Wolf Winter

by Cecilia Ekbäck

  He said nothing.

  “It just slipped out,” she said.

  “You said placing the antlers on Eriksson’s grave was like a ritual.”

  She shrugged.

  “Then you said it was done to frighten and accused Nils.”

  “Yes, well, I was wrong.”

  “What if it was a ritual?”

  Fearless wasn’t looking at her when he said it, but into the air. As if he were thinking out loud.

  “You said …” she began.

  “Not our rituals,” he said, “nor those of the Swedes or the Finns.”

  “The blood was sprinkled as if it might have been meant to resemble a cross.”

  “Not the blood,” Fearless said, “the skull.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “A Lapp from the east said there is this tradition in south Russia. They burn the head of the animal they’ve slaughtered and are about to eat. They put the burned skull by the place of the elder.”

  “Respect.”

  He gave a nod.

  “But who would have wanted to show Eriksson respect? And a Russian?”

  Fearless shook his head. He looked into the air again.

  “Don’t be fooled,” he said. “Spring is not here yet. It will still get colder.”

  Maija too lifted her face toward the east. He was right. The wind held ice.

  Frederika was in the barn. She was sitting astraddle the wooden bench, practicing. At first she tried to put a ring of wind around the goats to stop them from moving, but the goats weren’t budging anyway, so she couldn’t tell if it had worked. Then she tried seeing where Fearless was. She closed her eyes and focused hard, saw his face before her, but couldn’t keep his features in her mind. It was almost as if a candle had been blown out. This happened again and again.

  When Eriksson showed himself, she wasn’t even surprised.

  “Hello,” she said.

  He didn’t answer. He was standing up, chin raised, cold eyes not meeting hers.

  “I am practicing like you told me to,” she said.

  He scoffed.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You ignored me the other night.”

  “There was trouble down in the town,” she said. “I needed some time to think it through. You understand, don’t you?”

  He still wasn’t looking at her.

  “I am sorry,” she said.

  “I came to bring you a gift.”

  “I am sorry,” she said again.

  He sat down on the bench beside her. He supported himself with his arms on his knees and wasn’t looking at her, but at the goats.

  “I still have no idea what I am doing,” she offered.

  He hesitated, then nodded, sat up, and searched in his jacket pocket. “Here.” He handed her something wrapped in a scarf.

  It was a mirror, small and square with a twisted iron frame. It felt cold in her hand. Frederika turned it over. Its rear was made of black metal.

  “Elin’s,” Eriksson said. “She used to be able to talk to what she called her helping spirits through it.”

  “Is that how it works?”

  “I don’t know. I think there are many ways, but you need to find one that works for you.”

  She knew he was right. The peace was temporary. When she thought about her protective circle of wind, she now also saw them: the wolves. Shadows in the storm, heads bent low, progressing slowly but moving forward, on their way, in.

  There was a rasping sound outside. Then there was a pause and then the sound of skis being placed to lean against the wall of the barn. Frederika tucked the mirror in her pocket. Another pause and the door opened. It was Antti. He bent his head in a greeting and came in.

  Eriksson was gone. Antti took off his mittens and his hat. His black hair fell over his shoulders.

  “I’m here with Fearless,” Antti said. “He’s gone to see your mother.”

  “Fearless has gone to my mother? But why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Frederika felt a sting of jealousy. Fearless had chosen her mother, though Frederika was the one who was trying to walk in his footsteps.

  Antti looked around, hesitated, then sat down on the bench where Eriksson had just been sitting.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said without thinking. “Finer,” she corrected herself. “I don’t know,” she concluded.

  They sat in silence.

  His hand was on the bench beside hers. It was sinewy and broad, still summer brown. There were black hairs on his wrist. Frederika felt an ache in her stomach. Her own hand on the bench looked white and thin in comparison. She wondered what his skin would feel like.

  She looked up and found him looking at her.

  “I am wondering what your skin feels like,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Don’t,” he said.

  He stood up and she watched him put on his hat and leave. His movements were different from anyone else’s. She was certain she’d recognize him from any distance. She sat still even after all had long gone silent, and then her eyes became hot, and she rose. She’d felt as if she’d been weighed and found too light. She took out the mirror Eriksson had brought and caught a glance of herself. It was her mother gazing back at her, the same white-blonde hair, the gray eyes. Then she saw the rest of her.

  During the years they had added length and breadth to her dress as necessary, season by season, inch by inch, flounce after flounce. And her hair … untamed, untended, hanging down her back. She twirled it into a long string. She’d thought she was pretty. She’d given Antti the eye. She was unkempt, that’s what she was.

  Her eyes burned again and she closed them. She thought of Antti’s hand, the tendons on its back. She imagined his face before her, his mouth coming closer to her. The feeling tore at the pit of her stomach. He probably desired one of his own, she thought. But it was she who felt the spirits. Not any of their women.

  She stayed a long time in the barn. She held the mirror before her. “Speak to me,” she demanded.

  But all she saw was herself.

  That night Frederika dreamed of black ants, their small bodies gleaming. They were in the schoolhouse. At first there were just a few. She saw one. Then another one. Then she realized it was a trail of them making their way across the floor toward the fireplace. Outside more were coming. They approached from south, west, north, and east. They scaled the steps of the porch, clambering on top of each other in their fervor. The porch was full of them, seeking that tiny hole in the door that would let them in. Soon, inside, the floor was just one thick moving bulk, like flowing black treacle over wood.

  The weeks passed. Yet again, like most days, the priest ended up sitting in his church. He had memorized the body nailed to the cross in front: the paltry legs, the hollow chest, the intense red drops painted on its side and in its hands, the tilted head with the large crown of thorns.

  Once upon a time there was a little bird …

  Go and see Sofia, he told himself. Liven yourself up. He’d seen her horses and carriage enter the square two days earlier, coming back from another journey to the coast. He’d watched from his window as they unpacked the wagon. He had already decided to ask her to be his wife, but then he hadn’t gone to greet her, and he had been relieved when she didn’t come to see him.

  He stared up at Jesus again. If he squinted, there was the halo. Jesus’s head was hanging low on his chest. The priest couldn’t tell if the figure’s eyes were open. He hoped they were. Although Jesus was crucified. It was, of course, a bit much to ask.

  You could try praying. The thought skulked through his head in stockinged feet.

  His father used to pray. A pale shrimp of a man, mumbling into his clasped hands each morning, black holes on the sides of his head where once there were ears.

  The King prayed too. He lived according to the Word, went into his chamber and closed his door. Then, during sermon, when it was the priest’s time to read
the prayer, the King watched and nodded. As if the invocation was directed at him, not God. Which, in so many ways, it was. The King held the godly relationship. The Church agreed upon appropriate prayers with him.

  If I did talk to you, he asked Jesus, what then would you say?

  Strangely enough, it was Maija’s face that came to him.

  The large church door scraped open and he turned. Sofia pulled off her shawl and shook it to remove the snow.

  Her footsteps echoed as she walked toward him. His heart sank.

  “I was praying,” he said.

  She stopped. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “No, no. I had finished. Welcome back.”

  He slid further in on the pew to leave her space. She sat down at the edge. She looked serious. There was a sheen on her upper lip. Was she ill?

  “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  She inhaled and her nostrils flared. “I met with Mårten Broman when I was in town,” she said. “Of course, being the person he is … I don’t know what I was thinking …”

  She cleared her throat.

  The priest felt cold. He waited.

  “He’s tried to find out more about you ever since you met at the market,” Sofia said. “He wanted to know who you were. You were a court priest, but Mårten said you came from nowhere. Nobody has studied with you at the seminar, nobody has had you as a priest. … Your life starts at the point when you emerge beside the King. We were wondering: how is it possible for a priest to have no past?”

  Outside the church hands grabbed at the priest’s robe. He swirled around. It was the old man.

  Oh, not now.

  The man’s lips were pale and cracked. He was hollow-eyed.

  “Please,” he mumbled. “Have mercy. I’ll do anything. Take me off your list. Please …”

  “But there is nothing I can do,” the priest said.

  “Please.”

  “It is not my decision,” the priest said. “There is nowhere to go to appeal. Listen to me!”

  He shouted the last words just as the old man yelled, “You must help me!”

  They both breathed heavily.

  “There is nothing I can do,” the priest said. “It’s God’s will.”

  The cold of April was different from that of January or February. While the cold early in the year was sharp and nervous, this chill was dull and slow but pounded your bones. Bodies were tired and worn by then. They hurt more. It was the day before Lady Day, which was supposed to be the first day of spring. If you ran with bare feet on Lady Day, you wouldn’t injure your feet for the rest of the year. You wouldn’t catch a cold that year either. Although Frederika didn’t think she would run around barefoot in a meter of snow. If the mirror worked, she ought to be able to tell how the year would turn out. She had practiced with the mirror every day since Eriksson had given it to her, but she still couldn’t see anything in it apart from herself.

  Eriksson was trailing them, in among the trees. He kept himself far enough behind them, but every now and then she felt his eyes on her. Frederika had asked him to come to town, begged him when he said no. She didn’t know why he had changed his mind. “I need you there,” she’d said, though she knew he didn’t care about what she needed. “Maybe this is how I’ll be able to help you. If everyone is in the same place at one time.”

  Otherwise she supposed she’d have to get used to the idea of having Eriksson around. Perhaps some folk carried the dead around all their lives, unable to find a way to send them onward. No, that couldn’t be. And she couldn’t see Eriksson staying and not minding. He wasn’t the kind of person who waited on anyone.

  They were traveling on their own this time.

  “No,” her mother had said when Frederika asked her whether they were going with Daniel and Anna. There’d been a trace of regret in her voice. Frederika felt sad. She oughtn’t to have asked. At Lady Day sermon her mother’s punishment would be meted out by the bishop. They had talked about it. What the girls would do if their mother was injured, what they would do if she had to spend time in the stock. It was clear they could have used some friends.

  Her mother added another “no.” Flat, this time. She pushed her hair back and raised her chin. Frederika softened. It wasn’t her mother’s fault.

  They crossed the peak of the mountain, and the town lay beneath them in the hole of the valley, hard in pink light. Around it the white snow was untouched.

  “Can I go out?” she asked her mother that afternoon when they were installed in their cottage in Settler Town and the animals in their pen.

  “Yes,” her mother said. “Frederika …” There was a weakness by her mouth. “Do you know where we put the skins?” she asked.

  It wasn’t what she had been about to ask, Frederika was certain. It was hard, because with each step, they walked further away from each other. I love you, she thought. I love you and I will always love you, but … they were different.

  “Over there,” Frederika said, and pointed.

  Her mother turned away.

  The empty town was hoary: battered from winter. Snow-smoke drifted along the street. Frederika bent her head and walked toward Lapp Town. The Lapps had not yet arrived. She had hoped Antti would have been there. She wanted to talk to him. Most of all she wanted to sit on his lap, though she knew she was too old for that. She remembered what it had smelled like in his shelter: the smoke, sweat, and something else. And then she felt stranger, because the thought of sitting on his lap and smelling him stirred her. Her cheeks felt hot. She glanced at Eriksson, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  At the market square the large tree was thick and winter-furry. A few tradesmen had arrived. They opened the wooden shutters and slammed them against the walls, dull thuds, as if to try to wake up the town.

  “Should we go and see the church?” Frederika asked.

  Could Eriksson go close to it? She didn’t know. She shouldn’t have suggested it. After all, he was dead.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t,” Frederika said, and they remained standing.

  Then she felt the mirror grow hot in her pocket. At first it was pleasant: heat radiated through the wool and against her thigh. But the mirror grew hotter. She made a face, and Eriksson looked at her. She put her hand in her pocket to remove the mirror and burned her fingers. She began to tear at the buttons of her coat to rid herself of the object that now scorched her thigh. Eriksson handed her his scarf, and she used that instead to grab the mirror and throw it away from her, on the ground.

  There was the sound of someone closing a door to one of the houses across the green. In the corner of her eye she saw a man walking toward them.

  Frederika approached the mirror. It still glowed, and the snow around it was beginning to melt. There was something in it. She leaned forward and saw Dorotea sitting on somebody’s arm. No, she was wrong. This wasn’t Dorotea. This child had red hair. The little body was white. She didn’t have any clothes on. Why wouldn’t she have clothes? The child had wrapped her arms around the adult’s neck. So tight she almost lifted herself off the arm. Then whoever held her rotated, and the child turned her head. The eyes, as they met Frederika’s, were round, her mouth half open. The red, frizzy hair stood straight up around her face. It’s Elin, Frederika thought. It’s her when she was little. And then the child’s face changed again, and instead there was another child. Blonde this time, but still naked, on somebody’s arm, the same shock on her face.

  “You’ve arrived early,” a voice said.

  Frederika’s heart was pounding in her chest. Her hands felt icy cold, yet she was sweating.

  “Is something wrong?” Mr. Lundgren asked. “Frederika, you look unwell.”

  The child in the mirror had been Sara, Daniel and Anna’s youngest. Frederika’s mouth was dry. Her legs were numb. If she moved now, she’d fall down.

  “Frederika?” Mr. Lundgren put his hand on her shoulder. He came close enough for her to fee
l his breath on her face. There was spit on his bottom lip.

  “Why won’t you teach Dorotea any longer?” she whispered.

  He looked at her, those thick eyebrows raised in their perpetual question.

  “Is it because of her feet?”

  Their eyes locked.

  “There is a new letter in your windowsill,” Frederika said.

  An S for little Sara. But it wasn’t children carving their initials, as she’d thought. It was a conqueror’s list. She felt sick.

  In the teacher’s face: surprise. Then recognition.

  “Stay here, Dorotea,” Maija said. Dorotea was lying down on one of the beds. “Or do you want to come?”

  “My feet look better and better, don’t they, Mamma?” Dorotea said.

  “Yes, baby, they do.”

  “I am tired. I think I’ll stay here.”

  Maija walked outside. Twilight was turning night. She stopped outside. It had felt better when they were sharing a cottage with Daniel and Anna. But they would be living somewhere else this time. She leaned her head back toward the wall. It is me, she thought. I have driven everyone away from me.

  Dorotea. Her baby wasn’t tired. Her baby was in pain. What would they do? Maija pushed off the wall and began to walk down the street. Half of Dorotea’s toes were already gone, and still there was more darkening of the flesh. Maija couldn’t do the cutting that was needed.

  “We don’t always understand the ways of the Lord,” Jutta said beside her.

  The flash of anger was so sharp, Maija had to stop.

  “Don’t you ever, ever talk to me about God’s will,” she said.

  Enough, she thought. They needed help. The priest might be in the church. He was their priest. Surely, if she begged him, he would know what to do and be compassionate.

  The church hall was dark.

  “Hello?” she called.

  Nobody answered. She walked the stone floor toward the figure of Jesus on the cross and waited for a while beneath the yellow plaster body.

  But his head was turned to one side: Jesus studying his own wounds.