Dusk in Kalevia

by Emily Compton

  As the mutter of the heating pipes and a diffuse cast from the forgotten lights in the other room lulled him back to sleep, he settled into a blissful satisfaction he’d craved for eons. He thought of his hunger for the light, and muffled his laugh in mussed blonde hair.

  I should’ve tried this lifetimes ago.

  Chapter 11

  Inside the summerhouse, Kaija was shielded from the wind, but the stillness made it feel almost colder--as though the very air had frozen solid. She looked around the single room at the scattered remnants of summers past: a fishing rod, a camp lantern. Someone had clearly lived there and possibly would again, but in the dead of winter the thick dust was undisturbed; there were no signs of recent habitation save for the droppings of field mice on the floor. For now, this was a dead place, slumbering until the thaw like a frog in the ice.

  She voiced a single word, reminding herself of her only hope for survival.

  Fire.

  There was a stove in the corner with black drum sides and a pipe going up to the roof, and beside it, a neat stack of birch logs sat in a metal box. Kaija opened the flue and stuck her head into the stove just above the thin layer of ash in its belly, listening to the wind howling down the chimney. Fuel had been left out in the basket, ready for a summer evening--twigs and curls of bark, an old yellow newspaper, and a box with a few long matches remaining.

  Kaija stared down at the newspaper with a weird sense of dislocation; she recognized pages that had run through the presses last summer. The heat and noise of the print shop in her mind energized her enough to crumple the pages up into little balls and build a mound of them on the tiles of the stove.

  Kaija began to narrate her actions aloud--slurred musings in barely intelligible Kalevian as she broke twigs and rolled paper between her palms. It kept her focused. She had begun to shiver violently again, her hands jittering all over the place and her teeth chattering like a wind-up toy. She dropped a log, the sensation in her usually deft fingers severed by the cold. She struck the back of her fingers against her forearm, grateful for the little sting and the slight flex they gave to let her know that they still lived.

  Kaija felt like a fool for having let this happen to her, but her past could not be changed, and why worry about the future when its continuation came down to the burning of three matches? She gripped the first, struck it on the box, and shielded its flame in her trembling hands--but her movement was uncoordinated, and the flame guttered and died before she touched it to the kindling. The second match, however, managed the journey into the stove, passing on its flame to the mound of sticks and paper within. She caught a whiff of wood smoke--the calming smell of combustion and salvation.

  Reality was starting to slip away, her thoughts vacant and troubled. Her clothes were strangling her; she suffered at their heat. She knew this was wrong--she couldn’t possibly be warm yet--but she began to remove them without thinking as she stumbled around the room. She peeled off her coat and her sweater, struggled with her boots, and let her pants fall to her ankles until she stood naked, staring at the blossoming fire with the wonder of a prehistoric woman.

  As the logs caught, Kaija paced. Her woozy brain told her that so long as she was moving, her blood was moving, which led her stumbling back and forth for a few minutes until her leg hurt too much and she collapsed on the bed.

  It was set into a little cubby in the wall, covered by a faded quilt, and it whispered promises of sleep impossibly sweet. It took enormous effort for Kaija to resist its siren song. As a distraction, she grabbed the quilt and shook it, releasing a cloud of dust and a musty odor. Her nose wrinkled as she brought it to her face and sniffed its faint, waterlogged smell. This is the eventual fate of all things in a summerhouse, she thought. The lake crept into them, and they forever kept the smell of the damp close to their core. She wrapped the quilt around herself and settled in front of the stove to warm her hands.

  They woke slowly and painfully, announcing their resurrection with an intolerable itching that wormed its way down to the marrow of her finger bones. The skin had not developed the waxy pallor of severe frostbite, but had instead gone mottled; red and white patches bloomed across it like streaks of fire crackling under the surface. She was tempted to rub them, to tear at them in agony, but remembered something Martin had once told her about frostbitten skin while they had walked in the woods together.

  Maybe in another life he could’ve been a doctor, she thought. He always did care too much when someone was hurting. Poor Martin. Oh, well.

  It was that train of thought that forced Kaija to finally examine her wounds. She slid her hand down her leg, feeling the way blood had thawed into a horrible, sticky dampness on the skin near the gunshot wound; she then touched the top of her shoulder, near where it throbbed with every beat of her heart. It was becoming increasingly clear that the dizziness she felt was not just the effects of hypothermia, but blood loss as well. She had been avoiding looking at the wounds, afraid of what she might see. She took a deep breath and peered down her thigh.

  The bullet hadn’t pierced her leg so much as carved a groove along the flesh--a narrow, curved gap through which bloody muscle glistened. There wasn’t anything to stitch up, since there were no ragged edges of skin to pull together, nothing much she could do for it besides try to disinfect it and dress it the best she could.

  She got up and looked at herself in the dark-speckled glass of the window. In the reflection, she could also see the small chunk that had been torn out of her trapezius--less severe than her leg, but still leaking blood and threatening infection.

  In the cupboard she found a bottle of vodka, a cast-iron saucepan, and a few speckled camping cups, all of which she brought over to the fire. She tore her undershirt into strips slowly and meditatively, and stared for a while at the raw red channel from which her life slowly ebbed, before finally working up the courage to unscrew the cap from the bottle. She took the corner of the quilt in her mouth before she poured.

  Even as she screamed she was taken aback by the sound of her own voice--ghastly through the blanket between her teeth--as the spirits coursed over her open wound.

  She surely passed out for a few minutes, for when she opened her eyes, the room was finally beginning to get warm. She wrapped the quilt more tightly around herself on the hard floor and reached for the impromptu bandages. As she bound her leg, she alternated taking sips from the bottle and dabbing her shoulder, enduring her pain through her fear of gangrene.

  Once she had recovered some of her balance, Kaija shut the stove. A water supply was the last thing she needed before she gave herself over to exhaustion. Saucepan in hand, she limped over to the door to gather some snow, wishing she have didn’t have to bear the cold again until she was good and ready. She only reached outdoors to nudge some snow off a nearby bank, slammed the door shut again, and set the full pan beside the bed to melt. And finally, mercifully, she pulled herself into bed.

  Now there was nothing to do but wait. Survival was out of her hands. Miserable and weary beyond belief, she curled up around herself and hoped that this was a sleep from which she would wake.

  **

  Time slowed for Kaija, seeping ahead like a drop of blood through a bandage. She tossed and turned in her cocoon of mildewed blankets, wracked with chills despite the crackling stove. Her whole body felt bruised, her flesh stretched too tight over her aching bones. Pain rippled along her skin with each soft brush of quilt fabric, and reality fell away, ceding the stage to fever dreams both frustrating and interminable. It was a slow drowning, stifling even while she drew breath. Once, during a moment of lucidity, she realized that she was grasping at the air above her, arms extended toward some forgotten hallucination just beyond her reach.

  Some time later--whether minutes or hours, she could not be sure--the bright, clear strains of a melody pierced through the haze. The song gently lifted the veil of her fever and buoyed her back up into the surface of sanity. She lay with her eyes closed, letting the sharp not
es of plucked strings and the voice that sang the melody fall softly upon her.

  What a voice it was--a voice that could plow earth into mountains and sing the moon down from the sky, deep and resonant as though the air itself had begun to croon. She feared that if she woke fully, the dream-music would fade away, but when it persisted into her stirring consciousness, she dared to open her eyes.

  The lantern was lit, and an old man sat in the rocking chair in the corner, playing a kantele. His fingers danced across the lyre strings, bringing forth a tune of such beauty that Kaija almost forgot to breathe. His features were softened and obscured in the dim light of the cabin, but Kaija could still make out something of his appearance, odd as it was.

  The man was dressed in humble apparel of the old style--like an illustration of one of the sagas come to life. He wore a simple tunic of rough woven cloth dyed in earthen tones and boots bound with strips of cloth. Atop his long, wispy mane, he wore a small, round cap, and his white locks tangled together with his ample beard. He looks so very old, she thought, a grandfather at least, but the strong voice flowing from his mouth belied his aged appearance.

  Kaija held herself as still as possible, hoping that he would not notice her, unsure of whether or not he was even real. She entertained a fleeting worry that this was the cabin’s resident, returning for an offseason excursion in the middle of a blizzard, but it seemed so unlikely that she immediately dismissed it. The simple explanation was that this was merely a continuation of her delirium, but her senses felt true--the blanket rough and heavy against her skin, the smoky crackle of the stove mingling with the music.

  Kaija suddenly realized that she didn’t care. She felt soothed, like everything she had been through was being sung away, pain and sorrow floating away like autumn leaves on the current.

  It was then that Kaija saw the bear. It lay at the man’s feet, its dark bulk gently rising and falling and its chin resting on its paws. As she stared, frozen against the mattress, the beast stirred and lifted its shaggy head, its bright eyes peering at her with an eerily intelligent curiosity.

  She felt like she was falling even as she lay upon her back, her world tilting with the strange giddiness of fear and blood loss. At this, the bard’s fingers finally stilled. He set his instrument upon his lap and looked at her.

  “You’re waking up,” he said.

  She met his merry blue eyes as they twinkled in the firelight, and fell hard into the grasp of another hallucination.

  She dreamt she was in a boat at sea, surrounded by warriors straining at the oars through the rough waters. At the prow stood the old man, and Kaija tried to call out to him, sputtering as she caught the salt spray in her mouth.

  At the pale bard’s feet lay the most beautiful object she had ever seen: an ancient mill with the diameter of a large tree trunk. Rounded and metallic, with an ornate handle on top, its cover sparkled with constellations like the night sky. It was so intricately designed that she could scarcely believe it was a thing crafted by human hands--a dream that would not stand up to the scrutiny of the waking mind.

  Something about this was familiar to her. She had seen this happen before. Not like this, but perhaps in her mind’s eye...

  “Look!” cried the bard, jabbing his finger at a dark shape flying toward them against the rising sun. “The witch!”

  She fell out of the sky like a lightning bolt, clad in the gleaming metal form of a monstrous eagle. Her crone face howled from the midst of razor-sharp feathers, apoplectic with rage. She snatched at the artifact with talons like scythes, spewing a spiteful tirade from her wrinkled mouth.

  “How dare you try to steal the prosperity of my people!” she screeched, spittle flying with every word. “You wicked, evil old bastard! I won’t let you have it! Not you, not anyone!”

  As she struggled to lift the golden mill aloft, one of the men, in a flash of bravery, struck at her with his sword. The blow did little more than break a few of her claws, but it provided a window of opportunity in which the old man grabbed an oar and began to beat at the giant eagle body. The witch screamed and dropped the mill to the deck with a clang, and began to fly around the boat, gnashing her teeth and cursing the names of the men aboard--who jeered and shook their swords up at her.

  She made one final attempt at the treasure, succeeding in hooking a single uninjured talon around its celestial lid, but when she wrested it over the ship’s red bow, her strength seemed to fail her. The mill tumbled from her grasp into the depths.

  She let out a heart-wrenching scream, and there was a collective intake of breath from the warship’s crew. With one last cry, the witch flew north and the waters grew still.

  Kaija knew then that she had seen this moment countless times, as she lay in her bed reading her books of legends. This was the story where the Sampo was lost--the object that could erase all want from the land. Why this dream? Why now?

  The old bard Väinämöinen turned to her.

  The world shifted again, and she found herself climbing, her hide-swaddled feet seeking holds in the rock. She was no longer naked, but clothed in a soft white tunic that fluttered against her skin in the cool breeze. The bear walked ahead of her on the mountain slope, its round backside swaying ponderously in the dim light. It stopped and turned to her, as though entreating her to follow, and she scrambled to catch up, slipping and scraping her palms on the lichen-dusted stone.

  When she crested the peak, she was struck by the beauty of the vista stretching out below. Still pools were nestled in the breast of old-growth forest, a land of water and rock and pine, lowland fens stretching out toward the ocean’s distant shore. The sun crept over the horizon’s edge and touched each of the lakes in turn, tinting them with honey and brushing gold across the treetops. The bear waited calmly beside her, and she laid a hand on the dense fur of its back to steady herself, trusting instinctively that it meant her no harm.

  They stood and watched the sunrise, the cool, salt-tinged breeze playing through Kaija’s hair and ruffling the brown fur that bristled around the bear’s muzzle. After a moment, Kaija became aware of another presence near her, and turned to find that Väinämöinen had quietly joined them. He stared out over the land with a faraway look in his eyes, stroking his snowy beard in contemplation.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said in a rumbling baritone.

  She nodded, unable to think of anything to add.

  “Kalevia looks peaceful from up here. You’d never know this was a land at war with itself.”

  At this, Kaija felt tears threatening to brim over her lower lids, chilled by the steady ocean breeze.

  “Everything’s so broken now,” she mumbled. “So fouled up...”

  The old man laid a calloused hand upon her shoulder and shook his head.

  “People always tell stories of a time when things were perfect--a time when life had no hardship. Every land has its legends. The loss of a garden, the world tree torn asunder...”

  “The Sampo,” she said, finally understanding.

  “It was meant to be lost. Existence has always been a struggle, offering hope with one hand and fear with the other.” He looked at her, his beautiful voice gaining in volume, his wild hair touched by the wind and the morning light. “Yet you still go on. You create stories from that fear and that hope--give them faces and names. You forge ahead in this broken, imperfect world.”

  The bear’s heavy head nuzzled against Kaija’s leg, and she stroked it for a time before replying.

  “We survive.”

  “Like light in the darkness, little bear. And without darkness, we would not see the light.” He nodded and withdrew his hand from her arm. “Now, go.”

  Before she could speak, there was another shift, and Kaija was blinking at a ray of sunlight falling through the frosted window of the cabin.

  She lay in the bed, feeling the ache of her wounds, her hair and pillow damp with tears.

  **

  In the usual manner of recuperation, the next few days
seemed to both fly by and drag on endlessly for Kaija. The first morning found her terribly weak, slipping in and out of sleep and only moving to take sips of water from the tin cup by her bedside. When the need to urinate finally grew unbearable, Kaija tore herself from the bed to piss in the glass jar she had seen on the windowsill, tossing the desiccated remains of wildflowers onto the floor. Her legs could barely support her--her injury sent spasms of pain up her thigh--but she still forced herself drag a few more logs into the stove and stir up the embers, bringing back the roaring blaze of the day before. She knew the fire was the only thing keeping her alive, and tending to it would remain her first priority.

  On the second day, she changed her bandages and once again went through the ordeal of disinfecting her wounds. The graze on her shoulder had scabbed over nicely, but her leg was still oozing blood in the center of the cut. Although swollen, it didn’t seem infected, so she dosed it with warm water and alcohol, dressed it with fresh strips of shirt, and nursed the bottle of vodka in front of the fire, feeling bleak yet relieved.

  By the afternoon, she was strong enough to investigate the cabin for food and clothing. The cupboards were bare, but after a thorough search she came across a few tins of herring, a jar of preserves, and a metal tin of stale oatmeal forgotten in the back corner of a cabinet. She rationed these meager provisions into a respectable diet of two bowls of porridge and a few mouthfuls of the oily fish daily, which she found surprisingly fortifying. Her luck with clothing was middling as well--fisherman’s waders, a flannel shirt, and a baggy black dress with a torn hem were squirreled away in the various trunks and cubbyholes of the summerhouse.