Robbergirl

by S T Gibson

  When Gerda had accepted Helvig's offer to travel with her, the thief had felt only elation. She realized now that she hadn't thought through all the ways their journey could go wrong.

  "What is your business in Sapmi?" Rávdná asked Gerda, using her family’s own word for their ancestral region. "Are you trying to get in touch with one of my kin?"

  Gerda pressed a cloudberry between her lips and shook her head.

  "I'm afraid not. I'm searching for someone you've probably never met, someone who took my brother away from me when we were only children. I intend to get him back." She gave Helvig a wary glance, and the thief nodded. Gerda's story sounded like madness, that much was true, but there was no use lying to Rávdná. She had not raised eight children and traded goods with men as wily as Helvig's father without learning how to tell when someone was keeping the whole story from her. "I seek the Snow Queen."

  Rávdná inhaled slowly and leaned back in her seat. A ribbon of smoke rose up from the fire crackling between them, partially obscuring the old woman's face on its way up to the hole at the top of the lavvu. As far as Helvig could tell, she was thinking.

  "Yes, I've heard the stories. We have our own names for the spirits that move in the dark, and our own stories about the lives they claim."

  Drowsy from her full stomach and the crackling fire, Helvig shifted closer to Gerda and settled in for a tale. She could never get enough of Rávdná's stories, so different from the wives' tales and fables that got passed around her father's camp. Rávdná told her tales of how the world was made from the body of a reindeer: the rivers from its blood, the constellations from its shining eyes, and the sky from the broad expanse of its skull. She told her of Laib Olmai, the forest spirit who granted favor to hunters who pleased him and ill fortune to those who did not, and of how her husband had won her hand in marriage after asking no less than seven times.

  "This land does not belong to the Sami alone, or to the Swedes of the Finns or the Rus with their sabers and military caravans. There are things in the hills older than me, older than my grandmother’s grandmother. Spirits that couldn’t be separated from the land any easier than you and I could be pulled out of our bodies."

  "Ghosts?" Helvig asked.

  "No, they were never human. But they meddle in human affairs, sometimes, descending upon travelers lost in brutal winter and making them into...something else. Something only half alive. I know men who have seen dead wives or friends stepping out to greet them from great gusts of snow. But these...creatures, they’re false as black ice, and they aren’t the people they once were. They’ve become part of the land, wild and capricious, and they act without conscience or compassion."

  "And you think that the Snow Queen we’ve heard stories about might be one of these creatures?" Helvig asked.

  "I didn’t say that. But it’s possible."

  "Why do the spirits of winter take people over like that?" Gerda piped up.

  Rávdná shrugged. "What does an old woman know? Winter is always hungry, child, and all it knows how to do is take. Perhaps they think, in a way, that they’re saving them from a slow death, and it's true the poor souls do live on well past their years. But from what I’ve heard it's no life worth living."

  Helvig and Gerda exchanged a glance. They were pushing puzzle pieces around, trying to fit them together into a shape that was just out of reach.

  "Do the creatures ever take children?" Gerda asked.

  Rávdná nodded.

  "I’ve heard they travel as far as the cold winds blow them to haunt children’s dreams, and then sometimes, the children go missing. We all have our tales. There must be some truth to them, underneath the fear."

  Gerda fell quiet. She looked as though she was slipping out of her body, her mind pulled away into distant reaches that even Helvig couldn’t fathom. Rávdná watched her quietly, patient as she had ever been. Helvig was convinced that her godaunt could outwait a glacier gliding across the plain if she put her mind to it.

  Finally, Gerda asked,

  "Do you know where we can find such a creature?"

  Rávdná squinted at them both, dark eyes were spry as ever.

  "Now why would I let you know where to go poking at spirits in the darkest part of the year? Helvig, your father would kill me if I let you come back to him with so much as a scratch on you."

  Helvig jutted out her chin.

  "I’m not a child anymore. I’m going to get scratched plenty in this life and I would rather it be from helping a friend than anything else."

  The old woman gave a curmudgeonly huff, but her eyes shined with pride.

  "I ought to fill your waterskins and send you right back down to your father."

  "But?"

  "But I know that sometimes things need doing, no matter what the ones who love us might think. I can tell by looking at the two of you that if I turned you around you would just sneak past when my back was turned, and I don’t want you wandering further north without directions. I'll warn you, I'm no great expert on these matters. I keep to myself and I don't concern myself with the mysteries of the dead or their kin. But I've heard things."

  The same child who had called out to Helvig when they had arrived galloped into the lavvu, blonde hair flying askew as he tossed himself down next to his grandmother. Rávdná pinched his cheek and gave him a piece of flatbread.

  "There’s an old fort just under half a day’s ride north of here," she said, "If you spare the horse and reindeer, which I suggest. Some of the youths tell stories about hearing whispers or the sound of a woman’s cries coming from inside, even though it’s been abandoned many winters now. You may find what you’re looking for there. But if you don’t, you must promise to turn back. Neither of you have the skill to navigate Sapmi by yourselves. I would have to give up one of my own grandchildren to guide you, and that’s not a sacrifice I’m willing to make."

  The little boy lolled against Rávdná's lap, eyes growing heavy as he curled up beside her. She stroked his hair.

  "Thank you," Gerda said. Sometime while Rávdná was speaking, she had slid her hand over to Helvig's. Now, she squeezed it tightly.

  The old woman's eyes clouded over as she began to clean up dinner, stacking plates and gathering leftovers.

  "Don’t thank me yet. You might not like what you find up there. Sometimes, it’s better to let the land keep what it takes."

  Helvig and Gerda slept curled against each other under a pile of furs, their noses warmed by the embers of the dwindling fire. Rávdná and a few members of her ever-growing family slept nearby, mostly grandchildren too young to have begun their own households.

  They had passed the evening after dinner with gossip and laughter, and Helvig’s heart had swelled at the sight of old friends. She had been better warmed by Rávdná’s food than by anything she had eaten in her father’s camp for months, and the familiar bustle of children ducking in and out of the lavvu made her chuckle.

  But she couldn’t help but notice how distracted Gerda had seemed. The witch hardly spoke, and her eyes jumped towards every shadow or strange noise.

  Helvig and Gerda had gone to bed quietly, without indulging any of the new affections growing between them, but Helvig held tight to Gerda while they drifted off, afraid they would be torn apart in the night.

  Helvig woke in the middle of the night when Gerda jerked against her, whimpering.

  "Gerda?" She whispered. Helvig blinked the sleep from her eyes and shook her companion gently. Nightmares.

  Gerda’s eyes flew open and she grasped blindly for Helvig, pulling her closer. She pressed against Helvig and buried her face in her chest.

  "Gerda! What’s wrong? What did you see?"

  Helvig tried to keep her voice low. One of the boys sleeping nearby stirred but didn’t wake.

  "Kai," Gerda breathed, voice muffled by Helvig’s shirtfront. "He was drowning. I couldn’t reach him. He opened his mouth to call out for me, and the water…"

  Helvig wrapped her fingers aro
und the back of Gerda’s head, massaging gently with her fingertips.

  "What if I can't save him? What if I'm not strong enough? What if he's already dead and..."

  "Shh," Helvig soothed. She fought to keep her own anxieties out of her voice. "You're just shaken up. You're the most courageous thing I've ever seen, and you'll have me by your side tomorrow. We'll get him Gerda."

  Gerda’s shoulders shook, but her tears were silent. She had long ago learned to keep her grief to herself.

  "Hush now," Helvig fretted, nuzzling her dear companion gently. Gerda still seemed half-asleep, and so vulnerable in her distress. "It was just a dream. We’re going to find him. He’s alright, Gerda. Let’s go back to sleep."

  Gradually, Gerda slipped back into unconsciousness. Outside, wind blew hard against the lavvu, wailing through the camp like a woman mourning her lost love.

  Helvig pulled Gerda close and held her through the night.

  FOURTEEN

  Rávdná saw them off the next morning with a wholesome breakfast of dried fish and barley soup, and loaded them down with supplies and strict orders to return to camp before dark.

  The sun reflected off the white landscape with piercing brilliance as Helvig and Gerda started their trek further into the mountains. Their animals moved slowly over the rocky terrain, stretching the modest journey into several hours.

  For most of the ride, Gerda said little. Her eyes had a bruised look that told Helvig she hadn’t gotten much sleep. Helvig couldn't imagine carrying all of that hope and anxiety towards an unknown location. Helvig would occasionally point out a landmark her godaunt had told her stories about, or narrate the adjustments to course they should be making based on where the sun was in the sky, but conversation was sparse.

  Eventually, Helvig couldn’t help but address the issue at hand. She got chatty when she was nervous.

  "How are we going to kill her when we find her?"

  "Mm?" Gerda asked, pulled from her thoughts.

  "The Snow Queen, or whatever the proper name for a creature like that is. How do we kill something made of ice? You must have given this some consideration, in your years seeking vengeance."

  Gerda became distracted, and her eyes darkened.

  "Yes, I suppose I have."

  "Is she like a troll that turns to stone in the sunlight? Or do we need to saw off her head like a draugr? I haven’t got much but a couple knives and some rope and my wits."

  Gerda gave Helvig a smile that would have been disarming if it wasn’t so forced.

  "Haven’t you heard? I’m a powerful witch. I’ll defeat her with my magic."

  Helvig wasn’t satisfied. She had seen Gerda’s magic, and healing salves, rune talismans, and beguiling smiles seemed ineffectual against a creature animated by the spirits of ice and snow. Helvig still wasn’t sure they were going to find any creature at all, or just an empty old fort with no secrets inside, but she liked to know the odds she was facing regardless.

  Just as she was about to press Gerda for more insight into what sort of magic she had planned, the witch gave a little gasp.

  "Look!"

  The stone fort hunkered down over the horizon, casting a long and tilted shadow. Helvig had not been alive during a time when Sweden’s borders didn’t bleed out into contested lands. Skirmishes on canals and trade routes were common, and all-out war never died down long enough to be completely forgotten. In the wild swing between wartime and uneasy peace, things fell through the cracks. Rasmus wasn’t the only boy to have disappeared from the front lines without anyone noticing, and a whole fort being abandoned to weather and ruin was well within the realm of possibility.

  Originally built on the precipice of a vast lake, no doubt blue in the summer but now frozen over gray, the fort had sunk further into the ground over time, until a quarter of the structure was swallowed up by earth and water. Exterior walls crumbled away, and doors hung half-ripped from their hinges. It was hard to say whether it had been built on a faulty foundation from the start, or if its disrepair was the product of war.

  They closed the distance to the fort easily, encouraging the horse and reindeer to pick up speed despite the gales blowing puffs of snow across the plains. Helvig brought Bae to a stop near the entrance, by an alcove tucked away from the worst of the wind, and swung herself down off his back.

  She craned her neck to scan the high-reaching expanse of stone and mortar, taking it all in. The ground beneath her feet was frozen, ice that had seeped from the fort, from the lake, from the ground, and pooled at the entrance.

  "Not a very cozy place."

  Gerda shivered.

  "Not at all."

  Helvig stamped tentatively on the ice, testing her weight. It was difficult to know where the ice stopped and ground began, and Helvig had seen men disappear under rushing water that looked frozen from above

  "Seems solid enough to me."

  Gerda followed gingerly, despite the fact that she weighed almost nothing. Helvig was much more likely to go down first, if either of them.

  They entered through the askew door. Their footsteps were deafening in the stillness as they descended into darkness. Virtually no light penetrated the tiny slit windows high above their heads, and Helvig clutched Gerda’s hand tight as they navigated carefully, wary not to slip and fall. The little huffs of Gerda’s breaths on her neck reminded her that she was still very alive and not alone, despite the gloom of the fort.

  "What are we looking for?" Helvig asked.

  Gerda shuffled closer, feet crunching over soft ice and debris.

  "I’m not sure. Any signs of habitation? Barring that, any evidence as to where Kai might have gone."

  She already sounded skeptical. Helvig could not imagine what Gerda would do if this turned out to be another false lead. Despite the herculean perseverance she had shown in her search for Kai, Helvig didn’t know how many dead ends Gerda had left in her.

  "Look! Light, up ahead."

  Gerda skittered forward, tugging Helvig through the dark towards the grey glow ahead. Through an archway, a central hall sprawled with half of its ceiling torn away to the sky, and the weak midwinter sun fell through the gaps along with the snow.

  The tilted angle of the whole structure meant that the girls had to half-hop, half slide down iced-over stairs to reach the hall, which sat at a much lower elevation than the door they had entered through. A thick flood of ice slathered the floor, bringing the ceiling of the great structure closer to Helvig’s head and partially obscuring the stone supports that held up the building. Frozen waves rose up against the stone walls in whorls.

  "It looks like someone tried to sink the fort," Helvig murmured. It was difficult to fight the instinct to whisper. There was something...wrong about the place that made her worried to be found there.

  "Or raise the lake."

  Here, the snow on the ground was so thick that Gerda’s feet disappeared into it as she crunched into the center of the room. Helvig, who had been trained from a young age to mark her exits and watch for ambushes, scanned the corners of the room, any doors suitable for escape, and a narrow walkway running across the second floor.

  She could see and hear nothing. But unmistakable dread trickled through her veins, the same dread that had washed over her in the churchyard moments before the ghosts had appeared. She had the awful sensation that she and Gerda were not alone in the fort, and that something was watching from the far edges of her perception.

  "Something’s off," Helvig said.

  Gerda didn’t turn to look at her. She was surveying the frozen lake with dead eyes, her mouth set into a grim line. She looked a thousand years old.

  "Do you feel that?" Helvig pressed. She sifted through words, trying to find ones that fit the cold weight in her chest. "It’s…a presence. Heavy. Angry."

  Gerda hardly seemed to have heard her. She buried her chin down into her scarf, hands hidden within her thick muff, and looked for all the world like a statue abandoned alone to gather snow. Her eyes bu
rned behind glassy tears.

  "Nothing living could have survived out here for more than a day," she said in a raw voice. "It’s open to the elements and flooded out."

  Helvig didn’t realize she had drawn her knife until she saw herself gesture with it to the ground.

  "Old forts often have storerooms below ground. If Kai was able to find light, and water, he may be there still. He might have found some old rations."

  She suggested this partially because it was possible, however improbable, and partially because she was gripped by the desire to get out of this room as quickly as possible. Despite the open ceiling, the air was fetid and hard to breathe.

  "We’ll have a look at the lower levels," she went on. "See what we find. You never know."

  Gerda drifted towards Helvig, snow parting at her ankles and swirling around her feet like a trained pet. She seemed reluctant to leave this part of the building. Perhaps she had imagined having some final confrontation with her brother's kidnapper here, or throwing her arms around poor imprisoned Kai.

  Then, just as she turned to go, a sound like fingernails being dragged across ice echoed down from the second level of the building. Helvig’s eyes snapped up just in time to spy a wraith-thin silhouette in white. It slipped across her vision, taking three measured steps across the stone before disappearing into darkness.

  Helvig seized Gerda’s arm.

  "Someone’s here."

  Gerda threw her eyes wildly up to the second level, her breaths coming quick and shallow. Helvig realized then how unprepared they were for whatever might find them. Gerda knew medicine, and embroidery, and blacksmithing, and Helvig could throw a solid punch without breaking her fingers and skin a rabbit before the water had time to boil, but what good was any of that out here? They had no firearms to win Kai back with brute force, nor precious goods to barter for his release. They only had a few blades, the ferocity of Gerda’s devotion to Kai, and the strength of their affection for one another to protect them now.