Wolf Winter

by Cecilia Ekbäck

  Nils was waiting for her in the yard.

  “Good morning, Maija,” he said.

  “Good morning,” she said, and God damn her, it was still all she could do not to curtsy.

  He was wearing a long-haired fur coat. He looked comfortable, warm, and round. Her own hands beneath her jumper were scaly and red. Fisted.

  “It got Elin,” Nils said.

  “What?” She didn’t follow.

  “The mountain.”

  “That’s absurd. She killed herself.”

  “Call it whatever you like, but this mountain is getting to us, one by one. It injures us in one way or another. And when we’re weak, it takes us.”

  “She had just lost a husband. She couldn’t see a way. Stronger people than Elin have chosen that path.”

  Nils shook his head. “You remember we spoke of creating a village. If we come together, we’d have each other for help. We have to quell this.”

  “But quell what?”

  “I am calling the settlers to a meeting the day after tomorrow, midafternoon at my house. I heard Paavo did go to the coast, so I am inviting you to come.”

  She wasn’t going to have anything more to do with the quest for Eriksson’s killer, but, as if by themselves, her fingers searched for her pocket, slid in, and squeezed the glass fragment she kept there. The thought fluttered through her head that she had kept it with her, and so she had never thought of giving up, really. She took the blue glass piece out of her pocket.

  Nils looked at the fragment.

  “The Lapps say this is yours,” she said.

  “The Lapps.” He paused. “Well, then I guess it is.” He took off his mittens and stretched out his hand.

  She held back. “I found this where Eriksson was killed,” she said and looked him straight in the eye. “Up by the glade.”

  Nils gave a short laugh and shrugged. “There is a place up there that we call the King’s Throne. Have you heard about it? It has a lovely view. Everyone knows I sit there all the time. I must have dropped it.” He put his mittens back on. “I’ll see you at the meeting.”

  Before leaving he gestured toward their house. “If you shovel the snow against the walls of the house, it acts as insulation.”

  Maija remembered Daniel. That’s what he’d been doing when they visited together with the priest. She sighed.

  She’d add it to the list of things she hadn’t known.

  The valley was much colder than the mountain. As if the cold had run off the slopes and settled into a pool of winter at the bottom. Just like the first time she went to Daniel’s homestead, it was the dog who found Maija. This time with less bravado. It ran up to her side, barked twice, and then escorted her. The dog ran with its ears pointing forward. Maybe one could get used to you, she thought, and it looked up to her as if to say, You think?

  Daniel and Anna were inside, and as Maija opened the door, the dog ran straight past her and lay down by the fire. Daniel stopped carving, followed the dog with his eyes, and glowered.

  “May I come in?” Maija asked.

  Daniel returned to focus on the piece of wood and the knife in his hand. His back was stiff. She wanted to tell him she was not here to ask about Elin.

  “I wanted to see how you were,” Maija said to Anna.

  Anna shrugged. She was pale and had black shadows underneath her eyes. Her body still had the roundedness. Maija knew what it felt like carrying around bulk like that, feeling it whenever you took a step or moved your arm; a constant reminder of what had come to nothing.

  “Do you want me to see how you really are?” she asked.

  There was an awkward pause.

  Daniel rose. He turned in the doorway to tap his hand to his thigh, and the dog followed him out.

  Maija pointed to the bed, and Anna sat down on its edge, pulled off her shoes and trousers, and lay down. Maija poured some water into a bowl. She washed her hands and then rubbed them against one another to warm them.

  “A clean cloth?” she asked.

  Anna pointed to a wooden chest. Maija opened it and found what she needed. She pulled Anna’s shirt up over her stomach. The woman was still swollen. But at least she was not torn.

  “Winter is cold here,” Maija said as she let her hands do her work.

  “It is colder than usual.” Anna stared at the roof. “I’ve never known it to be this cold before the New Year.”

  “Did you get everything out?” Maija asked.

  Anna nodded. One sole tear ran down her cheek, but she didn’t say anything.

  After that they were silent. Maija pulled Anna’s shirt down to cover her and went to wash her hands. When she turned back, Anna had dressed.

  “Thank you,” Anna said.

  Maija shook her head, there was no need.

  “No,” Anna said. “Thank you for caring.”

  “As far as I can tell, there is no damage,” Maija said. “No physical damage.”

  “It wasn’t painful. It was as if the child had no hold in me.”

  “Sometimes that happens. I wish we knew why.”

  “No point thinking about it, I guess.” Anna walked to the kitchen table and sat down.

  “Don’t do too much,” Maija said. “Try to rest when you can.”

  “I was going to go to Nils’s meeting tomorrow.”

  Maija shrugged. “If you feel ready for the walk …”

  With her fingers, Anna combed the fringe of the tablecloth.

  “Did he come to see you too?” she asked.

  Maija nodded. She sat down opposite Anna.

  “Eriksson, Elin, and our baby boy too …” Anna’s voice broke. She sniffed and rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Nils might be right. Perhaps it is the mountain.”

  “They are separate occurrences, Anna. Not one whole.”

  “But there are too many of them.”

  Maija hesitated. Anna had just lost a child.

  “What was Eriksson like?” she asked instead.

  Anna’s fingers had returned to playing with the border of the tablecloth. She sighed and held Maija’s gaze as she gave in. “He used to come here, from time to time. He’d stay for a few minutes. He’d talk, and I’d go about my usual chores.”

  “Why?”

  “His way of making right, perhaps. I think he wanted to convince me that he was not at fault for the rift with his brother. For some reason I think it mattered to him.”

  Anna’s brown hair hung long and loose. Her sea-colored eyes seemed larger. It was strange to discover that what you’d thought of as roughness in a person was resilience. What you thought was hostility was caution.

  “Eriksson,” she said, “he wasn’t all bad. The way he thought, the stories he told—he was amusing.”

  “I am assuming he and Nils didn’t get on together.”

  “Both of them were used to commanding. But Nils was the nobleman. He was in charge.”

  “Eriksson must have been upset.”

  Anna smiled. “Not so. I think he waited for his time to come.”

  Maija shook her head.

  “Eriksson knew everything about each and every one of us. Made it his business to find out. Used it against people to get his way.”

  “All of you come here fleeing something or someone,” the priest had said. But it wasn’t easy, though, to uncover things people had decided to hide.

  “How?” Maija asked.

  “He traveled to the coast trade with birkkarlarna, the merchants, even off-season. Perhaps he was told gossip. Though mostly I think he was just very sharp-eyed. It was as if he smelled weakness in another person. He guessed and kept prodding. The last time I saw Eriksson he’d just come back from another journey to the coast. He was smug, said he had found out a secret. Something big about someone big, he said. I assumed it had to do with Nils.”

  “You have no idea what it was?”

  Anna shook her head.

  “Why on earth did Elin stay with him?”

  “I am not s
o surprised that she did.” Anna hesitated. “Eriksson … nobody else was like him. And then there was something skewed about their relationship. Whenever you saw them together, he acted as if she didn’t exist. And she acted as if indeed she didn’t exist.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Anna shook her head. “I am not certain I know myself. You know how some people have so many bad experiences that in the end that is the only thing they understand? I always assumed that there was something like that in Elin’s past and that that was why she stayed with him. She saw nobody but him. The nastier he was to her, the more she tried to please him. Yes,” Anna continued, “Eriksson could be amusing. But then there was the other side to him—cruel. It was silly, but sometimes I thought to myself that the mountain lived in him. Or maybe through him.”

  They sat silent for a while.

  “If that something killed him, then we’ll need the village,” Anna said.

  Maija wanted to tell her that this particular kind of fear didn’t die when people came together. It magnified, inflated. It took over and demanded sacrifice. It had in Ostrobothnia.

  She got to her feet. “It wasn’t something that killed Eriksson,” she said. “It was someone.”

  One single slash, she thought as she walked home. Deep, without hesitation. Someone who killed like that, it was either because of lack of emotion or too much of it.

  Did Nils own a rapier? Of course he did. He would have been raised with one in his hand. But that didn’t mean a thing. The wars had been so many and for such a long time. Most men had been in the army and owned the same sort of weapon. Many had deserted. Paavo had, without ever seeing the battlefront. He and the other villagers had left in the morning and been back two days later. She ought to have been happy, but she had also felt something else. Disappointment, perhaps. Though with whom or with what, she wasn’t certain. The rapier he’d brought home with him she’d used to keep the barn door shut when the latch had broken.

  Perhaps I just don’t like the nobles, she thought. Although a big secret about someone big—could have been about Nils.

  Their homestead was in between the trees, but she continued past it. There were two traps by the edge of the marsh. Please, she thought, and then scolded herself. You always do this: pray for good turns, when nothing is ever given. Hope so much, your chest feels in a knot. And then you tell Frederika to hold to reason when you’re no better yourself.

  The south side of the mountain had been wind-free. The surface of the snow was flat and undisturbed. The snow itself was like layer upon layer of dust. As she walked she sank down. She lifted her knees high for each step and breathed hard before she found a rhythm.

  By the marsh she had to search for a while. With new snow the land was different, or rather, it all looked the same. She found the first trap and sighed when it was empty. The second held a bird. It was tiny, and the little body was frozen white. She brushed the snow off it and held it up close to her face. “Well, you’re not anything to shout about,” she told it. In normal circumstances she would have left a prey this small for wild animals, but not this time. Soup. At least it would give the taste of meat. She turned and began her walk home.

  Her legs ached. When she reached the base of the mountain, she continued walking further down rather than cutting across. It would make the journey longer but much easier if she found her previous tracks and followed them home.

  It took a while, but lower, between the pine trees, were her own footsteps. Potholes at regular intervals in the blue snow. She stopped.

  Other tracks. Within hers.

  She walked closer and bent down to look.

  Wolf.

  Still crouching, she scanned the forest.

  The prints showed they were several, three or four. Adults. They had been following her tracks for as far back as she saw. Hunting. No. Wolf did not hunt people.

  She rose and began to walk. Fast now. Fixating on her old footsteps. She glanced over her shoulder. Nothing. Not yet. Not far home now. The snow was less deep here. Her throat stung from the cold air. She slowed down her breathing and thought of the Lapp reindeer.

  God. Mustn’t think about that. No. Eriksson. Nils. She forced herself to be angry. Things must be dealt with, she argued, and let the anger drive her on, push her forward. We must find out and not let fear take over. Their cottage became visible between the trees.

  An unhurried howl, and her heart was all the way up in her throat.

  Gray-legs to her right. One was still, looking straight at her. Yellow eyes. Its pelt erect. The other three were tramping behind it, held back by the immobility of the leader.

  Mustn’t run. Wolf didn’t attack people. Oh God.

  She turned and began to walk backward. Sing, she thought to herself. Sing.

  Couldn’t remember a thing.

  “EEn iungfru födde itt barn jdagh.” Her voice broke. She swallowed with a gasp. She swallowed again. And once more. Each time it sounded as if she was gulping for air. Mustn’t panic. Not now.

  “thet skole wij prijsa och ära.”

  Careful. Foot by foot.

  “j thet haffuer gud itt gott begagh.”

  She stumbled. Almost fell. It was the thick branch Frederika had told her to leave. She bent down, felt it solid in her hand, everything else weak and unsteady. She rose. The lead wolf curled its lips. White fangs, pink gums.

  She continued walking backward, the stick raised high.

  “han biudher oss höra hans lära.”

  They went for her when she reached the porch. Came running. She swung with the piece of wood and hit the first one across its head. It fell onto its side. Then she dropped the branch. Two steps. Door.

  A clapping by her back. Teeth closing on teeth.

  She screamed. Slammed the door. A thick body hit it so hard that the door felt alive under her hands.

  Cold had arrived in town, the wind adding to the chill. The priest wondered what the weather meant for Blackåsen. A light blizzard in town might mean severe weather up-mountain. The clean line of the church wall was broken by black dots. Visiting settlers. Or beggars. November, and already people were without food. He’d remind the verger about locks for the buildings.

  He walked toward the church and avoided meeting the gazes, pushed his hands into his pockets, lengthened his steps.

  In his room he sat down by his desk without lighting the fire. It was so cold it was like being outside. He rose, took his mantle, and put it over his shoulders. “Make new friends,” Sofia had said. It seemed so easy. It was easy. All his life he’d desired a position like the court priest’s. That hadn’t changed. It was just that he had thought their friendship, his and the King’s, was real.

  He realized he was resigned to the thought that even if the King hadn’t commanded his removal, he had agreed to it. He would have had to. The King was everywhere; he knew everything. For the priest to rise again, he would have to scheme; go behind the bishop’s back, and win the King’s heart once more. Somehow he was certain he could do it. But it felt hollow. For him their friendship could never be a personal one again. The priest would always have to remain clear-headed, detached. He’d have to be false. He’d been false before, but that had been different. He hadn’t felt dishonest with the ones he loved.

  He thought of Sofia—her blue eyes, the little nose, the dimples by her mouth, skin that looked soft as velvet. He’d have to marry her. He should marry her. She had everything a man could wish for. In his world so much was about the woman. Why was he so reluctant?

  It was too cold. He walked to the fireplace, bent down, and began building a fire. Before his inner eye he saw Maija: the precision with which she placed strips of bark, the way she sat back on her heels to judge which flame was strong enough to take more wood.

  The verger was in the hall arranging the psalm books, bareheaded and mittenless.

  “When are you leaving for Blackåsen?” the priest asked, his breath a white cloud.

  “Tomorrow at daybre
ak,” he said, pastel fingers trawling the soft backs of the books. “We will have classes Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I will be back here before Mass on Sunday.”

  The priest hesitated. “Johan, you went with the priest to last year’s Catechetical hearings …”

  “Yes.”

  “Did something happen? Something unusual?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “Did the priest seem upset or agitated?”

  The verger shook his head.

  “Was there anything that upset you?”

  “Me? Like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Anything.”

  “No.”

  Typical.

  “There was a case in the books many years ago. It was written down as K against the church.”

  “Most cases are trivial. Bickering, insults …”

  “Apart from that of Elin,” the priest said.

  “Yes, apart from that of Elin.” The verger nodded.

  “And this one was against ‘the church.’”

  “Was it? That does sound strange.”

  The priest frowned to show the verger he was not impressed. As verger, he ought to keep himself better informed about the church’s affairs than this.

  “I am coming with you tomorrow,” he said. “There are some people I need to see.”

  Maija and Jutta walked to Nils’s homestead, the past between them like a cloud.

  “I am telling you to be careful,” Jutta said. “People don’t like other people trying to tell them truths.”

  Maija didn’t answer. She kept listening for the pack of wolves, but the forest was quiet.

  “You can’t undo bygones. My bygones.”

  “I can prevent them from happening again.”

  Jutta made a clicking noise with her tongue. She didn’t think so.

  “I am not scared.”

  “There are times when it is wise to be scared.”

  Maija scoffed. She remembered Jutta—when it was clear to both of them she was dying—refusing to undress in the evening, as if that would stop night from coming. “Hold my hand,” she’d said. “Hold Frederika’s,” is what Maija had wanted to answer, but it had to be her and so she had held it, felt skin against skin, disgust for her grandmother’s weakness and then guilt for the disgust. She had wanted Jutta to be strong enough to fend off any fear of dying. She had also known that Jutta’s “bygones” were what made it so difficult for her to leave. I’ll never be like you, she thought. Never.