I think it took us two loads before Dorothea realized what we were doing. She fluttered around us like an angry bug as Dad and I hauled log after log out of the sled. We dumped them in an untidy pile beside the fireplace in the front room. We were both beyond caring how the place looked. Besides, we were racing the light. If I had to go outside, I didn’t want to have to do it in the pitch black.
“Mess!” Dorothea squawked as we overturned another load of logs on to the polished floor. “What are you doing? Mess!”
“Get out of the way,” I told her as we headed out for another load.
“You can’t bring more in!” she told us, skittering along beside Dad as far as the front door.
“We’ll be bringing in the rest of the wood now, Dorothea,” Dad told her matter-of-factly. “It’ll be safer for all of us if we don’t have to leave the house in the middle of winter.”
At that she stopped dead. I saw a look of shock on her face that made me want to smile.
“What’s wrong, Dorothea?” I asked innocently as Dad went out ahead of me into the storm. “It’s a good idea, isn’t it? Not to go out? I mean – winters are so hard up here. And … people go missing in the forest all the time. Right?”
She narrowed her eyes, the tip of her tongue flicking out to wet her dry lips. She fixed me with her eyes.
“You think you’re so clever,” she whispered. “But you won’t outwit the forest. No one ever does. It will take what it is owed.”
At that moment I knew I’d been right. We’d be safe as long as we didn’t leave the house. The varulv couldn’t come inside unless she gave them their human names but that would mean taking them away from the forest. Then they’d just be children – forgotten, out of time and useless.
“What are their names, Dorothea?” I whispered back. “Tell me their names.”
Her lips curled back. I half expected to see fangs but instead there were only two lines of old, yellow teeth. “Never,” she hissed. “They will never know their names.”
I left her there and staggered out into the snow after Dad. The blizzard hit me full in the face but I was so used to it by now that I didn’t even really pay it attention. I felt light-headed, as though I were dreaming, except with this weird electric charge skating across the surface of my skin. How could any of this be real?
But it didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter if we’d all gone as crazy as Dorothea. All we had to do was stay inside the house and wait until the phone line was back up. Then we could be evacuated. We’d get out of here and go back to Stockholm, get Mum well again and forget that any of this had ever happened.
I stumbled and slid after Dad, wiping snow out of my eyes and trying to focus on the shed in front of us rather than the black, twisting wall of trees to my right. I’d just reached the door when I heard something over the roar of the wind. It soared into the air, rising and falling like notes from an instrument I didn’t recognize. It was that haunting, lilting song again. It scythed right through the snow-clogged air and out into the forest, piercing the darkness. The indistinct shape of Dorothea was standing in the light from the open doorway. She seemed to have her hands cupped around her mouth but as I watched she dropped them to her sides. The weird music blew away with another gust of icy wind. Maybe I’d never really heard it in the first place.
“Come on,” Dad shouted to me impatiently. “You’re the one who wants to get this done today.”