Ch. 1: Finnmark

My name is Thomas Hartman, and I write this in response to a letter. It is a question I have been asked several times already over the past few years, but never have I given the true, honest, answer. It concerns something I swore not to speak of, for the sake of my reputation and credulity as a historian. Today, though, I feel it is time to tell the story. This year has been momentous already, both for our country �" may her imperial majesty rest in peace, and long live King Edward �" and for myself. Perhaps it is that which changes my mind, or perhaps it is the time of year, or that the letter simply found me in an unusually cheerful mood. In any case, here is my answer. The question was, in my own rewording: what single event I can say has changed my life?

What a question. For most people, a difficult or impossible one. Change is a gradual thing, made up of as many moments and decisions as the life it changes. However, some moments do stand out more than others, and I am lucky enough �" if lucky is the word �" lucky enough, I say, to have one particular event that stands out more clearly than any other.

It was before I came into my small fame. I was a gentleman, and had some considerable wealth, thanks to my late parents, but I spent little of it. I have always been, in the vernacular of the psychologist, somewhat obsessive. Always my life has been taken up with some great endeavour or other, something to which all my energies can be devoted to. This moment I am thinking of could, I suppose, be called the end of one such quest and, in a roundabout way, the start of another.

It was early winter, near the solstice, when I first saw the place he lived. After so long, and so much work �" the years poring over maps, trawling through ancient stories, seeking out diaries and translating legends �" but it had paid off. I had found it.

But, I have to say, it surprised me. I don’t know what I expected �" none of my research had given much evidence for the type of place this man might live. A factory? A palace? A cave? Something extraordinary, certainly, for �" in a foolishness I think I have lost since those days �" I expected exceptional things to come in exceptional surroundings.

In fact it was a simple place, built like many I had seen around those parts. It was small �" or squat, at least; from where I stood I could not see how deep it went �" and undecorated. The stone was gray and thick, and what windows I could see were small, though of course this was necessitated by the weather. In design, I would not say it was new, but nor was it ancient: I would put the style at perhaps a century old, not more. That seemed oddest of all to me, because the being I sought was an ancient one indeed.

Despite the cold climate and the time of year, that region of Finnmark was far from desolate. The house stands on the edge of a vast forest, in the shelter of one of the uncountable gullies carved there by ice, long ago. We saw little wildlife during our journey, just the occasional bird, perhaps because our sleds were noisy and the dogs more so. A shame, for I would have dearly loved to see a reindeer. But there was a sense of presence there, of hidden eyes watching from the trees, of all the life of the northern forests being somewhere just of out of view. It had snowed, but the sky was clear for us. Of course, given the time of year, there was no sun. The stars shone throughout the night, and only a blush of twilight crossed the skies around noon.

The search had been hard and slow, and that is why, when at last we had found the place, I was so eager to reach the goal of my quest. My captain urged caution, and asked to send some men with me, but I did not heed him. I left them to pitch the tents and handle the sledges, while I approached the house alone.

Up close, it was not as featureless as I had first assumed. A stand of holly grew right in front of it, and

It was a still day, and my footsteps on the cleared stone path seemed to echo off the frozen snow as I approached the house. Up close, I saw that the stone was not featureless, but was thickly crusted with those plants that grow in such a clime �" moss and ivy, for the most part. It was as though the forest were reaching out its fingers to grasp the house and pull it into itself, or so it struck me.

The door had neither knocker nor bell-pull, so I pounded on the thick wood a few times.

I had not more than a few seconds to wait before it opened, inwards. A woman stood there, which surprised me. Was she a servant? She didn't have the bearing of a housekeeper, but it was difficult to guess her station from her clothes. They were simple enough in design, and looked homemade to my eye, yet they had been embroidered well, almost lovingly, and they were of a rich luscious green, like none I had ever seen a servant wear. Was she perhaps his wife? In some of the stories he had a wife, of course. I had assumed that to be a modern addition, but perhaps not. After all, there she was, eyeing me up and down, her mouth creasing into a smile, and saying, "Now, I didn't think that sounded like pointed feet!"