The Cold Is in Her Bones

by Peternelle van Arsdale

  Gitta dropped her hands to her lap and looked at Milla with anger. “You’re so . . . mean. You always have been. Why are you so mean?”

  “Mean? What have I ever done but what you’ve told me to?”

  “Always begrudgingly, though. Always treating me like I’m simple-minded, such a bother to you. You and Niklas with your little jokes and secrets. Making me feel stupid. Niklas isn’t the same with me now. I don’t think he loves me anymore. He’s so angry. And I can’t make him understand that all I’ve done is to try to keep you safe.”

  “Safe? You mean from the curse you brought down on me? The curse that made me this way?” She turned her hands over and then rolled up one sleeve so that Gitta could see the scales, shimmering green.

  Gitta reached out a tentative hand, and Milla didn’t pull back, though she wanted to. Gitta stroked Milla’s scales, and Milla trembled from her wrist to her shoulder. Her mother’s hands were gentle, and Milla felt sudden relief that she could still feel the touch of fingers. She was overcome with longing to be a baby again, to start all over and be the kind of girl her mother could have loved. “Mamma,” Milla said, “I’m a monster.” And she sank to her knees and wept.

  “Oh no, child. No, no, no.” Milla felt her mother’s arms around her, caught her mother’s familiar scent of milky tea and parsley. Milla wanted to stay there, to put her head in Gitta’s lap and pretend to be a girl again. A girl like she never was, with a mother like she never had.

  Milla stood up, resisting all that temptation to soften. “But I am a monster. Or I will be. Even if you don’t want me to be. And if you really want to help me, if you’re truly sorry for what you’ve done, then you need to apologize.”

  Gitta reached up to grab Milla’s hand. “But of course I’m sorry. I told you so.”

  “No, Mamma. I’m not the one you need to apologize to. It’s Hulda. You must come with me to see her and tell her so.”

  Gitta scrambled backward on the floor and looked around as if for somewhere to hide. She shook her head wildly. “Oh no. No, no, no. I can’t. I won’t. You don’t know what she’s like. I didn’t tell you that part, Milla. She’s not like you. She really is a monster.” Gitta wept and carried on so that it was all Milla could do not to roll her eyes.

  “Don’t be a boo hoo baby,” Milla said.

  Gitta looked at her strangely. “What?”

  “A boo hoo baby, Mamma. That’s what you’re being. You lie up here crying because you haven’t gotten your way. Hulda made messes for you, and then I made messes for you, and you can’t wish your messes away. I’m here, Mamma. A big mess. And I’m taking you to your other big mess. And you will apologize, and you will make this right.”

  Gitta wiped her nose with the back of her hand and looked up at Milla with wet, pleading eyes. “Now?

  “Right now,” Milla said. “Get dressed and I’ll saddle the horses. We’re leaving before Pappa and Niklas can try to convince us otherwise.”

  As she walked to the barn, Milla imagined Hel off to one side cackling, slapping her knee.

  33

  MILLA WAS SADDLING FULLA WHEN she heard his voice. “Milla! You’re back!” Niklas ran to her and embraced her.

  She held onto him for just a moment and then pulled away, fearing she’d break down if she didn’t. “Not for long, though.”

  Niklas searched her face. “What do you mean? Why not?”

  “Nothing has changed, Niklas. I’m still cursed and so is Iris.”

  “Milla, please don’t go.” Niklas looked so sad, so alone, and for a moment Milla felt a shameful sort of pleasure. For so many years she had been the one pining for him, pulling on his sleeve, wishing he’d stay. “It’s awful here without you. Every day I wake up hoping you’ll come home. Every night I go to sleep disappointed. Mamma clings to me so that I can’t leave her alone for long. Pappa pretends nothing’s changed. He won’t even speak your name.”

  “He hardly ever spoke my name before, Niklas.” Milla knew it was unkind to be so cold in the face of his suffering, but she couldn’t ease it right now. She had barely enough strength to cope with her own.

  “Niklas,” Mamma said, standing in the door to the barn.

  Niklas looked Gitta up and down and confusion passed over his face. “You’re wearing riding trousers.” Then he turned to Milla and saw that she was saddling a second horse. “What’s happening?”

  “Mamma is going with me to Hulda, Niklas. She’s going to apologize to her.”

  “What! No! Neither of you is going to Hulda. She’ll kill both of you!”

  Niklas was a full head taller than Gitta, and she reached up to place a gentling hand on his shoulder. “If she’d wanted to kill me she could have done so long before now. She wants me to suffer, not die.”

  “I’m going with you,” Niklas said.

  “No,” Gitta said. “There’s no telling what Hulda would do to you, Niklas. And I can’t bear to lose you again. That would truly kill me.”

  Milla bit her tongue and tasted blood. It wouldn’t help to say what she was thinking—that, as ever, Niklas was everything to Gitta. That Milla could sink into the earth and it would mean less worry for her mother, not more.

  “Milla, talk sense to her,” Niklas said.

  “I did talk sense to her, and that’s why she’s going with me. And she’s right, Niklas. You should stay here. If you come along you’ll only give Hulda something to use against us. She wants to hurt Mamma, and she’ll know that the best way to do that is through you.” She held his hand for a moment. “And I couldn’t bear to lose you, either. You must let us go.”

  Gitta embraced him. “Stay safe, my sweet boy.”

  Niklas looked at Milla over his mother’s head. “Come home to me. Both of you.”

  Milla nodded. She would make sure Mamma did, but could make no such promise for herself.

  They rode for hours, until it was so dark Milla couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of them. By then, she and Gitta were long past the village. They’d passed Ragna’s empty cottage, falling in on itself, and then the wide, flower-dotted meadow that led to The Place.

  “You know what that is, don’t you,” Milla said.

  Gitta nodded, staring at the hulking fort off in the distance. “Niklas won’t speak of it. Whenever I try to talk to him he tells me I don’t want to know.”

  Milla cocked her head at Gitta. “Do you want to know?”

  Gitta looked back at Milla. “No.”

  Mostly, the ride had been quiet. Gitta hadn’t voiced a word of complaint since they’d left the farm. Gitta hadn’t even delayed, though she’d had the chance. Milla thought her mother might make the excuse of stopping to speak to Hanna and Tomas, but she didn’t. And she paid no attention to the stares of the villagers. Milla had grown so used to being an oddity that she’d forgotten what a strange thing it was to see a woman her mother’s age in riding trousers, astride a horse. But Gitta seemed not to notice their gapes; she simply rode, her eyes forward.

  After they’d eaten supper and rolled out blankets for sleeping, Milla said, “You don’t seem afraid.”

  “I am.”

  “But you don’t seem so,” Milla said.

  “I’ve had a lot of practice, not seeming afraid.”

  “Hm,” Milla said. “I don’t know if you were very good at it.”

  Gitta pulled a blanket around her and turned on her side to look at Milla. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you’ve always seemed frightened. For the longest time I thought you were angry with me. There was this particular expression on your face when you looked at me, and it was so different from the way you looked at Niklas. I can’t remember when it was that I first realized you were afraid. But once I did, it was all I could see.”

  “Well,” Gitta said, “but did I seem terrified? Did I seem like I could barely get out of bed each morning because I lay awake every night wondering what might have happened in the night? Did I scream all the time, or look like I wanted
to?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’d say I was doing just fine at pretending. Because there wasn’t a minute of any day since you were born that I didn’t feel that I might die of dread.”

  Milla felt overcome by grief. The waste of all that time, neither of them having any idea how the other was tortured by the unsaid. “Why didn’t you tell me? If you’d told me, then at least I’d have understood why you looked at me that way. I’d have understood why you couldn’t love me.”

  Gitta shifted to her back and looked up into the branches overhead. “You’re my daughter. Of course I love you.”

  “You can’t even look at me when you say that.”

  “Oh, Milla. Why must you make everything so hard ? Life is hard enough without your daughter making it more so.”

  “That’s not the first time you’ve said that to me, you know.”

  “Well,” Gitta said. “This must not be the first time you’ve needed to hear it then.”

  Milla closed her eyes, fighting back tears. Willing them not to come. “Goodnight, Mamma.” She turned on her side, her back to Gitta. Sverd and Selv tried to soothe her, but Milla was ashamed to admit even to herself that it wasn’t their comfort she craved.

  When they arrived at the cave, Milla knew before they entered that Iris wouldn’t be there. Even from the outside Milla sensed its blankness. Wherever Iris was, there was energy. Spark. But the cave was cold and empty. Gitta stood in one place, her eyes circling it. “This is where she’s been living? That poor child.”

  “You said she was wicked, Mamma. You let them take her away.”

  Gitta turned on Milla. “You know, you resent me so much for how I’ve looked at you, and for what I did to Hulda. But you’re looking at me right now like I’m a monster. Like I have no feeling. Like I should be the one with snakes growing from my head.”

  Milla sucked in air, stung.

  Gitta’s eyes widened. “I didn’t mean you! That’s not what I meant!” She buried her face in her hands. “Everything I say to you is wrong. You want something from me that I can’t give you. But I’ve tried, Milla. I’ve tried.”

  “Mamma, listen to yourself. You act like everything’s been done to you. I’m just me, Mamma. I’ve always been me. And all I’ve ever wanted is for you to love me. Even a bit.”

  “I told you I loved you.”

  “They’re just words when you say them to me, Mamma.”

  Gitta reached for Milla, held her by the wrists. “I haven’t known a moment’s peace since Hulda went . . . wrong. And everything I’ve done, I’ve done because I wanted to make things right. I was brought up to please. To please my mother and father, and then to please your father. Because that’s what women do. That’s how we live, how we survive. But Hulda couldn’t be pleasing—she never could. I loved her when we were little, but when we got older I grew impatient with her. I wanted her not to be so . . . strange. And it made me angry that she was. I was afraid that Jakob wouldn’t want to marry a girl with such a strange sister.”

  “Strange . . . like me?” Milla said.

  Gitta’s eyebrows knit together. She paused. “A bit, yes. And, Milla, just think. If you were like her, and you know how she turned out, then don’t you think I was right to be frightened? And so every day I taught you how not to be like her. I taught you how to please. That’s how I hoped to make your life easier.”

  “But you didn’t,” Milla said. “You made it harder.”

  “I know it, Milla. I know it. And I’m sorry for it.”

  Milla closed her eyes, felt her stony heart tremble and shake. She wanted to say something terrible to her mother. Wanted to make Gitta hurt, wanted her to feel the rejection that was as much a part of Milla as the snakes that grew from her head. But then she thought of Hulda and of what Milla asked her mother to do—to apologize to Hulda for all the pain. And if Milla held out any hope that Hulda could forgive Gitta, then Milla had to forgive her, too.

  Milla looked into her mother’s pale blue eyes, round and wet. “Thank you, Mamma.” And as she said the words, she knew she meant them.

  34

  THEY SPENT THE NIGHT IN Iris’s cave, huddled close for warmth. As Milla lay awake, she wondered what the future might hold for her and Gitta if Hulda lifted the curse. Milla forgave Gitta for the past, but would Milla’s heart ever fully open to her? Could she bear to risk the terrible heartbreak of not being loved well enough? Milla fell asleep not knowing.

  The next morning they were both quiet and neither could eat. “We should leave the horses here,” Milla said. “I’m not worried about Fulla, but your horse might get spooked.”

  Her mother nodded, then did something strange. Gitta had neatly rebraided her own hair that morning, and now she reached out to tuck a curl behind Milla’s ear. When Sverd grazed her hand, Gitta didn’t gasp or lurch backward. “Oh,” Gitta said. “Oh.” Her face remained gentle, and her hand as well. Milla’s heart opened to her mother just a tiny bit more.

  Milla and Gitta hadn’t walked far when the hissing started. Then the demon girls stepped from behind trees and crept over rocks and the hissing grew excited. Frantic.

  She’ssssssss here. The ssssssssister. The ssssssister is here.

  When Gitta reached for Milla’s hand and squeezed it, Milla’s heart opened still more.

  They walked farther, the hissing building and blending and overlapping.

  She’ssssssss here. The ssssssssister. The ssssssister is here.

  When Milla and Gitta arrived at the clearing where Hulda’s tree stood wide and tall, they were encircled by the demon girls. Among them was Iris. Milla searched her heart-shaped face for some sign of her friend, but there was none. The face that looked back at her belonged to Hulda.

  “Sister,” Gitta said, her voice hesitant at first, then growing stronger. “Sister, I’m here. And I have something I would say to you, if you’d let me.”

  Silence fell over the girls, and each of them cocked her head as if listening to a single sound.

  A blast of heat rose from the ground, and Milla felt terror and a sense of wrongness so sudden and acute that she thought she would lose the contents of her bladder and her stomach at once. She wanted to take her mother by the hand and run. She wanted to tell her that this was a terrible mistake. Milla and Gitta had both been wrong: It wasn’t safe for Gitta here. Because in that heat, Milla felt all the hatred and resentment that Hulda had nursed for her sister since Hulda had been abandoned in the snow. It was a well so deep it would never run dry.

  But there was no time to speak, because from the tree slithered Hulda’s snake legs, followed by the rest of her. And then so fast, too fast, and Milla should have known, should have known this would happen, Hulda had undulated forward and grasped Gitta around the throat, tearing her from Milla’s side.

  “Mamma!” Milla screamed.

  Gitta’s toes scraped the ground, and she struggled to stay on her feet.

  Hulda pulled Gitta to her, her face just inches away. Her purple lips pulled back into a grimace. “After all thissss lonely time, Gitta, you’ve finally come to visit. You were always so frightened of me. Even when I was nothing but a strange girl who talked to snakes, you thought I was a monster. So what makes you sssso brave now?”

  “I wasn’t always frightened of you, Hulda. I loved you.”

  “Never.”

  “I did, Hulda. When we were little we slept so close our hair would tangle together in the night. Mamma would have to unknot us in the morning. Do you remember?”

  “I remember you called me monster,” Hulda said. “How the mother and father let them take me. Bury me in the snow. How the girl died that day and turned into thissss.”

  “I died that day, too,” Gitta said.

  Hulda howled, and her howling spread to the girls until the air was full of their agony. Milla felt their pain in her own heart, in her brain and lungs and blood. A sleek black snake with intricate golden diamonds down its back lifted from Hulda’s head, and arched d
ownward to graze Gitta’s cheek with a long fang. “I could kill you right now, Gitta. And I should. For daring to compare your pain to mine. For daring.”

  Milla stood helpless, watching Hulda tighten her grip around Gitta’s throat, so tight her mother couldn’t speak. Then Hulda dropped Gitta to the ground, and Gitta sank to her knees. Milla ran to her mother to help her to her feet, but then Milla felt herself lifted off her own.

  Hulda dragged Milla backward toward her tree. Milla struggled to free herself, but it was like trying to bend iron. Iron that only coiled tighter the more she fought. “I could kill you, Gitta, but this is better. This way has always been better. I hurt you best by hurting what you love. Your child is mine now. She’s a monster like me. And we’re both monsters because of you.”

  Mine now.

  Mine now.

  You’re mine now.

  The voice was in Milla’s head. Hulda’s voice. Milla tried to resist. Tried to remember what her own voice sounded like. What her own heart felt and wanted. But where her heart had been there was only smoke. Hot and black and choking out all air, anything that wasn’t hate. That wasn’t vengeance.

  Then there was another voice inside her, fighting through the smoke. A voice that Milla remembered but couldn’t name.

  The voice of a friend.

  Come back, Milla.

  Iris.

  Iris was shaking Milla, then clawing at Hulda’s iron-snake grip. Shaking and clawing, wild and frantic but herself, all herself. Milla was looking into the face of a friend, heart-shaped and russet-haired and syrup-eyed. “Iris,” Milla said. And the friend smiled, but then the friend was flying through the air, hurled by Hulda. “Iris!” Milla screamed.

  Hulda dropped Milla to the ground. Enraged, she rolled toward Iris, her black and diamond snake ahead of her, fangs spread and ready. Then a figure was between Iris and Hulda. A figure with long blond hair breaking free of its once-perfect braid.

  “Mamma, no!” Milla cried out.