The Witches

‘Didn’t they search for her?’ I asked.

‘They searched for miles around. Everyone in the town helped, but they never found her.’

‘What happened to the other four children?’ I asked.

‘They vanished just as Ranghild did.’

‘How, Grandmamma? How did they vanish?’

‘In every case a strange lady was seen outside the house, just before it happened.’

‘But how did they vanish?’ I asked.

‘The second one was very peculiar,’ my grandmother said. ‘There was a family called Christiansen. They lived up on Holmenkollen, and they had an old oil painting in the living room that they were very proud of. The painting showed some ducks in the yard outside a farmhouse. There were no people in the painting, just a flock of ducks on a grassy farmyard and the farmhouse in the background. It was a large painting and rather pretty. Well, one day their daughter Solveg came home from school eating an apple. She said a nice lady had given it to her on the street. The next morning little Solveg was not in her bed. The parents searched everywhere but they couldn’t find her. Then all of a sudden her father shouted, “THERE SHE IS! THAT’S SOLVEG FEEDING THE DUCKS!” He was pointing at the oil painting, and sure enough Solveg was in it. She was standing in the farmyard in the act of throwing bread to the ducks out of a basket. The father rushed up to the painting and touched her. But that didn’t help. She was simply a part of the painting, just a picture painted on the canvas.’

‘Did you ever see that painting, Grandmamma, with the little girl in it?’

‘Many times,’ my grandmother said. ‘And the peculiar thing was that little Solveg kept changing her position in the picture. One day she would actually be inside the farmhouse and you could see her face looking out of the window. Another day she would be far over to the left with a duck in her arms.’

‘Did you see her moving in the picture, Grandmamma?’

‘Nobody did. Wherever she was, whether outside feeding the ducks or inside looking out of the window, she was always motionless, just a figure painted in oils. It was all very odd,’ my grandmother said. ‘Very odd indeed. And what was most odd of all was that as the years went by, she kept growing older in the picture. In ten years, the small girl had become a young woman. In thirty years, she was middle-aged. Then all at once, fifty-four years after it all happened, she disappeared from the picture altogether.’

‘You mean she died?’ I said.

‘Who knows?’ my grandmother said. ‘Some very mysterious things go on in the world of witches.’

‘That’s two you’ve told me about,’ I said. ‘What happened to the third one?’

‘The third one was little Birgit Svenson,’ my grandmother said. ‘She lived just across the road from us. One day she started growing feathers all over her body. Within a month, she had turned into a large white chicken. Her parents kept her for years in a pen in the garden. She even laid eggs.’

‘What colour eggs?’ I said.

‘Brown ones,’ my grandmother said. ‘Biggest eggs I’ve ever seen in my life. Her mother made omelettes out of them. Delicious they were.’

I gazed up at my grandmother, who sat there like some ancient queen on her throne. Her eyes were misty grey and they seemed to be looking at something many miles away. The cigar was the only real thing about her at that moment, and the smoke it made billowed

round her head in blue clouds.

‘But the little girl who became a chicken didn’t disappear?’ I said.

‘No, not Birgit. She lived on for many years laying her brown eggs.’

‘You said all of them disappeared.’

‘I made a mistake,’ my grandmother said. ‘I am getting old. I can’t remember everything.’

‘What happened to the fourth child?’ I asked.

‘The fourth was a boy called Harald,’ my grandmother said. ‘One morning his skin went all greyish-yellow. Then it became hard and crackly, like the shell of a nut. By evening, the boy had turned to STONE.’

‘Stone?’ I said. ‘You mean real stone?’

‘Granite,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you to see him if you like. They still keep him in the house. He stands in the hall, a little stone statue. Visitors lean their umbrellas up against him.’

Although I was very young, I was not prepared to believe everything my grandmother told me. And yet she spoke with such conviction, with such utter seriousness, and with never a smile on her face or a twinkle in her eye, that I found myself beginning to wonder.

‘Go on, Grandmamma,’ I said. ‘You told me there were five altogether. What happened to the last one?’

‘Would you like a puff of my cigar?’ she said.

‘I’m only seven, Grandmamma.’

‘I don’t care what age you are,’ she said. ‘You’ll never catch a cold if you smoke cigars.’

‘What about number five, Grandmamma?’

‘Number five,’ she said, chewing the end of her cigar as though it were a delicious asparagus, ‘was rather an interesting case. A nine-year-old boy called Leif was summer-holidaying with his family on the fjord, and the whole family was picnicking and swimming off some rocks on one of those little islands. Young Leif dived into the water and his father, who was watching him, noticed that he stayed under for an unusually long time. When he came to the surface at last, he wasn’t Leif any more.’

‘What was he, Grandmamma?’

‘He was a PORPOISE.’

‘He wasn’t! He couldn’t have been!’

‘He was a lovely young porpoise,’ she said. ‘And as friendly as could be.’

‘Grandmamma,’ I said.

‘Yes, my darling?’

‘Did he really and truly turn into a porpoise?’

‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘I knew his mother well. She told me all about it. She told me how Leif the Porpoise stayed with them all that afternoon giving his brothers and sisters rides on his back. They had a wonderful time. Then he waved a flipper at them and swam away, never to be seen again.’

‘But Grandmamma,’ I said, ‘how did they know that the porpoise was actually Leif?’

‘He talked to them,’ my grandmother said. ‘He laughed and joked with them all the time he was giving them rides.’

‘But wasn’t there a most tremendous fuss when this happened?’ I asked.

‘Not much,’ my grandmother said. ‘You must remember that here in Norway we are used to that sort of thing. There are witches everywhere. There’s probably one living in our street this very moment. It’s time you went to bed.’

‘A witch wouldn’t come in through my window in the night, would she?’ I asked, quaking a little.

‘No,’ my grandmother said. ‘A witch will never do silly things like climbing up drainpipes or breaking into people’s houses. You’ll be quite safe in your bed. Come along. I’ll tuck you in.’