by E. C. Hibbs
Chapter Thirteen
They walked for three days, barely stopping, taking turns to rest. Every now and then, they came across a patch of grazing uncovered by melting snow, and the reindeer would grind to a halt, eager to fill their bellies. Each time granted a blissful few hours’ break.
With every day that passed, the nights became a little shorter and the tundra more rugged. The mountains grew closer, until the Sun Spirit was completely blotted out by their massive flanks. One afternoon, they found themselves on the edge of a lake, a circle of clear blue water in the middle from where the ice had already started to thaw.
Tuomas knew just from looking at it that walking across was a bad idea. The surface didn’t need to be very thick to take one person’s weight, but that of an entire village and several hundred reindeer would spell disaster. They needed to go around.
Lilja ran to Enska and whispered something. He nodded, then held up a hand to tell everyone to stop, and called the leaders over.
Tuomas and Elin shared a glance, but before either could speak, one of the leaders raised his voice and addressed everyone.
“We can’t stop for ice-fishing,” he said. “It’s not strong enough. We’ll carry on.”
There were several grumbles from the convoy. They had brought some food from the winter camp, but the promise of fresh char right in front of them was tempting. Even Tuomas’s stomach rumbled at the thought of it. But he looked at Lilja, and she stared right back at him, the knowledge hanging heavy and silent between them. There might not be any mist on the lake, but it was a body of water nonetheless. It wasn’t just thin ice which was dangerous here.
The herders spread out along the lakeshore to prevent the reindeer from dispersing. The animals tossed their heads in agitation, but slowly funnelled along the bank. It took a long time, but soon they were all on the other side, and the sleighs followed.
Tuomas walked beside his reindeer, holding it by the harness. Every few feet, he glanced behind to make sure the runners were clear of the ice. The path they were using was precariously thin and peppered with scree which had tumbled down the mountain slopes.
“Do you want me to get out? Would that be easier?” Elin asked.
“No, stay there,” Tuomas said.
He guided the sleigh around a particularly vicious rock, then tapped the reindeer on the flank to urge it onward.
“Tuomas?”
He kept his eyes on the trail. “What?”
“Can you see that?”
He looked at Elin. She was pointing at the lake, her bleary eyes fixed on something.
He followed her hand and froze. A faint white vapour was gathering over the circle of meltwater. Under it, deep beneath the surface, he could just make out a figure floating face-up.
He looked at Lilja in alarm. She hadn’t seen it, but Enska had. His eyes were huge.
“Move,” he said to Lilja. “Now. Now!”
“What is it?” she asked, but before she could do anything, Enska grabbed her, bundled her over his shoulder as if she was a child, and ran.
The other villagers gasped as they noticed the mist. Several of the older ones made the sign of the hand to ward off evil.
“It’s just like at the Nordjarvi!” a woman near Tuomas cried.
He couldn’t move; his eyes fixed onto the silhouette under the water. No features were visible, but he could tell it was human; small, a coat billowing around it. It wasn’t moving.
Then he caught sight of something else. All around the figure, the water was churning, as though a massive shoal of fish was surrounding it. But they were too large to be any fish found in such a lake.
The mist swept towards the banks and wound around Tuomas’s ankles.
That was the fright he needed. He slapped his reindeer on its hind leg. It immediately bolted and he clung to the harness. Elin and Eevi yelped as the sleigh bounced over the uneven ground.
The path widened and the lake fell behind them. Tuomas picked up speed and didn’t stop until he’d reached the safety of the herd. The other villagers followed, and then their worried mutterings rose into screams.
Tuomas looked over his shoulder.
The fish shoal was spilling out of the hole. The mist broke up here and there as their bodies slithered through it. They were moving unnervingly fast: as fast as Tuomas himself could sprint in summer when there was no snow to impede him. And he had been right: they weren’t fish at all. They were human-sized, with arms and legs. A slithering sound filled the air.
His heart filled with dread. Draugars. And they were coming straight for the convoy.
Straight for him.
Everyone ran. Children started coughing even worse than before; in Tuomas’s sleigh, Eevi clutched at her throat as though trying to prise something away from it. Horrified shrieks filled Tuomas’s ears.
He struggled to get purchase on the snow. It was fresh and powdery here, undisturbed from a recent fall: the worst kind to move across quickly. Even those on skis could barely manage, and the sleighs, weighted down with people and supplies, were still far too slow. The creatures would catch up to them in no time, and then… Tuomas didn’t know what would happen. Would they kill them all? Take the children, like they had at the Nordjarvi?
He suddenly recalled Lilja’s observation when she had taken him there.
“Have you noticed you’re the only youngster who isn’t coughing? You’re a Spirit yourself. Of course it’s not going to affect you.”
He stopped and rested a hand on his drum. Henrik had held off the creatures at the Mustafjord, but Tuomas was stronger. Much stronger.
Elin twisted in the sleigh.
“What are you doing?” she shouted through a cough. “Come on!”
Tuomas ignored her. He turned on his heel and bounded back towards the lake.
Elin screamed his name. The villagers bringing up the rear tried to reach out and grab him, but Tuomas evaded them until the entire convoy was behind him.
The draugars were approaching fast. Tuomas pulled his drum and hammer off his belt and took a deep breath. His heart juddered; he felt summer warmth on his back and smelled sweet flowers. Taika sang through his body like electricity.
He fixed his eyes on the snow between him and the draugars, swept his hand across it, then hit the drum.
A barrier soared towards the sky. It was denser than Henrik’s; clung more tightly to everything it pressed against, until it became like a sheet of ice thick enough to support a whole herd. When the mist hit it, it swept back on itself and the draugars stopped dead on the other side. They let out a terrible gasping sound, like what a man might make as he drowned.
Tuomas stared at them in horror. He wasn’t sure what he had imagined them to look like, but these things were straight out of a nightmare. They were barely more than sagging slimy skin draped over bones. Holes had rotted through the flesh in places, the edges puckered as though they had lain underwater for countless years. Although they had arms and legs, there was nothing human about them. Their movements were shuddery, like the muscles had stiffened and locked; muddy webbing spanned their long fingers and sharp red eyes rolled in gaunt sockets.
One leapt towards him. Tuomas kept his hammer on the drumskin and unleashed another wave of energy to hold the boundary. The draugar lashed out in fury. The air vibrated with each strike, but the shield held.
Tuomas stared into its eyes. There was a hunger in them; a hatred for the breath in his lungs and the blood in his veins. And for something more…
The draugar snapped its teeth, and Tuomas felt it, plucking against his power like a fish hook. He stumbled backwards in alarm. It was tasting his taika.
Mage, it snarled inside his head. There you are, Son of the Sun…
Tuomas recoiled, but forced himself not to break eye contact. They couldn’t reach him behind the barrier. No matter how many there were, he was stronger than them all, and he knew it.
And so did they. The one at the front let out a screech, then flung it
self away. The others followed suit, and as one massive animal, they slithered over each other and rolled towards the lake. They dived back into the hole, the mist dragging behind them, and as quickly as they had come, they disappeared into the depths.
Tuomas didn’t dare move. He panted hard, his chest constricted from fright.
Footsteps crunched in the snow, then Enska and Lilja appeared in front of him.
“Are you alright?” Enska asked.
Tuomas nodded. He looked back at the convoy. The reindeer had spooked and several people were trying to round them up before they could disperse. Others stood still beside the sleighs. The screams had been replaced once again with coughs and painful wheezes.
Certain they were safe, Tuomas lowered his drum and tied it back onto his belt.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?” Enska hissed. “What if they’d gotten to you first?”
“Well, they didn’t,” Tuomas replied. “And I knew they wouldn’t.”
Lilja kept her eyes on him for a moment, then approached the barrier. She extended a hand and tapped it, gently, so it wouldn’t break. She sniffed back a sob.
“Why did you stop me?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
Enska closed his eyes despondently. He let go of Tuomas and walked over to her.
“It was for the best,” he said.
His expression softened and he cupped her face in his hands. Tears spilled down Lilja’s cheeks, but she still didn’t break; she straightened her shoulders and stared straight ahead, as though Enska wasn’t even there. Then she turned to Tuomas, her lip trembling.
“Did you see him?”
Tuomas’s stomach tightened. “I… don’t know. There was something in the water, but I don’t know if it was him.”
Lilja glared at Enska. “See? I could have gotten to him!”
“No, you couldn’t. You saw how many there were,” he insisted gently. “Lilja, listen to me. We can’t do anything for him now. We need to carry on.”
“What if they come after us?” Tuomas asked.
“They won’t. They need to stay near water to survive. This is the last lake on the route; the further we get from it, the safer we’ll be.”
“Well… can’t we at least give Lilja some time?”
Enska’s mouth twisted with pity. “The children can’t wait, and neither can the mountains. We need to get across them before the snow becomes unstable. We can’t risk the females dropping the calves.”
Lilja nodded. Despite her own pain, she knew he was right. She allowed her father to embrace her, and when she drew away, she pulled the sadness back inside herself. Tuomas could see it leaving her face: her lip stopped quivering and her eyes took on a flat cast. In no time at all, she looked the same as she always had.
Tuomas regarded her. Even now, she was so controlled; nobody would have any reason to think she was connected to what had just happened. It was alarmingly natural: the mask she had worn for so long simply slotted into place.
When he was sure she was ready, Enska squeezed her hands and led the way back towards the convoy.
“Thank you for stopping them,” Lilja whispered to Tuomas.
He offered her a small smile, hoping she could take some comfort from it, but she didn’t look at him; she kept her eyes firmly on the snow. Tuomas watched her in his peripheral vision. For as painful as this was, how much more did it hurt her to keep silent, so no-one would suspect anything?
Never mind that she had rebuffed him at the Nordjarvi, or the fright he had gotten when he last went into trance. He had to figure out a way to help her connect with Aki.
They caught up with the herd and walked on, leaving the lake and the protective shield behind.
Chapter Fourteen
When the lake passed out of sight, small peaks rose on either side of the convoy, trees clinging stubbornly to the rocky flanks. The ground began to slope upwards as they entered the gateway to the mountains. It wouldn’t be long now before they reached the pass: the most treacherous part of the journey.
No matter where Tuomas looked, he saw danger. This was the place of avalanches and impatient Spirits; wolves could be hiding anywhere and trolls slept under the ground. No lichen or heather grew. What appeared to be flat snow could only be a thin cover over a huge crevasse. When he was a child, a man from Akerfjorden had accidentally tumbled down one – his scream had lasted for so long, Tuomas thought he’d never stop falling.
The land was unforgiving at the best of times, but here, even the soundest knowledge would be tested.
They didn’t stop to pitch camp when the night drew in. The leaders reminded everyone that there was a migration stop a short distance into the mountains: a permanent cluster of turfed huts, built by the ancestors and maintained every year. This was the only place with such measures. Too many people had lost their lives to take chances with hide tents alone.
Heeding the leaders’ words, the herders pressed on. It wasn’t just for the sake of reaching the stop, either; everyone was very aware of the need to get away from the lake.
Tuomas lit a torch, fetched his skis to make the ascent easier, and walked beside Elin in the sleigh. Eevi was asleep with her head against Elin’s chest. A trickle of blood had run out of her mouth and stained her scarf. Elin wiped it away with shaking hands, then hid her face in her white hare mittens, trying to keep warm – but Tuomas suspected it was so he wouldn’t see her weakness so clearly. The skin around her eyes had darkened and she could barely manage three breaths before coughing.
“Why don’t you try to sleep as well?” he asked.
“I can sleep when we get to the stop,” she replied.
“Elin, you look like you’re going to faint. Your body needs the rest. You don’t want to end up like Paavo.”
“Well, unlike Paavo, I’m sitting down, so no need to worry.”
She was arguing for the sake of it. He could tell by her tone.
Tuomas swallowed nervously. What if she fought so hard, she wore herself out? Nobody had died yet, but a terrible feeling told him that there would be fewer children with them by the time they reached Anaar.
That made him think of Paavo. The Akerfjorden herd would have moved through the pass already and set up camp at the coast. He prayed to all the Spirits that they had made it unharmed and Henrik was able to care for everyone. Had Einfjall joined them yet? How many of their youngsters were sick too?
Feeling eyes on him, he glanced up and noticed a group of women staring. They didn’t stop when he looked at them. He shuffled uncomfortably as they started muttering among themselves. He heard his name, then the words “Son of the Sun.”
He clenched his teeth together so hard, his jaw ached.
“I’ll be back,” he said to Elin, and skied ahead to get away from them.
It didn’t take him long to find Lilja. She was alone at the front of the herd, not speaking to anyone, her attention fixed straight ahead. She didn’t even break it when he drew alongside her.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“As much as I can be,” she replied. “How are you?”
“Fine. I just… they’re talking about me.”
“What do you expect me to do about it?”
“Nothing,” Tuomas said. “I just needed a break from hearing it.”
“You don’t have to give me an excuse for why you came up here. Your company is one I don’t actually mind.”
“Well, that’s a relief. You were stuck with me for long enough.”
Lilja cocked one eyebrow in agreement. She dug both ski poles into the snow to help manoeuvre herself over a half-exposed rock
“Was this what it was like for you?” Tuomas asked. “When they found out you were saved by the Great Bear Spirit?”
The tiniest of smirks passed Lilja’s lips. He couldn’t tell if it was in response to his question or that she was happy for a distraction.
“It started like this,” she admitted. “Mutterings, glances… then they started houn
ding me, asking me for everything. That was when I got tired of it. Thankfully, they’re keeping away from me now – I think they’ve finally realised I didn’t appreciate it.”
“Do you think they’ll start doing that to me?”
“Who knows? The question you should be asking is, what are you going to do about it?”
“What can I do? I can’t help who I am.”
“And there’s the rub,” Lilja said, with a strange kind of wicked triumph. “We can’t win, can we? Why do you think I preferred to be away from it all?”
Tuomas looked at her. “Lilja, do you know why the Bear saved you?”
She was quiet for a long moment. “No. But I don’t think it’s important.”
“Why? It hardly ever intervenes like that. There must be something about you which it saw was worth saving.”
“What, are you saying I’m special? The same kind of special which meant you got stuck with the Great Mage’s life-soul?” she asked sarcastically. “Everyone knows I’m strange, but the only reason I am is because of the shape of the Bear appearing in my breath in the first place. I told you, Kari was the mage-in-training, not me. I was a nobody.”
“Maybe you were never a nobody though,” said Tuomas. “There’s nothing special about my body. I look the same as everyone else. It’s only since the whole ordeal with Lumi that things have changed.”
Lilja pondered that for a moment, then gave a conceding nod.
“You say some wise things on occasion, you know. But I think it’s best not to dwell on why things happened. You got that soul, and the Great Bear saved me. If anything is going to come of it, we’ll see it happen in time.”
She pushed back her hat to scratch an itch on her scalp, then spoke again.
“That’s the first I’ve heard you talk about the Spirit of the Lights.”
Tuomas sighed. “I miss her.”
A darkness spread over Lilja’s eyes. “I know. It’s never easy, is it? When a sibling leaves you.”
He hesitated. “Isn’t it… difficult for you? How can you still love him, even after all he did?”
