Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 35 - The Flute

Vetle swallowed again. Damn his fear of the dark, and that it was so apparent! But this man gave him a feeling of safety and trust.

“What am I to do?”

“You must travel far, far away. And you must do it alone. No, don’t worry, we’ll tell your parents about it.”

Suddenly the boy remembered his manners. “Won’t you sit down?”

At that point he could clearly sense that the man was smiling.

“Sit down? It’s been a long time since anyone’s asked me to do that! But no, thank you.”

“You’re used to walking, isn’t that right? You are the Wanderer of the Darkness, aren’t you?”

“That is what I am called, yes. You know your history, I see.”

“But I thought ...”

“That I lived down in the south? I do. But, as I said, we need your help right now, Vetle, and this particular situation is my area of responsibility.”

The man was markedly friendly – as though he were speaking to a child, the boy thought, somewhat insulted. But there was something a little jocular and ironic in his hollow-sounding voice.

Vetle grew a little bolder. He wanted to show his courage now that he knew there was no need to fear any “ghosts”. He didn’t get the feeling that he was facing a ghost right now, but rather an odd sort of friend.

“I’ve always believed that the Wanderer was the rat-catcher of Hamelin.”

“I see,” the man muttered. “That’s not a bad guess. No, I’m not the rat-catcher of Hamelin. But I’ve met him. And I received a flute from him. He was a strange man!”

“But Tengel the Evil didn’t manage to catch him?”

“The rat-catcher didn’t wish to meet him.”

“So there were two members of the Ice People on that trip?”

“I travelled ahead. In order to find the right places – that’s why no one has ever heard of me in connection with Tengel’s journey. We already had one flute, the Ice People’s or Tengel the Evil’s flute. The one that was supposed to wake him up. We heard of the rat-catcher and wanted him to lull Tengel into a state of slumber. But he wouldn’t do it. However, I was given the flute because he trusted me.”

“But you didn’t have Tengel’s flute with you?”

“No. That’s what Tengel thought. But I knew it had been stolen.”

“By the first Jolin? Stolen along with the Ice People’s old totem and hidden in Eldafjord?”

“You certainly do know a lot!” the Wanderer said with a smile. “That’s completely correct. To be honest, I knew that Jolin intended to steal our great totem, the yak horns in which the flutes were hidden. But I didn’t stop him. I knew how dangerous the flute was for us.”

“Jolin wasn’t one of us, was he?”

“No, he was a petty criminal who had been hiding in the Valley of the Ice People.”

“Thank you! The riddle is solved, then! I never liked the thought of him being a part of the family.”

“Oh, but you’ve had worse family members, haven’t you?” the mysterious guest murmured.

“Yes, I know that, of course. But Jolin was so ... lowly and scurrilous!”

“You’re right about that.”

“But I suppose Jolin didn’t know that the flutes were hidden in the horns?”

“No, all he saw were some valuable objects that could be sold. But he died before he had a chance to embark on that enterprise.”

Vetle hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “What is happening now? Why are my ancestors so anxious these days?”

“Someone has played a small part of Tengel’s signal on a flute.”

“Oh no!” gasped Vetle, suddenly growing cold with fear.

“Only a part. But he managed to do a great deal of harm in the brief period that he was active.”

“What kind of harm?”

The wanderer made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Just look at the state of the world.”

“You mean ... the world war? Is that Tengel’s doing?”

“Well ... not entirely his doing. Human folly had set the stage for it to a great extent. But his incentive caused the eruption.”

“But now he’s sleeping again?”

“Yes, I cornered him, though just a little too late, but I managed to get him to return to his resting place, something that I would never have been able to do if the entire signal had been played.”

“So what is the danger now?”

“Two years have passed since I returned him to his hibernation, and since then he has managed to gather strength and he wants to locate the flute player who played the partial signal. We must prevent that.”

“How are we to do that?” Vetle’s heart was pounding. This sounded truly unpleasant.

“The unfortunate man composed a melody practically identical to Tengel’s. He played only two bars of it but he wrote down the entire theme on a sheet of paper, which he threw into a chest together with a pile of other sheets of music. That sheet of music must be destroyed.”

“Can’t Saphira manage that?”

“Not alone, and you know that, Vetle! The ancestors can only act through those family members of the Ice People who are living. And you have been selected.”

Once again he had difficulty breathing, as he was trying to swallow at the same time. “But the dark angels can help me, I suppose?”

The figure shook his head. “You are not of their lineage.”

“Henning wasn’t either, and they helped him when he was a child. They also helped Malin.”

“The dark angels helped Henning because of Saga and her twin sons. And they helped Malin against Ulvar who was of their lineage. None of that is relevant in your case.”

Vetle took a deep breath. “I will, of course, do as you wish. But if Tengel the Evil is unable to move, he can’t get hold of anything, can he? Not the man or the flute or the music sheet.”

“That is true. But you are forgetting his enormous mental power. It has been slumbering for two years now. But it is once again as potent as it was before.”

“And?”

“And so he will make use of whatever human tools he can find to perform his evil tasks for him.”

“But he doesn’t have any stricken ones to use at the moment. For Benedikte ...”

The figure lifted his hand under his cloak. “Benedikte doesn’t do his errands for him. But he has others ...”

“Who, for example?”

“I don’t yet know whom he intends to choose.”

Vetle waited but the man didn’t say anything more.

“So what am I to do?”

“You must go south.”

The boy stepped back automatically. “To ... his hiding place?”

“No. Much farther west. To the land of the Moors.”

As we have said, Vetle was an intelligent boy and quick-witted; on top of that he was also very tactful. In the Wanderer’s own day it had been the land of the Moors. But it wasn’t anymore.

“I understand,” he said. “Do you mean Spain? On the Iberian Peninsula.”

“That is probably right,” said the Wanderer solemnly. “Out by the river, in Wadi-al-Kabir’s great delta, there is a castle, and that is where the man lives who played the flute that woke Tan-ghil the Evil.”

“And I am to kill the flute player?” Vetle asked bravely.

“No, no. Are you really that bloodthirsty?”

“Of course not,” said Vetle, blushing from embarrassment at his own words. “I just blurted it out.”

“Yes, that’s understandable. No, you just need to find the sheet of music. And destroy it before the master of the castle or anyone else manages to play what is written on it.”

Vetle thought for a moment. He didn’t know about the river Wadi-al-Kabir. But he did know about Guadalquivir. The latter was probably a Spanish version of the former, which was the Arabic name for the river.

And it had a delta that was practically boundless, he was certain of that. The great marshy area known as Las Marismas. Eldorado for seagulls and migratory birds.