Lockets & Seamonsters

Somewhen in the second year on the Unicorn Farm, probably around the autumn holidays.

Monster, monster from the sea
come to shore and speak to me.
Full moon waning in the gloom,
Hero rising for his doom
Suppress partner, pressure go!
Trash can ballet, warrant too.

Tage had been practising all the way from the bus stop to the sea. It was one of the rhymes from Olav's fake magic potion book but this one was a bit different from all the others. For one it was meaningless. Except for the first three lines they were filled with non sequitur and strange words.
Lis thought she had read something like it in an old almanac, but she had not been able to find it. Like Susan she was a voracious reader, known to read the time tables and ingredients lists on crackers if nothing else could be found.
Now they sat on the beach, munching some egg rolls the nisser had given them. Waiting for the full moon to rise which it would at a quarter after five, giving them ample time to return to The Farm in time for dinner - or so they hoped.

The beach was strewn with shells and other remains from big and small sea creatures. And when they dug a hole to bury the remains of their egg rolls Olav was sure, he had found an oyster shell, but Susan had to tell him that oysters did not live in the waters around Unicorn Farm, and that it was probably just a very old black clam.
They also found a couple of herringbones and the deteriorating beak of a puffin, Olav knew what it was, the others suspected it to be a discarded toy made from plastic.

Then the moon rose, and as soon as it had cleared the horizon Tage intoned the verse from Olav's book:

Monster, monster from the sea
come to shore and speak to me.
Full moon waning in the gloom,
Hero rising for his doom
Suppress partner, pressure go!
Trash can ballet, warrant too.

Straight as a needle the water jets rose from the water, Susan made a start, as if to run for her broom, but Heidi caught her hand, and they remained standing on the sand, watching.

The monster surfaced. It was long and sleek, reeking of overripe hummus, its scaled flanks towered over the children, when it neared, but its voice was surprisingly gentle.
"What do you want from me, human child?"
"I would like to know the meaning and purpose of that verse," Tage said.
"The meaning is obscure, lost to the mists of time, unravelled like an old crochet blanket." The monster spoke slowly, ponderously. "The purpose of it is to summon me, but only once a century do I heed the call. Tonight was the night."
The children looked at one another and back at the monster.
The monster spoke again. "Since you all seem guileless, not intent on abusing me or your powers ..." it looked at each of them in turn, its phosphorescent eyes boring into theirs. They met its scrutinizing gaze, afraid and curious at the same time "Since it is so," the monster continued, "I'll give you this locket. It belonged to a seafarer, long lost at sea. Maybe it'll lead you to treasures and riches. Maybe it'll only tell you where he bought his sprocket at the market before he set out on his last journey. Farewell young ones."

They made it home to The Farm before dinner. Today the Nisser served stew and gnocchi, a strange combination, but very tasty.
After dinner they met in the old chambermaids' room under the roof. It had over the months become the problem pit for Susan and her friends in times of need. Olav, Susan, Heidi, Tage and Lis met with My, Marit, Astrid and the two hippie sisters Fiona and Veronika. Those two had only recently joined the close knit group, but after an accident, involving Tage, a stick of dynamite and some unmade homework, they also were an accepted part of the team.
Heidi pulled the locket from her pocket and Lis and Tage told the story of the strange poem in Olav's book, the sea monster and the locket.
"We only miss him riding to Heaven in a fiery chariot," Astrid said, a teasing smile forming on her face. "I wonder if ..."
Tage interrupted. "Nope, no chariots here, only an old bucket with a periwinkle plastic handle.
They all broke out in laughter at this remark and when they got their breath back, Astrid said: "Yah, I admit, I had a hard time believing you, but where else could you have gotten such a locket; I mean look at it, it's overgrown with barnacles and stuff. It must have been at the bottom of the sea for years ans years."
"Let's open it," Heidi said.
"Wait," Veronika said. "Didn't you read the noteboard this morning? Lessons will start again in a fem minutes."
"To be blunt, no I did not," Tage said, and the rest of the apprentices either nodded or came with agreeing sounds
"What a luck we have mother Veronika to look after us wayward children," Olav said, which made Veronika gently elbow him and the rest begin laughing again.
Heidi put the locket back in her pocket, and Susan suggested that they met again after lessons.
"We sure will," Fiona said, speaking for them all, while she, Astrid, and Marit ran for the door. They had to be in the meadow for flying lessons.
The rest of the group left in a more orderly fashion, Tage extinguished the lights and closed the door before he ran down the stairs and reached the purple door across the corridor just a bit after Heidi, Lis and Olav.  
My slipped inside the blue door just seconds before Tähti arrived; and Susan, and Veronika reached the green dor at the end of the corridor at the same time as did Thora.

The after dinner lessons were short but intense. The friends quickly agreed to wait with solving the puzzle of the locket until next morning and hurried to the Barn, where Gilvi was just about to end the day. As usual he told of the plans for tomorrow's lessons, and ended by cancelling the Mál Sameinast.

Next morning bright and early saw the ten apprentices meet in the old chambermaids' room under the roof, Our friends had only little trouble understanding one another, as Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are very close to one another. Only My's very Northern Norwegian made Heidi a bit insecure, but Olav and his cousins translated her dialectal words into Bokmål for the Danes. Before they sat down, Lis removed the bockety chair from the table, telling the others of this strange word for worn and unsteady.
Then they got to work on the locket. First Olav cleaned off the barnacles with his pocket knife; He had one of those red ones with many different instruments in it. "My granddad has one with over fifty functions. I'll get a larger one when I turn 15."
"But that one is great," Susan exclaimed. "I always wanted a pocket knife, but my parents did not think it wise. Then I became a girl scout and had a big knife instead."
The others laughed. "Good one, Susan," Olav said, "A knife is an indispensable tool."
"Now I've removed the barnacles, Now what?" Olav asked.
"Try opening the locket," Lis suggested, "don't you think your smallest blade is slim enough to squeeze in there," she said, pointing to a small crack in the seam between the two halves.
All Olav's prying and trying was to no avail. the locket did not give. Then Tage discovered the spidery script along the rim of the locket.
Then the bell in the Belfry struck one time. In a quarter of an hour everyone would gather in the Barn, Gilvi would announce any news, and most important, cast the Mál sameinast, the language spell allowing all professors and apprentices to understand what everybody else said and be understood by everyone. Woe to the latecomers, trying to fumble through Taavi and Tähti's Finnish or Jon's very rural Norwegian, or the two Faroese newcomers strange syllables.
"We have to go down and get dressed," Heidi said.
"Let's meet again in the lunch break," Tage said, "I have an idea."

In the Barn, baskets of cookies, shortbread and small buns stood on the table together with teapots, milk and sugar.
Gilvi spoke: "Today is a feast day. Today, a year ago, we had the first meeting in what was to become the  professor's group at the Unicorn Farm. Today a year ago Unicorn Farm had its name. Today is the birthday of The Unicorn Farm! Let's make some happy noises."
Everybody obeyed, and Hoorays, Yahoos and similar sound filled the air, accompanied by clapping of hands and stomping of feet.

Again at lunch break the 10 apprentices met in the small room in the attic.
Olav tried yet again to pare open the locket with his knife, still with no progress.
"I feel that if I apply more pressure either the locket or my knife is going to burst. And none of them will be any good smashed to smithereens," he concluded.
"As I said," Tage continued, "I have an idea. I think I see letters around the edge, Lis, would you care to give it a try?"
Lis picked up the locket and said. "I see letters too, but I cannot make them into words."
"Let me try," Olav said. "I see the word 'Arch', but after this I see a-a-h-e-e which sure is not a word."
"Your eyes must be better than mine," Lis said. "Tell me all the letters you see."
Olav read aloud, and Lis jotted down the letters in the margins of an old magazine.
Susan opened her bag and pulled out her sketch pads: "Here use this."
The outcome was a long line of letters. Apart from scattered two-letter words it was totally meaningless.
"This must be some kind of code," Lis said "Let's try and crack it."
They sat down alone or in groups, writing letters and combining them. In the end Lis and Susan came up with the same solution.
"Every third letter," Lis said.
"Yes, and the second row has to be read backwards," Susan added.
But what a strange sentence, Lis said:"By the income of the primrose cormorant, I made my living. Walk the green boreen to lucidity!"

"What's a cormorant? Fiona asked.
"Some kind of bird, I think," Olav answered.
"They're black," My added, "not primrose."
"And what's a boreen?" Susan said. "Borean I know, and thought it was a spelling mistake."
 "A boreen is an unpaved road, mostly with grass in the middle," Veronika said. "I think it is an Irish word, as I know it from our Irish uncle."
"But still it's very unclear," Olav said. "Where do we start?"
"Finding the primrose cormorant," Tage answered. "It sounds like the name of an inn."
"It sure does, We'll have to ask all the travelling members of our families in the coming weeks," Olav answered.
"Yes," My piped in, "and all the sailors in the harbour too. It could be far away, even in another country."



Some weeks later they again met at the Unicorn Farm. After Morning gathering they had an unexpected break, and Susan convened the other 9 conspirators in the little room in the attic.

"I found it," she said. "Or least I think I did. My dad loves to go for car rides to little known places in Zealand, and last Wednesday we went to a small coastal town some 20 kilometres from home. We had an ice cream next to a humongous parking lot, quite deserted, as the holidays had not yet begun. We walked the woods and returned to the parking lot. There was a small museum next to the parking lot, and I succeed in getting my family to go there by saying that it was probably boring. This had my sister, begging for us to go there of course ...

"Yes, we know, sibling rivalry," Marit said. " please get to the point"

Inside the museum was models of fisherboats, and the main pieces were old signs, names from ships and that kind of things. One of the plaques came from an inn - featuring a yellow bird that with some good will could pass for a cormorant.

The label told that the sign came from the old inn very close by.
They also exhibited an old rusk - over 100 years old, and paintings of sea disasters and shipwrecks, where you could almost smell the spindrift."
"Susan," Tage said, "your poetic ore is rampant today, If I have to listen to much more of this, I'll go ballistic."

"OK;" Susan said, "then I wont tell anything about the seaside troubadour or all the large and small anchors and killicks in the entrance hall, and come to the point."

"Please do, please do." Tage repeated as if it was some kind of mantra.

"I asked about the signs, and the lady handed me a folder. There I could see that the inn with the yellow bird sign had lain on the edge of the plantation of tucamore trees planted to keep the sand from covering arable lands in the late 1500.

The legend tells of a whirlpool there only opening at certain dates and swallowing ships with men and mice - I think it's only a legend - but one ship - the Calliope - should have survived the trip through the whirlpool and still sail the waters thereabout when the moon is hidden. I think this might be where the treasure is!" Susan ended her tale.
"Did anyone else find anything?" Olav asked. "I did not."
The other apprentices also shook their heads, only Fiona and Veronika looked up. Veronika spoke: "One of the very old sailors in our harbour told of an old inn, he remembered, either from his youth, or something he only heard about ... that was not clear. He was very old, hard of hearing, and his thoughts drifted through time and space. It might very well be the same inn, as the distance per boat is not far."

Fiona and Veronika were given the job of trying to pick the old sailor's memories. Thanks to their daddy bringing some beer and asking the crowd in the meadow where the nets were hung from poles for drying, cleaning and mending, they found out that the old sailor was sick at home. They bought some flowers, and as a second thought some frozen soup and went visiting. He was in bed with a bad cough, and Fiona pulled a chair up next to the bed and sat down. Meanwhile Veronika had the water running, scrubbed sink and pots and had the soup boiling in a very short time.

The old sailor sat propped by pillows while Veronika fed him spoonfuls of the hot soup and good bread.

He slept for a short while, and then woke, lucid and ready to tell his tale.
"It was a dark and stormy night," he began, making the sisters smile. "We had to anchor up out of the harbour, near the wood with all them windblown trees. We took the lifeboat, more like a big dinghy, to the shore, as captain was certain the boat would capsize before the night was over, but it did not, it was a good boat, the old Cormorant. The winds were cold and blowing the sea-spray at us, so we walked. We thought it was far, as we sailors do not like walking. Somewhere along the way we found an old grave, weathered and worn, but fear inducing to the superstitious crew. One of the men collected pebbles from the grave, and put some on the tombstone and some in his pockets. We walked, stumbled on through the stunted forest and in the end we saw the light of a small door or window from afar. We followed it and came to an inn. It was surrounded by a garden, the strangest garden I ever say. Patches of clover grew around it, all filled up with four leaf clovers. I tried to warn the others, but they were frozen through, as was I and Captain. We spent the night at the Yellow Cormorant. Finding it a good omen that the name of the inn was almost the same as that of our ship. The inn was full, despite its remote placement. We sat down and made merry with the customers.

We paid the bill later, but no regrets," the old sailor said. He dozed off and the girls sat quietly, waiting.

"Where was I?" he asked, when he awoke again.
"At the Yellow Cormorant," Fiona said. " Listening to the tales of the sailors there."
"Oh yes. One of them I remember best of all. He was old as time, maybe he just looked old to us young 'uns back then. White hair, blue eyes, ruddy, weather-beaten face, kind of like carved in wood. He told a tale of a marvellous trip, to an enchanted land, through the maelstrom there. He showed us a coin, pure gold, heavy and big. Later that night he gave it to me for safekeeping. He said that he had seen the Klabautermann and death was coming for him."

The old sailor sank back on his pillows and said: "The old clock still hides my precious treasure." He drew a deep breath brining on yet another attack of coughing and continued in a winded voice: "Now I need to sleep. Your company and soup have don me good. Kind girls please leave me alone."

Fiona kissed the old sailor on the cheek, and they left for home.  

Next day they read in the paper that a neighbour had visited the old sailor in the evening, to feed him again, and that he had died during the night.