The Nix

Faye has no intention of staying in London. Rather she moves through Heathrow and immediately boards a flight to Norway. She is heading to Hammerfest, her father’s hometown. She wants to know why he left Norway so abruptly. When she arrives, she is initially put off. The town is hardly as picturesque as her father made it sound in his stories. The entire journey now seems stupid: “Just a few more stupid choices in a life full of them” (673).

Her ruminations are interrupted, however, by the appearance of a beautiful white horse. Faye feels drawn to it. She sees a young woman walking toward her. The two chat—her name is Lillian. Faye confesses the reason for her trip, that she is looking for the Andresen farmhouse. In a stunning revelation, the woman says that she is Frank’s daughter, although she knows him as Fridtjof Andreson. Lillian leads Faye to a nearby farmhouse. Lillian tells Faye that Frank was a fisherman known for his strange power to sense troves of fish in the ocean. Frank fell in love with a waitress named Marthe. In the spring of 1940, even as rumors spread about the approach of Nazi troops, Marthe told Frank that she was pregnant.