As Black as Ebony (8 page)

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13

Lumikki burrowed deeper under the covers. She never wanted to leave this warm nest where momentarily she could be far away from the evil world.

The sleet could lash at the windows. The cold could try to creep through the chinks in the window frames. Under this blanket, she clung to her false sense of security.

Björk was playing in Lumikki’s head despite the apartment being silent, singing about playing dead to make the hurting stop. Lumikki imagined an arm around her, warm breath on her neck, a body pressed against her back. She felt it. She felt the hand caressing her shoulder. She felt skin against her skin. She felt the lips that touched her lips and whose kiss made her own mouth open, made her open.

Lumikki felt Blaze. As strongly as if he were really next to her. Lumikki finally understood that this was just the way it was. Blaze lived inside of her even if they were apart. Even if they would never see each other again. Blaze was the one whose hand Lumikki would feel squeezing her hand when she was afraid walking in the dark at night. Blaze was the one whose body heat would radiate into Lumikki when she was sitting in an armchair reading a book. Blaze was the one whose gentle touch would caress her to sleep when she was lying alone. Not Sampsa.

Lumikki felt Sampsa when he was there. When Sampsa was against her. When Sampsa’s arms were around her waist and his lips were nuzzling her neck. Then Lumikki didn’t feel anything else or think of anyone else. They were just present for each other. But when Sampsa was gone, he was gone. Lumikki didn’t feel him next to her like she felt Blaze.

Was that wrong?

Could you live like that?

Lumikki couldn’t help her feelings. She couldn’t deny them or wish them out of existence. She wasn’t going to be able to erase just by force of will the intimacy she felt with Blaze considering that more than a year of separation hadn’t done it. The feeling wasn’t wrong.

She could decide what her actions would be. She could decide what choices she would make. She had chosen Sampsa. That was just how it was.

Lumikki threw off her blanket and immediately felt the chill. The hard, cold floor brought her body back to reality one toe at a time. She had to venture into the outside world, to school and the hard, piercing gaze of the bright electric lights, which would scare her nightmares away and wipe her skin clean of his touch.

The school staircase had been turned into a candle-lined corridor. All the other lights had been shut off. The living dance of the flickering candle flames made the school look like a fairytale castle or nineteenth-century manor house. Lumikki hadn’t remembered that this morning was the beginning of the St. Lucia procession. Lately, the tradition had begun spreading from Swedish-speaking circles to Finnish ones as well.

Lumikki always felt conflicted about St. Lucia’s Day. There was something warm and safe about it that felt good deep down inside, but there were also unpleasant memories. One year just before she started school, Lumikki had wanted to play Lucia at home. Her daycare in Riihimäki hadn’t adopted the Lucia tradition yet. Her mother had been delighted at the idea and promised to bake Lucia buns and make a white robe and crown of candles for Lumikki to wear. But her father just looked at Lumikki long and hard, his face overshadowed by a grayness that drained all expression away.

“This family is not going to celebrate a woman who tore her own eyes out to stop a man from molesting her because of her beauty. Who was killed by a dagger stuck in her throat after burning her to death didn’t work.”

Lumikki still remembered her father’s words. She remembered how her excitement had died. It was like being forced to swallow icicles whole. Her mother had been furious at her father for saying anything so gruesome to a child. But for Lumikki, it wasn’t her father’s words that had hurt. The worst thing had been the way he looked right through her as if she and her eagerness and her joy didn’t even exist in his eyes.

Lumikki had never suggested celebrating St. Lucia’s Day again.

Now she watched as a group of high school girls descended the stairs in long, white dresses, green paper garlands on their heads, tea lights in their hands. Tinka walked at their head. Her long, red hair was an angelic cloud of curls. As she passed Lumikki, she smiled sweetly and squinted a bit in greeting.

When the procession moved on into the mirrored lobby, and their singing began to fade, Lumikki found the words repeating in her mind in Swedish.

Finnish had always been Lumikki’s stronger language. She used her Swedish much less frequently. Mostly just with her dad and his relatives. Nevertheless, for her, Swedish was the language of poetry, a language of song that strummed nameless chords of emotion within her.

Vingesus.
How could so much beauty fit in one single word? Wings. The rustling of wings. Or soughing, like the song of the wind. Roaring like rapids or the raging of fire. Lumikki heard the word in her ears in melodic tones, sung by the clear voice of a child. The voice was familiar, but it wasn’t her own.

Suddenly before her, she saw the steps of an old wooden house with a little girl descending them singing “Sankta Lucia” in Swedish. Rosa. This had to be her lost sister Rosa. She remembered how beautiful Rosa had looked to her, somehow heavenly, and how she had thought that the next year she wanted to be with Rosa singing. Why didn’t she have any memory of the following year? Hadn’t the next year come?

In her memory, Rosa tenderly smiled at Lumikki. As only an older sister could smile.

The prince laced Lumikki’s corset ever tighter.

Just a little more and you will be an obedient wife.

Just a little more and you will learn to behave with more virtue and restraint. You aren’t living in the woods anymore. You are a queen. You must walk slowly and with grace. You must hold your tongue when I speak. You may not shout or laugh—that is not appropriate behavior. You have beautiful dresses and precious jewels and gilded chambers. I do not understand why you are not happy. Why can you not be satisfied?

The prince’s words echoed in Lumikki’s ears. She felt it become harder to breathe. The corset squeezed her lungs shut. The edges of her vision began to quiver and darken.

“Just a little tighter and maybe you’ll fall back into your eternal sleep and I can return you to your glass coffin. You were more beautiful to look at there. You were better and easier. I fell in love with the maiden in the glass box, not this unruly, impudent, misbehaving person who is all too normal and real,” the prince whispered into Lumikki’s ear.

She couldn’t breathe.

Her oxygen was running out.

Lumikki tried to gasp for breath. It didn’t work. She simply couldn’t get air into her lungs. The sensation of drowning. The sensation of passing out. Darkness spreading its wings before her eyes.

Lumikki collapsed, her head thumping on the floor. As her eyes swept across the stage floor, she suddenly remembered where she had seen the chest the key would fit. It was in her parents’ bedroom, under the bed, wrapped in a cloth. She had seen it there years ago when she had been in their room getting a thermometer and it had fallen on the floor and rolled under the bed. Lumikki had wondered what the object wrapped in the dark felt could be. Peeking under the fabric, she had seen a wooden chest.

For a fleeting moment, she had thought she remembered something from her childhood about treasures, but then her mom and dad came home and Lumikki bolted from the room like she’d been doing something out of bounds. And she had never asked about the chest. Of course not. She had understood that this secret was none of her business.

But now it was. Because she had the key.

That was Lumikki’s final thought before she lost consciousness.

Droplets of water on her face. Like a summer rain. Opening her eyes, Lumikki saw Sampsa’s worried gaze.

“I’m fine,” Lumikki managed to say.

That was a lie, but in a different way than Sampsa would have understood. Lumikki lay on a soft surface, probably a blanket from the props closet, and her feet were elevated. Her corset had been removed. In addition to Sampsa, next to her also stood Aleksi and Tinka, who was holding a water bottle. Apparently, she had been the one sprinkling water on Lumikki’s face.

“I said be careful with the corset,” Tinka snapped at Aleksi.

“I didn’t even make it that tight,” Aleksi said in his defense.

“It wasn’t because of that,” Lumikki said and crawled onto her feet. Her head threatened to go black again, but she refused to give the dizziness power over her. She had to convince the others that everything was okay because otherwise they weren’t going to let her leave.

“I probably just didn’t eat enough today. And I was up late last night.”

Sampsa and Tinka glanced at each other. Aleksi looked relieved. Tinka frowned and looked at Lumikki closely.

“Okay. Stuff like that happens sometimes. And you seem better now,” she finally said.

Lumikki hoped no one would notice her legs shaking. Sampsa rubbed her back with safe, calming strokes. Lumikki felt like leaning against him and letting him support her, but now was not the time for that.

“Let’s wrap it up here for today,” Tinka said.

“Maybe that’s a good idea,” Lumikki said. “Since the scene is supposed to end with me getting my laces undone and running off into the forest, we went a little off script.”

She’d managed to make the others laugh. Good.

“Dress rehearsal in two days then. And listen, everybody. This play is going to be fantastic! Thank you for all your hard work.”

Tinka’s energy was enough to get everyone excited. Chattering voices filled the auditorium. Aleksi nudged Lumikki gently on the shoulder.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lumikki replied.

“And now I’m going to take you home and spoil you rotten,” Sampsa whispered in Lumikki’s ear.

Lumikki carefully disengaged herself from his embrace.

“That sounds fantastic, but I have to go see my parents tonight.”

Lumikki tried to look Sampsa in the eye despite how difficult it was.

“Does it have to be tonight?” Sampsa asked.

“Well, we have this St. Lucia Day tradition in our family.” Lie number two. Or, in a way, it wasn’t.

Even though her father had said they weren’t going to celebrate the holiday, one of his cousins had been organizing parties on St. Lucia Day in Turku for the past few years. Lumikki knew her dad and mom would be there today and wouldn’t come home until tomorrow morning. She would have all the time she wanted to inspect the contents of the chest.

Sampsa looked disappointed. Enduring his disappointed and still slightly concerned gaze was hard for Lumikki. But she didn’t have any choice. She had to get some answers tonight or she was going to go insane.

As their lips touched, she tried not to think that it was a Judas kiss.

Being home without her parents knowing felt wrong. Her footsteps echoed strangely.

The wrong girl in the wrong house
, the echoes whispered.
A ghost girl who shouldn’t be sneaking around these rooms alone.

Of course her mom and dad would have given permission if Lumikki had asked, but she hadn’t wanted them to know. She didn’t want the extra questions that would just lead to more lies. Lumikki didn’t want to be the kind of person who lied to her loved ones, but her stalker had forced her into it with his threats.

Lumikki hoped when she finally uncovered the secret, this “Shadow” would leave her alone. What if the stalker was just obsessed with the fact that he knew something Lumikki didn’t and the most important thing was exposing the truth?

Lumikki silenced her inner voice that tried to whisper that an all-consuming madness like his was unlikely to be satiated by something so simple.

Her parents’ bedroom smelled like it always had. Lavender, fresh sheets, a slight hint of houseplant soil, her dad’s aftershave, and the old lace curtains that had been her grandmother’s. Lumikki lifted up one corner of the floor-length bedspread and peeked underneath. The blanket she remembered was there on the floor. Lumikki crawled under the bed. It was dusty. Apparently, her dad didn’t vacuum as manically now as he used to when Lumikki lived at home. Good for him.

Lumikki lifted the blanket. Suddenly, her heart was pounding frighteningly fast. Her hands were strangely cold and clammy. But all she found under the blanket was a regular cardboard box. Not an ornate chest. A brown cardboard box full of erotic magazines.

Lumikki pushed the box back into place and covered it. It contained secrets, but not the kind of secrets she was looking for. Her parents’ sex life was absolutely none of her business and she wished she had never made even this relatively innocent discovery.

She crawled out from under the bed coughing and brushing the dust off the knees of her jeans. Disappointment. Emptiness. Could she have remembered wrong? Had she just imagined the whole thing about the chest? What if she had just been thinking so hard about having the key that she had invented the memory of the chest and its lock that the key fit in?

No. That couldn’t be it. Lumikki wouldn’t accept that.

Where in her parents’ house would someone hide a chest they didn’t want anyone finding?

Lumikki searched the cupboards and closets, the living room, the entryway, the basement, and the small shed in the back yard. No chest. No hint of a chest. Evening had already turned to night. Hope began to change to gray frustration.

Think, think
, she urged herself as she sat on the living room couch. Lumikki gently rubbed her temples, trying to ward off an incipient headache. She dug the key out of her pocket and held it in her palm.

Little key in my hand. Tell me where your lock is hid. Lead me to the chest I seek.

The key was just a dead weight in her hand. It didn’t have any answers.

“Sometimes what you seek may be closer than you think.” Lumikki had always hated “deep” thoughts like that. But now, that was all she heard repeated monotonously in her head. What could be closer than she’d think? Under her butt? Yeah right.

Before Lumikki had even finished thinking her sarcastic retort, she was tearing the cushions off the couch and opening the hide-a-bed.

And finding the chest.

The bed part of the couch was under the cushions, folded in a space you had to pull it out of. Inside the couch, between the bed frame and the floor, was a small space just big enough to fit a flat box for storing sheets and a blanket. But instead, there sat the familiar wooden chest. Lumikki lifted it out with sweaty hands. She didn’t waste any time admiring the decorations on the outside. The contents were the important thing. She could barely hold the key. It turned laboriously in the lock. Lumikki had to work to get the lock to finally open.

She didn’t know what she had expected. She couldn’t say what she believed or hoped she would find in the chest. Suddenly, Lumikki saw before her a childhood she’d never remembered having.

Photographs of a blond, gray-eyed girl who resembled her but not quite. Who resembled her father and mother, but not quite. Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa. Her sister Rosa. When Lumikki saw the pictures, she suddenly remembered how her sister smelled and how she breathed in her sleep and how her arms hugged Lumikki and sometimes pinched a little too. Rosa’s giggly laugh. Her furious tantrums. Her singing and whistling that sounded like a nightingale.

Pictures of two girls together. One was shorter, with brown hair. Lumikki. They sat side by side. They waded in a lake. They ran. They danced under a sprinkler.

Lumikki wasn’t looking at the pictures anymore.

All her senses were suddenly awash with memories.

Strawberries in summer. Rosa gave her the biggest, reddest ones. Grandma’s attic always smelled of autumn, even in summer. Grandma’s old shoes, which were too big for them. They both put one foot in the same shoe. It was impossible to walk without falling. Rosa’s hair tangled easily. Lumikki’s didn’t. Rosa brushed her hair with a hundred strokes and then another hundred. Rain was lashing the window and they built a fort under a blanket that was oranger than orange. When a scary part came in their favorite television show, Rosa put her hands over Lumikki’s eyes and whispered that it was only a story. The smell in the rosebushes made her giddy, but the thorns poked them. Adults never understood the best games. Sometimes you had to get the whole floor wet in your room. Because it was the ocean. Rosa’s cheeks were salty because she had been crying. Lumikki licked the salt off. She was a cat. They held each other’s hands and were never going to be apart. They would always move to the same house and always sleep in the same room. They would be Frog and Toad. They would be Snow White and Rose Red. And if they had bad dreams, they would sleep in the same bed. Warm side by warm side. Breathing in unison. Nightmares could never get in if they slept right against each other.

Lumikki didn’t know how long had passed when she finally remembered she was eighteen years old and sitting on the floor of her parents’ living room surrounded by photographs. Dozens and dozens of photographs scattered all around. They filled the floor. As if a new sky had opened up above her and colorful, rectangular snowflakes had fallen from it. Lumikki wasn’t three anymore. She wasn’t holding her older sister Rosa’s hand.

Lumikki felt as if a tidal wave had washed over her, stripping away the ceiling, floor, and walls. The floodwater had thrust her into the middle of a black nothingness. There was no safety anywhere, no firm foundation, and everything she had believed was a lie, a black darkness. She had lived her entire life up until now believing that she was an only child, alone.

How could a sister be taken away from a person? How could they have hidden from her the fact that Rosa ever even existed? And why? What had happened to her?

Lumikki stood up. She had to support herself on the edge of the sofa. She felt faint. She felt like vomiting. She felt like crying. Her feet wouldn’t carry her weight. She fumbled around on the living room table for her phone. She had to call her mom and dad right now. It didn’t matter what time it was. It didn’t matter if they might already be sleeping. Liars. Deceivers. You couldn’t do things like this to someone you loved. Could you? How could they have concealed something this big from her all her life?

Lumikki had to ask.

Now.

She had to know what had happened to Rosa. Just then, a series of text messages showed up. Lumikki knew immediately who they must be from.

Lumikki rushed to turn off the living room lights even though she knew it wouldn’t help anything.

Then she stood stock-still in the dark room and stared into the yard, trying to see something. Only blackness gazed back.

Lumikki let the hand holding the phone fall and hang limply. She knew she couldn’t call.