Faces shone pale in the harsh light of the torches, eyes full of fear. The alarm had been sounded sometime before I arrived, fists pounding on doors and shouts echoing off the walls of homes.
Red … lós … sky… The words reverberated through my bones as I seamlessly joined the shuffling crowd that was making its way towards the village centre in a jumble of tears and uncertain whispers, necks craned back to examine the now-harmless night sky. I glanced up at the tangle of stars far above. No sign of the blood it had shed not half an hour ago. It had done its part. Sent its message. Now it was up to us to act upon it.
I caught my father’s eye as he emerged from our home, both hands on my mother’s shoulders. We will discuss your whereabouts later, his face said, but he was soon distracted by the frantic voices of the villagers all around us.
More and more people stepped out of their homes, still wrapping cloaks and shawls around themselves, eyes wide. A faint wind picked up, whispering of approaching snow. I remembered, as I waited for someone to begin speaking, how my father had once said that if we didn’t listen to the words of nature – the whispering winds, the rushing rivers, the cries of birds warning of nearby predators – then we were as good as dead. The trees, the animals, even the air has its own language. We must learn to speak it, or our existence will fade away. It reminded me of a child’s tale I’d heard long ago: Beware of the föss’s fiddle, they said. He plays a song with the wind and snow, rustling the leaves just so as to pull you in, fill your mind, and drag you under. If the rushing of a river ever sings to you, beckoning you just a bit closer, the föss’s spell has begun its work, and it may already be too late.
I stared away through the ghostly houses to the forest beyond, cloaked in darkness and bewitchment. I would have given anything to be there in that moment. The breeze ruffled a few needle-ridden branches, and a shadowed bird darted from one tree to another.
Soon. I would be there soon. For now, I would stay for this grim show of togetherness, this stony-faced gathering to discuss how much time we had left, as Skane began another game of which only a few would see the outcome.
My father – Sívar – was huddled together with Oben and an aging man named Alff, speaking in hushed tones. The rest of us clustered around, whispering and pointing to the three men, whose conversation was so animated we couldn’t help but stare. I edged my way closer to those gathered and moved to stand beside my father. Everyone hesitated and glanced at me, but I remained. Why shouldn’t I?
“It’s been so long,” Oben said, his voice breaking. “An entire generation has grown old with no sign of the lights.”
“Yes, and the sea is deep and salty, yet stating such facts is hardly a resolution, now is it?” Alff snapped.
“We can argue among ourselves until said sea freezes over,” my father said. “But people are seeking comfort, so comfort we will give them.”
“Why give them comfort when there is no comfort to be had?” Oben pressed. “What use is false comfort?”
“If it keeps us from falling into disarray, then it will be worth it, just until we can calm our fears enough to form a plan. Speak to the other villages. Organize.”
“And what will that comfort look like?” Oben asked. “What falsehoods will you feed them? Tell them that all will be well? Tell them to tuck away in their beds tonight, and pay no mind to the hundreds who have died in the past? To think nothing of how many of us will be dead in the coming weeks? Where is the comfort in that, Sívar? Answer me that.”
My father held Oben’s gaze for a long while, in a way that was somewhere between commanding and menacing. “Where is the hope in telling them there is nothing to be done? If people want to survive, why arm them with discouragement and death? Answer me that, Oben.”
Oben crossed his arms and shook his head but fell silent. Alff offered no input.
My father turned to find me standing there, his eyebrows knitting briefly in confusion, and then he addressed the crowd, his voice bathed in a kind of fortitude no one else present seemed to feel. Children held fast to the hands of their mothers and fathers, and all eyes bore a heaviness like I had never seen before. It was as if a weight had descended from the sky and pressed down on every one of us gathered in the village, one that was too heavy to push away. That was how fear worked, breaking down your mettle and resilience until there was little left of you but a brittle frame that could be blown away by the wind. Somehow, that crushing fear that had paralysed me when I had first laid eyes on the lights had evaporated, the minutes bringing with them a replenishing sort of renewal, like waking up after a good night’s sleep. I wasn’t unafraid – far from it – but my thoughts had cleared, and my head felt lighter as determination mixed with a faint bit of acceptance grounded me. I would not let my fear worsen whatever grisly events were soon to crest the horizon.
I stood a little taller, squaring my shoulders and breathing deeply.
An elderly woman named Unna, who rarely came outdoors and walked with a wooden cane carved with the head of a bird, gently pushed her way through the throng of villagers. I stepped aside to allow her access to the group of men beside me, who grew silent as she approached.
Unna stopped to catch her breath, stray pieces from her long grey braid flickering in the breeze.
“If any of you were alive last time,” she said with a voice that shook, “you were too young to remember. But I do. I remember it all, every day. I remember eyeing my own children as though they were strangers, waiting for their brows to start sweating, for their lungs to start coughing up blood.” A few eyes darted to the children around us – even mine. I couldn’t help it. “I remember my neighbour killing his own wife with a hunting knife when she began to show signs of the plague, dragging her body from the house to burn, only to die himself four days later. And I remember travellers from Isåvik, escaping their own village to find safety in ours – until one spewed blood on to the child of his host, and it spread like hungry flames from there. You don’t know what it’s like to remember. I relive it here every day” –she tapped her right temple with a finger – “don’t make me truly relive it again.”
A man coughed in the otherwise-silent crowd, and those close by him crept away, leaving a large gap all the way around him.
“I’m so sorry, Unna,” my father said, gently touching her shoulder. “I cannot imagine what that is like for you.”
“You’ll be able to imagine soon enough,” Unna told him firmly. “In the time between the lights and the first signs of the plague, there is much fear and crying and planning – all to no end. But what there isn’t much of, is time.”
“We know,” Alff said, with a less-than-subtle roll of his eyes.
“I am returning to my home,” Unna said, gripping her cane again as though ready to depart. “And I shall do what I did last time: stay indoors. No wanderers from other villages will see me fall ill. I shan’t let them in.”
She slowly walked away.
After a long pause, heavy with uncertainty, the meeting went on. I let their words – about staying vigilant and how they would discuss measures they could take to ensure safety – fade away. My thoughts wandered as I gazed around at the crowd, wondering how many of us would be left in the weeks to come…
A set of eyes met mine and didn’t look away.
Eri.
If I never saw him again it would be too soon. He was an accomplished hunter, and the son of a village widow, Svanhild, whose husband had died last winter along with … the others. Little bad could be said of him: he cared for his mother and her broken heart when he was not in the woods, and his general knowledge of the weather and the forest had garnered him a good deal of respect throughout the village. He had even found a lost child a year or two ago, wandering alone through the trees sobbing, as snow threatened us. He brought her back to the arms of her mother and father to great acclaim from the villagers. But he and Sølvi had been like brothers, always close, and always together. When you thought of one, you thought of the other, and that’s how it had been since they had met as children. After Sølvi had passed on, seeing just one was too much, sending me into fits of tears behind a house, or beneath the safety of my blankets. I couldn’t bear the pain of it, so I had avoided him for months.
Then we just never spoke again. Even if it was small, he cost us happiness that we could never make up, and I didn’t think I could forgive him.
At first it was strange to transition from seeing someone so often to never seeing them at all, but over the time since it had happened, I’d adjusted to it. And in the year since Sølvi had passed on, I’d grown accustomed to being entirely alone. Did I enjoy only the company of my own mind? I had found that there was a sort of energy required when interacting with people, and so often I was too drained to even offer a simple greeting.
But now Eri stood staring at me, his arms crossed, hood down and light hair being tossed by the wind. He had matured in the year since we last spoke, into a man I hardly recognized. He bit on his top lip, a habit I had once come to associate with him being nervous. Somehow, I had managed to forget about him as my heart and mind were consumed by Sølvi’s death; as I relived the whole of our relationship every single day.
But there was some small part of me that considered walking over to him. Asking how he’d been since his best friend had died. I’d forgotten that he, too, had lost someone last year. I was not the only one who’d felt that crushing pain, like someone had reached into my body and ripped my heart from its resting place, but death can blur things, make the obvious seem obscure.
A gust of wind whipped my hair into my eyes, and by the time I’d brushed it from my face, Eri had looked away.
Any warmth I had felt from my layers was sucked away as I watched a woman by the name of Ragna push her way through the crowd. Her severe features were only barely softened by the billowing hair that hung down to her chest. She stood tall, taller than me by at least an inch, and faced the three men with her chin held high. She cut a forbidding figure, and always had, perhaps the reason she had long been avoided.
My reasons to avoid her were different.
Four years ago, her son Orri was six years old. A sweet but quiet boy, he kept to himself and stayed close to the village. I had assumed it was on the instruction of his mother – always the suspicious, fearful type. I was fourteen years old and meant to be collecting firewood with some other villagers, Ragna included. I had wandered far from the path so I could work by myself, and as I found pieces of bark and placed them in my basket, I heard a long, lonely howl from the north. It was too far away to cause alarm, and I was still close enough to the village for safety, but it caused a pang of longing in my stomach. I wanted to chase it, to sing with it, to run away to the distant mountains and never come back.
On a whim, I cupped my hands around my mouth and howled back. It meant nothing to the wolf, of that I was certain, but in that moment, I felt deliciously wild and free.
I collected my basket once more and turned to find Ragna watching me through the trees, mistrust burning fierce in her eyes. She would tell the others, I knew it, and the whispers about me would grow in number, though I had done no harm.
Until late that evening, when a trail of blood was found leading from the village and into the trees, and we learned that Orri had been dragged away by a wolf. We never found him, and through Ragna’s shrieks and cries that lasted for days on end, she pointed a finger at me nearly as often as she drew breath. The others pitied her, sympathized with her, but even their suspicion of me wasn’t strong enough to believe that I had called upon a wolf to kill her child. Eventually, the story died down, until it was only whispered about infrequently, and never in her presence.
“I do not believe that we can be so weak in the face of the red lós,” she said, ensuring her voice carried over the crowd – and it did, strong and resounding, like a scolding none of us deserved. “When predators are on the hunt, the weak are the first to be feasted upon.” She had a way of talking that secured everyone’s attention.
Not far off, I saw my mother breathe deeply.
Alff cleared his throat. “Do you have suggestions to back up those words?”
Ragna looked around, her eyes seeming to smile as she realized everyone was waiting for her to continue. No, not smile. Smirk. A second later, her face hardened once more. “Sívar has already alluded to it, to safety measures to ensure our survival. We seal off the village,” she said, her voice carrying the crushing weight of waves during a winter storm. “No one should be allowed in or out, with perhaps the exception of the hunters, and rarely. No trading with the other villages, no scampering off into the woods” – her eyes darted to me, and my skin prickled – “and no taking in wanderers. We all heard Unna’s story about the visitor from Is̊avik; that will not happen again. We set up guards around our perimeter, taking turns on the watch. We can ensure that no infected persons go in or out of our village.”
A breeze blew. Someone in the crowd coughed. But no one spoke for a long moment.
“Ragna, you…” my father started, and his words revealed that he was rocked to his core. It took him a moment to find his words, Ragna’s biting words and ideas having no place in our village. “Why would we do this? And who would listen?”
Again, that smirk pulled at her eyes, and anger flared in my chest like a dragon’s breath. “Fear,” she said, and she was right. There was no question about it. “People will do anything when they are afraid, if they think it might save their lives.” She motioned to the crowd and spoke of them as if they were too far away to hear her. “Suppose you put it to a vote. You know the result as well as I do.”
A hush fell, disturbed only by the distant call of a raven.
Where there had been bow-string-taut tension before, Ragna had begun to pluck at it with a finger.
It was my mother who broke the silence. She stepped forward, her eyes never leaving Ragna’s face. “I think perhaps not,” she said, moving until only a foot or two of space separated the two women. She had a way of sounding her most polite when she was the most upset. “The sickness will likely come whether we protect our village limits or not. You know nothing about where the plague comes from, or how it enters our bodies. It could be in the next sip of water you take, or your next breath of fresh winter air. That is not meant to stir terror – it is simply the truth. What sort of people would we be if we cut ourselves off from the rest of the world, refusing to even see or speak with those around us?”
“We would be survivors,” Ragna replied. She drew herself up, standing even taller than before. Her eyes were ice. “We could be the only village in a few weeks’ or months’ time with no casualties. How can you deny these poor people safety?” She gestured to a nearby child, a weak play at garnering sympathy for her cause. “How can you insist upon inviting death into our numbers?”
“How can you insist upon leaving others to die without help?” my mother asked, her voice rising sharply. “There are children just like this in other villages. Children who might soon be motherless. Fatherless.”
“They are not our children,” Ragna said simply. “We must care for our own first, just as the others must care for theirs. We shoulder our own burdens in this harsh world. You know that as well as I do.”
“I know no such thing,” my mother breathed. “All I know, in this moment, is that you know nothing of love.”
Something swept across Ragna’s face, a kind of emotion I couldn’t place, but it took me back to her boy, dragged away by wolves. Surely she had loved him, once upon a time, or she would never have blamed me so cruelly for his death – yet this woman standing here, stony-faced, I could see nothing in her that spoke of love, or compassion, or anything that resembled empathy. The people of Skane had long been divided on our purpose. We live for freedom, said some. For courage, said others. But if we didn’t live for love, we lived for nothing.
“I am with my mother,” I said, steeping my voice in the same ironclad strength as Ragna’s. “Cutting ourselves off is selfish and cowardly.” I put an extra stress on the last word and spoke it directly towards her. Her stone face didn’t flinch, but her eyes bore into mine in a way that almost made me look away.
Almost.
My father nodded, and so did Alff, but Oben remained quiet, looking from one person to the next. His obvious silence sparked a question from my father.
“Oben, what say you?”
He eyed Ragna for a long moment, a wordless conversation seeming to pass between them. “I have heard far worse ideas,” he finally said. A sound of disgust escaped my father’s throat, and he rubbed his eyes with both hands.
“Do not be a fool, Oben,” he said, frustrated. I could see it starting to happen, the fear and uncertainty igniting a sense of frenzy and self-preservation. Some said self-preservation had helped us to survive, but others argued that it was a sense of community, of bonding together with the aim of not just surviving, but of thriving. I always thought it was a bit of both. There was no harm in protecting your own, but not at the expense of others. Never at the expense of others.
“Just entertain the idea for a moment, Sívar. All of you here must see the sense in it. Chances are great that the plague will not come from somewhere within our village. It will be brought here by something or someone, and we can prevent it from happening. Cut it off before it has a chance to reach us. If closing it off could indeed keep us safe, keep us from spewing blood until our bodies run cold, could you deny us all that?” He shook his head. “My father told me what it was like, only a year or two before I was born. How he saw his sister drown from the inside, blood draining from her face. She couldn’t talk or cry, and he watched her die slowly, her eyes still wide and round with fear long after she had passed. He never forgot it. Ragna speaks the truth, however hard to hear it may be.”
Ragna’s eyes glistened at the support as she sent a challenging look to my father. The tension was a fog in the air, thick and unwelcome.
“And you think no one before us has had a similar thought?” my father asked. “You think you have, at long last, solved the problem of the plague that has haunted us for generations? Or do you think, perhaps, that you are shit-scared and behaving like children who have just been told a ghostly bedtime story? Locking yourselves away is not a solution; it’s putting a fingertip on a laceration and hoping to stop the bleeding. Pull yourselves together.”
Another grim silence slipped by, until Alff said, “Let us take this discussion indoors. We will bring our solid arguments back to the village later.”
There were a few objections from the crowd, but the children had grown distracted and faces were tinged with fear from their proximity to others, as if the plague had already crawled up from the ground to claim them. When I moved to follow my father and the others into Oben’s house, Ragna held my shoulder. I jerked out of her grasp and turned to face her.
“No children,” she said, and swept past me through the door.
“She’s eighteen—” my mother started, but Ragna interrupted her.
“No children,” she repeated.
Fire burst through my veins, but I fought to quench it. Children cried when they didn’t get their way, and I was no child. So instead, I faced Ragna for a short moment and challenged her with the one thing I knew she would despise: the same smirking smile she had bestowed on everyone earlier, like I knew something she didn’t.
The sour look that shadowed her face nearly brought a true smile to my lips as I turned away.
The shadows darkened as I put more and more distance between myself and the village. In the wake of the meeting and seeing Eri again – really seeing him – a pressing need to be far away had propelled me into the woods. I had been dismissed as nothing more than a petulant youngster, forbidden from speaking with the adults. My temper flared hotter and hotter, and though I worked to keep it in check, the sight of Ragna’s face shutting me out would not leave.
Now my path was steep as I worked to climb higher and higher, up to a towering point on a familiar cliff too far from the village to be safe. If my mother and father knew, they would likely lock me in the house indefinitely.
Enjoy your freedom while it lasts, I thought bitterly. If Ragna and Oben had their way, I might be confined to the village in the weeks to come. And if there was one thing I knew about Ragna, it was that she generally got her way.
I was not the only one out and about in the woods. Between the trees I saw another girl picking her way through rock and limb, the sound of a tune she hummed just barely reaching my ears. Enja. I swallowed when I saw her face, its lines of familiarity that pulled at my heart. She was Sølvi’s sister, not quite two years younger. We’d been so close, of course, what with spending so much time with her brother… But as with most of my friendships, it had crumbled away last year. I hadn’t thought much about how she might have needed a friend after her brother died, only about my own pain, which made me feel selfish and ashamed to the point that I kept away from her even more. How can you take on someone else’s pain when you can hardly bear your own? I had needed to be away from everyone, alone with my wounds to allow them to start healing before I could help anyone else. And no doubt, she had done the same.
A ball of white fur walked close at her heels, and I remembered a time not all that long ago.
Sølvi and Eri had been tracking a large hare – Sølvi wasn’t much for hunting, and Eri had offered to guide him – unaware that Enja and I were trailing them. It hadn’t been on purpose. Not at first, anyway. We were meant to be gathering kindling for our homes and had strolled off into the woods together but had quickly been distracted by their voices through the trees. I knew Eri well; knew how adept his senses were and how wholly aware of the woods he became the moment he stepped into them, so I made sure to keep us downwind and out of sight. But with every glimpse of them, we knew they were both far too preoccupied with their work to notice two girls spying on them.
They spoke in low tones and walked carefully, slowly, trying not to scare off their prey.
“Poor Sølvi,” Enja whispered, smiling. “I am sure he’d rather be walking miles alone naked at night than this. He’s no hunter.” It was true. When he wasn’t writing on cave walls with me or herding and shearing sheep, his carving skills could have filled entire days from start to finish. He whittled elegant arrows and knife handles, spoons and other cooking utensils for the villagers. A few months ago, he had etched the rune for love – or perhaps it was family, though; it was difficult to be sure – into a smooth bit of wood and hung it on a string. I’d worn it every day since then.
He had a bigger top lip than bottom, which sometimes – like right then – made him look almost as if he was about to cry, until his face lit up with a smile that could reignite life in the dead.
“Should we be following them?” I whispered, keenly aware of the annoyance I would feel at such a discovery. “We can slip away now, and they’ll never know we were here.”
Enja held up a hand. “No, no. I want to see if my brother succeeds. It’s about time someone around here dethroned Eri.”
It sounded as if it was meant to be a joke, but as with many jokes, it was riddled with truth. Eri’s name was frequently found on the lips of the villagers, who praised his skills and strong heart. “A warrior’s heart,” my father had said, although I hadn’t figured out why that was something to be desired.
So we carried on following them, and perhaps ten minutes later, the two boys froze and stared at something through the trees. Then Sølvi raised his bow and let an arrow loose.
“No,” Eri said, but it was too late. Something nearby let out a yelp, and on instinct, Enja and I hurried out of hiding.
The heads of the two boys snapped in our direction, confusion and annoyance rampant on Eri’s face, and horror alight on Sølvi’s. He hadn’t killed a hare; he had killed a fox.
“I saw the white fur and…” Sølvi began, but he stopped, shaking his head.
“It was a good kill, and one we can use,” Eri said with a sigh. “Just not the one we were after.” He looked to me. “Why are you even here?”
“We were meant to be collecting kindling and started following you.” My desire to keep that a secret had evaporated the moment his annoyance with us had become so clear on his face.
“And no part of you considered the dangers of following two hunters, carrying bows?”
I shrugged. “We kept behind the trees.”
Enja, seeming to have noticed something a few yards away, knelt to the ground. I made my way over to stand beside her, and saw a little white face peering out of a burrow in the ground, mostly hidden by shrubs.
“She was a mother,” Enja said.
“Oh, damn me,” Sølvi cursed to himself when he saw the little creature. He shoved his bow at Eri, who took it with a look of surprise.
“You know you make the arrows I hunt with,” Eri said, slinging the extra bow across his back. “Not being the one to fire them doesn’t absolve you of responsibility.”
“I can change that,” Sølvi shot back. “I came out here to learn how to track a rabbit, not to kill a mother.”
“Welcome to Skane,” Eri said. “People like you are the first ones to go.” Then he turned and strode away through the trees.
When I turned back to Enja, she had the baby fox in her arms. It was trying to climb back down, yipping in fear and confusion, but she held it firmly. “He’s coming home with us,” she announced, looking her brother square in the face.
“Wonderful,” he replied.
Eri’s words to him would haunt me later in life, after this wretched island had indeed claimed Sølvi’s life, but I thought little of it in the moment.
Enja was carrying a basket on one arm, probably out collecting berries or kindling to dry. Her faithful fox followed at her heels. I should talk to her, see how she had been. But I turned away. A hundred thousand excuses floated around in my mind, all bumping into one another. I didn’t need to pick just one in order to avoid speaking with her. I had been doing it for a year now. One more day would do no harm.
If I was being honest, I would have acknowledged that I wasn’t ready to be the broken leading the broken. I hadn’t found enough pieces of myself yet to make a whole person, someone she could lean on, and I wasn’t sure if I would ever be that way again.
My foot slipped on an icy rock, and I flailed my arms to find balance. I had been climbing higher and higher up a ridge, and it was a long way down to the stony ground below. That would be a fall I would never survive.
I had tucked all my hair into a fur band that wrapped around my ears, just barely keeping them from going numb. My breath still hit the air like smoke from a chimney, but there was just enough warmth from the sun beyond the clouds to keep frostbite from my limbs. I had so many layers wrapped around my frame that the cold would have to fight to reach my body.
At the top of the cliff, I took in a deep, refreshing breath and planted myself on a rock close enough to the edge for a good view, but just far enough that I would not tempt fate. Around me, boulders and rough precipices and fir trees stretched for miles, until the forested horizon met the grey sky far to my left. To my right, tiny curls of smoke rose from the houses of my village. I knew that sight should have been comforting – home, familiarity, warmth – yet those were feelings I got out here in the wild, not surrounded by four walls.
Not far to my left, the sea churned and seethed. I didn’t travel to the shore much, finding enough distraction in the caves and forests of the land. Furthermore, Mother and Father had forbidden me from going there at a young age, and though I was generally happy to prowl about in places I shouldn’t, that was one instruction I had always heeded. Things outside our village did not often frighten me, but that turbulent sea did.
I turned slowly as I sat there, and let my eyes wander to the north. There were only snow-clad trees as far as I could see, rising and falling and hiding the horizon from view, a green and white sea of its own. Sometimes, on a clear day if I stood tall, I could just barely make out the tiny, shadowed forms of the mountains, impossibly far away – or perhaps I imagined them. Perhaps all the stories I had heard and the longing I felt about them morphed into those tiny black smudges that sometimes disappeared when I blinked. Sometime after arriving here, my people had named them the Kalls, an old word for cold. Simplistic, perhaps, but the mountains were in the north, and the north was undoubtedly even colder than here, where our little village sat.
We had stories about the mountains, of course, but because we knew so little about them, they came largely from the wandering minds of storytellers, with little to no basis in fact. They are the tombs of a people much larger than us, and far more ancient. They are the wall between our world and the other one. They are where all the evil things in Skane were gathered long ago, and they are better off left alone.
In the early days, a scouting party had headed that way, but they were run back by a pack of wolves, larger than the ones they had seen in Löska. Then when I was a child, an old man named Geir had left to travel to the mountains, but he’d never come back. After that, we stopped talking about them. Stopped thinking about them.
Sølvi always said that one day he would go, that one day he would set our village behind him and strike off to the north, and that he wouldn’t return until he had reached the mountains and collected stories to tell. And I … I wanted to go with him. I wanted to explore uncharted territories, to lay eyes on sights our people had never seen. I wanted to breathe in the cold mountain air and see what beautiful, wicked things they held. See silvery peaks that challenged the sky, soaring above the land like a fortress that either kept us out, or kept dark things within. I had dreamed of it, once or twice. Dreamed of the two of us traversing the distant mountains together, living out adventures we would grow old telling our children.
And then, one day, Sølvi was gone, and those dreams broke apart like a fallen icicle, shattered into myriad shards that could never be put back together. I stopped thinking about them, pushed away all thoughts of what we had wanted, what we said we would do, and let the idea of the north, of the mountains, fade away into the dim and be lost to thought. How could I, one person, want the same things we had wished for together? How could I hope any longer for a life that had been dreamed up when everything was different? But now… Now the call of the north sang to me again, and those thoughts and memories took in giant breaths of air, sending them spiralling back to the surface.
Trying not to move on from a loss is like staring at the stars at sunrise and willing them not to grow faint until you are merely staring at a lightened grey sky. Sooner or later, the parts of yourself you thought you lost begin to find their way home again.
“What’s in the north?”
A voice splintered the freedom of my thoughts. Eri stood a handful of yards away, a bow in his hands and a full quiver strung across his back.
“Am I your prey?” I asked, without answering his question. I pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged them.
“No. I found your footprints and followed them here.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
He stood straight, arms at his sides, but absentmindedly patted down the snow around him with one foot. “I saw you at the gathering. I know you saw me. You didn’t say hello.”
“We haven’t spoken in a year.”
He picked up a small stone from the ground and tossed it over the edge of the cliff, a sort of frustration behind every move of his muscles. “I know.” Silence. “I saw the lights for myself. They … they nearly made me sick.”
“I would have thought you were in bed at such an hour.”
He ran a finger along the string of his bow. “And I’d have thought you would be.” A long, heavy pause, and somehow I knew I would not like what was coming. I held my chin up, ready to face it. Whatever he had to say couldn’t be worse than the wretched year that was already behind us. “I was in the woods at the time because…” He cleared his throat and breathed deeply. “I knew you were in that cave. I knew because… Because I had followed you there. Into the woods. And back home.” The look on his face said he regretted saying it immediately – as he well should have. “I was worried about you, as your parents are, and I had seen you leave the village.” He spoke faster and faster, as if any of his words made it any better. “I would have felt terrible if something had happened to you and I was the only one who had known.”
I stood slowly. “You followed me?” The memory of that shadow darting out of the tunnel resurfaced.
“It was the right thing to do.”
Something broke inside me. I took three steps forward and poked a finger against his chest. “The right thing to do,” I whispered, shaking, “would have been to leave Sølvi and me alone. The right thing to do would have been to forget about me the moment you met me. The right thing to do would have been to apologize to him for what you said when you killed that fox’s mother, about people like him being the first ones to go. Because he’s gone now, Eri, and I can’t get him back. You were right: this Goddess-forsaken island did take him, and your words haunt me every day of my miserable life. The right thing to do would be to never speak to me again.”
He turned away towards the village, his eyes glistening with tears that would fall at any moment. My gentler side whispered I had been too harsh, but my anger snapped back that I had not been harsh enough. He gripped his bow with both hands and hugged it to his chest. “I regret those words every waking moment of my life, Janna,” he whispered. “But no matter what I do, or how I feel, I can never take them back.” One of the tears ran down his cheek, but he didn’t seem to notice it. “All I have left is you, and making it up to you, and keeping you safe. He asked me to, once, long ago. He said that if anything ever happened to him, to make sure that you were looked after. I can’t let him down. I can’t.”
Words got caught in my chest, and I had to turn away for a long moment, breathe in and out and collect myself. “You aren’t my guardian, Eri,” I said at last. “You are an anchor around my neck.” The thought of it, of a weight pulling me down beneath the dark and violent waves of the sea wasn’t unlike how I felt on most days, like I was struggling for air that was just out of reach.
The words cut at him, I could see it in his eyes, but he pressed on. “I hunt with your father, you know. He talks. He’s worried. He says you haven’t been the same since … since last winter.”
“None of us have been the same since last winter.” He’d lost a friend in Sølvi. Enja had lost a brother. And I had lost my love, my future. How could any of us be the same after that?
He held my gaze, fir-needle-green eyes piercing through mine, waiting for me to respond. I kicked a large rock with my boot so hard that pain shot up my leg.
“I don’t follow you for any reason other than to keep you safe, Janna. To keep your parents from worrying. You are lucky to still have both of them, and lucky that they care so much for you.” His voice broke, and he cleared his throat, but didn’t bother wiping away the tears that sparkled in his eyes. “I’m past hoping anything – I don’t think of you in any way except as a friend worried for another friend. That is all.”
My sharp edges softened. It wasn’t truly Eri himself that angered me so much – even though he had tried to divide us. But that was ages ago. What I hated deep down was how seeing him reminded me of Sølvi. They were always together, one right behind the other, and when I saw Eri walking through the village or the forest, I almost felt like Sølvi could be right behind him.
Although he never was.
“Will you come home soon?” His voice was quietly hopeful, but the word home stung my ears.
I turned slowly away for another deep breath, then back to look at him, to take in his whole demeanour. He didn’t want to be out here any more than I wanted him here. I was being harsh, but with a cause. He was not just someone from the village looking after a neighbour. There was a history that burdened every word we spoke; memories that invaded every second I spent in his presence.
“Yes,” I replied. Part of me meant it, part of me didn’t, but I made sure it sounded honest. “I’ll be home soon.”
He nodded twice. “Thank you.” After another moment or two of hesitation, the silence bursting with unspoken words that I could feel he wanted to say, he left me.
The air seemed to grow colder in his absence, and I hugged myself tighter. The night grew darker and darker somehow, though the sun had long since set. Overhead, innumerable stars sparkled and glistened, and when I looked at them, it was impossible not to feel hope. I stared for so long they consumed the world, and I was floating far away from this island, from the ground, bathing in starlight and shadow. Far in the distance, the howl of a wolf echoed through the woods, the siren song of a lonely forest. I tilted my head to determine where it came from. North. That was the second time I had heard it from that direction, yet they never seemed to move further to the south. They just cried on: the call of a wild animal which I longed to answer.
The call sounded again, and I stood, slowly. I knew these woods. I was light on my feet and I could climb a tree if need be. I stared to the north, pushing fallen bits of hair from my eyes. A wind from the south pushed against my back, propelling me forward. I shouldn’t go. My mother and father would be angry, and they would likely send Eri back out after me, but in that moment, it didn’t matter. I took another step.
Bright is the moon on a cold winter’s night, my grandfather once said. And bright are the bones it illuminates. It was a warning I had never forgotten.
And yet.
I could face their anger later, but tonight, I wanted to dance with a north wind and run with a wild river that rushed off to distant shores. Tonight, the north was calling.
It was the midsummer bonfire when I was thirteen, and all the children were playing a game where they split into two teams and tried to capture each other until one team came out the winner. The adults sat around the fire in the centre of the village, eating roasted meats and swapping stories of hunts or winters past, while we played on the outskirts nearer to the woods. They worried less during the summer, when the bears and wolves were fat on the plentiful smaller beasts found roaming the woods, and the air was far warmer than in the harsh winter months. Having been overlooked while teams were being chosen – I wasn’t sure if it was the fact that I stood a good few centimetres taller than most of the girls and some of the boys, or if it was the whispers I’d heard that my excursions alone to the forest made them uneasy – I was standing on the lowest branch of a tree inspecting an abandoned nest. That was how my mother always referred to my hair. As a bird’s nest.
Broken shards of speckled blue eggs lay among the grass and twigs. A raven’s nest, then. One that had served its purpose. Perhaps they were somewhere else in the same tree, watching me inspect their old home as they learned to live and fly. Judging by the pieces of shell, they had all hatched—
“Do you not want to play with us?”
I nearly fell off the branch at the sudden voice below me. A boy I only knew through Enja, Sølvi, stood under the tree, his hands folded behind his back. I didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, but staring at birds’ nests would do little to quell their concerns about me.
“I don’t have a group,” I told him, backing away from the nest to sit on the branch. “I’m fine.”
“You can be in my group,” he offered, beckoning for me to join. I saw a girl stop running to listen and stare. “I must not have seen you during the choosing. I’m sorry.” He looked genuinely apologetic, but his green-brown eyes had a way of always smiling even when he was serious.
I shrugged. “I’m happy to watch.”
“It’s midsummer. We should all be enjoying ourselves.”
“I was enjoying myself.”
“What were you looking at up there?”
I glanced back up to the bundle of twigs. “A raven’s nest. It’s empty, though. They all hatched and left.”
“Ah. It’s that time of year, I suppose. Anyway, will you join us or not?”
The girl who had stopped running came to stand at his shoulder. She cupped her hands around her mouth and leaned in to whisper something in his ear. Somehow the cupping, meant to muffle, only amplified her words. “My mother said she’s a witch. You must have heard the stories of when she called the wolves to kill poor Ragna’s baby. Leave her be. It’s best for everyone.”
A frown knitted Sølvi’s brows together, and I swallowed back a lump in my throat. It was not the first time I had heard those words, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. They had heard me speak to the animals from time to time, even though the animals never spoke back, and I spent more time out of doors than within them. Children were meant to behave, meant to come when called and meant to play with one another daily in the village, scampering about after their chores. Chase rabbits. Learn to hunt together. I behaved well enough, but I didn’t enjoy their playtimes, with wooden toys and games of hiding behind houses, waiting to be found.
“I wonder, then, how your mother is so familiar with witches,” Sølvi said as though he was deep in thought. The girl blanched. “Perhaps I should go and ask her.” He turned towards the village and craned his neck, as if searching for her.
“You shouldn’t,” the girl said quietly. “Mama says we should listen to adults. If she thinks the girl is a witch, she must be a witch.” There was defiance in her voice, but also uncertainty.
“And what if I told you my own mother thinks you are a witch?” Sølvi continued, cracking the knuckles on his hands one by one. The lines around his eyes and the way his mouth kept twitching like he was trying not to smile said that he was enjoying this more than the girl realized.
She swallowed and stared at the ground. “Then she would be wrong.”
“But my mother said it, and so she must be right. Perhaps I should warn your group…”
Without another word, the girl ran off, back into the village.
I stared at my feet as they dangled in the air, feeling the burn in my ears and cheeks. I still didn’t know exactly what a witch was capable of, though they came up from time to time in our stories and poems. Perhaps I was one and didn’t even know it. If a witch meant someone who preferred the woods to a house and the wind in her hair instead of the smoke of a fire, then I would wear the title with pride.
“Well, witch? Do you want to play with us, or not?” Sølvi’s smile melted the uncertainty growing within me, and I hopped down from the tree to join the game.