Chapter One
SIGRÍÐUR TÓMASDÓTTIR
Jafnan er hálfsögð saga, ef einn segir.
A tale is but half told if only one person tells it.
MY PAPPI thinks my eyes are even bluer than the River Hvitá flowing by our old farm. He’s so silly. He thinks my sister Bryndis is pretty too but she’s not. She has a funny chin. If I must find a simile for it, I’d say, ‘shrivelled turnip’.
My name is Sigríður Tómasdóttir, I’m twelve years old, thirteen in February and I live on a small sheep farm called Brattholt in the south of Iceland. My family call me Sigri but children in Eyrarbakki village call me ‘Sigri the Crow’s Nest’, it’s my curls, much too long and very messy; think haystack. Yesterday, I was trying to brush it and a twig and a crowberry fell on to my lap. My cousin, Petur, he’s a bully; he calls me ‘Tröll’ (troll). Boys can be so cruel. I remember when Ma had been here, there had been no twigs in my curls then. But Pappi never combs it. I miss her terribly.
I hunch my shoulders and walk over to my Gullfoss (Golden Falls), on the very path my sister and I built three summers ago. A jacket of sheepskin, four winters old, keeps the cold September wind at bay, but still I shiver. I had blinked and the summer of 1907 had galloped by, often the way in Iceland. Winter is now crowding in, keen to strip the birch trees and blanket us with snow. I hate the winter. The cold always seems to invade my body like a ship full of marauding Vikings.
I cross a patch of yellow grass at the back of my pappi’s farm. Grey sheep trot next to me, expecting to be fed, and my dog sniffs my heels. She is a sheepdog and I love her dearly. She is fluffy, her fur the colour of ash, so I call her Aska.
I feel my Golden Falls long before I see her, the waterfall hidden so it looks as if the mighty River Hvitá is simply swallowed up by the earth. Spray dusts my eyelids and a thunderous crashing sends shivers from my feet all the way to the tips of my curls. I walk over the top of a low hill...
...and there she is...
My wonderful cascade of water, dropping not once, but twice. Thundering into the
canyon, the swirling water meanders away in a thousand twists and turns. As always,
I stand stock-
In the shadow of this growling monster, my fantasy returns. I’m sitting on a tiny raft of drift wood, my feet dangling in the frothing water. I hit the first of the falls. I go over but I’m not scared. I’m flying.
FLYING! In a jumble of misty clouds. I see a wolf, all teeth and bristled-
A gust of wind hits me, carrying a string of sober words. Rudely, they interrupt my fantasy. I look up to see my pappi and a man trudging over the crest of the hill. I feel my teeth clench. The man is Mr. Rudolph J. Stern, an Englishman who works for the Global Electric Company, the GEC, and my only enemy. He has the black eyes of a devil, the wobbly bottom of a milking cow and a perfectly trimmed moustache. I decide, then and there, if I drop him in a pot of stew the stew would taste of scrambled up rat poo and wormy spaghetti. I spot he has a map in his hand. He wants to buy my Gullfoss and put a dam and a power plant on it.
‘Good morning, Sigríður.’ Mr Stern lifts the lip of his bowler hat and musters a grin but his eyes stay frosty. Nervously, he fingers the tips of his moustache, his cheek twitching as if there is an annoying fly on it. He knows what I think of him and his plans for Gullfoss.
I wish him a good morning too. My pappi is listening. He will be angry if I’m boorish.
‘No school today?’ Mr Stern asks me, cheerily. He knows no Icelandic but my mother schooled me in English. I need it for when I show visitors Gullfoss.
‘I don’t go to school,’ I reply curtly.
‘Yes, yes. Silly me.’ But I can tell he’s not interested.
He and my pappi clasp hands. ‘Excellent!’ booms Stern. ‘I will be by in the week with the papers.’ He drops to his knee to mop a spot of mud off his polished boots with his thumb. ‘Good day,’ he snaps.
With narrow eyes I watch him bumble off.
My pappi told me the men in the pub in Eyrarbakki call him Rudolph the Whale. I wonder if he knows. My lips muster a half moon. I must remember to let it slip on his next unwelcomed visit.
I winch up my chin and look to my pappi. He’s so ghostly pale these days but his eyes look alert and his powerful jaw still juts up proudly. He looks very ‘manly’, but I know he’s a big softy, too soft to even kill a hen when she’s too old to lay.
Thankfully, I got his jaw. I have his sapphire-
‘The farm’s not doing so well.’ He shrugs and stomps off. I chase after him, Aska yapping by my heels. ‘Wool is selling for a lot less,’ he is mumbling, his eyes to his boots, ‘and a polar fox killed two of the hens last night.’ I hook my fingers on his sleeve and he stops. Somberly, he looks to me. ‘We must sell the Foss.’
‘NO!’ My blood disobeys the cold wind bubbling in my ears. ‘Stern’s a crook. Why do you only even listen to him? Jafnan er hálfsögð saga, ef einn segir. He can not see the wonder of Gullfoss. He only sees pots of silver.’
‘Sigríður!’ Pappi puts a hand on my shoulder but I shake it off.
‘He will destroy my waterfall,’ I yell, inflamed. I’m on tiptoe now. ‘HE’S A MONSTER!’
‘Stop it!’
‘If Ma were here, she’d stop you.’ I say this, but with the words only a second from my lips, I wish I had not. Töluð orð verða ekki aftur tekin. (Spoken words can not be unspoken). Anger sparks in my pappi’s eyes and his jaw hardens to granite. I cower away, scared he will slap me.
But he walks away.
‘I won’t let you,’ I bellow to his hunched-
By my feet, Aska rests her jaws on the top of my boot, her way of comforting me. I try to rally up a tiny smile to thank her but sadly, my face has forgotten how to.
