Her curiosity gets the better of her. It is to the dance floor of the will-o’-the-wisps that Anna Stina goes when it is her turn to collect berries, while Lisa watches the children whom hunger has not yet awakened. There is a clearing there. The trees open and embrace a round area clad in tall grass that remains green even though everything else has yellowed. A summer meadow in a hiding place behind trees, full of flowers that still stand despite the ebbing season. It is beautiful enough to take her breath away.
She does not see them at first, concealed as they are by swaying stalks. There are small graves strewn everywhere, marked by simple sticks or scratched stones. Mementoes are mixed in with withered bouquets: a doll, a carved horse. At once she knows where she is. This is a place where young mothers come with children who are not welcomed in hallowed ground, unchristened and brought forth into the world out of wedlock. Trampled grass leads her to the freshly dug ground of the previous night, where a wreath has been laid alongside a rag doll cat.
She turns away, knowing that this warning has come just in time, just as she had started to toy with the idea of spending the winter in the Great Shade, tempted by the summer that will come again in only a few months’ time. When the night frost comes creeping, yesterday’s paradise will turn into a death trap. Around her the dew clings to the grass, but it is tears of the same kind she has heard told of beasts in strange lands that, it is said, cry as they devour their prey. Of course the flowers grow stronger and more beautiful here than elsewhere. Would the forest itself be here if not for the fact that it could lure its guests to stay longer than they should? Its gifts are conditional. When she lifts her gaze to the trees, they are not the same, now only endlessly patient predators. Their protective branches are also greedy claws stretching out for her and her little ones. Here in the meadow of the tiny dead is where their rent falls due. They cannot stay.
When Anna Stina returns with far too few berries, she sees from Lisa’s eyes that she knows where she has been. To her surprise, she sees shame rather than disapproval.
“The child you bore, does he also lie there? Is that why you come in the summer?”
Lisa turns her face away.
“The surgeon said that he fell apart the moment he came out of me. As gray as spoiled meat, he said. I never got to see him. They gave me a little bundle that I never dared to open. But in my heart he looks just like yours. Pretty and well formed. But dead all the same.”