Wolf Winter

Copyright © 2015 by Cecilia Ekbäck

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Set in 12 point Mrs Eaves

FIRST EDITION

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For the women in my family who don’t sleep

Contents

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PART ONE

Swedish Lapland, June 1717

“But how far is it?”

Frederika wanted to scream. Dorotea was slowing them down. She dragged behind her the branch she ought to be using as a whip, and Frederika had to work twice as hard to keep the goats moving. The morning was bright; white daylight sliced the spruce tops and stirred up too much color. Frederika was growing hot. There were prickles on her back beneath the dress. She hadn’t wanted to go, and now the goats didn’t want to either. They leapt to the left or right in among the trees and tried to run past them back toward the cottage. The only sounds were those of a tree shifting, of a hoof striking stone, and the constant bleating of the stupid goats.

“Only poor people have goats,” she had said to her mother that same morning.

They were sitting on the wooden porch of their new home on the side of Blackåsen Mountain. In front of them bugs flitted above the grassy slope. There was a small stream at the base of the hill and, beyond that, a field. Enclosing all this was forest—jagged black spears against pink morning sky.

“We’ll sow turnips up there.” Frederika’s mother, Maija, nodded toward the barn. “That’s a good place with sun.”

“At least cows and sheep manage on their own in the forest. Goats are a lot of work for nothing.”

“It’s just until your father and I have built a fence around the field. Take them to that glade we saw on our way here. It’s not far.”

The barn door opened, and Dorotea hopped out. The door clapped shut behind her.

“It will be fine,” her mother said in a low voice as Dorotea ran down the slope.

Frederika wanted to say that here nothing could be fine. The forest was too dark. There was spidery mould among the twigs, and on the ground beneath the lowest branches there were still patches of snow, hollow blue. She wanted to say that this cottage was smaller than the one they had lived in, in Ostrobothnia. It was lopsided and the land unkempt. Here was no sea, no other people. They shouldn’t have left. Things hadn’t been that bad. Hadn’t they always managed? But the wrinkle between her mother’s eyes was deeper than usual. As though she might want to say those things too, and so Frederika had said nothing.

“But how far is it?

Frederika looked at the blonde child in the hand-me-down dress that billowed around her like a sheet on a clothesline in wind. Dorotea was still little. Frederika was fourteen, Dorotea only six. Dorotea stumbled on the trailing hem.

“Lift your feet when you walk, and hurry,” Frederika said.

“But I am tired,” Dorotea said. “I’m tired, I’m tired, I’m tired.”

It was going to be an awful, awful day.

They climbed higher, and the forest below them turned into a sea of deep greens and stark blues that rolled and fell until the end of the world. Frederika thought of gray lakes; of a watery sky. She thought of flat earth with sparse growth that didn’t demand much, and missed Ostrobothnia so badly that her chest twisted.

The path narrowed and dipped, with many loose stones. To the left the mountain plunged all the way into the valley far beneath.

“Walk after me,” she said to Dorotea. “Watch where you put your feet.”

Along the base of the rock, star-shaped purple saxifrage peeked through the stones. There was a small mound of brown pellets sweating in the sunshine, spilling—a deer of some sort. Above them, growing straight out of the stone, was a small, twisted birch.

The path veered right. Frederika hadn’t seen this when they came, but here the side of the mountain had burst. There was a
fracture cutting deep into the rock. Lynx lived in crevices like this. Trolls also.

“Hurry,” she said to Dorotea and lengthened her steps.

There was a large boulder and another bend in the path. The trail broadened. They were back in the forest.

“I stepped on something prickly.” Her sister lifted her leg and pointed at the sole of her dusty foot.

Then Frederika sensed rather than saw it. The goats sensed it too. They hesitated and stared at her, bleating large question marks.

It was the smell,
she thought. It was the same stench that lay over the yard when they slaughtered to have meat for winter. Earth, rot, feces.

A fly buzzed into her ear and she hit at it. Further away, between tree trunks, there was light. The glade. She put her finger to her mouth. “Shhh,” she whispered to Dorotea.

Watching where she put each foot among blueberry sprigs and moss, she walked toward the brightening. At the edge of the glade she stopped.

Tall grass sprouted in tufts. A bouquet of hawthorn butterflies skipped and danced in the air like a handful of pale flowers thrown to the wind. At the farther end of the glade was a large rock. The pine trees behind grew close into a wooden wall. There was a shape beside the boulder. Yes, something had died. A deer. Or perhaps a reindeer.

Dorotea took her hand and stepped close. Frederika looked around as their mother had taught them, scanned the evenness of tree trunks for a movement or a shape. In the forest there was plenty of bear and wolf. Whatever had attacked could still be about, still be hungry after winter.

She concentrated. A woodpecker tapped. The sun burned on her scalp. Dorotea’s hand was sticky, twitching in hers. Nothing else. She looked back toward the carcass.

It was blue.

She let go of her sister’s hand and stepped forward.

It was a dead man there in the glade.

He stared at Frederika with cloudy eyes. He lay bent. Broken. His stomach was torn open, his insides on the grass, violently red, stringy. Flies strutted on the gleaming surfaces. One flew into the black hole that was his mouth.

Dorotea screamed, and at once it was upon her: the stench, the flies, the man’s gaping mouth.

O Jesus, please help,
she thought.

They had to get their mother.
Jesus
—
the goats.
They couldn’t leave the goats.

She grabbed her sister’s shoulders and turned her around. Dorotea’s eyes were round, her mouth wide open, strings of saliva that became a bubble, then popped. She lost her breath, and her mouth gawped in silence.

“Dorotea,” Frederika said. “We must fetch Mother.”

Dorotea wrapped her arms around her, clambered up her like a cat up a tree, clawing. Frederika tried to loosen her arms. “Shhh.”

The forest was quiet. There was no rustling; no tapping, murmuring, or chirping. No movement either. The forest held its breath.

Her sister bent her knees as if to sit down. Frederika grabbed her hand and yanked her to her feet. “Run,” she hissed. Dorotea didn’t move.
“Run!”
Frederika yelled, and raised her hand as if to hit her.

Dorotea gasped and set off down the trail. Frederika spread her arms wide and ran toward the goats.

They flew through the forest, hooves and bare feet drumming against the ground.

Faster.

Frederika whipped the back of the last goat. She fell, knees stinging, hands scraping.
Up-up-don’t-stop.
One of the goats jumped off the trail. She screamed and slapped its rear.

When they reached the pass, Frederika grabbed her sister’s arm. “We must go slow. Be careful.” Dorotea hiccupped and dry sobbed.
Frederika pinched her, and Dorotea stared at her, her mouth wide open.

“I’m sorry. Please, a little bit longer.” Frederika stretched out her hand. Her sister took it, and they followed the goats into the pass. One step, two, three.

The rupture into the mountain seemed larger. There was a sound. It might have been breathing.

Oh, don’t look.
Frederika kept her eyes on her feet. Four, five, six. In the corner of her eye she saw Dorotea’s naked feet on the trail beside hers, half-walking, half-running. Seven, eight, nine. The goats’ hoofs were loud against the rocks. Please, she thought.
Pleasepleaseplease.

The path slackened, twisted a little, and then flattened and fell downward and outward, and they began to run—slowly at first, then faster. Downhill now, sighting their house between the trees. Dorotea ahead of her, screaming,
“Mamma, Mamma!”

And at last, safe in their yard. Her parents came running, her father with long strides, her mother just behind him. It was then that Frederika vomited.

Her father reached her, hauled her up by her arm, “What is going on? What happened?”

“A man,” Frederika said and wiped her mouth, “in the glade, and he is dead.”

And then her mother swept her into her long skirts as if she would never have to emerge again.