Wolf Winter (41 page)

“Why would it be your feet?”

“I don’t think he likes what’s happened to them. And then he said that Sara needed his time more than me.”

Frederika thought about what priests said happened if you didn’t do well at the Catechetical hearing.

“But does this mean you don’t need tutoring, or what?” she asked.

“Yes,” Dorotea said.

Mr. Lundgren had said that Dorotea didn’t have enough Bible knowledge.
I’ll have to ask him,
Frederika thought.
I’ll have to make certain Dorotea doesn’t get in trouble with the priest.
Perhaps there were things they could practice at home?

“I’ll come in with you today,” she said to Dorotea. “There is something I need to ask Mr. Lundgren.”

When they knocked, the teacher opened the door.

“We are still not ready, but you can wait inside,” he said.

They took off their woolens and left them in the hallway. Sara, Daniel’s youngest daughter, was sitting beside the verger on the bench by the fire. Her shoulders were bent over the book in her lap, her feet hung straight down but didn’t reach the floor.

Frederika walked to the window. The yard was still. The snow almost reached the roof at the back of the barn where nobody had shoveled. And then she realized: she could see. There was light. Light! Yes, a dawn, though weak. Spring was coming.

She put her hands on the windowsill to press her cheek against the pane and try to see more. As she did so, her fingers touched a jaggedness.

There was a new carving in the wood of the window beside the other letters: S.

Frederika turned to look at Sara. Had she done this? But she was younger than Frederika. She was Dorotea’s age. How had she managed it without Mr. Lundgren seeing? How had she dared? Frederika wanted to giggle.

The others arrived. They shuffled in the hallway to remove their outer garments.

“My father got it for me at the market,” one of the older boys said. He was showing another boy a knife. He put it back in its case.

Sara came to sit at the table. She was pale and red-eyed, her arms like sticks. The verger left the room to go outside.

One of the boys sat next to Dorotea but rose again and walked around to sit at the other side. The boy who’d started to put his books on the table beside him gathered them up and followed him.

The older of the two boys leaned over the table. There were spots on his nose. “Your mother is a heretic,” he said to Dorotea in a low voice.

“Says who?” asked Frederika.

The boy glanced up at her. “Says my father, says my mother, says everyone on the mountain,” he said.

“You’re just a child,” Frederika said. “You have no idea what it is you’re talking about.”

“She’s not allowed to come to church any longer.”

“She’s a sorceress,” the younger boy said. “She brings misery onto us all.”

Frederika didn’t answer.

“Your mother will be punished.”

“Perhaps she’ll have to run the gauntlet. We’ll all hit her. Boom, boom, boom.” The young boy’s cheeks were flushed. He was banging his finger on the table.

“Awwww.” The older boy moaned and held himself as if hurt. He grinned. “Besides, your feet smell,” he said and puckered his nose at Dorotea.

Dorotea looked up at Frederika.

Never before had Frederika felt such anger. White and hot, hatred pulsated in her ears. She squinted toward him.
Burn,
she thought.
Burn.

The boy fell forward onto the kitchen table, hands flat beside his head.

Frederika took a step forward.
Oh God, what have I done?

I killed him,
she thought.
I killed him.

The verger came back in.

The boy sat up. “Aaaaah,” he mocked. “This is what she’ll be like, your mother.”

Frederika’s exhalation was uneven.

The boy stared at her, mouth open, waiting for her reaction. When there was none, he stuck his tongue out.

“Will you be staying with us today, Frederika?” Mr. Lundgren asked and smiled.

“Yes,” Frederika said. “Yes, today, I will.”

She had wanted to wound him, she thought later, after their evening meal. She was spinning wool, the greasy locks in her hands, twirling the fibers into thread with her fingers. No, it was worse than that. For the briefest of instants Frederika had wanted the boy dead.

And after, she’d been so upset, she’d forgotten about asking Mr. Lundgren about Dorotea.

I need to be careful. I need to grow up fast. When the day comes and these powers do what I ask of them, if I’m still unable to control my anger, then what?

The thought made her twirl the wool so hard, the thread became sharp enough to cut her index finger.

Dum. Tataradum.

When,
she had thought.
Not if.

She stopped the spinning wheel with her hand, stuck her finger in her mouth. It tasted salty. Her mother was sitting in front of the fire. She was mending a skirt with needle and thread, humming
a little to herself as she did so. The boy had called her a heretic, Frederika thought. She should tell her mother that people on the mountain were talking about her, but she didn’t want to. Her mother was already going to be punished by the church. Wasn’t that enough?

She put her foot on the treadle and began to move the spinning wheel again.

Maija had to go out on the porch to see it. Faint, but it was there. A dawn. The sun hadn’t yet mounted the horizon, but she sensed it there at the end of the world. Graylight would become longer and longer. Perhaps in a week sunlight would show. How long before nature produced something edible? Too long. But at least this gave hope. It was a while before she noticed him at the edge of the homestead. Fearless seemed to grow out of the earth. When he was certain she’d seen him, he approached. His skis made a hissing sound on the snow. He stopped beneath the porch.

“If you are here about me revealing what we found on Eriksson’s grave, I am sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to get you into trouble with the bishop.”

He said nothing.

“It just slipped out,” she said.

“You said placing the antlers on Eriksson’s grave was like a ritual.”

She shrugged.

“Then you said it was done to frighten and accused Nils.”

“Yes, well, I was wrong.”

“What if it was a ritual?”

Fearless wasn’t looking at her when he said it, but into the air. As if he were thinking out loud.

“You said …” she began.

“Not our rituals,” he said, “nor those of the Swedes or the Finns.”

“The blood was sprinkled as if it might have been meant to resemble a cross.”

“Not the blood,” Fearless said, “the skull.”

“Just tell me.”

“A Lapp from the east said there is this tradition in south Russia. They burn the head of the animal they’ve slaughtered and are about to eat. They put the burned skull by the place of the elder.”

“Respect.”

He gave a nod.

“But who would have wanted to show Eriksson respect? And a Russian?”

Fearless shook his head. He looked into the air again.

“Don’t be fooled,” he said. “Spring is not here yet. It will still get colder.”

Maija too lifted her face toward the east. He was right. The wind held ice.

Frederika was in the barn. She was sitting astraddle the wooden bench, practicing. At first she tried to put a ring of wind around the goats to stop them from moving, but the goats weren’t budging anyway, so she couldn’t tell if it had worked. Then she tried seeing where Fearless was. She closed her eyes and focused hard, saw his face before her, but couldn’t keep his features in her mind. It was almost as if a candle had been blown out. This happened again and again.

When Eriksson showed himself, she wasn’t even surprised.

“Hello,” she said.

He didn’t answer. He was standing up, chin raised, cold eyes not meeting hers.

“I am practicing like you told me to,” she said.

He scoffed.

“What?” she asked.

“You ignored me the other night.”

“There was trouble down in the town,” she said. “I needed some time to think it through. You understand, don’t you?”

He still wasn’t looking at her.

“I am sorry,” she said.

“I came to bring you a gift.”

“I am sorry,” she said again.

He sat down on the bench beside her. He supported himself with his arms on his knees and wasn’t looking at her, but at the goats.

“I still have no idea what I am doing,” she offered.

He hesitated, then nodded, sat up, and searched in his jacket pocket. “Here.” He handed her something wrapped in a scarf.

It was a mirror, small and square with a twisted iron frame. It felt cold in her hand. Frederika turned it over. Its rear was made of black metal.

“Elin’s,” Eriksson said. “She used to be able to talk to what she called her helping spirits through it.”

“Is that how it works?”

“I don’t know. I think there are many ways, but you need to find one that works for you.”

She knew he was right. The peace was temporary. When she thought about her protective circle of wind, she now also saw them: the wolves. Shadows in the storm, heads bent low, progressing slowly but moving forward, on their way, in.

There was a rasping sound outside. Then there was a pause and then the sound of skis being placed to lean against the wall of the barn. Frederika tucked the mirror in her pocket. Another pause and the door opened. It was Antti. He bent his head in a greeting and came in.

Eriksson was gone. Antti took off his mittens and his hat. His black hair fell over his shoulders.

“I’m here with Fearless,” Antti said. “He’s gone to see your mother.”

“Fearless has gone to my mother? But why?”

“I don’t know.”

Frederika felt a sting of jealousy. Fearless had chosen her mother, though Frederika was the one who was trying to walk in his footsteps.

Antti looked around, hesitated, then sat down on the bench where Eriksson had just been sitting.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said without thinking. “Finer,” she corrected herself. “I don’t know,” she concluded.

They sat in silence.

His hand was on the bench beside hers. It was sinewy and broad, still summer brown. There were black hairs on his wrist. Frederika felt an ache in her stomach. Her own hand on the bench looked white and thin in comparison. She wondered what his skin would feel like.

She looked up and found him looking at her.

“I am wondering what your skin feels like,” she said.

He shook his head. “Don’t,” he said.

He stood up and she watched him put on his hat and leave. His movements were different from anyone else’s. She was certain she’d recognize him from any distance. She sat still even after all had long gone silent, and then her eyes became hot, and she rose. She’d felt as if she’d been weighed and found too light. She took out the mirror Eriksson had brought and caught a glance of herself. It was her mother gazing back at her, the same white-blonde hair, the gray eyes. Then she saw the rest of her.