We continued on, our footsteps slow as we neared the village, our shadows growing long and the sky dipped in orange. Over the hours we walked, we spoke barely three times. The most recent occasion was when Enja asked if I knew where we were going, and I shrugged and said I thought so. But in the back of my mind, I had a suspicion that I knew where my feet were leading us, so I let them guide the way with little thought. The whole of my mind was consumed by the face of the person I’d shot; the face of agony and terror that would follow me to my own death.
And just behind that face were many others: my father’s face, my mother’s face, Ragna’s face. What had become of them since we’d gone? Had they already forgotten about me and my supposed crime, overcome by death as the plague crept from one waiting body to another? Or had their fear driven them further into madness? Perhaps fear guided all humans, regardless of anything and everything. It was a spark we all carried inside us, fanned into flame by predators, mountains, tales of the past … and by the red lós. Everything else paled in comparison to the dread those lights bred in our hearts, and for some it came before all else.
My footsteps grew heavier as my thoughts ran free, until the sound of my stomping in the snow pulled me back to the present, and back to the reality that I was now charged with the life of a girl a few years my junior, cast out of our village for ever, in the unforgiving depths of winter. We will be fine, I told myself, because I needed to hear it. We would try this village, and if we had no luck there, perhaps there were more of which I was unaware, or camps of loners who lived in the wilds. Perhaps we could find a cave in the forest, or return to the one down by the water. We would find somewhere to go, and we would make it through this winter.
Although, as my hand drifted to my face to brush away a stray hair, I couldn’t help but picture the man again, bruises the colour of midnight and blood trickling from ears, mouth, eyes.
I heard a shuffling sound behind me, then a sharp squeal, and silence. I whirled around and started to run towards the noise, I stopped when all I found was Enja standing there, her face calm and cool, a rabbit in her hands. Its neck was broken.
“What happened?” I asked, flailing my arms out in the air in a show of exasperation at the start she had given me.
“I killed a rabbit,” she replied, holding it out to me.
“I can see that.” I didn’t take the creature. “How? Why?”
She spun it around in her hand, staring at it. “I fell behind a little ways, and it made to cross my path. There’s almost always a moment when prey meets predator when they freeze out of fear, unable to move. My father taught me to take advantage of it. To use it to survive.”
My mouth hung open, dumbfounded. Perhaps I didn’t need to be in charge of her after all, which relieved me somewhat. I still enjoyed the feeling of being alone. And perhaps my own survival skills were slight compared with hers. I glanced once more at the rabbit, opened my mouth to say something, and then turned away. Enja was strange and surprising, and since she couldn’t see my face, I allowed myself a smile. That sisterly affection was working its way back into my heart, although I didn’t have the courage to say it out loud.
An hour later, buildings up ahead peeked through the trees. In the distance, I could hear the crash of waves and the cry of seabirds. I had only been to this village once before, as a child that night I had become lost in a storm and was taken in by two strangers. I didn’t even know which house was theirs, or how to find them. Walking through the village was like revisiting an old dream, one that isn’t quite like you’d grown to remember it. And that night, the snow had been swirling and the wind had been crying, and I could hardly tell right from left. I led us to the centre of the village and stopped. A few passers-by eyed us uncertainly, even stopping altogether to stare. Enja took a step closer to me, the rabbit hanging at her side, while Siiva sniffed the air all around us.
Worry prickled in my mind at the sight of people, at the memory of the last time I had seen so many faces at once. Torchlight flickered on the edges of my vision, and the trees dotted between houses became the stakes where I should have burned alive. But these people had no reason to hate me. No reason to burn me.
“What are you after?” asked an old man from his doorway.
“Who are you?” asked a woman.
“I am looking for someone,” I replied, searching each face for a sign of familiarity. Had I expected to recognize her after all these years? Could I even picture her face in my mind any more? I thought I could, but when I went to look for the memory, I found only shadows. I eyed all the surrounding houses, but nothing struck me as something I had seen before. Nothing. Perhaps it was the wrong village…
A door to my right opened and a man emerged. He was much older, more lines criss-crossing his face, but I knew him instantly. In some way he didn’t seem to be quite sure about, recognition toyed with his features. I stepped forward.
“Please,” I said, gesturing to Enja behind me. “A word? You wouldn’t remember me, but you took me in when I got caught out in a storm many years ago. You and your wife. And we … we have nowhere to go.”
“Is it the plague?” he asked gruffly, distrust burning hot in his eyes. “Has it reached your village?”
“Not ours, to my knowledge,” I said quickly. “There were no signs of it. We are here for other reasons.”
He stared at me for a long moment, and then at Enja. I could feel the “no” rising on his throat, but before he could reply, his wife appeared in the doorway behind him, a wave of warmth and comfort following behind her.
“It’s you!” she said, pushing past him and moving to embrace me. Golden hair framed a gentle face, and sparkling green eyes shone with recognition. “I’d remember that hair anywhere.” She ran a hand over my matted tangles, and her smile melted some of the ice I’d been building since we had narrowly escaped burning. As she embraced me, I felt the bump of her stomach that had been mostly hidden by her wraps and clothing.
“Careful,” the man whispered to her, taking her hand and gently pulling her back. “After the lights … you never know who might be carrying it.”
“Hush, you,” she said to him, and opened their door wider. “Come in.” There was a glow about her like nothing I had ever felt or seen, like those first rays of sunshine after a long winter storm. She was the sort of person who made you feel as if you didn’t always have to be the strong one, as if there was someone who could instead care for you.
Their home was warm and set up just as I had remembered it, with a few small new additions here and there, including a small daughter, who played with wooden toys in the corner. The woman hurried around as we sat down on folded blankets by the fire, offering us bowls of soup and tumblers of water before cleaning the rabbit. I drank and ate gratefully, the icy rage I had been carrying all day beginning to quiet. It was impossible to be angry here, in her presence. Every time she spoke was another warm blanket wrapped around my cold shoulders.
Siiva, having been allowed in, rested quietly beside Enja.
“Now tell us what has happened,” she said finally after we were fed and watered to our content, while her husband stood lurking nearby. He had softened a bit since we arrived, but not enough to get too close. He reminded me of the people from my own village, although I hoped less murderous.
The woman’s hand rested gently on the bulge of her stomach.
Amid such warmth and kindness, I felt like a child again, and I wanted nothing more than to lie down before the fire and fall asleep while she told us a story of some distant danger that would never be real, and I could sleep without darkened dreams or worries drenched in red. I wanted to forget the lós, the burning, the villagers who had risked everything to get us out, the dying man in the woods who had been consumed by the plague.
The man I’d had to kill.
I missed my good memories, suddenly and violently, as the weight of recent events – not only the burning and the lós, but a year ago, when I lost Sølvi – became far too heavy.
I drew in a long breath and told her everything. I didn’t know why, exactly, but she was so warm and kind and I was so cold and tired that pouring it all out before her took a great weight off my chest. I told her about the man who had died – Fiak – and how I didn’t know him. About Ragna, and the people of our village, and how we had narrowly escaped burning. I could hear the poison in my words as I spoke of them. I told her of the cliff, Enja’s fall, the cave – and I told her of the man in the forest, careful to emphasize the distance we had kept, although her husband still prickled. Enja offered small bits here and there to fill in the story while Siiva slept by the fire, and when we had finished, I could have sworn a tear lingered in her eye.
“It’s a tragedy, these lights,” she said, shaking her head. “And not only for the things they bring, but for the things they cause humanity to do. Families casting out families, villages closing off their borders to even those who might need it. After the red lights show and long before the plague even arrives, we’ve lost ourselves to fear and hate.” She coughed, a small, simple cough that sparked something to life in the back of my mind.
“You are expecting,” I said, trying to offer a small smile. “Again.” I glanced to the little girl in the corner.
“Yes, she was born almost two years ago, and this one… Well, this one will be here any week now. Not long left.” She patted her belly fondly, and something in me ached. What a time to be born. What a time to enter this world, during such worry and hostility, and a plague that might take their life before they even had a chance to truly live. “If I were allowed one wish in all of this chaos,” she continued, her eyes tight with sadness, “it would be that this one”– she patted her belly – “never has to see the red lós. And that she never has to see them again.” Her eyes fell lovingly on the girl in the corner. “I wish long lives for both of them, under a calm blue sky, where the plague is nothing but a memory.”
There was a weight to her words that gripped my heart, that made me think she would not be around to see them grow up. A tear ran down my face at the injustice of it all, if that were to happen. Her startlingly genuine kindness in a time when others had been swallowed by fear meant she deserved the world and everything in it. She was a gem of a person, standing in stark contrast to Ragna, and if ever Skane needed a leader, it should be someone like her.
If there was a way to make it happen, I wanted nothing more than to make her wish come true. And homeless as I was, impending plague notwithstanding, I had nothing but time to see it through. This unborn baby, the young girl in the corner – they could never know the plague. Perhaps it was my utter exhaustion or the heat from the fire, but in that moment, I felt so certain I could have staked my life upon it.
Memories of Sølvi’s last moments fluttered in my mind, thoughts of the promise I had made to myself, to pay off the debt I owed.
“Well, you may both sleep here for the night, and tomorrow we will discuss what’s to be done with you. I have blankets enough for a village, and fish enough to feed the island. You will not go hungry or cold under this roof.”
Her words wrapped me in warmth and comfort, welcome after the past few days.
“May Siiva stay, as well?” Enja asked.
Her eyes darted to the fox, who lay curled on the floor, ears twitching. “If he promises to behave,” she said.
Our host coughed again, and something in me started to crack. It was such a simple thing, such a quiet cough, that it should have been no cause for alarm, and yet I felt my pulse begin to race. Was it the cold that had got to her lungs? Had the smoke from the fire dried out her throat? I wanted it to be true, more than anything, but I had seen that man in the woods, seen him coughing and gagging on his own blood, and the sight would not leave me be.
Late into the night, long after the sounds of snoring had begun to fill the large room, I still lay awake, staring at the roof and unable to quiet my mind.