“Do you think he heard us coming?” Kari said. He had only just caught up with her and had to lean against a tree, huffing for breath.
“Maybe,” Tess said, looking frantically into the woods. The snow out there was ribbed with ski tracks, which meant that the search parties had been back and forth over the past few days. But how the hell had the Keeper escaped notice, right under their noses like this? And how had he slipped away the very moment that Tess found his camp? The Keeper must have departed in a hurry, because he’d left his walking stick leaning against the brickwork of the chimney. His pipe was there, too, sitting neatly atop the crumbling mantel of the naked fireplace. Tess even noticed one of his stupid gum boots jutting out from the other garbage under the tarp, and the sight of it caused her frustration to mount even faster. She didn’t know if tears were coming, or a scream, or both. Tess yanked off her gloves and stuck her fingers into the burningly cold snow.
“I think we should go back and tell Aarne,” Kari said, still struggling for air. “We wouldn’t have to say anything about all the Väinö stuff. This would be enough.” He pointed down at the fire and the abandoned meal. “Aarne and the police can search this whole side of the lake.”
“This camp has been here for days,” Tess said. “They must have seen it and gone right past him.” She went over to the chimney and picked up the Keeper’s walking stick. It was heavier than she would have thought—solid and old. She picked up his pipe, too, finding the bowl warm to the touch. The tobacco inside was still crackling. The Keeper couldn’t have lit it more than a few minutes ago. Would that have been enough time for him to disappear into the forest? Tess turned in a full circle, peering out into the open woodland. Then she set her eyes again on the gum boot. The top half of it disappeared under the tarp. And she realized, all at once, that the boot wasn’t empty.
Kari was still talking. “I don’t know who this person is,” he said, “but if Aarne can find him . . . if the police can talk to him . . .” Kari looked desperate. “It’s the best chance we have. We’ve got to try.”
“You’re right,” Tess said, trying to keep her voice from giving anything away. She set the pipe back down on the fireplace and took a step toward the tarp. “We should go back and get them.” She took another step. Slowly, she lifted the Keeper’s walking stick into the air, holding it high above her head. Kari seemed like he was about to ask what she was doing, but then his eyes went to the protruding gum boot, and he realized as well. Kari straightened himself up and clenched his hands into fists. Everything went still, even the smoke curling through the air.
Tess aimed for a spot on the tarp about a foot and a half above the boot and brought the walking stick down as hard as she could. The tarp exploded in a scramble of arms and legs, and the Keeper howled in agony. He shot up to his feet in the snow and fell right back down again. The old man’s eyes were watering, his face pink with pain. She’d gotten him right in the knee.
“That. Wasn’t. Necessary.” The Keeper gasped each word through his clenched teeth. He looked different from the way Tess remembered him. The old man had lost his ridiculous hat and traded in his duster for one of the neon vests that had been handed out to all the volunteers—he must have been posing as a member of the search party, which was why no one had thought anything of his camp. But it was more than just his outfit that had changed. The Keeper’s entire bearing seemed somehow shrunken, and real. His neck wasn’t quite so long, nor his head so broad as it used to be. His clenched teeth looked yellow, and old, and entirely ordinary. The Keeper’s attitude, on the other hand, appeared very much the same. His face relaxed as the pain subsided. The corners of his lips pinched up into a smile, propping up his collapsing cheeks. “It’s nice to see you, too.”
“Where’s my brother?” Tess pitched the words at the old man. She held the walking stick high, ready to hit him again.
“I don’t know much more than you do,” the Keeper said. “He’s on the path. On his way to Florida to look for his father. Beyond that, I couldn’t say.” He braced his hands in the snow and lifted himself up into a standing position.
“Hey!” Kari had been at the edge of the campsite this whole time, frozen in shock. But now he charged up next to Tess, his fists held out awkwardly in front of him. He looked about ready to throw himself on the old man.
“Easy there, humpty.” The Keeper held his arms up in a gesture of surrender. He was absolutely drenched—Tess could see that now. His sopping pants stuck to him like skin on a plucked chicken. She also noticed that he was holding a long white feather in his mangled left hand. A swan’s feather, mussed and ratty with the rain. “I’m not going to hurt anybody,” the Keeper said. “I was only trying to . . .” He took a hobbling step over to the fireplace and cried out in pain. “You really did a number on me. Would either of you mind passing me my pipe before it burns out?”
Tess shot a quick glance at the smoking pipe sitting atop the fireplace. Then she swung the walking stick like a bat and whacked it off the brickwork. The pipe snapped in two, and the pieces spun off into the woods. The Keeper watched them go. “God,” he said, “you’re just like your mother.”
“Kari,” Tess said. “I need you to go back to your house. Get my grandmother, or Aarne, or anyone else you can find.”
“No way,” Kari said. He was still holding his fists out in front of him. The kid must have never been in a fight—it looked like he was trying to drive an invisible car. “I’m not going to leave you alone with him.”
“You have to,” Tess said. “They won’t know how to get here, otherwise. It’ll be fine. I can take care of myself until you get back.”
Kari glanced from the Keeper to Tess. “What if he runs away?”
The old man limped over to the campfire and snatched up his little bottle of schnapps before Tess could shatter that as well. He sucked some down like it was medicine. “I’m hardly running anywhere,” he said.
“I’ll break his leg if he does,” Tess said. She really believed she’d do it, too.
“Hear that?” the Keeper said. “I’m in good hands.”
Kari looked agonized. He glanced at the far shore of the lake, his family’s summer home just a blip against the trees. “I’ll go as fast as I can,” he said. “Don’t let him get too close to you.” And with that he turned and sprinted back through the snow, scrambling up the sloping granite. They both watched him go, and the moment Kari disappeared over the rise, the Keeper’s demeanor began to change. His shellacked, self-satisfied grin faded. He suddenly looked rumpled, and old, and tremendously sad.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said, his voice soft. He seemed unable or unwilling to look her in the face. “But I’m glad to. I mean it. I’ve been searching for you, you know.”
“Not very hard,” Tess said.
“I got close a few times,” the Keeper said. “That little drawing you had them make didn’t have me too worried. As you can see, I’m not my handsome old self. I don’t think anyone would look at that picture and then look at me and think: That’s the guy! But a few people saw me in person the last time I was here. They heard my voice. And every time I tried to get to you, one of them would be out by the house. So I’ve been hiding out here, making like a concerned neighbor. I’ve been waiting for them all to give up so I could talk to you. I figured I owed you that much.”
“Well, here I am,” Tess said. “Talk.”
“Yes. Here you are.” The Keeper appeared to marvel at this for a moment. “How did you find me, anyway?”
“Your son helped us,” Tess said. Just the mention of Pyry seemed to do more to the Keeper than the strike with the walking stick had—for a second she thought he was about to cry. Tess was so furious with the old man that she couldn’t help but twist the knife. “I bet you didn’t even know that he was still alive.”
“Oh, I did,” the Keeper said. “If Pyry had come home to my woods, I’d have known. I used to look forward to the day—it would have given me a chance to
explain myself to him. But waiting for my son to die wasn’t a good enough reason for me to stick around. And I’ll see him again eventually.” He wrapped his skinny arms around his body, and a shudder ran all the way through him. “You know, I’d forgotten what it felt like to be so cold.” He tried to shift his weight onto his bad leg and winced. “And pain,” he said. “I didn’t remember it could hurt so much.” The Keeper took another long pull on his schnapps, and it seemed to lubricate his joints. He tried again to move his knee.
“I owe you an apology,” he said. “I know that. I do.”
“You owe me a lot more than an apology,” Tess said. “You need to take me to my brother.”
“I can’t do that,” the Keeper said.
“Yes, you can,” she said. “If you brought him there, you can bring me.”
“Not anymore. I couldn’t find the path again even if I wanted to. And besides . . .” The old man looked right at her, making eye contact for the first time since Kari left. Tess could see now that he really was crying. “I don’t want to. An apology is all you’re getting. But it’s real. I mean it. If there had been any other way off the path, I would have taken it years ago. But no wood can be without a Keeper. The only way the Hiisi would let me leave was if I could find a new one. Your brother was the best chance I’d had in years.”
“So you made him take your place,” she said.
“I didn’t make Axel do anything.” Even through his tears, the Keeper looked reproachful at this suggestion. “That’s not even possible. The only way to stay on the path is to want it with everything you have. To believe that there’s no place else in the world that you can possibly be. That’s how I felt after Aino died.” He took his eyes off Tess and looked out through the trees, across the shore, at the sodden little island. When he spoke again his voice had gone brittle. “I would have given up everything to see her again—to tell her how sorry I was. I did give up everything. Your brother isn’t any different. He feels the same way I used to.”
“Our dad just died!” Tess hollered at the old man. “Of course Axel feels the same!” She was almost surprised by how loud this all came out. And by the fact that she was crying now too. Because Sam was dead. She loved him so, so much, and he was gone. Now her brother was gone too. This wasn’t the way she’d expected her meeting with the Keeper to go—the two of them weeping at each other. “I felt like there was nothing left for me, too. But I don’t anymore. That’s the point. Feelings can change. People can heal.”
“That they can.” The Keeper pinched a neon corner of his vest and rubbed it over his face. “Listen,” he said. “I’m not going to lie to you. It isn’t a good life on the path, as a Keeper. It isn’t even a life. But your brother will come out when he’s good and ready. I promise you.”
“You mean he’ll have to trick someone into taking his place,” Tess said.
All the Keeper could do was shrug. “Kagg did. I did. He will too. There’s no shortage of mourners in this awful world. Plenty of them will choose to do much worse to themselves than live in their own grief for a few decades.” He took another long pull on his schnapps and stared down at the feather still clutched in his hand. “With any luck he’ll figure it out sooner than I did. A lot sooner.”
“That’s not good enough,” Tess said.
“I’m sorry,” the Keeper said, “but it is for me. And it’s all you’re getting.” With that the old man turned away from her and began limping toward the lake.
“Stop,” she said.
“Stop me,” he said, without looking back. The Keeper had called her bluff. He stepped gingerly over the rocky shore and then made his way out across the ice, heading in the direction of the pine island.
Tess caught up with him, the collected rain splashing away from her boots. It had gotten deep enough now that they both appeared to be walking on water. The Keeper still had the worn swan’s feather clutched in his hand, and he studied it as he walked. It was very slow going, with that limp.
“You should know that Aino saw what I was doing,” he finally said. “She saw and tried to stop it. She was always better than I was.”
“It isn’t very hard,” Tess said.
“That it isn’t,” the old man said. He tightened his grip, bending the shaft of the feather in half. He dropped it in their wake, and it floated away. Then he took one more swig of his schnapps before pitching the bottle out over the lake as well. It splashed into the water, slid along the ice beneath it, and lay there gulping rain.
Tess began to hear something in the distance—the rising growl of a snowmobile. The Keeper heard it too. He stopped limping and cocked his ear into the rain. Tess scanned the southern shore and saw that it was her grandmother and Kari, come to get her. This was the second time in a week that Jaana had rushed to a grandchild’s rescue. God, what they’d put her through. What they were still putting her through.
“That kid moves fast,” the Keeper said. Then he turned to face Tess again. “It’s time for you to go,” he said.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Tess grabbed at one of the old man’s soggy sleeves, but he pulled away. The fabric stretched down over his hand before slipping wetly out of her fingers.
“I’m not kidding,” he said, glancing from the shore to the pine island. It seemed like he was gauging the distance. “I’m going to do this whether you’re here or not.”
For a brief and stupid moment, Tess wondered: Do what? But then she realized where they were—roughly the middle of the lake. It was early in the season, and the ice out here was still forming. Still thin. The Keeper shuffled forward a few paces, his eyes locked on the island. The last thing his wife had seen before she died.
“You should do what your brother couldn’t and give it up,” he said. “It’s our job to love the dead. Not the other way around.”
He took a deep breath, as though to give Tess one last chance to back away. Then he bent his good leg and jumped. Even through the sound of the rain, the approaching snowmobile, and the splash of his landing feet on the inundated ice, Tess could hear a horrible, rippling crack. The Keeper jumped again. It was louder this time, and more of a groan, like a voice coming from deep underwater. Tess had very little time to make up her mind. The lakeshore and the island were just about the same distance away, in opposite directions. The only difference was that if she ran back to shore, she’d run alone. And any chance she had of finding her brother would be as good as drowned.
Tess took a lunging step past the Keeper, grabbing him by the wrist as she went by, yanking him toward the pine island. But the old man’s arm might as well have been a zipper, because as she pulled, the lake opened up beneath them. She felt the sudden vertigo of loose footing, and then she fell cleanly into a pocket of splashing ice. It felt, at first, like a sharp punch to the head. Like lots of punches. Tess tried to kick to the surface, but her ski boots may as well have been made of cement. Her clothes drank in the lake and dragged her under. The cold down there was so intense it wasn’t even cold anymore. It wasn’t anything. Tess could just as well have been adrift in space as where she actually was—under the ice, in a lake, in Finland.
21
The Boils
Back in Talvijärvi, neither Axel nor his mother had mourned the Keeper’s passing. There wasn’t time, and there didn’t even seem to be a point. The old man had given himself willingly, even happily, to the Hiisi’s glittering jaws. They’d waited a few moments in the birches behind the cottage, to see if he might reappear. But the Keeper was gone. The Hiisi was gone too. The flashlights on the shore drew closer, and Axel began to hear the unmistakable sound of his grandfather calling out his name, followed by the shouts of Tess and Jaana. They couldn’t wait any longer. Axel and his mother fled into the forest together, the voices of their family lost under the weight of the congregating trees.
But that was days and days ago—how many Axel couldn’t quite count. The search for the Boils brought him and Saara ever deeper into the woods of the world. The forest ar
ound them was all at once damp with sunlight and choking on night, bound up tightly in fog and vines and snow. It was exactly as the Keeper had said it would be—an impossible, ever-changing woodland. Axel and his mother passed through the shifting groves, through jungles and swamps and ice-crusted pines. And it wasn’t only the forest all around them that was changing. The farther Axel went, the more he could feel it in himself as well.
He first noticed that something was different just a few hours after they left Talvijärvi. Saara had caught a whiff of food, and they stepped off the path and into what appeared to be a little fishing camp. A few men were down at the edge of a mountain stream, casting their lines into the water. They’d left some trout to smoke on an untended grill, and Saara went to work, snapping the fish down whole. Axel took one of the trout in his hands and sniffed it. It had been nicely cleaned and deboned, and the smoked meat was the color of butterscotch. But even though he hadn’t eaten in ages, the thought of putting the fish in his mouth made Axel a little nauseous. He wasn’t the slightest bit hungry, and wouldn’t be again. He remembered that in all the time he’d spent with the Keeper, he’d never seen the old man eat. Apparently, Axel didn’t have to anymore either.
But it was more than just his appetite. Axel was transforming in other, stranger ways. These changes revealed themselves slowly, becoming more pronounced with every step. It wasn’t until Axel tripped over a log and tumbled into a camel-thorn shrub that he realized how little pain had come to bother him. Axel lifted himself up and picked the barbs from his clothes. He noticed that one of the thorns had passed right through his palm and was sticking out on the other side. He pulled on it, and the thorn slid out without even a drop of blood. He hadn’t felt a thing.
Axel had to will himself not to freak out. “You’re of the path now,” he said aloud. “You’re just becoming who you were always meant to be.”
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