As Black as Ebony

by Salla Simukka

  When they’d rehearsed the scene for the first time with all of the props, sound effects, and lighting, no one had been able to say a word for a long time afterward. They just glanced at each other as if asking, “Did you feel that too? Were we just somewhere else?”

  “Next run-through on Monday night. Same time, same place!” Tinka reminded them.

  “Aren’t we about ready now? How about we take a night off?” suggested Aleksi, who was playing the prince.

  Tinka cast him a scornful glance.

  “We have two weeks until opening night and a ton of work left to do. And some people still need to learn their lines all the way through.”

  Aleksi shrugged and started trudging out of the auditorium.

  Sampsa came over to Lumikki and stroked her back.

  “You were really good. Again.”

  “Thanks,” Lumikki replied as she tied the laces of her combat boots.

  Her hands were still trembling slightly from the intensity of the scene.

  “See you tomorrow. I gotta run. I’m already late and my mom’s gonna kill me.”

  Sampsa kissed Lumikki’s forehead, threw his backpack over his shoulder, and left. The last couple of scenes had given him time to change out of his huntsman costume already. Every Friday night, his whole family got together for dinner, including Sampsa’s grandparents and an aunt who lived in Tampere. They had been doing it for years, so Sampsa didn’t feel like he could skip out. He’d invited Lumikki a couple of times, but so far she had declined. The thought of the way everyone would stare as they sized her up was unpleasant. Lumikki had promised to come for coffee on Sunday though, when only Sampsa’s parents and little sister would be home. That sounded like more than enough for her.

  The dark, deserted school lay in a drowsy silence as Lumikki and Tinka walked down the stairs to the mirrored front lobby. The halls looked strange empty, and their steps echoed. During the day, they were crammed with students and the decibel level exceeded industrial safety limits.

  Tinka was analyzing the problems with each scene of the play, but Lumikki couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying. Had agreeing to act in the play been a mistake? She didn’t like how much she lost herself in her role and how the real world disappeared around her. She wasn’t pretending to be Snow White running through the forest. She was Snow White running through the forest, feeling and smelling blood on her hands. Snow White’s pulse was Lumikki’s pulse. Lumikki wasn’t used to that kind of loss of self-control, and it frightened her.

  Eventually, Tinka noticed Lumikki’s distance, and they donned their coats in silence. Around her neck, Lumikki wrapped the heavy, red wool scarf her former classmate Elisa had made for her and sent in the mail. They still kept in touch. Last winter, Lumikki never could have guessed Elisa would become a true friend.

  Outside, it was snowing large, fluffy flakes that melted the instant they touched the black ground. No hope yet that December would turn out white.

  “Some of the cast might be a little checked out still, but at least you aren’t. You’re killing it,” Tinka said as they walked through the schoolyard gates.

  Then she waved and headed in the opposite direction from Lumikki, who didn’t manage to get out anything sensible in reply. Mud squelched under Lumikki’s boots as she turned toward downtown. Farther along the path, she saw the school psychology teacher and one of the math teachers, who had apparently been working late too. This time of year, the teachers tended to work long hours grading tests and essays. Some of them preferred not to take their work home, staying at school late into the evening instead. In a way, it was nice seeing them outside of school, chatting and laughing together. Even so, Lumikki was happy to be far enough behind them not to be able to make out any of their words. She thought it was best to know as little as possible about her teachers’ private lives.

  The illuminated red brick tower of the Alexander Church rose into the sky, stately and familiar. It was so dark that the few old gravestones in the churchyard were invisible from the path. The large snowflakes looked like feathers against the black branches of the trees. Fallen from the wings of angels. Lumikki pushed her hands deeper into her coat pockets and walked faster.

  In her left pocket, she felt the rustle of something strange, something that didn’t belong there. Lumikki pulled it out. It was a white sheet of paper, folded four times. Lumikki opened it fold by fold to find a short letter typed on a computer. She stopped under a street lamp to read it.

  My Lumikki,

  Your prince doesn’t know you. Not in the play and not in real life. He only sees your outer shell. He only sees a part of you. I see deeper, into your soul.

  You have blood on your hands, Lumikki. You know it. I know it.

  I see every move you make.

  You will hear from me again soon. But know this: If you tell anyone about my messages, one single person, there will soon be much more blood. Then no one will survive the opening night of your play.

  With love,

  Your admirer, your Shadow

  Lumikki gasped and she looked up from the letter. Something flickered at the edge of her field of vision. Something black.

  But when she looked toward it, she saw nothing but the long, dreary shadows of the trees.

  Alla kvällar lät prinsessan smeka sig.

  Men den som smeker stillar blott sin egen hunger

  och hennes längtan var en skygg mimosa,

  en storögd saga inför verkligheten.

  Nya smekningar fyllde hennes hjärta med bitter sötma

  och hennes kropp med is, men hennes hjärta ville ännu mer.

  Prinsessan kände kroppar, men hon sökte hjärtan;

  hon hade aldrig sett ett annat hjärta än sitt eget.

  (Every evening, the princess allowed herself to be caressed.

  But the caresser only satisfied his own hunger,

  while her desire was a shy mimosa,

  a wide-eyed fairy tale in the face of reality.

  New caresses filled her heart with a bitter flush

  and her body with ice, but her heart wanted more.

  The princess knew bodies, but she sought hearts;

  she had never seen any heart but her own.)

  Lumikki read “The Princess” quietly to herself. The words calmed her. She had read her copy of Edith Södergran’s posthumously released collection The Land Which Is Not so many times she knew every poem practically by heart. The first words always brought back the rest of the lines. Familiar poems were like mantras. Their calming effect rested on the way the words flowed one after another in just the right order, without any surprises.

  Lumikki couldn’t go straight home after reading the letter. Was someone really following her every step? She’d tried to rationalize away the fear. In all likelihood, the letter was just a bad joke. Black humor. A cruel game. Someone somewhere was laughing right now thinking about how frightened she would be, but soon they’d jump out and reveal the truth. Gotcha!

  But what if the letter was real? What if she really did have a crazy stalker who was prepared to kill people? Lumikki couldn’t risk treating the letter too cavalierly. Her life experience had left her little doubt that people were capable of evil deeds. She’d endured years of brutal school bullying and then seen up close the ruthlessness of the international drug trade. Just that past summer in Prague, she had seen a charismatic leader use fear to manipulate his religious cult into attempting mass suicide.

  All her life was missing was a deranged stalker, Lumikki thought with a bitter snort.

  The sounds around her were pleasantly muffled. Calm footsteps, the rustling of pages, hushed conversations. Lumikki knew that if she went and sat by the base of one of the arches that made up the roof, she’d be able to make out every word being said at the base of the other side of the arch. Reima and Raila Pietilä had designed the Tampere City Library that way. However, Lumikki didn’t want to hear anyone else’s private conversations right now. She wanted to be wrapped in the
protective familiarity of the library’s indistinct murmurs, surrounded by people but still alone so she could calm down and build up the courage to go home. The library was only a two-minute walk from the Alexander Church.

  Lumikki had always found the building’s undulating dome and avian plume of arches soothing inside and out. There was just enough walking space between the shelves, but if you wanted, you could hide in them. The library was full of round reading tables and secret nooks where no one ever bothered you.

  Lumikki wanted to text Sampsa and ask him to come over for the night after his family dinner. No matter how late that would be. But she had never done something like that before, so Sampsa might wonder. And then Lumikki would have to lie, and she didn’t want to lie to Sampsa.

  No, she would have to make it through the night alone. Then she would have to find out as soon as possible who put the letter in her pocket. She’d have to do that alone too.

  Lumikki had thought she wasn’t going to be so alone anymore. She had thought wrong. Suddenly, she felt that familiar emptiness and desolation filling her inside. She was always alone, in the end. Lumikki stared at the stanzas of the poem, unable to read any more.

  Just then a deep, crisp scent of pine forest surrounded her and a warm hand gently brushed her neck.

  “Edith Södergran. Are you reading our poems without me?”

  Lumikki knew before she turned to look over her shoulder. She knew before the voice and the words. She knew from the smell and the touch.

  Blaze.

  He stood sideways behind Lumikki. Smiling. Real. He looked maybe a little more like a boy than he had eighteen months earlier. His hair was shorter and lighter, and there was a new calm and self-assurance in his posture, but otherwise he was exactly the same. Those ice-blue eyes were the same, and Lumikki sank into them instantly like breaking through a frozen crust as thin as thought and plunging into the black lake beneath.

  A storm of emotions washed over Lumikki. She wanted to curl up in Blaze’s arms as close as she could and tell him everything about the letter and how afraid she was and what had happened in the past year and all the longing and loneliness and dreams and black thoughts and ask him to protect her and save her from solitude and evil and take him home and tear off all his clothes and her own and get tangled up with him on the floor and kiss and kiss and kiss and press every hungry inch of her skin against him and burst into flames and forget herself and the world and that they were two different beings because front to front they were one, as seamless as could be with no boundaries, and Lumikki wanted to burn and burn and burn without fearing the fire for once.

  Lumikki swallowed. A tremor ran through her. She couldn’t speak.

  “It’s nice to see you. Wanna go get coffee? Or are you busy?” Blaze asked as if it were perfectly natural to chat like normal people.

  “No,” Lumikki managed to say.

  “Good. Should we go upstairs to the cafe?”

  “No. I mean we can’t go get coffee.” Blaze stared at Lumikki, a little confused, but then he smiled mischievously.

  “We can do something else if you want to.”

  With trembling hands, Lumikki put her book back on the shelf and pulled her knitted cap down over her ears.

  “No, we can’t. I’m busy. I can’t see you. Now.” Lumikki heard the words coming out of her mouth, haltingly, breathlessly.

  “Okay. Well, some other time then. Is your phone number the same? I’ll call or text you.”

  Blaze’s voice was warm and composed. Don’t, Lumikki should have said. That was what she wanted to say. But she also didn’t.

  “I have to go. Bye.”

  Lumikki’s legs wanted to run out of the library, as fast and as far as possible away from Blaze. But she forced herself to walk. Briskly and purposefully. Without looking back.

  Not until she was outside in the fresh air did Lumikki realize she should have said she was dating someone.

  She hadn’t said it though, because after diving into the burning ice water of Blaze’s eyes, she had forgotten that fact completely.

  I love you.

  Three words that are so easy to say but so hard to mean. I mean them. I breathe each word and they become a part of me. I say them to you and they become a part of you. My love moves into you. It makes you burn even more beautiful, strong, and radiant.

  I make you brighter than the brightest star of the nighttime sky.

  You become mine, completely. As was always meant to be. Because it is your fate. And mine.

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9

  Sister, sister, sister, sister.

  The word pounded in Lumikki’s head, as it always did now when she was visiting her parents in Riihimäki. It would just never come out of her mouth. Her mom had made goat cheese lasagna for lunch, which was one of Lumikki’s favorites, but today she could barely taste it. Lumikki felt as if all of her pleasure centers had been numbed. Food was just necessary fuel. Even coffee didn’t taste good.

  Lumikki figured it was because of the letter. She was still convinced that it was just a nasty prank, but the message bothered her anyway, lurking somewhere behind her thoughts. It made colors grayer and covered the world in a thin haze. Tastes disappeared. If Lumikki could just figure out who the letter was from, she would get her revenge, which would be civilized but definitely served cold.

  But at her parents’ house, the only thing Lumikki could think about was that she still hadn’t found out whether she really used to have a sister. The memories awakened in Prague by Lenka’s lie had felt so real. She had been sure that she had once had a sister. Since returning to Finland, she wasn’t as confident, though. She’d thought she would just slap the question down on the table as soon as she got home, but that hadn’t happened.

  When Lumikki had told her mom and dad about Lenka, she left out the part about Lenka claiming she was Lumikki’s sister. Over the fall, Lumikki had exchanged a few e-mails with Lenka, who had started studying math, chemistry, and biology on her own, hoping eventually to get into medical school. Lenka had also subtly let Lumikki understand that she had never moved out of Jiři’s apartment. Jiři had found a new job at a local paper. Lumikki had read between the lines that, after saving Lenka from the burning house with Lumikki, Jiři had found he liked taking care of Lenka. Lumikki was happy for them.

  Sometimes, Lenka signed her e-mails “your sister in spirit.” The word filled Lumikki’s thoughts. But she avoided saying it out loud.

  Why? Wouldn’t it have been easiest just to talk about it? Lumikki didn’t know what was holding her back.

  Maybe it was something in her mom and dad’s concern and earnestness, all the warmth and love they had shown since she returned from Prague. The uncharacteristic intimacy. The idea of interrogating them just felt wrong. Her dad’s trip to Prague years ago had turned out to be just a coincidence without any connection to the sister issue at all, so Lumikki hadn’t grilled them about that either.

  To tell the truth, she had enjoyed all the warmth. She hadn’t wanted to jeopardize it by talking about something that might have been only her imagination anyway. People could invent memories if they really wanted or if they thought that something had happened in the past.

  Days without bringing it up had turned into weeks, and weeks had turned into months. Eventually, Lumikki realized that there wasn’t any natural way to bring up the topic anymore. Her parents’ burst of tenderness had subsided, and all three of them had returned to their old, familiar roles where they talked about general things, kept in touch just as much as necessary for it to seem normal, and tried to avoid too many awkward lulls in conversation during a Saturday lunch like this.

  “Would you like some more?” her mother asked to fill one such silent pause.

  “No, thank you,” Lumikki replied. “Could I look at some of those old pictures though?”

  “Again?” her dad asked. “You’ve already seen all of them.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve been thinking that I might be able to use
them for a project at school,” Lumikki explained.

  “I’m going to make coffee,” her mother said, clearing the plates just a little too hastily.

  Lumikki sat on the living room sofa with the photo album, slowly turning pages. She knew every picture by heart. She had looked at them so many times, this fall especially. She had tried to find some solution in them, some key.

  There was her mom and dad’s wedding picture. Some pictures from a cottage in Åland. A couple of fuzzy shots of their home in Turku, where they lived until Lumikki was four. She only had dim memories of it. It was an idyllic, two-story wooden house in the Port Arthur area. Nothing like this stubby row house in Riihimäki. It seemed strange that they would have moved into a much less expensive house. For the price of their place in Turku, they should have been able to buy a big one here. Apparently, there were money problems no one had ever told Lumikki about.

  “Why did we move from Turku?” Lumikki asked. Looking up from his newspaper, her father furrowed his brow.

  “For work.”

  That explanation didn’t make a lot of sense. Her father had always traveled for work, and most of his trips took him to Helsinki. And you would have thought library jobs for her mother would have been easier to find in a big city like Turku than a tiny town like Riihimäki. Lumikki didn’t press the matter.

  She wondered yet again why there were so few pictures. There were just a couple from each year of her life and most of them weren’t very good. Not that Lumikki needed hundreds of baby pictures like people took nowadays, starting at the actual birth, but it was still strange for there to be this few. Lumikki had seen childhood photo albums at other people’s houses, and they were always much thicker and there were usually more than one. Maybe her mom and dad had just never been interested in photography. Or maybe they hadn’t been interested in taking pictures of Lumikki.