The Winter Place (29 page)

The first train to Talvijärvi wouldn't have left Helsinki until late that morning, so Jaana had rented a car and driven the two of them up overnight. Otso and Kari remained behind, in case Axel tried to return to the flat, but the farther they drove, the surer Tess became that her brother had run off to the summer place. She and Jaana would have arrived sooner, but for the heavy snowfall that began when they were still a few hours out, the flakes fat and lazy as old moths. By the time they arrived, everything but the highway had become impassable, leaving them with no choice but to head into town. Jaana found a small sporting-goods store, where she all but commandeered this utility snowmobile, leaving her credit card and the words “I'm sorry, but you have to make it happen” with the clerk, who protested in vain that the store was not yet open, nor the sled for rent.

The snowmobile wallowed in the soft powder, but they moved at a good clip, trees zipping by on
either side. Jaana crisscrossed the woods behind the cottage, Tess hollering Axel's name from the rear seat. Finding nothing, they decided to follow the track that Jaana had already discovered—a stutter of footprints strung along the frozen lake. The track looped behind the Hannula property and traced the shoreline for a pace before making a sharp turn into the spruce wood. It struck Tess that this was the same route they'd taken out of Erikinlinna. It felt like forever ago, but it hadn't been more than two weeks—that day when Axel's illness had gotten the jump on him and they'd had to carry him back to the cottage.

The ground was more uneven as they sledded into the woods, and the underside of the snowmobile scraped loudly against hidden stones and stumps. Soon they came to a collapsed oak tree, its neat cap of powder gouged from where Axel had scrambled overtop. The dead tree blocked their path, and Jaana began to steer the sled around. It was then that something caught Tess's attention—a sharp glimmer in the morning light. It was roughly the shape of a person—a torso with arms outstretched, just about as tall as a ten-year-old should be. Jaana must have seen it too, because she stopped the snowmobile before Tess had a chance to say anything. They both leaped off, sinking to their shins. But it wasn't
Axel. It was chain mail—a shirt of ringed armor, caught up in the crown of a young pine, its weight bending the sapling at the middle. Jaana retrieved the mail and shot Tess a glance.

“Your brother's?” she said.

It wasn't so much a question, but Tess answered all the same. “My father's.”

Her grandmother nodded at this, eyeballing the mail for another moment. Together they returned to the snowmobile, where Jaana dropped it into a saddlebag affixed to the seat. They'd hardly gone another ten feet before she cut the motor once again. The snow on the far side of the dead oak was overturned with a mishmash of boot marks and palsied snow angels. It looked like Axel had fallen. Or maybe he'd been pushed, because it was suddenly clear that he was no longer alone. They could see a second set of tracks now, flat-footed craters more than twice the size of Axel's. These tracks seemed to come from nowhere; they simply
appeared
. As though the Keeper had been dropped out of the sky and landed neatly on his feet. Tess still didn't know what to think about the rest of Axel's story, but he sure as hell hadn't been making this part up. He'd tried to tell Tess that he'd seen the Keeper, and what did she do? She'd called her little brother a liar. Worse than a liar—a loser. Tess felt almost light-headed with the shame of it.

“Oh no.” Jaana's voice pulled Tess back into the moment. Her grandmother had noticed this second set of tracks as well and had fallen down onto her hands and knees. Jaana's naked fingers pressed into the snow on either side of one of the big, unfamiliar boot prints. “Oh my God.” She sounded like she was choking.

“Grandma,” Tess said. “There's something I need to tell you.”

A few hours later Tess found herself seated on a low wooden stool in the Kivis' freezing cottage, pondering how best to describe the Keeper. A young woman with the Talvijärvi police sat on the stool opposite her, squinting into a sketchpad as though it were the opening of a dark well. This was already their third go-round, and the young artist still couldn't make heads or tails of the baffling face they seemed to be conjuring together. Behind the dry rubbing of the woman's eraser, Tess could hear the crackle of radios and the harsh snap of a camera shutter. The chief of the tiny local police department was a family friend, and Jaana had called him from the road early that morning to say that she thought her grandson might be headed up their way. “No reason to get worked up just yet, Aarne,” Jaana had said. “I had the Hannula boy look in, and he says
the cottage is empty. Perhaps you could keep an eye out in town?”

Of course, their discovery of Axel's aborted fire and Tess's mention of the Keeper had changed the flavor of the situation considerably. Even now Chief Aarne was leading a hastily organized search party through the frozen woods. Jaana was out back, digging an icy trench into the yard with her pacing, updating Otso on all that had happened. Tess's grandmother had been so collected on the drive up from Helsinki, so calm and purposeful as they searched the trees beyond the cottage. But now she'd officially lost her shit. Yesterday Tess would have put good money against the prospect of ever seeing the old lady shed a single tear. Today she'd have spent that same massive and imaginary amount just to stop them coming.

“So, would it be—was it perhaps more like this?” The young woman turned her pad around for Tess to investigate. But this one was as bad as the first two; the walleyed, toothy face leering out of the page looked absolutely nothing like the Keeper. It wasn't that the face was too normal, but rather that it was too
real
. Like someone had tried to tease a true-to-life portrait out of a caricature.

“I'm sorry,” Tess said. “I don't think I'm explaining it right.”

The woman took a moment. She couldn't have
been more than twenty-five, and as she scrutinized her pad, the bridge of her nose wrinkled. “Absolutely not. It's not your fault. Why don't we start with a fresh page?” She tore the sketch away, ready to begin again. “We can take our time.”

Tess knew, of course, that she believed no such thing. She could almost see the effort that this nice young woman was expending, trying to keep the awful possibilities out of mind. Tess had sat through enough urgently sincere safety-awareness assemblies at school to understand what her mention of the old man would do. A runaway kid was bad enough, but if you throw a strange and unidentified adult into the story, then “this is bad” very quickly graduates to “panic freaking immediately.” Tess had understood that telling Jaana about the Keeper would send her—and everybody else—into a frenzy, so she decided to leaven her honesty with more honesty. If she was going to tell the truth, then she might as well tell the complete, moronically fantastical truth. Never mind if no one believed that she'd seen the old man in New York. Never mind if they shrugged off Axel's ghost story, just as she had. Because omitting the supernatural bits wasn't just dishonest, but it also made the story worse.
A stranger had lured her little brother into the forest
—the abridged version was by far more terrifying.

“His face was wider than that,” Tess said. “I mean really,
really
like an egg. Almost flat on top.”

“All right,” the woman said, the arc of her elbow indicating the expansive oval that she was scrawling over the pad. “An egg. Just like an egg.”

Tess picked up the discarded portrait off the floor and stared into it. “The teeth here aren't bad,” she said. “They were big like this, but also . . . I don't know. Every time you looked at them, they seemed a little different.” She went quiet for a moment. How to put that upsetting sight into words? “Like they were swapping places when you blinked.”

“That's fine,” the young woman said, perhaps deciding to suspend her skepticism. “I'm not sure how to draw that, but I'll try.”

They were just about finished by the time Jaana came back inside, looking haggard. Her jacket hung open, and the sweat beading the tips of her close-cropped hair had frozen over, silver on silver. But her eyes were clear, and the dark patch on her fleece collar was the only evidence that she'd been crying. Jaana held a pair of cross-country skis under her arm. Tess knew they didn't belong to her. The Kivis never came to Talvijärvi in the winter, so there was no need for them. “One of your friends took my sled,” Jaana said, “so I'm going to need these.” She seemed to be addressing
the cottage at large. “And the boots that go with them,” she said. “Immediately.”

“Mrs. Kivi—” the policeman with the camera began. His tone suggested that he was about to say something ridiculous, like that Jaana should rest for a moment. Like that she should wait until they heard back from Aarne's search party.

No need to listen to the tail end of that blather. Jaana cut him off. “Your boots, or I'll just walk,” she said.

“I don't think that they'll fit you,” the policeman said haltingly.

“Blisters will be the least of my problems, then.” Jaana stared at the young man, looking like she'd actually get down and begin untying his laces if he didn't do it himself. So he did.

“I'm going with you,” Tess said, getting up from her stool.

“Not until you've finished,” her grandmother said. “What you're doing is very important.” She already had a foot in one of the policeman's boots.

“We are finished,” Tess said.

Jaana shot a glance across the living room, and for a moment the sketch artist writhed in silence. “No, Mrs. Kivi, I don't think we are,” the young woman said, peering down into the Keeper's impossible mug. Perhaps she'd been trying to prove a point by drawing the old man exactly as Tess
described him, cartoonish hyperbole and all. But in doing so, she'd stumbled blindly into a spot-on rendition.

“Yes, we are,” Tess said. “That's what he looks like.”

“You ski?” Jaana said.

Tess was from Upstate New York—of course she could ski. She nodded.

Jaana returned her gaze to the sketch artist. “Can she borrow yours?”

“I'm sorry, ma'am . . .” The woman looked at her colleague, exasperated, entreating for his assistance. But the young officer was already good and railroaded, standing there in his woolen socks with pictures of Moomins dancing across them. “We aren't done.” The sketch artist seemed to take a breath to gather her courage. “Your granddaughter is . . . I don't know if she's playing a game, but—”

“Excuse me?” Jaana stopped tightening the boots and took a step toward them. The overlarge things made a menacing thump on the hardwood, untied laces flopping about the sides. The sketch artist gave no answer; she just handed over her pad. Jaana stared down at the grinning portrait. Then she raised her eyes to Tess. “This is what the man you saw looked like?”

“It is,” Tess said.

“Then you're done,” Jaana said, thrusting the pad back at the sketch artist.

“Mrs. Kivi, I'm only trying to help,” she said.

For a moment Tess's grandmother seemed to soften. But before she could make any answer to the young woman, they were interrupted by a clattering from outside. The chief of the Talvijärvi police let himself in and began stamping his boots on the welcome mat to loosen them of snow. Aarne was a big man, with a beard that occupied a wolfish portion of his face. The exposed ridges of his cheeks were bright pink, but it was impossible to tell if this was a condition brought on by the cold, or just the way he was made. “I'm sorry. Nothing yet,” Aarne said. “They're doubling around now, in case the boy went back to the lake.”

“What do you mean doubling around? You mean they've lost the trail?” Keeping her eyes on Aarne, Jaana knelt down to finish tightening her boots.

“They haven't lost it, but it ends.” The police chief waved his hand through the air, indicating some point beyond the cottage walls. “Out past where you found that metal shirt. They—” Aarne coughed and rubbed his hands over his mouth and chin, as if to wipe the word away. “Your grandson must have turned back. But that's a good sign. No
ski marks or tread marks. Your boy can't be far.”

“Did you check the castle?” Tess asked.

“The tracks don't lead that far, but—” Tess was already getting up out of her stool, and Aarne held his hands out, as though to slow her. “We searched the whole thing anyway. And I left somebody there. If anybody tries to go near the place, my man will see them.”

“Good,” Jaana said, straightening up and zipping her jacket. “Now, listen, my granddaughter would like to help in the search. Please see that she gets some skis.”

Chief Aarne glanced at the bootless feet of his young officer, and Tess guessed that under other circumstances he might have smiled. “Of course,” he said. “I have more volunteers on their way to join the search party. I'll ask that they bring a set in her size. Maybe until then, if it would be all right, I could talk to her a little bit?”