The Cold Is in Her Bones

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  Once that fall, Milla visited the near village with Otto and Liss. She hadn’t wanted to. Katrin was being kind in encouraging her to go, thinking she might enjoy the distraction, but Milla would have preferred to be left alone. That was when she felt most comfortable, most herself—when there was no one around to please. With Katrin and Otto she felt the need to be sweet and grateful—and in truth she was grateful—but the effort involved in showing it all the time made her feel trapped. Milla thought of all those people in the village—so many people to try to be well-behaved for—and sweat dampened her hairline. She felt cramped and breathless.

  This village hugged the road, same as the other village had, but the people were more curious than suspicious. And the market was full of ripe, healthy apples and unblemished potatoes and fat livestock. There was a din of haggling and sociable chatter and shrieks of children chasing each other among the stalls. Otto bought her and Liss sweet buns studded with raisins.

  Milla was only half in her body all that day. She felt the curious eyes on her, the strange girl whom Otto and Katrin had found in their barn. She’d taken care with her appearance, wearing an old dress of Katrin’s made of moss-green wool. She combed her hair. She no longer worried that her snakes might show themselves; they knew better. But still she felt like an oddity. All around her there were people, their mouths perpetually wagging with words. Milla couldn’t imagine having that much to say to anyone anymore. The only people she’d ever been able to talk to that way—never running out of things to say—were Niklas and Iris. And just the thought of how much she missed them turned the doughy bread in her mouth to sand.

  Liss chatted and pointed and laughed, filling the too-wide space between her and Milla. Milla had a feeling that Liss did this on purpose, that she knew how Milla struggled with words. Beneath Liss’s easy smiles, there was a bright intelligence—the snap that Milla had sensed in her that first morning in the barn. Milla wondered if she’d buzzed the same way when she was that age. She remembered how easily stories had come to her as a child, but it was as if her desire to make words had died at The Place. Now she just wanted to be quiet. Still, despite herself, Milla felt herself warming more to Liss every day. She told herself not to get too attached, not to let her guard down. She imagined what Liss’s face would look like if she ever saw Milla’s snakes. Best not to get too close, Milla told herself. Not even to Liss. Especially not. If Liss ever looked at her the way Gitta had, Milla didn’t think she could bear it.

  Then there was Katrin. Milla sensed Katrin’s desire to be motherly with her, and it was a struggle for her to be kind in the face of it. Why must a mother’s love come with so many rules? Katrin was warmer and easier with Milla than Gitta had ever been, but still Milla felt the judgment in her eyes. The gentle nudge toward the wash basin. The reminders that she probably meant to be subtle, but weren’t subtle at all. And always the observations about Milla’s appearance. Katrin seemed to think it a nice thing to tell Milla that she would look pretty with her hair braided. But what Milla heard was that Katrin didn’t approve of Milla’s hair the way it was. Too wild, too unkempt. Once Katrin had offered to show Milla how to braid her hair around her head the way Katrin wore hers. When Katrin lifted her hand as if to touch a lock of Milla’s hair, Milla flinched away from her. Katrin’s face showed hurt and surprise.

  “I’m sorry,” Milla said. That old, familiar word. She was using it again, so often. “I’m just tender-headed. I wouldn’t even let my grandmother touch my hair.” Then Milla smiled in a way that she hoped said, let’s forget all about this. Katrin smiled back in a way that said, you’re a strange girl and I certainly won’t try to touch your hair again.

  The air had smelled like snow all day, and the clouds were so low and heavy that they seemed to settle on the treetops. Just before supper, the first snowflakes fell. By supper’s end, the world outside the cottage was frosted white.

  Once dishes were cleared and washed, Milla and Katrin worked on a pile of mending, while Otto rubbed grease into his boots. Liss rolled a wooden ball across the floor to Kai, who was supposed to roll the ball back to her. Instead of rolling it, though, he cackled louder each time and carried the ball back to Liss, dropping it at her feet. Then he waddled away from her as fast as he could.

  Liss put her hands on her hips. “Kai, that’s not the way you play the game.”

  “Apparently it’s the way Kai plays the game,” Otto said, and winked at Liss.

  Liss walked over to Kai and picked him up like a sack. “All right, you. Time for a story.” She sat at her mother’s feet with Kai in her lap.

  Katrin set down her mending and ran her fingers through Liss’s springy curls. “Such beautiful hair you have, Liss.” She lifted up a curl and wrapped it around her finger.

  “She’s getting to be as lovely as her Mamma,” Otto said.

  Milla kept her hands moving—needle through fabric, needle through fabric—and her eyes on her work.

  “Once there was a little snake,” Liss said. She tickled Kai.

  “Ssssssss. Sssss. Sssssss,” Kai said.

  “And that little snake thought himself very smart and very beautiful. And also very big. He went around quite puffed up, as a matter of fact. He slithered by an anthill and said, you’re all so very little. I could eat every single one of you with just a lick of my tongue. And the ants all said, oh please, don’t eat us. We’re too small to be much of a meal. A big snake like you wants something big to fill his belly. And the snake agreed that the ants weren’t at all a worthy dinner for him, so he moved on. Then he saw a ladybug, and as he passed her, he swished her with his tail. The ladybug called after him, saying, well that wasn’t very nice. The snake looked back at her and said, you shouldn’t say such things to me because I could eat you. I’m a very big snake. And she said, oh, you wouldn’t want to eat me. I taste very bad. And the snake thought he’d heard that about ladybugs, so once again he moved on. He passed all kinds of creatures after that. Flitting moths, busy grasshoppers, fierce dragonflies. And to every single one he bragged about how big he was and how he could make a quick meal of them. And every single one talked him out of it, flattering the snake that they were much too unimportant and not tasty enough for such a pretty, smart, big snake as he. And the snake agreed with every one of them. By the end of the day, the snake was feeling so pretty and so smart and so big, that he slithered right up to a . . .” Liss stopped her story and tickled Kai. “What do you think he slithered up to, Kai? Do you remember?”

  “Goose! Goose! Goose!” Kai clapped his hands.

  “That’s right! The snake slithered right up to a goose, and he very proudly said, you look like a plump, tasty meal for a snake as big as me! Well, that goose was so amused by this that she laughed and laughed. And the snake was quite offended at first, but something about the way that goose laughed and stomped her quite large goose feet, made the snake think that perhaps he wasn’t quite as big as he thought he was. So the snake said to the goose, yes, ha ha ha, that is very funny. And you are a very big, very handsome goose, and I think I’ll be going. Well, the goose looked at him with two black, beady goose eyes and said, oh no, I don’t think so, little snake. I think I shall be making a meal of you. Well, now our smart little snake needed to be a fast little snake, and he slithered right between the goose’s legs and down a tiny little hole that only a very tiny little snake could fit into. And when our snake was safe down that hole, he heard the goose above him go snap snap snap with her beak.” And here Liss stopped to snap at Kai with her thumbs and index fingers like little jaws. Kai squirmed and giggled. “And our smart little snake thought that really, after all, it was a very fine thing to be quite tiny.”

  Otto and Katrin clapped. “Liss, you tell a very good story,” Otto said.

  “Silly snake,” Katrin said. “I’m glad he learned his lesson. Best not try to be something you’re not.”

  Milla resisted the temptation to reach into her hair, to remind herself of what she was. Instead, she k
ept her eyes on her sewing. Needle through fabric. Needle through fabric.

  That night, when Milla and Liss climbed into their beds, Milla thought of Iris and her stories. “That was a good story,” Milla said.

  “Kai likes it. Mamma and Pappa, too. My favorite is one about two children, a brother and a sister, who get lost in the woods. But Mamma doesn’t like that one.”

  “Oh? What happens to them?”

  The room was dark, but Milla could hear Liss turn on her side. “They meet a witch. But they don’t know she’s a witch. And she offers them wishes.”

  “Wishes never go well, do they?”

  Liss laughed. “No.”

  “So what happens to these poor doomed children?”

  “The witch eats them, of course.”

  “Of course,” Milla said. “They must have broken the rules. That always happens with wishes.”

  “Not in my story,” Liss said.

  “No?”

  “No. In my story, they get eaten because they follow the rules.”

  “That’s a twist,” Milla said.

  “All those stories about doing what witches tell you are silly. Why would you do what a witch tells you?”

  “Hm,” Milla said.

  Silence fell between them, and Milla knew Liss’s night noises well enough now to recognize the moment she’d drifted off.

  It was only at such times that Milla’s snakes emerged from her mass of hair and rested their heads on her shoulders. She looked forward to these moments. She closed her eyes and stroked their cool, smooth skin and thought, I wish I knew your names. It didn’t occur to her to name them herself. She felt certain they had names already.

  Then she heard two soft, smooth, distinct voices in her head. And two distinct words to go with those voices. The first voice said, Sverd. The second voice said, Selv.

  Milla lifted her hands so they hovered just above each snake. “Sverd?” The green snake over her left ear raised its head and tasted her hand. She stroked him and said, “Well, hello.”

  Then she said, “Selv?” The red snake over her right ear did the same. Milla smiled—genuinely, widely. It is right to know their names, she thought. Only a stranger is nameless.

  24

  AT FIRST IT WAS PLEASANT to be cocooned in that warm place. For much of the winter, Milla spent the few daylight hours sitting in one of the cottage windows, looking out at drift upon drift of snow. There were days when the sky was so blue and the sun on the snow so bright that it hurt to look at it. But mostly the sky was a pale gray, and snow became more snow, became even more snow. Only the sharp, dark spikes of the evergreens broke the sea of whiteness.

  Then the cocoon grew too tight, and Milla felt suffocated. She envied Otto strapping on snowshoes and venturing into the woods to lay his rabbit traps. He’d come back with his beard frosted with ice, his cheeks bitten red, and Milla could smell the forest on him as he blew into the door. She was so desperate for air, for rough bark, for the sky over her head, that she asked him if she could go with him to check the traps. Katrin laughed at this. “Oh, Milla,” she said. “You don’t want to do that. You’ll freeze to death.” Milla nearly said that she’d take her chances, but she stopped the words before they could spill out. She sensed it would mark her as even stranger in Katrin’s eyes. Then once again she grew resentful of the effort not to appear odd.

  Finally, when even Liss grew blank and prickly and tired of telling the same stories, the snow turned to mud. Rivers of mud. Which meant oceans of laundry, but Milla never thought she’d be so happy to be scrubbing until her hands bled. Soon, she thought. Soon she could walk in the woods. She felt the need for it in her bones. In her snakes’ bones.

  Once the first wildflowers poked through the last of the melt, Milla had begun to notice a change in Katrin. She seemed heavier, slower. Tired all the time. Then Milla noticed how Katrin filled out her dress, and the round of her belly under her apron, and she knew: Katrin was expecting another baby. Milla said nothing, knowing this was news that you waited to be told.

  One morning as Milla and Katrin were cleaning up from breakfast and Liss played with Kai, Katrin sat down in a chair at the kitchen table and said, “Milla, I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired.”

  Sunshine poured through the windows and the trees were budding. The air was fresh and just barely cool. It wasn’t a day to be tired. Katrin was pale with exhaustion, and Milla nearly touched her arm, but didn’t. “Why don’t you nap?” Milla said.

  “No, no,” Katrin said. “It’s time to knead the bread for dinner. And you must tend to the goats while I do that. And the chickens. There’s too much to do.” Katrin rested her forehead in her hand for just a moment. “There’s always too much to do.”

  “Liss and I can do it all. Not as well as you, but it will get done. You rest.”

  Katrin nodded and pushed herself up to standing. “You’re a good girl, Milla. Thank you.”

  Milla scattered a handful of flour on the table, and fetched the bowl of risen dough. She plopped the dough onto the floured wood, and just as she was about to begin kneading, she saw that the surface of the risen dough was alive with weevils, spread out over and through it like seeds. She opened Katrin’s crock of flour. It was crawling with tiny, pale brown worms.

  Milla told herself that these things happened. Weevils got into flour. It was nothing more than that.

  “Liss,” Milla said. “Why don’t you take Kai outside? He’ll like picking some flowers for your mamma. I’ll find you when I’ve finished here.”

  “I can help you,” Liss said.

  Milla covered the dough with her hands, wishing away it and the dread that was growing in her belly. “No. Go out, Liss.” Her tone was sharper than she meant it to be, and Liss looked hurt.

  After Liss had dressed Kai in boots, she turned back to Milla at the door, and said, “You’ll come when you’ve finished?” Her face looked so hopeful and eager to be loved and attended to. Milla felt a mixture of tenderness and revulsion.

  Milla conjured a smile that she hoped carried an apology as well. “Yes, of course.”

  Liss smiled back, her face opening up like one of the crocuses dotting the meadow.

  Milla tossed out the infested dough and flour. She fetched another crock of flour and the sourdough starter. She ran her fingers carefully through the flour and saw nothing amiss. There, that was proof, wasn’t it? Weevils had gotten into one crock of flour. It was nothing more than that.

  She set to mixing more dough. She’d tell Katrin that the first batch hadn’t risen. Such things happened, and no sense worrying her. That was the right thing to do, Milla thought—for Katrin’s sake, because she was so tired. She practiced what she would say, the lie forming on her lips.

  Once Milla had set the dough to rise, she fed the chickens and milked the goats. She told herself to ignore the busy anthills in mounds around the paddock, the trails of ants that marched row upon row, single file into the barn. They’re just ants, Milla told herself. This is what ants do. They hadn’t been there yesterday because this was the first truly dry day.

  It was nothing more than that.

  She also ignored Sverd and Selv, who’d grown unusually restless. She tried not to notice their whispers in her ears. She told herself that it wasn’t they who whispered warnings to her. It was just the ghost of a memory of something terrible that had happened but was over now. In the past.

  It was nothing more than that.

  As the sun was nearing its peak, she remembered that one of Katrin’s hens had gone broody the day before. The hen had pecked Katrin’s hand when she’d tried to come close, so Milla knew to stay well away from her, but she wanted to look in the coop to see if the chicks had hatched. It would be a little surprise she could offer Liss, something to make her smile.

  Milla reached the yard to find the chickens in a frenzy of pecking. Milla swatted something black from her arm. Then from her other arm. Sverd and Selv hissed.

  Termites. They swarm
ed up from the ground, an oozing mass, thick and black like smoke. Milla swatted more from her skirt, kicked them from her boots. The chickens pecked and pecked at them. Then, as quickly as the termites had risen, they subsided again and the yard was back to normal, the chickens calm and incurious. Among them, Milla realized with a start, was Katrin’s brooding hen. The hen shouldn’t be in the yard with eggs still to hatch. Perhaps she’d given up on them. That would be a shame.

  But nothing more than that.

  Sverd and Selv hissed at her again, impatient.

  Milla walked toward the coop telling herself that she’d find a clutch of unhatched eggs.

  Instead, she found six eggs that had hatched, and six chicks lolling inside, all dead. Their pale yellow feathers crawled with ants; their eyes were gone, and in their place were more ants. Milla backed away, her hand to her mouth, willing herself not to scream.

  The curse had followed her. It was here.

  When she dropped her hand from her mouth, she sucked in her breath so hard the intake burned her lungs. The skin on her palms was a pale, shimmery, grassy green. Cool and scaled. She dropped her hands to her sides.

  Milla walked into the kitchen, her mind turning and turning but unable to settle on a thought or action.

  Katrin was placing a round of cheese and a plate of cold meat on the table. “There you are,” she said. “Where are Liss and Kai?”

  Milla tried to create order on her face, to arrange her mouth and eyes in a way that wasn’t horrifying to behold. Katrin had asked her a question, but the effort required for Milla to compose her face and string words together was too much. She opened her mouth and nothing came out.

  “Milla? Is something wrong?” Katrin’s eyebrows knit together. “Where are Liss and Kai?”