Christmas at Frozen Falls

by Kiley Dunbar

  ‘I think I get it,’ I say, but admit to myself I haven’t managed to conquer my curiosity over Stellan’s nakedness. Suddenly my memory replays the way he brushed his lips over mine yesterday with the tentative, respectful caution he always showed when we were younger, and I feel my top lip tingle at the recollection, like the barely perceptible chime of a tuning fork, still resonating into silence.

  ‘Sylvie? Are you all right, do you need some air?’

  ‘Sorry? I was miles away. I was thinking about, umm…’

  ‘I know. Me too.’

  As he says this, his voice low, I catch the wicked hitch at the corner of his mouth and a bright flash in his eyes, and I get a glimpse of the other side of the Stellan I knew when I was nineteen, the Stellan who would undress me deliberately slowly, who would kiss my entire body until I was breathless and wild, the one who’d…

  ‘Sylvie, are you here?’

  I focus on him once more and see him draw his bottom lip between his teeth as his eyes rest on my mouth. I find myself wanting to shift closer to him on the slatted bench, so I do, and I watch as Stellan reacts, reaching for my hand.

  The feeling of our slippery wet fingers slowly interlacing has me exhaling a measured breath. Suddenly, and without thinking, I lift myself from the bench onto Stellan’s lap, straddling his thighs, and his hands immediately spread over the small of my back, pulling me closer to him. We’re face to face in the dry air and the low light when I kiss him, hard and long, and it’s perfect.

  But after a few blissful moments where our breathing accelerates and Stellan’s hands find my face and my neck, I realise I’m seeing stars. I can hardly breathe.

  He pulls his mouth from mine, and I try to focus on his face. ‘We should stop,’ he says. His lips are swollen and red. ‘Somebody’s going to pass out unless we cool down, and it might be me.’ He rakes a hand through his wet hair and laughs.

  I have to admit he’s right and I slip back onto the bench beside him as he reaches for the bucket of water on the floor and pours it out onto the hot stones, staunching their heat instantly. The steam billows up in a white cloud then stops with a dying hiss.

  ‘You said you hadn’t even scratched the surface of Lapland?’ Stellan’s reaching for my hand again, and his eyebrows are quirked wickedly.

  ‘Uh-huh?’ I say, wondering where he’s going with this.

  ‘How about we take the ultimate next step in the sauna experience?’

  Oh my days! What is he going to do?

  ‘Come with me?’ He’s leading me to the door and I’m going to follow him no matter what. But instead of turning for the house, he’s leading me onto the jetty. That’s when I notice it: a pool cut out of the ice at the jetty’s end. ‘It’s traditional to plunge into the water after a sauna.’

  ‘I’m sure it is Stellan, but that’s also completely insane.’ My toes curl at the thought of it. ‘I was born in Castlewych, you know. We’re not rugged like you Scandinavians.’

  ‘You’re a Magnusson, aren’t you? How about you take one for your ancestors?’ He’s grinning provocatively.

  ‘You got me, dammit! Well, if we’re really doing this, you’d better make it quick, before I change my mind.’

  ‘Sweet!’

  He takes me at my word and leads me through the dark and biting cold. My skin prickles and all the heat of the sauna leaves my body. He picks up his pace, starting to run. There are lights underneath the jetty illuminating the lakeside, and I see the large black mouth of the diving hole getting bigger. As we reach it I slam on the brakes and Stellan lets go of my hand, grabs the towel from his waist and throws it to the ground. I watch him launch himself into the air before plunging under the frigid water. There’s barely a splash.

  I stand horrified at the end of the little pier and look for him resurfacing from the black rippling ink, hugging myself against the cold and stamping my bare feet, wide-eyed and panting. I swear my heart’s about to stop and I try to call his name, but can’t.

  Suddenly, the surface breaks and Stellan appears with a deep gasp. And in an instant he’s back on the jetty.

  ‘Your turn,’ he rasps. He’s shivering uncontrollably. ‘Nobody enjoys the dive. It’s the feeling you get afterwards that counts.’

  I give myself a millisecond to weigh up my situation. I either jump in now or I stand here feeling like a spoilsport and a coward faced with a freezing, naked Stellan, and so I sit on the side of the jetty and lower the towel from around me, never more aware that I’m being watched, and I drop my body in, trying to keep my head above the water.

  The cold takes my breath. I gasp and flounder my arms in the black slushy water. No air reaches my lungs. I can’t move. I can’t think. But strong hands drag me out of the water and back onto the jetty before I sink deeper.

  ‘You did it!’ Stellan shouts, gleefully. ‘Now let’s go before I lose my kivekset to frostbite.’

  I feel the cleanest air in the world enter my lungs again, and my skin tingles with pins and needles as my circulation restarts. I’m not one hundred per cent sure what kivekset might be but from the way Stellan is breaking into a hunched run and protecting a very delicate part of himself with his hands, I can hazard a guess.

  I realise I’m running full pelt beside Stellan, and I’m screaming like a siren from the lake.

  ‘It’s exhilarating, right? Some feelings are worth the agony,’ Stellan’s shouting, and we’re both laughing hysterically, blood fizzing and nerves buzzing, gasping for each breath.

  As we run, I stoop for a handful of snow and throw it at Stellan’s broad back. The holler he makes leaves me howling, and I’m rewarded with a pelted snowball which breaks up in the air between us and falls in a sparkling shower of finest powder on my skin.

  We reach the lake house door and he hauls it open, its wonderful warmth enveloping us. The house is in darkness, but we don’t stop running all the way up the winding stairs and into a dim room, snug and warm. In the half-light I see him reach for a thick robe from behind the door which he drapes over my shoulders, running his hands over the material across my back, pulling me close to him. The warmth of his skin pressing hard against mine through the open robe is dizzying.

  I feel the sinking softness of the bed as we hit it and, diving under the covers, we roll into each other’s arms, ravenously kissing until the cold is gone.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ I hear him say, and, frankly, I want to scream because waiting is the last thing I want to do. I watch him kneel up over me, looking down at me on the bed. ‘Are we doing this?’

  I know what he’s doing, making sure this is what I want. ‘Yes, of course,’ I say.

  ‘Well, then,’ he grins, ‘let’s do this right.’

  For the first time I become aware of the high glass ceiling above us. There are stars framing Stellan’s blond hair in a silver halo, and for a moment we just look at each other as he pulls me up to kneel in front of him, face to face.

  Everything slows.

  Stellan’s fingertips slide between my neck and my hair and he lifts away the strands, exposing my skin. There’s a green-blue light glimmering on his shoulders and I let my hands swim through it and over his body.

  For a moment his eyes rest on mine then move down to the spot just below my ear that I know he’s going to kiss first. It’s so torturously slow in coming that I close my eyes and lean my head back into the cradle of his hands at my nape.

  I say a little prayer to all the ancient Scandinavian gods. Please let it be like it used to.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  After watching the flames dancing in the hearth and finishing their cloudberry cocktails, they dined on honeyed porridge by the fireside. Niilo watched in delight as Nari found the hidden almond in her creamy, steaming bowlful – the almond that meant she’d be bestowed with good fortune all year long, and she’d dug in her pocket to show Niilo the silver sixpence Sylvie had given her in the taxi as they left the airport.

  ‘So you’re going to get very lucky this
Christmas, then?’ Niilo said with a smile and a meaningful look passed between them.

  Trying not to betray the thrill Nari’s glance sent down his spine, Niilo quickly cleared the bowls. ‘Should we, um, go for a walk, do some aurora chasing?’

  Within moments they had clambered back into their snowsuits, and Niilo was rummaging in the cupboard below the cabinet of family treasures.

  Nari cocked her head, watching him select a glass jar and a small candle. ‘What do you need that for?’

  ‘I light a candle for my parents at Christmas. I already visited their graves yesterday morning, but I need to place it in the snow. Is that OK? It’s not weird, is it?’

  ‘Not at all. Can I have one too, please?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘For Dad,’ Nari adds in a quieter voice, watching as Niilo finds another set.

  ‘Let’s light them now.’

  Nari watches as he brings the two candles to life, silenced by the way the light loved the angles of his face and his rounding lips as he blew out the match.

  Instinctively, they reach for each other’s hands and don’t let go on their slow stroll into the forest, their candles lighting their path.

  ‘It doesn’t seem quite so dark tonight,’ Nari said, looking skyward as they enter the treeline.

  ‘That’s the beginnings of the aurora. The sky seems lighter at first and suddenly you’ll see a flash of green. Give it about an hour and we’ll have a decent display, I expect.’

  Leaving the cottage’s lights behind, they make their way deeper into the forest, crunching through snow and snapping twigs and branches deep underfoot.

  ‘In the early autumn my grandmothers would come out here foraging for berries. I remember they’d be gone all day, only coming back late at night with baskets full of bilberries, raspberries, lingonberries, mushrooms, anything you could wish for. And then they’d cook, and preserve things, and dry the mushrooms for the winter. I can still remember the smell of the sugar and the fruit in the big pan. Lingonberry jelly was my favourite as a kid.’

  ‘I’d love to see this place in the warm days. It must be transformed,’ Nari said.

  ‘It is. Everything is green by June, and the white nights in the summer when the sun doesn’t set, those are wonderful. Stellan and I fish on the lake and we hold midnight barbecues for the staff sometimes. Those are good times.’

  ‘Maybe I could come back to see that?’

  ‘Come back any time.’

  A sudden gust of wind sweeps through the trees sending powdery snow from the overladen branches flurrying into the air. Nari stops dead and they drop hands to protect their candles, now guttering in the falling flakes.

  Just as Nari is grinning at Niilo’s face, recovering from the sudden icy blast, a sharp screech rings out, and a swift shadow moves somewhere up above them.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ said Nari with unexaggerated panic.

  Niilo laughs. ‘Only an eagle, I imagine.’

  ‘An eagle? Golden eagles? They can snatch human babies from prams, can’t they?’

  ‘Or it might have been a wolverine.’

  ‘Up a tree?’

  His delighted laughter helps quell her fear. Niilo seems to be enjoying teaching his guest about his homeland and, more than that, he’s enjoying the way she has grabbed his arm and is still applying the lightest pressure to his bicep through the thick layers. ‘Possibly, they’re like little bears really.’

  ‘They’re not wolves, then?’

  ‘Nothing like a wolf, more like a big weasel.’

  ‘Are you pulling my leg?’

  ‘You said you would believe anything I told you,’ he replied with an arched brow and a smile. ‘It’s all true.’

  The forest has grown thick and black and they find they’ve come to a natural stopping point on their walk.

  ‘Here?’ asks Nari.

  Niilo nods, and the pair crouch, placing the candles in the thin snow at the foot of a towering birch. Standing again, looking at the glow from the jars, they find each other’s hands once more, and observe a reverent silence.

  ‘Do you pray? Nari whispers after a peaceful moment.

  ‘No, do you?’

  ‘No, but Dad would have done. Scottish Catholic. He was a chorister in Glasgow as a boy, before his itchy feet carried him off around the world. He was a wanderer like me, and he met my mum while he was working in Seoul.’

  ‘I’d love to see Scotland… and Seoul, come to think of it.’

  ‘You see! You do have the wanderlust in you.’

  Niilo reaches into his snowsuit pocket and pulls out two torches, handing one to Nari. As their lights cut through the darkness, eerily illuminating the white tree trunks and their footprints leading their way back to Niilo’s family home, a piercing howl rings out in the night. Saying nothing, Nari yanks at Niilo’s arm, gaping in wide-eyed horror.

  ‘It’s OK, it might just be a lynx,’ Niilo shrugs, nonchalantly, before adding in a wicked whisper, ‘or a hungry bear.’

  ‘That’s it, I’m done, let’s go. One of the best things about travelling solo is that nobody gets to see me doing this face.’ She turns to him, making him laugh joyously at her comically bared teeth and horror-struck expression. ‘My Instagram feed shows me smiling, happy, confident, but never the moments when I’m behind a hotel room door terrified someone’s trying to get in, or when I’ve got my keys between my fingers walking back to my villa at night.’

  ‘A very different kind of wildlife you’re describing there?’

  ‘Hmm, yes. Give me bears and wolverines in a dark forest any day.’

  ‘But you still travel. You’re not that afraid.’

  ‘I am! I’m scared all the time, but I’m not letting them win. You can’t shut me out from half the world.’

  ‘Won’t you travel with someone, one day?’

  ‘I never wanted to, before.’

  As Nari speaks, her voice low and contemplative, they emerge from the trees into the clearing where the little cottage stands. Above it, like a hologram projected onto the firmament, flash the rippling lights of the aurora, bold and breathtaking.

  Nari gasps, while Niilo grins up at them, nodding proudly, the corners of his mouth curling, as though he were thinking the phenomenon was right on time, just as he had planned.

  ‘Guovssahasat,’ he whispers.

  Nari peels her eyes from the miraculous wonders above to look at him inquisitively, striking Niilo almost breathless by the changing colours reflected in her irises.

  ‘A Sámi word for the Northern lights,’ he manages to explain, all the while gazing, awestruck at her face.

  Overwhelmed by the need in his eyes, Nari makes the small step towards him and their lips meet in a kiss that Niilo feels all the way down.

  If he could have thought clearly, he’d have joined up the fragmented ideas scattering in his brain. Yes, she was kissing him hungrily, passionately, but it didn’t feel like the others; the girlfriends of his youth, or those few visitors to the resort he’d let himself kiss. As he enfolded Nari in his arms, he recognised a different kind of intensity, a deep, overwhelming connectedness. She was taking his hand now, and they break into a run for the cottage door.

  Inside, they fumble with snowsuit zips and peel off layers, and they laugh, throwing off their boots.

  He had been right all along. Nari was exactly the person he’d been waiting for. But none of these thoughts materialise clearly in his mind, only a feeling of light-headedness washing over him again and his muscles melting at her touch as their bodies meet for the first time. Niilo inhales sharply through gritted teeth at the sensation of her skin touching his and her long hair against his chest.

  Nari pulls back, looking at him levelly. ‘Where do you sleep?’

  Wordlessly, Niilo looks to the low door leading from the kitchen. He grasps her hand and walks her from the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  When I wake, the room at the top of Stellan’s lake house is
warm and silent. It takes a few moments of blinking into the darkness to work out that I’m not imagining the rippling green fluorescence above me. Through the glass I see it; the aurora borealis, lighting the sky, shimmering and changing, disappearing suddenly then recovering itself in a flash of brilliant colour. How long has it been shining above me? I try to remember if it had been there all along, the whole time Stellan and I have been wrapped up in each other in bed, too focussed on each other to notice the magic in the sky. I look around, amazed, wanting to tell Stellan, but he isn’t here.

  A fluttering panic fills my chest, and I scrabble around looking for clothes that, it suddenly hits me, are still at the sauna. So I haul a sheet off the bed, wrap it around me and go in search of Stellan.

  He can’t have left me here, can he? No. He’d never do that. But if he’s sitting by the front door, full of regret and ready to take me back to the resort as soon as morning comes… No. Not after last night. It was perfect.

  Perfect doesn’t even do it justice, Stellan and me. It was as sublime and ecstatic and magical as the first sip of Friday night prosecco after the longest week; like fresh bedclothes on a Sunday afternoon; like Johnny Marr expertly slipping between chords; like the scratch card that reveals a million; like the unexpected concert hall encore when you think the band has left the building; like Idina Menzel’s highest note on her very best day.

  Long story short: It. Was. So. Good.

  I float downstairs and I see him, his back to me, in a white robe, busy working in the gleaming, elegant open-plan kitchen by the immaculate white lounge where there’s a crackling log fire. He’s lit candles all around and the whole impression is blissful, and I can smell sweet foody scents in the air.

  ‘Is it still Christmas Day?’ I say, as I approach him, pressing a kiss between his shoulder blades and letting my hands explore his chest.