The wide room we were in shrank into a narrow passageway. I wondered, as I did with most caves, how it had been formed. Naturally, during the birth of the world? By hand, by someone long ago? There was a sort of gentle thrill in knowing I’d never know the answer, that some secrets Skane would never give up. What things this island had seen before our arrival would for ever remain mysteries to us.
The torch rested steadily in my hand. With Enja injured, even slightly, I had to be the stronger of us two, refusing to show fear even in the face of the uncertainty I felt. That sensation had been … unnerving. Even the fox had felt it, and though it had begun to diminish, some phantom of its presence still clung to my mind and body.
I took each footstep slowly, glancing all around us and down to where my foot would land. This wasn’t one of my usual caves that I could walk with certainty in darkness, and in the shadowed places of the world like this, it was impossible to be too careful. Every now and then I’d glance behind to find Enja a few steps away, bow strung but pointed at the ground, and Siiva haunting her footsteps. It was a good setup: whatever I missed in the front Enja could follow up on with her bow. Confident, I pressed forward.
The tunnel pinched ahead, becoming just wide enough for a body to fit through before opening up wider again. Turning sideways, we edged through, the walls seeming to close in even tighter as we passed by.
The tiny hairs on my arms, the back of my neck, all stood on end. I shivered despite the warmth of my wraps. Behind me, Siiva let out a low whine. Everything about this cave felt off but inviting, frightening but intriguing. I had never been so confused but so sure in my life as I came to a standstill and turned in a slow circle.
The light from my torch wasn’t the only light in the room.
All around us, swirls and shapes and unfamiliar lettering lit up in a dull blue, pulsing and waving as though alive. It filled up every inch of the walls; every bit of space the cave had to offer was alight with writing I couldn’t hope to understand. It was an art form just as much as it was writing – if indeed it was some form of writing – and for several long moments, it moved us to silence.
“Have you ever seen this before?” I whispered.
“Never.” Disbelief and fright were heavy in her voice. “What is it?”
“I wish I could say. I’ve never—” I stopped short as the lights flickered heavily like the flame of a candle someone was trying to blow out. On and off, fading in and out and rippling around the walls as if they were nothing but water. They were reacting to something, and as daft as that sounded, I’d never been more certain of anything. “Hide,” I said quickly.
I extinguished the torch and ducked behind a tall, jagged rock. Enja and Siiva did the same a few feet away, thankfully still in my line of sight. She held the fox in her lap, likely to keep him quiet, and then we waited, the room illuminated only by the blue glow from the walls.
It took a few long moments as the writing flickered more and more, dancing in a way that reminded me of the lós on a particularly cold and clear winter’s night. The icy blue grew vibrant then faint, up and down, but it never went out. Then, from further down the cave, something slowly worked its way towards us. It was large and odd, but decidedly elegant, certainly not a person. As it drew closer and closer to the centre of the wide room, the realization dawned on me.
A wolf, just like the ones I had seen in the woods. Like the one Eri had shot. A large, peculiar wolf that now stood tall, its head up. I couldn’t see details in the dim bluish light, but I was certain its eyes were closed. Could it sense us? Smell us? Animals could almost always sense humans and other animals, but perhaps in here, with no breeze to carry our scent, we would be safe.
A moment later, it threw its head back and howled. The noise cracked through the room, deafening in the silence and piercing my ears in a way that made me turn my head away. On it howled, the sound hungry and desperate to fill every inch of the world.
Then it stopped. Silence settled back in, and the lights dimmed. The wolf stood still for an achingly long moment, our eyes locked on its face as we waited for it to move, to howl again, to do anything at all. And when it finally did move, it slowly spun its giant, regal head – and met my gaze. I couldn’t fool myself into thinking it couldn’t see me. Its eyes bored into mine as if it could see beyond my face and flesh to the soul and mind beneath. My skin prickled from the cold but flushed from the heat. I was speechless and desperate to shout. Every emotion I’d ever encountered warred with one another as its gaze lingered, endlessly.
After a long, drawn-out pause, the wolf turned back the way it had come and left the cave with that hauntingly graceful walk.
I fell backwards against the floor, out of breath and dazed.
“It saw you,” Enja whispered, shuffling closer. “It gazed right at you and did nothing.” She turned to look back at where it had disappeared. “I don’t understand.”
I shook my head, still at a loss for words, and shuffled back on to my feet.
In the faint blue light, I struck the flint and relit the torch, motioning for Enja to follow me back the way we had come. Neither of us spoke as we followed the tight passageway back to the room with the Löskan items. When we were both there, Siiva darting around the room smelling everything to ensure it was all exactly how he had left it, I spoke.
“What was … that?” But I knew she didn’t know. Her eyes were wide, her face pale.
“I’ve never seen that before. I’ve never even seen a wolf that big. Once or twice while I was on my way here I’d hear their cries in the distance, but they were never very close. I didn’t think they could find a way in…”
That piercing howl echoed around in my head.
“It isn’t safe to stay here,” I said, making my way back towards the mouth of the cave. “Not if we don’t know what it is.” I didn’t like the not-knowing. Everything – the caves I frequented, the writing on their walls, the storms, even the red lights – were all explainable in some way, backed by history or stories or something we could understand. But that… That, I knew nothing about. “It could come for us in the night.” I stopped talking as I reached the cave mouth, to a wall of swirling white snow. The wind roared beyond the stone entrance.
Safe or not, we would be sleeping here for the rest of tonight.
“Janna, I … I don’t think it will come for us,” Enja said carefully. She rubbed both hands together nervously, which was odd for her, ever the cool and collected one. “It looked at you. It saw you, and it simply walked away.”
I sighed and dropped to the ground, crossing my legs. Enja took the torch and fixed it nearby, so I rubbed my hands across my face and thought hard. We could either brave the storm and almost certainly die, or brave the wolf and those lights and spend the night in here. Even if Enja hadn’t been injured, going out in the storm was far riskier. The choice was already made.
Neither of us spoke much for the remainder of the night. I wasn’t sure what to say – what could be said after what we’d seen – so I lay wrapped in my cloak staring at the roof, lost in thought. Outside, the storm raged on, howling and shrieking.
We always held that storms were the workings of giants: somewhere far away they fought with one another, their breath turning to wind and their voices rattling the ground. I imagined it now – a fight between two giants that could nearly bring Skane to its knees – if for no other reason than to avoid thinking about the wolf and the writing.
Life in our village was simple: hunt, gather food, knit, carve wood, prepare for winter, do not go too far alone. I knew what to expect from this life; from sun-up to sunset, everything was easy. Planned. And whether I liked that or not, it was the way things were. But this – the lights, the wolves – didn’t make sense. It didn’t fit in line with everything I knew about Skane, about life, about anything. I didn’t understand it, and that ate away at the back of my mind like rotting wood.
“Why did you bring us out here?” I asked presently, looking at Enja who sat staring back through the tunnel at the back of the cave. “Why not hide in the forest, or a nearby cave?”
She tore her eyes away and looked at me. “This place has felt like a home to me since I first found it. I hide here sometimes, since no one else would climb down that ledge.” A small smile. “They can shut their doors to the world, but I didn’t want these things to be lost for good, for those who survived.” She held up a scrap of cloth as if to illustrate her point, and then set it gingerly back down again. “Their story deserves to be heard, even if it’s only by us.”
“There are many stories that will never be heard,” I said, and then regretted how harsh it sounded. “Some of them aren’t meant to be known.”
But I understood, I truly did, and if I had been in her place, I knew I would have done the same thing. “We can try another village, after the storm,” I said, changing the subject. “Perhaps another one might be more friendly.”
She nodded, but she didn’t look convinced that we would be welcomed.
“Perhaps,” she said distantly.
I fell silent and looked around the room, the realization beginning to dawn on me that this was now as much my home as anywhere else. That pile of blankets I had always called my bed no longer belonged to me. Those walls in which I had grown up were no longer my refuge. The people who lived there had cast me out into the snowbound world beyond. All my life I had wanted to escape, to find a life in Skane that wasn’t tied to my village, and now here I was, with no other choice but to survive.
And survive I would, if I was forced to cling to life by my broken and bloodied fingernails. I would not be ruined by the people who had spent eighteen years casting false smiles my way, standing ready to accuse me of a crime I’d had nothing to do with. No, I would live, and I would endure long enough to outlast the plague and return to the village to see what havoc had been wreaked upon it. And evil though it was, a small smile pulled at my lips in the dying light of the torch.
Over time, even the hardest of hearts can learn to forgive. Animals can forgive, or at the very least forget. But Skane did not forgive; its stone, its merciless winds that ripped and shredded and threatened to tear you limb from limb … that was how I felt, like the ruthless wind of Skane, unflinching in its icy resolve. In being raised on this island, I had become a part of it, and the resolve and resilience it had engraved into my soul may be the one thing that would help me to weather the coming days.
Embrace the storm, Sølvi had once told me, while the wind shrieked outside. But I would do better than embrace it; I would become it.