Wolf Winter (32 page)

“We’re done,” Mr. Lundgren said, and his chair scraped.

Already? Outside, the yard lay empty.

“What are you doing?” Dorotea asked on the way home.

“What?”

“You keep turning around.”

There was no moon now, and so dark Frederika couldn’t see her. She barely saw to put her feet before her in the snow.

“After what happened to our mother with the wolves, I am just careful,” Frederika said.

“What wolves?”

Frederika tried to see Dorotea but couldn’t. She was struck by a thought. “Dorotea, have you seen any animals since we came here?”

“Yes,” Dorotea’s voice came from the sledge. “Spiders and ants and …”

“No. Big animals. Like bear. Or wolf?”

“I saw a fox once,” Dorotea ventured. “In Ostrobothnia.”

Frederika tried to think what Dorotea had been doing when the wolves attacked. Dorotea had been with her in bed. They had hugged, and her sister’s eyes were closed. Her body had been limp in her arms. Had Dorotea been sleeping? But her mother had seen the wolves? Yes, her mother had seen and heard them for sure.

It wasn’t night, but the unending darkness made you conduct yourself as if it were. There was no strength for vigorous activity or loud noises. People moved slowly. The animals were quiet in their pens. The dogs kept their heads low as they crawled closer to the fires. By day the priest tried to read, but ended up most often sitting with his head in his hand, a book open in his lap on no particular page. In the afternoon he sometimes walked the paths of this ghost town the bishop had entrusted him with. So little time before he had to share the King’s marching orders. A few weeks left to Christmas and the coming of the settlers for six weeks.

The priest tried to force himself into activity.
A list,
he thought. They needed a list. Winter froze the houses. Come spring they would see the real damage when the ice supporting the walls melted and things began to sag and lean. But some things ought to be repaired before the settlers arrived, and the verger would not have much time between schooling children and church duties.

He found broken windows in two of the houses in Settler Town and removed his mitten to sketch a map for the verger. His fingers began to burn, and he hurried. Somewhere a door hinge squeaked. He should try to find it. An open door would allow the snow to move inside. He put his mitten back on and raised the lantern to try to spot the errant door. Unless he was right beside it, the lantern would not give enough light to see. His father used to have his lamp on a rod that he carried on his shoulder. Not a bad idea. As a boy walking behind his father, the mild swaying glow was sufficient to permit him to see where he put his feet, while his father murmured away, some story about the yarn of a man. “We are what we are. We’re what we’re born. Be grateful, Olof. Be grateful.”

He’d told the King about his father. A clear warm night in Poland.
Smell of grass. A lake shimmering in moonlight. The troops valiant. Augustus II yet to be deposed.

“He didn’t think man was in charge of his own destiny,” the priest had said, heat in his voice. “He never saw that man can change.”

“And you do?” the King had asked. It had been dark. The priest had not been able to see more than the other man’s profile.

“It is what you do every day: shaping Sweden for generations to come.”

The King didn’t answer at first. “But can you say the two are the same?” he asked then. “Is changing character as easy as enacting deeds?”

“Both are about making a decision and standing firm.”

Look at me and you, he had wanted to say. Here we sit together, you, the King, and me, your court priest. He’d been excited. He had been thinking about himself and his progress. He now wondered whether there was much more to that conversation than he had thought. Perhaps the King had had doubts and needed his priest.

The door hinge whined again in the wind.

Only, there was no wind.

The priest lifted his lantern high and held it left and then right to see. It was probably an animal that had made the noise.

In summer he had gone in and out of the many houses and thought about those who built them on the crown’s command. Christianize Lapland. Tax Lapland, rather. But now, in winter, the deserted houses were different. Their windows gleamed black, as if he were being watched.

A door slammed. The priest jumped. His heart scurried into his throat. He raised his lantern even higher, this time to hold the darkness away rather than to see. He had spent most of his childhood in the dark and never minded it. And here he was, a grown man becoming afraid of it.

He began to walk. It was cold. He would go and sit down by his fire. He lengthened his steps. The walls of the houses shone, but he refused to look, focusing on his feet.

At the end of the street there was the same blackness, but the priest knew it as his church green. He walked into it and exhaled.

Not that it made any difference where he was, he thought, and lengthened his steps again.

The handle of the church glittered. Last winter a boy had put his tongue against the iron, and as they ripped it loose, the blood had been a violent red in the snow.

He pulled the heavy church door open and sneaked in. It shut behind him. In the hallway he let out his breath.

There was a lit candle in the entrance. It couldn’t be the verger; he wouldn’t be back until the weekend. The priest’s shoes made a dull sound as he ran up the steps to his office.

Sofia was waiting for him in his room on the first floor.

“There you are,” she said, voice purring. She was wearing a white fur hat and coat. Her blonde hair was braided. Her voice was soft. She was the kind of woman any man would be happy to come home to.

“I don’t see you for a few days,” she said, the tone of her voice mocking, “I begin to worry.”

“I had a message from the King,” he said.

“Really?” she said.

Her eyes were focused on his lips.

“Just another edict to add to the burden of my chores,” he said.

“Ah,” she said and smiled again. “Come for dinner tonight.”

“I will,” he said.

When Sofia had left, the priest decided he might as well just get it over with.

It was the young maid who opened the door. Her hands by her sides were larger and redder than ever. She gasped when she saw the priest.

“Sire,” she said in a low voice and curtsied.

“I am here to see your father,” he said.

They were sitting by the table eating cabbage soup. The maid’s old parents startled when he entered. The mother hesitated, and he knew she was wondering what she could offer him. He shook his head.

“I’m afraid I am coming with bad news,” he said.

The three of them exchanged glances.

“Bengt, you will be enlisted come spring. The King needs you in his army.”

How old was this man? Gray and small, hands shaking. But what could he do? The verger was in charge of the schooling. His own candidature wouldn’t be accepted, nor that of the night man—their roles were considered indispensable in a town. All that remained were this man and the two farm hands.

None of them reacted at first.

Then the young maid said, “My father is sick,” at the same time as her father said, “How about the boys? The stable boys?”

“Them too,” the priest said.

The old man coughed and wheezed, his whole frame laboring as if to squeeze the air out.

“Have mercy,” the mother said.

“There is no choice,” he said.

“I am so sorry,” he said, and left.

The fourth time Frederika met Eriksson he was in their barn again. She opened the door and saw him, turned and ran, but he was faster than she. At once he was on her. She fell forward and hit the snow so hard, her air left her. The snow burned her cheeks and nose. He spun her over, straddled her, and covered her mouth with his hand.

“Shhh,” he whispered just by her face. He smelled of morning breath. Of closed rooms and stale water.

Her eyes filled. She blinked and blinked.

“You are overreacting,” he said and looked her in the eyes.

After a while she nodded and he let go of her mouth. She had to swallow several times. He rose and pulled her to her feet.

“You hurt me,” she said after a while. “My arm still won’t heal.”

“Then you ought to have learned your lesson.”

They stood looking at each other.

“Elin had something in her past,” Frederika said. “Something awful.”

“She did. The first time I saw her I knew. She had a frailty in the midst of that strength of hers. You’d see it in her eyes when she first looked at you, before her features hardened. This beautiful kernel of dread. Once I knew that, it was easy. She was so infatuated with her fear, she would always choose it.”

Frederika thought about what she had seen inside Gustav. She thought about the trees Eriksson had shown her. Elin and Gustav had had similar experiences—not shared experiences; she believed Gustav had been telling the truth when he said he didn’t know Elin—but similar ones. Gustav had been a prisoner at some point, she was pretty certain. The Russians stole children. Frederika’s mind played it: the split-second of nothingness and then the violence. Perhaps something similar had happened to Elin. She shuddered.

“Why didn’t you leave her alone?” she asked Eriksson. “Hadn’t she suffered enough?”

“Don’t you see that if it wasn’t me, it would have been somebody else? It was what she sought. I loved Elin. Not that she ever knew or cared. She was too busy hating me.”

“But she didn’t kill you.”

Eriksson squeezed his lips together. “Of course she didn’t. Now you disappoint me. You have to grow faster than this, Frederika. I’ve already told you. I am not the most dangerous thing around.”

He shook his head and walked away from her toward the tree line.

There was someone else beneath the pine trees. Eriksson brushed shoulders with him, but this second person didn’t move. Straight shoulders. Silver hair. Silver beard. Fearless.

She half-ran toward him. “Eriksson,” she said as she reached him. “He just passed you.”

Fearless didn’t answer. She didn’t have to say anything. He knew it all.

“I heard you talk,” he said then. “This is not for a little girl. Alone outside in midwinter.”

“The mountain won’t leave me alone.”

Fearless was silent for a long time.

“Antti told me about you,” he said then. “Said I owed that much, to make certain you were safe.”

He turned toward her. She wanted him to see that her meanings were good. But his face was cold.

“That’s the reason I came,” he said. “Because Antti asked. We are Christian now. Talk to the priest. Beg God for mercy. Don’t go looking in the shadows.”

Her cheeks became hot.

“But I am not looking,” she said. “He is. They are. The spirits. You know this.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Then he seemed to change his mind and leaned toward her and said in a low voice, “You
have no idea what you are trying your hand at. Try to tame the spirits at your own risk. If you fail, they’ll tear you apart.”