The Klipfish Code (3 page)

Marit curled into a tight ball and finally slept.

***

"
Frokost!
" Aunt Ingeborg called upstairs, as she did every morning. Marit jumped up, emerging from a dream of searching for her parents amid bomb-shelled buildings, and bumped her head on the slanted ceiling. "
Uff da!
"

With a groan, she dragged herself out of bed. The sun was higher than usual. "Oh, no." By now, Big Olga's udder would be painfully full.

Lars's rumpled hair—the color of
kaffe
with cream—stuck out from under the fluffy
dyne.

"Lars, get up. Don't keep Aunt Ingeborg waiting."

No sooner had the words left her tongue than the
dyne
flew off the bed. As Lars's feet hit the wooden floor, Marit hurried ahead down the steep stairs into the yeastscented kitchen. She braced herself for her aunt's scolding, although the worst kind of scolding was Bestefar's stony silence.

Aunt Ingeborg turned away from her bread dough and wiped her flour-dusted hands on her apron. Her fingernails were trimmed short, her forearms covered with sun-bleached hairs and sprinkled with freckles from hours in the gardens. She pushed golden strands back into her tightly woven bun, then humphed.

"I thought you were going to sleep forever. The sun's halfway through its chores already, as you two should be." She had the same sterling blue eyes as Mama—only
Mama's eyes were glistening water, and Aunt Ingeborg's were melting ice.

At the back door, Marit pulled on her boots. "I'm sorry..." she began. "I'm going right now."

"No, I already took care of the milking. Boots off." Aunt Ingeborg patted Marit's shoulder and steered her to a chair at the table. It was set with plates of cheese, herring, bread, strawberry jam, and hard-boiled eggs and a pitcher of buttermilk. "Besides, you needed extra sleep. A girl of ten shouldn't have such dark circles."

"
Takk.
Tomorrow—I promise—I'll be up earlier."

"Tomorrow,
ja,
but today I need you two to pick rhubarb."

"For pie?" Lars asked, his dimples deepening in his rounded cheeks.

"And jam. I hope to trade some for flour and a little coffee. Now, bow your heads."

Later, they headed outside. Alongside the red barn, trimmed white like every door and window frame of her grandfather's goldenrod house, they found rhubarb leaves as big as elephant's ears. In the land of the midnight sun, the long hours of daylight helped crops grow fast—and large.

"Remember, Lars," Marit said, "pull them out like this." Without breaking its stem, she pulled on a long rhubarb stalk until it slipped free.

"I
know,
Marit," Lars said, shaking his head. "I heard
what Aunt Ingeborg said. You don't always have to tell me what to do, just because you're older." His bangs hung nearly into his eyes; Mama would have trimmed his hair weeks ago.

Marit put her hand on his shoulder. "I know you're smart. You finished grade one already."

Lars lowered his head.

"Well, maybe you didn't
finish
grade one, but close enough."

"See?" he said. "You said I didn't finish."

"Don't worry—we'll start school in the fall and you'll be in grade two."

He was two heads shorter, but sturdy. The island was a good place for him, and Aunt Ingeborg's cooking had helped ease the stomachaches he'd had when they first arrived.

Some things were the same. Her brother. Aunt Ingeborg and Bestefar. Three cows swishing their tails in the pasture. The island smells of kelp, fish, and salt water. Cries of seagulls and kittiwakes. Wooden trawlers and smaller fishing boats bobbing on a soft chop. The fairyland city of Ålesund across the harbor with its towers and turrets—or at least what was left of it. But when sirens rang across the water, the sound of bombs falling in Ålesund often followed.

She turned away and joined Lars in picking more rhubarb. Soon a pile of green leaves and red stalks
reached Marit's knees. They brought their harvest to the back steps, cut off the stems, and threw the leaves behind the barn.

"Just enough sugar left to bake pies," Aunt Ingeborg said as they carried the ruby red stems into her tidy kitchen. "After this, I don't know when we'll see sugar again."

That afternoon—as they had every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday since they'd arrived—Marit and Lars hiked the dirt road to the fishing wharf. They paused by the first boathouse, where a new propaganda poster had been tacked up overnight. The illustration showed a blond Norwegian and a blond German shaking hands, with "
Alt for Norge!
" written above it.

"Don't believe it," she told Lars. "
All for Norway
is a lie."

Such posters often combined Nazi swastikas with Viking boats and heroic characters, as if the Germans could convince Norwegians that the two countries were destined to merge. Norwegians regularly ripped down
the pro-Nazi posters at night, but in the mornings, German soldiers tacked them back up again.

Beneath the gaze of Godøy Mountain, Marit and Lars walked on. They passed several island farms—narrow strips of land that stretched like piano keys to the shore. Fjord horses dotted a few pastures; more ponies than horses, their thick manes and golden coats caught the morning sunlight as they grazed.

Along the way, Marit's mind raced with worry that a letter from Mama and Papa might—or might not—arrive. At least there was one bright spot: her new friend, Hanna.

The day they'd first met, Marit had been waiting on the pier with other islanders for the mail boat to arrive. Someone had tapped Marit on her shoulder and asked, "Where are
you
from?" Marit turned to discover a girl her own height, with shiny dark hair and a smile that revealed a slice of air between her front teeth.

"Isfjorden," Marit replied.

"My name's Hanna Brottem. What's yours?"

"Marit Gundersen. I'm staying with my grandfather, Leif Halversen, and my aunt Ingeborg."

"You mean Miss Halversen. She's going to be my teacher next fall."

"Really? Oh, and this is my brother, Lars."

Lars glanced away shyly, but his dimples deepened. "
Hei,
" he said, without meeting Hanna's eyes.

Hanna told Marit about her family's new baby and two-year-old sister she looked after every day while her mother worked at the hospital in Ålesund. She pointed to a nearby red clapboard home facing the ocean. And Marit told Hanna about being bombed, how their cookstove had been blown partway through their kitchen wall, and how they hadn't been able to return home yet. That she wondered every day if her parents were all right.

"That's terrible," Hanna said. "Much worse than no flour or sugar."

"A lot worse."

Hanna's eyebrows bunched over her tiny nose. "Then ... you're
refugees.
"

Refugees.
The word had an edge to it, like a fence meant to divide those who belong from those who do not. Marit wasn't sure if this girl was making fun of her. What had she meant exactly? She bristled. "
Ja. I
guess so."

Hanna touched her arm lightly. "That must be hard—to be separated like that from your home and parents."

Marit could only nod. Whatever doubts Marit had about Hanna instantly vanished. She knew she'd made a good friend.

***

As they waited for the mail boat to pull alongside the dock, Marit tapped her foot impatiently. Lars held
Marit's hand, and she let him. His small hand reminded her that he was only seven. Even at ten, she was having a terrible time being separated from Mama and Papa. More than once, she'd woken up from the same nightmare. Always, she was on a ship with her family and they were crossing the ocean, when out of nowhere, the legendary sea monster—the
kraken
—reached its terrible tentacles and suction cups around the ship and to the very top of the mast. Part crab, part octopus, it was enormous, and it finally found what it was looking for—Mama and Papa. It wrapped its slimy arms around their bodies and pulled them toward its pinching mouth, then sank out of sight, leaving a whirlpool behind. Marit clung to Lars as the ship twirled in dizzying circles, sucked slowly downward toward the bottom of the sea. That's when she usually woke up—terrified and sobbing.

"
Hei,
Marit!" Hanna ran toward them, her braids whipping in the breeze. Marit dropped Lars's hand. "Hanna!"

Soon after, the mail boat pulled up to the main dock.

"What do you have for us today?" called Mr. Larsen, grabbing a line and tying it off. Owner of the general store, with a head of short sandy curls and matching beard, he was taller than most men on the island.

"The usual," replied the captain. He tossed the leather mailbag to Mr. Larsen as a handful of passengers disembarked.

"Do you have a letter from the Gundersens?" Marit asked Mr. Larsen, following him step by step to his shop.

"Same answer, Marit. You'll have to wait—along with everyone else."

A new sign in the window stated:
Out of potatoes. Don't know when we'll get them.

Inside, the shop's shelves of food, household, and farm supplies seemed to dwindle every day. Mr. Larsen stood behind his counter and began pulling letters and parcels from the leather bag. Villagers crowded around. "Ivarsen!" he called out.

"Here!" A young woman scurried forward, hand up.

"Riste."

"Over here." Marit recognized the fisherman who held his pipe in the air. He was a friend of Bestefar's.

With each name that Mr. Larsen called, Marit's dread grew that they would
never
get a letter,
never
again see Mama and Papa. To again hear nothing, to walk back along the road empty-handed, to be passed by truck-loads of German soldiers ... A stone lodged in her throat and she chewed the inside of her lip to keep from crying. If she started, she'd never stop.

Hanna elbowed her. "Marit—he called Halversen. Raise your hand."

Marit shot her hand up and hurried forward. She suddenly couldn't speak.

Mr. Larsen looked over her head, waving the letter high. "Halversen?"

"Here!" She waved her arm back and forth.

Suddenly, the chatter in the shop died away as Mr. Larsen turned toward the window, the letter frozen in his hand. Everyone followed his gaze. Outside, a German officer dismounted from his bay horse, its coat as glossy as its rider's long black boots. When the Germans had arrived, they'd brought their own horses with them.

The officer stepped inside and frowned, as if he'd caught a group of children doing something wrong. "Too many," he said in halting Norwegian, his nose bent slightly at the bridge. He waved his arm through the air as if clearing unwelcome cobwebs. "A secret meeting?"

Mr. Larsen spoke up, waving the letter. "I was just handing out the mail. You see? This one goes to the Halversens." He pointed to Marit. "Marit and her brother are grandchildren of Leif Halversen."

The German studied Marit.

She held herself back from leaping for the letter like a starving dog after a food scrap. She kept calm—controlling herself—as if the letter meant nothing to her at all. But she had already noticed the handwriting. It was Mama's!

The officer took the letter from Mr. Larsen's hand and placed it in Marit's. "There you go,
Fräulein.
"

She would rather spit in his hand than take anything from him, but she couldn't refuse the letter. It burned between her fingers. She wanted to rip it open, but instead she waited for the officer to leave. As soon as he was outside and turned his tall, ebony horse toward the street, Marit hurried to the door, with Hanna and Lars right behind her.

Once outside, she studied the letter.

"Is it from your parents?" Hanna asked.

"
Nei.
I mean, the return address says Siversen, not Gundersen. But the handwriting. Something's not right. I'm sure this is my mother's."

"Hanna! Marit!" came a familiar voice. The girls looked up from the envelope. Olaf, a year older and a friend of Hanna's, hurried from the docks toward them, all smiles. In his arms he carried a shaggy pup. The dog's eyes were mismatched—one was blue, the other brown—and its pink tongue lapped relentlessly at Olaf's face. "Look what my father brought back for me from Ålesund! It's a husky—the kind that pulls sleds."

He set the wiggly puppy down on the side of the road and combed the pup's thick fur with his fingers. The puppy's tail curved over its back. "He's going to be a fine dog, don't you think? And big. Just look at his paws."

The puppy was cute, but Marit could only think of the letter and getting home so she could read it with Aunt Ingeborg. "C'mon, Lars. We have to go."

But Lars dropped to his knees and hugged the puppy's neck. He was always quick to fall in love with animals. "
Hei,
little puppy—"

"What are you going to name him?" Hanna asked, squatting down alongside Lars.

Olaf's eyes flickered with mischief. "I was thinking of calling him Marit."

"
Nei!
" Marit tried to pretend outrage, but she knew Olaf was teasing.

"Actually, I'm thinking of calling him Kaptain."

"I like that," Hanna said.

At that moment, nothing besides the letter mattered. "Lars," she said, "we need to get back." She sounded as firm as Aunt Ingeborg and pulled him to his feet. "I'm sure we'll see Kaptain again soon. We have chores."

"Marit ... but—"

"Now!" She nearly ran all the way home, but had to keep stopping along the road to wait for Lars to catch up. Past the school building, boathouses, and pastures, they followed the road as it curved northeast. As they turned down the dirt drive and raced past the barn, the goats lifted their heads in question.

Aunt Ingeborg met Marit on the doorstep. "Marit—what is it? What's the matter?"

Out of breath, Marit handed her the letter and stepped in. Aunt Ingeborg sat down at the kitchen table and stared at the letter in her hands.

"It's Mama's writing, isn't it?" Marit said.

Aunt Ingeborg nodded. "Sure looks like it, but..."