The Cold Is in Her Bones

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  And Anna gasped.

  It was the ugly old woman, and the ugly old woman asked where her half of the treasure was.

  That was the third and last time Anna felt afraid.

  Anna said there was no treasure. She had dug where the ugly old woman had told her to dig, but there was nothing there. Anna said that the ugly old woman was very mean for scaring her so, and really Anna should be heading for home because her mamma and pappa would be waiting for her.

  Then the ugly old woman looked much less like a question mark. She stood as straight as the walking stick that she no longer seemed to need. Black smoke rose from her feet, enveloping her rags and transforming them into a cloak so black that it was blacker than the blackest blackberry. Her hair swirled around her head.

  Anna knew then that the ugly old woman was a witch, and this was all a terrible trick.

  The witch told Anna that she had one more chance to save her life. She held out her gnarled hand and waggled her fingers over the earth beneath their feet, and from that spot sprouted a low tree with long, skinny leaves. And from one of its branches grew a single green apple. An apple so green it glowed. It made Anna’s mouth water.

  The witch said that Anna had only to eat that apple, and then all would be forgiven.

  Anna reached out and plucked the apple. Then she sank her teeth into it, and for just a moment, Anna thought she had never tasted anything so delicious in all her life.

  But after that first bite, Anna wasn’t Anna anymore. Or at least she wasn’t an Anna-shaped Anna. Anna was a snake. A small, slender, perfect snake. She shimmered as she curled around the green apple where it had fallen to the ground. She wondered at her new station in life.

  The witch bent over and plucked up Anna by the tail. She held Anna in the air, and looked into her snake eyes. And she said to Anna: The prettiest snake is eaten first.

  Then she dropped Anna into her mouth. And as the witch chewed, enjoying the sensation of Anna fighting back a bit, only just a bit, she also enjoyed the sweetness of the apple she could taste on Anna’s snake lips.

  When the witch had swallowed Anna down, she waggled her fingers once again and the snake tree disappeared. Then, as the witch continued on down the path, looking for other pretty, good girls and boys, she laughed. These good children, she said. They do love their rewards. . . .

  When Iris told Milla that story, she knew exactly when to pause and lower her voice, and she made Milla shiver in places and laugh in others.

  One afternoon when the sky was blue and the sun was warm and the shade from the trees was the perfect degree of cool, Iris and Milla sat in a clearing that looked very much like where the witch’s treasure was buried. When Iris finished telling Milla her story, she reached over and tugged on one of Milla’s long brown curls. “You have beautiful hair, Milla.”

  “I do?”

  “Of course you do. Don’t you know it?”

  Milla felt such hopelessness in her chest at that moment, such an awareness of the vast, uncrossable distance between what she knew and what she didn’t know. “Iris, I don’t know anything. And if you don’t tell me, I never will.”

  “Your mother must tell you things.”

  “All Mamma tells me is how to cook what Pappa likes to eat and how to get things clean.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s useful. And lots of mothers are like that.”

  “Is yours?” Milla knew Iris missed her mother.

  “There’s always so much work to be done. And life is . . . hard. But in the evenings, Mamma brushes my hair and we talk. And that’s nice. Was nice. I thought it might be that way with Grandmamma. But she’s old and she falls asleep by the fire. So mostly I sit and sew while she and Grandpappa snore. You’re lucky you have Niklas.”

  Milla thought about that for a moment. She supposed she was lucky. She couldn’t imagine life without him, with just her and Mamma and Pappa. It would be so dreary. “You don’t have brothers or sisters, do you? I just realized that I never asked.”

  “No. It’s only me.”

  “Your mother and father must miss you so much. I’m surprised they let you leave them.” Milla knew she was treading dangerously close to asking Iris more questions, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “Milla,” Iris said. She looked at Milla with her bright syrup eyes that seemed to take in everything so quickly.

  “I know, no questions.” Milla sighed. “All right. Tell me about your friends. You’re the only girl I’ve ever met. You can at least tell me about other girls.”

  “Oh,” Iris said. “All right. Well, I had a friend, yes.”

  “What is she like?” Milla had a thought. “Maybe she could come visit you?” Then Milla would get to meet someone else. A seventh person.

  Iris went blank. So blank. So blank it was as if Iris weren’t there anymore and only an Iris-shaped shell were left in her place.

  “What’s wrong?” Milla said. “What did I say?”

  Iris stood up suddenly and walked away from Milla. “We should get back.”

  “Iris.” Milla caught up with Iris, only to have Iris walk away even faster. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. But if you’d only tell me how I upset you, then I’d know not to do it again. As it is I’m so confused that I feel like I’m wrong and I don’t even know why. And I’m so very tired of feeling this way.” Milla’s voice cracked and she realized she was crying.

  Iris stopped walking, but she didn’t turn around. “My friend’s name was Beata.”

  Was. Milla stopped crying. Wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Beata and I were friends since we were babies. Always together. She taught me all the stories I tell you. You think I’m so smart, but Beata was the smart one. So quick and sharp. But then she got sick.”

  Iris paused. Then she turned around and looked at Milla. “And now Beata’s not Beata anymore.”

  Beata’s not Beata anymore. The line from the prayer came to Milla now. Lord, let us not answer the knock of the stranger. Had Beata answered the knock of the stranger? Is that why she wasn’t herself anymore?

  “You’re my only friend, Milla. Be my friend.” Iris wasn’t crying, and she wasn’t pleading. She was telling Milla something, and Milla knew she needed to listen. To collect all that she was being told so she could do something with it later.

  “Yes, Iris,” Milla said. “I’m your friend. Always.”

  5

  SPRING WARMED TOWARD SUMMER, AND Milla no longer worried that Iris might be snatched away from her at any moment. She and Iris had taken to doing all of their chores together, making short work of them. Sometimes they chatted, other times they were happy to be quietly in each other’s company while they peeled potatoes or hung the laundry to dry.

  On Sundays, when Niklas, Pappa, and Stig rested from their work in the fields and there was no market in the village, Niklas joined Milla and Iris on their walks in the forest. Iris was easy and friendly with Niklas, but she never made Milla feel as if she really wished she were alone with him. Milla had been worried about this the first time he had walked out with them. She wondered if she might feel stupid and awkward and childish if Niklas teased her in front of Iris. But when Niklas called her “silly Milla,” Iris always came to her rescue, teasing Niklas back and saying that he was the silly one.

  The first time they walked out together, Milla had been so eager to show Niklas how well she knew Iris, and to display Iris to Niklas in all her wonderfulness, that she begged Iris to tell him the story about the snake tree. While Iris told the story, Milla watched Niklas’s face and saw that it troubled him. At the end he said, “Why would the good child get eaten? That’s not the way stories are supposed to go.” So Iris didn’t tell any more stories when Niklas was around.

  Something else Milla noticed was that whenever conversation took a turn toward the village, Niklas steered it away again. Sometimes she said something about the village just to watch him do it.

  “Iris,” she said once, “how wo
uld you be spending your day if you were back in the village?”

  Before Iris could answer, Niklas pointed out a fox to them, a fox that magically disappeared when she and Iris tried to spot it. And then he changed the subject to hunting foxes, knowing that Milla would argue with him and tell him that he should leave the foxes alone. Milla allowed herself to be distracted, because she already had her answer: Niklas knew something she didn’t. He was in on the secret, and he was trying to keep it from her.

  Milla might have wished Iris could tell her whatever the secret was, but she forgave her for this; she understood Iris’s reasons. Iris feared she’d be sent away. Milla felt betrayed by Niklas, though, and it closed a tiny part of her heart to him. She found herself wishing he wouldn’t walk with them on Sundays—which shocked her. Not so long ago, she’d wanted so desperately for Niklas to stay with her always. But everything had changed since Iris arrived, and for the first time Milla allowed herself to think that maybe, in this one way, her life hadn’t changed for the better. She didn’t want to feel this way about Niklas. It made her unhappy. But there it was. The truth was out. And she couldn’t put it back in.

  On the first hot afternoon of the summer, when Milla and Iris had finished their chores and cleaned up after dinner, Milla told Iris that she’d take her to a spring where they hadn’t been before. Without Niklas, they could take off their boots and stockings and hitch up their dresses and wade in up to their knees. It would be heaven.

  Milla hadn’t known Iris very long, but she’d studied her so closely that soon after they set off for the spring, Milla knew something was wrong. Iris’s harvest-wheat skin looked pale on the surface, like a thin veil had been pulled tight across her.

  “Are you feeling well, Iris? Are you sure you want to walk so far today?”

  “Oh yes, quite well, Milla. Quite well.”

  Iris sounded odd to Milla, too, as if she were slightly off the beat of the world around her. After Iris spoke, she shadowed her own words, silently reforming them with her lips as if she were making sure of them, or not quite ready to let them go.

  “I have a new story for you,” Iris said, and she didn’t wait for Milla to respond. She spilled it out in a rush of words. “Once there was a prince, who fell in love with a beautiful princess. So he asked her to marry him and she said yes. On her wedding day, white doves flew down and dressed her in a beautiful blue gown. Then they perched on her shoulders and cooed to her while bluebirds flew down and braided her hair. When the prince saw her, he said, my darling, what’s that all over your shoulders? And pray tell, what is that in your hair? And the princess looked and saw that the white doves had shat all over her shoulders. And she reached up to her hair and discovered that indeed the bluebirds had shat all over her hair. So the prince beat her and then he ordered her burned as a witch because only a witch would let birds dress her and braid her hair.”

  “Oh,” Milla said. “Oh.”

  Iris laughed. Then she put her hands to her face and cried. “There’s something wrong with me, Milla. Something terribly wrong.”

  “No, no, dearest. Not at all,” Milla said. “I loved that story. It was wonderful. All of your stories are wonderful.” They’d reached the spring, and Milla led Iris to a flat rock where they could sit and talk.

  “You don’t understand,” Iris said. “It’s happening to me. Just like it happened to Beata.”

  Milla felt frightened then, because she knew she was about to hear something terrible, and for the first time she realized that perhaps she didn’t want to know. Perhaps it might be better not to.

  “I’m hearing it in my head, Milla.”

  “You’re hearing what in your head?”

  “The demon.” Iris tapped her forehead. “It’s in here.”

  “Oh no. No, no, no. That’s not possible.” Milla felt herself going blank now. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears and squeeze her eyes shut and pretend she hadn’t heard any of that. “We spread the salt. We locked the doors and windows.”

  Iris smiled strangely, in a way that showed teeth but no happiness. “That doesn’t work. I told you that. Nothing ever works. The demon gets us anyway.”

  Milla had a choice to make, she realized. She could tell Iris to be quiet, the way her mother would have told Milla to be quiet if she’d said something troubling. Or she could be the friend that Iris had asked her to be. “Tell me, Iris. Tell me everything.”

  And Iris did.

  It wasn’t the oldest girls who were taken by the demon. Or the youngest. Or the ones in the middle. Or rather, it was the oldest and the youngest and the ones in the middle. It was any of them, sometimes all of them. Very few families were spared entirely. Maybe they had only sons, or they had daughters who managed to escape the demon. Those families considered themselves blessed. But most families could list off sisters or aunts or cousins or daughters who were taken by the demon. And the cruelty of the demon was its randomness. There was no pattern to its grasping, so there was no way to protect against it. The most devout weren’t spared, nor were the least. They were all at risk. If you were born a girl, you were fair game.

  The youngest girl who’d ever been taken was twelve, and no one could recall a girl over the age of eighteen being taken. This was why Jakob and Gitta had at first insisted that Iris’s mother and father wait until she was eighteen before they sent her to live with Stig and Trude to be Niklas’s intended. This way Jakob and Gitta could be assured that Iris was out of danger—or rather, that Jakob and Gitta were out of danger of bringing a demon-possessed girl into their home. Trude told Iris that it was Niklas who’d convinced Jakob and Gitta that Iris should come now. After all, she was almost eighteen, and such a good girl. And Niklas said she’d be a calming influence on Milla—because they all had their worries about Milla. She was too much alone. It wasn’t healthy. A girl could start hearing things under those circumstances.

  That was how it started with the girls who were taken by the demon—hearing things. It was the demon talking to the girls, telling them nasty lies about their mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. Then the girls began whispering to themselves. Then one morning they woke up seeing monsters in the faces of their families. They screamed at the sight of their own mothers.

  When the first girls were taken—long before Iris was born—the village was caught unawares. But as it happened to more and more girls, the demon-possessions became a sad way of life. Fear and grief and suspicion fell over the village like a fog that the villagers continued to walk through in the hopes that one day it might lift. And what choice did they have? Leave their homes and farms and shops? And go where? And eat what?

  Then it happened to Beata. Iris’s dear Beata. One day Beata confided in Iris that there was a whispering in her head, a whispering that wasn’t her own. She asked Iris if she thought the demon was taking her, and Iris had said, no, no, of course not. Iris wouldn’t let herself believe it, because she couldn’t bear for it to be true. Then the whispering grew louder and clearer in Beata’s head. It was a voice, strong and certain. And Beata found it increasingly hard to doubt what the voice said to her. Beata, the voice said, your family doesn’t love you. They think you’re a monster. But they’re the monsters. Look at their faces. See the monsters all around you.

  Beata begged Iris to help her leave the village, and for Iris to leave with her. But Iris was afraid. Then Beata woke up one day screaming. She looked at her mother’s face at the breakfast table and insisted she was trying to poison her. She looked at her father’s face and said he was the devil. And by then it was too late; there was no escape for Beata. Consumed by guilt, Iris pleaded with Beata’s mother and father not to let the midwife take Beata away. Iris told Beata’s mother and father she could look after Beata herself. But that wasn’t allowed. Possession, the midwife said, was contagious. This was why all the stricken girls were taken to The Place, where the midwife looked after them. Families were allowed to visit, and some did. But many found it too upsetting to be remind
ed of their loss—to look into the eyes of a daughter who sometimes knew them and at other times said terrible things. Hateful things.

  Iris didn’t know what The Place was, or even where it was. But she knew she didn’t want to be sent there. She’d rather die. The Place had become something that mothers and fathers used to scare their misbehaving children. If you carry on so, the midwife will come and take you to The Place. So she made Milla promise her that no matter what happened, Milla wouldn’t let them take her.

  And Milla promised.

  “Be my friend,” Iris said to Milla.

  “Yes, Iris,” Milla said. “I’m your friend. Always.”

  Then Milla and Iris took off their boots, and they walked into the icy water together. As they went deeper, letting the cold sink into them—toes, then ankles, then knees—Iris gripped Milla’s hand so tightly that it hurt.

  6

  MILLA SEWED WHILE WAITING FOR Pappa to yawn. When Pappa yawned, Mamma would say it was time for bed. Then Milla could find a moment alone with Niklas.

  All through dinner, Milla had looked at her family with new eyes. Her mother’s fear for her made sense now—and her father’s insistence on obedience. Of course. They were terrified that one day they’d wake up and Milla would have become someone else in the night. Or something else. A monster wearing their daughter’s dress.

  Maybe, though, such things only happened in the village. Maybe that was why they lived so far away, and why Milla was forbidden to go to the village—because it truly was contagious. She supposed that was reasonable, but why couldn’t they have told her? Why was Niklas brought in on the secret, trusted in that way, when her life was the one most at risk? It was infuriating. She had watched her brother eating his supper, making inane small talk with Pappa, and she wanted to slap their bowls away from them. She twitched.

  She pressed a hand to one of her cheeks. Was this how it started? With such violent anger? No. Iris had said it was a voice in your head that was the first sign. But what was a voice in your head? How did you know it wasn’t your own voice? What did the voice sound like? Milla had spent so much time alone before Iris came that she had gotten quite used to talking to herself. Sometimes the voice in Milla’s head didn’t seem quite like her—it seemed sharper. Meaner.