Once she had reigned here with her skeleton-hands outspread across her ribs like fans, but slowly the worms and roots dislodged her finger-rings; then they bent her ribs apart and groped up toward the sun. Then a farmer dug her up and robbed her of her spider-figured golden brooch. A subsequent crofter showed better heart, although his deed might have been misguided; thanks to him a rune-cut lead cross was buried with her in the grave. Gently setting this aside, I stroked away the dirt from the queen’s hand, and found that the little finger was all the poor lady had left. There was no need to cut it off; it came up in my hand.
At her side the tines of her bone comb lay outspread like the fingers she no longer had. At her feet was a cracked bowl of dark clay, with my silver coin in it.
Behind her head a stone passage went down. With the sun now overhead, I could see some way in. There lay good Queen Hnoss, and far beneath her was a boy’s skeleton on its side, gaping like a panting dog.
Bowing to my hostess, I gave her back her lead cross. Then I covered everything up, and replaced the living turf.
It was night when I came home to Ingrid. I fear I was haggard and grubby after my travels. The door opened, and there stood Ingrid, who always made her dresses so elegant with the bright hooks and waves of tablet-woven braid. She was decked out as if for company, in double brooches, and a thrice-bright woven braid across her breast, a chain of silver dipping down. Perhaps it was I she had been waiting for. Her hair was brighter than morning sunlight on the sea, and she was smiling her old smile of mirth without cheer, brightness without friendliness, invitation without promise. Needless to say, I desired her as much as ever.
You didn’t bring it, I see, was the first thing she said.
Straightaway, I threw the queen’s finger-bone in her face, and my poor Ingrid went pale and rigid. Then she began marching into the darkness. Thinking it a pity for her clothes to get spoiled, I helped her out of them, not that she thanked me, and then allowed her to go nightwalking in her shift, as so she plainly desired, with her pretty bottom showing, and her not even knowing it. The last I saw of her, she was already in the sky, trudging obediently off across the moonbeams, her hands out before her as if she were a timid child on horseback who dared not let go the reins.
Thinking I might as well get something for myself out of all this while my darling was gone, I pushed her bedstead aside, which she had told me never to do, and behind it were three secret chambers connected to Frey’s mound, one for the copper, one for the silver and one for the gold. Since there was so much more copper than anything else, I decided not to deprive Ingrid of what she evidently preferred to collect, and contented myself with taking all the gold and silver I could carry. Then I pushed back the bed and sat eating up Ingrid’s bread and cheese, for walking all the way around the world is hungry work, never mind digging up graves, and Ingrid had neglected to offer me anything. After that I felt caught up on my obligations. The only other thing I might have done was to set free her enchanted pigs, but for all I knew they were happier as they were; I myself could have made the best of it as one of Ingrid’s pigs, provided that she pulled my tail every now and then.
Here at dawn came my poor Ingrid, creeping down from the white sky’s grey cloud-cobbles, sinking to the ankle in the wet green pasturage churned up by the cows, shivering and sweating without knowing that she did, with her blonde hair down, her night-shift sopping wet and that swan-shirt, courtesy of the cormorant-trapper’s daughter, held tight against her bosom.
I threw the queen’s finger-bone in her face again, and back to herself she came, my sweet old Ingrid, awarding me quite the hateful look. Needless to say, I was wearing Turid’s arm-ring, so Ingrid couldn’t enchant me. She stood there dripping with dew and rain, and her mouth twitched while she decided how best to lay hands on me.
Good morning to you, I said.
In a rage, she bit her lower lip. Just then she noticed what she had in her arms, and her expression changed. Right away she commenced to coo and sigh over it, kissing the feathers one by one, until she remembered me again and sent her evil eye my way, in case I meant to rob her of her fine swan-shirt.
Where did I get this? she demanded.
You went barefoot to Lapland and back, I said. An easy walk, I should say, since you didn’t get any blisters.
That was when she finally realized that my heart had changed. I should have felt sorry for her, but my indifference resembled the green grass that conquers a pillaged grave-hole.
Sulking, Ingrid rushed off to the duckpond to bathe. I made a point of not watching. When she returned, the morning was strengthening, and she was naked and white to tempt me.
Well, said Ingrid, don’t you even feel like making love?
But your swan-shirt came a day late.
Oh, don’t worry about that, said she, as sweet as I had ever heard. The main thing is that I have my heart’s desire, no matter how. And so we’ll live happily ever after, until I leave you.
When might that be?
That’s no concern of yours. Now, do you want to make love or not? — And she swung her hips a trifle, so that I knew what she wished me to say.
Since doing the opposite of whatever she asked was bringing me such success, I said: Well, well, Ingrid, since that swan-shirt put us both to so much trouble, I’m curious to see how you look in it.
Of course Ingrid could not resist that; she longed more than anything to become a swan and fly away. So she pulled the beautiful thing over her head, slid her arms through the sleeves, and she was naked from her belly down, while from her belly up the perfect white swan-feathers sparkled like sea-waves, each one of them trapped so cunningly in the alternate-leaved V’s of linen, the quills rustling so sweetly with her heartbeats, and her long blonde hair spilling loose and windblown across all that precious whiteness, although I must admit that this set me to thinking of the queen’s hair ornaments scattered about her hairless skull. Turning her back to me, she began singing down to the grey ocean. Then she turned into a white swan and flew off.
As for me, I went home to my Turid, whose ways were as bright as lake-edge flowers. On the way I reburied the queen’s finger-bone in her grave, and poured in a double handful of gold, because a generous queen can never have enough of that. I also gave a gold coin apiece to the elf-wife and the old woman with the orange hair. As for the silver, I scattered that from mound to mound, so that the other wights would have joy of me.
Turid was standing in the doorway smiling, with a serpent-pin at the throat of her soft grey shift. She had the white breast and proud neck of a Norwegian wooden church. We went straight to bed. Once I asked her what she saw in me, and she replied that she liked a man who was easily satisfied. I gave her the rest of Ingrid’s gold, or Frey’s as I should say, which she buried in her cave of cormorants, in case we might ever need it. From what the birds told us, Ingrid was very happy, and enjoyed taking her lovers in the air. (I fear her pigs all starved.) Whenever she flew to our house in hopes of bewitching me again, Turid went out to deal with her, and hid me in her eiderdown nest. In time she gave me a whole brood of bird-children, and our life together grew as moist as sea-wind over the sweet-grassed graves.