The Winter Spirits

by E. C. Hibbs

  Elin peered over the rim of the cooking pot to check the contents.

  “It won’t be long,” she said, then gave Tuomas a toothy grin. “So, what’s your name? I don’t know whether I’ve seen you on the migration route. To speak to, at least.”

  He smiled back sheepishly. She’d obviously been thinking the same thing as him.

  “I’m Tuomas,” he replied.

  “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “The same as me.”

  There was no more talk while Alda hoisted the pot away from the flames. Elin held out a supply of carved wooden bowls as her mother served the portions with a bone ladle. Just the sight of it made Tuomas’s mouth water. The sautéed meat was mixed with red lingonberries: a simple dish, but so hearty and filling that it never failed to satisfy.

  The bowls were handed out, and everyone took a moment to thank the Spirits and the reindeer for its sacrifice, before they dug in. Tuomas withdrew his small knife and heaped the blade with food, taking care not to spill any down his chin.

  “So, Lilja,” said Sigurd, “I’d imagine even a wandering mage has common sense. Why are you this far north? You’ll get cut off from going back if you’re not careful.”

  Lilja swallowed her mouthful of reindeer before replying.

  “We’re going to the Northern Edge of the World.”

  Elin’s eyes widened at that. “Really?”

  “Why not during the thaw?” Sigurd pressed. “It would be a lot easier for you!”

  “No, it must be now,” said Lilja. “We need to speak with the Earth Spirits. Anyway, at least at this time of year, it will be summer in the World Below.”

  Tuomas frowned. “Summer? What are you talking about?”

  “The World Below is said to be the opposite of whatever it is here,” explained Elin, rather wistfully. “When it’s winter here, it’s summer there. Night here, day there. That’s what the mages say, anyway. They’re the only ones who can ever get down there.”

  “I’ve never heard of that,” Tuomas said, surprised Henrik hadn’t mentioned it.

  “Well, our village is the closest one to the Northern Edge of the World,” said Sigurd. “It’s common knowledge here. Down in the south, not so much.”

  “Anyway, what’s all this ‘we’ stuff?” asked Alda, eyeing Tuomas. “Are you Lilja’s son?”

  “No!” both of them said in unison. Then they glanced at each other awkwardly, and Tuomas noticed Elin stifling a giggle.

  “No,” he said. “I’m not. I’m just…”

  “My apprentice,” Lilja cut in.

  Tuomas shot her a questioning look, but decided to go along with it. No matter that Lilja obviously had a past with Sigurd’s family, it was clear she didn’t want to go into details. And, he realised, neither did he.

  He turned back to his meal scraped the bottom of the bowl with his knife to ensure no morsel was left behind. Everyone else did the same, until all the dishes were set down. Elin gathered them and put them by the wall, to be washed later when the blizzard had ended. Then she dragged her sleeping sack aside to make more room closer to the fire. The overlapping birch twigs on the floor snagged on the fur as she moved it.

  “You can sleep here,” she said, motioning at the space she had uncovered. “We’ll get your belongings from your sleighs later.”

  Tuomas smiled at her. “Thank you.”

  Sigurd wiped his knife on a strip of cloth and placed it back into its sheath.

  “That was delicious, Alda.”

  “You’d say that if there was mould growing on it,” she threw back with a wry smile, and he pulled a face at her.

  “Anyway, I’m in the mood for a tale. Let’s do something with the evening – it’s not as though we can go ice fishing tonight,” he said.

  “Father, tell the one about the mage who wore human skins like a coat!” Elin piped up.

  “That’s a gruesome one,” Sigurd remarked. “Do either of our guests have any stories to tell? Anything exciting from south of the tundra?”

  Tuomas paled. Hardly anything of interest happened in Akerfjorden, and recent events were out of the question. He threw a glance at Lilja, hoping she would be able to think of something.

  To his faint surprise, given her reserved nature, she nodded.

  “I suppose it would be good to get my voice used to speaking properly again.”

  Sigurd looked at her curiously. “It’s really been that long without Kari?”

  Lilja glared, but spoke no more on that subject. Instead she said, “I’m afraid I haven’t come by any new stories. But there is one which I never get tired of.”

  She turned her eyes on Tuomas for a moment longer than necessary, and began.

  “At the dawn of time, the Sun and the Moon Spirits lived together as sisters, together in the World Above. And they both gave birth to a child: the Golden One bore a son, and the Silver One a daughter. The Sun Spirit’s boy was as bright as day; talented, smiling, perfect in every way – and the Moon grew jealous, because her own daughter was cool and confined to the darkness. So, one day when the Sun wasn’t looking, she switched the children, kidnapping the boy and leaving the girl in his place.

  “But the Golden One was too kind to turn the Moon’s daughter away. So she raised her as her own, showing her all the love she had given to her own son. And the Son of the Sun grew up in the Silver One’s shadow, until the day he learned about his true parentage, and how he had been stolen from his mother.

  “He tried to return to her, but was unable. So he leapt from the sky in the form of a red fox, and landed in the World Between, choosing this place over the lie he had been raised on. He determined to become the greatest mage the realms had ever known, and find a way to go home to his mother: the Sun Spirit.”

  Tuomas couldn’t suppress a grin. It was one of his favourites from childhood. He hadn’t heard it in years.

  He rocked forward on his knees and watched Lilja closely, hanging onto her every word. Every now and then, she coughed and cleared her throat, but didn’t let it hinder her. She seemed wrapped up in the story herself – it reminded him of when she had fallen into a trance and chanted, as naturally as breathing. For someone who often spoke rarely and sharply, this flowed like music.

  Lilja glanced at her listeners in turn, the glow of the fire reflecting in her eyes.

  “To help him on his journey, the Earth Spirits from the World Below gifted him a pair of their own magical white reindeer, which he used to build himself a magnificent herd: the herd from which all herds are descended. He ate their meat and drank their milk, and it gave him an immortal life. He walked through centuries, mastered chants and powerful taika, nurtured the humans who flocked to him. They became his new family, but every Midsummer, when the Golden One is at her most powerful, he would turn his eyes to the sky and whisper his love, of how he would someday return to the World Above.

  “And all the while, the Sun and the Moon watched him, each longing to have him back. One midwinter night, the Silver One appeared to him, begging for him to return to her instead of her sister. But he became frightened, and gathered his people, telling them that he intended to travel south to where the Long Dark’s grip was not as strong, where the endless night would be broken by small hours of his mother’s glow. Some decided to stay in the north, and formed the villages of Poro and Einfjall. A small band of others chose to go with him.

  “They walked for weeks and weeks, growing hungry and tired, crossing tundra and forest and fjord. His people became weak, and so, forsaking his own health, the Great Mage gave them the otherworldly meat and milk. His life began to wane, yet he led them on, until they reached the edge of the ice, and made a new home on the shore.

  “But his body was mortal now, and struggled to survive. His life-soul was the Spirit he had been in his previous life, and it could no longer sustain him. The cold entered his bones, until he fell down through the ice and died. The people named the place where he fell the Black Water,
in memory of his sacrifice.”

  Tuomas’s eyes widened. This was a part of the story he hadn’t heard before. The Black Water was the Mustafjord, on the border of Akerfjorden. He knew about the Great Mage who had died leading the way across it, but had always assumed him to be a man, albeit an extremely competent one.

  Was Lilja honestly saying that those two stories were connected? That he’d had a Spirit as his life-soul? The Son of the Sun? Was that even possible?

  She paused for a moment, swallowing to moisten her throat.

  “High in the World Above, the Sun and Moon Spirits watched it all. The Golden One was heartbroken that her son would never come back to her, but she was determined to make some light out of all the darkness. So she bid her adoptive daughter care for all the souls who pass into the World Above, to be the guardian of her son, to ensure he never came to harm again.

  “The Daughter of the Moon accepted, and now she leads the ancestors in their dances through the sky, sweeping up the snow with her tail. Some claim to have seen her running in the form of a white fox.”

  Tuomas’s heart skipped a beat.

  “Lumi,” he muttered.

  “What did you say, boy?” Sigurd asked.

  Tuomas looked around. The spell of the story was broken. He shook his head.

  “Nothing.”

  It only took a moment for Sigurd to shrug it off, and he grinned widely at Lilja, congratulating her on telling the tale so masterfully.

  But she didn’t meet his gaze. She only glanced quickly at Tuomas before turning her eyes back to the fire.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tuomas slept fitfully. He had slept on harder ground than this, but something writhed in his stomach and refused to let him settle. And all the while, the storm raged outside. Dirt fell from the turf encasing the hut and the wooden beams trembled. The sound penetrated his dreams and he imagined the entire structure collapsing on them, burying them beneath a mound of soil and snow.

  He opened his eyes and lay staring at the fire. It was well-stocked to last the night, and the flames burned gently with a hypnotising flicker. As they reached hidden residues within the logs, they transformed into brief tongues of blue and violet. It was like a miniature aurora, right there in the tent.

  He didn’t bother wondering how long he stayed like that, hoping he might drop off back to sleep. The terrible winds slowly stilled, and from his sleeping sack, he could see the faint pinpricks of stars appearing through the smoke hole. Across from him, Sigurd snored softly. The sound reminded him of Paavo.

  His heart grew heavy. He missed his big brother so much. In his memory, he could picture Paavo’s face clearly; then it morphed into Henrik’s, then Sisu’s, then Mihka’s, with his shock of white hair. And then, finally, the whiteness spread, until Lumi was looking out at him.

  He heaved a sigh and sat up, glancing around at his companions. Alda had her nose buried in Sigurd’s neck, snuggled close to him to stay warm. Elin lay beside Tuomas, but at a respectful distance. Her face was half-covered by her hair, fringe sticking up at odd angles.

  Lilja, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  Tuomas eased himself free of his sack and crawled to the exit, quietly pulling on his coat and hat. Then he slipped his feet into his shoes and stepped outside.

  As he shut the door, he knocked against Sigurd’s skis. He caught them before they could make any noise and set them back against the wall. Then he stood still for a moment, listening, in case he’d woken someone. Hearing nothing, he relaxed and walked away.

  The blizzard was over, and a fresh blanket of snow stretched as far as the eye could see. It melted seamlessly into the sky, so he had to strain to place the horizon line. It was only broken here and there by the silhouettes of storage houses, propped several feet off the ground atop a set of sheared tree trunks. His and Lilja’s sleighs were practically hidden under several inches of white powder. Tuomas was glad they had covered them with the tarp, otherwise there would be no way of fetching anything from inside.

  Now the storm had cleared, he could see the village properly for the first time. It was a little smaller than Akerfjorden, the huts built lower to the ground to withstand the stronger winds blowing over the tundra. Snow had banked up against them on one side, several feet deep in places.

  Behind the settlement reared the imposing face of a mountain, its summit lost in the low cloud, the flanks caked white with snow and ice. It seemed to glow in the strange directionless light, every flake reflecting what little there was. It immediately struck him as a place of importance, and knew it must be the Einfjall shrine.

  He felt power radiating out of it like heat from a hearth. Anywhere else, the mountain might not have been unusual, but out here, all by itself, completely different from all that surrounded it, it was special. The forces of nature had put it here, and now it served as a way to connect with the other Worlds: a place where the barriers separating them from the people were thinner.

  Akerfjorden’s winter camp had its own natural shrine: a gnarly tree stump in the forest, which had grown into a twisted shape during its lifetime. Poro would have one too; perhaps a cairn, a formation in the land, or even a simple engraved post. The one at Akerfjorden was quite small, but size didn’t really matter. There wasn’t much left of it, yet its strangeness showed how magical it was. All the other trees grew tall and straight; all different, but still of the same design. To be unique spoke of power.

  Henrik would often go to the stump, as his predecessors had before him, to lay offerings to the Spirits, asking for favours and good fortune. Likewise, Tuomas could picture the Einfjall mage drumming up there on the mountain, halfway between the World Between and World Above. Lilja passed through here ten years ago – had she been up there too, once?

  Lilja… He remembered she hadn’t been in her sleeping sack.

  He looked at Sigurd’s hut, squinting to see in the low silvery light. He noticed something he hadn’t before: a line of footprints, curling away around the back. He followed them, taking care to place his feet carefully so as not to crunch the snow. The tracks led around the edge of the village, to the base of the mountain.

  Then he heard something. For a moment, his heart raced. But as he listened, he recognised the sound.

  It was sobbing.

  He reached the last hut and peered around it. Sure enough, Lilja was sitting on a rock several feet away, face buried in her hands. Her entire body was shaking – from the cold or her crying, Tuomas couldn’t tell. She didn’t even have a torch with her.

  He hesitated, unsure what to do. His first thought was to comfort her, but why would she have come out here, in the freezing night, if she didn’t want to be alone?

  Deciding to leave her, he took a step backwards. But under the snow, his shoe hit a patch of ice, and he fell onto his side with a grunt.

  Lilja’s eyes snapped in his direction. She hadn’t seen him, but Tuomas knew his cover was blown, so he stepped into the open.

  It was too dark to see any of Lilja’s features, but she quickly wiped at her cheeks.

  “What are you doing out here?” she barked. Her voice was tight from weeping

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Tuomas replied as he brushed snow off his trousers. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  She said it too fast.

  “Lilja,” Tuomas tried again, “it’s alright. Do you need anything?”

  “No,” she said. She was still on the defensive, but her tone softened a little. “I’m fine. Memories are hard, that’s all.”

  “You mean, being back in a village?” Tuomas asked.

  She looked at him for a moment, then shrugged.

  “You could say that.”

  She wiped her face one more time and trudged over to him.

  “I’m going back to bed. Are you coming?”

  “In a moment. I just wanted to get some air,” Tuomas said. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

  Lilja threw him a glance as she passed. “I�
�m fine.”

  Without another word, she disappeared around the side of the hut. Her footsteps grew fainter, then Tuomas heard her opening the door to Sigurd’s shelter. Moments later, silence fell once more.

  The cold began to bite at him, so he walked back in the same direction. Keeping moving was the best way to stay warm. He wiggled his toes inside his shoes to get the blood flowing; circled his shoulders and bounced up and down for a few moments. A small fire pit was behind him, but it was empty and covered in snow; even if it had been lit, no flame could have survived the blizzard.

  Soon, he arrived back to where his and Lilja’s sleighs were parked. What memories could have affected her so badly? It was alarming to see her cry – he’d never imagined her as having any expression except one of stone and glaring eyes.

  He knew it was best not to pry. For as alone as she’d been since childhood, he had to remember she also had a life before meeting him. He had no right to judge or assume what she might have gone through – though he secretly hoped he might find out one day.

  And when she was feeling better, he would ask her where she had heard that version of the Great Mage story.

  Letting his thoughts drift, he looked out towards the tundra. He felt as though he was by himself in an empty world. Not a breath of wind blew, nor a single cry sounded from some faraway animal. Even the Spirits in the air around him seemed strangely distant. Yet he still strained to catch the faintest movement: a flash of white hair or the flick of a fox tail.

  “Lumi?” he whispered. “Are you out here?”

  There was no answer.

  He remembered his drum, still packed into the sleigh with his other belongings. He pulled back the tarp, straining against the weight of the snow on top of it, and fished around with one hand until he found the instrument and its hammer. He pulled them out and walked away again, slowly beating the skin. Maybe that would help him summon her.

  He had to talk to her. That much he knew. He needed to make sure she was unharmed after the storm.

  After a few minutes of nothing, he sank to his knees, resting the drum on his lap. He closed his eyes. His bare knuckles went white on the hammer, and he struck it with faster motions, a chant coming together in his throat.