Wolf Winter

by Cecilia Ekbäck

  “I am not certain this is wise.”

  Already her father didn’t like it. To separate: what a stupid idea.

  “It’s the only way,” Maija said.

  “There is still war,” Paavo said.

  “There’s always war,” her mother said. She sounded tired.

  Frederika’s shoes were scuffed and muddy. They looked like they belonged to someone else.

  “Perhaps some of the others are going,” Maija said.

  Her father looked up. Maybe he wouldn’t have to go it alone. Her mother throwing him a tidbit of hope, like you brush crumbs off a table pretending you are leaving a decent meal for the dogs.

  The barn smelled of pelt and sawdust. There was a bucket by the pen. Frederika kicked it, and it hit the wood with a clank.

  She remembered another time, kicking a tree stump, Jutta watching.

  “But she’s horrible,” Frederika had yelled. “She’s so … cold.”

  Jutta sat down on the tree stump. She put her hands on its top beside her thighs, as if to appease what was hurt. The skin on her hands was wrinkled and see-through, the blue veins on her hand large and bubbly.

  “Before your mother came to live with me, she lived with her father inland in a hamlet,” she said.

  Stories. As if all that was ever needed was another story.

  “Outside the hamlet there was Näkki, who pulled you down if you looked too deep; Hiisi, in crevasses and by boulders who attacked you if you came too close; and Ajatar, who made you sick if you ventured too far into the forest.

  “But inside the hamlet was Maija’s father, Ari, and her four older brothers, who took turns to carry her around in a haversack they’d braided out of thin strips of bark.

  “Now you wonder: why were they carrying her? You see, Frederika, your mother was born with thin legs, twisted like ropes, of no use at all.

  “Your mother’s father had a brother who was traveling the seas. Whenever he came to visit, Uncle Erkki brought gifts. Once, there was a roaster grid from Turkey and small black beans in a leather pouch. They roasted the beans, made juice of them, and the hot black liquid banished sleep for several days. Another time there was a piece of cloth from Bengal, with sallow stars so delicate and beautiful, not even night did better. Then it was a yellow root from China. This was an important gift. They boiled the root and mashed it and put it on Maija’s stick legs, and they stared and there was stirring and pricking, but that was all. Maija’s father forced her to eat what was left of the root, and Maija vomited beside the porch.

  “The last time Uncle Erkki visited, he brought a disease from Calcutta.

  “Ten days after Erkki’s departure Maija’s brothers got a rash: small red dots on their foreheads. Maija and her father watched with fascination and then fear as the boys grew thin, as if drained from the inside, and the bumps grew larger, until her brothers’ skin was covered by shining jellyfish. The jellyfish puffed up and puffed up and then they breathed out and deflated into dried sheets of skin. Pale fluid began to seep out. Her father lifted Maija up and shushed her onto the porch.

  “Your mother sat on the porch night and day. At first the villagers came to ask how things were. Then they bent their heads when they passed. Toward the end nobody walked the road by their house at all. Sometimes Maija put her hands on the wooden railing above her and pulled herself up. She looked in through their window, but her father put his hands up: ‘no’—the disease whirling around him like a small storm. Later, jellyfish had her father also.

  “One morning her father came out. His face was covered with so much dried skin it looked like thick bark. Maija saw eyes in there, round, blinking, but her father had turned into a tree. He fell off the porch. And that’s when I came to take your mother with me.”

  Frederika took a step forward, close enough for Jutta to reach her. Her great-grandmother smelled of sweat, of love, perhaps of spring onion.

  “She’s walking now though, my mother,” she said to the wool on the chest.

  Jutta leaned back to look at Frederika. “And you know what? She did that all on her own.

  “One day I found your mother staring at her legs. ‘As far as I can tell, there are two legs,’ she said.

  “Well, undeniably, there were.

  “I would watch through the window as your mother pulled herself up with the help of the porch railing and tried to move those shrimp legs of hers. Your mother would fall over, and I’d leave the windowsill. Then I’d come across her in the barn, kneading her legs like sour dough with her hands, knead and pull and twist.

  “And your mother’s legs grew, thicker and straighter. Toward the end of that summer your mother stood up. Before the snow fell, she walked.

  “I asked her about it once. How she had known? She said that the most frightening part had been believing. Many people would have been happier not trying. Most people never try.”

  Jutta patted the sides of Frederika’s legs with her hands.

  “I don’t know any other way to describe it than to say that your mother healed herself. This is why she sometimes becomes … impatient with other people. She wants them to fight.”

  “Hmm,” Frederika said, still unwilling to let go. “Not everyone is as strong as her.”

  “That’s true. And your mother used to be more tolerant of others, but …”

  Jutta interrupted herself and patted the sides of Frederika’s legs again—this time to tell her to stand up. Frederika rose.

  Jutta bent over the tree stump and stroked its top. Her lips were moving as if she were praying.

  There was a dull clang of bells, dogs barking, voices. Frederika ran out from the barn and across the yard at the same time as her mother opened the cottage door.

  “Winter,” her mother said when Frederika reached her. She was squinting toward the forest. “This is winter coming.”

  Men and women came walking out of the forest. Frederika counted five men, four women, children, and, with them, a herd of reindeer with tall antlers. The dogs yapped. The reindeer slowed and came to a halt. They moved to drink from the stream.

  Two men left the others and mounted the slope toward them. The older had silver hair and a silver beard. His face was wrinkled and darkened by the sun. His coat was of leather patches sewn together with large tendon stitches. The younger was quite young. He couldn’t have been much older than Frederika. His black hair almost reached his waist. He looked at them down a straight nose.

  Lapps.

  “Greetings,” the older one said.

  His voice surprised her. It was soft.

  “So you are here,” Maija said.

  There was this look on her mother’s face. Not fear, nor shock. Happiness, Frederika realized. Her mother was pleased to find the Lapps here in their yard.

  “The dark time is approaching, čakčadálvi is already here.”

  “Ssakca …?” her mother mumbled.

  “Early winter,” he said.

  The Lapps had eight seasons, Frederika thought. Someone had told her. Jutta?

  “I am Maija,” her mother said.

  He bent his head. “I am Fearless,” he said. “This is Antti.”

  They looked each other over.

  “Will you keep a few goats for us for the winter?” Fearless asked. “They don’t fare well at our winter site.”

  Her mother was still silent. She was counting, Frederika thought. Thinking if they had enough fodder.

  “What’s there in return?” Maija asked.

  “A reindeer to slaughter.”

  “When?”

  “Before the snow melts.”

  Her mother nodded. “We’ll take them.”

  Antti turned and ran down the slope. Fearless stood without talking until the younger man came back toward them, leading two black goats by rope. He touched one of the goats’ head as if stroking it, and it seemed to calm.

  “Frederika, take them to the barn,” her mother said.

  Frederika reached out, and Antti unwound
the ropes from his hand. She took them and tried to avoid touching his skin.

  “This year there is more in the air than snow,” Fearless said behind her. “This year better to be careful.”

  “Wolf winter,” Antti said.

  Frederika didn’t meet his gaze.

  “We’ll spend the night by the stream,” Fearless said. “We leave tomorrow.”

  Dorotea was standing so close to the window, she fogged it with her breath. She drew a line in the whiteness with her finger. There was a strange light in the air outside; pink and dark at the same time. The sort of dusk that floated in and out of a house.

  “How long did they say they were staying?” her father asked with a low voice, as if the Lapps might otherwise hear.

  “One night,” her mother said.

  “I am not sure we should have agreed.”

  “I’m not sure we were asked. Besides, all of Lapland—it is their land.”

  Frederika sensed rather than saw her father frown.

  “What is a wolf winter?” Frederika asked.

  “A cold winter,” her mother said.

  It had sounded worse. Like a threat. She was about to ask again, but her mother made a small movement with her head and caught her eye.

  “Henrik said the Lapps pass through here a few days before the first snow,” her father said. “As if they can smell it in the air.” He took a few steps backward. “I’ll have to pack up. Get ready.”

  “Are any of the others going?”

  “None of them.”

  He looked at her mother, wanting. But her mother’s eyes were fixed on the figures in their field.

  The autumn gale threw itself against the wall of the cottage with thuds and muffled screams. A branch spanked at the rear. Frederika lay on her side in her nightgown her mother had dyed red.

  She turned onto her back. The sheet beneath her was damp, the hay in the mattress, lumpy.

  Wolf winter. She tasted the words in her mouth. Wolf. Winter. She bit on a hangnail until it was salty and hurt. She bent her legs to squeeze her warm toes and stretched out again. If a person didn’t have sleep in them, they shouldn’t be made to stay in bed.

  I don’t have to, she realized.

  Her father’s chest rose and sank. Frederika supported herself on her elbow and looked over him. Her mother had turned her back. Frederika sat up. Sat still and waited. Nothing. She pulled her dress off the chair beside her and stuck her head and arms into its openings. She stood up. Held her breath. Tiptoed on naked feet across the floor. One. Two. Three.

  The door to the hallway squeaked. She bent down, found her shoes with her hand, opened the front door, and sneaked out.

  She stood for a while on the porch and waited, but no one came. She sat and put on her shoes. The wind was cool against her bare legs, the hay in the shoes, rough. Around her the sky was a black pink and the crowns of the trees swayed. The air was full of their murmurs.

  Frederika ran across the yard. The wind pulled at her, filled her lungs with new air.

  Behind the tree line she slowed. There was the light from a fire down by the stream, and she made her way toward it in protection of the trees. As she came closer there was a low, rhythmic chant.

  Her great-grandmother had told her about it. How the Lapps’ songs captured the very core of an object—no, more: captured the object itself. But they weren’t allowed to sing them any longer. Devilry, the priests said.

  She crouched and made her way forward on all fours.

  “Stop now,” a man said, and she froze. She recognized the voice of Fearless.

  The chant ceased.

  “Do you remember when you taught it to me?” another man’s voice said after a while. “I was small. It was my first hunt. I was frightened.”

  “Stop now,” Fearless repeated.

  The other man’s voice rose in anger, “We’ve all seen the signs. You could protect us if you wanted it.”

  The voices moved away until she couldn’t make out what they said any longer. She sat still for a long time. The ground was bitter against her legs. She shivered and stood, began to tiptoe back up toward the cottage.

  She glanced to her right. A figure. Motionless. It took a step forward and she almost screamed.

  She swallowed. “I was going to …”

  Antti was silent. She couldn’t see his eyes, only the straight line of his nose.

  “I just wanted to ask …”

  He still didn’t say anything.

  “Wolf winter,” she said, her voice small. “I wanted to ask about it. You know, what it is.”

  He was silent for a long time. “It’s the kind of winter that will remind us we are mortal,” he said. “Mortal and alone.”

  Maija walked toward the lake. She paused to look at an old oak tree with a scarred trunk, broken and hollow. Lightning. The stump was still sprouting the green leaves of summer, as if it didn’t know it no longer had a center; as if it didn’t understand it no longer had a future.

  But the wind pushed at her. It had a cold heart, this wind. Snow was not far away. Maybe that was how the reindeer smelled it. She was pleased the Lapps had chosen to leave the goats with them. When they come to pick up the animals this spring, she thought, I’ll try to get to know them. She thought about snow again. Paavo had to leave before the first snowfall. The land would be difficult to traverse after.

  It would be good if he left, she thought. That was awful. She shouldn’t be thinking like that. But it was hard enough without somebody else spreading fear.

  “Mirkka,” she called and listened, but couldn’t hear the cow’s bell. She wasn’t certain when she had last heard it. It was always there, melded with the bird song, the stir of the grass and the hum of the forest. Surely she would have noticed if it had been long absent?

  The wind whipped up froth on the lake’s dark surface. The sky above was bruised. Further away smoke pushed out of the vent of Gustav’s cottage and was forced back down again toward its spine by the gusts. But the cow was nowhere. She called anyway.

  “Mirkka!”

  She turned and walked back into the forest. She stopped by a stream and squatted to drink. The water was so cold it had no taste. She had already been up on the mountain, in the glade, and by the pass. The one place left to look was the marsh. Or the valley. But she wouldn’t have gone as far as the valley; cows stayed close to relief. Unless somebody else had milked her. It wasn’t unheard of—people who stole from each other by milking each other’s cattle. But the time milk would be needed was this winter, and by then the cow would be tucked in, in her pen.

  The birds were gone from the marsh. They had left its surface a sullen black.

  “Mirkka!”

  This time there was a cry. Not Mirkka, but it was animal.

  Maija began to run. She stepped sideways, head tilted, listening, calling the cow’s name.

  Again. That horrid sound. Not crying—screaming. Animal screaming. Maija had to make a large loop around thick reeds.

  The cow was lying dead on the ground. And this—this was wolf. Wolf at its worst. They had come from behind. Mirkka’s head and chest were whole, but her flank had bite marks, and her anus was torn wide open. The bowels had been pulled out through the rift and eaten—probably while Mirkka was still alive.

  Maija put both her hands before her mouth.

  And then Mirkka lifted her head.

  Oh no.

  She didn’t have anything with which to kill her. There were no stones anywhere nearby. Maija ran to one of the trees, kicked at one of its branches. But the tree held onto its limbs.

  She ran back to the cow and fell to the ground to cradle the large head in her arms, rock it back and forth. She cried into her muzzle, and the cow’s uneven breaths were hot against her ear.

  Maija got to her feet again. She ran all along the marsh, tried to find something, anything, but in vain.

  When she came back, the cow was dead.

  At the homestead she saw the blood on her arms a
nd the filth on her skirt. She limped to the barn. She must have hurt her foot trying to break the branch. In the empty pen she took the cow’s water, found a rag, wet it, and rubbed it against her skirt. The rag tore, and her knuckles scraped against the wood of the pen. She watched as tiny red and blue streaks appeared on her knuckles. She put them to her mouth and sat down, forehead against her knees. She smelled of sweat. Of urine. Her ankle was pulsating. What now? Without barley? Without milk?

  They would have to go with Paavo to the coast. Maybe someone would take pity on them and help them with lodging until they earned some money.

  There was a twinkling in the corner of her eye, and she lifted her head. It came from one of the Lapp-goats.

  She limped toward the goat, grabbed it by its pelt. Around its neck on an animal tendon, pieces of blue glass chimed empty tunes.

  Paavo was wearing his black wool hat with the floppy rim. His rucksack sagged on the floor. Maija went to wash her hands.

  “I can’t find anything,” he said and laughed out loud. It was so long since she’d heard it, she’d almost forgotten the sound. “My winter hat. My mittens. I need your help to pack.”

  The water dripping into the bucket was pink. She dried her hands.

  “Paavo,” she said.

  He reached out and grabbed her hand. “I need this,” he said. “You’re right. The past is the past. We said we would leave it behind us. All this fear … I have begun to feel as if I am no longer a man.”

  He squeezed her fingers until they began to hurt.

  And then, before her, stood a long-haired, spirited boy; a boy who had used to pull her braids, and she couldn’t tell him about Mirkka or about the piece of glass, but set him free.

  She watched as he crossed the yard. Waved and smiled and wished him safe journey. When she let go of the porch railing, her hand ached and she didn’t know whether it was because of his grip or because of hers.

  That same night it began to snow.

  At first there are only single flakes falling from a solid sky onto Blackåsen—one, then a couple more. The mountain parries them. As if considering not allowing things to proceed. With spruce and pine, it blocks the snowflakes from reaching the ground. By the river it swallows them with water. Over the lake they are so moist, they seem like sheer mist.