Page 16 of North Is the Night
Siiri
“Are you all right?”Mummi reaches towards me, but I shrug her away, moving in the other direction around the table. “What are you going to do?” she calls after me.
I shake my head, my heart racing.
“Forgive your father, Siiri.”
My indignation mingles with my embarrassment. “He hit me.”
“He’s afraid,” she replies. “Nothing he said now is untrue. Your father left Turku to offer you all a better life away from the Christians. But no matter where we go, they follow.”
“So we should stand and fight! When a bear is backed into a corner, it stands tall, and it fights to the death.”
Tears rim her eyes. Hopelessness lurks inside her too.
“Oh, Mummi,” I whisper. “Where is your heart?”
She offers me a sad smile. “Apparently, it beats in your strong chest.”
“Do you think I should apologize to the priest? Should I lie to everyone and say it was not Kalma on the lakeshore but some devil of the formless God?”
Mummi considers, her blue-grey eyes searching my face. “No,” she says at last. “I don’t.”
“You think I should take the belt? I should let Father humiliate me?”
Before Mummi can respond, the door rattles open and Liisa bounces in, followed closely by Aksel. “I fed the chickens, Mummi,” my sister announces, going straight to the ladder in search of her cat.
Aksel plops a brace of rabbits on the table, already skinned and ready for the pot. “For supper,” he says with a grunt. Then he moves to the back of the cabin and begins stripping out of his soiled clothes. “I’m going to the lake to wash.”
“I want to do sauna tonight,” Mummi calls. “Will you cart in the wood?”
Aksel huffs, his head stuck inside his shirt. “It’s not sauna night.”
“It is if I say it is,” she counters.
He peels himself out of his sweaty shirt, leaving him in only his elk-skin breeches. “Mummi, I stink and I’m tired. I’m going to wash. We’ll do sauna tomorrow.”
“Never mind. Siiri and I will do it,” she replies with her own huff. “Siiri, come.”
I reach out my hand, letting her take it. I know what she’s doing. Inside the sauna we can speak with no one around.
Aksel shrugs, and we all step outside into the weak afternoon light. All around us, the green of the leaves is starting to change to yellow, brown, and red. Autumn is here, and it won’t last long.
Aksel marches off in his breeches and bare feet towards the lakeshore. Mummi and I veer right, walking hand in hand towards the sauna. Liisa doesn’t dare follow, lest she be put to work carting wood.
Mummi and I gather several logs from the pile outside the door. Inside the sauna, the aromatic smell of pine fills my nose. We remove our boots, keeping the door open to allow light into the windowless room. I drop to my knees before the small hearth, ready to layer in the logs. Behind me, Mummi watches. “Milja told me what you said,” she begins. “She told me what you plan to do.”
I go still, a split piece of wood balanced in my hands.
“Siiri, you can’t go alone on some quest looking for proof of the old gods.”
I drop the wood, gazing up at her. “I don’t need proof. I have it already. Kalma took Aina, you said so yourself.”
“And you think because Kalma revealed herself to you, another god will do the same? Who are you that the gods of old will show you their faces?”
“Another god already did,” I challenge, rising to my feet.
“When? Why did you not say anything?”
