You could use the wood for the new house, surely.”
“You mean ‘Basecamp.’” He announces the house’s name with air quotes.
She laughs. Basecamp. She’d have preferred something along the lines of Villa Faraday or The Tree House, but whatever. Tom says “Basecamp” captures the sense of family adventure they’re embarking on, so Basecamp it is.
“Basecamp,” she deadpans, and Tom grins.
“I’ll cut down those trees tomorrow. Happy?”
“Ecstatic.”
* * *
—
It is nighttime. Coco is lying against Aurelia’s left shoulder and Gaia is curled up beside her in the armchair as she reads from her father’s old journal of Norse folklore, as told to him as a child by his parents and grandparents. The yellowing, crumpling transcriptions with inkblots are much too delicate now for handling, and they’re in Norwegian. Some years ago she began the painstaking process of translating and digitizing the book into an English PDF file that she reads on her iPad to Gaia. Many are simply too macabre for a six-year-old, but there is a selection of tales that are entertaining and that provide a good source of education about Gaia’s heritage. Gaia loves the tale about the raven who raises two sparrows in her nest when her own eggs are stolen. She particularly loves the one about the man who changes into a wolf when his sadness gets the better of him, and always squeals at the tale of the bear who tries to catch a fish that turns out to be a whale that swallows the bear whole—a metaphor, Aurelia thinks, for biting off more than you can chew.
“Can you read the one about the lady who was friends with the big deer?”
“Yes, of course,” Aurelia says, swiping to the beginning of the PDF.
“Here it is,” she says. “‘Grete and the Elk.’”
Once upon a time there was a woman called Grete who had two daughters. All day long Grete did the work of women, but at night she would stand by the door and dream about sailing across the ocean, or diving to its depths, or even soaring to the moon.
One night, whilst she was standing by her door eating a bowl of riskrem (“riskrem is a kind of porridge,” she tells Gaia), she heard a noise in the woods, the sound of shaking branches and twigs snapping underfoot. Her dog began to growl, and fear seized her so that she shut the door with trembling hands. But when she peered through the window she saw an enormous elk sniffing at the latch. The next night the same thing happened, and the night after, but on the fourth night she decided to hold her nerve and see what the elk wanted.
The elk was a magnificent creature with a majestic crown of antlers that glinted in the moonlight. Grete was afraid of being run through by them, but as the elk stopped a little way away from her she sensed that it did not mean her harm. Her dog rushed toward the elk, barking and warning it off, but the elk merely looked down at it, and eventually the dog quietened and seemed to accept the elk.
“What do you want?” Grete asked the elk. It took one step closer, then another, and she noticed its eyes peering at the remains of the riskrem she had just been eating a moment before. Gently she held up the bowl and the elk ate from it.
The next night Grete made two bowls of riskrem and the elk visited and ate. This visit became a regular habit, and Grete found that she spent her days doing the work of women anticipating its visits with happiness. The elk listened to her more than her husband or children, and she’d noticed it would often seem to respond with little grunts or huffs that sounded as though it understood every word she spoke.
But then Grete became ill. Her oldest girl fetched the doctor, who told her nothing more could be done—she would have to stay in bed, where she would eventually die.
Grete asked for her daughters to put a bowl of riskrem by the front door each night. At first they asked why, but after the first night they understood. After three nights, Grete was wakened by the tap-tap-tap of hooves across the floorboards. She was astonished and joyful to see her elk walking through her home, where it came to rest at her bedside. She reached out to stroke his velvety muzzle and told him many tales, to which he nodded and grunted in response.