Do not let her die.
Fire crackled. Light pressed against my eyelids. I blinked once. Twice, climbing out of a deep dream where there was something I had to do. Someone I needed to save.
Home.
I sat up quickly, my head spinning, and imagined I saw a wolf and an arrow and Eri holding a bow. And those words weighed heavy in my mind, though I didn’t know why.
Do not let her die.
“What happened?”
It was my mother’s voice that answered. “Eri brought you back last night. You’d fainted.”
I collapsed back on to the bed, pure frustration making my skin flush. “I have to go back,” I said, and then moved to get up.
“You can’t, Janna,” Mother said softly, and something in the way she said it gave me pause.
“Why not?”
Before she had even answered, I remembered the village meeting. The cold resolution in Ragna’s face. The things that had been said. The last time I had seen my mother, she was entering Oben’s house to discuss Ragna’s proposition. I should have forced my way in, insisted on being a part of the discussion, but I had given in to Ragna’s words and turned away for a walk in the woods, like the child she thought I was. I kicked away all blankets and furs, too warm.
“We put it to a vote among all of the villagers,” she said. Her voice was rife with sadness, weighed down by whatever she was about to say next. “They voted overwhelmingly to seal off the village. It’s happening today.”
“I wasn’t here,” I said quickly, jumping to my feet. “And neither was Eri, or Enja, for that matter. We didn’t get to vote.”
“Your votes would not have changed anything, Janna. Only a few voted against it.”
I could see all their faces standing there the night before, see the fear and the worry and the frustration that haunted their features, and I could picture the vote in my mind. Picture them choosing the option that might – just might – give them a chance. Fearful minds are quick to search out hope, even if it’s false, and Ragna gave them what they craved. She painted a picture of safety and life, and they ate it up like starving creatures would, giving no thought to anyone else. A scream boiled up in my chest, but I quelled it before it had the chance to escape. The plague could take days or weeks to arrive, and weeks or months to leave. The thought of being trapped here for so long – and trapped with the dead and dying, blood melting into the snow, spluttering coughs the only sounds to be heard within miles – made me sick deep in the pit of my stomach, and worse, the thought of what sort of message it would send to the other villages. Granted, we rarely saw them, did almost no trade with them, and especially now in the dead of winter found very little reason to make the long trek through the snow to the nearest one. But if someone came calling, if a fisherman came to trade for deer meat or some of our stockpiled wool, if they needed something, word would spread around like fire through straw that we had closed off. That we had left everyone else to die while we stayed safe and secluded within our own walls.
“How soon?” I asked.
“Now. Today. They are already working to divide up the watches and light fires around the outside of the village.”
I thought my heart would stop altogether as the walls seemed to reach out towards me, sealing me in. “Now?”
“Now.”
The forest. The hills. Open stretches of undisturbed snow. That was what I needed; what had given me hope and strength over the last year. They had got me through the darkest part of my life to date, and the thought of not seeing them again for weeks – or never, if the plague found me – was suffocating. “What happens if someone leaves the village?”
Mother spoke each word carefully, ensuring I received their full meaning. “Then they will not be allowed to return.”
I collapsed back on to the bed, as the wood of the roof fractured and spun overhead.
The sun was harsh, glinting off the snow and threatening to blind me as I all but stomped through the village towards Enja’s house. It was the first place I had thought to go after waking up; the first place I had wanted to go. But was it Enja I truly wanted to see, or was it an old habit that had yet to die, from the days when I made this walk to visit Sølvi? I avoided answering myself, because I didn’t know.
There was a comfort in making this walk, and in these hours between the red lights and the plague, when our village was collapsing in on itself and fear had climbed atop our trembling bodies to reign over us, I was desperate for comfort.
All the houses were alike, although they varied in size. Wooden walls lined with mud and rocks kept out the harsh winds. The streets that wove between them were little more than packed earth from frequent walking, now smothered with trampled snow. Most homes housed several generations, the elderly living with their children until their death. My grandfather and grandmother on my mother’s side had passed away nearly ten years ago, from a great sickness that had swept through the village and claimed many of the older folk. Of our family, only my father’s father remained, though he lived across the village with my uncle.
One by one, the homes slipped by, all the same. The door to Eri’s family home was closed, but I couldn’t help glancing at it as I passed, tempted to kick it open and wring his neck for what he’d done to the wolf. But all in good time. I would have nothing but time to deal with him when we were all locked in the village for the foreseeable future.
My hands shook as I stood outside Enja’s – Sølvi’s – house. I had been here so many times before, for dinner, for games, to spend time with his family, to ride out snow storms, or to bring him over to our house. Memories hung thick in the air around me, threatening to choke me and rob me of air. Was that a faint scent of him? His hair always smelled of leaves in the forest, and his clothes carried the soft scent of dried kitchen herbs. But – no. The sight of his home, the echoes of a bygone time that my mind wished to once more make real, made me almost believe he was here. And the understanding that he wasn’t here was an anchor weighing my soul to the ground.
After four knocks, the door opened. It was her mother. His mother. They were his eyes, staring back at me in surprise. A sad sort of recognition settled into her features. “Janna?”
I drew in a steadying breath and brushed my fingertips along the door frame. “I just came … to see Enja. Is she in?”
Hildur shook her head, but I didn’t miss the surprise in her movements. I had not come here seeking out Enja’s company in what felt like a lifetime. “She went to walk along the perimeter, to see if there was someone who would let her out. I tried to stop her, of course, but you know how she is. I might as well try to tame the wind.” A sad sort of what can you do? passed across her face, and for a moment, I could see just how tired she was.
“No one will let her out,” I assured her, taking a step back. The overwhelming familiarity was seeping into my skin, finding its way into my bloodstream and making me nauseous. I wanted nothing more than to turn and run, but I wouldn’t. Not in front of Hildur. I swallowed heavily and gripped the door frame for support.
“If you find her,” she said, “please bring her home.”
I nodded, then spun around and walked away as quickly as I dared, until I had rounded a handful of other homes and his was out of sight. The world tilted and spun, left and right and up and down blending together until my knees met the ground and I fell.
I tried to breathe. There’s no air.
I tried to stand. Your muscles are too tired. They’ve been tired for a year.
I lay down and rolled over to stare at the sky. There’s no beauty in a sky that gives host to the red lós.
It was the voice I had been fighting since last winter. I couldn’t stand the sound of it, whispering in my ear every dark and wicked thought I spent so long trying to push away.
Slowly, I struggled to climb to my feet. When I was certain no one was around, I leaned back against a tree trunk set between two houses on the outskirts of the village and closed my eyes, focusing on the rustle of leaves and call of birds to calm my racing heart.
The house looked the same. It smelled the same. He could so easily be there, sitting just inside the door, working on a pile of arrows or stringing a bow. He could have been only a few feet away and turned to look up at me when I knocked, his eyes shining with firelight and the scent of dry leaves wrapping me in an embrace. He could have.
But he didn’t. And he wasn’t. That was the worst part: how nothing had changed except that he was no longer here, which meant that somehow, everything had changed. Life in Skane was a game which everyone ultimately lost, but some lasted longer than others. I was not ready for his part to be over. I was never going to be ready.
What would he say if he were here, knowing, as we all did, that somewhere on this island, the plague was alive and well again? That the next person to cough could be the first person to die, and that in one of these quiet homes around me, someone could be staring at bruises forming beneath their skin. Could see the redness in their eyes reflected in a pool of water. Those stories that had once made my skin crawl with horror, of blood and death and pyres full of bodies, were real, and they were here.
“Janna.”
Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked to my left. I knew that voice.
“Enja.”
A bird called overhead. In the distance, a man’s voice echoed off the trees.
“You look unwell,” she said. Both hands hung at her sides, her white-blonde hair tied up behind her head. Shorter than me by a few inches, she still somehow managed to cut an imposing figure when she stood still, icy eyes unmoving in their search of your soul. Her long grey cloak, lined with fur, danced in the gentle breeze. I’d had such a fondness for her, such a respect for her once upon a time, and those familiar feelings, like being in the presence of family, came trickling back.
But so did a sense of discomposure as I was gently reminded by a voice in my head that I had forgotten how to be around her. That I had abandoned her when she needed me. She abandoned me first, I shot back.
I pushed off from the tree and crossed my arms behind my back. My ears burned, though whether from the embarrassment or the frustration that warred within me, I didn’t know. “I just came from your house.”
A breeze toyed with her stray hairs, and her eyes wandered briefly before finding mine again. She didn’t nod or move, she just said, “I see it every day, you know. Her face. His face.” She flexed her fingers one by one, perhaps working methodically to stave off tears. “Some days I hardly notice it, and then she’ll say something that he would have said, or make a face like he would have made, and then it’s all I see. It’s like my lungs slowly start to fill with water until, all of a sudden, I can’t breathe. She doesn’t know, because she doesn’t see herself, but we all see it. I see it.”
It was a rebuke, in her own way, reminding me that I wasn’t the only one to hurt when he passed on. But pain had made me inconsiderate. I had retreated into myself after he died, searching for comfort in the safety of my own mind, though I had found none. Could I have been happier if I had run to her, instead?
A year of unspoken words formed a fog between us, and I was half tempted to use it as cover to turn and run away.
“She asked me to send you home,” I told her. Somehow, steering the conversation to the present kept me from fleeing.
“I’m sure she did.” She bent down to pick up the white fox at her feet, who nestled into her arms and closed his eyes. “They are sealing us in as we speak, stringing rope and twine between trees to outline our perimeter, since so few of them know their way around these woods. They are setting up patrols to walk along it, to watch for anyone trying to pass in or out. We’re no better than sheep.”
That pressure in my chest returned, a crushing sense of suffocation and helplessness. “Even sheep find ways to escape.” I brushed a piece of frizzy hair from my eyes and breathed deeply. “I wasn’t here for the vote, or I would have fought it.”
“Neither was I.”
“Wouldn’t have made a difference.”
“I know.”
Footsteps grew louder close at hand, and two women with armfuls of rope moved by at a careful distance, casting furtive glances our way. I knew that look so well, the one that reminded me the village would always keep me at arm’s length, never trust me enough to let me in. But I didn’t want to be let in. The villagers didn’t trust people they didn’t know, and none of them had tried to get to know me or Enja. They had seen wild girls with wild ideas, who hated the village and loved the forest, and had slapped us with a stamp of witchery which we would never be able to remove.
Once a few paces past us, the two women began to whisper to one another.
No one trusted anyone after the red lights, least of all us.
“They won’t look at us the same until it’s over,” Enja said. She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but there was a shake to her voice as though tears were not far off. I wanted her to find her strength, to drip with it, even if it was only skin-deep. To let the words of the villagers run down my body like rain and fall away. “We aren’t to be trusted.” There was a devilish twinkle in her eye.
I nodded, and shrugged, watching as the women disappeared into the trees. “I’ll never look at any of them the same way again, either.”
I walked Enja back through the village but said goodbye before her door came into view. I couldn’t bear to look at it again so soon. When she had disappeared into her own house, I should have gone home straight away, gone to speak with Mother and Father about what I could do to help the village prepare. I’d heard voices as I walked back towards home, echoing in the woods and emanating from doorways, speaking of funeral pyres that would need building and sunset prayers to plead with the Goddess for mercy, but all it had done was make me vomit behind a house. I’d felt ashamed after that, like I was too weak to do anything of value, but when I’d stood up again and taken in the cold night, that sickening fear had been overshadowed by something stronger.
I held my chin high for a long moment, collecting my thoughts as this new fire, this sense of purpose, kindled to life in the darkest corners of my heart. Voices and whispers hissed around me as I walked, and now and then, words reached my straining ears. I was curious about this village now, curious about those who had come to a decision I so despised. Now, more than ever, I wanted to understand the people I lived with. It had only taken eighteen years.
“… should have done this last time. Goddess knows what they were thinking…” The words were spoken by a man to a woman as they carried armfuls of wood from a shed towards the open door of their house.
“… always been underestimated. I’ve long said she should be a leader. She knows what’s best for us. Always has…” spoken by one of two men who sat inspecting an array of weapons laid out before them. Bows and arrows and knives. I prayed silently that they were not speaking of Ragna. And when would they have need for so many weapons? If other villages came calling? To end the misery of those with the plague? I wanted to ask, but I kept walking. It was better if I didn’t draw attention to myself.
I pulled air into my still-healthy lungs and stopped near the centre of the village. Was there anyone on this island, at this exact moment, who had yet succumbed to the plague? Anyone who felt blood seeping into their lungs and eyes and nose and mouth, who knew that the end was near. I didn’t know exactly how it felt to have the plague, but I had imagined it more times than I should, out of either fear or wicked curiosity. But it had always been a distant thought, still under the safety of a blue or green or clear sky. It was never sure. Never imminent.
I gently touched my chest with a hand, that feeling of suffocation beginning to return.
The soft but distinct voices of children made their way to me on a light breeze. I followed the sound to a small grove of trees on the edge of the village and stayed out of sight behind a woodshed while I listened. One seemed to be telling a story to the others, who listened in silent rapture.
“… says the witchfolk still live among us, conjuring storms in the sky, or causing hunters to lose their way in the woods. They bring predators upon us and frighten away any game we could hunt. Because”– He sucked in a breath, drawing out their interest for as long as possible – “witches don’t need food to survive. They live on human blood, stealing it from you while you sleep, over and over again every night, until one day, you just won’t wake up.”
I peeked around the shed to see the three children sitting on the ground gingerly touch their throats.
“And the worst part of it is, you won’t even know when you meet one, because they look just like you and me. The only difference is that, on nights with no moon, you can’t see them at all. They just…” The boy snapped his fingers. “Disappear.”
The children gasped.
“But my father says that they live among us, that they walk the same streets as us; that they are the ones who bring the plague to our veins and watch us bleed to death one by one.”
One of the children cried, and another asked, “But who are they?”
The boy who was speaking shrugged. “I don’t know. My father never told me. I don’t think anyone knows.”
I should have gone in to break up this vile little meeting of theirs, but something told me that I did not want to insert myself into something like this. That it would be better if I stayed silent and out of sight for the moment.
“You there,” a man called to me gruffly. He tossed me a heavy coil of rope, which I just barely caught. “Take this to the southwest perimeter edge. They need more. Hurry up.”
I smiled drily when he turned his back to me. When no one was looking, I tossed it into the first fire I could find.
When the veil of night settled over the village, Mother had asked me to return to the house – and I would, eventually. My breath was sharp and biting in my lungs, and the areas of my face that were exposed to the cold night air stung like a skinned knee. I wandered the edge of the village hugging myself, glancing up at any snapping twig or rustle of the underbrush. I was still within the perimeter, of course, but far enough that I felt the satisfaction of pushing the boundaries. I hated myself for thinking it, but with every breath I took in, I couldn’t help but imagine the plague slipping into my lungs and spreading like floodwaters through every bit of my body.
Terror rose, but I stamped it down.
In the distance, through the silhouetted trees, I could make out the echoing voices of those on the watch, and here and there I could see the faint glowing of their campfires. In the space of a single day, my world had shrunk to the size of the village, and I had to breathe through the alarm that tried to swell within me. Now, more than ever, I wanted to hear Sølvi’s comforting voice.
The village is what you make it, he would say. Find a way to be yourself when you cannot be where you wish.
His time with me had, for a while, sent him spiralling to the outside alongside me and Enja, but his friendship with Eri and his ability to hunt – a skill so highly valued in our village – soon saw him welcomed back into the arms of our people. He could walk that line in a way I never could; be the wild boy I loved, and the upright one they cherished, somehow without losing himself along the way. It was everything or nothing with me, outsider or insider, but no part of me wanted to surrender any of my freedoms to spend more time with people who whispered that I was a witch whenever I turned my back.
I wasn’t unlike them, though. We were all working towards the same thing, all fighting for something that was never, for any of us, guaranteed: a future. It was why they sealed off the village, why they didn’t trust the others dotted around Skane, why we hunted and gathered for the winters. We were all just trying to survive, but I did not want to survive in a world where the only heartbeat that mattered was the one in my own chest. Sølvi gave everything he had for me, including his own heartbeat, and I would not watch us devolve into a divided, fearful society that rose up only by standing on the bodies of the weak.
Something small – a rabbit, perhaps – scurried through the nearby shrubs and disappeared into the shadowed forest. The woodland was just coming alive for the night, and I wished with an aching heart that I could be a part of it.
Night-time had always been my refuge, my retreat from the glaring vulnerability of day. But tonight, the dark held wicked things with gleaming teeth, and the wind carried the whispers of the plague on its back, breathing death into my ear.
A door opened maybe ten yards away, and a man stepped out to collect an armful of firewood. He stopped when he saw me, staring for long enough that my skin prickled. His eyes, what I could see of them in the faint light from his doorway, glittered with distrust. A moment later, he returned to his house, and I was again alone. Superstition ruled the village, and I, considered an odd outsider from childhood, was the easiest one on whom to lay their suspicions.
As if I could conjure the plague from the frozen air around me.
Early the next morning, they found a body.