Of course, their discovery of Axel’s aborted fire and Tess’s mention of the Keeper had changed the flavor of the situation considerably. Even now Chief Aarne was leading a hastily organized search party through the frozen woods. Jaana was out back, digging an icy trench into the yard with her pacing, updating Otso on all that had happened. Tess’s grandmother had been so collected on the drive up from Helsinki, so calm and purposeful as they searched the trees beyond the cottage. But now she’d officially lost her shit. Yesterday Tess would have put good money against the prospect of ever seeing the old lady shed a single tear. Today she’d have spent that same massive and imaginary amount just to stop them coming.
“So, would it be—was it perhaps more like this?” The young woman turned her pad around for Tess to investigate. But this one was as bad as the first two; the walleyed, toothy face leering out of the page looked absolutely nothing like the Keeper. It wasn’t that the face was too normal, but rather that it was too real. Like someone had tried to tease a true-to-life portrait out of a caricature.
“I’m sorry,” Tess said. “I don’t think I’m explaining it right.”
The woman took a moment. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, and as she scrutinized her pad, the bridge of her nose wrinkled. “Absolutely not. It’s not your fault. Why don’t we start with a fresh page?” She tore the sketch away, ready to begin again. “We can take our time.”
Tess knew, of course, that she believed no such thing. She could almost see the effort that this nice young woman was expending, trying to keep the awful possibilities out of mind. Tess had sat through enough urgently sincere safety-awareness assemblies at school to understand what her mention of the old man would do. A runaway kid was bad enough, but if you throw a strange and unidentified adult into the story, then “this is bad” very quickly graduates to “panic freaking immediately.” Tess had understood that telling Jaana about the Keeper would send her—and everybody else—into a frenzy, so she decided to leaven her honesty with more honesty. If she was going to tell the truth, then she might as well tell the complete, moronically fantastical truth. Never mind if no one believed that she’d seen the old man in New York. Never mind if they shrugged off Axel’s ghost story, just as she had. Because omitting the supernatural bits wasn’t just dishonest, but it also made the story worse. A stranger had lured her little brother into the forest—the abridged version was by far more terrifying.
“His face was wider than that,” Tess said. “I mean really, really like an egg. Almost flat on top.”
“All right,” the woman said, the arc of her elbow indicating the expansive oval that she was scrawling over the pad. “An egg. Just like an egg.”
Tess picked up the discarded portrait off the floor and stared into it. “The teeth here aren’t bad,” she said. “They were big like this, but also . . . I don’t know. Every time you looked at them, they seemed a little different.” She went quiet for a moment. How to put that upsetting sight into words? “Like they were swapping places when you blinked.”
“That’s fine,” the young woman said, perhaps deciding to suspend her skepticism. “I’m not sure how to draw that, but I’ll try.”
They were just about finished by the time Jaana came back inside, looking haggard. Her jacket hung open, and the sweat beading the tips of her close-cropped hair had frozen over, silver on silver. But her eyes were clear, and the dark patch on her fleece collar was the only evidence that she’d been crying. Jaana held a pair of cross-country skis under her arm. Tess knew they didn’t belong to her. The Kivis never came to Talvijärvi in the winter, so there was no need for them. “One of your friends took my sled,” Jaana said, “so I’m going to need these.” She seemed to be addressing the cottage at large. “And the boots that go with them,” she said. “Immediately.”
“Mrs. Kivi—” the policeman with the camera began. His tone suggested that he was about to say something ridiculous, like that Jaana should rest for a moment. Like that she should wait until they heard back from Aarne’s search party.
No need to listen to the tail end of that blather. Jaana cut him off. “Your boots, or I’ll just walk,” she said.
“I don’t think that they’ll fit you,” the policeman said haltingly.
“Blisters will be the least of my problems, then.” Jaana stared at the young man, looking like she’d actually get down and begin untying his laces if he didn’t do it himself. So he did.
“I’m going with you,” Tess said, getting up from her stool.
“Not until you’ve finished,” her grandmother said. “What you’re doing is very important.” She already had a foot in one of the policeman’s boots.
“We are finished,” Tess said.
Jaana shot a glance across the living room, and for a moment the sketch artist writhed in silence. “No, Mrs. Kivi, I don’t think we are,” the young woman said, peering down into the Keeper’s impossible mug. Perhaps she’d been trying to prove a point by drawing the old man exactly as Tess described him, cartoonish hyperbole and all. But in doing so, she’d stumbled blindly into a spot-on rendition.
“Yes, we are,” Tess said. “That’s what he looks like.”
“You ski?” Jaana said.
Tess was from Upstate New York—of course she could ski. She nodded.
Jaana returned her gaze to the sketch artist. “Can she borrow yours?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am . . .” The woman looked at her colleague, exasperated, entreating for his assistance. But the young officer was already good and railroaded, standing there in his woolen socks with pictures of Moomins dancing across them. “We aren’t done.” The sketch artist seemed to take a breath to gather her courage. “Your granddaughter is . . . I don’t know if she’s playing a game, but—”
“Excuse me?” Jaana stopped tightening the boots and took a step toward them. The overlarge things made a menacing thump on the hardwood, untied laces flopping about the sides. The sketch artist gave no answer; she just handed over her pad. Jaana stared down at the grinning portrait. Then she raised her eyes to Tess. “This is what the man you saw looked like?”
“It is,” Tess said.
“Then you’re done,” Jaana said, thrusting the pad back at the sketch artist.
“Mrs. Kivi, I’m only trying to help,” she said.
For a moment Tess’s grandmother seemed to soften. But before she could make any answer to the young woman, they were interrupted by a clattering from outside. The chief of the Talvijärvi police let himself in and began stamping his boots on the welcome mat to loosen them of snow. Aarne was a big man, with a beard that occupied a wolfish portion of his face. The exposed ridges of his cheeks were bright pink, but it was impossible to tell if this was a condition brought on by the cold, or just the way he was made. “I’m sorry. Nothing yet,” Aarne said. “They’re doubling around now, in case the boy went back to the lake.”
“What do you mean doubling around? You mean they’ve lost the trail?” Keeping her eyes on Aarne, Jaana knelt down to finish tightening her boots.
“They haven’t lost it, but it ends.” The police chief waved his hand through the air, indicating some point beyond the cottage walls. “Out past where you found that metal shirt. They—” Aarne coughed and rubbed his hands over his mouth and chin, as if to wipe the word away. “Your grandson must have turned back. But that’s a good sign. No ski marks or tread marks. Your boy can’t be far.”
“Did you check the castle?” Tess asked.
“The tracks don’t lead that far, but—” Tess was already getting up out of her stool, and Aarne held his hands out, as though to slow her. “We searched the whole thing anyway. And I left somebody there. If anybody tries to go near the place, my man will see them.”
“Good,” Jaana said, straightening up and zipping her jacket. “Now, listen, my granddaughter would like to help in the search. Please see that she gets some skis.”
Chief Aarne glanced at the bootless feet of his young officer, and Tes
s guessed that under other circumstances he might have smiled. “Of course,” he said. “I have more volunteers on their way to join the search party. I’ll ask that they bring a set in her size. Maybe until then, if it would be all right, I could talk to her a little bit?”
Jaana looked at Tess. As frenzied as her grandmother was, Tess had the impression that she would have waited as long as she had to for an answer. “It’s all right,” Tess said. “I can meet you out there later.”
“You probably won’t even have to,” Jaana said, forcing a strange, under-bitten look of calm. “It can’t be long before we find him.” Optimism sounded about as natural in her mouth as Japanese. She stepped to the door, pausing for a final moment on the threshold.
“It can’t be long at all.”
It was a good thing that her brother had left such clear evidence of his escape to Talvijärvi, because had the search for Axel been based on Tess’s story alone, then she had no doubt it would have been called off before dark. Nobody said so to her face, but they all plainly believed that she was lying. The people Tess spoke to for the rest of the morning differed only in how they interpreted her motives. A few of them clearly assumed that she was doing it intentionally, either because she had some kind of secret to hide, or because she was simply a profoundly shitty kid. But this was a minority—most seemed to think that she just couldn’t help herself. That she was so addled by the trauma of a dead father and a vanished brother that she no longer knew what was true and what wasn’t. And as such, these people treated her like some kind of delicate object that might shatter if you moved it too quickly. They listened intently to her story about meeting the Keeper in Baldwin, about Saara’s ghost and the physics-defying woodland path, like cheap therapists looking for clues in her dreams. And as kind and gentle as these people were, Tess found that she actually preferred the first group. After all, their nastiness was exactly what she deserved. Because Tess was a shitty kid—at least that’s how she felt at the moment. Axel had asked for her help. He’d begged for it. And Tess had shrugged him off like he was nothing. She’d been shrugging him off for years.
Volunteers arrived as the word spread, sledding in from town and the various lakeside properties. Kalle, shaken with remorse for the role he’d played in Axel’s escape, offered up his family home as a base of operations. There Aarne handed out bright neon vests and divided the new arrivals into pairs, assigning them to different search grids in the surrounding woods. The hunt stretched farther and farther afield as the day ripened and burst. By early afternoon a team of sniffer dogs arrived from Savonlinna, and shortly thereafter the forest reverberated with the hectic chop of a rescue helicopter.
Otso and Kari left Helsinki on the evening train and caught a ride to the lake with the police. Jaana and Tess were out in the driveway when the two of them arrived, skis fastened, warming themselves with mugs of tea before heading out to join the search again. Kalle was in the frozen drive as well, handing out thermoses of hot fish soup to returning volunteers. He’d been doing it all evening. As Otso wheeled himself up to the big, bright house, he set his eyes on the young man.
“If I were younger, I would break your goddamn nose,” he said. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I am so sorry, Mr. Kivi,” It was unclear whether Kalle meant this as an apology for his own behavior, or as condolences for what had happened. Maybe both.
“How could you not have noticed that he was in your stupid pickup? How could you not have seen him in the cottage?” There was spit flecking Otso’s lip. He looked like he’d just finished up crying, or was about to start.
“I don’t know,” Kalle said. It was all he said.
Otso’s face twisted, his voice cracking awfully. He took a wheezing breath. “Well. I’m upset. Do forgive me.”
There was a moment of silence. Jaana broke it by pressing her weight sidelong into her back ski and gliding over the packed snow to her husband. “Ukko,” she said, putting her hands on his face, fingers lost in the dense bracken of his beard.
“Rakas.” Otso looked up at her and blinked away some tears. He took her fingers from his cheeks and held them in his own shaking hands. Tess suddenly felt a strong compulsion to look away. There was something about this modest display that was unfathomably, almost terrifyingly intimate. All her grandparents had done was hold hands and trade pet names, not more than four syllables in total. But these were as much real names as pet names, the secret identities that Jaana and Otso would never share with anybody else for the rest of their lives. And beyond.
“You’re heading out again?” Otso said, his voice still quavering.
“We’re about to.” Jaana brought the bundle of their hands up to her lips, exhaling over them. Warming them. “They’ve given everybody flashlights. And with the snow and the stars, it’s bright enough.”
“I wish I could come,” he said.
“I know you do,” Jaana said. Tess knew it too. Her grandfather would have gone right into the woods, plowing his chair through the snow, if only Jaana and the police would allow it.
“And what about you? Are you warm enough?” Otso let go his wife’s hands and beckoned Tess over.
“I’m all right,” Tess said, approaching with a single push on her outturned ski, as her grandmother had.
“We’ll be fine,” Jaana said. “She’s an excellent skier. You should go inside. Kalle has a good fire going.”
“I love you,” Otso said. He was still winning the fight against the tears that so clearly wanted to jump out of his face, but just barely.
“We’re going to find him,” Tess said.
“Of course you are,” Otso said. Before Tess could react, he’d taken hold of her wrist and pulled her close, planting a light, whisker-bristling kiss on her cheek. It was the first time he’d done this. He smelled like an old man, but different from Grandpa Paul, the only other old man she knew. Otso released her wrist and allowed himself to be wheeled to the front door. There Kalle and Kari helped him out of his chair and carried him up the steps and inside.
Jaana and Tess lingered for a moment, light from the Hannula house spilling out over the plowed drive. The stars were bright, and the woods flickered distantly with flashlights from the search parties. Then, without a word, Jaana pushed off with her poles, and together they sailed into the forest.
17
How They Lost Her
A cold snap set in overnight, seeming to freeze everything into place, even the breeze. The previous afternoon had been just warm enough to raise a sweat upon the new snow, melt that had since hardened into a glittering skin of ice. Bluish with reflected starlight, the ice rolled over the forest floor, bunching up around tree trunks like gathered bedding, shattering beneath the gliding press of Tess’s and Jaana’s skis. Her grandmother took the lead, carving out slick troughs for Tess to follow. The two moved at a good pace, tucking their knees for speed downhill, hardly a stroke wasted between them. Often they would stop to shine their flashlights about the forest, calling out Axel’s name. Sometimes the woods would give them an answer: the shrill complaint of a red squirrel, the thumping wing beat of a tawny owl, even the alarmed braying of startled moose. But never Axel calling back. It had been two days since Tess’s brother had slipped away from her in Helsinki. Nearly twenty-four hours since Axel had been swallowed up by the forest.
Tess and Jaana skied from the spruce wood to the reedy lakeshore. They slid beneath the star-cast shadow of Erikinlinna, where they encountered two more neon-vested members of the search party. Chief Aarne had set up a constant guard at the tumbledown castle, complete with chemical warmers and winter survival gear, just in case Axel did eventually try to make his way back there. Aarne had done the same thing at the Kivis’ cottage and at all the vacant properties along the lake. The men were having an early breakfast when Tess and Jaana passed, taking shelter in the covered picnic area. Coffee steamed in their wooden mugs, and one of them was clutching a little loaf of rye in his bare hands, thawing it out. Right b
ehind them was the display on Talvijärvi’s famous ghost, including the laminated picture of Väinö and Aino and their ruined-looking son—the last family that the Keeper had helped to destroy.
“Anything?” Jaana called, hardly slowing on her skis. Given the grim demeanor of the men, she needn’t have asked. They shook their heads, and she and Tess pressed on.
From the castle they turned east, swinging up along the far shore. It was more than a ten-mile circuit around the lake, and Tess’s legs were gummy with the effort. This was her twelfth hour on these skis, not counting a forty-minute nap back at the Hannula place. Perspiration drenched the insides of her jacket and saturated her scarf, crystalizing wherever it came into contact with the air. In the moments when they stopped to holler Axel’s name and shine their lights overhand into the trees, the chill reached almost to her bones. Jaana had said that it was much too early in the season for it to be this cold. The lake shouldn’t even have been frozen over yet, but already the ice was thick enough that volunteers had begun to take shortcuts over the shallows. If they stayed really quiet, they could even hear the trees freezing. The sap in their veins popped and groaned as it expanded—a conversation that reverberated through the forest.
Tess and Jaana came to a patch of cleared land, stumps dotting the ground like low-set tables, and decided to stop for a breather. Jaana removed her skis and used one to clear the crusted powder from a large stump, giving them a place to sit. It was only after they stopped moving that Tess realized how hard her grandmother was panting—Jaana’s face was flushed, almost purple in the dark morning, her mouth a jagged vent of steam. Neither of them had slept more than a couple of hours since Axel had first disappeared, and it was starting to show. Tess sat beside Jaana and caught her breath as well. They were on the north side of the lake, opposite the distant, shimmering windows of the Hannula place. The house hung like a pendant in a chain of lights strung all along the far shores—flashlights from the search parties.
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