“The meadow. Playing.”
Katrin cocked her head at Milla. “Would you go fetch them for dinner? It’s a cold meal today. There isn’t time for anything else. Take Fulla. She could use the exercise.”
“Of course,” Milla said. She heard how flat her words were. She willed herself to walk calmly to the door, to keep moving her feet, and perhaps soon thoughts would form out of the sick panic that was rising inside her.
25
MILLA RODE FULLA TOWARD THE meadow while words screamed in her head. Her panic had turned to anger, and that had turned to speech.
Why, she demanded to know. Why was it not enough that she’d been forced to leave her home, that she had these snakes growing from her head? That the girls had all been freed and the midwife was dead? Everyone who had betrayed Hulda had been forced to pay in some way. And their children—and their children’s children—they had paid as well.
Why was it not over?
Sverd and Selv whispered to her. You know why.
The delicate hope that Milla had just barely sustained since she arrived on the farm was now gone, choked and breathless. The curse had followed her, because the demon wasn’t finished with her yet. Milla had become a half-thing. Herself inside, and yet something else on the outside. Demon-like and yet not a demon. And everywhere she went, she would bring the curse with her, causing anyone she touched to suffer as well. She should have drowned herself in that spring. She remembered how Sverd had kept her from killing herself then. She’d thought of Sverd and Selv as her snakes. But maybe they were really Hulda’s. Maybe she should rip them from her head.
Sverd and Selv rose up from her head, whipped themselves downward, each staring into one of her eyes. We are not Hulda’s snakes, they hissed, we are yours.
She reached out to them, stroked their leafy-green and crimson heads, wanting to believe them, wanting their comfort. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Help me. I don’t know what to do.” She touched the palms of her hands, as scaled and beautiful as Sverd and Selv. And yet so wrong. She was fascinated by herself and disgusted at the same time. She wanted to look and also to look away.
Liss and Kai weren’t in the meadow. The sun was high overhead and though it was still early spring and Milla wore a winter wool dress, her riding trousers underneath, and a coat of Katrin’s, she could feel a hint of warmth on her shoulders. Maybe, she thought, they’d sought shade.
The orchard.
It was a voice in her head, and not her own. It was a voice so familiar and dear to her that despite everything that had happened, she was too grateful to be frightened. Milla looked around her, scanning the meadow and the forest beyond. She caught a flash of movement and color—the color of rust. The color of autumn leaves. The color of Iris’s hair.
The orchard, Milla.
Then the flash of color was gone, and the voice was, too, and Milla turned Fulla toward the orchard. She squeezed her legs tighter around Fulla’s belly. “Faster, Fulla. I know you’ll do just as you please, no matter what I do. So please go faster.”
She could hear the buzzing over her own heartbeat and breath and it grew louder and louder the closer she and Fulla came to the apple orchard. She saw the orchard ahead of her—neat rows of slim trees separated by lanes of green.
The apple trees should have been white with blossoms, but instead they were white with the webbing of moth nests. Where there should have been fresh, new petals there were chewing caterpillars. The buzzing was now loud in Milla’s ears, but there were no flies, and the deeper Milla walked into the orchard, the more intense the buzzing grew and yet there was no sign of where the buzzing came from. Then, amidst the slender tree trunks she saw a large, round mass of black and livid yellow, like a storm cloud that had settled to the ground.
In the center of that mass were Liss and Kai.
Milla slipped off Fulla and ran toward the black and yellow cloud, and the angry, eager buzzing was all she could hear. The cloud was made of wasps—so many wasps. It was as if every wasp that had funneled into Ragna’s cottage had come here, now, and all were circling their prey. Milla stood just outside the cloud—so close she could feel the air shift around their vibrating wings. The wasps ignored her, their focus trained on the children caught inside. Liss sat on the ground, Kai pulled into her lap. She wrapped her arms around her own head and his.
“Liss!” Milla screamed over the buzzing. Liss didn’t move.
Milla screamed again, a sound that started out as a word—why—and became a howl. She screamed at nothing, at everything. At Hulda. At Iris. Why. Why her? Why these children? Why must hurt breed more hurt, pain breed more pain? What sense did any of it make? She alternated between anger so bitter she could taste it in her mouth and despair so deep she wanted only to sink to the ground and sob. But she couldn’t, because those children were in that cloud of wasps, and it was her fault. And she would not let them suffer for what someone else had done.
Sverd and Selv rose from her head and hissed at the cloud, and Milla saw a parting open in front of her, big enough to put an arm through. “Again,” she said. “And louder.” Another hiss, and the opening grew larger, as big as a window.
“Liss!” Milla called to her.
Liss looked up. “Milla!” She started to stand, and Kai squirmed in her arms.
“Don’t move,” Milla said. “Keep holding Kai close to you.” Milla saw Liss take in Sverd and Selv, but she didn’t scream, only grew open-eyed with wonder.
Then Milla spread her arms wide as if they too were snakes, and from deep in her belly, a place where there was nothing but gut and anger, she hissed. She hissed her anger and her demand that those wasps disperse and leave those children. Her hiss was louder than the buzzing, it was louder than the wind. In response, the cloud widened and widened, and grew, and thinned, and Milla felt the wasps pass her, withdrawing and withdrawing.
Then they were gone. Liss remained crouched over Kai, their faces and eyes hidden, just as Milla had told her to do. Sverd and Selv tucked themselves away in Milla’s hair, and Milla went to Liss and touched her shoulder. She felt Liss’s trembling, and she said, “They’re gone, Liss.” She wanted to say you’re safe, but that would have been wrong. Because they weren’t.
Kai struggled out from beneath Liss, and Liss stood. Red-faced, his dark curls matted to his forehead, Kai looked at the air around them. “Fly! Fly?” Then he tugged on Liss’s hand. “Ssssss! Sssss! Fly!”
Milla said, “Wasps, Kai. Very mean wasps.”
Liss looked at Milla with round eyes. “You saved us. I knew you would.”
“How did you know I would save you, Liss?”
“She told me.”
Milla felt as if she’d pitched forward off an unexpected step. “She?”
Liss tapped her forehead. “The voice in my head.”
“What did the voice say to you, Liss?”
“It said, she’s here.” Then Liss smiled, her eyes alight.
26
MILLA'S EYES SEARCHED THE SPACES between the trees. The voice Liss heard in her head could have been Iris’s. But Milla feared it wasn’t. The blight, the cloud of wasps, the brightness in Liss’s eyes . . . there were too many signs that the she who was here—who was nudging her way into sweet Liss—was not Iris.
It was Hulda.
“Come, Kai.” Milla scooped him up and handed him to Liss. “Go straight home. Tell your mamma and pappa about the wasps, and the moth nests. Tell them I told you I’ve seen it before—that it’s what killed . . . my grandmother. Tell them I was afraid that I’d caused it, and so I needed to leave. Tell them all of that.”
Liss nodded. “I will, but I don’t want you to leave.” Liss’s bright eyes were wet and shiny.
“I have to, Liss.”
“What if they don’t believe me? What if they think it’s a story?”
“They won’t. You’re so smart and so strong. And your mamma and pappa love you.” Milla’s voice broke. “They’ll believe you.”
Kai struggled to get down. “Ssssss! Home!”
“All right, Kai, all right,” Liss said.
For the first time, Milla took it upon herself to embrace Liss. She held Liss close and kissed the top of her head, her curls tickling Milla’s nose. Then she released Liss and walked away from her fast, looking back just once and seeing that Liss was doing the same.
Fulla stood her ground stolidly. Imperturbably. Milla thought the mare would follow Liss and Kai back home. Fulla had become more dog than horse to the family. But she didn’t. She stood there staring at Milla, waiting. “Really, Fulla?” Milla said to her. “You know we’re not going back.” She reached for Fulla’s reins and tugged gently, expecting the horse to finally resist and turn around. But instead Fulla followed Milla out of the orchard and into the mossy evergreen forest. What she would do with Fulla, Milla had no idea. But the mare had a mind of her own, and whenever she wished to turn around and go back home again, she no doubt would.
Anyway, the mare calmed her. Sverd and Selv rose up and craned forward, as if they knew the way. As Milla had done before with dear old Fulla, she allowed her snakes to lead them, trusting that they could taste Iris in the air the way Fulla had tasted home.
The forest was so thick that the sky was just a sliver of blue above her head, and Milla felt a chill even under all her wool. Evening would fall soon, and she hoped Iris would show herself before then. The forest floor was soft with evergreen needles and Milla was tempted to curl up between two tree roots and rest her head.
Rustle. Flash.
Milla looked quickly to her right and there she was—Iris.
She wore a man’s shirt over pants that she’d rolled up over leather boots that looked at least a few sizes too large for her feet. Her eyes were syrupy amber, no brighter than they should be. She smiled at Milla. “I’m happy to see you,” Iris said.
Milla wanted to run to Iris, to embrace her, but this was the same girl who’d threatened to kill her, who’d hurt Niklas. Who’d hissed and writhed under a full moon, who’d held hands with the other demon girls, who’d tried to get Milla to join them. “You seem like yourself, Iris. But you seemed like yourself before. And you weren’t. Or you weren’t for long. I want to trust you, but how can I?”
“Because you love me. And I love you back.”
Milla sighed. She wished it were so simple. But everyone she loved most had hurt her. Or she had hurt them. She thought of the moral to the story Iris had told her in her cell at The Place. The people you love are dead and want to kill you.
But Iris wasn’t dead. Niklas wasn’t, either. And sweet Liss hadn’t ever hurt anyone. Liss deserved so much better than whatever fate Hulda had in store for her. “If you really do love me, will you take me to Hulda and help me end this?”
Iris led Milla and Fulla deeper into the woods. She dug into her trousers’ deep pockets and handed Milla an apple, and she ate one herself while Milla asked her question after question. They gave the cores to Fulla. Often they paused while Fulla stopped to chew on the leaves of low-hanging branches and shrubs.
“How do you live?”
“You’ll see,” Iris said.
“Where did you get those clothes?”
“Hanging on a line.” Iris smiled. “I’m awfully quiet when I want to be.”
“Do you see the other girls?”
Iris’s face closed and she seemed to recede. “Sometimes. They frighten me. Only the girls who hear Hulda’s voice are left. The ones who were never possessed in the first place have run off. I stay away as much as I can, but sometimes Hulda calls to me, and I have to go.”
“Why do you have to?” Milla struggled to understand, but she couldn’t. Why couldn’t Iris resist? Shut out that voice, and refuse to do what the demon said?
“Because she’s the mother. And when she’s in here”—Iris tapped her forehead—“I have no choice.”
“What does she want from you and the other girls?”
“She wants us to hate everyone. She wants to punish our families and the people who hurt her. But each time she curses another girl, it doesn’t ease her pain. It only stokes it. Makes it hotter. Nastier. So then she sent the insects after the village’s harvest. And then that wasn’t enough, either. When we all escaped from The Place, and she sent the wasps for Ragna, even that wasn’t enough.”
“What does she want from me?”
Iris looked at Milla with pity in her eyes, and Milla’s heart went cold. The chill seeped outward, wrapping tightly around her rib cage, squeezing the air from her lungs. She looked down at her hands, the scales pale green and spreading to her wrists. “I suppose I already know, don’t I? She’s turning me into a demon like her. But why?”
“She hates your mother and father most of all. She’s punishing them for what they did to her by turning you into a monster, too.”
“If only Hulda knew how little Mamma and Pappa care for me she wouldn’t have bothered. It’s Niklas they love.”
“Don’t tell Hulda that. You saw what she did to Ragna. You don’t want Niklas catching her attention. She’d kill him if she knew, and make Jakob and Gitta watch. That’s why I keep you and Niklas in a special place in my head. A place she can’t touch. She can fill the rest of my head with her pain, but not that place. That place is mine.”
“Why didn’t you come find me before now? I’ve missed you so. I’ve felt so lost.”
“I haven’t been right, Milla. I knew you were out there, and I wanted to find you. But I remember what I did to you at The Place. I remember my hand around your throat. I remember wanting to squeeze, and squeeze harder, and I didn’t know if it was all a trick or if I really would hurt you then. Or if I might hurt you if I saw you again.”
Milla reached out and held Iris’s hand. She tried to imagine the pain of a head so torn in two. She thought she could. A bit. Sverd licked her cheek. But no, her snakes weren’t like that. They didn’t make her do things. Or think things. “And now? Your head is more your own? And that’s why you came to find me?”
“No,” Iris said. “My head isn’t more my own. It’s mine right now. Right at this moment. But I never know when she’s going to take it.”
“Now that I’m with you, maybe we can keep her out of your head for good. Maybe we can find a way.”
Iris stopped walking and her face rippled, the outlines of not-Iris reforming the planes of her face. “No . . .” Iris said. “No . . . I . . . I don’t think so.” She shook her head, hard, as if she were trying to shake something out of it. Then she smacked the side of her head, harder still. “No. No. No.” Smack.
Milla let go of Fulla’s reins and took Iris’s hands firmly in her own. Iris struggled against her, but Milla wouldn’t let go. “Iris, no, please, dearest. You mustn’t hurt yourself. And you’re here now. With me. Yes?”
Iris nodded. Her muscles were hard under Milla’s hands, as if flexed with the effort to hold herself together. Slowly her face reassembled itself again, and she was wholly Iris.
Milla gathered Fulla’s reins and they continued walking, quiet for a time. Then Milla said, “Why do you suppose I can hear your voice in my head?”
“I don’t know,” Iris said.
“I think I do. I think it’s because I want to, so badly.”
“But I don’t want to hear Hulda’s voice in my head, and yet I do.”
“True,” Milla said. “But that’s different. You didn’t invite her. The moment I met you I found the person who’d never let me be lonely again. The person who really saw me, all my strange parts, and loved me all the same. I invited your voice into my head and you never left. And I never wanted you to leave.”
“That’s a nice story,” Iris said.
“Shall I tell you another?”
“Yes, please.”
“There was once a girl who loved to lie in the grass and let it tickle her skin. She liked the feel of dirt under her fingers. She didn’t like aprons or making dinner or washing dishes. She didn’t like being told to behav
e. She didn’t like feeling that no matter what she did her mother and father looked at her with disappointed eyes. She could never be pretty enough or sweet enough or pleasantly talkative enough. And she grew angrier and angrier and angrier that all anyone wanted her to be was an idea they held in their head that had nothing to do with her. And this anger became bitterness, and this bitterness turned her into a monster. And the monster that she became wanted to hurt everyone that had hurt her. So she did. She punished everyone until there was no one left to punish. No one at all.”
“That’s a sad story,” Iris said.
“It is.”
“It has a bad ending.”
“It does,” Milla said. “But I think maybe it hasn’t ended yet.”
Iris stopped walking and looked at Milla. “I’m afraid it will go on and on, Milla. The punishing. The anger. The sadness. I feel Hulda’s sadness inside me, her resentment. It’s growing stronger, and it’s making me weaker. What if I leave you again, and what if I never come back? What if I’m gone for good?”
Milla took Iris’s hand. “Iris, I promise you this. I will never abandon you. I don’t care what you say to me. What you do. What Hulda makes you say or do. You’re my sister as much as Niklas is my brother. My mother couldn’t be a sister to Hulda, but we are not them. We get to choose. And I choose never to leave you.” Milla’s voice was shaking now, tears rimming her eyes and spilling over. “And I will get Hulda’s voice out of your head. Because no matter how deep her pain, no matter what she’s suffered, she doesn’t get to take my sister from me.”
Iris threw her arms around Milla and Milla held on tight. Milla swore to herself: No demon above or below would ever separate them again.
PART FOUR
27
IRIS LED MILLA AND FULLA up the ledge of a low rock slope and into a cave. “This is where I come when I can shake Hulda’s voice from my head.”
There was a battered basket of clothing. Another of apples, and yet another of potatoes and onions. Everything stolen. Iris gave Fulla an apple and then knelt in front of a circle of stones where she built a fire. The ceiling of the cave was black with soot. Milla looked around, imagining how many long nights Iris had spent here, alone and dreading when Hulda’s voice would return.
The Cold Is in Her Bones Page 17
