The Cold Is in Her Bones

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  But no, Milla sensed this wasn’t what Iris was talking about. Milla remembered how Iris had looked that afternoon, like her usual self-command had been stripped from her. She seemed afraid that she was being rearranged piece by piece and all twisted. This was something different from the odd thoughts that Milla often had. Milla sometimes wondered why she thought the way she did—certainly she felt strange at times. But she felt sure, almost sure, that her thoughts were her own. They weren’t anyone else’s. She didn’t think.

  Maybe that’s what the other girls thought, too.

  And how would Milla ever know if no one told her? Perhaps her family thought they were protecting her by keeping her so ignorant, but they were wrong. She accepted her mother and father’s disregard for her as simply the way things were. But Niklas. Her whole life she had loved him best of all. And Mamma and Pappa had loved him best of all, too, and Milla didn’t even mind. All she hoped for in return was that Niklas might love her best of all. Or at least think of her sometimes. But now she knew he never had. He wanted to keep her as small and helpless as Mamma and Pappa did. He thought she was too fragile—too strange—to be trusted with the truth about the village and the workings of the demon. He didn’t know her at all.

  She stared at Niklas where he sat working on a wooden bowl for Mamma. She willed him to look at her, to notice how angry she was. But he blandly ignored her.

  She watched Pappa. He smoked his pipe facing the fire—not so much looking at it as pointed toward it. Blank as always. Then she watched Mamma at her sewing. Occasionally Mamma looked up from her work and straight at Niklas. It was as if a thread connected Mamma to Niklas, and the only direction her attention could go was toward him.

  Milla turned her gaze back toward her father. Yawn, Pappa. Yawn.

  Then, finally, he did—a face-cracking yawn that Mamma couldn’t help but notice. Mamma folded up her sewing and Pappa tipped the remains of his pipe into the fire. “Bedtime,” Gitta said. She followed Jakob upstairs. Milla heard their door close.

  “Niklas.” Milla hissed his name, and he looked up at her, seeming surprised at what he saw in her face. “I know about the village. I know about the girls, and the demon, and The Place. And I know you’ve been keeping it all from me.”

  Niklas closed his eyes and pressed his lips together. He only ever did that when he was very upset. Then he opened his eyes again. Niklas had the kind of green, brown, and amber eyes that changed color with his surroundings. Right now they were black, full of pupil. “Iris told you.”

  The mention of Iris’s name opened up a crack in her chest that filled with cold air. Iris had told her, yes, and the reason Iris had told her was that she was afraid she was hearing the voice of the demon in her head. And if Niklas knew that, he would tell their mother and father, and then Iris would be taken away from her and sent to The Place.

  She looked at her brother, registered the fury in his eyes, and thoughts streamed through her head like wheat berries through her fingers. If she tried to catch one, she not only lost it, but ten others slipped past as well.

  Milla had made a terrible mistake. She knew it even before Niklas said, “You have no idea what you’ve done. And what Iris has done in telling you.”

  “I begged her to tell me. I knew you were keeping something from me. You don’t know what it’s like to live this way, Niklas. Feeling like there’s a world out there that’s so different from this one and I’m not even allowed to know how. Or why. It’s maddening. Sometimes I think I can’t bear it another day.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? You don’t even know what I do for you. How lucky you are. Do you think I like going to the village without you? Believe me, I don’t. But Pappa made me swear I wouldn’t tell you anything about it. He said it was the only way to keep you safe.” He stared at Milla, blinking too hard and too fast. “This is all my fault.”

  Milla struggled with how differently their conversation was unfolding than she’d thought it would. She’d known only her anger a few minutes before, and that was so simple, but this was complicated. Her brother sat in front of her, and instead of hating him, she regretted causing him such anguish. That little part of her heart that she’d closed to him opened back up again, and she felt deep guilt for having closed it in the first place. She was the wrong one. She was always the wrong one. And then she felt angry again. Why was she always the wrong one? It wasn’t fair. And so her thoughts went, around and around.

  “It’s not your fault,” Milla said to Niklas. And she meant it. “It’s theirs, Mamma’s and Pappa’s. They’ve done this to us. They took you away from me, and they keep me here, trapped. And they convinced you it’s for my own good. But it’s not.” Even as Milla said all this, though, another thought streamed through her brain, and this one she caught and held onto tightly. Iris. What would Milla tell Niklas about Iris, and what Iris was afraid was happening to her? Then he answered Milla’s question for her.

  “I have to tell Pappa and Mamma that you know, and that Iris told you. I can’t lie to them.”

  “Oh no, Niklas. No, you can’t.” The cold crack in Milla widened. “If you do they’ll send her back. You don’t want her to go back, do you?”

  “Of course not, Milla. I’m the one who convinced Pappa to let her come here now.”

  “Because you think I’m strange. And you think Iris will make me less strange.” Milla’s anger was coming back.

  Niklas put a hand to his forehead. “Everything I do for you, you turn it all around. I knew Pappa and Mamma wanted her to come eventually, and I know how lonely you’ve been. I know you, Milla. You may not think I do, but I do.”

  “If you know me, then you know I love you more than anyone else. And you know I wouldn’t lie to you. If you tell Mamma and Pappa that Iris told me, and if they send her back, then I’ll run away.”

  “I’ll tell Mamma and Pappa you said that, and Mamma will never let you out of her sight. She’ll lock you up. You won’t be able to run away.”

  “If they ever did that to me I’d turn into one of those demon girls.” She almost laughed when she said it, but the words horrified her the moment they left her lips.

  “You mustn’t say such things, Milla.” He grabbed her hand and squeezed his eyes shut. “Lord protect us from demons Lord protect us from demons Lord protect us from demons. Amen.” He looked at her. “Say it, Milla.”

  “Amen,” she said.

  He tried to pull his hand away then, but she held on. “Niklas. I promise to be good. I promise not to ask any more questions or ever to speak of the village again. Just please don’t tell Mamma and Pappa that Iris told me.” She squeezed his hand and looked into his face, so tight and worried. “Please.”

  Niklas sighed. “As long as you keep your promise, I won’t tell them. But I’m going to have to talk to Iris. She needs to know how wrong she was to tell you.”

  “No.” Milla’s voice was louder and sharper than it should have been, and Niklas jerked his head back. “Don’t talk to Iris, Niklas. Let me do it. It will be better.”

  Niklas looked at her through lowered eyebrows, and Milla saw an expression there that she hadn’t ever seen on his face before. Suspicion.

  “I feel guilty, Niklas. That’s all. She’s still so new here and eager to please, and I made her tell me. And she was so upset about it. She’d be terribly embarrassed if you knew. She thinks so highly of you.”

  The shadow that had fallen over him lightened, but Milla knew she would have to be more careful now. Something had changed between her and Niklas, because something had changed in her. She had become a liar.

  The next morning dawned bright and even hotter, and by the time Jakob and Niklas left for the fields, Milla was already sweating under her dress. She’d lain awake a long time the night before, worrying over Iris and the terrible mistake she’d almost made with Niklas. She had come too close to betraying Iris, much too close. She thought through all the things that might have happened if Niklas had told Jakob and Gitta. She
thought about what her life would be like if they took Iris away. Then she felt terrible shame that she was worried more for herself than for Iris. Iris had trusted Milla. Be my friend. Milla hadn’t been her friend last night.

  But today that would change. Today, Milla told herself, Iris would feel better, and Milla would be a good girl, and she’d do her chores well, and she’d smile brightly at dinner, and soon the shadow of suspicion would entirely lift from Niklas and everything would be fine.

  Doubt tickled her spine when Iris didn’t appear at the kitchen door after breakfast. But maybe Trude had given Iris something to do that delayed her. Trude could be baking, and would want Iris’s help for that. There were any number of reasons that Iris wasn’t there. So Milla continued doing her chores, carefully, ever so carefully.

  She poured the lines of salt especially straight that morning, with not a single break.

  When every chore was done, and she had been told by Gitta that there wasn’t a single other thing that needed doing, Milla walked to Stig and Trude’s. She walked no faster or slower than she should have, and she thought that the very normalcy of her stride was proof that this was a fine day, a typical day.

  She walked up to Stig and Trude’s whitewashed door and she knocked in a way that wasn’t too soft or too hard. It was a just-right knock, and then she waited for someone to open the door in a just-right way.

  Instead there was no answer. So she knocked again, this time a little harder and louder than just-right. And again. And again. And then she called through the door. “Iris? Trude?”

  Milla heard movement and then the door opened. Trude faced her, and Milla knew then what she hadn’t allowed herself to know since Iris hadn’t come after breakfast. What she’d felt in her gut even last night as she tried to convince herself to sleep. What she hadn’t wanted to believe the moment Iris had tapped her forehead and said the demon was in there.

  Nothing would ever be just-right again.

  7

  TRUDE REACHED ACROSS THE THRESHOLD and pulled Iris inside. The kitchen was oppressively hot, the windows shut tight.

  Iris wasn’t there; Milla could feel the emptiness of the house. There were two cups on the table and a pool of spilled tea that hadn’t been wiped up. Trude herself looked unwell. Her gray hair, always neatly braided around her head, trailed down her back, undone. Her apron was dirty. Stranger than all of this was the expression on Trude’s face, which was usually so plump and pleasant. It was terror. “Where is Iris?” Milla said.

  “It’s happening, Milla. Here. Where we thought we were safe.”

  “Where is Iris?” Milla felt that if Trude didn’t answer her question this time that she might reach out and shake the old woman by the shoulders.

  “She’s run off! Stig’s gone after her. And if your mother and father find out they’ll take her and they’ll put her in The Place. And then they’ll send us away, too. Because we brought the demon here when we brought Iris here.”

  “What do you mean she’s run off? She’s run away?”

  “She was so strange last night. So peculiar. And she didn’t look well. And Stig and I, we looked at each other, and I think we both knew then, but we didn’t want to know. So we all went to bed, and this morning I went in to wake Iris and she took one look at me and she screamed. She said I was a monster and what was I trying to do to her, and then she ran out in her nightdress. Stig went after her, but she ran so fast he said it wasn’t even human. It was like something else was in her body making it go. Then he lost sight of her.” Trude sobbed into her apron.

  Milla had to think. She had to think what to do. She should comfort Trude, she knew, but instead she took a step away from her, wanting only to get away from her wet weeping.

  “After that,” Trude said, “Stig came back for his rope. He said that if he finds her and she’s not herself, he’ll tie her up and take her to The Place. Then he’ll tell your mother and father that Iris got homesick and went back to the village. He said that was the only way your mother and father would let us stay here.”

  Milla had to get to Iris before Stig did. She couldn’t let him take Iris to The Place. She turned away from Trude, desperate to leave.

  “Oh, please, Milla. Don’t tell your mother.”

  Milla held the door handle, her back to Trude. “That’s what you care about.” She turned around and looked at the woman whom she’d always thought of as a sweet old grandmother. “You don’t care about Iris. You only care that Mamma and Pappa don’t make you leave.”

  Trude’s face changed, and Milla thought of the ugly old woman in the story of the snake tree, and how she transformed into a witch when angered. “Don’t you judge me,” Trude said. “Don’t you dare judge me. You’ve never had a worry in your life. You don’t know what that village is like. You don’t know what it is to be afraid of your own child. You’re a foolish little girl.”

  Milla’s chin dropped a fraction lower with each word, each word that hurt even more for being true. She turned her back on Trude and left the door wide open.

  Milla ran into the woods, thinking of all the places she and Iris had been together—the clearing that was so like where the witch in the story had buried her treasure. The spring where they’d sat the day before. But Iris wasn’t anywhere Milla thought she’d be, and the longer she looked the more frantic she became, and the less certain she was that she would ever find Iris before Stig did.

  She needed Niklas. He would calm her, and he would know what to do. She hoped he was alone and not with their father, because she couldn’t possibly pretend in front of Pappa that something wasn’t terribly wrong. In just over an hour Mamma would ring the bell for dinner, and she had to find Niklas before then.

  Milla ran to the edge of the forest. There was a slight rise above a fallow field where she knew Niklas had gone that morning to chop a fallen tree into kindling. She heard his axe first, and then she saw him. He’d paused his work to wipe his brow. His light brown hair was dark with sweat. She waited to call to him until she was closer for fear that Pappa might be nearby and hear her. When she couldn’t wait any longer she called to him while running. “Niklas!”

  She could tell his first impulse was to smile at her—because that was always Niklas’s first impulse when he looked at her. That made her heart break just a little. Then he took in her desperation and ran toward her, swatting aside tall, fluff-topped grass. “What is it?” he called to her. “What’s happened?”

  “Iris,” she said. “She’s run off.” When they reached each other, she told him everything—how Iris hadn’t seemed well yesterday, and what she’d just learned from Trude. “We have to find her before Stig does or they’ll take her to The Place. We can’t let them take her, Niklas. You love her, don’t you? She begged me not to let them take her there, and I promised I wouldn’t. Please, Niklas.”

  All the while she pleaded with him, Niklas moaned and ran his hands through his sweat-damp hair. “Oh, Milla,” he said, pressing the heels of both hands to his eyes. “You should have told me last night that Iris wasn’t well. And what will we do if we find her? What if she’s as Trude says? If she’s like the other girls, and the demon’s really gotten into her?”

  Milla didn’t believe it. It couldn’t be. “Well, then at least we’ll know. But I have to see her, Niklas. I have to talk to her. I can’t just let them take her.” Then she said something that she knew would get him to come with her. “And neither can you. You said it yourself. You’re the reason she’s here. You owe it to her.” Milla was almost sorry when she saw how her words landed on him. But not sorry enough to say that she was.

  “All right, Milla. Let’s go. But if we haven’t found her by the time the dinner bell rings, and you and I aren’t back soon after, Mamma and Pappa will know something’s wrong anyway. And then neither of us will be able to protect her.”

  So this was how it felt when it happened. Just last night Milla had wondered if she’d ever heard another voice in her head—a voice that wasn’t he
r own. Now she knew she hadn’t ever heard one before, because she was hearing one now.

  It wasn’t the voice of a demon, though. It was Iris, and she was talking to Milla right inside her head. It wasn’t wishful-thinking talking, the way Milla used to imagine that Niklas was with her and what they’d talk about if he were. This wasn’t Milla making up the sound of Iris’s voice in her head. This was Iris herself, telling Milla things that she didn’t know.

  Don’t tell Niklas. He won’t understand. Lie to him. Lose him. Then I’ll tell you where I am.

  “Have you looked everywhere you went together, Milla?” Niklas looked so concerned as they ran through the woods, choosing paths that Milla hadn’t yet searched. She wanted to believe he cared for Iris, that he would help Iris once they found her. That he would keep her secret.

  We can’t trust him, Milla. He’s not my friend. Only you are my friend, Milla. Be my friend.

  Milla was sick with uncertainty.

  He lied to you, Milla. He kept things from you. Everyone loves him more than they love you. Everyone except for me. Be my friend, Milla.

  Milla ran along behind Niklas. Sweat dripped under her arms, and she felt hot and cold at the same time. She slowed. “Niklas,” she said. “I have to stop.”

  He turned around.

  “I have to pee,” Milla said.

  “Now?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m so frightened.”

  Niklas shook his head. “Well go on, be quick.”

  “Walk ahead of me,” she said. “I’ll catch up with you.”

  Run left. Run fast.

  Milla waited, heart beating painfully, as Niklas walked on. When the path took a gentle turn and she could no longer see him, she ran left, and she ran fast.