The Cold Is in Her Bones

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  Sverd and Selv hissed to her. Sleep.

  “How can I sleep?” Milla said. “I’m in a trap. With bones.”

  It’s the only thing to do, they hissed back at her.

  Milla gathered wet leaves together, cushioning a spot under her head. She lay down, looking up at the darkening trees. Sverd and Selv rested their heads on her shoulders, and she stroked them.

  There was a soft crackling of life and movement around her. Bats fluttered above, dipping into the pit and circling her head. She looked at them through the darkness with wide, curious eyes, and they looked back at her with their own. Her panic subsided, and she felt strangely at peace here with these crawling and flapping things. She would sleep tonight, she told herself, and tomorrow someone would come for her. And then she would get out of this pit and go find Niklas.

  Just as her lids grew heavy, Milla felt something shift beneath her—deep beneath her. Something dark and endless. Something that was waiting . . . waiting to be called. Milla hadn’t said her prayers in such a long time, but in the seconds before sleep the words came back to her.

  Lord, protect us from demons.

  Lord, protect us from demons.

  Lord, protect us from demons.

  29

  MILLA SENSED LIGHT THROUGH HER eyelids, and morning damp in her hair. She opened her eyes and looked up to see two faces staring down at her from opposite sides of the ditch. One was long and familiar: Fulla, the dear. If not for the other face that looked down at her, Milla might have smiled. But the other face—cackling and hideous—belonged to the humming witch.

  “That is one nasty curse you’ve got on you, girly.” The witch slapped a knee. “I haven’t seen a curse that nasty in . . . well, since the last time I cursed someone myself!” She slapped her knee again.

  Milla looked up at the old woman. She knew her first request should be that the witch throw her a rope, but she was more curious about something else. “How do you know I have a curse on me?”

  “I can see it,” she said.

  “Do you mean my snakes?” Milla said. “Anyone can see them.”

  “No, I don’t mean your snakes,” the witch said, rolling her eyes as if affronted. “I mean I can see your curse all around you. And the demon who did that? Well, there’s not much I’m afraid of, but she’s a doozy.”

  Milla sat up. “You know what demon did this?”

  “I’m a witch, girly.”

  “I need to find her. Can you help me?”

  The witch scratched her nose. There was a lot of nose to scratch. “I can. Are you sure you want me to? She’s not one you sit down and have a chat with. Not without coming away more cursed than you already are.”

  “It’s really not possible to be more cursed than I am,” Milla said.

  “You’re wrong there, girly,” the witch said. Then she walked away.

  Milla waited, staring at the wall of the pit and the beetles that scuttled in and out. Then, in front of her eyes dropped a thick rope.

  The witch’s name was Hel. She led Milla to her yard and offered her a stump to perch on, then handed her a cup of something hot. Milla looked at it suspiciously. Her snakes tasted the air over the cup. “Smell it, girly,” Hel said. “It’s tea.”

  Fulla had refused to step any closer to the witch’s cottage than the forest’s edge. She’d simply stopped in her tracks, immovable as a mountain. Her mouth full of leaves, the horse hadn’t look frightened, merely decided. Milla had patted her neck and said, “Smart, Fulla. Very smart.”

  Milla sniffed the cup. It seemed like tea. Smelled like tea. Still, she didn’t take a sip. She’d heard too many stories to sip the first cup of tea a witch had handed her. This witch seemed kind, though, if that was the right word for her. Strange, yes. But she didn’t look at Milla as if she were a monster, and for that Milla was grateful.

  Milla peered around the witch’s yard. The animal carcasses still hung there, flies feasting. The witch tracked the direction of Milla’s gaze. “My maggot farm,” she said. “There’s not a potion I know that isn’t made better by maggots.”

  Milla nodded as if this made perfect sense. The steam from the tea wafted up, warming her face. She was so tired and chilled from the night spent in the ditch. She took a tiny sip from the cup. It really was tea.

  Hel narrowed her eyes at Milla. “What do you know about demons?”

  “Nothing, really,” Milla said. “I only know that my aunt, Hulda, used one to curse me and my family and her whole village. And I’m trying to break the curse. My aunt says she can’t do it, that only the demon can do it.”

  “Hm,” Hel said. “I think your aunt is lying to you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I know her demon. She’s my demon as well.”

  “Does she have a name?”

  “She does,” Hel said. “She’s the oldest of the demons, the original. You don’t want to tangle with her, girly. Like I said, she’s a doozy. Always hungry. Never satisfied.”

  “But you tangled with her,” Milla said.

  Hel smiled, lips puckered over teeth that crossed over each other like fingers, and were so yellow they were brown. “Keep drinking your tea.”

  Milla looked down at her cup. What was that floating in it?

  Hel laughed and slapped her knee. “Taking tea from a witch, girly! Taking tea from a witch!” And she slapped and laughed until she coughed and spit into the dirt.

  What Hel spit up was black. It squirmed. Milla blinked her eyes at it and watched as the black mass crawled across the yard and into the grass. She felt the world shift just slightly around her. She wasn’t dizzy, or disoriented. But what she saw around her was different. Clearer. Colors were brighter and sounds were louder, and when she looked at Hel she saw something forming over the witch’s face, like a mask. Every one of Hel’s already exaggerated features became more so. Her nose was so long it curled under her chin. Her eyebrows weren’t just woolly like caterpillars, they were caterpillars. The largest wart on her nose puffed and curled mushroom-like, then began to vibrate. It burst open and out oozed a nestful of tiny gray spiders that spread across her face.

  “Do you see it yet?” Hel asked her.

  “What is happening to you?” Milla said.

  “Oh, it’s not what’s happening to me. It’s what’s happening to you. I gave you something to help you see. We don’t just cast our curses, girly. We become our curses.”

  “Who did you curse? And why?” Milla hoped that it was worth it, and that whoever was on the receiving end of something so ugly deserved it.

  “Years and years ago, I was pretty,” Hel said. “Would you believe that? I was a pretty farm wife with a husband and no children. And then one day my husband died. He left me with the farm, but no sons to protect me, and no daughters to take me in. But I didn’t think I needed sons or daughters, because I had a farm, and that was enough. I was wrong, though. Of course I was.” Hel laughed, but it didn’t sound like a laugh. It sounded like an axe striking wood. “My husband’s brother arrived on my doorstep and told me the farm was his. I could live there, but he’d run it. Well, I was always mouthy, and I wasn’t interested in having that man run my farm, so I went to the village elders to complain. My husband’s brother didn’t like that, and so he and his wife spread it around the village that I was a witch and that I’d poisoned my husband. The elders never liked me anyway, and they had no trouble believing I’d done such an evil thing. So they let my dead husband’s brother take my farm. And then I cursed all of them. I cursed their harvests and their children’s harvests and their children’s children’s harvests.”

  “And did it work?” Milla asked.

  Hel leaned forward and smiled, and a shiny green beetle raced across her front teeth. “They all starved.”

  Black smoke curled from Hel’s nostrils, so sharp and biting that it caused Milla’s own nose to curl and her eyes to sting. Then the smoke filled the air around Milla and the scent took on meaning, and Milla
felt that she knew the name of Hel’s demon, and of Hulda’s. The smoke had told her the name. “Vengeance,” Milla said. “Your demon is Vengeance.”

  Hel laughed, and her face reconfigured itself into something a shade less hideous than it had been. “And a fine demon she is. She’s done right by me all these years.”

  “You don’t . . . you don’t feel . . . sorry . . . for all those people who starved?”

  “Did they feel sorry for calling me a witch and taking what was mine? They got what they deserved. They wanted a witch, and I gave them one.”

  Milla wanted to believe that Hel was weakened by her curse. But she didn’t seem weak. Twisted, yes. But not weak. Milla wondered if the strength Hulda drew from Vengeance was as unbending as Hel’s, then why would she ever let it go? “You said you saw my curse on me. Can you show me?”

  “You’ve drunk the tea. You only need look at your reflection.” Hel went to the well and drew a bucketful of water, then placed it in Milla’s lap. “Look. You’ll see.”

  Milla stared into the water and saw only her own unkempt hair and serious face staring back at her. Sverd and Selv rested their pretty green and red heads on her shoulders. Then something formed around Milla. A cloud. A dark cloud, shot with flashes of yellow. No, not a cloud at all. A swarm.

  A swarm of wasps. Thick and hungry. Tireless. Buzzing. And they were all over Milla. In her hair, her eyes, her mouth. Laying their eggs in Sverd and Selv, their larvae growing plump and eating her snakes alive.

  Milla cried out, dropping the bucket to the ground, sloshing water over her boots.

  “That is Vengeance,” Hel said. “I told you not to tangle with her.”

  30

  “THERE MUST BE A SPELL for lifting curses,” Milla said. “You must know one?”

  “There isn’t,” Hel said. “Else it wouldn’t be a curse. Curses are powerful magic, and only the one who casts a curse can lift it.”

  Milla thought about the curse hanging over her like a swarm of wasps—the same curse that also hung over Iris and now Liss. Milla had made the mistake of thinking she could escape it, and instead she’d brought it to Katrin and Otto’s door.

  “Maybe Hulda doesn’t realize she can lift the curse,” Milla said.

  “Hm,” Hel said. “Doubtful. More likely she’s a liar.”

  Milla knew Hulda was a monster, and yet she struggled to believe she was a liar. She’d seen the torture Hulda inflicted on the girls and everyone who loved them. But the part of Milla that felt rejected and abandoned by Gitta was drawn to the part of Hulda that felt the same way. Milla remembered the anguish in Hulda’s voice when she said, Will an apology make me a girl again? Will it give me back my life? The demon Vengeance had kept Hulda alive but at the cost of almost everything else. At the cost of any impulse other than the desire to punish.

  Milla shook her head. “I don’t believe she’s lying. I think she’s in pain, and the pain is all she can think about or feel.” Milla thought for a moment. “Hel, I’m not the only one Hulda has cursed. She’s cursed many girls, including my friend. Hulda gets inside their heads. She makes them feel what she feels and do things they wouldn’t do ordinarily. She’s not inside my head, not yet. But I’m afraid she might do that to me.”

  “And you want to stop her from doing that? You want some sort of potion for that? Don’t think there is one.”

  “No. Not a potion for that. I wonder, is there some kind of spell that could put me inside Hulda’s head?”

  Hel crossed her arms over her chest and squinted at Milla. “You want to possess Hulda? You’d need your own demon for that.”

  “No. Not possess her. Just get inside her for a bit. Find out what she wants and if there might be a way to appease her. To end all this.”

  Hel scratched her chin thoughtfully. “Could be there’s something could get you in there. Could be. But I’m going to need more maggots. Lots more.”

  Milla’s stomach rolled and rose up to her mouth.

  Hel took the cup from Milla and hummed happily while she worked. Milla forced herself not to look, not wanting to know. She heard Hel mashing something in the cup. Her stomach lurched and cramped, readying itself to refuse.

  “Oh yes,” Hel said. “That’s nice. That’s very nice.” She brought the cup to Milla. Too late, Milla realized she should have held her nose. The steam that rose from the cup was as brilliant yellow as dandelions but the scent reminded her of dead mouse. The liquid itself was a sickly brown. And chunky. Milla thought she’d lose what was in her stomach before she even brought the cup to her lips.

  “Now you drink all of that down,” Hel said.

  Milla looked up, her eyes stinging, fat tears rolling down her face. “All of it? There’s so much.”

  “All of it. Hold the cup with two hands. You don’t want to drop it when . . . well. You might want to drop it, but don’t.”

  Milla pressed her lips to the cup and at first all she could think of was the unexpected thickness of Hel’s potion. Or not thickness, sliminess. It was like drinking a slug. She took one sip and recoiled, sticking her tongue out like Kai spitting oatmeal.

  “Drink it while it’s fresh! You’re wasting time, you silly girl.”

  “I’m not silly,” Milla said. “I’m disgusted.”

  “You’re not even a girl. You’re a baby. A silly baby who wants to boo hoo about how hard her life is so someone else will fix it.”

  Milla narrowed her eyes at Hel, then she put the cup to her mouth and drank down every slimy, chunky sip and morsel. When she’d drunk it all, she continued to look at Hel while she ran her finger around the inside of the cup and licked it.

  Hel laughed and slapped her knee. “That’s my girly. My little demon girly. Now close your eyes and think of Hulda, not a thing else. The potion can’t do all the work—you have to help it along.”

  Milla did as she was told, but other thoughts kept flooding in. Iris’s confusion. Niklas’s disappointment. Gitta’s revulsion. Milla’s own shame. The shame was dark and hard to see through and it made everything else ugly and untrustworthy. Milla’s shame made her angry. She felt it consuming her, like fire. And this was how she found her way back to Hulda. The anger was where they both lived. The anger had transformed Hulda into a monster and it was transforming Milla even now. The anger burned up the air between them. The space. Then there was no air or space between them; there was nothing between them at all, because they were one and the same. They were Hulda.

  Hulda remembered a time when she could be alone and not lonely. She remembered how she’d lay in the meadow, the grasses swaying and stroking her nose. She remembered having skin and hair and all the sensations of girlness. She remembered the salty taste of sweat that dotted her upper lip on a warm day. The delicious tickle of gooseflesh that bloomed in the night breeze. The vibration of her own laughter in her ears. She remembered all of this.

  And then she remembered how it was taken from her. How aloneness became loneliness. And how loneliness became pain and then pain became terror and then terror became hate.

  And hate became monstrosity.

  Hulda didn’t know why these memories were coming back to her now. Oh, but yes she did. She knew why. It was the girl’s fault. Milla. The girl she’d cursed to be like her. The girl who wanted to apologize to Hulda for things that weren’t her fault.

  She remembered the cold. So cold. She remembered the midwife burying her. She remembered the snow in her face. How it froze the blood in her veins. The breath in her chest.

  Hulda wrapped her snake arms around herself, listened to all the life that buzzed and crackled and squirmed in her tree. She was safe here. They couldn’t hurt her anymore. She could talk to her snakes. She could talk to her demon girls. They would never leave her.

  They couldn’t.

  Hulda writhed. They would leave her if they could. But they couldn’t. They couldn’t because she wouldn’t let them.

  So alone.

  But. But. But. Hulda gestured with her
snake hands, making her argument to the air around her. Their mothers and fathers didn’t love those girls. Not the way Hulda did. Their mothers and fathers didn’t deserve them. Hulda did, because Hulda understood them. And Hulda loved their ugliness. Their anger. These girls were lucky. Hulda had saved them. Now none of them would ever have to see the disappointment in a mother’s eyes. Or a sister’s.

  Hulda was the mother now, and the sister. She was the one they loved, and who loved them back. She would never betray them.

  Hulda remembered the mother, still. But those were sad memories. She remembered wanting something from her, something she could never have. It was like being hungry always. There was never enough for Hulda, because the sister got it all.

  The sister. Gitta.

  Why these memories now, Hulda asked herself. Told herself: You don’t need these memories. They only hurt you. Call to your demon girls. Make them come and tell you stories.

  But she didn’t want the demon girls. They only loved her because she forced them to. Hulda knew that. She was a monster; she wasn’t stupid.

  Hulda wanted the sister. It had always been the sister she wanted.

  Gitta.

  31

  MILLA DROPPED THE CUP. “SHE’S so . . . so lonely.” Milla shivered in her dress, though the day was warm.

  Hel rolled her eyes. “Boo hoo.”

  “Haven’t you any feeling at all? She’s sad. And I don’t think she has any idea how to lift the curse.”