The Cold Is in Her Bones

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  The words were out of Milla before she could stop them. “Iris would be safer here at home than in The Place, wouldn’t she? How can you leave her there?”

  Hanna’s face closed up. Hardened. “I was like you once,” she said. “I had ideas about how things should be. I hoped. I visited my sister there and told her I loved her and missed her. And each time I saw her there she was less and less my Leah. Then one day she only screamed when she saw me. She said I wasn’t her sister, I was a demon come to drag her to hell with the other demons. I tried to touch her, and she hissed at me like a snake. After that, I never went back. It’s too hard, Milla. Too hard. You’ll see. Now go on with you. And don’t come back here. You’re not welcome.”

  Hanna turned away from Milla and walked into Tomas’s arms. He looked at Milla over his wife’s head, two stones where his seeking eyes had once been.

  13

  MILLA WALKED DELIBERATELY PAST THE villagers, keeping her eyes on the ground, hoping that if she didn’t look at them, they might not look at her, either. When she’d passed the church, and the cemetery, and the market square that she’d so often dreamed of visiting with her brother, the homes grew sparser. Milla felt that she might soon be safe.

  Farmland rolled on either side of her, the wheat stunted and shriveled, nothing like her father’s fields. Why had Hulda cursed the village so, but allowed Jakob and Gitta their healthy fields only a day’s walk away? An answer came to Milla. The torture was in the waiting. That was how Hulda cursed Gitta and Jakob. Their punishment was to wake each morning wondering if that was the day the aphids would come and suck the life out of their wheat, the day the demon would come and swap their daughter for their greatest fear—a demon just like Hulda herself.

  Fields gave way to forest. The temperature dropped with the shade of the trees, and Milla’s snakes peeked out of her hair. Milla was used to woods that felt alive—tree life, insect life, birds and animals all pecking and crawling, flying and scurrying. The drip of damp and soft rustle of leaves. But these woods were dying. There were no birds to drive back the onslaught of fat caterpillars and ants, grasshoppers and beetles that feasted upon the papery leaves and ate the trees from inside out. Milla felt queasy moving among the diseased roots and branches.

  Milla felt a kiss of snake tongue on her left ear, and another on her right. She touched the snake over her right ear. It was so much bigger in just a day; it circled her wrist, not just her finger. She caught a flash of brilliant red, so beautiful. She was amazed by it, how it was part of her and yet not. How it moved of its own volition, and yet she felt what it felt. Its alarm was her own, its thirst was her own as well. Thirst. She was terribly thirsty. But if there had been water here, she wouldn’t want to drink it. Even the air smelled wrong.

  The sun was halfway to the horizon, the light just turning golden, before the forest turned green again. She caught the homey scent of wood smoke and soon she arrived at the midwife’s cottage. It hugged close to the side of the road. Next to it was a barn and paddock with a single horse standing outside looking back at Milla with mild curiosity.

  A dark-haired woman peered out from one of the cottage’s two front windows. If Milla had wanted to slip by undetected, she’d failed. She could try to keep walking, but if the midwife didn’t want her to pass, she’d only come after her. The woman nodded at Milla, then moved away from the window. Within a moment she’d opened the door.

  Milla could see that the woman was older than Gitta, but beyond that she couldn’t tell how old she was. She stood tall and straight-backed. A slender, perfect streak of white sliced across her dark hair, which was thick and unbraided, and swept over her right shoulder. Milla hadn’t thought what to expect of the midwife, but upon seeing her in the flesh she realized she’d assumed her to be ugly and craggy, with a face to match what was surely the blackness of her heart. She wasn’t expecting a woman so striking, so interesting to look at. The midwife seemed strong and capable, alert and intelligent. She smiled. Her lips were full and her teeth were straight and white. “What are you doing so far from the village, and so late in the afternoon?”

  Milla had prepared herself for questions, and she forced herself to breathe evenly, not to betray her lies with shaking, and not to tell more lies than she absolutely had to. Not because lying to this woman troubled her, but because she was afraid she wouldn’t be very good at it. “I’m looking for my brother,” Milla said.

  True.

  The midwife raised her eyebrows. They were full and arching. “And who might that be?”

  “Niklas.”

  True.

  “Ah, Niklas. He came with Iris and didn’t want to leave her, is that right?”

  “Yes,” Milla said. Also true.

  “Come inside.” The midwife stepped back and to one side, inviting.

  Milla’s snakes hissed softly, so softly. A warning that only Milla could hear. “I . . . I shouldn’t. I need to get to Niklas. Before . . . before it’s too late.”

  The midwife’s eyebrows shot up again. “Oh my. That sounds serious. Well. All the more reason to come inside.” She smiled again, closed-lipped now but not unkindly. Milla tried to remember Iris’s warnings. Iris was terrified of this woman, and Milla knew there were good reasons for that. And yet Milla felt herself drawn to the midwife. Admiring her, even. She seemed like the kind of woman Milla might want to grow into being—so sure, so certain. She didn’t seem like a woman who ever tried to puzzle out what would please someone else. She simply knew what was right. And not the way Gitta knew the right way to serve Jakob’s dinner or to feed the chickens. Milla sensed a deeper sort of knowing in this woman, and underneath that, something else. A lack of concern. Of trepidation. There was only solidity where Milla so often trembled and shook. This was not a woman who said sorry. Or felt regret. What must that be like, Milla wondered.

  As the distance closed between her and the midwife’s door, Milla looked down at her feet and wondered at the strangeness of knowing that she shouldn’t be doing this—even feeling that she didn’t want to do this—while her feet continued to carry her forward. Soon she would be in the midwife’s cottage and the door would close behind her. She felt like the stupid girl in a story that Iris might have told her.

  Still Milla’s feet carried her forward. As she moved past the midwife and stepped inside the cottage, the warmth of the woman’s hearth met Milla’s face and perspiration chilled her temples. The chill traveled to her snakes and down her spine. Then the midwife closed the door and Milla saw that she wasn’t alone.

  There was a girl in a chair by the fireplace. She seemed to be hugging herself so closely that her hands disappeared behind her, which Milla thought odd. Then Milla saw that the sleeves of the girl’s dress were twice again as long as they should be and had been used to bind her arms to her torso. The girl’s hair was parted down the middle and pulled smoothly behind her. It shone blackly as if wet. Milla couldn’t tell how old she was. She seemed tiny, the shelf of her collar bones forming a straight line that was visible through the drab gray wool of her strange dress. Her eyes were a deep brown. She looked at Milla and blinked once, twice. She pressed her lips together, just enough that Milla could detect the effort. Milla recognized that expression. It was the same one Gitta turned to Milla every day. Fear of what might happen, combined with willing oneself to remain silent. The girl looked past Milla to the midwife.

  “Milla, this is Asta.”

  So the midwife knew Milla’s name. But of course she did. Milla had said her brother was Niklas. Which meant that the midwife also knew the demon was her aunt.

  “Hello, Asta,” Milla said. The girl said nothing in response, though she looked at Milla again and blinked. Once. Twice. Milla looked at Asta a beat longer, a question in her own eyes. Still the girl said nothing.

  Milla looked around the room. It was about the size of her mother and father’s cottage. It had all the same features. A kitchen, a table and chairs. But it all felt too close. And there was no scent�
��not of apples or bread or stewed meat. Panic tightened her belly and Milla wanted to shove past the midwife and run. “And your name?” Milla said to the midwife.

  The midwife raised one dark eyebrow. “Ragna.”

  “Thank you for inviting me in, but I can’t stay,” Milla said. “I need to take a message to my brother. To tell him that our mother is ill.”

  “Is she dying?” Ragna said.

  Milla felt herself pale. It would be a terrible thing to say her mother was dying, like bringing a curse down upon her. But Milla reasoned that the midwife wouldn’t let her see Niklas if the news weren’t very bad. The contents of Milla’s stomach rose up, stinging the back of her throat. She swallowed. “Yes.”

  “There’s nothing to be done then,” Ragna said. “You’ll only upset him if you tell him. He’ll want to see her and even if I allowed it, which I won’t, by the time he got home she’d be dead. No. You may stay here the night, but you go back home first thing tomorrow. And I hope your mother is still alive when you get there. It was foolish of her to send you here. I’m surprised Gitta would do that.” Ragna’s voice was drained of emotion. Unyielding. Challenging.

  Where Milla had felt only panic a moment before, anger bloomed. She felt the quick flicks of her snakes’ tongues against her scalp. Ragna was so sure she knew what was right and that Milla would do as she was told. And if Milla didn’t . . . then? Milla looked at Asta, so quiet and so still on the outside. Yet Milla saw how her stillness cost her. The restrained terror in her eyes.

  “Sit,” Ragna said. “Are you hungry?”

  “Not a bit,” Milla said.

  “Well, sit anyway.”

  “It will be dark soon. I should go,” Milla said.

  “You’ll stay here,” Ragna said. “I told you.”

  Milla’s anger unfurled some more. It didn’t make her stupid, though; it made her sharp. “Why doesn’t Asta speak? And why is she bound like that? Is she ill? Is she your daughter?”

  Milla could see that her last question caused a flicker of unease to pass across Ragna’s face. “She’s my daughter, in a way. All the girls are my daughters.”

  “She’s from The Place?”

  “I’m helping her,” Ragna said. “The girls say bad things sometimes. Cruel things. Asta says especially bad things. She upset her mother and father very much when they visited her yesterday. So we’re having a talk. And when she’s ready to be a good girl I’ll take her back.”

  “Back home?”

  Ragna’s eyebrows formed two soft crescents over her eyes, rough imitations of kindness. “Oh, aren’t you a sweet child. I know it’s hard to understand. But these girls are stricken. Cursed by the demon. They can never go home. The best I can do for them is to keep them safe and calm.” She smiled. “See how safe and calm Asta is. She’s feeling better already.”

  Asta blinked. Once. Twice.

  Milla imagined Iris in that chair, and she thought she might be sick.

  Ragna crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head. “You look like her, Milla. Has anyone ever told you that?”

  “I don’t look like anyone in my family,” Milla said. Her snakes coiled tighter around her head and she felt an ache in the bones of her face, tears about to form and spill.

  “So much like her,” Ragna said. “Hulda was never pretty like Gitta. There was always something strange about her. And then we found out why. It’s a miracle you haven’t been taken. Isn’t it?”

  Ragna’s eyes were on Milla, enjoying her agony. Milla couldn’t bear to look back at Ragna, so instead she looked at Asta. And that was how she saw the silent word that formed on Asta’s lips. Go.

  By the time Ragna had finished feasting on Milla’s pain and had turned her attention back to Asta, the girl’s expression had once again stilled to barely controlled terror.

  A thought entered Milla’s head then. It was her own but also not. The secret to lying well is to give them what they want. Lying to Ragna, Milla realized, was no different from lying to Niklas, or to her mother or father. What Ragna wanted was sweetness and obedience to her wishes. So Milla would give that to her. Or at least the appearance of it. Milla allowed her bottom lip to tremble, but ever so slightly, as if she were trying not to. “I’ve made a terrible mistake,” she said. “You’re right. Mamma was foolish to send me here, but she loves Niklas so. I should go home to her. If I leave now I can stay the night with Tomas and Hanna and I’ll be that much closer to home in the morning. Maybe they’ll even lend me a horse so I can get home faster. Would that be all right? I feel that I’m intruding here . . . while you’re so busy helping Asta.” Milla made her eyes as round and innocent as a hare’s.

  She thrilled a bit. It was a very different thing to lie simply to please someone than to do what she was doing now—to lie to get something she wanted. Or it felt different, anyway. This felt like a game that she could win.

  Ragna looked at Milla as if measuring her, and Milla tensed inside while exerting every bit of will she possessed in order to relax herself to soft compliance on the outside.

  “Stay to the road and walk straight back,” Ragna said. “It will be dark in a few hours and these woods are thick. You’ll be lost before you’ve taken a step.”

  “Oh, I would never step into the woods,” Milla said. “Mamma and Pappa wouldn’t allow it. And anyway, I’d be frightened.” Milla moved toward the door, not too fast, she told herself.

  “As you should be,” Ragna said. “Fear will keep you safe.”

  Milla reached to open the door while smiling at Ragna in a way that was at once sad and grateful and apologetic. “Thank you, Ragna.” Once the door was open, Milla turned back to look at Asta. “Good-bye, Asta.” She wanted to say to Asta, I won’t forget you. She wanted to rush past Ragna and pick up that slight, frightened girl and save her. But in that moment Milla had no idea how she would keep herself safe, much less Asta. And Ragna loomed over Milla, strength of purpose and conviction rising off her like a threat—a reminder of the fate that would await Milla if she didn’t do as she was told. Milla made her smile a lie but kept her eyes honest for Asta. Then she blinked at Asta once. Twice. Asta did the same.

  Milla didn’t breathe while her legs took her back to the road and pointed her toward town. She didn’t breathe while Ragna followed her out to the road and stared after her. Milla’s snakes stayed close to her scalp as if they, too, could feel Ragna’s eyes. Milla took in her first breath only once she’d passed Ragna’s barn. She kept walking without looking back until her snakes began to move in her hair and she felt them peek out and lick the air. Only then did Milla look behind her to see that Ragna had disappeared.

  14

  THE WOODS WERE SHOWING THE first signs of infestation when Milla left the road. It was revolting to pick her way through the caterpillars and webbed leaves. She’d traveled well past Ragna’s cottage before doubling back again. She was certain Ragna hadn’t followed her, so the trick now was to conceal herself should Ragna be keeping watch on the road. Milla wasn’t afraid of the woods. She never had been and she wasn’t now. She felt certain that no matter how thick the forest, she’d find her way straight. Her greater fear was that Ragna might take it upon herself to go to The Place tonight—and that she’d be waiting for Milla when she got there. But Milla had to hope she wouldn’t be, not with Asta there to look after. Milla shuddered to think of what that might mean. Maybe, somehow, she and Iris—and Niklas, too, if Milla could convince him—could save that poor girl. But first, Iris. Iris was the one she’d made a promise to.

  As the woods grew healthier and thicker and wetter, the air was sweeter to breathe but the traveling was harder. So as not to find herself moving farther and farther from the road, she clambered over rocks and branches rather than around them. When she drifted left, her snakes rose up and leaned her right, closer to the road.

  A breeze rustled through the leaves, sending a chill through her dress. Then the rustling became whispering.

  Let me out.
r />   I’m so cold.

  Let me out.

  Iris. Wasn’t it? But not only Iris. Not one girl. Many girls. And women. All whispering together.

  Let me out.

  Milla turned abruptly right, heading for the road. She had to be well past the midwife’s cottage by now. And those voices told her she was close.

  The woods were so thick that darkness seemed already to have fallen, but as she drew closer to the road and the trees thinned, Milla saw that the sun hadn’t yet dipped below the horizon. When she emerged from the woods, the whispering grew louder, as if showing her the way. Her snakes were on high alert, tasting the air over her head. She felt their excitement and her pace quickened. The road made a soft turn and she reached a wide meadow, blue-green in the twilight and dotted with yellow flowers. It might have been beautiful.

  The Place rose up in front of her, a curved wall of stone so covered with moss that it looked like a flat, green hill.

  The whispering that had sounded pleading before had become howls. The wind carried them to Milla’s ears in screeches and shrieks.

  LET ME OUT.

  Milla’s snakes retracted into her hair and she felt them tremble. Her bravery dissolved. The Place was so big, and she felt so small and alone. The only thought that calmed her terror was that Niklas was within those walls. He would help her, she told herself. He must. Maybe she could even tell Niklas what was happening to her, make him understand that though Iris had changed—and though Milla was changing, too—that they were still themselves. If she could get him to believe that, then he would have to help her free Iris. He would know that Iris didn’t belong there. And then they could all leave here and find someplace where the curse couldn’t reach them.