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On the night when Birk was born, a thunderstorm raged over the mountains that rose up over the trees of Borka's Wood. Inside Borka's robber den, however, there was only singing and joy.
“Look!” Borka roared, holding the babe out from his barrel chest. “Look at this boy I have made! A robber chieftain he shall be, this babe of mine! See how fine and fierce he is,” he told Arne, who was old and bald and beaming from ear to hairy ear. “No robber chief has ever made a child so fine.” The other robbers nodded, telling each other how put out Matt would be to hear his old enemy had gotten a child. With a great laugh, Borka tucked the boy back into his arm and declared that Tor was the child's name, a King of Thunder born on a thunder night.
“Nonsense,” said Undis, who was already up and walking around, because that was the sort of woman she was. “Tor Borkason? You invite trouble with the very sound of it. His name is Birk.” She had taken the babe into her arms and was preparing to feed him.
Borka roared, this time in anger. “He is my son! I will name him what I want!”
The other robbers all looked about the den, very carefully in any direction other than at their chief and his wife. All except Arne who, from old age and experience, had earned the right to stare if he wished.
“Oh?” Undis snickered. “Because you worked so very hard to bring this child into the world, did you?”
The other robbers snuck glances in between studying the hearth fire, the wooden beams in the ceiling, and the clean-swept floor, knowing as well as Borka himself did that the moment Undis' birthing time had come, he had retreated beyond the curtain to pace in front of the fire, gnawing on a corner of his beard.
Borka's cheeks turned as red as his hair and he growled in frustration. “You should be resting!”
“As should you. I understand you undertook a great and difficult labor tonight!” Undis wasn't shouting, but her chin jutted forward and her eyes flashed in a manner that forestalled any argument.
“I will!” Borka roared, understanding that the matter was settled. “I should like to hold Birk again when he is done.” Undis nodded, smiling kindly again, and went to her place by the fire. Borka grinned at her and grinned then at his robbers, who resumed with great and immediate vigor their celebrating, as if they had never left off.
Borka's Den was nestled in the very heart of Borka's forest, so Birk went out into the forest as soon as Undis needed water fetched and there was no one else to either hold the child or carry the water. And so he discovered the sound of wind through the leaves and the dapple of green sunshine on his face while just a babe balanced on Undis' hip.
By the time he was old enough to remember the day previous, he knew the woods as simply another part of Borka's Den. He knew plenty of other things by then as well, how to hide from harpies, avoid gray dwarfs and rumphobs, and to come inside straight away when a mist comes over the forest at twilight lest the Unearthly Ones capture your heart.
Within a few more seasons he had learned also how to brush down a robber's horse, where to go unseen by the sheriff's men (who were never to be trusted), and how to tell a dirty devil Matt robber from a decent Borka robber at a distance.
Borka hated those robbers almost as much as he hated the sheriff's men. “That dirty, hairy overgrown troll, Matt!” Borka would growl, gnashing his teeth. “Sitting in that fortress at the top of my mountain in Borka's forest, stealing what is rightfully ours!” But Undis would lay a hand on his shoulder and tell him softly that there was plenty of forest for two chiefs and their robbers to greet travelers and avoid the sheriff's men.
Birk certainly knew by then that the forest had its limits and that there were towns and great rivers and lakes beyond it, but to him the forest seemed nearly endless. In his long life he had never seen a dirty Matt robber, and only twice had he had to hide from a sheriff's man.
But summers passed and too soon the sheriff's men grew more plentiful. Borka held whispered conferences with old Arne about goats and mountain trails and old stone fortresses, and soon after Skinny Finn took Birk out and taught him how to climb trees. It was while Birk practiced tree climbing one golden afternoon that he first learned the most important thing he had learned in all his years:
There was another child in Borka's forest. He was able to decide with some certainty that although he would grow to be a Borka, the other child would be an Undis. She was wild as a young horse, fierce as an eagle, and as joyful as the morning sun as she ran through the summer forest. She passed out of his sight in moments, and he knew as surely as he knew anything that he just had to see her again.
Birk's skill in the art of climbing progressed very quickly after that, but no matter how high a tree he crowned, he did not catch another glimpse of the girl that summer.
By summer's end, Birk had learned a great many things he never dreamed possible. He learned from old Arne that on the night he was born, the storm had thundered most particularly over that dirty devil's fort, and a great bolt of lightning had split the fortress in two. It was, Arne told him, common knowledge, though not a common subject of conversation; the mountain it crowned was impassable by any means other than one narrow trail, and those dirty Matt robbers guarded it jealously.
He learned from Skinny Finn how to find hand holds in a rock face that grown men could not use. He learned how to anchor a rope so that it could bear the weight of a robber chieftain and his twelve men. He learned how to make ladders and pulleys and baskets to carry provisions up from the forest floor to the high mountain cliffs. And he learned to do this wholly in the dead of night, a secret kept from both Matt robbers and the sheriff's men.
All the while, Birk wore anticipation like a strange second skin. Rik had wondered aloud to Ninetoes whether Matt (that dirty devil) had fathered a girl or a wild harpy child. Birk knew immediately that this was the girl he had seen that golden day. He climbed the moonlit mountain face as nimbly as a squirrel, his father's robbers below cheering as loudly as Undis would let them; but it was more the thought that every inch brought him closer to catching sight of her again that propelled him up the cliff so quickly.
It took all the skills Birk had gained in the last weeks to first pull up Skinny Finn with more ropes, to secure the ladders, and with Rik's help to erect the pulleys that would lift the baskets Undis had packed so carefully. The moon had already set by the time the robbers and their provisions were carried up to Borka's Keep. Birk had barely closed his eyes before he was up again with the sunrise, blinking aside his sleepiness in the chill autumn dawn. He started at the main level and went up, poking his head down every hallway and opening every door. Though he did not stop to examine a single wooden chest or dusty sack, by the time he reached the top of Borka's Keep, he felt he had delayed for a lifetime.
He ran first to the parapets, marveling at the view from the top of the mountain. The forest lay spread out before him in all its autumn red and gold. He could see the river twisting away into the trees, small as a garter snake in the distance. It was like nothing he had ever seen from the top of even the highest tree, and he laughed to see it. He wanted to do more, he wanted to give a yell like a robber chief, but good sense stopped him. Birk wanted to see the daughter, not the entire robber band.
Birk walked the length of three sides before he came to the gap that had split the fort in two. It was dark, certainly, and seemed very deep, but it was no more frightening than looking down at the dark forest floor from the mountain face, and so he walked straight to the middle of the gap and sat at the edge, dangling his freckled legs into the darkness.
The sun was only a little higher, just beginning to reveal ledges and floors further down in the gap—and Birk was only beginning to wonder what the other side might look like—when he heard laughter like he had never heard before.
He looked up, though had known before looking that it was her, the robber's daughter, that wild harpy child, so fierce and joyful. He met her eyes and Birk learned then that dark eyes can flash as brightly as stars; he learned that sunlight on black curls glints red and blue; he learned that a heart full of happiness can beat as loud as a waterfall and still be silent as a twilight forest; and he learned how it feels to have everything slip neatly into place, like a fort made of pine cones.
Birk's laughter echoed hers, joyful and fierce and wild.
“I know who you are,” he said. And he knew in that moment all he could ever need to live in the forest.