by E. C. Hibbs
“Regardless,” said Anssi, “let’s just leave it at that, please.”
Tuomas nodded, but couldn’t help shooting a glance at Elin. Her eyes were tired, as if she had also tried and failed to talk about this.
It didn’t matter that they had all seen Lumi in physical form just a few weeks ago. She was still the Spirit of the Lights: a being of darkness and pride. Revered as she was for leading the ancestors in their spiralling dance, she remained one of the most feared entities of all. The knowledge the people had held for generations would take more than a single winter to change.
Tuomas looked at his wrists. He could still feel her frantic hold around them. Had she known people were getting sick, and didn’t want him to catch it? Yes, that must have been it.
Beside him, Elin helped herself to some char, then she coughed into her scarf, quietly, so nobody would notice.
Chapter Four
When the last of the food was eaten, everyone headed towards their tents to bed down for the night. The Lights were still strong overhead, and even as the fire died, they cast a green glow upon the forest. All the snow-covered branches were edged with it and stood eerily still beneath the waving river in the sky. The temperature plummeted; every breath Tuomas drew stung his lungs. Tiny drops of ice froze on his eyelashes and he fought the urge to brush them off in case the hairs snapped.
He helped Paavo to clear the bowls and scour them with snow and birch branches. Then they placed them back in the sleighs and drew a reindeer-skin tarp over them. Tuomas could tell from the clear sky that no snow would fall, but it would also dissuade the animals from rummaging through the sacks for the backup lichen.
He was about to follow Paavo into the shelter when he noticed Henrik standing expectantly by the fire, eyes fixed on him.
Paavo hesitated. “What’s wrong?”
“Henrik said he wanted to speak to me about something,” Tuomas said. “I almost forgot. You go in, I’ll be back soon.”
“I’ll lay out your sleeping sack for you,” said Paavo, then stepped inside and closed the flap behind him.
Tuomas crossed the clearing until he was standing in front of Henrik.
“What is it?”
“Go into my tent,” Henrik replied.
Tuomas did, and as soon as he ducked inside, he was greeted by the scent of herbs and outrageously strong tea. He wrinkled his nose. He had never been in Henrik’s tent, only his permanent huts at Akerfjorden and Anaar, but even now he couldn’t get away from the smell. It had seeped into the hide tarp from years of brewing. He took stock of how weathered the tarp was; Henrik must have used it for every single one of his migrations and simply patched it whenever it wore thin.
He sat down by the fire. It was an act of politeness upon being invited into one’s shelter, but Tuomas also knew that he would probably be here for a while. A conversation with Henrik rarely ended quickly.
Henrik stepped past him and picked up something from the foot of his sleeping sack. When he turned around, Tuomas’s breath stuck in his throat.
It was a drum: the one which Henrik had given to him when he set out from Akerfjorden at the beginning of the Long Dark.
“You left this behind when you went to the World Above,” said Henrik. “Paavo found it in your hut and asked me to look after it for you. Now it’s time for you to have it back.”
Tuomas’s eyes wandered over the stretched skin, tracing the markings painted on it in red alder bark juice. The Great Bear Spirit stared at him from the centre.
“Are you sure?”
“I gave it to you,” Henrik replied firmly. “And I’ve made myself a new one, as I said I would. This is yours.”
He passed it to Tuomas and sat opposite him, groaning as his old knees hit the reindeer skins on the ground. Tuomas held the drum by the back beam and ran his palm across the surface; then pulled the antler hammer from inside the frame. Its weight felt comfortable in his hand, as though it was merely an extension of his own limb.
“Thank you,” he said. “I didn’t realise how much I’d missed this.”
“Enska told me you didn’t even need it at one point,” Henrik noted. “He said you managed to enter a trance without it.”
“Once,” Tuomas insisted. “I still prefer using a drum, though. It gives me something to focus on.”
Henrik nodded understandingly. “And with a taika like yours, you need all the assistance you can find.”
Tuomas glanced up at him. A memory flashed in his mind: of Lilja’s drum on the fire; her scream as all her magic blew out of her control. That power was in the mage themselves, not the drum, but the instrument was the focal point which allowed them to direct it. He could tell from Henrik’s expression that he was thinking of the same event.
“How was she?” Tuomas asked. “Before she left?”
“Fine, as far as I could see,” said Henrik. “I gave up trying to talk to her in the end. I would have had better success drawing blood from a stone.”
Despite himself, Tuomas smirked. “How was Enska with her?”
“Again, fine,” Henrik said, with the same gruffness. “He wanted to wait for you, but when he came here, it left Poro without a mage. He had to go back, and she went with him.”
He flexed his fingers, bones and tendons sliding under liver-spotted skin.
“I was glad to see the back of her, if I’m honest. Strange woman,” he said.
“She helped me,” Tuomas protested.
Henrik shrugged, clearly not wanting to talk about it any longer. He shuffled to the door and swept some virgin snow off the ground. Then he came back to the hearth, laid a pot over the fire, and dropped the snow inside to melt. Tuomas watched in silence as he tossed herbs into the water, fighting not to grimace at the size of the handful. He wondered if Henrik had somehow managed to destroy his own sense of taste from always brewing his tea so strong.
Now it was on the fire, it was a courtesy to stay and drink. As Henrik stirred the pot with a bone ladle, Tuomas rested the drum across his lap and swept his hand over the skin to clean it. He traced the spirals and paintings with the stump of one frostbitten finger.
It still brought a jolt of shock to see those two digits missing their tips, suddenly ending in a blunt mass of flesh. It made his hand look somewhat unreal, like a drawing a child might have made in the snow. Luckily, he hadn’t lost enough to hinder him – he could still grasp things and pick them up.
Just as with Mihka’s white hair, it was a small price to pay.
“You could have had it a lot worse,” said Henrik, noticing his musings.
“I know,” said Tuomas. “I could have been dead.”
Henrik paused, running a pale tongue over his lips. Then he dipped two wooden cups into the tea and passed one to Tuomas.
“I did my best to prepare you,” he said. “I had my reasons for not telling you about the Great Mage.”
Tuomas laid the drum aside and took the cup with a nod of thanks. He wanted to put off drinking it for as long as possible.
“Are you going to tell me those reasons?”
“To spare you. The knowledge was heavy on my shoulders, and I’m an old man, I’ve lived my life. You were just a boy.”
“I’m fifteen. I’m a man now.”
“That’s still a boy.”
Tuomas bit back a snide retort. A forty-year-old would probably still be a boy in Henrik’s eyes.
“Fine. Tell me later. There will be time on the migration,” he said instead. “But I have something to ask you.”
“What?”
“I know I’m… well, a Spirit.” Tuomas gritted his teeth together at hearing his own words. “And I know I’ve passed my mage test. But I know there’s more I need to learn. So, I wanted to ask if I could be your apprentice again? But this time, please don’t keep any secrets from me. About who I am, I mean.”
Henrik chuckled, blowing on his tea before taking a noisy slurp. The steam twisted and writhed in front of his face, then mingled with the smoke
from the fire.
“Fair enough,” he said. “But, to be honest, you don’t need tutoring. At least not in the way you think. You just need help in enhancing your taika, and continuing to control it. As you said, you’ve passed your test.”
He scratched his head through his hat. His mouth worked uncomfortably, as though he was trying to swallow something sour.
“For as much as I don’t want to say this, I know it’s the correct advice. It may be better to ask Lilja if you can study under her, instead.”
Tuomas was startled.
“Lilja?” he repeated.
Henrik grimaced. “As I said, I don’t like it, either.”
“No, it’s not that. You really think she’ll have me?”
“Well, you can but ask. The worst she can do is say no. And she probably will.”
“But you don’t even like Lilja. Why? She helped me; she delivered me when I was a baby.”
“So did her brother,” Henrik said, a dark edge to his words. “I appreciate her skill, but I don’t understand her, and I don’t like what I can’t understand. But she’s also the only mage left in this World who can come close to you in taika. I respect that, even if I don’t respect her.”
Tuomas couldn’t help staring. Henrik had never made any secret of how wary he was of Lilja. She had, after all, been personally touched by the Great Bear Spirit: something unheard of among many mages, and had wandered for years without a people or even more than a couple of reindeer. She was strange and quiet, and not easily read. For Henrik to recommend her above his own tutelage was notable indeed.
“In any case, we’ll probably happen across her on the migration. You can enquire then,” said Henrik, and drank again.
He cleared his throat loudly and Tuomas realised he still hadn’t touched his. He took a small sip, making a conscious effort not to grimace. It was as bitter as ever. Henrik didn’t notice however, and stared softly into the depths of his own cup.
“You should expect this migration to be unique in more ways than one,” he said eventually.
“Why?” Tuomas asked. “Because all the villages are meeting up?”
“Not just that.” Henrik gave him a piercing glance from across the fire. “Word has got around about you. Everyone knows you’re the Son of the Sun. Some might not say it to your face, but don’t expect them all to keep quiet about that knowledge. It’s likely not just here, either; if Poro and Einfjall don’t know already, they will soon.”
Tuomas immediately recalled the wary looks he had received by his neighbours. He had been the only one in the village who managed to pull Mihka to safety when the Lights struck him – not even Henrik had gotten close enough. Then he had returned from his journey with a Spirit at his side; and vanished into the sky after facing down the most wicked mage in recent memory.
In the heat of the moment, they had celebrated, but he should have known things would be different now. No mage should have been able to do what he did, not unless they possessed some other power.
The power of a Spirit.
He swallowed his tea too quickly and it scalded his throat. He coughed and tears rose to his eyes, but he blinked them away.
“Speaking of which,” continued Henrik, “it’s interesting to note that ever since you came of age, strange things began to happen. You’ve only been fifteen for seven months, and already we’ve seen a wicked demon-driving mage, and the Spirit of the Lights walking in the World Between. And now we have a strange mist descending on the fjord and not going away.”
“I had no control over any of those things!” Tuomas protested.
Henrik cocked an eyebrow.
“Well, fine, I know I pulled the Spirit out of the sky,” Tuomas said. “But I never would have done that if Mihka hadn’t insulted her in the first place. And Kari was planning on coming for me ever since I was born. It’s not my fault that this soul decided to enter me when I was a baby!”
“I’m not blaming you,” said Henrik, his deep voice softening into a gentler tone. “However, it is interesting to note how quick you are to try to shift blame. You pulled the Spirit from the World Above, but why do you call Sisu’s son into it?”
Tuomas fought the urge to roll his eyes.
“Because if it hadn’t been for him acting like an idiot, I never would have needed to go out looking for Lilja. I never would have drummed against the Lights, and I never would have gone into the World Below and let Kari loose so he could try to kill me!”
“Still angry,” Henrik muttered, shaking his head. “Anger will do you no good. Was it not anger which caused you to summon her in the first place?”
Tuomas’s knuckles went white around his cup.
“You need to control that, as well as your taika. Son of the Sun or not, that’s part of being a man,” continued Henrik. “But my point is, if things like that could happen simply because you exist, with no prior knowledge of who you are, whatever might come now that you do know?”
He looked at Tuomas firmly and pointed with a gnarled finger.
“I didn’t tell you that you were a Spirit because I hoped you’d never need to use that knowledge. But now, you’d best be prepared, and start acting like a man. You might not have asked for the Great Mage’s life-soul, but you’ve got it, whether you like it or not.”
Tuomas lowered his eyes as the fury faded out of him. Henrik brought up a disturbingly accurate point. For his whole life, he had been respectful of the Spirits and the stories around them, but never had he thought he might actually come into contact with the entities themselves. Or be the target of such selfish and calculated evil. And through it all, he had been reckless, with many of the times he had escaped trouble being down to pure luck. He couldn’t afford to take chances like that again.
“Do you think the thing in the mist is what I need to be prepared for?” he asked.
“That’s the main reason why I wanted to speak with you, in private,” Henrik replied. A heaviness came into his watery eyes. “There’s nothing in the mist. I told you, the sound you heard was just fish heaving under the ice.”
“I’ve never heard a shoal make a noise like that,” Tuomas insisted.
He paused when he saw the expression on Henrik’s face. The old mage was staring intently at the cracks in the burning wood, as though searching their red lines for an answer.
“Henrik…” Tuomas said, “You said yourself, it’s not a normal mist. Do you know what it is?”
For a long moment, Henrik didn’t move. Then he heaved a sigh from so deep in his lungs, his entire body slumped when he exhaled. He took another sip of his tea and swallowed it hard.
“This isn’t the first time a mist like that has swept in,” he admitted. “The last time it happened, I was just a couple of years older than you. It seems to happen every generation or so.”
Tuomas stared at him. “But… you said…”
“That was to keep everyone calm,” Henrik cut in. “I think I’m one of the few still living who remembers the last one; even the oldest caretakers are younger than me. They’re lucky.”
“Why?”
“Because… when the last mist like this came down the Mustafjord, it brought a sickness with it,” said Henrik.
“What kind of sickness?” Tuomas’s eyes widened. “Wait, why did you let the caretakers stay behind?”
“They’re immune to it,” replied Henrik. “It only targets the young ones: the children and young adults. Those who you see as old men now, they weren’t even born when it happened last. But I was struck down with it. Why else do you think I make my tea so strong? It’s because I can still feel it on my lungs.”
Tuomas was so shocked, he almost dropped his cup. He glanced at the black liquid inside it. He had choked on this brew more times than he could count, but only now did he suddenly recognise the aromas rising out of it.
“Nettle and angelica,” he said. “For treating colds.”
“That’s all it is,” said Henrik. “A very nasty cold. Like pneumoni
a, almost. And it comes back once every generation. We just need to ride the wave and get to the summer islands. The last time it hit, we were on the migration too, and by the time we reached Anaar, it was all over.”
Something about the way he spoke chilled Tuomas’s bones. He thought about the coughing which had risen on the air that evening. It had only started since the mist had swept into the village.
“All over?” he repeated slowly. “Henrik… is this going to kill people?”
Henrik gave him a steady look over the tops of the flames.
“There will be deaths. Some will manage to fight it off, like I did, and others won’t. You and I must manage things as best we can.”
Tuomas felt as though he was going to fall through the ground.
“But –”
“Not a word of this to anyone,” Henrik warned. “Not for now, at least. People will panic, and that’s the worst thing they can do. We need to keep moving forward.”
He stabbed at the fire with a stick until the bottommost logs broke up.
“That’s why you wanted us to leave so quickly,” Tuomas realised.
Henrik nodded. “You haven’t lived through a disease before, boy,” he said, his voice as heavy as a stone. “I hoped it wouldn’t happen again in my lifetime, but in another respect, I’m grateful, because I can teach you how to manage it before I die. But this is yet another aspect of our work as mages: the unglamorous, messy, tragic part. As I’ve told you, it’s not all about going into trances and hitting a drum. It’s cruel as much as it is beautiful.”
Henrik downed the last of his tea. Tuomas quickly did the same so there would be none left, biting his tongue to keep himself from grimacing.
“We have to do something,” he said quietly.
“We’ll do what we can,” Henrik replied. “We’ll pass a shrine in the next week. You and I will go there and make an offering to the Sun Spirit. She is the one who heals the sick. We’ll need her help.”
He tossed the stick into the fire. It crackled angrily and for a brief moment the tent lit up with sparks.
