It was one of those springs that worked to deceive us, teasing us with a handful of warmer days before once again plunging us into snow and darkness. One afternoon we would be out of doors playing in the sunshine, casting off our thickest layers as the exertion warmed our bodies, and the next, we would be huddled beneath blankets and cloaks, rubbing our hands to keep them warm. On one such night, many of the village children, myself included, gathered in the home of my good friend Enja, Sølvi’s sister, preparing to hear her father tell us stories while her mother offered us food and warm drinks. A great fire roared in the centre of the room, but I stayed on the edges, aware that most of the children knew little of me, and therefore mistrusted me. Enja dropped to the ground beside me and tossed me a hunk of bread, slightly dried out from the fire, but still delicious. Her father chatted with her older brother, Sølvi, whom I had hardly spoken to, but knew from the village.
“It’s colder than a troll’s bum,” Enja said, then glanced to her mother to be sure she hadn’t heard. “Perhaps winter is here to stay.”
I shivered at the thought of winter refusing to release us from its frigid grasp, of never feeling warm again, and never seeing the ground hidden beneath the snow. “Then we should leave,” I said, smiling a little to show it was in jest.
“Back to Löska?” Enja asked, flashing a smile. “I would rather stay here and be cold.”
All sense of fun disappeared as thoughts of that continent and the carnage that had happened there emerged from the depths of our minds. Those stories were ingrained in us, a part of who we were after hearing them so often, but so disturbing that we pushed them away as often as we could, only remembering on the rarest of occasions as we grew older. The monsters, the Ør, cruel people from distant northern islands who had overtaken the homeland of my people, murdering, skinning, and driving them out. The jewellery made from human teeth. It sounded more like a ghost story told by a fire than the actual history of our people. We were, all of us, Löskan, new to this island for only a few generations.
“Welcome,” Enja’s father – Ulrik – said, rubbing his hands together. The room hushed, voices fading into whispers that faded into silence as we all stared at him, ready to laugh or cry or jump in terror at whatever story awaited us. There were some stories that were often repeated, ones we knew by heart, but some were new, saved for special or deeply cold nights where we longed for a distraction. Tonight, I hoped to be scared.
“Once, many a year ago in a small village called Setta, there was a woman who claimed she saw a man made of nothing but bones.”
A few of the children shivered, and we all leaned in closer.
“‘He was tall and bore no flesh or hair, only a black hat that never fell off in the wind,’ she said, but no one believed her. It is impossible, muttered some. The cold has gone to your head, said others. But for days, the woman insisted that, in the middle of the night, her door had somehow been cracked open and the wind was whistling in, so she had risen to close it. As she was about to push it shut, she saw a man standing outside, nothing but waxen bone with no eyes or nose or lips. The wind rushed through him, howling all about the house, but the hat sitting atop his head didn’t budge an inch. He said nothing, nor did he move. At last, thinking herself to still be asleep, she slammed the door shut and locked it, climbing deep beneath the blankets on her bed until well into the morning. When she rose to go outside, there were footprints outside her doorway, angled and sharp, like the bare feet of a man with no flesh. Her blood ran cold at the sight: chilling proof that it had not been a nightmare as she had worked to convince herself. She tried to show the villagers, but they waved her off, supposing it to have been some animal lost out in the cold that had wandered off. Three days later, they found her dead in the forest, fallen from a cliff with a broken neck.”
I drew in a sharp breath, jumping at his sudden rise in tone, then flushed, embarrassed at having been afraid. I glanced at Sølvi, worried he had noticed, and felt my face flush even further to find him watching me with a self-important smirk that said he had heard this story before. I sat up a little straighter.
“Not a week later,” Ulrik went on, “a fisherman went running through the village during the night, shouting about a man made of bones who had visited his door, but disappeared into the swirling snow. Again the villagers wrote him off, assuming too much time on the sea had confused him, but this time, they locked their doors. Three days later, the man’s body washed ashore, drowned somewhere far out to sea.
“Now the villagers grew afraid, worried that they, too, would find the bone man waiting outside their doors one dark night, heralding a death that would follow in three days’ time. Weeks went by with no sign of him and eventually the village of Setta began to grow calm again, wondering if perhaps it had all been a misunderstanding, or perhaps a gruesome hoax. But then, on a particularly bitter night when snow swirled about in great white twisters and the shadows were rich and deep, an old man heard a knock at his door shortly after he had gone to bed. As he opened it with shaking hands, he, too, came face to face with the bone man, who said nothing and made no movements. He stared at the man until he grew so afraid that he quickly shut the door and backed away. One by one, the bone man knocked at each and every door in the village, and one by one, three days later, each and every villager met a quick and sudden end.”
My hands shook, but I didn’t want the story to finish. I fought the shaking by smoothing down my clothes and avoiding anyone’s face but Ulrik’s.
“Never again, in any of the surrounding villages or indeed anywhere in Löska, was the bone man ever seen.” Ulrik’s eyes gleamed at the looks of shock and enjoyment from his story, and he leaned back in his chair, satisfied. The children began to whisper again, and I turned back to Enja.
“Perhaps it is best to leave Löska be, after all,” she said, smiling with a wicked twinkle in her eye.
My dreams that night were filled with lights that burned behind my eyes, the howl of a wolf never far away. My mind replayed climbing off that ledge to find Enja injured below, only this time it wasn’t Enja, it was me, and I wasn’t injured, I was dead. All the scares and frights of the day came crashing into my dreams in one dark, fractured gust of terror, and I awoke at long last covered in sweat.
The comforting form of my mother sitting by the fire was nowhere to be found, and the walls of my familiar home had been replaced by darkened stone. I shivered and hugged myself, haunted by night terrors.
Siiva sat alert nearby and watching my every move. Time was impossible to tell, so presently, I hauled my aching body to my feet, and made my way to the mouth of the cave. The snow was at least a foot deep, and the wind had carried it partway inside the cave in messy piles, but it was no longer as windy and wild as it had been the night before. Here and there the sky had cleared up, and faint bits of a grey dawn were visible.
Back in the room where we had slept, I gently shook Enja. She awoke slowly, exhausted after yesterday’s events. Her face was still pale and there were a few new spots of dried blood where the wound had been irritated and opened during the night, but there was no sign of infection.
“We should get on our way as soon as possible,” I told her, grabbing my cloak from where it lay on the floor, having served as my bed for the night. “We can find food and fresh water in the forest, and with any luck, a village that might take us in.” In the dim light of morning, it suddenly didn’t seem so bad. Surely we would be welcomed in somewhere. Only our village was so evil as to cast us out for ever.
Siiva darted around in circles, pausing every few seconds to stick his head up and look at us, clearly keen to leave the cave. When Enja stood up, she rocked a bit and gently touched her head. “It aches,” she said, closing her eyes tightly.
I watched her for a moment. “Things always get worse before they get better,” I assured her, because it was true. I had seen a good deal of injuries in my life, and nothing about hers told me that it wouldn’t heal quickly. “But…” I looked back towards the mouth of the cave. “Enja, I don’t think you’ll make that climb. You didn’t make it down yesterday when you were well. I wouldn’t risk it while you’re injured.”
“It’s the only way up,” she told me.
“Well…” I started. “It isn’t.” I swallowed, looking towards the tunnel we had gone through yesterday. Her eyes grew wide, and I rushed to explain. “That wolf got in and out somehow, without using the entrance or the ledge. It didn’t even bother coming our way because it didn’t have to. If it was so sure, then perhaps its way is much easier.”
“But what if we run into it?” she asked, her voice rising. “What if it’s their den, or some sort of gathering place? One would be bad enough, but two? Three?”
“Then we’re armed,” I told her. “Climbing that ledge will be far more dangerous than taking the tunnel, especially after a snowstorm.” I hated that I was right, because I didn’t know what we would find, but right I was, and there was no mistaking that. I smoothed down my cloak and tried to think logically, pushing fear aside. “It’s either the near certainty of falling from a cliff, or the possibility of running into wolves. We have to take the chance, Enja. We have to.”
She drew in a breath and looked at Siiva, who still stood alert, ready to leave. Having an animal with us could only be helpful; he could hear or sense things approaching before we could, giving us – with any luck – enough of a chance to hide. The odds were stacked in favour of us taking the tunnel, and as the eldest, though not by much, I felt that it was my responsibility to make the decision.
“We’re going through the tunnel,” I said, as firmly as I could. “And we are going to be fine, and we’ll find a village where we’ll be safe, and someone can tend to your head better than I can. All will be well. We just have to get out of this cave.”
Enja didn’t bother arguing. She simply picked up her bow and quiver, adjusted her cloak, and nodded. I held my knife firmly in my hand, glancing around the room at the precious items that would have to stay behind. They were safe in here, for the most part. Safe from the storms outside and the waves from the sea. In a sinister, sad sort of way, they were the safest they had ever been. We would come back for them one day, but for now, the outside awaited.
We crept back through the tunnel, keeping closer together this time, walking side by side when space allowed. Siiva moved around slowly, ever on the alert, sometimes behind us and sometimes in front. I wondered what sort of things he could sense, what he knew about this tunnel and the darkness ahead that I didn’t. I wondered if animal senses were anything like what we had felt yesterday, when something within us had flickered, acknowledging a presence that we could neither see nor hear.
Slowly, slowly, we inched back towards the cavern with the lights. The markings were still there, blanketing the walls in shapes I had no hope of understanding, but their bluish light and pulse had disappeared, and the wolf was nowhere in sight. Siiva sniffed around, interested, but gave off no warning signs.
We moved past the walls, past the place where the wolf had stopped and given off that piercing howl while the blue lights danced around it, and into the narrower tunnel beyond. All around us there was just cold stone, uneven walls, and the pressing darkness outside the comforting glow of the torch.
The passageway wound on, the roof sometimes so low that we had to duck to fit our heads, and then sometimes so high that we couldn’t see it at all, even when I held the torch over my head. I was always surprised by the discovery of a new cave or a new tunnel, winding through the land like unseen veins that pumped with secrets and history.
On and on and on the passage went, until distantly, so faint I almost thought it was a trick of my eyes, there was a light. A blue-white light that could only mean one thing: day. The end of the passageway. Enja gently tapped my shoulder to point it out, and I nodded, smiling with relief. The bizarre nightmare of the cliff and Enja’s fall and the inexplicable wolf in the cave was over.
Siiva darted forward, almost out of reach of the torch light which was fast losing its vibrancy. A moment later, I dashed it out on the rock. Pale daylight lit our way as we moved quietly towards the small opening, the fox guiding us onwards. Outside, I could see snow-laden trees and white drifts piled heavily against their trunks, like winter had breathed over the land during the night and left its mark on everything. Difficult as our walk would be, the sight of daylight and snow and anything outside this strange cave was welcome. Siiva stuck his nose into the snow and rolled around, overjoyed to be back outside and out of the darkness. As my boots sank into the piled flakes, I smiled slightly. This daylight felt like freedom.
Like whether we would spend tonight sleeping under the stars, or an unfamiliar roof.
It was always more difficult to navigate a forest after a snowstorm such as the one we’d had the night before. The ground was mostly hidden, the trunks looked just a bit different, and some of the larger rocks and boulders that were waypoints in my mind had vanished under a white blanket. It took longer than it should have, our winding path leading us out of the way from time to time before I realized our mistake and righted us again. Sometimes it was Enja, recognizing something in the forest that I didn’t and directing our way, or Siiva, who seemed determined to take a particular route that neither of us thought was correct. We had agreed to head south, to a small village I knew only vaguely. There were more villages north, and we would visit them all if need be, but from where we had started out this morning, this one would be the closest.
This was adventure, I realized as we walked. This was what I had daydreamed about for so long: escaping Sjørskall and striking out into the wilds of Skane to see what lay beyond the realm of familiarity in which I had grown up. This was what I had always wanted.
I kept a careful eye on Enja as we travelled, but her injuries seemed to have caused her no lasting damage. She was alert and filled with energy, the kind I wished she could share with me, as my mind tried to crawl into those dark recesses that are better off left alone. A cloud of doubt and worry threatened to drown out even the brightest light that the world had to offer, but I fought it back, finding hope and beauty in the brilliant snow, in the rich evergreen needles peeking out from beneath their wintry shroud. There was beauty in Skane that no darkness could consume, that would remain until the island crumbled away into nothingness, or sank once more beneath the waves.
A twinge of distant smoke reached my nose a short while later, as we crested a steep rise in the ground. Siiva sniffed the air, and Enja and I slowed our pace as we neared the village. After what had happened, the thought of once again being near people set me on edge, and I chewed on a nail while we inspected the area. There was no sign of a perimeter, no sign of campfires or guards ready to turn us away, no sign of a stake made ready to burn us. This wasn’t Sjørskall, I told myself. It would not be the same here.
“What’s that?” Enja asked, tearing me from my thoughts. I followed her gaze to a patch of darkness hidden in the shadows of a shrub.
The back of my neck tingled as I made my way over.
Blood was melting into the snow. It was smeared on leaves, the trunk of a tree, the surface of a rock. Siiva let out a low whine like I had never heard before, and shrank away behind Enja.
“An animal?” she asked half-heartedly, kneeling to pick up the fox.
“Perhaps,” I replied, moving to follow the trail. A hunter had lost their wounded quarry, maybe, and we could save it from its misery and return it to the village. That would make our welcome at least a little bit warmer. Or perhaps our approach had frightened off an animal from its prey, and lay waiting nearby for us to pass.
The woods were thick here, undergrowth and tree roots intertwining into a tangle. I ducked under low-hanging branches, climbed over fallen tree trunks and boulders shooting from the ground, egged on by a sense of morbid curiosity. Something was dead or dying, and I needed to see, needed to know what or who it was, for reasons I couldn’t quite understand.
My heart was thunder. My breaths were short.
There was a splutter, a wheeze, like someone trying and failing to breathe, and I knew, even before I rounded the tree before me, what I would find.
A body lay in the dirt and leaves, eyes red and swollen, blood running from his mouth and ears. His furs were thick with it, dark and viscous and gruesome. He didn’t speak – couldn’t speak – and I was not entirely sure whether he was aware of our presence or not. Death was here with us, surely, waiting in this clearing for the opportune moment. This man had only minutes left.
A hand clawed at the ground, writhing and desperate for air that would never come. He was far from water, yet drowning.
“Stay back,” I said softly to Enja. I wanted to help the poor man, wanted to take him into my lap and hold him, offer him water, clean his face. How alone he must feel, trapped in his own dying body with no chance of help. But I couldn’t. Even though I’d never seen it before, I knew that we were staring into the grisly face of the plague.
“We must do something,” Enja said, and her voice cracked with sorrow. She reached out towards him, but dropped her hands again promptly.
We couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t go near enough to breathe the same air as him. Not unless we were ready to run the risk of infection ourselves. And even though I had been well all day; even though I knew my eyes were not red, and no blood ran from my ears, I felt suddenly unsure, intensely aware of every inch of my body. Did I feel feverish? Too cold? Was that a rattling in my breath?
Perhaps we were already standing too close. I could almost see the plague slithering across the ground between us, winding its way up my legs and creeping down my throat. I took a step back, grabbing at my neck as though to halt its progress.
No. If the plague was going to take me, too, I would not give it the pleasure of first consuming my mind. I had seen what this kind of fear did in my own village, and I would not succumb to it. I didn’t give myself time to think, to find another option. I simply grabbed Enja’s bow and an arrow from her quiver, and shot it into the poor soul’s heart.
It was the only kind of mercy I could offer.
I would soon be fourteen. In my efforts to be as good as Eri, I was out in the woods teaching myself to hunt. I had tracked a fox all the way from the village – not to kill, but to catch – and while a small voice in the back of my mind told me I should turn back, that the nip in the air signalled snow, I pressed on, eager not to return empty-handed.
Ahead, I caught the flash of a reddish-grey tail and moved towards it, my feet slipping into the snow without a sound. A chill wind hit my face and I glanced up through the tangle of needles overhead to where the sky was fast becoming dark grey. A storm was brewing – and quickly. I had seen skies like that one many times before, yet I was so close now. The creature could be mine within minutes, if only I could focus…
Another streak of movement, this time further afield. I picked up my pace, refusing to think about the snowflakes now making their way down through the trees from the sky. I was at least an hour from home. An hour’s walk through this storm … but I pushed away thoughts of what my mother and father would say, of the scolding I would receive when I returned. If I brought something back with me, perhaps it would soften the blow.
My mind was at odds with itself, arguing back and forth about whether to continue tracking my quarry or to turn around and head towards safety.
A gust of wind snapped a small branch nearby. I stopped, swallowing hard. Ahead through the trees there were no more signs of the fox. Frustration fought to boil to the surface, but apprehension at the gusting wind and fast-falling snow pushed it back down. Casting one last glance around for any sign of russet fur, I turned back the way I had come.
When I was younger, my father had taught me that in a snowstorm, it’s nearly impossible to tell in which direction you are travelling. With the wind and the snow and the lack of visibility, it is far too easy to head the wrong way and not realize it until it’s too late. I had imagined several times what that would be like, stripped of all sense of direction and pressing on to the Goddess knows where, home and warmth waiting somewhere out of sight.
I didn’t have to imagine it any more. Within minutes, the wind was roaring in my ears, the air sharply cold in my lungs. I wrapped my arms around myself to hold in any warmth that I could, but it did very little. I shivered like I had never shivered before as I tried to focus, tried to stay on my feet and keep pressing on. Before long, I wasn’t sure if my feet were still carrying me in the direction of home. Had I turned slightly to the left back there, or was it my imagination? Was I leaning a bit to the right? It was impossible to tell, and my father’s words seemed to be shouted into my ears by the wind.
I imagined the storm passing and finding myself far to the north, in unfamiliar woods with unfamiliar beasts roaming around – if I survived long enough to ride out the storm. My hair whipped wildly around; my clothing pressed tightly against my body with the force of the wind. Some small, frozen part of my mind considered coming to a standstill and collapsing to the ground. I could curl up into a ball and stay as warm as possible while the snow slowly covered me. There had to be worse ways to die.
Where did the birds go during storms like this? Where were the foxes and the deer and the rabbits? Maybe I could survive in the same way they did, in some small den or cave – where were my caves? Perhaps I could find one, but … so cold. So bitterly cold. Thoughts tried to make their way into my mind, but they cracked and splintered before they could fully form.
The part of my mind that still functioned became vaguely aware that I had stopped nearly walking into trees. There were other shapes now, but I couldn’t quite make out what they were.
Until my boots kicked against a solid wood door. I stood blinking for several moments, confused to my core. Home? Mine? Someone else’s? It didn’t matter. I kicked again, my arms too cold to raise my hands, and I kept kicking until someone cracked it open, pulled me inside, and shut it behind me.
It wasn’t my village, and I didn’t know the occupants, but it was a kind woman with fair hair and grey-green eyes, and her husband, who barely said a word. She put me by the fire and brought me food and a warm drink, and once feeling had returned to my bones, I’d slipped off to sleep.