Wolf Winter

by Cecilia Ekbäck

  “Things aren’t too good on Blackåsen,” she said.

  He held the leather up to look at its shape against the light.

  “I worried in case some settlers might be quick to blame your people,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  He began to cut anew through the pelt. When he had finished, he walked across the room to give the pieces to the young Lapp who sat sewing on the floor. He came back, sighed, and looked at Maija. “So what’s the grievance this time?”

  “The harvest failing, Eriksson dying. … Some settlers are claiming to have seen things in the forest, and then they remember the children who disappeared.”

  “All those are things that have befallen us too,” Fearless said.

  Maija nodded. The other men hadn’t thrown one glance their way, but their movements had slowed down.

  “They’re just scared,” she said. “It’s the traditions of your past.”

  “There are those among you who are more skilled in those practices nowadays than we are.”

  “Among us?”

  Surely Fearless knew that Elin was dead?

  He didn’t continue.

  “Well.” She rose. “That’s what I came to say.”

  As she closed the door behind her, she saw the other men turn toward him.

  The Christmas Mass began at dawn. It was tricky. Arriving early, but not by too much. The dead had their Mass before the living, and that wasn’t one you wanted to attend.

  Frederika sighed with relief on seeing live people inside. At the entrance the verger handed them the psalm book.

  “He said I didn’t need it now,” Dorotea whispered as she limped beside her down the nave.

  Frederika was watching the lit chandeliers in the roof. She didn’t think she had ever seen that many candles burning at the same time. “What?” she said.

  “Mr. Lundgren, yesterday at the market. He said I didn’t need extra schooling. There’s another girl who is worse than me.”

  Her sister’s voice was so full of joy that Frederika had to look at her. She hadn’t realized her sister minded being thought a bad reader.

  The church was cold. Their mother pointed to one of the pews and they sat down. Further toward the front was Henrik’s blond hair. Beside him the bonnet that must be Lisbet, and then a tall silver head: Nils. The priest arrived and walked toward the front. As he passed, there was a sound from the back, and Frederika turned. The Lapps entered: Fearless in their midst, head high. She remembered their conversation and should have been angry. Instead, she felt ashamed: for her inexperience, her thankfulness when she thought he’d come to help, her failure to say the right things. Her eyes caught in Antti’s. He raised his head ever so little, then he walked out.

  The priest was climbing the pulpit.

  “I need to go out,” Frederika whispered to her mother.

  “Now?” Her mother looked at her, back toward the door, to the front toward the priest, back at her again.

  “I have to go. I’ll sneak in afterward.”

  Antti was waiting for her on the stairway leading up to the tower. He turned and walked upstairs. She tried to glide up the stairs as he did, but she was too heavy. Each of her steps creaked on wood. Antti walked into a room where a fire crackled. There were shelves lined with books from floor to ceiling.

  Frederika hesitated.

  “The priest doesn’t need his room right now,” Antti said.

  Still she dawdled.

  “It’s cold outside,” Antti said.

  He squatted down in front of the fire. She hunched down beside him.

  “Eriksson is still following me,” she said. “Though not here.”

  She realized as she said it that it was true. Eriksson had not come to the town. Perhaps he needed to stay close to the mountain?

  Antti was staring into the fire.

  “Then there are wolves. They attacked my mother, but only my mother and I can see them. Though my mother says I mustn’t talk like that.”

  She wasn’t used to squatting. She sank down on her bottom.

  “I asked one of our elders,” Antti said. “They don’t want to talk about it. But she said two things were certain: when the spirits call, whoever they call needs to prove themselves worthy. The other thing that is certain is that there will be guidance.”

  Frederika shook her head. “Fearless doesn’t want to help me. I tried. He said not to get involved.”

  They sat in silence.

  “These spirits … are they evil?” Frederika asked.

  “No. Or, I guess, they can be. It depends on whose hands they are in. The elder said the gifts they bring can then be used to do either good or evil.”

  “What gifts?”

  “Justice, protection, answers.” He shrugged. “Healing.”

  Healing. Frederika thought of Dorotea’s feet.

  There was a scraping from over by the door. For one chilling moment Frederika was certain the priest would walk in and find them there. There was someone, a shadow. But then, rather than move away, it faded. Antti was still staring into the fire.

  “If you are found worthy, you’ll be able to give more to humans around you than you ever imagined.”

  He rose.

  She wanted to tell him not to go, though she knew they had to leave before Mass was over. “I have no idea how to speak with the spirits,” she said.

  “I can’t help you with that. Watch out for people, Frederika.” Now he looked at her. “Make no mistakes. The hunts for sorcerers are recent, the fear still close, easy to resurrect. Speak with the wrong person and they will make you burn. Even people you never expected.”

  It was the void after the sermon. Inside the church hall her mother turned her head so Frederika saw her profile. I am here, Mamma, Frederika thought.

  Her mother nodded as if she’d heard, and turned back toward the front. The crown of Dorotea’s head tilted and came to rest against her mother’s shoulder.

  Frederika looked to the profile of Fearless. Help me, she thought. Please help me.

  But Fearless didn’t move.

  Back in Ostrobothnia their Christmas celebrations had begun with Mass and were followed by a bath. Paavo would make a fire beneath the big iron tub in the barn and fill it with snow. They’d take turns to sit down in it, wash their hair, scrub their bodies, the girls squealing with horror that was really joy.

  Maija had hung a blanket in the roof to give them some privacy, and she had filled the washbasin with snow. It wasn’t Ostrobothnia, but they would be clean.

  “Can I go first?” Dorotea asked.

  “Ask your sister.”

  Frederika nodded without looking at them. She had taken off her clothes and sat down on them, facing the fire.

  Dorotea sat down in the washbasin with her legs over the edge. Maija scrubbed her younger daughter’s hair with snow, scrubbed her face and neck. Her daughter shrieked.

  “Rub your skin with cloth before you dress,” Maija said, “so that you dry.”

  Frederika rose. She had grown tall and her body was spindly. Maija hesitated. How strange. She no longer knew whether she should help her older daughter.

  “Do you want me to wash your hair for you?” Maija asked.

  “No. I’ll do it myself.”

  Frederika huddled over the basin, ribs protruding. Her long hair hid her face. It was no longer a child’s body. Not quite a woman’s yet either, but the child was gone. She put snow in her hands and rubbed her chest and neck. Her skin pulled together in tiny bumps.

  “What’s that?” Maija asked.

  “What?” Frederika said, but moved her left arm to her side as if to hide it with her body.

  Maija took a step forward. “This.” She lifted Frederika’s arm.

  There was a two-inch-long rip on her daughter’s arm. Half of it had healed, leaving behind a ruddy scar. Half of it was still crusty yellow.

  “I hurt myself in early winter,” Frederika said.

  “B
ut this is a bad injury …”

  Frederika stood up.

  “No, let me look at it,” Maija said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

  Frederika snatched her arm loose and bent for her clothes. She pulled her dress over her head and wriggled it down to cover her legs, moved the blanket to the side, and disappeared.

  Maija was staring after her. Her baby had wounds she didn’t know about. When had Frederika stopped telling her things? I don’t know her, she thought.

  “She hurt herself in the forest,” Dorotea said, “when I was in school.”

  Maija lifted up each item of clothing beside her, folded it, and stacked them on top of each other into a neat heap.

  “If I didn’t go to school, I could help look after her,” Dorotea said.

  “We brought salted reindeer,” Anna said when Maija removed the blanket she had hung up.

  Maija was looking at Frederika.

  “We have grayling,” Frederika said, without meeting her mother’s gaze. “I’ll set the table.”

  Frederika tied her hair up in a twist and nudged Anna’s daughters to help her. As they put the plates on the table, Maija watched her elder daughter. Her wrists were fine, her movements smooth and precise. I don’t know you, she thought again. She guessed there were things Maija ought to talk to Frederika about. Things that a mother told a daughter.

  “What did you think of the sermon?” Anna asked as they sat down to eat. “He’s good, I think, our new priest.”

  The candlelight made her eyes seem greener and her lips and cheeks, tinted.

  “I like hearing the Bible read at Christmas,” Maija said. “It’s the tradition, I guess.”

  Daniel reached for bread.

  “The Lapps were all there,” Anna said.

  There was a pause in Daniel’s movement.

  “Why wouldn’t they be?” Maija asked. She looked from Anna to Daniel.

  Anna glanced at Daniel.

  “Nils said he’d talk to settlers from other mountains and hear if any of them have had recent problems with the Lapps,” she said.

  Maija wondered if this meant she was no longer invited to the settler meetings.

  “You don’t think Blackåsen’s bad luck has anything to do with the Lapps, do you?” Maija asked.

  “They have powers,” one of Anna’s daughters piped up.

  Her mother hushed her. Then she touched Maija’s arm. “Maija, you are new here. It’s better we make enquiries now.”

  “We might be new, but we know the Lapps,” Frederika said.

  “Oh?” Anna said.

  Daniel had raised his eyebrows.

  “I wouldn’t say we know them,” Maija said. “Fearless left his goats with us for the winter.”

  “He left them with you? He normally goes to Nils,” Anna said.

  “My mother is good with the animals,” Dorotea said. “She made our barren cow give milk.”

  Now it was Maija who hushed her daughter. “Our homestead might have been closer to their route this year,” she said.

  “What happened to Fearless’s family?” Frederika asked.

  “They disappeared,” Daniel said.

  Maija looked from her daughter to Daniel. No wonder Fearless had said that everything had befallen the Lapps too. And this disappearance, Nils had forgotten to mention.

  “Yes, but how?”

  “His wife had taken their baby to town to be baptized—there was some problem with the reindeer, and Fearless stayed behind. That’s when the big forest fire broke out. They were never found.”

  “So they died in the fire,” Frederika said.

  “Fearless spent months searching,” Daniel said, “but found nothing. There ought to have been remains.”

  “So what does he think happened?” Maija asked.

  Daniel shook his head. “The old priest said that Fearless found peace in Jesus and he stopped his search.”

  Maija shivered. The worst farewell must be the no farewell, to have someone you love vanish from your life without leave-taking. As if it hadn’t meant anything. As if it never was. The image of Paavo came before her.

  Dorotea caught her eyes. Her cheeks were red and her eyes gleamed.

  Yes, Maija thought. Let’s forget about this, for one night. All of it. Let’s pretend that all we have to worry about this night are the Christmas celebrations. She leaned forward and winked at her younger. Dorotea’s face brightened. Maija rose and went to take out the parcel she had hidden underneath the bed.

  In August Maija had made wool thread, dyed it the clearest blue, and wove cloth on the loom in the barn. The color she’d created amazed her. It was like having a piece of the sky in their barn. She had sewn the dresses during the late autumn evenings.

  “Ah!” Dorotea said when she saw it. “Can I try it on? Please?”

  Seeing her joy, Maija had to laugh. Frederika stroked the cloth of her dress with her hand.

  “Don’t you like yours, Frederika?” Maija asked.

  The girl nodded, but left the dress without unfolding it.

  Dorotea held out her hands, and in them was a birch fungus so springy Maija would be able to use it as a pincushion.

  “Frederika and I found it,” Dorotea said, “when we searched for branches for new brooms. I hid it all autumn.”

  Maija hugged her. “Just what I needed.”

  Frederika handed her some braids made from dried scent grass.

  “That is so thoughtful,” Maija said. “When we come home, we’ll put it in our summer clothes, and come spring, we’ll smell like the ladies from the south.”

  Dorotea still had a parcel in her hand. “This is for the priest,” she said when she saw Maija looking.

  “The priest?” Maija said.

  “It’s his Christmas present,” she said.

  Maija didn’t dare to look at Daniel and Anna.

  “So will you take me to him?” her daughter asked.

  Maija and Dorotea walked to the priest’s dwelling. The air was easy to breathe, high and clear. There were lights in the windows, music coming from somewhere. As they came to the church green, far away the lines of the white mountains were clean, rolling together with the dark sky. Dorotea had stuck her hand in Maija’s. She had a funny way of holding hands, keeping her own absolutely straight, which meant that Maija had to do the actual holding.

  There was not much light in the priest’s house.

  “He’s not home,” Maija said. She pictured the blonde woman she’d seen him with. They probably celebrated Christmas with friends or family.

  Dorotea stepped up the stairs anyway to knock on the door. It took a while, but then there was a sound, and the priest opened.

  “You’re home,” Maija said. “I mean … good,” she said.

  He’d raised his chin, but lowered it again. He wasn’t wearing a priest’s clothes, but trousers and a shirt. He looked different without his attire. Seeing a man’s throat made him appear more vulnerable. She wondered if he missed the collar when it wasn’t there.

  “Can we come in?” Dorotea asked.

  The priest had been sitting in front of the fire on his own. On the table there was a single plate and a glass of wine. He looked at it too. She expected him to explain away his solitude—most people did—but when he didn’t, she liked him for it.

  “Would you like something to eat?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “We’ve eaten. It was Dorotea … she has something for you.”

  Her daughter stuck her hand in the priest’s and pulled him with her. She handed him the little parcel and beckoned for him to bend down. She whispered something in his ear. Then she said, loud enough for her mother to hear, “I would like something to eat. Pudding would be nice.”

  “Dorotea!” Maija said.

  “It would be my pleasure,” the priest said to her daughter and bowed. He wasn’t making fun of her, she thought. His smile was tender
.

  He rang the bell on the wall. There were footsteps, and a plump woman entered.

  “Could we please have dessert,” the priest said. “I have guests.”

  The housekeeper had brought rice porridge and nuts, apples, and gingerbread cookies. Dorotea talked and ate and asked for a napkin to take some food home to her sister. Then she fell asleep in her chair.

  The priest and Maija sat in silence and watched the fire. I should go, she thought. I must wake Dorotea up so we can leave. Frederika will worry. Daniel and Anna will talk. But she remained where she was. Just a little bit longer.

  “I am glad you came,” he said.

  In the light of the fire his eyes were a kind blue. Suddenly she too wanted to give him something.

  “The parishioners like you,” she said.

  He began to laugh. She made a stern face, but then she joined him. What a thing to say.

  The priest rose and covered her daughter with a blanket. He sat down again.

  “Christmas,” he said. “Christmas and then another year.”

  “Yes. It gives you hope.”

  “Hope? Myself, I always feel trepidation.”

  That surprised her.

  “It is clean. It is new,” she said. “A chance to start over.”

  “Precisely. One has to start it all over.”

  She saw what he meant.

  “I didn’t think priests felt trepidation,” she said.

  “Do you really think they are so different from you?”

  Yes, she thought. No, she thought. How strange. She looked him over. He had narrowed his eyes toward the flames and was supporting his chin in his hand. Solitude at a time like Christmas was setting yourself up for melancholy, she thought and was about to say it. But she liked him for his frailty.

  “Some people on Blackåsen are blaming the Lapps for Eriksson’s death,” she said. “I am worried I made it worse. I spoke with Fearless. I just wanted to warn him, but perhaps some things are best just left.”

  She surprised herself. It’s because he’s a priest, she thought. There is this urge to confess, to tell him everything.

  “Nils wants a village,” she added.