“That’s likely!” retorted Wise Olaf. “She’s the only thing he was ever afraid of.”
“I didn’t think he’d stay away this long,” said the old man, “He loved his power over us too much. And now he’s gone since last November.”
“Oh, he’ll be back soon enough,” answered Wise Olaf. “I saw Young Eric the other day. He’s expecting him any time.”
“I was having a good time,” grumbled the old crone, puffing away at her pipe, “and you’ve made me ill with your talk!”
“Always in the winters before,” continued Kaisa, “I have seen her coming down the path on her skis. At night, thinking no one would see her. There she’d come, swiftly, her skirts flying behind her, and straight down she would go, over the bank, and out to the spot where her daughter was drowned. You should have heard her moaning, and wringing her hands! And she would cry something terrible. Many times I’ve asked Olaf to build us a house elsewhere, and not live here in the store like heathen folk, where we had to see such a sight and listen to such things. ’Tis not good for the children.”
“I’ve heard,” said Olga, her voice soft and pitying, “that she was just like other people before she lost the girl. That they were very happy, even though they were so poor, with their little garden and their hut. Perhaps she is like others still, only we are afraid of her, and that makes her queer. Perhaps we should go up and see if anything has happened to her?” She looked around questioningly, her blue eyes pleading.
“I’ve often said so to Kaisa,” answered Wise Olaf. “It’s you women, I said, should go——”
“How can you expect us to go,” asked Kaisa angrily, “when you men are afraid?”
“And with good reason,” cackled the old man, his toothless gums still busy with the coffee bean. “I’m old here, and I know. I was with those that went up, shortly after we’d found the daughter, and Witch Mary had had her brought up there, and buried beside the hut——”
“Beside the hut—think of that! That was no Christian thing to do. You must have known then there was something wrong.”