Wolf Winter (33 page)

“But I’m not trying. They won’t leave me alone.”

“Go on inside, Frederika.”

“What happened to your drum?” she whispered.

“It’s long gone,” he said. “I burned it myself.”

She watched him leave.

He couldn’t have meant for her to pray.

When she was little, she had thought the stars were angels who had made holes in the sky to watch over her, and the light she saw was the glory of heaven. But now, after having called for help, after having reached up, she didn’t think there was anyone there.

In the evening Frederika and her mother sat by the kitchen table. Her mother was knitting a blue woolen sock. Frederika pulled the tallow candle on the table toward her. She thought about Fearless and about Eriksson. She pressed the hot wax close to the flame with her thumb. Turned the candle around. Pressed some more.

“Mamma.”

“Mm-hm?”

“Dorotea didn’t hear the wolf.”

Her mother lifted her head.

“That day when you were attacked. She didn’t hear it.”

They both glanced toward the bed where Dorotea was sleeping.

“Why do you say that?” Maija asked.

Frederika thought again about what Dorotea’s body had felt like. The weight of her. And the smell had been that of a sleeping Dorotea. Sweet. Vinegary. “I think she slept,” she said.

Her mother’s forehead was wrinkled. “Well, I don’t know. Dorotea is still little. Perhaps the stress …”

“Don’t you think it is strange that she didn’t hear it?”

“Frederika, do you remember that wooden stick? The one you stuck in the snowdrift by the porch?”

“It’s gone.”

“I know, but why did you want it there? Why did you say I couldn’t move it?”

She didn’t know. It had belonged there. “I was going to use it,” she said, though she couldn’t remember what for.

Her mother sat up straight. “This is no good. The other settlers have seen the wolves too. We talked about it at the settler meeting.”

Her mother’s mouth became a thin line in her face.

“You have this trait, Frederika, of looking for the mysterious and letting yourself be overcome. I shouldn’t have let you spend all that time with Jutta when you were growing up.” Her mother shook her head. “These kinds of thoughts, they spread rot.”

The yellow flame arced close to her fingertips. Frederika pushed the candle away.

In town the merchants’ calls vied with one another:

“Reindeer pelt.”

“Bear pelt.”

“Trade for salt?”

“This winter has been like no other.”

“I need shoes.”

“I have ptarmigans.”

“I can get those myself anytime.”

“What about window glass?”

Maija sighed. The last time they had been here, in the wake of Eriksson’s death, it had only been the settlers. The last time her husband had been by her side. Paavo. She wondered where he was and what he was doing.
He’ll be back,
she thought. Either just before the snow begins to thaw or immediately after. But he could have written …

All along the verge of the church green, houses were alive. Shops. Outside, the merchants had built racks on which to hang the dead animals and thick furs the settlers and the Lapps might bring to trade. Behind the church, further up on a hill, the night man had climbed the gallows and hung a new rope over its frame. By the frozen river someone had set up a small brewery. She was glad they were here. The journey had been foul, but she imagined, here in the valley, the weather would be less fierce. And they would not be alone. People shuffled forward in the dark. The breaths from horses’ nostrils were slow and large, the long hair on their hooves full of ice clumps and snow. The file passed the vicarage. The golden candle holders were visible through the tall windows, and people swerved so as not to walk on the light thrown onto the snow, as if, coming from inside the vicarage, even that were sacred.

Then she saw him, the priest, and fell back though he could not see her. He was standing by the window together with a blonde woman in a red dress. The woman turned toward him and touched his arm. The priest smiled. She had assumed he did not have anyone, though she didn’t know why. After all, he was educated. Tall. Poised. She guessed you could say “fine looking.”

The woman’s hair was tied back. She and the priest stood watching those outside, like royals on a balcony.

By the muted, light blue mass of the church, they turned right into Settler Town. On both sides of the street yellow flames from tar torches flanked them. Then the church bell began to ring.

They were to share a house with Daniel and Anna and their children, and so they had traveled together; the two families and their animals.

“We used to share with the Janssons.” Anna interrupted herself.

The family that had disappeared. Maija wanted to tell her she was not superstitious, but saying the words would make it seem as if she were.

She helped Dorotea to sit down on the bed. She thought about the priest and his woman. The light in the house had been so yellow and seemed warm. This house was ice cold. A few of the window panes were missing. Daniel squatted, and there was the clinking sound of flint hitting flint.

Through the gaping hole in the window the people who passed outside were dark shades. Their feet crunched on the snow. Their voices were muted.

“What about our neighbors?” Maija asked.

“All the settlers from Blackåsen are on the same street.”

There was a feeble fire now in the fireplace. Daniel nodded to Anna to care for it and walked out. He came back with a few planks of wood with which he covered the hole in the window.

“Can we go out?” Frederika pulled her sleeve. Dorotea was standing behind her.

Maija hesitated.

“Yes,” she said. “See where your schooling will take place, and see what we need to do to register at Customs.”

She watched her younger daughter hobble to the door.

“Don’t overdo it, Dorotea,” she said, “and take good care to look where we live so you find your way back.”

She pictured the two of them, walking hand in hand toward the marketplace, pictured them gaping at the size of the sugar lumps, sneezing at the smell of the spices, mouths watering at the sight of bread. She would have given them the world. She would have.

Lapp Town was the area furthest away from the church. The timber houses looked much like those built for the settlers, but there were also cone-shaped shacks, and the whole district was fenced in. The reindeers were already in their fold. The Lapps had hung large orange torches on the poles of the enclosure. Maija watched the animals for a while, hundreds of them, flank to flank, digging with their feet in the snow for lichen, locking antlers when they got too close. Every now and then one of them took a few leaping steps, some others would tag on, and then snow smoke would draw over the herd in a glittering cloud. Maija raised her face toward the shimmer, and then had to lower it again when it descended on her and began to sting her face.

A woman approached. She wore a colorful dress with broad hem ribbons. There was a triangular shawl across her shoulders. She said something in a strange language.

Maija let go of the wooden railing. “I was looking for Fearless.”

Fearless seemed both shorter and older than he’d been the last time she saw him. His skin was burned, and the wrinkles by his eyes seemed carved. He made no sign of recognizing her, but stepped to the side. There were two other men inside. One of them was stirring
a pot over the fire. The other one was sitting down, legs crossed, sewing. It was the young Lapp with the black long hair.

Fearless nodded to the settle. The table in front of it was covered by a reindeer skin. He picked up a knife. It disappeared in his hand as he cut through the pelt with small sawing movements.
You could watch this forever,
she thought,
a man good at his work.

“I wonder why you have come this time,” he said.

Yes, why had she come? It had been an impulse. Or, if she was honest with herself, she had known she would go and find him as soon as they arrived. Perhaps out of guilt at their last meeting.

“Things aren’t too good on Blackåsen,” she said.

He held the leather up to look at its shape against the light.

“I worried in case some settlers might be quick to blame your people,” she said.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

He began to cut anew through the pelt. When he had finished, he walked across the room to give the pieces to the young Lapp who sat sewing on the floor. He came back, sighed, and looked at Maija. “So what’s the grievance this time?”

“The harvest failing, Eriksson dying. … Some settlers are claiming to have seen things in the forest, and then they remember the children who disappeared.”

“All those are things that have befallen us too,” Fearless said.

Maija nodded. The other men hadn’t thrown one glance their way, but their movements had slowed down.

“They’re just scared,” she said. “It’s the traditions of your past.”

“There are those among you who are more skilled in those practices nowadays than we are.”

“Among us?”

Surely Fearless knew that Elin was dead?

He didn’t continue.

“Well.” She rose. “That’s what I came to say.”

As she closed the door behind her, she saw the other men turn toward him.

The Christmas Mass began at dawn. It was tricky. Arriving early, but not by too much. The dead had their Mass before the living, and that wasn’t one you wanted to attend.

Frederika sighed with relief on seeing live people inside. At the entrance the verger handed them the psalm book.

“He said I didn’t need it now,” Dorotea whispered as she limped beside her down the nave.

Frederika was watching the lit chandeliers in the roof. She didn’t think she had ever seen that many candles burning at the same time. “What?” she said.

“Mr. Lundgren, yesterday at the market. He said I didn’t need extra schooling. There’s another girl who is worse than me.”

Her sister’s voice was so full of joy that Frederika had to look at her. She hadn’t realized her sister minded being thought a bad reader.

The church was cold. Their mother pointed to one of the pews and they sat down. Further toward the front was Henrik’s blond hair. Beside him the bonnet that must be Lisbet, and then a tall silver head: Nils. The priest arrived and walked toward the front. As he passed, there was a sound from the back, and Frederika turned. The Lapps entered: Fearless in their midst, head high. She remembered their conversation and should have been angry. Instead, she felt ashamed: for her inexperience, her thankfulness when she thought he’d come to help, her failure to say the right things. Her eyes caught in Antti’s. He raised his head ever so little, then he walked out.

The priest was climbing the pulpit.

“I need to go out,” Frederika whispered to her mother.

“Now?” Her mother looked at her, back toward the door, to the front toward the priest, back at her again.

“I have to go. I’ll sneak in afterward.”

Antti was waiting for her on the stairway leading up to the tower. He turned and walked upstairs. She tried to glide up the stairs as he did, but she was too heavy. Each of her steps creaked on wood. Antti walked into a room where a fire crackled. There were shelves lined with books from floor to ceiling.