The Cold Is in Her Bones

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  “Don’t be a weak boo hoo baby,” Hel said. Sverd and Selv hissed at her. She laughed.

  “How can I call up Vengeance?” Milla said.

  Hel cackled. “Calling her up is the easy part. But what are you thinking you’d say to her when you did? Girly, she’s not called Vengeance because she lifts curses. She punishes. That’s what she does. That’s why she’s a demon. I’m just an old witch, not even the meanest, and even I wouldn’t lift a curse. You hurt someone, they hurt you back. You hurt a witch you get hurt back worse. You go against a demon and you wish you were dead. That’s the way the world works and it makes good sense to me.”

  Milla looked at Hel, at the nightmarish mask her curse had made of her face. That was the price of so much hurt and hatred, and it did not make any sense at all to Milla. “You said it’s easy to find her. So tell me how.”

  “You know, girly, you should be more respectful. Don’t forget I’m a witch. You’ve got one curse on you already. You don’t want another.”

  Milla’s cheeks grew hot, half with anger and half with embarrassment. Half wanting to strike Hel, and half wanting to apologize for being rude.

  Hel drew her white eyebrows together and lowered them over her small black eyes. She pinched her lips together so tightly her mouth seemed to disappear, sucked into her face. Black smoke poured from her nostrils and the stench of Vengeance rose around her.

  Still, Milla refused to quake or step back. Instead she took a step forward, and Sverd and Selv rose up and hissed at Hel.

  Hel laughed. “Good, girly. Never be nice, that’s my advice to you. I spent years trying to be nice, though it wasn’t in my nature. Then my dead husband’s brother showed up on my doorstep and stole my farm. After that I didn’t wish I’d been better at being nice. I resented every bit of time I’d wasted trying to be nice at all. Girls who run from what frightens them don’t get what they want. Now let’s call us a demon. It’s a blood sacrifice we’ll be needing. Demons like blood sacrifices.”

  Milla felt needles of suspicion at the nape of her neck and Sverd and Selv wrapped themselves around her throat, hissing. “What kind of blood sacrifice?”

  “Something you can kill yourself. Maybe one of your pretty snakes?”

  Milla backed away from Hel, and the witch closed the distance.

  “I bet they’d make a powerful potion,” Hel said.

  Milla took another step backward.

  Hel stomped her foot. “Girly! You’re not going to find a demon by being a well-behaved child who runs away from scary things and hides behind your mother’s legs.”

  “I don’t do that,” Milla said, feeling spite rising inside her.

  Hel sighed. “I’ve lost patience.” She walked over to a placid chicken pecking at the maggots that fell to the ground beneath the reeking hides. She grasped it by the neck in one hand, and pulled a knife from the pocket of her trousers with the other. She raked the knife across the chicken’s neck, spraying blood across the earth between her and Milla.

  Black smoke curled and rose from the blood, grew thick and alive and fierce with intent.

  Hel smiled. “Girly, meet Vengeance.”

  Smoke poured into Milla’s mouth, her ears, her eyes—choking her, deafening her, blinding her. She fell to her knees, unable to breathe. Sverd and Selv trembled and vibrated and she cried out—she thought she could hear their cries, too. It felt as if they were being ripped from her head.

  Then it was over, and she could breathe, and she gasped and felt for her snakes. They moved against her hands and she was so grateful she thought she might cry.

  When she opened her eyes, her tears dried. Her mouth did, too. The hissed refrain of Hulda’s girls came back to her. Terror . . . terror . . . terror . . .

  Vengeance filled Hel’s yard. Black antennae branched from her head like horns, and what at first seemed like two black plate-sized eyes on either side of her head were made up of countless smaller eyes, all reflecting Milla back at herself. The demon’s flattened nose was bright yellow, and two jaggedly sharp black mandibles wrapped round her chin, resting under her wide, black, ridged mouth. Her broad upper body was shiny-black and armored, her waist slender and flexible, and her lower body was all stinger, black slashed with yellow. Two sets of translucent, finely veined wings stretched out on either side of her from her shoulders, and her arms and legs were bright yellow and viciously serrated.

  “Who calls me, and why?” Vengeance said.

  Milla didn’t know what she’d expected Vengeance’s voice to sound like, but it wasn’t this. Her voice was full, round, and motherly. If Milla had closed her eyes, she might have been deceived by it, but she kept her eyes open to remind herself what Vengeance was. A demon. The original demon.

  No fear, she thought to herself. Girls who run from what frightens them don’t get what they want.

  “I called you. I want you to lift a curse,” Milla said.

  Hel muttered under her breath, “Want, she says. Like she’s giving orders. Spoiled boo hoo baby.”

  “I see your curse,” Vengeance said, “and I’m admiring of it, but it’s not my curse.”

  “Hulda told me it was. That your words were in her mouth when she cursed all of us.”

  Vengeance hummed and Milla felt the vibration in her feet. “I am her demon. I cannot do what she doesn’t ask me to do. Her curse is her own.”

  “Is there a way . . . a way to make her lift the curse?” Milla said. “Could you do that?”

  “Nooooo,” Vengeance said. “But you could.”

  “How?”

  “You have three choices. The first is to ask for her forgiveness. And then she must grant it.”

  “I tried that. No. She’s too”—Milla hesitated for a moment, then said—“vengeful.”

  “Hmmm,” Vengeance hummed, shifting her wings. “Her demon suits her well.” Vengeance took two steps forward. Milla felt each of the demon’s eyes examining her. “That was a terrible thing her own family did to her. I remember how she cried out to me in the cold and dark because no one else would come to her. What kind of a mother and father would do that to a child?” The demon sawed the air with her mandibles, and Milla was all too aware of their sharpness and the wide mouth behind them. Then Vengeance grazed Milla’s cheeks with her antennae, holding her still, and Milla was no longer in Hel’s yard.

  Milla was buried in snow, bound and shivering. Snow filled her mouth, her nose, and when she tried to breathe she breathed in snow. The cold was in her heart and in her lungs. The cold was in her bones. She tried to cry out, but she couldn’t, so the scream was all in her own head and it wasn’t a scream for Niklas or Iris, it was a scream for vengeance. She was dying, she was alone, and her only wish was for something to take this hurt away.

  Milla cried out, and Vengeance released her.

  “Settle yourself, girly.” Hel patted Milla’s shoulder, and it was almost soothing. “Don’t be a boo hoo baby.” Almost.

  “What is my second choice?” Milla said.

  “Kill Hulda,” Vengeance said.

  “No,” Milla said. “Never.”

  “Hmmmm. I thought you might say that. Your third choice is the best, really. Simplest. Most . . . effective.”

  “What is it?” Milla said.

  “Ask me to be your demon and let me kill her.” Vengeance stood up on her serrated back legs and brought forward her long yellow and black abdomen. “Look at my children,” she said, exposing her belly lined with translucent eggs, each containing a quivering larva. “There are so many. Vengeance is endless. I go on and on, and you may use me, all of me. My strength is the only strength you will ever need.”

  Milla felt Vengeance’s strength and knew she was right. With Vengeance, she could destroy Hulda and save Niklas and Iris and Liss. With Vengeance she would never have to fear the revulsion she saw in Gitta’s eyes—or anyone else’s. She would never need to be pleasing again. She could live inside her anger and feast on it.

  Milla might have said yes
to that. But then she remembered lonely Hulda in her tree. That was where Vengeance would take her. And Milla wouldn’t go.

  “No,” she said. “You’re evil. And you’re no choice at all.”

  “Oh, girly,” Hel said. “You’ve done it now.”

  Vengeance spread and flapped her translucent wings and the wind that kicked up under them was furnace-hot. It knocked Milla back on her heels and singed her eyelashes. The air filled with buzzing, the sound familiar and horrible, the sound of swarming. The sky blackened as if the sun had gone out, a blanket thrown over them all, but the blanket was made of wasps. Milla thought she and Hel were surely dead, but the wasps closed around Vengeance, encircling her, lifting her from the ground and carrying her up and up.

  Milla and Hel stood openmouthed, watching her go.

  All was now silent in the surrounding forest. Not even a leaf shook. Hel’s yard was strewn with feathers, the remains of her chickens. Sverd and Selv peeked from Milla’s hair, while Milla struggled to think of something to say. “I’m . . . sorry . . . about your chickens.”

  Hel’s long white caterpillar eyebrows were sizzled black at the ends. “Girly, I don’t want your sorries. I’m no boo hoo baby. What did I tell you? Never be nice. We messed with a demon.” She shrugged. “This is what we get.”

  32

  FULLA STOOD CHEWING AND WAITING, unmoved by the appearance of a wasp-shaped demon. Milla rested her forehead on Fulla’s and stayed there, wishing she could absorb some of the mare’s calm. “All right, girl. Help me think this through. I can’t kill Hulda. I wouldn’t know how to, anyway.” The very idea of it was ridiculous. Milla remembered her games with Niklas when they were little. Waving their imaginary swords through the air, hunting trolls. She had no sword and Hulda was no troll. “And I won’t ask Vengeance to kill Hulda.” That would be just as bad. No, it would be worse, because it would be cowardly. And then where would it end? With more vengeance. That’s what the demon wanted. “So the only thing left is forgiveness. But I’ve already tried asking for that, and it made Hulda even angrier.”

  Milla wanted to scream, but instead she tried slowing her breath to match the mare’s. How wondrous it would be to be an animal, Milla thought. How easy. Any kind of animal would be fine. No matter how short the life span. She’d live, sleep, and eat. Death would come quickly. As it was, Milla imagined her life if the curse continued to run its course. It rolled out in front of her, interminably. Her body fully covered in green scales, only snakes where she once had hair. She’d be a monster, forever alone. Punished for the sin of another.

  Milla lifted her head from Fulla’s, a thought blooming, tickling, making her ears itch. The sin of another.

  It wasn’t Milla’s apology that Hulda wanted—needed. It was Gitta’s.

  It had always been Gitta.

  Bless this horse’s sense of direction, Milla thought to herself more than once. She said it aloud to Fulla more than twice.

  It took the better part of a day for them to find their way back to Iris’s cave, skirting as far around Hulda and the demon girls’ territory as they could without losing their way. When they arrived, Iris was huddled in the dark, her face pressed to her knees.

  Milla ran to Iris and crouched in front of her. Iris blinked as if to be sure that Milla was really there. “I came back to myself,” Iris said. “I’m me. Your sister. You can see, can’t you? I’m me.”

  Milla wrapped her arms around Iris. “Yes, dearest. I can see. You are my sister. And I’m yours.”

  Iris pulled away. She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face. “I don’t know why you still trust me. You shouldn’t trust me.”

  “None of this is your fault. I trust you. I trust my Iris, my friend, my sister.”

  Iris let out a muffled sob.

  “Come with me,” Milla said. “I’m going home to get Mamma.”

  Iris lifted her head. “Gitta? Why?”

  “I’d thought I needed to protect Niklas from Hulda, but now I know that it’s not him she wants, or me. It’s Mamma. Hulda loved Mamma more than anyone else, and Mamma betrayed her. And it’s Mamma who has to make this right. So I’m going to ask Mamma to go to Hulda with me. Maybe if Mamma apologizes, Hulda will lift the curse.”

  “But you saw how Hulda is. She’ll never lift the curse.”

  “I have to believe otherwise,” Milla said. “I don’t want to end up like Hulda. Even the thought is unbearable. And I must get her out of your head. And Liss’s. And all the other girls. And . . . well. I want Hulda to have some peace.”

  “She doesn’t give me any peace, Milla.”

  Milla sighed. “I know. But there’s some part of her that isn’t awful. I think there’s a way to convince her to let us go.” She picked up a coil of Iris’s russet hair and held it in her hand. “At least I have to try. Will you come with me to talk to Mamma?”

  “It’s not safe. What if I lose myself? They’ll tie me up and drag me away again.”

  “They wouldn’t. I won’t let them. Niklas won’t let them.”

  “Neither of you could stop them before. And what if they drag you away, too? What if they see your snakes?”

  “My snakes know how to hide.”

  Iris reached for Milla’s hands and turned them over, showing her scales. “What about these?” Milla felt Iris’s agitation growing, threatening to ignite. “Anyway, Gitta isn’t safe with me,” Iris said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I hate her. We all do.”

  “But Mamma didn’t do anything to you. Hulda did. And I don’t think Mamma really knew what she was doing to Hulda. She was frightened. And selfish. But how could she know what the midwife would do to Hulda? She couldn’t possibly.”

  “I still hate her,” Iris said.

  Heat rose off Iris in waves. The cave felt airless. This was Vengeance, Milla knew. She could smell her, feel her. Sense her larva hatching in Iris, eating her from the inside out. “Well, I love you,” Milla said, hoping to soothe the parts of Iris that didn’t belong to Hulda or Vengeance.

  Iris dropped her face to her knees again, and Milla stroked her hair, crinkly with hay and leaves.

  “I’ll come back for you, Iris.”

  Iris nodded into her knees but didn’t speak.

  It was midmorning a day and a half later when Milla arrived home—or the place she’d once called home. The farm looked faded, like a dress forgotten in the sun. The air buzzed with black flies that harassed Fulla and Milla both. Anthills leaned against fence posts, undisturbed, no one noticing or caring to sweep them away. The cottage itself seemed to sag in the center, as if exhausted with the effort of going on. All was quiet, and still, and sad, just like the village had been.

  Milla led Fulla to the barn, unsaddled her, and gave her a big bucket of oats. The poor beast hadn’t had a proper brushing in days. “I’ll make it up to you,” Milla said. Fulla was nose down in the bucket, unconcerned.

  There was no sign of her father or Niklas when Milla walked back to the cottage. She didn’t expect there would be—they’d be out in the fields, working, at this time of the day. But there was also no sound floating over from Stig and Trude’s cottage. No scraping of chairs or stirring of pots or flapping of laundry. Milla walked inside and the kitchen was cold and empty, no bread rising or dinner preparations underway, even though her father and Niklas would be back in a few hours for their midday meal.

  Milla found Gitta lying in bed, eyes open and staring, her blond hair loose about her shoulders. “Mamma? Mamma!” Panic rolled over Milla. Her mother looked ill. Or worse. Milla remembered the lie she’d told the midwife, that Gitta was dying. Had she made it so?

  Gitta stirred, then raised her head from the pillow to look at Milla, her eyes struggling to focus.

  “Milla?” She sat up.

  “Mamma, what’s wrong? Aren’t you well?”

  “I’m not dying, if that’s what you think. I only wish I were.” Gitta put her face in her hands. Milla felt a flash of disgust
for her mother, like lightning. Gitta was so terribly selfish. Milla thought of what Hel would say about her. Spoiled boo hoo baby.

  “Why do you wish you were dead, Mamma?”

  Gitta’s eyes trailed over Milla. “Look at you. You haven’t had a bath in days, have you?”

  Milla wanted to scream. A bath? Milla hadn’t been home in months, and her mother could only remark on how dirty she was. “That’s what you have to say to me, Mamma? That I need a bath?”

  “Oh, Milla. Why must you be like that?”

  Milla should have gone to her mother by now, embraced her. Isn’t that what any other daughter would have done? She imagined what Liss would do if she hadn’t seen Katrin in so long. She imagined what Katrin would do. Katrin would have held onto Liss and never wanted to let go. But Gitta went on lying there in bed, feeling sorry for herself. No wonder Hulda hated her.

  “Do you want to know where I’ve been? Do you care? Or is it enough that you have Niklas home now?” Milla could see her mother’s pain, how she suffered, but she didn’t stop talking, remembering what Hel had said to her: Never be nice.

  Gitta cringed, shrinking backward and inward.

  And there, in her cringing and shrinking, was the face that Milla had grown up looking back at. The face that looked at Milla with fear. With dread instead of love. “Are you afraid of me?” Milla said. “Of these?” Sverd and Selv rose from her head, not hissing, only placid and staring. Milla’s anger felt clean and right. It didn’t belong to Vengeance or to Hulda, it was her own, and she could control it—and use it.

  Gitta cried out and covered her face with her hands. “Don’t make me look at you. Don’t make me look at what I’ve done to my own child.”

  A space opened up in Milla at that moment. A space that allowed in a crack of pity, and of curiosity. She moved closer to Gitta. “What do you mean? What have you done to me?”

  Gitta wept. “It’s all my fault.”

  Milla remembered her mother’s weeping when Niklas went to The Place with Iris. How was this any different? Gitta was more sad for herself than she was for Milla. “You mean you’re disgusted by me.”