Wolf Winter

by Cecilia Ekbäck

  The priest tried to force himself into activity. A list, he thought. They needed a list. Winter froze the houses. Come spring they would see the real damage when the ice supporting the walls melted and things began to sag and lean. But some things ought to be repaired before the settlers arrived, and the verger would not have much time between schooling children and church duties.

  He found broken windows in two of the houses in Settler Town and removed his mitten to sketch a map for the verger. His fingers began to burn, and he hurried. Somewhere a door hinge squeaked. He should try to find it. An open door would allow the snow to move inside. He put his mitten back on and raised the lantern to try to spot the errant door. Unless he was right beside it, the lantern would not give enough light to see. His father used to have his lamp on a rod that he carried on his shoulder. Not a bad idea. As a boy walking behind his father, the mild swaying glow was sufficient to permit him to see where he put his feet, while his father murmured away, some story about the yarn of a man. “We are what we are. We’re what we’re born. Be grateful, Olof. Be grateful.”

  He’d told the King about his father. A clear warm night in Poland. Smell of grass. A lake shimmering in moonlight. The troops valiant. Augustus II yet to be deposed.

  “He didn’t think man was in charge of his own destiny,” the priest had said, heat in his voice. “He never saw that man can change.”

  “And you do?” the King had asked. It had been dark. The priest had not been able to see more than the other man’s profile.

  “It is what you do every day: shaping Sweden for generations to come.”

  The King didn’t answer at first. “But can you say the two are the same?” he asked then. “Is changing character as easy as enacting deeds?”

  “Both are about making a decision and standing firm.”

  Look at me and you, he had wanted to say. Here we sit together, you, the King, and me, your court priest. He’d been excited. He had been thinking about himself and his progress. He now wondered whether there was much more to that conversation than he had thought. Perhaps the King had had doubts and needed his priest.

  The door hinge whined again in the wind.

  Only, there was no wind.

  The priest lifted his lantern high and held it left and then right to see. It was probably an animal that had made the noise.

  In summer he had gone in and out of the many houses and thought about those who built them on the crown’s command. Christianize Lapland. Tax Lapland, rather. But now, in winter, the deserted houses were different. Their windows gleamed black, as if he were being watched.

  A door slammed. The priest jumped. His heart scurried into his throat. He raised his lantern even higher, this time to hold the darkness away rather than to see. He had spent most of his childhood in the dark and never minded it. And here he was, a grown man becoming afraid of it.

  He began to walk. It was cold. He would go and sit down by his fire. He lengthened his steps. The walls of the houses shone, but he refused to look, focusing on his feet.

  At the end of the street there was the same blackness, but the priest knew it as his church green. He walked into it and exhaled.

  Not that it made any difference where he was, he thought, and lengthened his steps again.

  The handle of the church glittered. Last winter a boy had put his tongue against the iron, and as they ripped it loose, the blood had been a violent red in the snow.

  He pulled the heavy church door open and sneaked in. It shut behind him. In the hallway he let out his breath.

  There was a lit candle in the entrance. It couldn’t be the verger; he wouldn’t be back until the weekend. The priest’s shoes made a dull sound as he ran up the steps to his office.

  Sofia was waiting for him in his room on the first floor.

  “There you are,” she said, voice purring. She was wearing a white fur hat and coat. Her blonde hair was braided. Her voice was soft. She was the kind of woman any man would be happy to come home to.

  “I don’t see you for a few days,” she said, the tone of her voice mocking, “I begin to worry.”

  “I had a message from the King,” he said.

  “Really?” she said.

  Her eyes were focused on his lips.

  “Just another edict to add to the burden of my chores,” he said.

  “Ah,” she said and smiled again. “Come for dinner tonight.”

  “I will,” he said.

  When Sofia had left, the priest decided he might as well just get it over with.

  It was the young maid who opened the door. Her hands by her sides were larger and redder than ever. She gasped when she saw the priest.

  “Sire,” she said in a low voice and curtsied.

  “I am here to see your father,” he said.

  They were sitting by the table eating cabbage soup. The maid’s old parents startled when he entered. The mother hesitated, and he knew she was wondering what she could offer him. He shook his head.

  “I’m afraid I am coming with bad news,” he said.

  The three of them exchanged glances.

  “Bengt, you will be enlisted come spring. The King needs you in his army.”

  How old was this man? Gray and small, hands shaking. But what could he do? The verger was in charge of the schooling. His own candidature wouldn’t be accepted, nor that of the night man—their roles were considered indispensable in a town. All that remained were this man and the two farm hands.

  None of them reacted at first.

  Then the young maid said, “My father is sick,” at the same time as her father said, “How about the boys? The stable boys?”

  “Them too,” the priest said.

  The old man coughed and wheezed, his whole frame laboring as if to squeeze the air out.

  “Have mercy,” the mother said.

  “There is no choice,” he said.

  “I am so sorry,” he said, and left.

  The fourth time Frederika met Eriksson he was in their barn again. She opened the door and saw him, turned and ran, but he was faster than she. At once he was on her. She fell forward and hit the snow so hard, her air left her. The snow burned her cheeks and nose. He spun her over, straddled her, and covered her mouth with his hand.

  “Shhh,” he whispered just by her face. He smelled of morning breath. Of closed rooms and stale water.

  Her eyes filled. She blinked and blinked.

  “You are overreacting,” he said and looked her in the eyes.

  After a while she nodded and he let go of her mouth. She had to swallow several times. He rose and pulled her to her feet.

  “You hurt me,” she said after a while. “My arm still won’t heal.”

  “Then you ought to have learned your lesson.”

  They stood looking at each other.

  “Elin had something in her past,” Frederika said. “Something awful.”

  “She did. The first time I saw her I knew. She had a frailty in the midst of that strength of hers. You’d see it in her eyes when she first looked at you, before her features hardened. This beautiful kernel of dread. Once I knew that, it was easy. She was so infatuated with her fear, she would always choose it.”

  Frederika thought about what she had seen inside Gustav. She thought about the trees Eriksson had shown her. Elin and Gustav had had similar experiences—not shared experiences; she believed Gustav had been telling the truth when he said he didn’t know Elin—but similar ones. Gustav had been a prisoner at some point, she was pretty certain. The Russians stole children. Frederika’s mind played it: the split-second of nothingness and then the violence. Perhaps something similar had happened to Elin. She shuddered.

  “Why didn’t you leave her alone?” she asked Eriksson. “Hadn’t she suffered enough?”

  “Don’t you see that if it wasn’t me, it would have been somebody else? It was what she sought. I loved Elin. Not that she ever knew or cared. She was too busy hating me.”

  “But she didn’t kill you.
”

  Eriksson squeezed his lips together. “Of course she didn’t. Now you disappoint me. You have to grow faster than this, Frederika. I’ve already told you. I am not the most dangerous thing around.”

  He shook his head and walked away from her toward the tree line.

  There was someone else beneath the pine trees. Eriksson brushed shoulders with him, but this second person didn’t move. Straight shoulders. Silver hair. Silver beard. Fearless.

  She half-ran toward him. “Eriksson,” she said as she reached him. “He just passed you.”

  Fearless didn’t answer. She didn’t have to say anything. He knew it all.

  “I heard you talk,” he said then. “This is not for a little girl. Alone outside in midwinter.”

  “The mountain won’t leave me alone.”

  Fearless was silent for a long time.

  “Antti told me about you,” he said then. “Said I owed that much, to make certain you were safe.”

  He turned toward her. She wanted him to see that her meanings were good. But his face was cold.

  “That’s the reason I came,” he said. “Because Antti asked. We are Christian now. Talk to the priest. Beg God for mercy. Don’t go looking in the shadows.”

  Her cheeks became hot.

  “But I am not looking,” she said. “He is. They are. The spirits. You know this.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Then he seemed to change his mind and leaned toward her and said in a low voice, “You have no idea what you are trying your hand at. Try to tame the spirits at your own risk. If you fail, they’ll tear you apart.”

  “But I’m not trying. They won’t leave me alone.”

  “Go on inside, Frederika.”

  “What happened to your drum?” she whispered.

  “It’s long gone,” he said. “I burned it myself.”

  She watched him leave.

  He couldn’t have meant for her to pray.

  When she was little, she had thought the stars were angels who had made holes in the sky to watch over her, and the light she saw was the glory of heaven. But now, after having called for help, after having reached up, she didn’t think there was anyone there.

  In the evening Frederika and her mother sat by the kitchen table. Her mother was knitting a blue woolen sock. Frederika pulled the tallow candle on the table toward her. She thought about Fearless and about Eriksson. She pressed the hot wax close to the flame with her thumb. Turned the candle around. Pressed some more.

  “Mamma.”

  “Mm-hm?”

  “Dorotea didn’t hear the wolf.”

  Her mother lifted her head.

  “That day when you were attacked. She didn’t hear it.”

  They both glanced toward the bed where Dorotea was sleeping.

  “Why do you say that?” Maija asked.

  Frederika thought again about what Dorotea’s body had felt like. The weight of her. And the smell had been that of a sleeping Dorotea. Sweet. Vinegary. “I think she slept,” she said.

  Her mother’s forehead was wrinkled. “Well, I don’t know. Dorotea is still little. Perhaps the stress …”

  “Don’t you think it is strange that she didn’t hear it?”

  “Frederika, do you remember that wooden stick? The one you stuck in the snowdrift by the porch?”

  “It’s gone.”

  “I know, but why did you want it there? Why did you say I couldn’t move it?”

  She didn’t know. It had belonged there. “I was going to use it,” she said, though she couldn’t remember what for.

  Her mother sat up straight. “This is no good. The other settlers have seen the wolves too. We talked about it at the settler meeting.”

  Her mother’s mouth became a thin line in her face.

  “You have this trait, Frederika, of looking for the mysterious and letting yourself be overcome. I shouldn’t have let you spend all that time with Jutta when you were growing up.” Her mother shook her head. “These kinds of thoughts, they spread rot.”

  The yellow flame arced close to her fingertips. Frederika pushed the candle away.

  In town the merchants’ calls vied with one another:

  “Reindeer pelt.”

  “Bear pelt.”

  “Trade for salt?”

  “This winter has been like no other.”

  “I need shoes.”

  “I have ptarmigans.”

  “I can get those myself anytime.”

  “What about window glass?”

  Maija sighed. The last time they had been here, in the wake of Eriksson’s death, it had only been the settlers. The last time her husband had been by her side. Paavo. She wondered where he was and what he was doing. He’ll be back, she thought. Either just before the snow begins to thaw or immediately after. But he could have written …

  All along the verge of the church green, houses were alive. Shops. Outside, the merchants had built racks on which to hang the dead animals and thick furs the settlers and the Lapps might bring to trade. Behind the church, further up on a hill, the night man had climbed the gallows and hung a new rope over its frame. By the frozen river someone had set up a small brewery. She was glad they were here. The journey had been foul, but she imagined, here in the valley, the weather would be less fierce. And they would not be alone. People shuffled forward in the dark. The breaths from horses’ nostrils were slow and large, the long hair on their hooves full of ice clumps and snow. The file passed the vicarage. The golden candle holders were visible through the tall windows, and people swerved so as not to walk on the light thrown onto the snow, as if, coming from inside the vicarage, even that were sacred.

  Then she saw him, the priest, and fell back though he could not see her. He was standing by the window together with a blonde woman in a red dress. The woman turned toward him and touched his arm. The priest smiled. She had assumed he did not have anyone, though she didn’t know why. After all, he was educated. Tall. Poised. She guessed you could say “fine looking.”

  The woman’s hair was tied back. She and the priest stood watching those outside, like royals on a balcony.

  By the muted, light blue mass of the church, they turned right into Settler Town. On both sides of the street yellow flames from tar torches flanked them. Then the church bell began to ring.

  They were to share a house with Daniel and Anna and their children, and so they had traveled together; the two families and their animals.

  “We used to share with the Janssons.” Anna interrupted herself.

  The family that had disappeared. Maija wanted to tell her she was not superstitious, but saying the words would make it seem as if she were.

  She helped Dorotea to sit down on the bed. She thought about the priest and his woman. The light in the house had been so yellow and seemed warm. This house was ice cold. A few of the window panes were missing. Daniel squatted, and there was the clinking sound of flint hitting flint.

  Through the gaping hole in the window the people who passed outside were dark shades. Their feet crunched on the snow. Their voices were muted.

  “What about our neighbors?” Maija asked.

  “All the settlers from Blackåsen are on the same street.”

  There was a feeble fire now in the fireplace. Daniel nodded to Anna to care for it and walked out. He came back with a few planks of wood with which he covered the hole in the window.

  “Can we go out?” Frederika pulled her sleeve. Dorotea was standing behind her.

  Maija hesitated.

  “Yes,” she said. “See where your schooling will take place, and see what we need to do to register at Customs.”

  She watched her younger daughter hobble to the door.

  “Don’t overdo it, Dorotea,” she said, “and take good care to look where we live so you find your way back.”

  She pictured the two of them, walking hand in hand toward the marketplace, pictured them gaping at the size of the sugar lumps, sneezing at the smell of the spices,
mouths watering at the sight of bread. She would have given them the world. She would have.

  Lapp Town was the area furthest away from the church. The timber houses looked much like those built for the settlers, but there were also cone-shaped shacks, and the whole district was fenced in. The reindeers were already in their fold. The Lapps had hung large orange torches on the poles of the enclosure. Maija watched the animals for a while, hundreds of them, flank to flank, digging with their feet in the snow for lichen, locking antlers when they got too close. Every now and then one of them took a few leaping steps, some others would tag on, and then snow smoke would draw over the herd in a glittering cloud. Maija raised her face toward the shimmer, and then had to lower it again when it descended on her and began to sting her face.

  A woman approached. She wore a colorful dress with broad hem ribbons. There was a triangular shawl across her shoulders. She said something in a strange language.

  Maija let go of the wooden railing. “I was looking for Fearless.”

  Fearless seemed both shorter and older than he’d been the last time she saw him. His skin was burned, and the wrinkles by his eyes seemed carved. He made no sign of recognizing her, but stepped to the side. There were two other men inside. One of them was stirring a pot over the fire. The other one was sitting down, legs crossed, sewing. It was the young Lapp with the black long hair.

  Fearless nodded to the settle. The table in front of it was covered by a reindeer skin. He picked up a knife. It disappeared in his hand as he cut through the pelt with small sawing movements. You could watch this forever, she thought, a man good at his work.

  “I wonder why you have come this time,” he said.

  Yes, why had she come? It had been an impulse. Or, if she was honest with herself, she had known she would go and find him as soon as they arrived. Perhaps out of guilt at their last meeting.