Wolf Winter (30 page)

God. Mustn’t think about that. No.
Eriksson. Nils. She forced herself to be angry. Things must be dealt with, she argued, and let the anger drive her on, push her forward.
We must find out and not let fear take over.
Their cottage became visible between the trees.

An unhurried howl, and her heart was all the way up in her throat.

Gray-legs to her right. One was still, looking straight at her. Yellow eyes. Its pelt erect. The other three were tramping behind it, held back by the immobility of the leader.

Mustn’t run. Wolf didn’t attack people.
Oh God.

She turned and began to walk backward.
Sing,
she thought to herself.
Sing.

Couldn’t remember a thing.

“
EEn iungfru födde itt barn jdagh
.” Her voice broke. She swallowed with a gasp. She swallowed again. And once more. Each time it sounded as if she was gulping for air.
Mustn’t panic. Not now.

“
thet skole wij prijsa och
ära.”

Careful. Foot by foot.

“j thet haffuer gud itt gott begagh.”

She stumbled. Almost fell. It was the thick branch Frederika had told her to leave. She bent down, felt it solid in her hand, everything else weak and unsteady. She rose. The lead wolf curled its lips. White fangs, pink gums.

She continued walking backward, the stick raised high.

“han biudher oss höra hans lära.”

They went for her when she reached the porch. Came running. She swung with the piece of wood and hit the first one across its head. It fell onto its side. Then she dropped the branch. Two steps. Door.

A clapping by her back. Teeth closing on teeth.

She screamed. Slammed the door. A thick body hit it so hard that the door felt alive under her hands.

Cold had arrived in town, the wind adding to the chill. The priest wondered what the weather meant for Blackåsen. A light blizzard in town might mean severe weather up-mountain. The clean line of the church wall was broken by black dots. Visiting settlers. Or beggars. November, and already people were without food. He’d remind the verger about locks for the buildings.

He walked toward the church and avoided meeting the gazes, pushed his hands into his pockets, lengthened his steps.

In his room he sat down by his desk without lighting the fire. It was so cold it was like being outside. He rose, took his mantle, and put it over his shoulders. “Make new friends,” Sofia had said. It seemed so easy. It was easy. All his life he’d desired a position like the court priest’s. That hadn’t changed. It was just that he had thought their friendship, his and the King’s, was real.

He realized he was resigned to the thought that even if the King hadn’t commanded his removal, he had agreed to it. He would have had to. The King was everywhere; he knew everything. For the priest to rise again, he would have to scheme; go behind the bishop’s back, and win the King’s heart once more. Somehow he was certain he could do it. But it felt hollow. For him their friendship could never be a personal one again. The priest would always have to remain clear-headed, detached. He’d have to be false. He’d been false before, but that had been different. He hadn’t felt dishonest with the ones he loved.

He thought of Sofia—her blue eyes, the little nose, the dimples by her mouth, skin that looked soft as velvet. He’d have to marry her. He should marry her. She had everything a man could wish for. In his world so much was about the woman. Why was he so reluctant?

It was too cold. He walked to the fireplace, bent down, and began building a fire. Before his inner eye he saw Maija: the precision with which she placed strips of bark, the way she sat back on her heels to judge which flame was strong enough to take more wood.

The verger was in the hall arranging the psalm books, bareheaded and mittenless.

“When are you leaving for Blackåsen?” the priest asked, his breath a white cloud.

“Tomorrow at daybreak,” he said, pastel fingers trawling the soft backs of the books. “We will have classes Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I will be back here before Mass on Sunday.”

The priest hesitated. “Johan, you went with the priest to last year’s Catechetical hearings …”

“Yes.”

“Did something happen? Something unusual?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Did the priest seem upset or agitated?”

The verger shook his head.

“Was there anything that upset you?”

“Me? Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Anything.”

“No.”

Typical.

“There was a case in the books many years ago. It was written down as
K against the church.
”

“Most cases are trivial. Bickering, insults …”

“Apart from that of Elin,” the priest said.

“Yes, apart from that of Elin.” The verger nodded.

“And this one was against ‘the church.’”

“Was it? That does sound strange.”

The priest frowned to show the verger he was not impressed. As verger, he ought to keep himself better informed about the church’s affairs than this.

“I am coming with you tomorrow,” he said. “There are some people I need to see.”

Maija and Jutta walked to Nils’s homestead, the past between them like a cloud.

“I am telling you to be careful,” Jutta said. “People don’t like other people trying to tell them truths.”

Maija didn’t answer. She kept listening for the pack of wolves, but the forest was quiet.

“You can’t undo bygones. My bygones.”

“I can prevent them from happening again.”

Jutta made a clicking noise with her tongue. She didn’t think so.

“I am not scared.”

“There are times when it is wise to be scared.”

Maija scoffed. She remembered Jutta—when it was clear to both of them she was dying—refusing to undress in the evening, as if that would stop night from coming. “Hold my hand,” she’d said. “Hold Frederika’s,” is what Maija had wanted to answer, but it had to be her and so she had held it, felt skin against skin, disgust for her grandmother’s weakness and then guilt for the disgust. She had wanted Jutta to be strong enough to fend off any fear of dying. She had also known that Jutta’s “bygones” were what made it so difficult for her to leave.
I’ll never be like you,
she thought.
Never.

They stopped, shoulder by shoulder. There had been a strong wind, and it had blown a large part of the ice bare. The ice would still swell and break. By the end of the winter it would be streaked white, scarred by aging. But for now, although it was young, it was already a thick black.

“Frederika is growing up,” Jutta said.

Yes, she was. There was a new thoughtfulness to her daughter. A tiny pause before each act. The image that came to Maija was how in late summer the sides of trees were sometimes coated by a mass
of gore and marrow. Blood stopped flowing through the reindeer antlers as they hardened to bone, and the animals rubbed against the trees to remove the beautiful velvety skin. Growth so often came like that—through pain.

“She’s becoming like you,” Maija said. “Though God knows, I’ve fought it.”

“No,” Jutta said. “Frederika is nothing like me.” Maija turned to her grandmother, but Jutta was still looking out over the ice.

The settlers gathered in Nils and Kristina’s house, arriving alone or two by two. Some of the older children were there. They scuffled to squeeze in. There was a fire in the fireplace and a bearskin draped over a chair in front of it. A large carpet hung on the wall toward the back. Patterns shimmered in the blonde of the sun or the way churned milk gleamed before it turned to butter. Colors Maija had only ever seen in nature. The material too was different. It looked smooth, like water. It was the kind your hand flew up to touch. This might be silk. Maija lingered by it. But normal things took over. Soon the room smelled of wet dog and sour wool. The light from the window fell in and painted a feeble cross over them. Then the window panes fogged up, and they were on their own, hidden from the world.

Nils stepped up onto a chair. He was in his shirtsleeves. Kristina was standing behind him.

“I’ve called this meeting to discuss forming a village,” he said. “Eriksson has died, his wife also, the harvest has yet again come to nothing, and now some among us have seen … things in the forest. The mountain is taking over. It is time we came together. Time for us to ensure that we are safe.”

Things? What things?

“What things?” Maija asked.

Nils looked to one of Henrik and Lisbet’s sons.

The young man reddened. “A shape. It was behind our cottage, in among the trees. It was black. It ran so fast.” His voice slipped into a high pitch and made him a boy. He cleared his throat.

“Wolf,” Maija said.

“No.” The boy shook his head. “It was much larger.”

“It was the Devil,” his mother said. “The mountain belongs to him.”

Beside her, her husband scowled.

“That’s a fable.” Daniel pushed off from the wall he was leaning against. “There are hundreds of similar stories all over Sweden, told by parents to stop their children from going into the forest alone.”

“Only we have, in fact, lost children,” Nils said.

Daniel turned white.

Nils’s voice softened. “I too came to Lapland to inhabit a piece of land of my own and farm it with my family, colonizing this region for the crown. But something is going on here that isn’t natural …” He held up his hands. “I am not saying it is the Devil. I am just saying we’d be safer together than apart.”

He was skilled. Maija felt the draw of being a part of the whole, of letting somebody else decide.

“I would like to understand why Maija says it was wolves our Hans saw?” Henrik said.

In a way Henrik was like her, she thought. He too knew what it was like to live in the same house as fear.

Maija thought of the pitted claw marks in the wood on her door. The banging throughout the night as the animals threw themselves against the walls of the house. Her daughter’s screams.

They were looking at her.

“Have you come across wolves?” Henrik asked.

“Wolves don’t go near people,” Daniel said.

“They sometimes crave human flesh,” Lisbet said.

The room fell silent.

Maija could hear them again, the thumps against the walls, but the thought that remained was that, had gray-legs wanted to, they would have had her. Yet she hesitated to speak. Things easily twisted and turned the wrong way.

“Perhaps the Lapps are still at their magic and they are bringing this on us,” Lisbet said.

“Someone should speak to the priest,” a voice said. Anna?

“The Church has never done anything for us. This is a Blackåsen matter.”

“If it’s sorcery, it’s a matter for the Church.”

Maija raised her voice. “We had a cold summer and then a killer frost—yes, our harvest failed. I did see wolves. They were all adult males. I don’t know what that means, but maybe there being no bitches among them changes their behavior? And Eriksson … Eriksson was killed by man, by flesh and blood, like us.”

By one of us,
she thought.