“While we’re talking of warnings… Do you remember, Sivert Jakobsa, the year we rowed fishing that winter for Hovden. It was only a year after I redeemed the fembøringen I owned with Erik, Finn Jonetta’s son at Kråkhaugen.
“It was such grim, uncanny fishing during advent that year, and I expect you well remember Sivert, we left to go to the fishing grounds three weeks before Christmas.
“When we sailed around Berget, a cormorant came flying straight towards our prow, but I was quick enough to steer the boat free of the shadow of its wing. And when we had come as far as the boathouse point and entered the harbor, three crows came straight towards us.
“Had it now been one of the old fellows who sat at the helm, then he would have turned and steered into the harbor from the other approach. — Or what would you say, Rubert Rubertsa?
“But I was so foully angry with Finn Jonetta and all the trollish pranks she had played since we had fallen out about the boat, her son and I, that I was indifferent to whatsoever that met me of spooks and warnings she had sent against us.. And I steered the fembøring towards the boathouse that had been lent to us, while the fishing lasted.
—•—
“At first, everything went as it ought—the weather was good, and we fished; it was a release to be at sea.
“But during the last week before Christmas, the grey seals began to come ashore in our boatshed, obsessively so.
“Yes, you remember it, Sivert Jakobsa, how afraid you were the morning we came down to the shore early, to row aboard the fembøring, and your foot slid, and you sat down with your backside right on a grey seal. You cursed until you gleamed, and he jumped up and rolled into the sea.
“But what you don’t know is that I went down to the boathouse when everyone in the house had fallen asleep in the evening. I went with a lighted lantern in my hand, and when I arrived, it was so dense with grey seals that to my eyes it was as if they were floating as close together as herring in a barrel. I thought straight away that Finn Jonetta was out with her arts, trying to disturb my vision and discourage me. For it is an old belief that fay folk row out from the shed the grey seals gather in.
“But what Finn Jonetta didn’t have any idea of was that I knew the words and aspects that would force the fay grey seals away from my marks, and when I had recited and scratched in the sand the necessary signs, they were gone.
—•—
“We, like all the others who rowed for Hovden, hauled our fembøring up on to land over Christmas. And in our case, we got a lift by boat for part of the way.
“The rest of the way we went on foot, and were home again in good time, the morning of Christmas Eve.
“But on the third day of the new year we were back. And when I had laid my bundle down in the boathouse, I strolled down to the fembøring, while Sivert Jakobsa made sure the stove was made up, and boiled coffee for us.
“The fembøring was as we had left it. But when I looked inboard, I saw that both rear oars lay turned the wrong way, and so was the bailer amidships.
“‘Oh ho!’ I thought. ‘Is it the draug himself that she has conjured upon us now, that damned troll witch?’
“And I took and turned the oars and the bailer around the way they should lie in a Christian man’s boat. But I mentioned it neither to you Sivert Jakobsa nor to the rest of the boat’s crew; I first wanted to try the power of the fellow who had been loosed on us.
“Then you certainly remember well, Sivert Jakobsa, that the Lord’s enrapturing storm blew up, the night after we had come to Hovden. It lasted more than thirteen days, and it was impossible to go to sea. The fish rack, with all the coalie we had fished and hung during advent blew down, and the storm tore the roof off two fishing huts; but our hut was spared.
“And every single morning I went to look over the fembøring, I found the rear oars and the bailer lay draug-turned.
“I didn’t say anything then either, Sivert Jakobsa. But if you think about it, you will probably remember that when Saturday came, I took a quick turn home. The fjord was accessible by boat, and I had to cleave both scree and mount, but I got there.
“I was back on Sunday evening. And by then the weather had calmed enough to give us hope that we would get the fembøring on the water when day came again.
“But do you know Sivert Jakobsa what it was I had been home to fetch?
“Well, when they tore down the old church on the bar, there was one who was so thoughtful that he cleaved a piece off the altar; and for good words and payment I got a splinter big enough to make me some wooden pegs from the consecrated wood.
“Those were what I went to get, the weekend I went home. And the same evening, I knocked one of those pegs into the stem of the fembøring.
“And not enough with that; I knocked one into the keel under the middle of the boat, and one in the stern, and beneath the rear cabin bulkhead, I cut the mark of a cross with my sheath knife.
“The oars and the bailer lay as they were supposed to, and I thought it was your hands Sivert, that had turned them around, without your mentioning it to me.
“Enough about that. I went and sat at the top of the tidemark and hid the lantern beneath my outer garment. And I hadn’t sat there for a minute before I heard something come splashing ashore, dragging itself up the rollers towards the boathouse.
“It was pitch dark, with a glimpse of clear sky between the storm clouds.
“When what had come reached the fembøring, it raised itself up.
“And enough light reached down to the ground from the clear patches of sky that I saw it was a draug. He was as tall as a fembøring mast, and he gleamed, as if he had been smeared top to bottom with glowing embers of fire.
“I didn’t shudder where I was sitting; and I wasn’t appalled, either, just so boiling tense concerning what would now happen.
“He groped his way along the boat. But when he was about to round the prow, he remained standing, sniffing, and then he bent himself and glared at the peg I had knocked in.
“Then he lay down flat on the ground and tried to press himself under the boat’s keel, but he soon came out again, got up and began to grope inboard.
“But when he came to the rear cabin bulkhead, he began to wail, and waved something that I supposed to be his arms; to my eyes they resembled the foreflippers of a walrus. Then he set off down along the rollers such that sparks hissed in his wake, and gone was he.
“And afterwards it never happened that the rear oars and the bailer lay draug-turned in my fembøring.
—•—
“Since then I heard that Finn Jonetta had an accident, on the same evening that what I have now told you happened. She fell on the ice and hurt her back so badly that she lay there moaning and crying.
“They got her inside the house, and her son’s wife offered to fetch the parson. He was very good with both the spiritual and the physical. But Finn Jonetta said no. And when her strength to hold out was exhausted, he came, whom she had sworn herself to, and fetched what was his.”
“God mind your mouth, my Mekkel, how you talk! Finn Jonetta died as any other human being, and was placed in a coffin and buried in the Christian manner.
“Perhaps the only remarkable thing was that she turned black–blue in her face and down her left side, after her death. But that came about because she had suffered such a hard death, and from the knock she took on the ice,” said Mekkel Johanna, who was a right-thinking person, and would not allow the resentment she harboured to speak, since her enemy had been brought before her God and judge.
But then Mekkel Aronsa laughed until he hiccupped, and put his arm around his wife’s neck.
“Yes, yes, my sugar ball,” he said. “Your words to honour and my words to filth.”
“But now it’s your turn, mother Johanne; tell us now what your uncle saw when he was stuck on the mountain in Kobbvågen, close to the jekt-warehouse.”
“If you think I should tell you, then I shall do so,“ said Mekkel Johanna, slipping her head out from beneath his arm.
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