The Winter Place (37 page)

Tess opened the fasteners on the back of the frame and pulled Aino's map out. She gently rolled it up.

“Stop that right now!” Mr. Järvinen shouted.

“I'm so sorry,” Tess said, her cheeks hot and pink. Then she turned and walked quickly out of the dark little sitting room. Kari rushed to follow her, looking baffled. Väinö's son hollered after them, calling for his nurse. But the cartoons were much too loud, and Tess and Kari had already reached the front door.

I
t had been only a few hours since Tess and Kari left Mr. Järvinen's house, and already she thought that they might be getting close. They were back at the lake, standing in the same patch of cleared forest where Bigwig had appeared nearly a week ago, poring over Aino's hand-drawn map. Kari was holding his poncho out to shield the map from the rain, but even so the paper was fraying at the edges, coming apart in their fingers. A stray raindrop landed on a corner of the map and passed right through like a wet bullet. Tess felt rotten about it. She promised herself that if she made it through this, she'd find a way to make it up to Mr. Järvinen.

Tess had told Kari everything the moment his
older brother dropped them back off at the lake. Kari hadn't given her a choice—he'd threatened to go right back into town unless Tess explained why they'd stolen from the old man. But it was good—the telling had helped. After all, she was only just starting to put things together for herself. Saying it aloud to Kari was as much a way of explaining it to the both of them. Tess wasn't sure that she had all the details right, but the gist of the story was simple: Väinö Järvinen, the grief-stricken woodsman who had abandoned his son and disappeared into the forest more than sixty years ago, was the Keeper. Väinö was the drifter who had appeared before Tess and Axel back in Baldwin on the night their father died. It was Väinö who had made contact with her brother at Talvijärvi and scooped him out of the world.

“But I thought that what was happening to Axel was the same thing that happened to Väinö,” Kari said. “Wasn't he supposed to be a victim of this Keeper guy?”

“He was that, too,” Tess said. She had no doubt that a Keeper had once lured Väinö into the woods and shown him the path. And thanks to the younger Mr. Järvinen, Tess had a pretty good idea of who that original Keeper was. But for whatever reason, the job had been passed on to Väinö. He'd spent decades lost in a wilderness of
grief, tricked out of his own life. And now he was the man doing the tricking.

“And the map?” Kari said. “Why do you need it?”

“To find where his cabin used to be,” Tess said. She knew that this last leap was the biggest, strangest one of all. To go looking for Väinö at the site of his old home meant that she had to believe that the corpse in the castle belonged to the original Keeper—
Erik-freaking-Kagg
. An ancient Swedish count who by all rights should have been dead for eight hundred years or so. Väinö had taken Kagg's place in the forest, and Kagg had taken Väinö's in the ground. “Erikinlinna was his home,” she said. “If Kagg returned there, then maybe Väinö will return to his.”

Tess could tell that Kari wanted to believe her but simply didn't. Not even a little bit. But still, here he was, shivering right beside her and holding up his poncho to keep the map dry. A lot had changed since Aino had drawn it. Homesteads dotted the shoreline in her time, but in the many decades since, they'd been replaced by summer cottages, their farms all gone to weed. The mill closed and the forest crept back, advancing on the water. With none of Aino's landmarks left, Tess and Kari had to follow the contours of the shore, orienting themselves by their distance from the island. It lay off to the left, the two old pines
bending under the weight of the slush.

“Shouldn't it be here?” Kari said.

“Almost.” Tess pointed to a spit of rocky land on the map, curling into the lake like a tail. Then she peered up at the shoreline. They could just make out a few of the rocks in the distance, sticking up out of the ice like dorsal fins. “Past there and over that hill,” she said. She rolled the map up carefully and handed it back to Kari, who wrapped it in his poncho. The woods became dense and untended beyond the clearing, so they cut across the shallows. Nearly an inch of rainwater had accumulated on the ice, and it splashed around their boots as they made their way carefully over the slick surface. It was a strange feeling, to be walking through water, atop ice, atop still more water. But it was thick enough—Tess had watched grown men and women from the search parties taking shortcuts across the lake all week long.

They reached the rocks and cut back to the shore. The ground rose up ahead, and Tess saw that what had looked like a hill on Aino's map was actually an outcropping of bald granite wearing a crown of orange-barked pine trees. Kari paused, pressing a gloved hand against one of the trunks for balance.

“Do you smell that?” he said.

Tess did—an oily sweetness hung in the air,
rich and pungent against the clean smell of the rain and woods. The odor got stronger as they climbed the rise, and when they reached the top, she could see a few threads of tar-black smoke drifting through the trees. There was something at the far foot of the slope. The snow down there had been trod flat in a rough little circle, all around the husk of a dead pine tree. And within that circle Tess could see a black blotch of smoking ash sitting under a soggy cardboard lean-to. A blue tarp lay crumpled across a bank of overturned snow, partially covering a glinting pile of open cans and empty bottles. It was a campsite.

“Careful!” Kari yelled. But Tess was already sliding down the slope on her butt, going as fast as the ice and snow would let her. The moment she hit level ground again, she was running. According to Aino's map, this was exactly where the Järvinens' cabin should have been.

As Tess got closer she saw that it wasn't a dead tree in the middle of the campsite but rather an upright stack of red bricks. A fireplace and a chimney—the only pieces of Väinö and Aino's home that had survived the endless winters. The campsite around the fireplace looked like it had been only recently abandoned. The embers in the fire pit were still smoking, and an open jar of pickled herring sat atop a stone, slowly filling
with rainwater. Beside that was a bottle of syrupy pine schnapps, the cap sitting loose atop the mouth.

“Do you think he heard us coming?” Kari said. He had only just caught up with her and had to lean against a tree, huffing for breath.

“Maybe,” Tess said, looking frantically into the woods. The snow out there was ribbed with ski tracks, which meant that the search parties had been back and forth over the past few days. But how the hell had the Keeper escaped notice, right under their noses like this? And how had he slipped away the very moment that Tess found his camp? The Keeper must have departed in a hurry, because he'd left his walking stick leaning against the brickwork of the chimney. His pipe was there, too, sitting neatly atop the crumbling mantel of the naked fireplace. Tess even noticed one of his stupid gum boots jutting out from the other garbage under the tarp, and the sight of it caused her frustration to mount even faster. She didn't know if tears were coming, or a scream, or both. Tess yanked off her gloves and stuck her fingers into the burningly cold snow.

“I think we should go back and tell Aarne,” Kari said, still struggling for air. “We wouldn't have to say anything about all the Väinö stuff. This would be enough.” He pointed down at the fire
and the abandoned meal. “Aarne and the police can search this whole side of the lake.”

“This camp has been here for days,” Tess said. “They must have seen it and gone right past him.” She went over to the chimney and picked up the Keeper's walking stick. It was heavier than she would have thought—solid and old. She picked up his pipe, too, finding the bowl warm to the touch. The tobacco inside was still crackling. The Keeper couldn't have lit it more than a few minutes ago. Would that have been enough time for him to disappear into the forest? Tess turned in a full circle, peering out into the open woodland. Then she set her eyes again on the gum boot. The top half of it disappeared under the tarp. And she realized, all at once, that the boot wasn't empty.

Kari was still talking. “I don't know who this person is,” he said, “but if Aarne can find him . . . if the police can talk to him . . .” Kari looked desperate. “It's the best chance we have. We've got to try.”

“You're right,” Tess said, trying to keep her voice from giving anything away. She set the pipe back down on the fireplace and took a step toward the tarp. “We should go back and get them.” She took another step. Slowly, she lifted the Keeper's walking stick into the air, holding it high above her head. Kari seemed like he was about to ask what she was doing, but then his eyes went to the
protruding gum boot, and he realized as well. Kari straightened himself up and clenched his hands into fists. Everything went still, even the smoke curling through the air.

Tess aimed for a spot on the tarp about a foot and a half above the boot and brought the walking stick down as hard as she could. The tarp exploded in a scramble of arms and legs, and the Keeper howled in agony. He shot up to his feet in the snow and fell right back down again. The old man's eyes were watering, his face pink with pain. She'd gotten him right in the knee.

“That. Wasn't. Necessary.” The Keeper gasped each word through his clenched teeth. He looked different from the way Tess remembered him. The old man had lost his ridiculous hat and traded in his duster for one of the neon vests that had been handed out to all the volunteers—he must have been posing as a member of the search party, which was why no one had thought anything of his camp. But it was more than just his outfit that had changed. The Keeper's entire bearing seemed somehow shrunken, and real. His neck wasn't quite so long, nor his head so broad as it used to be. His clenched teeth looked yellow, and old, and entirely ordinary. The Keeper's attitude, on the other hand, appeared very much the same. His face relaxed as the pain subsided. The corners of
his lips pinched up into a smile, propping up his collapsing cheeks. “It's nice to see you, too.”

“Where's my brother?” Tess pitched the words at the old man. She held the walking stick high, ready to hit him again.

“I don't know much more than you do,” the Keeper said. “He's on the path. On his way to Florida to look for his father. Beyond that, I couldn't say.” He braced his hands in the snow and lifted himself up into a standing position.

“Hey!” Kari had been at the edge of the campsite this whole time, frozen in shock. But now he charged up next to Tess, his fists held out awkwardly in front of him. He looked about ready to throw himself on the old man.

“Easy there, humpty.” The Keeper held his arms up in a gesture of surrender. He was absolutely drenched—Tess could see that now. His sopping pants stuck to him like skin on a plucked chicken. She also noticed that he was holding a long white feather in his mangled left hand. A swan's feather, mussed and ratty with the rain. “I'm not going to hurt anybody,” the Keeper said. “I was only trying to . . .” He took a hobbling step over to the fireplace and cried out in pain. “You really did a number on me. Would either of you mind passing me my pipe before it burns out?”

Tess shot a quick glance at the smoking pipe
sitting atop the fireplace. Then she swung the walking stick like a bat and whacked it off the brickwork. The pipe snapped in two, and the pieces spun off into the woods. The Keeper watched them go. “God,” he said, “you're just like your mother.”

“Kari,” Tess said. “I need you to go back to your house. Get my grandmother, or Aarne, or anyone else you can find.”

“No way,” Kari said. He was still holding his fists out in front of him. The kid must have never been in a fight—it looked like he was trying to drive an invisible car. “I'm not going to leave you alone with him.”

“You have to,” Tess said. “They won't know how to get here, otherwise. It'll be fine. I can take care of myself until you get back.”

Kari glanced from the Keeper to Tess. “What if he runs away?”

The old man limped over to the campfire and snatched up his little bottle of schnapps before Tess could shatter that as well. He sucked some down like it was medicine. “I'm hardly running anywhere,” he said.

“I'll break his leg if he does,” Tess said. She really believed she'd do it, too.

“Hear that?” the Keeper said. “I'm in good hands.”

Kari looked agonized. He glanced at the far
shore of the lake, his family's summer home just a blip against the trees. “I'll go as fast as I can,” he said. “Don't let him get too close to you.” And with that he turned and sprinted back through the snow, scrambling up the sloping granite. They both watched him go, and the moment Kari disappeared over the rise, the Keeper's demeanor began to change. His shellacked, self-satisfied grin faded. He suddenly looked rumpled, and old, and tremendously sad.

“I didn't expect to see you here,” he said, his voice soft. He seemed unable or unwilling to look her in the face. “But I'm glad to. I mean it. I've been searching for you, you know.”

“Not very hard,” Tess said.

“I got close a few times,” the Keeper said. “That little drawing you had them make didn't have me too worried. As you can see, I'm not my handsome old self. I don't think anyone would look at that picture and then look at me and think:
That's the guy!
But a few people saw me in person the last time I was here. They heard my voice. And every time I tried to get to you, one of them would be out by the house. So I've been hiding out here, making like a concerned neighbor. I've been waiting for them all to give up so I could talk to you. I figured I owed you that much.”