by Matt Haig
Joel waited for Anders to laugh too, but there was a long silence.
‘I’ve been watching you all day. You’re good with an axe . . .’ Anders trailed off, seeing that Nikolas was sitting up in bed with wide open eyes listening to the most exciting conversation he’d ever heard. ‘Maybe we should talk in private.’
Joel nodded so hard the white bobble on his hat fell forward. ‘Nikolas, could you go in the other room?’
‘But, Papa, we don’t have another room.’
His father sighed. ‘Oh yes. You’re right . . . Well,’ he said to his giant guest, ‘maybe we should go outside. It’s quite a mild summer night. You can borrow my hat if you want.’
Anders laughed loud and long. ‘I think I’ll survive without it!’
And so the men went outside and Nikolas went to bed, straining to hear what they said. He listened to the voices murmuring and he could just pick out the odd word.
‘. . . men . . . king . . . rubles . . . Turku . . . long . . . mountain . . . weapons . . . distance . . . money . . . money . . .’ Money was mentioned a few times. But then he heard a word that made him sit up in bed. A magical word. Maybe the most magical word of all. ‘Elves.’
Nikolas saw Miika scuttling along the edge of the floor. He stood up on his back legs, stared at Nikolas, and looked ready to have a conversation. Well, he looked as ready as a mouse ever looks to have a conversation. Which wasn’t much.
‘Cheese,’ said the mouse, in mouse language.
‘I’ve got a very bad feeling about all this, Miika.’
Miika looked up at the window, and Nikolas thought his tiny dark eyes seemed filled with worry, and that his nose was twitching nervously.
‘And if I can’t have cheese I’ll eat this stinky old vegetable creature instead.’
Miika turned to the turnip-doll lying by Nikolas’s bed, and took a bite.
‘Hey, that was a Christmas present!’ said Nikolas.
‘I’m a mouse. Christmas means nothing to me.’
‘Hey!’ said Nikolas again, but it was hard to be cross with a mouse, so he let Miika carry on, nibbling the turnip-doll’s ear off.
The men stayed outside the window for a long time, talking distant words and drinking cloudberry wine, as Nikolas lay there, worried, in the dark, with a bad feeling in his stomach.
Miika also had a bad feeling in his stomach. But that was what you get from eating raw turnip.
‘Good night, Miika.’
‘I wish it had been cheese,’ said Miika.
And Nikolas lay there, with a horrible thought. The thought was this: Something Bad Is Going To Happen.
And he was right.
It was.
The Sleigh (and Other Bad News)
Listen, son, I have something I must tell you,’ said his father, as they ate stale rye bread for breakfast. This was Nikolas’s second favourite breakfast (right after un-stale rye bread).
‘What is it, Papa? What did Anders want to ask you?’
Joel took a deep breath, as if the next sentence was something he had to swim through. ‘I’ve been offered a job,’ he said. ‘It’s a lot of money. It could be the answer to everything. But . . .’
Nikolas waited, holding his breath. And then it came.
‘But I’ll have to go away.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t worry. It won’t be a long time. Only two months.’
‘Two months?’
Joel had a bit of a think. ‘Three, at the most.’
That sounded like for ever. ‘What kind of job takes three months?’
‘It’s an expedition. A group of men are heading to the Far North. They want to find Elfhelm.’
Nikolas could hardly believe what he was hearing. His mind was spinning with excitement. He had always believed in elves, but never really imagined that people could actually go and see them. Elves. Living, breathing elves. ‘The elf village?’
His father nodded. ‘The king has said there’s a reward for anyone who finds proof of the elf village. Twelve thousand rubles. Between seven men that’s over three thousand each.’
‘I don’t think it is,’ said Nikolas.
‘We’d never ever have to worry about money again!’
‘Wow! Can I come? I can spot a mushroom from a mile away even in the snow! I’ll be really, really useful.’
His father’s long leathery face looked sad. The skin under his eyes had gained another ring. His eyebrows were sliding apart like caterpillars falling out of love. Even his dirty old red hat seemed floppier and sadder than usual.
‘It’s too dangerous,’ Joel said, his breath smelling of sour cloudberries. ‘And I’m not just talking about bears . . . There will be many nights sleeping out in the cold. Finland is a large country. A hundred miles north of here, there is a village called Seipäjärvi. Beyond that, nothing but iced plains and lakes and snow-covered fields. Even the forests are frozen. And by the time you reach Lapland food – even mushrooms – will be hard to find. And then the journey gets even more difficult. Which is why no one has ever made it to the Far North.’
Tears filled Nikolas’s eyes, but he was determined not to cry. He stared at his father’s hand, and the missing half finger. ‘So how do you know you’ll make it?’
‘There are six other men. Good strong men, I am told. We have as good a chance as anyone.’ He gave his familiar crinkly-eyed smile. ‘It will be worth it. I promise you. We’ll make a lot of money on this expedition, which means we will never have to have watery mushroom soup and stale bread again.’
Nikolas knew his father was sad, and didn’t want to make him feel any worse. He knew he must be brave.
‘I’ll miss you, Papa . . . But I understand that you must go.’
‘You’re a child of the forest,’ Joel said, his voice trembling. ‘You’ve a tough spirit. But remember, you mustn’t go near danger. You must stop your curiosity. You have too much courage . . . I’ll be back by September, when the weather gets worse. And we’ll eat like the king himself!’ He held up a piece of dry rye bread in disgust. ‘Sausages and fresh buttered bread and mountains of bilberry pie!’
‘And cheese?’ wondered Miika, but no one heard.
Bilberry pie! Nikolas nearly fainted at the thought. He was so hungry that the idea of the sweet purple berries encrusted in mouth-watering pastry seemed like heaven itself. He’d once tasted a bilberry, and it had been lovely, but everyone knew that the way to make something even lovelier was to put it in a pie. But then he became sad again, and a thought occurred to him. Surely Joel – who was scared to let Nikolas out of his sight sometimes – wouldn’t be leaving him on his own.
‘Who’ll look after me?’
‘Don’t worry!’ said Joel. ‘I’ll write to my sister. She’ll keep you safe.’
Sister! Oh no. This was even worse. It was bad enough spending the whole of Christmas afternoon with Aunt Carlotta, let alone spending three whole months with her.
‘It’s all right. I can be on my own. I’m a child of the forest. I can . . .’
Now his father interrupted him. ‘No. It’s a dangerous world. And you’re still a child. We saw that yesterday. Aunt Carlotta is a lonely woman. She’s a lot older than me. She’s really an old lady now. She’s forty-two. Hardly anyone lives to be forty-two. It’ll be nice for her to have somebody to look after.’
He looked at his son for a long while before breaking the final piece of bad news. ‘Oh, and I’ll need to take your sleigh. Anders thought it would be useful. To hold our . . . supplies. And anyway, it is summer! The snow is too thin on the ground around here.’
Nikolas nodded. He could not think of an answer.
‘You still have your turnip-doll.’ Joel pointed to the sad-looking turnip with a face carved in it that was sitting by Nikolas’s bed.
‘Yes,’ said Nikolas. He supposed that as turnip-dolls go it was a very nice one.
Maybe it was the best doll made out of a rotten, stinking turnip in the whole of Finland. ‘Tha
t’s true. I still have that.’
And so, ten days later, on a cold but sunny morning, Nikolas watched his father leave.
Joel was wearing his red hat, carrying his axe on his back and dragging the wooden sleigh behind him. He headed off under a pink sky, through the tall pine trees, to meet the other men in Kristiinankaupunki.
And then, after that, the really bad things started to happen.
The Arrival of Aunt Carlotta
Even at a time when most aunts were nasty and horrible, Aunt Carlotta was particularly bad.
She was a tall grey-clothed thin woman, with white hair and a long stern face and a very tiny mouth like a full stop. Everything about her, even her voice, seemed covered in frost.
‘Now,’ she said, sternly, ‘it is important we set some rules. The first rule is that you must wake up with the sunrise.’
Nikolas gasped. This was horrible. Finland was in summer! ‘But the sun rises in the middle of the night!’
‘The second rule is that you do not answer me back. Ever. Especially about the first rule.’
Aunt Carlotta looked at Miika, who had just climbed up the table leg and was now scuttling across the table looking for crumbs. She seemed disgusted.
‘And the third rule,’ she said, ‘is no rats!’
‘He’s not a rat!’
But it was too late. She had picked Miika the mouse up by his tail and carried the struggling creature to the door, which she opened, before throwing him outside.
‘Hey! You can’t do that!’ shouted Miika, at the top of his voice. But as the top of Miika’s voice was nowhere near the bottom of most people’s voices no one heard him. She closed the door, sniffed the air and her eyes landed on the turnip-doll by Nikolas’s bed.
She picked it up. ‘And no horrible rotten vegetables either!’
‘It’s a doll. Look. It’s got a face on it!’
‘Actually, on second thoughts, I’ll keep it. Might distract me from the smell of you.’
Aunt Carlotta considered Nikolas with even more contempt than she had shown the rotten turnip. ‘I’d forgotten how much I hate children. Especially boys. I find them . . . revolting. It’s becoming as clear as the air. My ignorant nine-fingered brother has been too soft with you.’
She looked around the small one-roomed cottage. ‘Do you know why I came?’ she asked. ‘Did he tell you?’
‘To look after me.’
‘Ha! Ha! Hahahahaha!’ Her laugh flapped out of her, suddenly and scarily, like bats from a cave. It was the first and last time he would ever hear her laugh. ‘To look after you! Oh, that’s good. That’s funny. What a world you must live in, to think people just do good things for no reason! Do you really think I came here because I cared about you? No. I did not come here for a skinny, grubby childish fool. I came here for the money.’
‘The money?’
‘Yes. Your father has promised me five hundred rubles on his return. That could buy me five cottages.’
‘What would you need five cottages for?’
‘To make more money. And then more money . . .’
‘Is money all that matters?’
‘Spoken like a true grubby little pauper! Now, where do you sleep?’
‘There,’ said Nikolas, pointing first at his bed and then to the other end of the room. ‘And that’s where Papa sleeps.’
Aunt Carlotta shook her head. ‘No.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Nikolas.
‘I can’t have you in here, seeing me in my undergarments! And besides, I have a very bad back. I need both mattresses. You don’t want it to get worse, do you?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Nikolas.
‘Good. So yes, you will sleep outside.’
‘Outside?’
‘Yes. Outside. Fresh air is good for the soul. I never understand why children want to be indoors all the time these days. I know it’s nearly the nineteenth century, but still. Go on. Shoosh! It’s getting dark.’
So that night, Nikolas lay on the grass outside his house. He had taken his mother’s old winter coat to sleep under, and lay on the smoothest patch of grass he could find, between two tree stumps his father had chopped years ago, but there were always pebbles somewhere under his back. The wind blew. He watched Aunt Carlotta in the distance squat over the hole in the ground, hoisting up her petticoat to go to the toilet, and he hoped she’d fall in, then hated himself for thinking that. She went back into the warm cottage, and he shivered under a sky full of twinkling stars, as he clutched his rotten turnip for comfort. He started to think about the unfairness of the universe, and wished there was some way of making it fair again. And as he thought, Miika crept over and joined him, crawling over his arm and resting on his chest.
‘I feel sorry for Aunt Carlotta,’ he said. ‘It can’t feel nice to be that miserable. Can it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Miika.
Nikolas gazed up at the night. Even though he had nothing much to be happy about, he liked to have such sights to look at. A shooting star fell through the sky.
‘Did you see that, Miika? It means we have to make a wish.’
So Nikolas wished for a way of replacing meanness with goodness.
‘Do you believe in magic, Miika?’
‘I believe in cheese, if that counts,’ said Miika.
There was no way of Nikolas knowing for sure if the mouse did or didn’t believe in magic but, comforted by hope, Nikolas and his little rodent friend managed to fall slowly and gently asleep, as the cold breeze kept blowing, and whispering all the unknown secrets of the night.
Rumbling Stomachs and Other Nightmares
Nikolas slept outside all summer.
He spent every day – as Aunt Carlotta told him to do – looking for food, from first light until nightfall. One day he saw the bear again. The bear stood upright. But Nikolas waited. Stayed calm. Be the forest. The bear stood there, peaceful and terrifying all at once. The bear that had chased his mother towards the well. But he couldn’t hate this creature.
‘Look at me,’ said Nikolas. ‘I’m skinny as a rake. No meat on my bones.’ The bear seemed to agree, and ambled away on all fours. Was there an unluckier boy in the world? Yes, actually, there was. There was a boy called Gatu who lived in India who’d been struck by lightning while going to the toilet in a stream. Very nasty. But even so, it was a miserable joyless time for Nikolas. Aunt Carlotta was never happy with the mushrooms and herbs he managed to find. The only real comfort – apart from Miika – was in counting down the days and weeks and months until his father returned, which he did by scratching lines in the nearest pine tree to the cottage.
Two months passed. Then three.
‘Where are you?’ he’d ask, amid the trees. The only sound that came back to him was that of the wind, or a distant woodpecker.
Aunt Carlotta became nastier with the days, like vinegar getting more sour. She’d scream at him for nothing.
‘Stop that!’ shouted Aunt Carlotta one evening, as she ate the soup he had made for her. ‘Or I’ll feed you to a bear.’
‘Stop what?’
‘Those horrible noises from inside your disgusting body.’
Nikolas was confused. The only way to stop a rumbling stomach was by eating, and as with most days he’d only found enough mushrooms for Aunt Carlotta to have soup. And the ones he’d sneaked in his mouth in the forest hadn’t been enough.
But then, Aunt Carlotta smiled. A smile on her face was an unusual thing to see, like a banana in the snow. ‘All right, you can have some soup.’
‘Oh thank you, Aunt Carlotta! I’m so hungry and I love mushroom soup.’
Aunt Carlotta shook her head. ‘As you always make me soup I thought I would repay the favour. So, while you were out in the forest, I made some soup especially for you.’
Miika was looking through the window. ‘Don’t eat it!’ he squeaked, pointlessly.
Nikolas looked worried as he stared down at the murky grey-brown liquid. ‘What is it mad
e with?’ he asked.
‘Love,’ said Aunt Carlotta.
Nikolas knew she had to be joking. Aunt Carlotta couldn’t love any more than an icicle could love. That’s a bit unfair to icicles. Icicles melt. Aunt Carlotta was as frozen as a frozen thing that was very frozen and would never melt.
‘Go on then. Eat it.’
It was the most disgusting thing he had ever tasted. It was like eating mud and dirt and puddle water. But he could feel Aunt Carlotta watching him, so he kept eating.
Aunt Carlotta’s cold grey eyes made Nikolas feel a hundred times smaller than he was as she said for what seemed like the hundredth time, ‘Your father is foolish.’
Nikolas didn’t answer her back. He just kept sipping the foul soup, feeling more and more sick.
But Aunt Carlotta wasn’t going to leave it there. ‘Everybody knows there are no such things as elves,’ she said, spitting as she spoke. ‘Your father is a stupid ignorant child to believe such things. I’d be very surprised if he is still alive. No one has ever been to the Far North and returned to tell the tale. I was so stupid, coming here, waiting for five hundred rubles that will never arrive.’
‘You can always go home.’
‘Oh no. I can’t now. It’s October. The weather has turned. I can’t walk ten miles in this weather. I’m here all winter now. For Christmas. Not that Christmas means anything to me. It’s a hateful time of year.’
This was just too much.
‘Christmas is great,’ Nikolas said. ‘I love Christmas, and don’t even care that it clashes with my birthday.’ He was going to say ‘The only thing that spoils Christmas is you’ but he thought better of it.
Aunt Carlotta seemed genuinely confused. ‘How can you, a grubby dirty motherless boy, love Christmas? If you were a rich merchant’s son in Turku or Helsinki then I could understand it, but my brother has always been too poor to buy you a present!’