Read Online Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekbäck - Free Book Online Page A

Gustav, upper lip curled. “Sometimes the spring floods move them. I came to inspect them before people came to harvest, but it seems Gustav has already tasked himself with correcting the matter.”
    “There isn’t much to harvest,” Maija said. She was still annoyed with herself for having curtsied.
    He turned toward her. “It’s been a cold summer. Where is your husband?”
    “He’s at the homestead.”
    “I will go and introduce myself to him. I understand it was your daughters who found Eriksson.”
    She lifted her head.
    “I need to talk to your husband about that,” he said.
    Paavo sat on a wooden bench by the barn and sharpened the scythes. He wielded the stone against the edge with long, slow strokes, and the blade sang. Through the laundry on the clothesline Maija glimpsed Frederika trying to shift a boulder with an iron rod.
    Paavo rose.
    Nils nodded to him. “My name is Nils Lagerhielm,” he said.
    Her husband stroked his shirted chest with his hand and mumbled something, impossible to tell what. Nils looked at Maija as if to tell her she could leave now. When she didn’t, his lips narrowed, but he turned back to Paavo.
    “I heard your daughters found the body of Eriksson,” he said.
    Her husband nodded.
    “I came to see they are well.”
    “They’re doing better,” Paavo said.
    Maija looked for Frederika. Are you, she thought, doing better? The stone was large, and her daughter leaned her weight on the rod. Careful, Maija thought. You put that kind of pressure on, and something will have to give. As if she had heard her, her daughter released the rod and inserted it from another angle.
    Nils cleared his throat. “I was wondering if there was … was there anything strange about it?”
    “He was dead,” Maija said. “That was rather strange.”
    Both men frowned.
    “There wasn’t anything that appeared … mystic?” Nils asked.
    “Mystic?” Paavo repeated.
    “It’s not the first time there has been trouble on the mountain.”
    Trouble again. But for some reason Maija was certain that Nils would tell them what had happened.
    “What do you mean?” Paavo asked.
    When Nils spoke again, he’d lowered his voice. “Two children have gone missing on the mountain,” he said. “One, ten years ago. She was going to pick lingonberries and didn’t return. The second, five or six years ago, during the harvest. It’s not strange in itself. We are in the wilderness. But the siblings of both children raved of having seen things in the forest. And then last year a whole family disappeared overnight, the Janssons. One day they were here, the next day they weren’t.”
    “People don’t just disappear,” Maija said.
    “Precisely,” Nils replied.
    Paavo blinked.
    “Before they were Christianized, Lapps from far away used to travel to this mountain to see the shaman here. It was said he had uncommon powers. I am an educated man, but out there, on this mountain is … something. And that something isn’t good.”
    Sunlight twinkled in the crowns of the spruce trees. A fly landed on Maija’s arm, and she brushed it away.
    “Back home we had the village,” her husband said, and she knew he was looking at her.
    “A village,” the nobleman said.
    He said it slowly.
    “We were safe,” Paavo said.
    “Perhaps we do need to come together,” the nobleman said. “If we lived in a village, we’d have each other to rely on. Just as long as we didn’t bring the trouble with us in our midst.”
    The nobleman creased his forehead and nodded to himself. He’s thinking of someone in particular, Maija thought. Someone he doesn’t want to live close to.
    “Let’s think about this,” Nils said. “I’ll talk to the others about it too.”
    He nodded curtly and left.
    Frederika was by her side. Maija didn’t know how long she had been there. Her daughter waited one breath to see if she would be told anything more, then sauntered off.
    Paavo juggled the sharpening stone in his hand a couple of