The Winter Place (27 page)

To Axel, the answer seemed obvious. “Because where Saara's supposed to be is with Sam. And where I'm supposed to be is with both of them. They're my mom and dad.”

“You do understand,” Mrs. Ridgeland said, “that your mom and dad are dead.”

“Everybody dies,” Axel said.

“Dear me.” She squinted down at him. “That sounds to you like wisdom?”

Neither of them said anything more. The
Keeper took up his walking stick and high stepped over the soldier's corpse, cutting a jaunty angle right through the little moment of gloom that had just settled. “You've seen Saara today, then?”

“Today. Yesterday.” Mrs. Ridgeland shook her head. “Much to the dismay of everybody here. She doesn't do well with
no
, that woman.” With her free hand Mrs. Ridgeland moved aside the rigid sheet of hair that she'd sprayed into place. Beneath it there was nothing but a few strips of stucco-pale skin, straining against the push of the deep gray ashes that filled her. The ragged rake of a bear's claw had ruined nearly half of Mrs. Ridgeland's face. Axel didn't want to be rude, but he couldn't help it—he stared. His mom had done that.

“The woman's a real terror, to tell you the truth of it,” Mrs. Ridgeland said.

“Well, perhaps you could just show us where she is,” the Keeper said.

“Oh, I'll point her out,” Mrs. Ridgeland said. “But I'm not getting close.”

She led the three of them to a mulch trail at the far end of the meadow, which they followed to the main parking lot and the visitors' center. It was so strange—Axel knew no other place on earth as well as Mud Lake Park, but tonight it was almost
unrecognizable to him. If the meadow had been the staging ground for a skirmish, there had been an out-and-out massacre in the parking lot. Small fires burned here and there, illuminating corpses scattered like leaves. Many of the dead wore uniforms similar to that of the young soldier in the meadow—white jackets and boots over blue trousers and undercoats, hems and lapels riveted with golden buttons. The moon was still high in the sky, and there wasn't a shred of cloud to offer shade. It looked like it would be a while before these dead would be allowed to flap, trot, and hop their way to shelter. Axel wondered, suddenly, if there were any bears among these moonlit ghosts.

“Why do they all come back as different animals?” he asked.

“They don't
come back
, exactly,” the Keeper said, surveying the devastation in the parking lot. “Remember that you're in their world right now. They haven't returned to yours. But to your point—I honestly have no idea. If there's any logic to it, I haven't been able to figure it out. I've seen wealthy men and women arrive in my woods as sparrows and mice. I've seen a little girl, dead before she was half your age, step into the trees as a mother wolf.” He seemed to pause and think on this for a moment. “I've often dreamed of how much easier my life would be,” the Keeper said, “if
your mother had become something with smaller teeth.”

Mrs. Ridgeland held up a hand, shushing them. She pointed down to the visitors' center, where a few ghosts had huddled together, and led them to cover behind a small winterberry at the edge of the lot.

“Never a good idea to interrupt the battle,” she said.

“What battle?” Axel said. “Who's fighting?”

“Today?” Mrs. Ridgeland made a face as she peered through the branches. “Sometimes it's hard for me to keep track. There have been so many comings and goings in these woods, and enough people put down roots that I'm left with quite the hodgepodge. I've got Algonquin and Onondaga. A handful of backwoods English trappers and rebel veterans who settled here after their war. To say nothing of the newer dead. But these particular ones are . . .” She parted the winterberry and leaned forward just a bit. “They're French.”

American history was a weak point for Axel, but he did vaguely recall that the French were among the first Europeans to arrive in this part of the state. And he knew that they and the English, not to mention all the native nations who were here before anybody else, had once fought over this land. It happened hundreds of years ago, but
as he stared down at the visitors' center it might as well have been yesterday. It reminded Axel of the inexplicable battle he'd witnessed at Erikinlinna—Vikings getting shot at by twentieth-century infantry. All of them hacking one another to bits, being reset by the moon, and then getting right back to hacking. Now that Axel really thought about it, it was astoundingly stupid.

“Why do they do it?” he asked. “Why do they keep fighting?”

Mrs. Ridgeland blinked at him for a moment, like she didn't understand the question. “They're people,” she said simply. “They are fighting about what people fight about.”

“But those are
dead
people,” Axel said, careful not to sound like he was correcting her.

“All the better for them,” Mrs. Ridgeland said. “There are no funerals after the dead go to war.” She kept her eyes on Axel as he puzzled this over and seemed all at once to become annoyed. “What are you looking for? You want them to be pure? Washed clean of any pettiness or fear, bright and shiny with love and forgiveness for you? I know that you've spoken to your mother, so you should know better.”

Axel hardly had time to feel hurt by this before the Keeper interrupted them with a hiss. “Speaking of,” he said, pointing down at the
clutch of overdressed ghosts gathered in front of the visitors' center. One of the men had broken the huddle, and now they could see that Saara was down there as well. Just like the French ghosts, Axel's mother was in her human form in the blue moonlight. She had a thick coil of rope running around her wrists. Her overalls were filthy, and her chin was slick with blood.

“What did they do to her?” Axel said.

“More like what did she do to them,” Mrs. Ridgeland said. She still sounded deeply irritated. “Your mother thinks I'm lying about Sam, so she's asking everyone else she can find. When they say they haven't seen him, she asks them again. And again. Believe me, we'd all love her gone.”

“Well, neither of us is leaving until we find my father,” Axel said.

Mrs. Ridgeland looked from him, to the Keeper, and back again. “Did he tell you about the monster?” she said.

“The Hiisi?” Axel said.

“
You
call it
Hiisi
,” Mrs. Ridgeland said, wincing like the word cost her something. She nodded in the direction of the soldiers by the visitors' center. “
They
call it
Lutin
. There are as many words for it in my woods as there are tongues to speak with. But it's all one. Did your happy tour guide tell you that walking on the path would draw out
the Hiisi? Did he happen to mention that the farther you go, the more awful it will get?”

“I most certainly have,” the Keeper said, unsticking the pipe from his mouth and making like he was offended. “Not that he has to take my word for it—he's seen the monster for himself. In fact, I'd wager that this boy has spent more time with the Hiisi these past months than you have in a hundred years. And he hasn't backed down yet, has he?”

“He's right,” Axel said. “I'm not afraid of the Hiisi.” Saying the words aloud brought him a little bit closer to believing them.

Mrs. Ridgeland's brows knit together, causing a little puff of ash to fall out of the torn-open side of her face. “Let's set aside, for a moment, the fact that you
should
be. Because this is about more than just you and how brave you are or aren't. I mean, your mother is trouble enough as it is. The Hiisi doesn't like it when the dead stray from their home woods. But you? You're so, so much worse.” Mrs. Ridgeland threw up her arms, getting more frustrated the more she spoke. “The Hiisi might forgive a dead wife for wandering, but it will never tolerate a real live boy walking the path. And you shouldn't think for one minute that this whelp of a Keeper can protect you. The Hiisi maintains order among the dead and the Keepers alike. We are as subject to its rules as any ghost.”

This last bit the Keeper had, indeed, failed to mention. Axel's surprise must have shown on his face, because Mrs. Ridgeland let out a mean little laugh. “We're nothing but pieces of the order,” she said. “One Keeper to every wood. One person to live among the dead—to remember them. Never fewer. And
never more
. Just by being here you're throwing off that balance, and the Hiisi cares only for balance. You must understand that it will ruin whatever stands in its way in order to reach you. Me. Him. Even her.” Mrs. Ridgeland nodded down at Saara again, surrounded by French soldiers. “I know that you miss your parents. But you're risking what peace we have by going where you don't belong.”

“Then I'll start belonging,” Axel said, forcing himself to look Mrs. Ridgeland right in her remaining eye.

The Keeper smiled tightly at this. He seemed about to say something, but at that moment a bright shape stumbled out of the shadowed sugar bush, interrupting them. It was another soldier, his overcoat torn and the tattered uniform beneath darkly striped with blood. But from the way he was moving, it probably wasn't his own blood. When the soldier noticed them all squatting behind the winterberry, he nearly fell back into the sugar bush. He scrambled to unsling his
musket, aiming it square at Axel's chest, which seemed pretty unfair, as Axel was the only person out of the four of them who was demonstrably alive. The soldier approached, barking pitchy orders. As he got closer Axel realized how young he was—somewhere between Kari and Kalle in age—and also how utterly terrified he looked. “All right, now,” the Keeper said, standing and slowly raising his hands. Axel did so as well—he didn't speak a word of French, but the soldier had made that much plenty clear.

“Calmez-vous,”
Mrs. Ridgeland said, using her telescope to push herself up.

The young Frenchman seemed to recognize her. Nevertheless, he kept his musket trained on Axel.
“Madame Gardien, pardonnez-moi,”
he said.
“Vous connaissez ces étrangers?”

Mrs. Ridgeland glanced back at Axel, her expression resigned. “Last chance,” she said. “Tell me you'll go home. Back to your sister and your grandparents. I'm sure they miss you terribly.” She hardly waited for Axel to finish shaking his head before turning back to the soldier.
“Ils ne sont pas mes amis. Et ils ne sont pas bienvenus ici.”

Axel didn't know exactly what she'd said, but it sounded stone-cold. The young Frenchman approached them slowly, toeing the grass. In one quick and jerky movement he snatched the sword
from Axel's belt. Then he patted down the front of the Keeper's threadbare shirt, the limp pockets of his duster. Finding no weapons, he slapped the still-smoking pipe out of the old man's mouth. “There isn't any need for that,” the Keeper said.

“Tais-toi!”
the soldier said, gesturing with his musket across the parking lot. Again it was pretty clear what he wanted.

“We don't need your help anyway,” Axel said, feeling vicious and wild.

“They may not,” Mrs. Ridgeland said, “but you most certainly do. And you just turned it down.”

“Dépêchez-vous!”
The Frenchman was shouting now. He pressed the barrel of his musket between the Keeper's shoulder blades and pushed so hard that the old man was forced to take a step. Then the Keeper took another, heading out into the war zone of the parking lot. Axel went with him, his hands still high in the air. They moved carefully around the bodies, some of which were still alive, writhing in the mud of their mingled blood.

The soldier called out as they neared the visitors' center and was answered by a jag of barking French. The officers up ahead left the picnic table and set on them.
“Sont-ils armés?”
one of them asked. He turned the Keeper's duster inside out and confiscated the old man's tobacco with undisguised pleasure.

“Oui, mais seulement avec une épée . . .”
The young soldier handed over Sam's sword, earning a few grim chuckles from his superiors. The officers spoke for a while longer, none of which Axel understood. They led him and the Keeper to the picnic table, seating them on either side of Saara. The rope binding her skinny wrists was frayed and ragged, and her fingers were interlocked in a knobby bouquet of bruised knuckles. Her face was mapped in black and blue, and blood still trickled from her lower lip. But that was nothing compared to what she'd apparently done to the soldiers. They had tooth marks on their faces, and a few were missing tufts of hair. One man had both eyes swollen shut.

“I told you not to bring him here,” Axel's mother said.

“He insisted,” the Keeper said. “Hello to you, too, by the way.”

“He shouldn't have come,” she said. Then, before Axel could even hope that this was out of concern for his safety, she added: “He isn't any help, anyway.”