The Winter Place (34 page)

“Bother,” the Keeper whispered, glancing back into the ruins. But he must have known there was no other way out—Axel had been there only twice before, and he even knew it.

The men continued to approach the castle archway. One of them put a hand on a little radio affixed to his shoulder. “We're hearing some movement at Erikinlinna,” he said into the mouthpiece. “Stand by, please.”

At this the Keeper fell to his knees. He pulled a little bottle of schnapps from one of his pockets and proceeded to empty about half of it all over himself. Then he gathered up a big fistful of snow and poured the rest of the schnapps into that. He looked Axel right in the face. “Don't ever tell me that I didn't sacrifice for you,” the Keeper said. Then he stood, pulled the back of his duster up and over his head, and charged out of the courtyard like a madman. Axel could see the Keeper wheel back and throw his boozy snowball, striking one of the two men square in the nose and knocking him back onto his butt.

“Not in
my
house!” the Keeper hollered. “And on
Christmas
?”

Still screaming, the old man scampered insanely into the forest. The two searchers were so shocked that it took them a second to respond. But when they finally did, they were quick about it. The one with the radio called in to ask for help rounding up a drunk in the woods. Then they skied out into the dark after him, leaving Axel and his mother alone inside the ruins.

The Hiisi watched all of this silently from its perch atop the tower. Then the saplings that filled the courtyard began to twirl, barking with the Hiisi's voice.

“Fools,” it said.

The Hiisi leaped down off the tower, crashing through the roof of the covered picnic area. The wooden pillars exploded, and the eaves folded in, catapulting rinds of curdled snow against the castle walls and into the boughs of nearby trees. For a moment they couldn't see the Hiisi, but they could hear it in there, slipping on the snow-strewn floor, smashing into tables, gathering itself back together. A moment later the Hiisi rolled out of the wreckage, clicking and ticking, licking its chops.

“We need to go too,” Saara said.

Axel and his mother raced into the woods, careful to go in a different direction from the way the Keeper had gone. They found the frozen lakeshore
all dotted with lights from search parties, and twice they had to change course to avoid flashlight beams that came too close. When they finally arrived at the Kivis' cottage, they found it dark against the star-filled sky, obviously empty. There was no place that Axel wanted to go less than that, but the Hiisi gave them little choice. They could hear it sizzle and hiss just a few steps behind. It had eyes only for Axel. It had no eyes at all.

They tumbled into the cottage, Saara's massive body crushing the air from Axel's lungs as she rolled over him. She fumblingly tried to shut the door behind them with her claws, and Axel, still gasping for air, had to help her latch the dead bolt. Saara leaned her bulk against the shuttered door, and they waited. Axel strained his ears, but there was no sound other than the mingled huff of their breathing. And then, from the other side of the cottage, the oiled swish of hinges.

They'd forgotten about the back door. It was, fittingly and horribly, the one with the ramp. The one made to accommodate wheelchairs. Axel turned to see the door swing wide, filled with the Hiisi's nothing guts. It reached a long arm—or something very like an arm, formless and precise as the dark—across the living room. Axel tried to wriggle away, but the Hiisi sensed his movement. It groped frantically, overturning chairs and sending books
bouncing against the low ceiling. Saara just stared, utterly useless. Axel's hand fell to his belt and discovered, almost to his own surprise, the hilt of his father's sword. He unsheathed it and struck down as hard as he could. It passed through the Hiisi like it was nothing but air. Still, the monster trumpeted awfully, and as it lurched away, Axel followed it to the back door, slamming it shut. The Hiisi hollered again, thrashing around by the sauna. Then, bit by bit, it quieted down.

They waited. Axel went to check the windows, but all he could see were lights in the distance. A minute passed and then another. Saara began to fret and groan. She tried to get her broad grizzly rear onto the couch and succeeded only in pushing it against the far wall. She stayed like that, half of her butt lifted up onto the couch, mean little ears twitching with agitation.

They kept waiting. Saara glanced about, taking in the sight of her childhood summer cottage like it was a place she'd never been to. Axel looked around too. The cottage appeared to be pretty much as he'd left it. The muddy ash was still frozen in the fireplace, and his stripped bedding lay exactly where he'd dropped it on the floor. There were plenty of people out searching for him, but it was clear that none of them were sleeping here. Axel went to one of the east windows and gazed down shore at the
Hannula house. It was like someone had doused the place in gasoline—hot and bright and ugly. He could see silhouettes moving behind the curtains. Even at this distance Axel could tell that one of them was Otso.

“This is where we met,” Saara said, apropos of nothing whatsoever.

Axel turned to her. For a moment it seemed as though this might be the beginning and the end of what his mother intended to share. “You and Dad,” he said, hoping to prod her. “You and Sam.”

Just the utterance of his father's name seemed to have a physical effect on Saara. “Sam,” she said. “Sam,” like the word was water and she was parched. “He was in Talvijärvi for the summer. He was in the trees, up high in the trees. He didn't have the words.” She pressed her tiny eyes closed, her lips curling back over her teeth. It seemed like she, and not Sam, was the one who needed words.

Axel gave her a moment.

“He was collecting samples,” Saara said, her eyes still closed. “I had gone out for a walk, and I thought I was alone. Because why would anyone be up there? But when I stopped in some bushes to pee, I heard a noise. It sounded like a person. ‘I'm in here!' I called. Sam didn't know what I was saying—he didn't have the words. He yelled back to me, and it made no sense. I spoke English, but I just didn't think . . .
Why would someone in the trees be yelling
English
at me? ‘I'm in here!' I said. ‘Don't come here!' Sam thought that I was in trouble. That I needed help. We were just yelling and yelling and yelling. ‘Keep away!' ‘Here I come!' ” Saara drifted. Her little eyes popped open again.

“I think that you should stay here,” she said, as if this thought were somehow connected to the ones that had come before it. It took Axel a moment to understand her meaning. “You should go back to them.”

“I don't want to,” Axel said. He didn't mean to sound so hesitant and wimpy. So he said it again. “I don't want to stay here.”

Saara turned her head sideways, bestial and inquisitive. For the first time since Axel had met her, every bit of Saara's attention seemed to be focused squarely on him. The couch groaned beneath her. “Aren't you homesick?”

“Not for here,” Axel said. He turned back to the window so that he wouldn't have to keep looking at her, resting his elbows on the sill. There was a flickering streak in the distance—a pair of flashlights moving quickly on the frozen shore. “Besides, you won't be able to find Sam without me,” he said.

“Yes, I will,” his mother answered flatly. “I've got forever.”

“But I want to find him. I want to find him, too.”

“He isn't yours to find.” Saara sounded aghast at the possibility that Axel didn't already know this. “He's mine. And even when we do find him, there's nothing that your father can give you. Not anymore. There's nothing I can give you, either.” Axel may have been kidding himself, but he thought he could detect a trace of regret in her voice. “You need to understand this,” Saara said. “It doesn't mean I didn't love you when I was alive. It doesn't mean that I wasn't so, so excited to meet you.
When I was alive.
But I'm not anymore.”

“But I don't want anything from you,” Axel said. He caught himself getting a little frustrated. “And besides, there's nothing for me here. I don't even know who I'm supposed to be here.”

“Won't you have to find out, sooner or later?”

“Says who?”

His mother was quiet for a moment, as if she were giving this petulant question more consideration than it deserved. Then she harrumphed, a wet, warm sound. “Says nobody, I guess. Do what you want.”

They spoke no more after that. The cottage fell into silence, save the occasional hollering of Axel's name, drifting in from the trees. Had that been Tess's voice, or Jaana's? It was a rotten thing that Axel had done to them—he knew that. They'd be sad. Axel didn't kid himself; they'd be devastated. But they'd get over it.

Eventually Saara got up and began pacing again, eager to get outside and continue the search. Axel was eager, too. He was afraid that if they stayed here much longer, he might lose his nerve. How easy it would have been to just open the door and take the short walk over to the Hannula house. Otso would let him inside, and everybody would scold him, and they'd all weep for joy. Axel decided that there was only one way to keep going. He found a piece of doodled-on paper on the dining room table and a pen in one of Jaana's drawers. It was a short note, but it took surprisingly long to write. When Axel signed the bottom, it was as good as a contract. He was never coming back here.

“Hey!” The Keeper's voice came from just outside. “You two in there?”

Saara was already at the front door. “Is the Hiisi gone?” she called.

“All clear,” the Keeper said. “Nobody out here but us saviors.”

Saara pawed at the dead bolt, and Axel hurried to unlatch it before she could bust the whole door down. Then he followed her out into the snow. Axel realized, right away, that the Keeper had lied to them. He was standing in the middle of the yard, glowing. He'd lost his hat when he'd run away from the little search party at the castle, and fluorescent light was reflecting off his skull. He wasn't looking
at them, Axel realized, but above them. He was staring over their heads, into the mouth of the Hiisi.

It had climbed onto the roof of the cottage. Axel turned just in time to see the thing come down upon him. What a soothing grip it had, cool and clean like washed sheets. The Hiisi took him up, pulling him into the sizzling bright. It was the same thing that it had always been. It was the wheelchair that had followed him to school. It was the numbness in his legs and arms. It was the quiet of an empty house, the loneliness of his father's empty bedroom. The Hiisi was everything that Axel had ever been afraid of. Except, in that moment, it also wasn't. In fact, in those seconds when the Hiisi was about to swallow him, Axel didn't feel any fear at all. Because Axel was of the path now. If the Hiisi pulled him off it today, he would find his way back tomorrow. If Tess and Jaana caught him and brought him to Helsinki, he would walk right back here. Axel could read the blazes now. Every branch was a signpost, every tree a doorway to his new home.

The Hiisi hesitated, Axel still dangling over its shining maw. Then, all of a sudden, it tossed him aside. He landed hard on the ground, the snow burning his palms and bare cheeks. Saara's jaws closed on the hood of his sweater, and she lifted him to his feet.

“So that's it, then?” the Keeper said, his voice
high and giddy. He was speaking to the Hiisi.

“The boy seems sure,” the Hiisi said, whispering the words through the frozen spruce needles. It sounded vaguely hesitant.

“He is sure. His threads are cut.” The old man took one short step toward the monster and then another. “His threads are cut,” he said again, all smooth and soothing, like he was trying to calm some wild animal. “He
belongs
now. He isn't upsetting the balance.” Another step. “You've got what you need, and the woods do, too.” The Keeper was speaking right into the Hiisi's gaping mouth now. With just a twitch, the monster could have ruined him. In the length of a breath, it could have swallowed him whole.

“Get away from it,” Axel said. He tried to take a step toward the Keeper, but Saara was still holding his hood in her reeking jaws. She began to back into the trees, and Axel's ankles slid across the ice and powder.

“We have to go,” she whispered through her mouthful of cotton. “They'll be here any minute.” She was right—Axel could see flashlights approaching from around the Hannula house. He could hear his name hurled out across the frozen lake.

“We can't just leave him there,” Axel said.

“We absolutely can,” Saara said.

The Keeper had reached out his mangled left
hand, as though he meant to try to touch the light inside the Hiisi. “One Keeper for every wood,” he said, almost whispering now into the bright abyss. “Just one. You promised.”