“But you get to see things,” she’d argue. “I don’t understand why I can’t go. It’s not fair.”
Then he’d smile and laugh like always. “Silly Milla.”
Milla knew better than to make such arguments to her father and mother. Pappa would ignore her. Mamma would look frightened. Of what, Milla could never figure out. But her mother’s fear was always there, always hanging between Milla and Gitta like an impenetrable fog. It lifted when Niklas was at home. Gitta’s face lit up then, and she laughed at Niklas’s jokes and she swept his hair from his forehead and kissed him there. Niklas wrapped his arms around Gitta’s waist, even when she was cooking, and she let him. If Milla had done that, Gitta would have shooed her off and told her not to hang on her so. When Gitta spoke to Milla at all, it was a word of caution. Don’t do that. Be careful there. Watch you don’t get dirty. Lower your voice. Brush your hair. Put on a clean apron. Milla couldn’t remember a time when it wasn’t that way, and so it didn’t occur to her any longer to try to soften her mother toward her. Nor did it occur to Milla to blame Niklas. After all, she loved Niklas best, too. It was impossible not to.
That loving was from a distance these days—ever since Niklas had turned thirteen, five years ago, and Pappa had said he was man enough to learn how to run things. Running things meant packing the wagon, and saddling a horse and driving cows and goats to the village—the village where Milla wasn’t allowed to go.
When she entered the kitchen, Milla felt Gitta’s eyes on her, scanning her, making sure her hair was smooth, her apron tied, and her fingernails clean of grime before she set the bread in front of Pappa and took her place at the breakfast table. Milla thought it hardly mattered what she looked like, because she couldn’t remember the last time her father had really noticed her. Jakob would have noticed if the bread wasn’t fresh, or if the meal wasn’t hot. But if all was in order, if the meal was served at the right time and his fork was to the left of his plate, Jakob would see nothing else. Milla might have traded places with a goat, she thought to herself. As long as the goat was well-behaved, Pappa would be none the wiser. Milla imagined herself as a goat, placing the big wooden bread board in front of her father with her teeth instead of her hands, and she laughed.
Gitta wrinkled her brow at Milla then. “What’s funny,” she said. She said it like a statement, not a question. As if she were really saying, There’s nothing funny. And we don’t laugh for no reason.
Niklas came to the rescue, as he often did. “Did you hear Trude’s rooster chased Wolf right out of the kitchen yard?” Trude and Stig were their family’s only neighbors, and Wolf was their elkhound. Stig worked for her father, and since Niklas was so often away now, either in the fields or traveling to the village, Milla spent as much time sitting and sewing with Trude as she did with Gitta. “That old rooster is more of a guard dog than Wolf is.”
At that, Gitta laughed, and that meant that Milla could, too. Because now something was funny. “That rooster is so mean,” Milla said. “Poor Wolf.”
“That dog’s no use if a rooster can run him off,” Jakob said. “I told Stig he should put Wolf down.”
“Oh, Pappa,” Milla said. “No. That’s awful.”
Jakob stopped chewing and looked at Milla with surprise, as if he’d just that moment seen she was there. “What would you know about it? And wouldn’t it be awful if a fox came and ate up all of Trude’s chicks, meanwhile Wolf’s asleep by the fire? You’re old enough to be thinking sense about these things, Milla.”
Milla felt blood rush to her cheeks. She couldn’t remember the last time her father had spoken so many words to her. The ignoring she’d grown used to, but this was far worse. She looked down at her plate. She wondered if all girls were treated this way, like something to be frightened for, or ridiculed and thought ignorant if they ever did speak, or found useless if they weren’t perfectly behaved all the time. How was she any better than Stig’s dog? She looked up at her father’s square, sun- and wind-hardened face topped by thick, sandy hair mixed with gray. She realized how rarely she looked into his opaque blue eyes. “Perhaps you should put me down, too, Pappa.”
The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, before she even knew where they were coming from.
Her father’s cheeks purpled.
“Milla.” The expression on Gitta’s face was one of horror. Like a goat really had replaced her daughter at the table. A talking goat with horns on its head and clattering teeth. Gitta’s disgust was so great she couldn’t even utter a don’t or a no or a take care. Milla watched while Gitta turned her attention from Milla’s disobedience to Jakob’s disapproval. Her mother’s most immediate job was to soothe the latter. A storm on her father’s side of the table would ruin the meal. And a ruined meal was a grave failure. “Jakob,” her mother said. “The child is softhearted. That’s all it is. You know how she is about the animals.” Gitta reached out her hand and barely grazed Jakob’s cuff with her fingertips.
Niklas was struck silent. He looked from Milla to their father, then back again. Jakob stared straight at Milla, his cheeks slowly fading to red. It was Milla’s turn now to make things right. She spoke softly. “I’m sorry, Pappa.” That word. Sorry.
Her father said nothing, but stared at her one beat longer as if he wanted her to wonder what might happen next if he had a mind for something to happen next.
After breakfast, Jakob climbed into the wagon and Gitta spoke to him softly while she handed him the food she’d packed for him and Niklas. Milla walked Niklas to his horse. Once he’d mounted it, he said, “Milla, why must you worry them so?”
Milla had to restrain herself from shouting, but instead she kept her voice low enough so only he could hear. “Worry them so? What do I do all day but try not to cause them worry? Try to be sweet and clean the way Mamma wants, and obedient and . . . and invisible the way Pappa wants. I swear to you, Niklas, I thought just this morning that Pappa wouldn’t notice if I were a goat. If I were a goat with horns and fur who sat at his table. So long as I set his plate down in front of him at the right time and the right way, it wouldn’t matter.” Milla laughed then. “Can you imagine, Niklas! I should do it. Dress up one of the goats in my apron and set it loose in the kitchen.”
Niklas looked at her in a funny way then. A way that he didn’t normally look at her. It was the way her mother always did. Like he was frightened for her—or of her. “You mustn’t talk that way, Milla.”
Milla took a step back then. “What way, Niklas? Like a bad girl?”
He shook his head. “Don’t be silly, Milla.” Then he smiled. “I’ll bring you back something from the market. Promise not to upset Mamma while I’m away.”
Then he rode off, and Milla wondered how she could avoid doing something that she had never tried to do in the first place.
Milla ate a quiet supper with her mother that evening. If it weren’t always so awkward between them, Milla might have enjoyed these nights without Pappa and Niklas. There were no men to feed or clean up after. There was so much less food to make. No clumps of soil shaken from heavy boots and trailed across the floor. There was a fire to warm their toes and the pleasing shimmer of their needles in and out of their sewing. And silence. Dreadful silence.
They might have chatted amiably about which chickens were laying and which would end up in a stew. That’s what Trude would have prattled on about if she were here. Trude had a way of using a lot of words to talk about very little, and it would have at least filled the air between them. Instead, the dark fog of Gitta’s fear hung there, thicker than ever.
Gitta paused her needle in her sewing and looked at Milla. Milla kept her eyes on her sewing, but she felt her mother’s examination like fingers on her scalp. “Milla,” Gitta said. “We’ll say our prayers together tonight.”
Milla felt a chill inside, despite the fire. She knew what was coming next. Milla set aside her sewing, and her mother reached across and took Milla’s hands in her own, then pulled her down t
o kneel across from her on the floor.
Gitta squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that it looked more like wincing than praying.
Lord, help us to stay on the path.
Lord, help us to do as we should.
Lord, help us to obey.
It was a prayer that Milla knew well, but tonight it felt different. Tonight it felt like every word her mother spoke was meant for her, either to protect her or to punish her. It was blasphemous to think so, but Milla doubted there was much of a difference between the two.
Lord, we have spread the salt.
Lord, we have locked the doors.
Lord, let us not answer the knock of the stranger.
The knock of the stranger. For as long as Milla could remember, this line in the prayer had given her a secret thrill. There’d never been a knock of a stranger on their door. There had only ever been her mother and father and Niklas, and Stig and Trude just a shout away. Faces she knew so well she would have noticed if a freckle were misplaced.
Milla wanted a stranger to knock on the door. She begged for one. Anything to break the lonely sameness of her days.
Lord, protect us from demons.
Lord, protect us from demons.
Lord, protect us from demons.
Three times. Three times always. Three times was supposed to be the charm. Milla had often wondered what would happen if she said it only twice.
“Amen,” Gitta said. Then she opened her eyes and looked hard at Milla, so hard that Milla feared she’d said aloud what she thought she’d only been thinking.
The heat from the fire licked Milla’s right cheek, and a cold draft from under the door kissed her left. “Amen,” she said.
Gitta held her grip on Milla’s hands, and stared into Milla’s eyes as if looking for something. Milla resisted the impulse to break her gaze and instead held steady, steady, steady. Soon, Milla thought to herself, soon she’d be free to go to her bed, and then what happened in the space between her ears was her own business and no one else’s.
Finally her mother released her, and Milla rose to her feet.
Gitta stayed where she was, kneeling on the floor. As she turned to the stairs to go up to bed, Milla noticed a break in the stream of salt in front of the door. A small gap—but there. If Gitta noticed it, she’d want Milla to do something about it. Milla looked back at her mother and made a decision.
“Goodnight, Mamma,” she said.
Milla went to bed then, and in the moments before sleep took her, she thought about a stranger knocking on their door. And then she thought about opening it.
3
SOMETHING WAS HAPPENING. THAT WAS what Milla said to herself over and over that day. Something is happening.
Something was happening. Soon.
Soon her days wouldn’t be the same. Soon there would be a new face at the table—at least sometimes. A new face to discover, and a new voice to say new things. Things that might surprise her.
Milla was so excited she spilled the salt. Gitta was too distracted to admonish her for it.
Someone was coming. A girl. A girl just a year older than Milla. Her name was Iris.
Gitta told Milla the news right after Niklas and Jakob had returned from their last trip to the village. The girl was Stig and Trude’s granddaughter, the only child of their daughter and son-in-law who lived in the village. And she was coming to live with Stig and Trude now.
When Milla asked Gitta why Iris was coming, Gitta hesitated at first. Then she sighed. Her face became soft, and Milla couldn’t tell if it was a happy or a sad softness. Then she thought it was both. “It will soon be time for our Niklas to think about marrying. And Iris is a good girl. Or so Stig and Trude say. So for the next few years she and Niklas will get to know each other, and if they like each other, well, they’ll marry. And we’ll build them a house here. And things will go on.”
Niklas . . . marry? Milla turned the words over in her head. It wasn’t that the thought had never occurred to her, but it had seemed so impossibly far away that either of them would have to think about it. And Niklas was her brother, a boy. A boy with a man’s shoulders, but still—a boy. “Does Niklas know?”
“That Iris is coming? Of course.”
“No, does he know that he’s to marry her?”
Gitta looked away from Milla, through the window and at the green of the fields that rolled away from their home, and the darker green of the forest that bordered it. That view through the window was all Milla had ever known. She wondered how her mother could be content with it. With everything always going on and on, the same. She wondered what a girl like Iris—a girl raised in the village!—would think of so much quiet. So much sameness. Then she went back to thinking about her brother marrying. Marrying!
“He knows it’s how we’re thinking of it,” Gitta said. “And he knows he can say no if he doesn’t like her. But they’ve met, and he seems happy enough about it.”
“They’ve met?” Milla couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice. Or the hurt. How long had Niklas known, and he hadn’t told her? Once again she felt filled with resentment that his life was so much bigger than her own. His life occupied a whole other world that she hadn’t even been allowed to see. And then there was the hurt that her brother, to whom she’d once been so close, now felt so far away. That he hadn’t told her something so important about himself. Not to mention, he knew how lonely she was. How much she craved companionship. How could he not have told her that her wish was being granted?
Instead of ringing the bell for dinner, Milla decided to go find Niklas in the field. It was spring, and the sun was warm on her head, but the air was still chilly on her skin, so she wrapped a wool shawl around her shoulders and walked at a clip through the fields to where she knew her brother would be. She called to him the moment she saw him. He looked up, waved, and walked toward her.
When he was not less than thirty feet away, Milla said, “Just when were you planning to tell me that you’re to marry?”
He walked closer before he answered her. “Mamma told you?”
“No, Wolf did. That dog talks to me more than you do.”
Niklas laughed. Kept smiling. “Don’t tell Pappa you’re talking to that dog. He considers him a bad influence.”
Milla kept her mouth in a straight line. Her eyebrows, too. Niklas would not get her to smile. He would not. “Niklas.”
He sighed. “I didn’t know what to say.”
“How about, ‘Milla, a girl named Iris is coming to live with Stig and Trude, and Mamma and Pappa think I should marry her in a few years.’ ”
“Well, right. I suppose I could have said that. But honestly, Milla, it’s all so strange. Imagine how I feel. I’ve seen the girl at the market with her mother and father, but I haven’t spoken to her more than twice. She seems nice enough, and I suppose I’m happy about it. You’re not the only one who gets lonely, you know.”
Milla looked at her tall, handsome brother. For the last five years she’d imagined him having friends in the village, charming everyone with his smile the way he charmed their mother. It hadn’t occurred to her that he got lonely. She only thought about how lonely she was, and how much more exciting his life seemed.
But still. Something was wrong. There was something her brother wasn’t telling her. She could see it in his eyes, that there was a closed door in there, and he was trying to distract her away from it.
“I’m mad at you,” Milla said. “You should have told me.”
“You’re always mad, Milla. And you have less to be mad about than you think.”
Milla raised an eyebrow. That closed door had just opened a crack. “What do you mean,” she said.
The tiniest ripple of consternation crossed Niklas’s forehead, then dissolved into a smile. “Nothing, Milla. I just mean you don’t know how easy you’ve got it.” He took one of her hands in his own and turned it over. Then he took her other hand, held one of her fingers between two of his own and ran it over the pads of her
open palm. “So soft,” he said.
“My hands aren’t soft,” she said, pulling her hands away from him. “I work plenty. Who do you think helped Mamma make the dinner you’re about to eat? Who do you think is going to wash the shirt you’re wearing?” She rubbed lard into her hands at night, just to soothe the painful, bloody cracks that burned every time she dipped them into soapy water.
Niklas held up his own hands, palms facing her. She touched them. The calluses were as thick and hard as wood chips.
“Fine,” she said. She turned away from him and walked toward home. He chased after her and threw an arm over her shoulder.
“Silly Milla. Let’s not fight.”
She crossed her arms over her chest so her elbows stuck out hard and sharp.
“Don’t you want to know what Iris is like?”
“No,” Milla said.
“Oh really?” Niklas said. “You’re not curious? You’d cover your ears and run away if I tried to tell you?” He smiled at her, triumphant.
“I hate you,” Milla said. But her own smile gave her away.
“No you don’t,” Niklas said. “And you never could.”
Milla sighed. It was true. She couldn’t. She couldn’t ever.
Milla knelt to sweep up the salt she’d spilled. Stig and Trude had gone to fetch Iris two days before, and the plan was that they’d stay one day visiting with their daughter and son-in-law, and then they would come back here. Milla did calculations in her head, guessing how long it might take them to make the trip. It must be very far, Milla thought. After all, she never saw anyone from the village, so it must be hard to get from there to here. The way Mamma and Pappa talked about it, it seemed like the village was a world away.
Milla stood up, and that’s when she heard wagon wheels. Stig and Trude. And Iris. They were back. Milla’s hands flew to her hair to tuck away any stray strands. Iris was the first girl she was meeting in her life, and Milla had been worried for days how she might appear to her. If she might look . . . off . . . to Iris. If she dressed the same as the girls in the village. Talked the same. Wore her hair the same way. Gitta was always so despairing of Milla that she thought she must be very clumsy and awkward. She imagined Iris must be more like Gitta. Pleasing to look at, and graceful. Always knowing what to say and how to act, even without her mother’s rules to guide her.
The Cold Is in Her Bones Page 3