Page 50 of North Is the Night
I take a step forward. “Listen, there is a raven—”
“Hush,” Riina rasps, spinning around to face the darkness.
I hear it, too, the faint rustle of a bush off to the left. Next to me, Satu grabs my hand.
“Let’s split up,” says Lilja. “No offense, Satu, but you look like you’re going to cut your own leg off swinging that axe. Aina, can you hunt?”
I shake my head. “I’ve always been a better forager.”
Riina rolls her eyes. “I’m going this way.” She points to the right. “Lilja, go that way and swing back at the river,” she adds, nodding to the left.
“You two just keep walking straight ahead,” Lilja adds. “With all the noise you make, you’ll scare whatever’s hiding and send them our way. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Riina says with a nod.
Next to me, Satu gasps. “Wait—if we make noise, won’t we lure the ghosts and väki closer?” But the other girls aren’t listening. They part ways, disappearing into the darkness. “Don’t leave me,” Satu begs.
“Come on then.”
We begin walking, picking our way over roots and around ferns.
“Do you think there are boars in Tuonela?” she whispers. “A boar killed my uncle. It was a nasty, brutish thing with great, long tusks. It gored my uncle in the groin. He bled out in my father’s arms. It was awful.”
“Boars are clever,” I reply, keeping my voice low. “They’ll smell us coming... or hear us. We’ll do as Lilja says and make some noise. If we can help them make a kill faster, we might all escape this alive.”
“But if we make noise, we may lure the walking dead or the sprites or—”
I pull her to a stop. “You don’t need to remind me of what may lurk in these dark woods. I’m already so terrified, I can hardly breathe. Let’s just be scared together. All right?”
Slowly, Satu nods. I can hardly see her face in this dim light. “All right.”
Before we can move, branches snap to our left. Satu spins around with a gasp, swinging her axe. The glint of the blade flashes by my eye as I barely move away in time.
“What is it?” she rasps. “Can you see it?”
Inching closer, I wrap my hand around her wrist. “Here... why don’t you give me this?” I gently pull the axe from her shaking hands.
“I can’t be unarmed—”
“You’ll do more harm than good with it, I’m afraid.” I tuck it through my belt. “Just stay with me. I may not be as good as Siiri with a hatchet, but I’m not hopeless either.”
“Who’s Siiri?” she asks as we continue walking forward.
“My friend from home. She’s the best with a bow I’ve ever seen. And she can win a hatchet-throwing contest with her eyes closed. She drives all the young men crazy.”
“With her beauty?”
I can’t help but laugh. “No, because none of them can best her. I once saw her fell an elk from the other side of...” My voice trails off as I spy something lying on the ground, partially concealed behind a fern.
Satu sees it too and goes still. “Is it...”
“Dead,” I finish for her, stepping around the fern to take in the form of an elderly man lying peacefully on a bed of moss, lost to eternal sleep. Satu holds tighter to my arm, staring down at the dead man with wide eyes. “Come away,” I say gently. “He won’t hurt us. The sleeping dead are at peace.”
“And what of the walking dead?” she whispers.
We step around the dead man, both of us startling when we quickly spy two more bodies lying in the gloom. “It was a meadow,” I say, hoping to distract her. “Siiri managed the shot clear across a meadow.”
Not far from these bodies lies another, half-hidden in the ferns.
