ALRIGHT!!!
So I wrote something that I might be proud of (that is up for debate). Here...just finished making this better than what I handed into class on Wednesday...Monday is going to be a very funny class...when we talk about the version that was quite screwed up.
The Seer
A wolf streaked across the glistening snow, blasting tunnels through the ice. The moon was full and its radiance reflected off the fields of snow that rolled on and on toward the forest on the horizon. It was a white night and even the pine forest had enough light to make the tiny pinecones dangling from the long, drooping limbs visible to the human eye—not that any humans stood beneath the lofty boughs of the light-green pines gazing upward at the starry night sky though. The long thin needles, the few inches of snow that sat atop them and the two feet of snow beneath were quite alone under the shining moon, waiting for the wolf’s swift motion to shatter the scene and spray its pieces like the snow displaced in its tracks.
Somewhere in the depths of the woods between two sturdy trunks on ground dotted with patches of ice, the wolf disappeared. The night was no more silent for it; the branches did not wilt any further. All was the same except the air. It whirled around in a spiral until the individual streams glowed and their radiance overtook the entire clearing. At the moment when whirlwind of light overwhelmed the world, she appeared clad in a robe sliver as the moon. Longs strand of black hair fluttered behind her, floating on waves of glistening light. The gaze of her green eyes passed right over the water that always materialized before her. Her eyes shone like the moon and left a sparkling trail like the moon’s reflection over the water’s dark surface.
The legend, told on many frozen, dark nights when mounds of snow forced families to huddle by the fireplace, said the girl was waiting, existing with only the hope that one day her seer will come and free her from her frozen cage.
The truth was lost amongst the heaps of snow dumped upon the village, carried elsewhere by the swirling winds and winter storms that isolated the residents, the charming wooden homes, the thin streaks of evergreen blending with the masses of white. But that never stopped the dreamers from gazing toward their horizon, from perpetuating the fantasy…
Sirja breathed fog onto the window as she kneeled on a leather recliner, leaning forward so she could get a better view of the dark, snowy world that sat perfectly still beyond the window. Spears of ice hung from the boughs of the evergreen that grew inches from the streetlight at the corner and it was nearly impossible to decipher where her lawn ended and the street began. A solid sheet of icy snow stained grey by the twilight stretched until it blended with the fuzzy, yellow lights of the neighbor’s home. Only the top of the mailbox and a few trees encased in ice poked through the untouched snow. School had been canceled for the second time that week due to excessive snow and bitter cold.
It was late morning and Sirja still wore her forest green flannel pajamas. Sirja saw no need to dress that day since her mother had specifically forbidden her from going outside when she woke her to say goodbye right before she left for work. Lying on her side under three comforters, Sirja had reassured her mother in a mumble that it was too cold to even leave bed. But here she was in the living room with only the fireplace for light. Flames crackled behind the metal grating and Sirja turned to smile at them. The fireplace was companionship, a distraction to keep her from standing on the cold tile in the kitchen waiting for her teapot to whistle.
The phone rang before the teapot whistled though. Sirja rolled her eyes and tapped her knuckles against the armrest. It was not her mother’s lunch hour so she saw no reason to even check who was calling. But the phone kept ringing. In fact it grew louder as Sirja ignored it. Finally the teapot whistled and Sirja leapt up. She took a few steps toward the kitchen and the phone went silent, but as she took a mug decorated with shiny snowflakes from the dishwasher, the ringing started again. Sirja slid the mug onto the counter, turned off the stove and jogged to the hall where the phone was.
“Hello?” Sirja held the cordless receiver to her ear and walked back toward the kitchen to finish brewing her tea.
“Oh Sirja honey there you are. I was afraid you might be sleeping still. How are you?” Sirja’s mother Kristine said.
“Nah, I started thinking too much to sleep any longer so I got up and have just been sitting around since then…” Sirja poured the boiling water in her mug. Steam rose from the water and condensation collected along the rim of the mug. Sirja focused on this and ignored the quickly rising water level; hot water spilled over and the tea bag’s string sank into the water.
“I hope you are not too bored. I know you were just devastated when I told you there was no school today either.”
“Yeah truly, but hey I am less bored doing nothing than sitting listening to Elle ramble the same old stuff at least. Oww!” Sirja yanked her finger from the hot tea. She had not been fast enough while fishing the string from her tea and the water burned her finger.
“Are you okay? Sirja, we can talk about school later. I just wanted to remind you not to go outside. It is cold and the forecast says more snow. Now I don’t know where it is all going to go, but that’s what they said.”
“There isn’t that much snow…I mean I could still see the top of the mailbox. I just burned my finger. I feel like going outside to cool it off.” Sirja shook her hand.
Kristine laughed. “That would be overkill. But I have to get back to work. All this snow is causing all kinds of chaos in the village.”
“Oh okay…”
“Be careful, honey. I worry about you.”
“Bye.” Sirja hung up and dropped the phone on the table. From what she had seen out the window earlier, there wasn’t much more snow than was expected for Northern Finland in the dead of winter. She actually remembered times in previous years when snow covered the entire mailbox. The only way to know for sure was to step outside though, but her warmest socks were in the dryer and she couldn’t quite place the direction in which she had thrown her hat upon getting home yesterday afternoon so Sirja would have to be patient. For now she took her tea into the living room and sank into the loveseat across from the fireplace.
Sirja picked up a hardcover novel that was resting on the end table beneath a ceramic snowman and opened it in her lap. It was in English. Skimming over the text, about a third of the words had a definition in Sirja’s mind, but as a whole the passages had no meaning. Her bookmark was in the middle of the third chapter. She bent over to reach the bottom shelf of the end table; she needed her Finnish to English dictionary to read any further. The movement spilled the cup of tea onto the leather seat. She just rolled her eyes at the mess. As she was going to get a towel from the laundry room, the phone rang again. Sirja threw the towel over her shoulder and ran to answer it.
“I am so being careful, Mom. You don’t have to worry so much.”
“Hello to you too. Sirja listen though. I’m going to work late today. I don’t even know how late, but our plow is so frozen it won’t even start and the police got at least three reports of people snowed inside their homes.”
“That’s cool. I was just studying my English.”
“Stay warm, dear. I’ll talk to you later.”
Sirja dropped both the phone and the towel on the loveseat. She looked at her book and then out the window. While she was in the laundry room, she had noticed the dryer had finished. No longer could she use her socks as an excuse.
In her room upstairs, Sirja pulled on two pairs of long underwear, snow-pants, three sweaters and two pairs of white socks. There was no staving off negative fifty degree weather, but her layers should take the edge off. Sirja went back downstairs to get her thermal socks from the dryer. She also found another hat and a pair of knitted gloves mixed in with a table cloth and some fleece throws. Such items as fleece throws and insulated blankets had to be in abundance for surviving seven months of winter, but neither were as necessary as the heavy logs that burned a vibrant red-orange in the fireplaces of nearly everyone. Tradition had it those logs burned hotter than any imported wood.
A wall of frozen air knocked the breath from Sirja. No matter how many times she took that first step from the warmth of her home, she never got used to it. She coughed as her body struggled to find use for the heavy air, as her airway burned as frost crept its way closer toward her lungs. Sirja stood on the porch, the last shore before she cast herself to the sea of snow. Banks of snow were flesh against the house, devoured the lower portions of tree trunks and clung to branches, streetlights and everything else in its path.
The sun rising on the horizon illuminated the sky a pale yellow. The clouds that kept the dawn dim were a blessing in that they prevented the blinding combination of sun and snow. Sirja pushed forward into this snow since there was no way around the blocks of white. The tiny crystal flakes were icy and stuck together, forced Sirja to really plow her way through. She made it a few meters onto the lawn before collapsing into the bed of white. She sank a little, but quickly came to a rest staring at the sky and listening to her breathing. By now she was a comfortable numb; she imagined ice crystals running through her blood. They were the same ice crystals that supported her, that clogged pipes and cracked windows. She was one of the infinite snowflakes that blanketed the world simply lying on the softness of fellow snowflakes, piling toward the clouds from which it fell.
“Sirja!” A voice cut through the windless afternoon. “Sirja, is that you?”
Sirja spun around. The snow made it hard to pinpoint where the voice was coming from. She stood up and brushed the chunks of snow from her coat. “Kari, what are you doing out here?” Sirja screamed at the girl running toward her.
“Sirja, Sirja! I need your help.” Kari’s face was red; the corners of her eyes were filled with droplets of water. Sirja wiped the tear from Kari’s eye with the tip of her glove before it could freeze. Kari wore snowshoes and since she wasn’t partially wading through snow, she was slightly taller than Sirja despite being four years younger.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” Sirja squeezed Kari’s hands and looked the girl straight in her watery grey eyes.
“Ana is sick. Both of our parents left for village hall early in the morning. I tried calling them, but our phone is dead. A branch must have fallen on the line or something.”
“My mom too, but our phone is working quite fine, too fine actually. We’ll go right inside and call your mother.” Sirja held Kari’s hand and lead her through the path she had created earlier.
“Didn’t you hear me? Ana is sick…” Kari kicked her boots off spraying snow across the tile in the foyer.
“Your sister is fine. Trust me, there isn’t much that can keep Ana down for more than a few hour. Anyway I was hanging out with her yesterday and she was fine; fine enough to chase after some wolf footprints…” Sirja tracked snow on the carpet as she ran to the sofa to get the phone. Upon finding it underneath the towel, she tossed it to Kari. “Have fun.”
Kari pressed a few buttons and the phone beeped. She hit a few more buttons and held the phone to her ear. Sirja flopped onto the sofa and stretched her arms. The ice that had frozen to her clothes outside melted in streams down the leather.
“It’s not working. I don’t hear a dial tone.”
“Bring it here. I just used it.”
Kari came and sat next to Sirja atop the pile of things left there from morning. The phone was in fact not working Sirja typed the number to the village hall, but no dial tone sounded. “What the hell?” She threw the phone down hard. It bounced under the sofa.
“Ana had a fever…”
“I know, I know, but she will be fine. It is scary, but freaking out isn’t going to make the situation any better. Do you want something hot to drink? I can make you hot chocolate.”
“I want my Mommy…”
“Stop whining. You are not five. Ana needs you to be strong for her. Stay by the fire and warm up. I will get you some hot chocolate and everything will be fine.”
As Sirja stirred the milk that was heating in the saucepan on the stovetop, she noticed darkness soaked through the curtains. It wasn’t the usual darkness that signaled the return of the nearly twenty hour night, but an eerie gloom that sought to shatter the glass and attack her. The wooden spoon went limp in her hand and the smell of milk churned her stomach. Her eyes fled from the pearly white liquid back to the curtains. They should get more daylight; continuous night wares on the nerves after a while. Sirja dropped the spoon in the pan and rushed to the window. The sky was just grey. The layers of clouds the rising sun had highlighted were flattened into a fluid grey that blended like mercury into the snowy ground. A shiver ran down Sirja’s spine, but her only response was a nip at her inner lip. She took a thermos from the cabinet. She had to get Kari home before the storm raged.
“What is this?” Kari held up the novel as Sirja re-entered the living room.
“A book.” With one hand Sirja took the book from Kari and with the other gave her the drink.
“Sirja, I know what a book is, but I don’t get it. This isn’t Finnish…” Kari sipped the hot chocolate and smiled. “Thank you, Sirja.”
“It’s in English, silly. I’ve been practicing. I want to cross the ocean, to study in America.”
Kari’s eyes went wide and the thermos hovered halfway to her mouth. “But that is so far away. You are going to leave us, Sirja?” Tear drops quivered in her eyes.
“You need to go home now. It is going to storm and anyway if Ana is so sick, she shouldn’t be alone.” Sirja moved toward the front door.
“Ana needs help. Won’t you come help?” Kari shuffled after Sirja.
“What?” Sirja’s hand was on the doorknob. She could feel the cold radiating through the cracks. Outside the wind howled. Sirja did not want to look outside; there was a blizzard, she just knew it.
“Sirja?”
“The weather changed so fast.”
“Are you alright?”
Sirja whipped around and winked. “Of course. It is awesome really. I just got to get you home.” She pulled the door open and immediately snow spiraled in. Three inch tall drifts covered the porch. The yard and the street now looked like dunes of white sand, rising and falling as the wind whirled around changing direction just when it seemed the entire world was being flung one way.
Sirja grasped Kari’s hand and pulled her through the snow. Gusts of wind scattered snow, blasted them with particles of ice. She squeezed her eyes shut and shielded her face with her arm. It was probably the road beneath the snow she slogged through, but it didn’t offer any easier passage. There were no tracks to follow; even their tracks were blown away within minutes of them leaving them. All Sirja knew at that moment was no tree better pop up in front of them. Kari lived at the end of the block. It was a direct line and they would make it if the path they walked was anywhere near as straight as it seemed.
“You know why we are getting so much snow, right?” Kari asked as opening her front door.
“It’s winter? It is cold? We pretty much live on top of the world?” Sirja followed Kari into her house. Inside the air was warm and as if the heater had been on as high as it would go all night.
“No! Shhh, don’t tell anyone, but Ana told me about it. The Seer is haunting the village. Remember how you said Ana was so intrigues with the wolf prints? Well, last night after coming inside from gather wood, Ana looked really pale. I think The Seer got her then.” Kari left her coat, scarf and gloves in a pile by the door. “Come upstairs, come see Ana, Sirja.”
That is ridiculous. Ana follows tracks because she loves animals. The Seer is just an old legend…”
Sirja entered Ana’s dark room. Only the grey light that slid under and between the curtains lit the room and there was no noise—no movement, no labored breath, no whispers.”She is sleeping. I am not going to wake her. You know she needs to--”
“Sirja, he wants an answer, he longs to speak. Even the Seer gets lonely.” Kari whined. Sirja glared at Kari, but Kari just watched her sister. Blankets rustled and Ana sat up rubbed her eyes and looked in their general direction.
“Sirja?” Ana coughed into her sleeve. “Is that you?”
Sirja perched on the edge of her friend’s bed and wrapped her arm around her hunched shoulders. She touched Ana’s chin and brought her friend’s face to meet hers. Blotches of yellow stained the milky white of her eyes and across her cheeks a red rash rose like tiny peddles half submerged in sand.
“I’m here, Ana. What hurts?”
Ana hugged her knees to her chest and buried her face in them. “Hah! What doesn’t hurt? But my face…”
“It’s red. Looks like a rash, but I certainly am no doctor.”
“Rash? Does it look bad? I couldn’t stand my face being hideous.” Ana buried her face between her knees.
“You’re fine.” Sirja rubbed Ana’s back. “You actually picked a nice day to be sick. School was canceled yet again thanks to another blizzard. We are all used to snow, but, dang, this time we can’t keep up. I almost feel bad for my mom.”
“We’ve had record amounts of snow already this year.” Kari chimed in from behind. Ana lifted her head just enough to see her sister. Kari had cast away her outer shell of clothes, but ruffled hair where her hat was and a red noses and ears where a lingering indication she had violated the winter storm curfew.
“It is cold in here.” Ana pulled her sleeves over her bare hands and shivered. Her hands hand been shaking since she awoke, but now she had to hold her mouth closed to stop her teeth from clattering and sit on her hands to alleviate the shaking and growing numbness.
“Go back under the blankets.” Sirja held the layers of comforter and quilt up so Ana could slip under, but she did not move.
“Ana!” Kari climbed past Sirja and put her arms around her sister. “Why would he do this to you?”
“Kari, people get sick. It doesn’t mean there are any demonic forces at play here.” Sirja said.
“Tell her you saw The Seer, Ana. Sirja is no fun at all.”
“I don’t know if I saw The Seer, but I certainly saw a large, proud wolf while I was getting wood from the shed and he was so adorable. It was truly stunning…” Ana still didn’t move, but she had a voice. It was slow and weak, but at least audible.
A branch slammed against the house. The sound of its hit was thunderous. The wind was a drummer practicing beating his new drum sticks—the branch—against his drum-- the weathered, well-loved wooden siding. The wall closest to the impact shook but nothing collapsed or fell. The three girls didn’t dare even blink in fear the storm would throw more trees or ice at them. Outside the window the view was pure white; inside the view was almost black now that the tree blocked the afternoon’s last light from entering the room.
“I’m scared!” Kari squeezed her eyes shut so tightly her entire face scrunched. Ana gave no further response than remaining still. The wind screeched and the fallen leaves scratched against the house. It sounded as if a monster was outside poised to pounce as it tore at the wood with its curved claws.
Sirja flicked the light switch. Nothing happened. She tried again, but found no luck. “Is your light burned out?”
Ana shook her head then rolled onto her side. Her blonde hair was matted and damp from sweat and it concealed her eyes as she stared through it at the wall next to her bed.
Kari tested the other light in the room and the light in the hall, bathroom and her parent’s room; none of them worked either. A fallen tree or massive block of ice must have cut the power lines.
“It’s so dark.” Kari cried. Sirja couldn’t see her face, but she heard sniffling.
The monster that was gradually slashing its way toward them roared and ice slammed into the house. The trees moaned as the monster’s breath bent them, pushed them to the point of snapping then thrashed them in the opposite direction. The chunks of ice pelting into the roof were the monster beating the snow into dense balls with his tail in frustration at the last barrier that prevented him from reaching his targets.
Sirja pushed Ana’s hair from her face; her finger tips brushed against the rash. The skin was warm and rough like scaly, cold-blooded creature lying in the sun, but Sirja froze upon contact. Shivers pricked at her spine, gnawed at her stomach, grasped her throat until she choked. She knew that touch. In its rough mountains and valleys she found a memory, an image of yellow-skied winter storms, wolves and pain that summoned shrill screams to her mind, invoked a fear that turned her blood cold and dried her throat so completely, she couldn’t scream even if she wasn’t terrified of any noise what-so-ever.
Ten years ago when Sirja was six and her father led the village with his bright smile and silent demeanor, the moon with its lucid craters tempted her from her bed room. She sat cross-legged on her bed all bundled up to go sledding with her father, but he wasn’t home yet. Her mother said he would take only minutes longer, but she was reading now in her room because dinner was slow-cooking and would take many hours to be finished. The snow, pure, white and untouched, spanned everything Sirja could see. The moon bursting from the dark sky called to her, begged her to question the contrast between black and white, night and day, but as she slipped out her front door and bounded through the snow, her thoughts faded into light. Sirja tripped and her face hit the snow, but she just laughed and sprang up to resume her prancing. Snow fell in flakes from the trees and she chased them with her mittens and her tongue. When the ground slopped downward, Sirja rolled on her side, spraying ice on her face, lodging snow in her boots. She never even thought to shiver. The night was an amusement park and she was free to ride what she wanted. Any whining might shatter her independence, draw her home to a hot bath and her soft bed.
Sirja’s rolling came to an abrupt end. She whipped the slush from her face and looked around her. In her range of vision were tree trunks, loads and loads of more snow and legs. Two thin furry legs stuck up from the white. Sirja blinked and reopened her eyes expecting to realize her mind was simply creating patterns in the abundant snow, but the legs still existed. They were clearly defined from the snow; there were footprints nearby. Sirja inched away on her stomach. The wolf’s eyes scanned the closest line of trees. It might not have seen her. She continued to crawl away, to feel the cold, the tediousness of her escape with every bit of snow she touched. Sirja’s foot broke through ice and it cracked into three pieces sinking into the water below. The nearly frozen water soaked into her boot, her socks and bit her bare skin so sharply it stripped away the top layer of skin and left her raw and exposed to the cold, the blowing snow and the distance she did not know if she could retrace.
Sirja leapt to her feet. The wolf’s eyes were on her. She ran forward—to escape the piercing yellow eyes, to force life back into her foot. Beneath where Sirja ran was more thin sheets of ice and her swift strides cracked it. Her leg fell in first; then the rest of her body felt the punch. In the water, her body went stiff; she was frozen, as if the water froze around her trapping her in place beneath the surface. The sky above was a putrid yellow threatening to dump more snow, to once again conceal the watery trap. On the banks of snow, the grey and white wolf howled. Its head rose to glare back at the angry sky, but the snow still came and soon the wolf disappeared beneath the freshly fallen snow, into the ether. The wind took its place howling and raging as the day passed.
Sirja awoke to her father’s hand clutching her, taking her somewhere. The world bounced past, her brain bounced around in her skull, scrambling her memory of going outside, of family, of her home. The hands that held her were rough, that she distinctly remembered. For a brief moment, she braved opening her eyes and saw her father’s hands were deformed. They looked burned, but felt like a grater upon her own skin. Only with her eyes open, understanding she was alive did Sirja experience the cold. Her teeth clattered, ice clung beneath her noses and around her eyes and she coughed—coughed like she would for the next decade each time she breathed in cold air.
“I have to go!” Sirja pushed herself from the bed and was half way out the door of Ana’s room before finishing her sentence.
“What? You can’t leave Ana. I’m so scared. Ana, why won’t you talk to me?” Kari rubbed her fists into her eyes.
“There is no such thing as The Seer, Kari. Stay right where you are. I am going to get help. I will be back soon. Trust me, alright.” Sirja tried to smile, tried to meet the blizzard outside eye to eye, but both were difficult, both required a courage Sirja would rather not even think about.
Another half foot of snow had fallen while Sirja was inside. Between this and the gales her previous tracks were completely destroyed. There was basically zero visiblity. Sirja pulled her hat over her face, covering her eyes and month. She couldn’t see or breathe anyway and she had to make it to village hall without becoming an ice statue, she had to talk to her mother to ask her why all those years ago her father’s hands had been so warped. Sirja needed motion, energy to melt the ice that surrounded her, kept her frozen where she had fallen long ago.
Sirja walked into a tree once knocking some packed snow onto her head and she repeatedly had to swim through snow because she sank into drifts that were almost as tall as her and she saw no way of climbing out of those. She could only push her way through the storm hands in front of her face to deflect the worst of it. Her lungs burned as if there was a fire within them and she was coughing on the smoke. But Sirja forced herself to go on. She never got the chance to ask her father about his hands, always thought that memory had been her imagination. The family never spoke of that night. Her mother simply watched Sirja near constantly afterward, banned her from playing in the cold and ensured their house was warm to the point of something being uncomfortable.
There had only been one other time when Sirja actually violated the rule against going outside for any significant period of time. She had been thirteen and at home over winter break. Her friend Luuk threw a stone at the window and asked her to come outside with him, there was something he wanted to show her. Sirja had been reading in her room alone all day and seeing Luuk for the first time since they got out of school a week and a half ago was all the convincing she needed.
Of course Sirja coughed upon joining Luuk in the snow, but he hugged her tight, held her hand as they ran across the snowy neighborhood. That year there wasn’t nearly as much snow, the temperature was manageable with three layers of clothes and people were actually outside shoveling, walking over the slightly plowed streets and just sitting enjoying the white scenery.
“Let’s go somewhere quieter.” Luuk suggested with a grin and a sparkle in the depths of his grey eyes. Sirja just nodded watching the moon through the snow-covered branches with one eye and studying the strands of Luuk’s blonde hair that stuck out from under his fuzzy hat. They walked hand in hand toward the forest leaving the warm glow of the village behind them.
“I love snow.” Luuk said. “I wish it would snow and snow and snow until the entire world is white and everyone would have to swim through the snow to get anywhere…or get boats. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“I wish it would snow when it was warmer. The cold just makes me cough so I don’t get to enough it much.”
Luuk stopped. “Can’t enjoy the snow? That is a tragedy…I’m sorry” He frowned.
“Don’t be sad, Luuk. It makes me happy that you love winter so much even if I cannot. At school when I’m inside reading and you are all having a snowball fight or rolling around, I always watch you. I know you’ll have enough fun for both of us.”
“They make you read during recess?”
Sirja laughed swinging the hand that held Luuk’s. At that moment, winter was alright; she was warm and though her lungs and the rest of her body were starting to burn, seeing Luuk, Luuk looking at her, speaking to her made it better.
“No they make me sit in a room with the younger kids. I can do whatever I want…just quietly, but really I don’t mind reading…”
Luuk smiled again. “I’m glad. Come on, let’s go. I still want to show you something.” He led her through the snow toward the forest. Sirja chewed at her lip and tightened her grip on his hand. In the night, she always heard the wolves howl from the woods, dreamed of the trees and the wolves morphing into dark figures that led her into icy water and then didn’t even stick around long enough to watch her drown.
“Is it in the woods?” Sirja caught of glance at his eyes, which focused ahead and the white of the world reflected off them, making him surreal. Sirja’s throat went dry; he almost had to drag her closer to the line of trees.
“There is this clearing in these woods--a magical clearing. It is where The Seer lives.”
“The Seer?”
“Don’t tell me you never heard the rumors. The whole town knows the legend. Your father is the leader of the village. How can you not know?”
“I…I know…I just don’t like the story very much…” Sirja barely knew. Her parents didn’t speak of it. A few times through closed doors, she overheard them mutter about demons and eternal snow storms, but since neither were possible, she took them as seriously as the words she read in books.
“It is actually a bit of a romantic story. I don’t understand why they call him a demon. He only wanted to share--”
“Luuk, stop! I hear something.” Sirja scanned the trees, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Luuk placed his hand on her shoulder. “You are just scaring yourself, Sir. I thought you didn’t like those stories, huh?”
“The only place I don’t like is this place. I’ve been here. I don’t want to be here!” Sirja turned to flee the clearing, but a wolf blocked her path. Its yellow eyes glowed in the moonlight and upon seeing Sirja, cried to the moon.
Luuk ran in front of her. Sirja swallowed to refrain from coughing, but failed. Her lungs felt like the snow had slowly been falling on her them, but now when it finally stopped, she noticed how deep it was, how much pressure it was putting on her weakened body. Her coughing was a desperate attempt to scrape the snow away before her lungs collapsed under the weight, but she couldn’t move, think fast enough.
Heavy yellow clouds raced across the sky, blocked the moon from lighting the world. The clearing went dark except for the wolf’s eyes and the wind whipped up. The trees shuddered as snow spun around their trunks and their highest branches beat against one another. Sirja couldn’t see Luuk or the wolf; she saw darkness, maybe she had passed out, faded into the snow.
“Sirja…” The wind had to be speaking, nothing else was around Sirja. She couldn’t tell where the voice came from; she couldn’t touch the wind, sooth the longing that was entwined with the raspy voice that called her name.
“Sirja. Listen to me. Why won’t you acknowledge your Seer? He only wants to guide you, to show you who you are, who you can be.”
Sirja snapped to attention. The entire clearing was the purple waves of a small pond. She stood on one bank and a girl who wore a sparkly, silver robe was on the other. Her hair danced behind her, but she did not smile, just gazed forward with cloudy eyes.
“Who are you?” Sirja said, mouthed since there was no sound here.
“I am The Seer. I am you, but I am not your Seer.”
“What do you want with me?”
“I want to set you free…”
“I knew that wolf wanted to eat me!”
“Ah, so you saw the wolf. Truly you are blessed with love…”
“Then why do I feel cursued?”
The girl in silver’s hair stopped dancing and fell dead on her back. “So to you I am a curse? You are cursed. This entire village is cursed? This curse you speak of is nothing but reality. We are a sum of our choices, the sacrifices we make to reach our dreams.”
Sirja screamed, her voice projected through the trees, shattered the night into snowflakes that flew beside her beneath the white arms of the evergreens.
The memory stabbed at Sirja’s lungs like a white-hot spear and without oxygen, the force of the blizzard knocked her into a snow bank. Lying there, she wondered why she had even left bed that morning. She was right when she told her mother there was no reason to get up that day. Tears welled in her eyes; lying in the snow was the next best thing to bed. She wasn’t necessarily cold; she just couldn’t move, wouldn’t move. Sirja closed her eyes wishing Luuk was here to carry her home like her had that night, rub the frost from her veins. Luuk would be laughing right now, plotting how they could boat through the snow, teasing her for even considering these record amounts of snow were a curse.
The wolf trotted up and stroked his muzzle against her cheek. His soft grey fur lifted her from her abyss of memory. The wind had stopped and the sky was black again. When Sirja regained her balance the wolf was gone and she could not even see traces of its footprints. Without the gusting and blowing snow, Sirja knew where she was, could find her way to the village center to her mother and Ana’s parents.
Sirja pulled the heavy wooden door open and slid into the warm building. As she caught her breath, the door slammed behind her, but she didn’t flinch. The town square was actually shoveled so she only had to wade through feet of snow a little longer after starting off again.
“Sirja! What the hell are you doing here? You could have been killed! Why don’t you ever listen to me? What is it about freezing winds and snowfall that calls to you?” Her mother rushed into the foyer, half in tears half determined to scold her daughter.
Sirja looked at her boots to avoid looking her mother in the eyes. Her mother’s last question was a valid one, but Sirja had no answer that would be believed. Her mother didn’t believe the first time she claimed to have encountered The Seer. She said she was feverish and imagined it and blamed Luuk for letting her walk in the cold. Sirja insisted a girl in silver spoke to her, but her mother’s face just showed concern for surely her daughter was ill. Sirja spent the next four days at home, sick in bed while Luuk escaped the village, moved on to better things beyond the barriers of snow. She never saw Luuk again. His family left the village and their whereabouts became another village rumor.
“Answer me, Sirja. This is not a joke.”
“Ana is sick, Mom. Her face is covered with the same rash that deformed Father’s hands the night I almost drowned.”
“What has gotten into you, Sirja. Stop making up such things. You are going to scare someone.” Kristine gripped her daughter’s shoulder.
“Mom…no, it’s true…I don’t understand it either, but that is why I have to go, to find the truth. The Seer is calling me.”
“Oh, you are not going anywhere. The Seer is a legend, nothing more.”
“No, stop lying to yourself! Father explained the whole story to me…a few nights before…before he left.
It was two nights after Luuk brought Sirja home. She sat on the counter in the kitchen watching her father write. It was way past midnight, but since he worked at the village hall all day, the only chance he got to write to his friends around the world, the friends he met while he was a middle school teacher in the Midwestern United States, a journalist in New Zealand, a tourist in Brazil, China and all the other others in the pictures tacked on his walls, was at night after Sirja had gone to bed. But she couldn’t sleep that night, wasn’t the least bit tired then because her mother had made her sleep all day so her father allowed her to stay up with him. He even gave her sugar cookies and lemon soda, which her mother said would upset her stomach. Sirja stared over his shoulder watching his pen move spelling out words she did not understand. He wrote in English; her parents were the only people in the little village who spoke English fluently.
“Dad, can I ask you something?” Sirja crossed her arms over her chest.
“Sure, honey, what is on your mind?” He turned around when he replied so she could speak directly to him.
“It is about The Seer…Are the rumors true?”
“Well it depends really. What have you seen?” He laid his pen on the paper, got up and leaned against the counter next to Sirja.
“Mom told me I was imagining it, but I know I saw a girl with black hair and a silver dress, a wolf and the lake I once almost drowned in. She spoke to me. I’ve ended up in that place twice…I don’t understand.”
“If you saw it, how can you not understand? Was that not real enough for you?”
“But who is she?”
“Who would you like her to be?”
“I asked you the question. You are only confusing me more…” Sirja hung her head, her arms fell to her side and her messy hair fell over her eyes. Her father took her right hand in both his and patted it.
“I’m sorry, Sirja. I’m sorry I cannot answer all your questions, but I can tell you it is you who decides who she is. Let’s look at it like this...What is it you dream of most?”
“I want to leave this village and go somewhere I can be free to do what I please. I want to see the world that lies beyond these walls of snow.”
Her father smiled. “Your mother and I traveled the world before we had you. We saw six of the continents, lived and worked amongst the locals. Little can compare to those experiences…but I digress you have seen the pictures and heard our stories. The point here is the moment your mother found out she was pregnant we returned home, returned to this little village we both grew up in.”
“Why? I could have been born elsewhere, you mean…?”
“But no, you couldn’t have. The world is a scary place out there. We wanted you to be safe and happy…at least until you could make your own decisions, decide where you belong.”
Sirja crossed her arms again. “Northern Finland is scary too. You can drown or freeze or get caught in a fire because you have to have so many heaters…The whole world is a scary place.”
“Sirja. I don’t want you to feel that away about the world.”
“But it isn’t a bad at all. You never know what lies in the woods unless you explore. Nights here are so beautiful…just cold.” Sirja hopped down from the counter. “But you still haven’t answered my question. Is The Seer real?”
“It all depends on you. Do you want the legends to be true? What risks will you take?” He hugged his daughter close.
And the next week he was gone. The note he left was a metaphor in which he was a fish trapped in a tiny pond longing for the open ocean. There just wasn’t any oxygen left under the sheet of ice that capped the pond so he jumped, swam free to the world beyond. It was a world of sharks and fishing nets, but also warm breezes and the blistering sun burning over the shimmering ocean, the pastel sand. This note was in Finnish, but the other writing he left behind was not. He had been working on a novel—in English—and a few stray pages littered his desk. Regardless of whether it was ever finished, his novel was a failure. His words, stories, creations were not enough to grant his heart the freedom it yearned for. Soon after his escape, Kristine took over as village leader and Sirja became a prisoner of her mother’s paranoid-of-loss nature studying English alone and dreaming of lands beyond this village and its five hundred residents.
Sirja cried and her mother held her, gently stroking the black hair that fell from her hat. They still stood in the foyer, Ana lay ill blocks away and more snow was all but guaranteed.
“I have to go back to work. We almost have the snow plow working. Then we can clear this place up.”
“But what about Ana?” Sirja pulled away from her mother and looked up at her with her watery eyes.
“Her parents can go home to her, of course. Don’t worry a bit.” She patted Sirja on the head before turning to leave.
“I’m going back outside.” Sirja sniffled, but met her mother’s gaze.
“I know you are.” Then Kristine left the room. There was not much else to be said. Sirja yanked her hat from her head and combed her fingers through her hair. That hat produced even more static than the one she flung somewhere in her house. She plopped it back on though; the air beyond those doors was just as cold as ever.
Sirja ran outside through the tracks she had created earlier to the outskirts of town. The forest loomed ahead. It was not the home of monsters, but an opportunity to explore, to find a long-awaited answer. She stepped though the snow leaving deep foot prints wherever she crossed. Sirja covered the distance quickly, keeping her eyes on the woods. Before her two trees’s branches blocked her path. The snow covered branches tangled together and she had to pull them apart to enter into the forest. Ice hit her boots and snow wet her gloves, but Sirja just shook it off. Worse things had happened in these woods.
The clearing sat between the trees and the ice of certain spots sparkled brighter than the snow—nothing was out of the ordinary, nothing screamed dangerous or mysterious.
“I have returned. I have not fallen or been led here. I come on my own accord and I come to admit you were right. The Seer did guide, will guide me to better days.”
The wind swirled around Sirja. It was a chilly wind, but Sirja closed her eyes and embraced it. In her quest for warmth and peace, there was a place or this freezing wind and the dark night. When the wind died down, she opened her eyes and the water flowed before her--the moon casting its stream of light across the smooth surface. Sirja walked forward; she stood on one side of the water and the on the other a boy leaned against a tree smirking. His hair shone like the sun. Sirja was breathless, transfixed by even the blinking of his grey eyes.
“Luuk!” Sirja called over the water, through the open air.
Luuk waved and stood up. The smirk never left his face; his eyes were never directed at anything but Sirja. “Yo, Sir. Nice weather, huh?” Sirja heard his voice in her head, the happy voice of a child as he played in the snow, but Luuk’s mouth didn’t move.
“Luuk, what are you doing here? Where did you go…?”
Luuk shook his head. “I ran right over when I heard about all the snow you got. I was jealous.” Sirja watched his still mouth wishing the silence would quiet down so she could hear his voice.
He nodded toward the water, gazing at the waves then up at Sirja. Sirja felt her breath returning, her feet moving forward one after the other. Luuk continued to nod, faster now as she drew closer to the water’s edge.
“I have something to show you, Sirja.” Those were the words he longed to speak most; it hit her like the stone he had thrown against her window that night back when they were children.
Sirja’s eyes burned with color and clarity as she stepped to the edge of the land and peered down into the water. She stared into the disconcerting depths. The darkness was so endless, Sirja assumed this was where all their snow came from, but she continued to watch and slowly the waves came together with the light in her eyes, the light from the moon, the memory of nearly freezing to death and her love for Luuk, the boy who guided her here, who she came closer to with every bit of fallen snow, who dissolved into light on the other side of the water.
Sirja’s own reflection looked up at her, straight in the eyes. Her face was red and her clothes stained with snow in some places and completely frozen in others. But she smiled and spoke clearly in English. “I will see the world. I will be free.”
Then Sirja ran from the clearing, out of the woods disturbing the tracks she left earlier. Wolves howled as she fled, a lone wolf dashed parallel to her, but she barely noticed and it faded before she re-entered the village.
Upon reaching her block, Sirja went straight to Ana’s home. She had to see her mission to help her friend through before she could return to her reading. Ana’s mother had returned home so a fire burned in the fire place sending a warm glow through-out the room. Ana sat on the sofa with a blanket wrapped around her. Sirja just waved when her friend noticed her presence.
“Feeling better?” Sirja asked.
“Where have you been?” Ana gaped then looked away holding in laughter.
“What? I was helping you, you know.”
“You’re a mess, Sirja. You know that? You are a mess in every sense of the term. But I love you anyway. Want to watch a movie?”
“Not if you have an infectious disease or something else I might catch and be even more of a mess…”
Ana frowned. “You know, you really scared me when you said I had a rash on my face. I thought I was deformed or something. That was mean...”
“But you did…do!” The rash was there, but now the bumps were more swollen than rough and gravely.
“My mother said it is an allergic reaction to something in our wood. I must have been so dazed by seeing the wolf, I wasn’t paying attention to anything else. I don’t know, but it hurts.”
Sirja plopped down on the sofa next to her friend. “Let’s just watch a movie—as long as we can have English subtitles.”
“What?”
“If I’m going to study in another country, I have to practice somehow.” Sirja leaned back and smiled. Ana looked at Sirja through the corners of her eyes before getting up to rummage through her collection of movies. Outside, snow fell lightly and frost crept closer to the insulated windows, but Sirja just stretched. There really was no reason to move anymore that particular day.
_________________
~The children the world almost broke become the adults who save it~
I know, should realise
Time is precious, it is worthwhile.
Despite how I feel inside,
Have to trust it will be all right.
Have to stand up to be stronger
The Happy Toaster (my blog)
Subject: Re: Writers 
Thu Aug 27, 2009 1:19 am
Very good job on explaining in 
thank you Rob < 3
