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

times.
    “Don’t tell me,” Maija said.
    “We shouldn’t have come here,” he said.
    “Paavo …”
    “Things in the forest? I don’t like it.”
    Oh Paavo, she thought. She put her hand on his sleeve. “The other day she—the widow—asked me to look at Eriksson’s body …”
    The muscles in his arm tensed. He stared at her, his nose wrinkled, mouth open.
    “Together with the priest,” she added.
    “You looked at the body?”
    “Yes.”
    “But why would you do such a thing, Maija? Why?”
    “It wasn’t bear or wolf that killed Eriksson.”
    “That’s not what he suggested either.” He indicated with his head the direction of Nils’s leaving.
    “I can assure you that Eriksson was not killed by sorcery or by evil either,” Maija continued. “He was killed by a man, by flesh and blood.”
    Her husband shook his head. “Leave this,” he warned. It sounded like a growl.
    “Paavo, listen to me. People like Nils don’t care about people like us. For some reason he wanted to tell us about Blackåsen’s past. And he said that some people oughtn’t to be welcome in any village, if it was to be built. Could you hear that? Don’t you see what that ought to remind us of?”
    “I know exactly what this reminds me of. Leave it. Think of your children.”
    Maija laughed, but it didn’t come out like one.
    “As if that were the reason,” she said, before she could stop herself.
    There was a pause, then, “What do you mean?”
    “Nothing.”
    “No, say it. For once, say it out loud.” Her husband’s voice rose. “Do you think I don’t know what you’re thinking?”
    “Paavo.”
    But she spoke too late. He was walking away.

The ground in the glade was yellow. Autumn had begun to blanket the top of Blackåsen Mountain without letting anybody else know. The sun was out, small and white, like one in winter. Maija stood over the brown patches left by Eriksson’s body. Death worn down and forgotten. Nature not impressed. She squatted and pulled her fingers through the grass, felt the spongy ground beneath.
    The watching eyes of a village. Villages were good things, but not if built on the wrong grounds. Those eyes could fast turn from watching what was outside to inside, and then there was no saying where they might take things.
    We must find out what happened before this gets out of hand, she thought. Never again will our family stand by while fear spreads.
    She glanced at Jutta. They were done talking about it. Many people had something like that in their past. A grief, a time when they had fallen short. But Jutta didn’t meet her gaze.
    Maija got down on her knees. Inch by inch she crawled the glade, studied the ground, fingers prodding. Nothing out of the ordinary. No trace of the strange herbs either. The sun leaned on her shoulders. Her knees ached. She sat back on her heels. Who brings a rapier to the forest? Someone who always carries it or someone who, this time, has brought it with a purpose.
    She looked around. The glade wasn’t close to anything in particular; it was on the way. On the way from the valley to the river or the other way around. Passing from one side of the mountain to the other.
    She got to her feet. So: Eriksson had been lying with his head south and his feet north. He hadn’t defended himself. The man who killed him—for the length of that wound would have had to be done by a man—must have been standing … she took two long steps. Somewhere here, she thought. In the middle of the glade—same blueabove him, same sun. Her eyes followed the tree trunks all the way to the sky. They waved and waved as if it didn’t concern them.
    She turned around. Whoever killed Eriksson might have come from this direction. She walked into the forest and in a loop around the glade: passed the trail down to the river, then the one leading to the valley through the pass. There was a whirl of birdsong coming from the glade, bells and trills. Bluethroat. Maija stretched her neck to see.