To their left, most of the girls and women were gathered, hissing and laughing and undulating like one creature with many heads—Iris’s coiling, rust-red hair a bright spot among them. After traveling all this way to save Iris, Milla felt sick with defeat and self-disgust. Was she really going to leave here without Iris? Milla’s eyes lingered on Iris, willing her to look back, to show her the eyes of a friend and not a demon.
“Come, Milla,” Niklas said.
Milla looked back at him. “Iris,” she said.
“She’s a demon girl now,” he said.
Demon girl. Is that what the boys called them? Did that not make her still a girl? Or did the girl part of her no longer matter? Once again she looked at Iris, willing her friend to look back, to show Milla some part of herself that was still Iris. As if in response, Iris threw her arms up in the air and hissed. Then all the demon girls did the same, their arms rising up together, then weaving and interlacing.
Niklas grabbed Milla’s hand and pulled.
The arched passage to the outside of the fort was directly in front of Milla and Niklas, and they both looked at it, measuring the distance between them and it. She and Niklas began to walk toward it slowly, purposefully, silently agreeing that a frantic sprint would only draw the girls’ attention. Milla wanted to believe that the girls wouldn’t hurt her—that they sensed in her someone as afflicted as they were, someone who would never wish to hurt them. But then she thought of Iris’s hand tightening around her throat, of the blood darkening Niklas’s hair, and of the howling and the frenzy, and she knew she couldn’t be sure of what any of them might do. They weren’t girls with thought and reason of their own anymore; they were all Hulda. Single-minded and furious.
Milla and Niklas walked. Each step caused her heart to tighten painfully, anticipating the moment that the girls would turn on them.
The hissing was terrible, but it was a different kind of eerie when the hissing stopped. As one body, the girls fell silent and stared at Milla and Niklas as they walked past.
Halfway between the door to The Place and the arch in the outer wall, Niklas halted. Milla looked at him, confused. Was he faint? Was he unwell?
Niklas looked to his right, and in an instant Milla knew what he was looking at. The bell.
She shook her head, horrified that he’d even think of it. “No, Niklas.”
“Milla, I have to ring the bell. Then Ragna will know the girls are out. She’ll warn the village.”
“Warn them of what? Those girls won’t go back to the village. That’s the last place they’ll go. Those are the people who sent them here. Besides, the boys have all run off. Surely they’ll have warned Ragna.”
Niklas gave her a skeptical look. “Milla, they hate her.”
Milla was painfully aware of the stares of the girls, the passage of time, everything slipping away. She could feel them behind her, their interest ever more aroused. “Niklas. Please. Do not ring that bell.” She looked at the horses in the paddock. “When we ride by Ragna’s cottage we can warn her.” She would say anything to get Niklas out of there, to get out of there herself, and she reasoned that the girls would still have plenty of time to scatter. Ragna couldn’t go after all of them by herself, and by the time she’d gotten to the village, the girls would be safe somewhere else. Iris among them.
Niklas nodded and they walked to the horses. Then Milla saw them: five more girls, crouched on the far side of the paddock. Milla’s lungs tightened and she grabbed Niklas’s arm. The girls blinked at Milla. Once. Twice. Milla saw in their eyes and how they clung together that they were as frightened as she and Niklas were. Milla moved toward them, her hand cupped in front of her as if she were approaching a wary, possibly dangerous animal. “Come with us,” she said to them. “We’ll take you home. You’re safe.” Were they, though? How could she promise them that? They were so thin, like girls made of sticks. Like Asta, bound and mutely suffering in Ragna’s cottage. Milla wondered how these girls could have the strength to move, but when they saw that Milla and Niklas meant to help them leave, they scrambled to their feet. Milla and Niklas handed the girls the reins to three of the horses and together they led the horses through the outer arch of the fort, the demon girls behind them still silent and watching.
The moon washed the meadow in shades of blue and darker blue. The strongest of the girls mounted one of the horses; the other four mounted horses two by two, their burlap dresses hitched up around their legs showing their livid bruises and scraped knees. The girls were all knobs and angles, but they looked fiercer now, the night air expanding their lungs and ruffling the ends of their matted hair. Milla and Niklas each mounted the two remaining horses. They would go to Ragna’s, but not to warn her, as Niklas wished to do. Milla knew it was evil of her—and she could taste the nastiness of her loathing on her tongue—but she didn’t care whether Ragna survived this night. The girls could have the midwife and do what they wanted with her. There was only one reason to visit Ragna tonight, and that was to save Asta.
19
LIGHT FLICKERED IN THE WINDOWS of Ragna’s cottage, though Milla could tell by the angle of the moon that it was now well past midnight. Then the light shifted and Milla saw Ragna’s tall, strong outline.
Milla and Niklas dismounted, but the girls stayed on their horses. “Asta is in there,” Milla said to them. “Will you help us get her out?” She looked at the girls’ shadowed faces, at the way memories of this place passed across each one, the pain still fresh.
As the girls all dismounted, Niklas whispered to Milla, “They’re so small and worn out, Milla. I don’t think they’ll be much help.”
“We’re stronger than we look,” one of the girls said. Her voice came out hoarse, unused. She was Milla’s height but half her width. Still the girl shoved between Niklas and Milla, sending each of them stumbling to one side, and she slapped barefoot up to Ragna’s door. “Open up, you witch! And give us Asta!”
A girl’s voice called from inside the cottage. “Ellinor! Is that you?”
“It’s me, Asta!” Ellinor looked over her shoulder at Milla and Niklas. “I’m getting Asta out of there if I have to burn this cottage down, and Ragna with it.”
“There won’t be any need for that,” Milla said, walking toward the window where Ragna stood, staring back. “Will there, Ragna? Open up. We want Asta and then you can stay or leave as you please.”
Milla saw Ragna’s eyes widen, circled with white. Ragna retreated backward from the window, and then Milla saw why. Two of the girls were dragging something between them toward the window. An axe. Niklas started to run toward them, but Milla put herself in his way.
The girls lifted and swung, and Ragna’s front window shattered inward.
“Milla, this is wrong,” Niklas said.
“Ragna had her chance to open the door. They just want Asta. They won’t hurt her if they don’t have to.”
Niklas tried to move past Milla, but she put herself in his way again. While Ellinor and the other four girls cleared the window of glass and climbed into the cottage, Milla grabbed Niklas by the shoulders. “Go.”
“Home? Without you? No!”
“You don’t belong here, Niklas.” This hurt him. She could see it in his eyes.
“Milla! You don’t know what you’re saying.” It struck Milla how strange that phrase was, and how often she heard it, or some variation. You don’t know what you’re saying, Milla. You don’t know what you’re doing, Milla. You don’t know what you’re thinking, or feeling, or wanting, Milla. Anyway, when people said that to her they didn’t really mean that she didn’t know. Of course she knew. They meant she was wrong. But she wasn’t wrong.
Milla placed a hand on either side of her brother’s face, which was hopeful even in this moment, and so different from her own.
She felt full of knowing. The knowing rose to her throat; she tasted it in her mouth. It tasted of grass and dirt and the undersides of damp rocks. This knowing had been growing inside her ever since
her mother pinched the first snake from her head.
“Look at me, Niklas.” She took her hands from his face and ran them through her hair, encouraging her snakes up and up. “What do you think Mamma would say when she saw me? What do you think Pappa would do?”
Niklas’s open face collapsed. “No, Milla. No. Please. I can’t leave you. I won’t.”
She wrapped her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his chest, feeling his heartbeat in her ear. She listened for two beats, three. She memorized the sound. Then she looked up at him, and she had to blink to see him clearly. “If I can ever come home again, I will.”
Niklas’s face changed, and he wasn’t looking at her any longer, he was looking past her, over her. His mouth slid open.
Then she heard it: the sound of breath forced between many sets of teeth. The demon girls.
She turned around and her own mouth gaped. The moon had set, and she felt the chill of predawn. But that wasn’t what raised the hair on Milla’s arms. The demon girls surged toward Ragna’s cottage—they flowed, they snaked. They were still minutes away and yet their hissing sizzled through the air like meat hitting a hot pan. “Iris is with them,” Milla said. “I can’t leave now. I have to try to talk to her one more time. But you must leave, Niklas. They’ll hurt you. They’re so angry. I can feel it in my bones like . . . like it’s a part of me, too.” And she did feel it in her bones. Like a hum. She looked up at Niklas again, took his shirt in her fists and shoved him backward toward the road. “Go.” Her snakes reared back and snapped, hissing in chorus.
Niklas looked at her—all of her, girl and snakes—and then behind her at the surging, roiling, hissing mass. “You’ll come home Milla. Someday. I know you will.”
She blinked at him. Once. Twice. I see you. See me.
Niklas mounted his horse and looked back at her. She held up a hand to match the one he held up. She hated herself for wanting to catch his hand in her own, for wanting to say, You’re right, Niklas, I don’t know what I’m saying. Tell me what to do, Niklas. Tell me this doesn’t have to be so hard, Niklas. Tell me how to go home. But she didn’t do that. Instead, she watched as he turned away from her and kicked his horse forward toward the village. Milla’s snakes wrapped their cool bodies around her neck, rested their heads on her shoulders, and hissed softly, reassuringly. She hated herself again for half hoping Niklas might still turn around. But he didn’t, and she told herself that she didn’t really want him to.
20
THE FRONT DOOR TO RAGNA’S cottage opened, and Ellinor emerged with her arm around Asta’s waist. The other girls trailed behind. Milla didn’t have to tell them the demon girls were coming. They all turned toward the sound of their hissing. “We have to leave. Now. Or they’ll make us stay with them,” Asta said.
Milla said, “Why?”
“Because the demon will tell them to,” Ellinor said. “It’s not their fault. They can’t help themselves.”
Asta’s legs wobbled under her, and Ellinor urged her forward toward the horse she’d ridden there. The girls all mounted their horses, two by two, but Milla hesitated, stood staring down the road. She could see Iris. She could call to her if she wanted. What if Milla could talk to Iris, she thought. What if there was still hope for her? For them? She remembered back when she’d first met Iris. Iris had said that the two of them could leave, could go . . . anywhere. Maybe she could get Iris to go somewhere, anywhere, with her now. Now that she was free.
“You go,” Milla said to them.
Ellinor’s eyebrows came together. “You think you’ll be able to talk to her. But you can’t. You’ll see. For a moment she’ll seem like your friend, but then the demon will snatch her back.”
“I have to try,” Milla said. Asta reached out, and Milla took her hand for just a moment, felt the bones under her skin, and the sinew holding them together. “Good-bye. I hope . . . I hope you find home again.”
Asta looked over Milla’s head and her face filled with loathing.
“There’s no home for them.” It was Ragna. She stood in her open doorway, her arms crossed over her chest.
“You’re not in our heads anymore,” Ellinor said. Then she smiled. “They’re coming, Ragna. They’re coming for you.”
The other girls laughed. Repeated what Ellinor had said in singsong voices. They’re cooooming for you, Ragna. Even after the girls were off, Milla heard their laughter carried back on the dawn breeze, chiming like bells.
Ragna took a step backward. Whatever certainty had remained in her after the girls shattered her window, it fell away from her now. Milla said to her, “You should have opened up when we asked. You still had time to get away. Now your only hope is that your shutters hold.”
Ragna slammed her door, and by the time she’d closed and locked the last shutter, Milla and her mare were surrounded on all sides by the demon girls. She remembered the first one she saw in The Place, and how she realized that the girl who stood in front of her was no child; she was a woman whose life had been taken from her. But since the girls had left The Place, even the oldest among them looked like a girl again. They might have lines on their faces, and even touches of silver in their hair, but their eyes were bright and they crackled with energy, like fires that had just caught, their flames licking high and thirsty.
Iris, though, was calm, as if something in her had been quenched. She stepped out of the mass of girls that circled Milla, and Milla could see in her eyes that the only light in there belonged to Iris. Her face was its familiar heart shape. “Iris?” Milla said to her, turning her friend’s name into a question.
Iris took her hand. “It’s me,” she said. “For now.”
Milla looked around her at the other girls, not hissing now, but staring and quiet, as if waiting for a signal—or an order. She kept her voice low. “Leave here with me,” she said. “We can climb on this horse and go.”
“Go where?” Iris said. “You with your snakes growing from your head, and me with the voice inside mine. Where would we go that people wouldn’t run us off or lock us up?”
“We don’t need people,” Milla said. “We can take care of ourselves.”
Iris cocked her head. “Chickens don’t grow on trees. And nothing grows on trees in the winter.”
“What else can we do?” Milla said.
“Come with us.” Iris squeezed her hand. “To the mother.”
Spark. There it was. The light that wasn’t Iris, and yet inside her. Getting brighter by the second.
“The mother? You mean your mother? My mother?”
“Not them,” Iris said, her lips thinning. “They don’t want us. They never did. No. Our mother,” Iris said. “The mother. We’re going to her. She loves us, and she’s going to take care of us. But first”—Iris looked over her shoulder at Ragna’s cottage—“the mother is going to take care of her.”
The anger that Milla had felt humming in her bones now vibrated so powerfully that her teeth chattered. It was all around her—under her as well. She felt it from her feet to the tips of her hair. A spot of heat bloomed in her belly so suddenly that Milla looked down, but there was nothing there, and the heat expanded through her torso like a live coal in a pot. Milla scanned the landscape around her to find a source of the humming, but there were only the demon girls, quiet, still, and waiting, and Ragna’s cottage, shut up tight, and the clear dawn sky, all pink except for a few soot-black clouds.
Something about those clouds held Milla’s attention. Her snakes stretched high, straining even higher, as if trying to get a closer look. The clouds were moving, spreading, changing shape faster than any clouds Milla had ever seen. It was as if the clouds were gathering together overhead—pulled to this spot from north, south, east, and west. Then it seemed to Milla that the humming was even louder and the quality of the sound was different, more jagged. It was no longer a humming; it was a buzzing.
Milla’s eyes widened and she sucked in air and she realized those were no clouds at all. They were swarms upon
swarms of wasps, pulling together, forming a funnel pointed directly at Ragna’s chimney.
The girls were no longer silent; they were giddy. They giggled and clapped. They danced. Milla thought she might be sick. She grabbed Iris by the wrist. “What’s happening?”
“It’s the mother,” she said. “She sent them to punish Ragna. Now she’ll never hurt us again.” Iris smiled.
The demon girls had lost interest in Milla, they were so overjoyed at the sight of the vicious cloud of wasps filling the air overhead, pouring now into Ragna’s chimney.
Milla heard screaming inside, and she clapped her hands over her ears. The girls circled the house as if about to sing and play a child’s game. They held hands and looked up expectantly. The sky was turning more golden than pink and the light shone down on their faces and Milla might almost have thought them beautiful if it weren’t for what she imagined was happening inside Ragna’s cottage—just the midwife and all those angry wasps.
Iris had left her side and joined the other girls, her joy as thorough as theirs. Milla put her hand on the mare that still stood patiently beside her. She didn’t paw or stomp the ground. Her ears were up and alert and she looked back at Milla. Milla’s father had trained her not to view animals as anything but what they were. Creatures to be worked, or eaten. Or worked and then eaten. They weren’t people. They didn’t have thoughts. But if Milla were looking for something or someone to tell her what to do, she saw it in her own mirror reflection in the mare’s wet eyes. Milla looked like a lonely, terrified child who didn’t belong here. She pulled herself into the saddle, and then she buried her head in her hands and wept. She didn’t belong here, but she had no idea where else to go.
The Cold Is in Her Bones Page 14
