Wolf Winter

by Cecilia Ekbäck

  They stopped, shoulder by shoulder. There had been a strong wind, and it had blown a large part of the ice bare. The ice would still swell and break. By the end of the winter it would be streaked white, scarred by aging. But for now, although it was young, it was already a thick black.

  “Frederika is growing up,” Jutta said.

  Yes, she was. There was a new thoughtfulness to her daughter. A tiny pause before each act. The image that came to Maija was how in late summer the sides of trees were sometimes coated by a mass of gore and marrow. Blood stopped flowing through the reindeer antlers as they hardened to bone, and the animals rubbed against the trees to remove the beautiful velvety skin. Growth so often came like that—through pain.

  “She’s becoming like you,” Maija said. “Though God knows, I’ve fought it.”

  “No,” Jutta said. “Frederika is nothing like me.” Maija turned to her grandmother, but Jutta was still looking out over the ice.

  The settlers gathered in Nils and Kristina’s house, arriving alone or two by two. Some of the older children were there. They scuffled to squeeze in. There was a fire in the fireplace and a bearskin draped over a chair in front of it. A large carpet hung on the wall toward the back. Patterns shimmered in the blonde of the sun or the way churned milk gleamed before it turned to butter. Colors Maija had only ever seen in nature. The material too was different. It looked smooth, like water. It was the kind your hand flew up to touch. This might be silk. Maija lingered by it. But normal things took over. Soon the room smelled of wet dog and sour wool. The light from the window fell in and painted a feeble cross over them. Then the window panes fogged up, and they were on their own, hidden from the world.

  Nils stepped up onto a chair. He was in his shirtsleeves. Kristina was standing behind him.

  “I’ve called this meeting to discuss forming a village,” he said. “Eriksson has died, his wife also, the harvest has yet again come to nothing, and now some among us have seen … things in the forest. The mountain is taking over. It is time we came together. Time for us to ensure that we are safe.”

  Things? What things?

  “What things?” Maija asked.

  Nils looked to one of Henrik and Lisbet’s sons.

  The young man reddened. “A shape. It was behind our cottage, in among the trees. It was black. It ran so fast.” His voice slipped into a high pitch and made him a boy. He cleared his throat.

  “Wolf,” Maija said.

  “No.” The boy shook his head. “It was much larger.”

  “It was the Devil,” his mother said. “The mountain belongs to him.”

  Beside her, her husband scowled.

  “That’s a fable.” Daniel pushed off from the wall he was leaning against. “There are hundreds of similar stories all over Sweden, told by parents to stop their children from going into the forest alone.”

  “Only we have, in fact, lost children,” Nils said.

  Daniel turned white.

  Nils’s voice softened. “I too came to Lapland to inhabit a piece of land of my own and farm it with my family, colonizing this region for the crown. But something is going on here that isn’t natural …” He held up his hands. “I am not saying it is the Devil. I am just saying we’d be safer together than apart.”

  He was skilled. Maija felt the draw of being a part of the whole, of letting somebody else decide.

  “I would like to understand why Maija says it was wolves our Hans saw?” Henrik said.

  In a way Henrik was like her, she thought. He too knew what it was like to live in the same house as fear.

  Maija thought of the pitted claw marks in the wood on her door. The banging throughout the night as the animals threw themselves against the walls of the house. Her daughter’s screams.

  They were looking at her.

  “Have you come across wolves?” Henrik asked.

  “Wolves don’t go near people,” Daniel said.

  “They sometimes crave human flesh,” Lisbet said.

  The room fell silent.

  Maija could hear them again, the thumps against the walls, but the thought that remained was that, had gray-legs wanted to, they would have had her. Yet she hesitated to speak. Things easily twisted and turned the wrong way.

  “Perhaps the Lapps are still at their magic and they are bringing this on us,” Lisbet said.

  “Someone should speak to the priest,” a voice said. Anna?

  “The Church has never done anything for us. This is a Blackåsen matter.”

  “If it’s sorcery, it’s a matter for the Church.”

  Maija raised her voice. “We had a cold summer and then a killer frost—yes, our harvest failed. I did see wolves. They were all adult males. I don’t know what that means, but maybe there being no bitches among them changes their behavior? And Eriksson … Eriksson was killed by man, by flesh and blood, like us.”

  By one of us, she thought.

  The room was silent again, but it was a better silence this time, less worrying. Maija met Henrik’s gaze. Henrik nodded, perhaps encouraging her to go on. Maija turned to the boy.

  “Tell us again,” she said, “what you saw.”

  “A … silhouette.”

  “Running, you said?”

  “More like … floating.” The boy looked her in the eyes. He was kneading his knuckles against his thighs. He’s not making this up, she thought. He believes in what he’s saying and is now realizing that seeing something in the forest isn’t exciting but very frightening.

  “It could have been a person,” Maija said in a kind voice.

  The boy shook his head.

  “Or the light playing tricks on you?”

  The boy hesitated. He wrinkled his forehead. “Maybe,” he said.

  “It’s an easy mistake.”

  “Perhaps it was the light.” The boy nodded.

  Maija turned to the others. “Let’s not get carried away,” she said. After that, when all had been said, nothing had been said, and then people nodded to one another, departed, disappeared into the forest, to their own. Maija walked outside. The darkness was so dense, she had a feeling that if she reached out her hand, she would be able to touch it. It would leave her fingers smutty with something like burned rye. We’re all going to start seeing things if we aren’t careful, she thought. Gustav pushed past her. It surprised her that he’d been there.

  The wind had picked up—her throat felt bare, and she pulled at her scarf. The sky was thick. More snow on the way. A lot more. She’d cook pheasant for dinner. Then they would use the carcass for soup. The door opened behind her again. The snow squeaked under his weight as Nils stepped out. He looked toward the sky.

  “Snow.” He turned to her and raised his brow. “Belittling the fears of those who have been here much longer than you. Brave. Some might say imprudent.”

  It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t answer.

  “A woman trying to discuss important matters, questioning this and that, is both blasphemous and dangerous,” he said. “Remember what you are, Maija. We forget that and we question the order of God Himself. Stay in your place unless you want to end up like Elin: secluded, separate.”

  “You can’t make that happen,” she said.

  He turned to walk back inside, and now he looked almost amused. “But I won’t have to,” he said, good-naturedly. “People don’t like what is different.”

  What was it Eriksson knew about you? she thought.

  “Open the door!”

  The priest sat up in his bed. There was banging on the door downstairs. A male voice, but light. A boy?

  “Open!”

  He searched for his cloak in the dark. There was the sound of running feet in the room beneath him, of the door being unbolted.

  In his living room he found the housekeeper in a white night gown, gray hair sticking out from underneath her cap, and a young man. His cheeks were red. He smelled of frost.

  “Message from the King,” the boy said and handed him a roll.

/>   Message from …?

  The priest took the roll. He felt parchment against his fingertips.

  Message from my King.

  His heart pounded in his chest. The maid arrived and squatted by the fireplace to build the fire. He turned away from her. He didn’t want to share this moment with anyone.

  He unrolled the parchment with shaking hands.

  On Royal Command …

  He read the few lines again. This was not a message from the King. It had his seal, but it had been dictated or even written by somebody else without the King’s contribution. His parish was requested to contribute twenty able men to the King’s army in early spring, three from the town itself, seventeen from the surrounding mountains.

  He turned the paper over, but the back of the paper was empty.

  Twenty men. That would be almost all the men in his parish.

  “They burnt the whole town,” the boy was telling his housekeeper.

  “What?” The priest turned toward the boy, paper roll still in his hand.

  “The Russians,” the boy said. “One week ago. They attacked the coastal town north of us. The people fled to the church. The Russians bolted it and set fire to it. They were fried to death.”

  “What?” the priest said again. “When?”

  “A week ago,” the boy repeated.

  “Where are they now? The Russians?”

  “They left after the attack. They’ll be back. They’re always back. There were over a hundred people in that church.”

  Stop, he thought. Stop. He raised his hand and walked out.

  The priest lay down on his bed, parchment roll in hand. He had never known a world without war. But somehow, actually being in the army, the war had felt less real than it did now. They had fought terrible combats during the daytime, but at night they dressed up for dinner with the King. He had seen things on the battlefield that he would never be able to forget. But at night they had drunk wine and eaten roasted pig and conversed about politics and women. “We know why we are doing this,” the King sometimes said. And yes, they knew.

  Now, forced to tell twenty parishioners they would have to travel south to join the army—the peasant’s war being very different from the one he had experienced—he felt that the wars were like thin fibers with thorny roots that had pushed down deep inside the country, tangled themselves with its very tissue and been allowed to take over.

  They can’t do it. He thought of the settlers. They are starved. They have nothing. They can’t fight anymore.

  And an edict. Hundreds of them would have been sent out over the country. He crushed the paper roll in his hand.

  But the King was God’s representative. It was God’s edict he had crumpled in his hand. What would happen if you started to question that?

  Not the children, he thought. I won’t take the young men.

  But shall I take the fathers?

  Perhaps I’ll let each mountain choose their men, he thought. But then people like Nils and Eriksson, had he still been alive, would never be considered.

  The priest lay sleepless, squeezing the crumpled edict in his hand.

  Snow rose to the level of their chests. The sun no longer mounted the horizon. Winter’s midnight had begun.

  Late that morning Johan Lundgren came to see them. He sat by their table. Her mother was looking at him, as if expecting something. Then she seemed to conclude he wasn’t going to give it, and she lowered her head.

  “Did you speak to your mother?” he asked Frederika.

  Frederika had forgotten.

  Her mother looked up.

  “Dorotea needs more schooling than the others,” he said.

  “She does?” her mother said.

  “A few more hours every week would be good. Reading and Bible knowledge.”

  “I am surprised. At home she reads well.”

  Frederika thought of what the priests said happened if you didn’t do well at the Catechetical hearing. Even small children burned in hell.

  “It might be good,” she said to her mother.

  Her mother turned to her and made large eyes, as if Frederika had said something important.

  “Mr. Lundgren says it won’t have to cost us much,” Frederika said, annoyed with her mother. She wasn’t paying attention.

  The teacher nodded. “We can begin today.”

  “Fine. Frederika, you take her,” her mother said. “I need to … get more wood,” she said and nodded to herself. She grabbed her woolens.

  The teacher rose and walked over to Dorotea.

  Frederika edged herself forward so he wouldn’t notice the firewood basket was full.

  “And so the great darkness has arrived,” Mr. Lundgren said.

  Dorotea was sitting on the sledge and Frederika was pulling her. The runners sang in the snow.

  “What do you think about Blackåsen, Dorotea?” Mr. Lundgren asked.

  “We’re getting used to it,” Frederika said when her sister remained silent.

  For a moment she had almost thought she heard the sound of footsteps following them.

  “The priest was planning to come and see you,” Mr. Lundgren said, “but he got a message from the King and couldn’t leave.”

  Frederika tried to pause between each step to listen.

  There was a glimpse of a dark shape to their right. A man. He walked into a clearing between the trees and into the moonlight. It was Eriksson. The knife in his hand gleamed.

  At once her heart raced.

  “I am surprised.” Mr. Lundgren chuckled. “So far he hasn’t paid attention to any of the parishioners. Why would he come to see you?”

  “He and my mother talk about how Eriksson died,” Frederika said.

  Eriksson was staring at her. He bared his teeth and made a low wheezing sound, “Hnnh. Hnnh.”

  Could others see Eriksson too? Suddenly it was crucial that she did not tell the teacher or make any sign. He wasn’t going to be of any help. He would panic. He’d run, and Eriksson would attack. They needed to carry on as usual until … well, until.

  “So who do they think killed him?” the teacher said and smiled.

  “They don’t know.” She forced a steadiness onto her voice. “They’ll try to find out.”

  “How on earth will they do that?”

  She no longer liked him. He wanted too much.

  “Here we are now,” the teacher said and walked into the yard.

  Frederika moved so she was behind her sister. She put her hands on her sister’s shoulders and pushed her so fast, she almost ran the sledge into the teacher’s legs.

  Hurry, she thought. Hurry. Eriksson stopped by the line of the trees. He held his arms up over his head stretching toward the moon.

  Mr. Lundgren walked up on the porch and kicked his shoes against the side of the door.

  Eriksson left the forest and walked toward them with long steps. Frederika hauled her sister up the steps.

  Open the door. Open it.

  The teacher dropped his mitten and bent down to pick it up.

  Eriksson stopped beneath the porch. Her teacher turned to face her. Now, she thought. He sees him and Eriksson goes for us.

  “I am sure your mother needs you, Frederika,” he said. “There’s no need for you to wait. I can walk Dorotea home afterward.”

  Then Eriksson put his head back. He howled. A long, drawn-out wail. The teacher and Dorotea were looking at Frederika.

  They can’t hear him, she realized. They can’t see him either.

  Eriksson began to laugh.

  Frederika took a step to the side, and at once Eriksson’s knife shot out and cut the air just in front of her. He wasn’t going to let her leave. He howled again, and the sound sent a shiver down her whole spine.

  “I’ll wait,” she said.

  “You don’t have to,” their teacher said again.

  “No,” she said. “I’d like to.”

  Frederika sat by the window. Eriksson was standing motionless in the yard. Behind he
r, Mr. Lundgren read sentences, Dorotea repeated after him, he corrected her.

  In the window frame many letters had been carved with a knife in the wood. There was a scraggly J, a U, and a long-legged K, an A, a B. … Was it children? Perhaps before leaving school for good. She wondered how they’d been able to do it without the teacher seeing. He must have been so angry when he discovered it. She traced the letters with her finger. She had to think of a way for her or Dorotea to be able to stay as long as possible. But if Mr. Lundgren didn’t see Eriksson, then it would be difficult.

  “We’re done,” Mr. Lundgren said, and his chair scraped.

  Already? Outside, the yard lay empty.

  “What are you doing?” Dorotea asked on the way home.

  “What?”

  “You keep turning around.”

  There was no moon now, and so dark Frederika couldn’t see her. She barely saw to put her feet before her in the snow.

  “After what happened to our mother with the wolves, I am just careful,” Frederika said.

  “What wolves?”

  Frederika tried to see Dorotea but couldn’t. She was struck by a thought. “Dorotea, have you seen any animals since we came here?”

  “Yes,” Dorotea’s voice came from the sledge. “Spiders and ants and …”

  “No. Big animals. Like bear. Or wolf?”

  “I saw a fox once,” Dorotea ventured. “In Ostrobothnia.”

  Frederika tried to think what Dorotea had been doing when the wolves attacked. Dorotea had been with her in bed. They had hugged, and her sister’s eyes were closed. Her body had been limp in her arms. Had Dorotea been sleeping? But her mother had seen the wolves? Yes, her mother had seen and heard them for sure.

  It wasn’t night, but the unending darkness made you conduct yourself as if it were. There was no strength for vigorous activity or loud noises. People moved slowly. The animals were quiet in their pens. The dogs kept their heads low as they crawled closer to the fires. By day the priest tried to read, but ended up most often sitting with his head in his hand, a book open in his lap on no particular page. In the afternoon he sometimes walked the paths of this ghost town the bishop had entrusted him with. So little time before he had to share the King’s marching orders. A few weeks left to Christmas and the coming of the settlers for six weeks.