Wolf Winter

by Cecilia Ekbäck

  Perhaps that was why she had dreamed.

  In her dream she was ill. The disease varied: sometimes she suffered from fevers, sometimes crayfish. Sometimes it was an illness with no name. What was the same was that when the dream began, she always found herself knowing that she would die within days.

  She wasn’t afraid of dying. She didn’t know what to think about death—not that anyone on this side of life would ever get clarity in the matter. No, when the time came, she wanted to make up her own story about death and hold fast to it. The Church, of course, offered its own truth, but she didn’t want to make that hers. Its truth demanded too much.

  Jutta putting her hopes in Jesus had come late.

  “Jesus, Jesus, forgive me, forgive me.”

  Jutta’s litanies on her deathbed hung in the air over the yard and penetrated every corner, every hollow in the house. Maija heard them wherever she was, whatever work she was doing, pounding in her head.

  “Maija, hold my hand, hold it tight, don’t leave me.”

  I shall never become like you, Maija had whispered to herself, over and over. By then she knew why Jutta was so afraid.

  It wasn’t Jutta who had told her. It was Paavo. Maija had been seventeen. They’d been sitting by his boat. They hadn’t been lovers long. He’d squinted out toward the sea, aching to go, but stayed by her side.

  “There is something I must tell you,” he’d said.

  He’d told her about her grandfather, a tall, slim man with fire in his eyes and in his heart and, later, fire wherever he went.

  She laughed. But Paavo had dog eyes, and her face froze, silly smile still on her lips.

  “I would have heard about it,” she said, and her voice sounded stiff.

  “It was better you didn’t.”

  “Says who?”

  “The elderly. It happened long before you were born. Knowing could only do you harm.”

  Then why are you telling me now? she wanted to scream. Instead, she looked out toward the sea, so far out that her eyes hurt.

  “You kept this from me?”

  He nodded. Admitted—yes, they had.

  Why hadn’t they told her?

  The guilt, she thought. After all, it was villages that burned people, not single men. They were all at fault and hadn’t spoken about the events out of guilt.

  But then why did the other children know?

  Her head raced, trying to remember. Hadn’t there been a hesitation in their dealings with her, a particular quickness to severity and to punishment? Had they been monitoring her for the qualities of her grandfather?

  And Jutta … where had Jutta been in all this?

  She’d removed her hand from his.

  “How many?”

  “Maija …”

  “How many?”

  “Thirteen.”

  And when he gripped her fingers again and squeezed hard to say he still loved her, expecting her to feel gratitude, she felt nothing but disgust. The same revulsion she later felt for Jutta.

  “Jesus, Jesus, forgive me, forgive me.”

  “Thirteen women!”

  Maija screamed at Jutta when she found her by the lake.

  “And you remained married to him?” Maija’s heart had swelled so much in her chest, she was choking. “Who were they?”

  “Maija …” Jutta’s face was gray.

  “Who?”

  “Aino and Eeva—Mielikki’s mother and grandmother …” Jutta spoke with difficulty.

  Mielikki had lived next door to them all Maija’s life. Maija could smell when the woman baked bread, and she would run over for a taste.

  “Helli—Katri’s sister …”

  Katri was Maija’s teacher.

  “Eira—Paavo’s grandmother …”

  Oh God.

  “Anneli—my daughter … your mother.”

  And with this, Paavo and Maija together opened gates to the past and to the future and nothing could ever be the same. They had unearthed what was buried in a much too shallow grave.

  Jutta couldn’t stop talking. As if absolution was in Maija’s power to give: the uncontrollable fear—the fervor—God, an evil force sweeping across the land. Her husband—old—she didn’t take him seriously—he just prayed and prayed and prayed. The women had come to Jutta to have their futures read—laughed, perhaps they danced—midsummer—it was midsummer. Someone said something—someone talked—Devilry. One by one the women were accused. Helli, Eira, Anneli … Anneli … My daughter Anneli. Jesus, Jesus, forgive me, forgive me. Nobody stood up for the accused. You must understand: nobody. My daughter! Surely it would come to nothing—it would go away—they were sensible. They’d known each other forever. Unless it was true—what if some among them belonged to the Other Side? What if some of them copulated with the Devil? The smell of cooked meat and burned hair as they sat on their porch in amber evening light—what screams of lives on fire sound like—images spewed out of Jutta’s mouth and were made Maija’s, to carry for the rest of her life.

  Then when Jutta lay dying, clinging to the last of life with skeletal fingers that ought to have let go already, Maija sat beside her and thought of the mother she could have had, the mother she had once had but couldn’t remember. It should have been you, she thought. Not her.

  “Why not you?” she asked.

  “I was accused,” Jutta said, “but they retracted it. Perhaps my husband …”

  “Jesus, Jesus, forgive me, forgive me.”

  I shall never become like you, Maija swore. I shall never lay my misery on anyone. I shall carry my burdens with dignity. No emotion. Not now. Not ever. I will get by, by getting on. I shall know to die alone. And never, never, ever again shall I use the gifts.

  Paavo’s voice in her head: “We don’t know what we would have done in her situation.”

  But they did. They did! You decided what was right. You held to it. You fought.

  And then again: the dream.

  Maija was dying. But even more frightening was the fact that this time and every other, in her dream, as the knowledge of her death dawned on her, the first thing she did was to reach out—for Frederika, for Dorotea. Sometimes for people whose faces she didn’t even recognize. She would cling onto them, screech, and tell them she was soon to be gone.

  This was how she knew she was still not strong enough.

  Maija took the cloth off the plate and ate the fish. Then she ran out and was sick on the porch.

  Frederika lay awake. Her throat hurt, and it was hard to swallow.

  In her mind’s eye she kept seeing the wolves. She heard them panting.

  Her mother had got up and then gone out. The dampness she’d left on the sheet beside Frederika turned ice cold. Frederika didn’t give any sign that she was awake. It wasn’t a night for words. Under the cover Dorotea pressed into her. Dadum-Dadum-Dadum. Her sister’s heartbeats against her side.

  Eriksson had come and left again while her mother was still indoors. Frederika didn’t look at him, and her mother didn’t react. Perhaps it was enough to deal with your own ghosts without having to take on anybody else’s.

  She shivered. The spirits weren’t waiting any longer. They would come for her again, and she wasn’t ready for that fight. Though there had been something in her. When her mind had yelled at them, for a brief moment she had been the stronger one. But then she had weakened.

  She lay frozen on her back and didn’t dare to move. There was a pressure on her chest. She worried that if she inhaled properly, she might make a gulping noise, and so her breaths were thin and ragged, not giving her enough air.

  Jutta had been able to sense people without seeing them. Jutta had tried to teach her.

  “Stand still and try to feel where I go rather than see it.”

  A June in Ostrobothnia. Frederika and Jutta were hanging laundry on the clothesline. They had stretched the rope far between two pine trees. The spring winds were strong and the sheets snapped in the wind, large white sails shining in their yard, flapp
ing over the boat that no longer had a purpose.

  Frederika closed her eyes. Flap, flap. She could imagine the ropes hitting the masts of the boats, but there was no Jutta.

  “No,” she said.

  “Try again.” Jutta’s voice came from her left.

  “No.”

  “Don’t listen for me. Feel.”

  A presence, to her right, an imprint in the air. Then again: the warm wind against her cheek.

  “Perhaps,” Frederika said and tried again. Yes, a dent. A shape. “Got you,” Frederika said and opened her eyes.

  “Now try to hold me there,” Jutta had said.

  “How?”

  “Think of it as trying to put a ring around me. A ring of wind or of fire. Something I won’t be able to leave.”

  Frederika had concentrated and tried to think a circle around her great-grandmother. But soon Jutta’s arms were around her. “Needs some work,” Jutta had said in her ear.

  Jutta had known things. Could the same be done with spirits?

  Frederika tried to see the wolves in front of her—the sinewy bodies, the matted pelt, the sharp teeth …

  She shuddered.

  Oh no. I am not afraid of you. She closed her eyes and tried again. She didn’t know how long she’d been trying when, at once, she was overcome by a yawn.

  And then she felt the shift.

  It was as if the space around her, or time, something unforgivable and unbending, had risen on its end and let her feel through it, travel through it. There was a movement, far away, and she knew she had them. West of the mountain. A den. Or a passage? The lead wolf was standing tall, gazing ahead, the others foraging. It lifted its nose, and its nostrils flared. It knows I’m here, Frederika thought. It can feel me too. The other beasts became nervy. One of them came too close, and the leader brought it down, pinned it to the ground with its paws and bared its teeth. The other wolf whined, rolled over, and bared its belly.

  I can’t put a ring around them, Frederika thought. I would never be strong enough to hold them.

  Beside her Dorotea twitched. Frederika turned her head. Her sister swallowed and opened her mouth. Frederika smelled sour milk, sweetness. Sister.

  Perhaps, she thought, if I cannot put a ring around them, I can put a ring around us. One of protection.

  She closed her eyes. At first she tried to visualize their homestead, but she couldn’t see all of it at one time. Then she pictured their cottage, but she couldn’t hold that picture for long—other thoughts came in and broke it. Now she was tired. Finally she put her arm over Dorotea and held her, and at once she saw the two of them in her mind’s eye. She tried to imagine fire, but the cottage was too dark and cold. Then she thought of the storm they’d had. Wind, she thought. She pictured the snow outside and how the wind began to finger its surface, disturb its peace. Come on. Wake up. The wind blew harder, hard enough to lift the crystals. They rose. Faster, faster. Snow in a flurry. A thick whirl of white. And in the calm of its midst: Dorotea and Frederika.

  Her mother ought to have been there with them, Frederika thought as she fell asleep.

  The days passed, and with them came reason and sisters squabbling and the nuisance of having to get dressed and go outside to perform chores. A week gone and the other settlers would be back at the mountain too, but no one had come to visit.

  “It’s a school day,” Frederika said to Maija one morning.

  Her mother pushed back her hair from her forehead. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I believe it is.”

  “School, school, and school,” Dorotea muttered behind them.

  A memory of a ring made of wind. Frederika felt calm and safe at the thought. “I’ll take Dorotea,” she said.

  “So you no longer need to see Mr. Lundgren on your own,” Frederika said as they walked. “How come?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps it is my feet,” Dorotea said.

  “Why would it be your feet?”

  “I don’t think he likes what’s happened to them. And then he said that Sara needed his time more than me.”

  Frederika thought about what priests said happened if you didn’t do well at the Catechetical hearing.

  “But does this mean you don’t need tutoring, or what?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Dorotea said.

  Mr. Lundgren had said that Dorotea didn’t have enough Bible knowledge. I’ll have to ask him, Frederika thought. I’ll have to make certain Dorotea doesn’t get in trouble with the priest. Perhaps there were things they could practice at home?

  “I’ll come in with you today,” she said to Dorotea. “There is something I need to ask Mr. Lundgren.”

  When they knocked, the teacher opened the door.

  “We are still not ready, but you can wait inside,” he said.

  They took off their woolens and left them in the hallway. Sara, Daniel’s youngest daughter, was sitting beside the verger on the bench by the fire. Her shoulders were bent over the book in her lap, her feet hung straight down but didn’t reach the floor.

  Frederika walked to the window. The yard was still. The snow almost reached the roof at the back of the barn where nobody had shoveled. And then she realized: she could see. There was light. Light! Yes, a dawn, though weak. Spring was coming.

  She put her hands on the windowsill to press her cheek against the pane and try to see more. As she did so, her fingers touched a jaggedness.

  There was a new carving in the wood of the window beside the other letters: S.

  Frederika turned to look at Sara. Had she done this? But she was younger than Frederika. She was Dorotea’s age. How had she managed it without Mr. Lundgren seeing? How had she dared? Frederika wanted to giggle.

  The others arrived. They shuffled in the hallway to remove their outer garments.

  “My father got it for me at the market,” one of the older boys said. He was showing another boy a knife. He put it back in its case.

  Sara came to sit at the table. She was pale and red-eyed, her arms like sticks. The verger left the room to go outside.

  One of the boys sat next to Dorotea but rose again and walked around to sit at the other side. The boy who’d started to put his books on the table beside him gathered them up and followed him.

  The older of the two boys leaned over the table. There were spots on his nose. “Your mother is a heretic,” he said to Dorotea in a low voice.

  “Says who?” asked Frederika.

  The boy glanced up at her. “Says my father, says my mother, says everyone on the mountain,” he said.

  “You’re just a child,” Frederika said. “You have no idea what it is you’re talking about.”

  “She’s not allowed to come to church any longer.”

  “She’s a sorceress,” the younger boy said. “She brings misery onto us all.”

  Frederika didn’t answer.

  “Your mother will be punished.”

  “Perhaps she’ll have to run the gauntlet. We’ll all hit her. Boom, boom, boom.” The young boy’s cheeks were flushed. He was banging his finger on the table.

  “Awwww.” The older boy moaned and held himself as if hurt. He grinned. “Besides, your feet smell,” he said and puckered his nose at Dorotea.

  Dorotea looked up at Frederika.

  Never before had Frederika felt such anger. White and hot, hatred pulsated in her ears. She squinted toward him. Burn, she thought. Burn.

  The boy fell forward onto the kitchen table, hands flat beside his head.

  Frederika took a step forward. Oh God, what have I done?

  I killed him, she thought. I killed him.

  The verger came back in.

  The boy sat up. “Aaaaah,” he mocked. “This is what she’ll be like, your mother.”

  Frederika’s exhalation was uneven.

  The boy stared at her, mouth open, waiting for her reaction. When there was none, he stuck his tongue out.

  “Will you be staying with us today, Frederika?” Mr. Lundgren asked and smiled.

 
“Yes,” Frederika said. “Yes, today, I will.”

  She had wanted to wound him, she thought later, after their evening meal. She was spinning wool, the greasy locks in her hands, twirling the fibers into thread with her fingers. No, it was worse than that. For the briefest of instants Frederika had wanted the boy dead.

  And after, she’d been so upset, she’d forgotten about asking Mr. Lundgren about Dorotea.

  I need to be careful. I need to grow up fast. When the day comes and these powers do what I ask of them, if I’m still unable to control my anger, then what?

  The thought made her twirl the wool so hard, the thread became sharp enough to cut her index finger.

  Dum. Tataradum.

  When, she had thought. Not if.

  She stopped the spinning wheel with her hand, stuck her finger in her mouth. It tasted salty. Her mother was sitting in front of the fire. She was mending a skirt with needle and thread, humming a little to herself as she did so. The boy had called her a heretic, Frederika thought. She should tell her mother that people on the mountain were talking about her, but she didn’t want to. Her mother was already going to be punished by the church. Wasn’t that enough?

  She put her foot on the treadle and began to move the spinning wheel again.

  Maija had to go out on the porch to see it. Faint, but it was there. A dawn. The sun hadn’t yet mounted the horizon, but she sensed it there at the end of the world. Graylight would become longer and longer. Perhaps in a week sunlight would show. How long before nature produced something edible? Too long. But at least this gave hope. It was a while before she noticed him at the edge of the homestead. Fearless seemed to grow out of the earth. When he was certain she’d seen him, he approached. His skis made a hissing sound on the snow. He stopped beneath the porch.

  “If you are here about me revealing what we found on Eriksson’s grave, I am sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to get you into trouble with the bishop.”