Wolf Winter Read Online Free PDF

children. Toward the right side of the yard birch trees grew in a group. Too close together—they ought to have cleared them out. With the grown ones taking up that much space, there wasn’t going to be enough light for the saplings.
    “Bear didn’t do this,” she said.
    Elin stared ahead. Her face was vacant. It was as if she herself had gone somewhere else now that Maija had seen what she wanted her to see.
    “How would the seeds have ended up on his sleeve if they are not from here?” Maija asked.
    Elin moved her head a little. “I don’t know,” she said.
    “When did he go missing?”
    “He was going to the marsh. He’d talked to Gustav about trying to harvest it further out in the wet areas this year. Three days ago. Perhaps it was three days ago.”
    “Weren’t you worried?”
    Elin lifted her shoulders a fraction, let them fall again. “He was often gone for long periods.”
    “Doing what?”
    “He traveled to the coast to trade. When he was here, he did whatever it is our men do. Hunting, fishing.”
    The wound had not been the hacking gash made by an axe. It had been lengthy, narrow. The kind made by knife. No, not knife. Not stabs. Something swung by force. Rapier. The others would have known too. As soon as they saw the body.
    “Did anything happen before he left?” Maija asked. “Anything unusual?”
    “No. Nothing unusual.” Elin met her gaze and her voice became sharp. “He was going to the marsh.” The moment of strength was gone and her shoulders sank.
    A faint wind drew over the yard. High grass bent as in prayer. The priest returned, wiping his mouth with a cloth. His tall figureand the long strides were too decided for the stillness; his profile too sharp. He tugged with his hand at his brown hair. He is young, Maija thought. Younger than you might think at first.
    “His brother …” Elin’s voice waned.
    The priest had reached them. In the corner of her eye Maija saw him shaking his head.
    “If you tell me where he lives, I can speak with him on my way home,” she said. She hesitated. “What will you do now?”
    Elin didn’t answer.
    As they left, Maija turned around once, and now she saw the children. They were in the cluster of birch trees, flitting between the pale tree trunks like ghosts.
    Nothing, she thought. We are nothing.

Frederika sat on the porch, her legs stretched out in front of her. The wood was warm against her palms, the earth damp under the soles of her feet. She stuck the top of her index finger in a knag in the dull timber that probably had been there forever.
    Dorotea was squatting by the barn, digging underneath it with a twig. Her father was in the woodshed restacking wood, organizing it according to type. The kind of work that doesn’t need doing but with which a man could fill many odd days if he liked. She imagined him, felt hat pushed low, hand hovering in the air, face grim. Birch, could he see any more birch? Yes, two pieces. He’d pull out two—one with each hand, throw them on top of his new birch section. Chink, chink.
    Her mother had not yet returned. Frederika shivered and put her feet up on the step beneath her, pressed her toes flat against the wood.
    Her father wasn’t going to be good with the forest; that was clear already. The forest watched him but didn’t warm to him. Her mother had said once that her father’s element was water. That her father had been a fisherman, the best there was—fearless of any height of wave or beast of the sea. “He only laughed,” her mother said, and smiled at the images inside. “His hair was long and bleached, his skin battered, and still he laughed.”
    Frederika tried to imagine her father with long hair, laughing on top of the bow of a ship, but it was difficult.
    The smile was gone from her mother’s eyes before her lips followed.
    “What happened?” Frederika asked.
    Her mother shook her head. “It isn’t my story to tell,” she said. “Maybe one day he’ll tell you