“What is happening?” a voice hollered. “Why am I here?” Tess turned from her brother and saw Väinö Järvinen—the Keeper—climbing out of the bubbling water and up the opposite bank. He must have gotten pulled here with Tess, when they both fell through the ice together. Now that he was back on the path, Väinö once again looked every bit the creepy ren-faire drifter. His body had been stretched to the jaunty dimensions of a marionette, his face pulled broad, his teeth enormous. “Why am I here?” the old man asked. He looked livid, betrayed. “I’m supposed to be done with this!”
The forest all around the spring shivered and whispered an answer back at him. “A Keeper for every wood.” Tess had never gotten a good look at it before, but she knew that voice. It was the Hiisi. “That is the order. Your woods cannot go without.”
“My wood has its damn Keeper.” Väinö pulled himself up out of the muck. One of his gum boots got stuck and came off, but he didn’t seem to notice. He hobbled up to the Hiisi and stared into the monster’s shining mouth. “He’s sitting right there.” Väinö stabbed a long, crooked finger in Axel’s direction.
“He isn’t a Keeper,” the Hiisi said. “Not yet. If he were, you wouldn’t be here.”
Väinö put his hands on his head and spun around in a circle, like a child having a tantrum. His face was a stew of disgust and rage. “But the boy cut his threads,” he shouted, his voice breaking. “He cut his threads, and you let me go!”
“Not all of them,” the Hiisi said. “A thread remains.”
Väinö turned back to Tess and Axel, his eyes bulging, desperate. “Her? But she’s dead now.”
The monster made no answer to this. Axel pulled himself out of Tess’s claws and scrambled to his feet. “Does that mean she can still go back?”
“She can,” the Hiisi said, its mouth stretching ever wider, as big around as a doorway. A few flecks of spit flew out and landed on the hot mud. It was only when they melted that Tess realized that they were gobs of snow.
“But only if she goes right now,” the Hiisi said.
“Come on.” Axel spun around and held his hand out to his sister.
“Where?” Tess said.
“Into the Hiisi,” Axel said. “I saw the Keeper do it. It’ll take us home.”
Only Tess could see what these words were doing to Väinö’s expression—her little brother had his back to the old man—but she didn’t have time to warn him. Väinö was upon Axel in an instant. He plucked the sword out of Axel’s loose grip and shoved him so hard that he fell face-first into the mud. Tess could hear the wind getting knocked out of him, just as she had all those weeks ago, at the Renaissance Faire.
A growl came tearing out of her, and she lunged at the old man, but Väinö stepped away easily. Tess was unsteady, unaccustomed to having four legs. “Touch my brother again,” she said, “and I’ll kill you.”
“Believe me, kid, I’d like nothing better,” Väinö said. And with that he turned the dull blade over in his hand and shoved it into the soft patch behind Tess’s shoulder. He had to put all of his weight into it, but the sword broke her skin and went all the way through, skewering Tess to the muddy ground. Axel screamed and threw himself at the old man. Väinö grabbed him by the collar and tossed him nearly overhand into the reeds. Then he braced his remaining gum boot on Tess’s ribs and pulled Sam’s sword back out. She lay there, twitching, struggling for breath. The pain was worse than drowning.
“I’m finished with apologies,” Väinö said, turning back to where he’d thrown Axel. “I’ve done more than sixty years on the path. I’m not doing another day.”
Tess writhed in the mud, turning her pointed face to the reeds. Axel charged out of them, screaming, swinging a heavy stick in his hands. But Väinö whacked the stick away with a light flick of Sam’s sword. He turned the blade sideways and whipped it across Axel’s face, knocking him down again. Tess’s brother lay there for a moment, weeping with fury. When he propped himself up again, she saw that he had a long, purple welt across his cheek. The top edge of it was bleeding.
“You had your chance to leave,” Väinö said, squatting down to look Axel in the eye. “You had every chance to leave. But this is what you chose, and now you have to live with it. I’m not going to let a dead girl keep me from what I deserve.”
These words, “dead girl,” seemed to ring in Tess’s ears. Because that’s what she’d become, wasn’t it? Tess had drowned in a frozen lake in Finland. Her body was probably still drifting there, far under the surface of the ice, held down by her ski boots and soaking winter clothes. She wasn’t even really here. She hadn’t even really been stabbed, had she? Tess concentrated on moving her paws, and as it turned out, they moved just fine. The black bear lifted its head and stirred.
The dead girl got up.
Väinö didn’t know what hit him. Tess bit down on the old man’s shoulder and pulled him away from Axel so hard that his other gum boot flew off and the sword went spinning out into the water. He squirmed out of his vest and scrambled away from her, surprise and horror splitting his wide face. Väinö tried fighting at first, but Tess was much stronger than him. He made to run, but she was much faster. She had sharp teeth and long claws, and he had hurt her little brother. Terrified, Väinö even tried escaping up a tree. Tess remembered that they always tell you not to climb a tree if a black bear is after you. She taught herself, and Väinö, exactly why that was by climbing right up after him.
If her brother hadn’t called her off, Tess wouldn’t have stopped until there was nothing left of Väinö Järvinen but some strips of cloth and a pile of ashes. She jumped back down into the mud with Axel. He reached out for her, grabbing tight to a thick tuft of black fur. Then, together, they stepped through the light of the Hiisi.
Axel and Tess found themselves standing in the crescent of naked birches, just beyond the Kivis’ summer cottage. The rain had stopped, but it was still streaming down the saturated trees, pouring into the wet snow below. From where they stood Tess could see out over the lake—a flat expanse of white broken only by a little island with two pine trees and the gray-blue hole in the ice. A sled track was faintly visible on the flooded ice, leading to a still rumbling snowmobile, lying improbably on its side by the Kivis’ frozen dock. Tess supposed that Jaana must have rescued her. How the old woman had pulled her out of the water, Tess couldn’t even begin to guess.
She and Axel left the birches and went down past the hillside cellar. They could hear a commotion coming from inside the sauna, where smoke was whirling out of the tin chimney. Tess wondered who might be in there, but that was silly, because of course she knew. Tess was in the sauna. She could feel the warming boards under her back as well as she could the snow crumbling beneath her broad paws. It was a strange sensation, to be in two places at once. To be alive and not quite.
Together they crossed the yard, approaching the sauna. They hadn’t yet reached it when the door slammed open, and out rushed an utterly frantic Kari, his whole face pink and slick with tears. He ran around the sauna, coming up on one leg as he turned sharply at the corner. Kari grabbed a loose armful of wood from the pile stacked beneath the eave and then disappeared back into the little pine building. Tess could hear Jaana’s voice in there—calm, crisp, making her wishes known. A moment later Kari raced out of the sauna again and down the shore, probably going to get more help. Tess was glad he hadn’t noticed them. She didn’t want Kari to see her like this.
They came around behind the sauna, and Tess lifted her enormous body up onto her hind legs so that she could peek into the high-set window at the back. Inside she saw her own blue self, damp and lifeless, all wrapped up in Jaana’s heavy down jacket. A good fire had grown to fill the woodstove. Her grandmother was leaning over her, pushing air into her mouth and compressing her chest so hard that Tess was sure it would leave bruises. Jaana appeared to be whispering something, which Tess heard perfectly, on account of the fact that her grandmother’s lips were only inches from her ear.
“You are not to go anywhere,” Jaana was saying. “You are not to go anywhere.” Tess could tell, from the thick batter of her grandma’s voice, that Jaana would be able to hold it together for exactly as long as she had to.
She fell back down on all fours and stared at her brother behind the sauna. Tess could feel it now. The sharp pressure on her bear’s heart and lungs. The need to breathe, because she wasn’t breathing.
“What do we do now?” Tess said.
“I think you go inside,” Axel answered.
Before Tess could say: “you?” they were distracted by another banging. The back door of the cottage swung open, smashing against the outer wall and shaking on its hinges. Otso flew down the ramp in his wheelchair, blankets upon blankets all stacked over his lap. But he took the turn too hard in the snow, and the chair came crashing down onto its side. Before Tess or Axel could even step toward him, Otso was up again, springing bowlegged for the sauna. Going by the expression on his face, their grandpa was taking this less well than his wife. He just managed to make it through the door before collapsing, pushing Jaana away as she reflexively turned to help him up.
“Just the door,” Otso said. “Just the door!”
And with that Jaana shut up the sauna, trapping the mounting heat. Again, Axel and Tess looked at each other in silence. Water trickled from the eaves, away from the tin chimney as it warmed up. It occurred to Tess that there was a question that she’d forgotten to ask. Not that they’d had a chance to do much talking since they’d escaped the Keeper and stepped through the Hiisi.
“Did you find Dad?” she said.
It seemed to take her brother a moment to understand the question. Perhaps he simply hadn’t expected it of her. “We didn’t,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Tess said. “That’s a shame.” It wasn’t condescension, or empty commiseration. It really was a shame that they hadn’t found Sam.
“Yeah,” Axel said. “It is.” Then more brightly: “Mom’s still looking.”
“That’s good,” Tess said. She could feel an odd sensation in the tips of her fingers, the tips of her claws. Her chest was about ready to burst.
“Shouldn’t you, maybe—” Axel sort of juked his shoulders in the direction of the sauna. “I don’t know how long you can . . .”
“Not by myself,” Tess said.
He just looked at her, confused.
“I’m not going without you,” Tess said. “If you want to stay, I’ll stay with you.”
Axel sucked his teeth and let out a relieved gulp of laughter. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “Obviously I’m coming with you.”
But it wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t obvious, even to Axel, until his sister had asked and waited for his answer.
“Great,” Tess said, beaming a wide, jagged, bear’s smile at him.
Together they walked around to the front of the sauna, and Tess used her broad head to push the door open. Axel could see his sister in there, still as clay on the wooden bench, their terrified grandparents arched over her. For a second he was afraid they’d come too late, but then a string of coughs sputtered out of her, fast and hard, emptying Tess’s lungs of lake water. The bear lingered for a moment. She looked up at Axel, her rich black fur bleeding color at the tips, her thick muscles turning slowly into air. Jaana and Otso were shouting now. They were holding Tess tight. But it wasn’t only her. Axel had come home too. Just a step, just a breath, and here they all were.
They’d arrived just in time for everything.
Alexander Yates was born in Haiti. At around the same time, a girl named Terhi Majanen was born in Finland. The two of them met in their senior year of high school in the Philippines. Naturally they got married. Now they live in Vietnam with their two cats. Before, they lived in Rwanda. Alexander studied creative writing at Syracuse University, where he also learned a number of ways to describe snow, and how not to hurt himself too badly when he crashed on his skis. He is the author of Moondogs, a novel for adults. This is his first novel for teens, and he is hard at work on a second one.
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen
authors.simonandschuster.com/Alexander-Yates
* * *
Thank you for reading this eBook.
Find out about free book giveaways, exclusive content, and amazing sweepstakes! Plus get updates on your favorite books, authors, and more when you join the Simon & Schuster Teen mailing list.
CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE
or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com/teen
* * *
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 by Alexander Yates
Jacket photographs of girl and forest © 2015 by Irene Lamprakou, Jitka Saniova/Trevillion Images; tree graphics and photograph of boy copyright © 2015 by Shutterstock Images; photograph of bear copyright © 2015 by Thinkstock Images
All quotations from the Kalevala are taken from the 1907 translation by William Forsell Kirby.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Atheneum logo is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover and Irene Metaxatos
The text for this book is set in Apollo MT.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yates, Alexander.
The winter place / Alexander Yates. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: Upon their father’s death, Tess and her younger brother, Axel, leave New York for their grandparents’ home in Finland, where they learn that a bear they both saw is the spirit of their mother, the strange man with her is the keeper of souls, and he wants Axel, already plagued with the disease that killed their mother, to replace him.
ISBN 978-1-4814-1981-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4814-1983-3 (eBook)
[1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 3. Orphans—Fiction. 4. Death—Fiction. 5. Soul—Fiction. 6. Grandparents—Fiction. 7. Finland—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.1.Y38Win 2015
[Fic]—dc23
2014045284
The Winter Place Page 29