14. The Funeral
The Funeral
Before Ulrika’s tragic death, I hated my invisibility because of how it affected me.
Because of everything it took from me. Because it made me feel lonely and lost, bleak and miserable—a ship adrift on an uncharted course.
Like an insidious thief creeping through the dark, it stole from me all the things I watched others get to have.
Such hatred was a selfish kind of thing. It was about me. My feelings. My loss. And yet it fed me and kept me going these many years. It warmed me and put me on a path, directed me on a quest to find the creature who did this to me and make her pay.
I’d walked the woods every night without fail, with purpose, the routine as embedded as breathing, determined but apprehensive of facing a creature with the power to steal a life, to take it without ending it.
Only powerful magic could do that, and fear pounded hard inside me, as constant as my own heart beneath the wall of my chest. Only a fool wouldn’t fear a witch with the power to turn me into this: nothingness, a void, dead space.
I’d always sensed her presence. She was close. So close. I clung to the belief that it would happen eventually. I’d find her, and the spell would be broken.
But now the damage went beyond me. It wasn’t just me. I was no longer solely affected.
The spell that ruined me had ruined another. Several people, in fact. Lives irrevocably destroyed. Because a witch had decided to toy with me, I watched helplessly as Linnea’s daughter fell into the fire. I could do nothing to save the child.
The fear of that witch out there, lurking, watching, left me then. There was no more apprehension.
I no longer feared her.
She needed to fear me.
I grieved alongside Linnea, staying with her, telling myself she needed me, but it was really me that needed her to survive this heartbreak.
I needed her to make some effort at life. I knew it was soon, only a couple days since the accident, and she was allowed her grief, but the way she didn’t react to anything or anyone around her was alarming. She simply sat and stared, unblinking, not speaking, not drinking, not eating.
Linnea’s mother had suffered a malady a year ago and was not very strong on her feet anymore.
She was bound to bed or a chair, so Linnea’s cousin, Skadi, stayed with her, helping with the children and tending Linnea’s wounds.
She had badly burned her hands trying to pull her daughter from the fire.
Maretta had been sent for, and I’d watched as the healer examined the damage.
I could tell from her grave expression that the burns were not merely superficial. They were serious.
Skadi dressed Linnea, washing and brushing her long hair and tucking it under a fresh headscarf for the funeral, all the while gently murmuring, “You want to look nice for Ulrika, don’t you, coz?”
Of course Linnea didn’t respond—not even when Skadi checked her wounds and reapplied the poultice Maretta had given her for the charred, ravaged skin.
It was white in places where the flesh was completely destroyed, and I wondered if she felt the wounds at all anymore.
Was sensation completely gone? Perhaps that was why she did not flinch.
Or perhaps her grief had driven out the ability to feel all physical pain.
Skadi forced sips of water down past Linnea’s dry lips, making certain she swallowed some of the drink and not all of it dribbled down her chin.
I’d seen very little of Isak since the accident.
Since he first roared like an injured animal, picking up a chair and flinging it across the room, striking the wall and splintering the chair into bits.
Grief was a messy business. No one reacted in the same way.
Linnea shut down and turned into a statue whilst Isak succumbed to a violent rage before storming off.
He only reappeared for the funeral—that terrible, wretched affair that brought peace to no one.
Ulrika’s remains were burned—again—on the pyre. The smoke hung heavy on the air, a penumbra over the village that felt permanent.
Afterward, mourners gathered in the tight confines of Isak and Linnea’s home, making muted conversation and nibbling on the salted fish and cakes brought in by neighbors. All except Isak’s mother.
The older woman did not even make a pretense of eating.
Her bloodshot eyes remained fastened on Linnea, who stared fixedly into the fire crackling in the hearth.
The same hearth Ulrika had tripped and fallen in.
The screen was back in place. There were plenty of children about, so the precaution was still necessary.
Although with so many adults in attendance, no child would stray into such a dangerous situation. Not again.
Linnea’s face was blank as a piece of parchment. Her eyes dull and unblinking. I spoke to her several times, whispering words of love and encouragement as though they might somehow reach her and give comfort.
She held a rag doll in her lap, Ulrika’s favorite toy, the one the child had slept with each night.
Isak had attempted to place it on the pyre with the child’s remains, but Linnea had burst into action, waking temporarily from her torpor and snatching it back with a cry.
“No! Give it to me! You won’t destroy it! She loved it!”
She’d clung to the doll like it was Ulrika herself she was saving from the pyre. After that, she fell mute again, holding the lifeless doll with its button eyes and string lips in her lap, the slightest rock to her body as she regarded the flames.
Over the low hum of conversation, a voice suddenly cracked out across the house with the force of lightning, the words choking on a sob, “How could you? How could you?” It was Isak’s mother.
Linnea flinched but did not look up from the flames. She heard, of course. She was still in there, even if buried away, and the accusing words were no doubt knifing through her.
Everyone froze, watching with varying expressions. Some horrified. Some gratified that the woman they all thought responsible for Ulrika’s death was finally being properly censured.
Linnea’s mother-in-law lunged from where she sat beside a table groaning from the uncustomary weight of food, the contribution of mourners.
“You stupid cow!” She reached Linnea, striking her with her thick-knuckled fists. “You’re useless! You killed her! It’s your fault! Your fault!”
Isak and one of his brothers snatched hold of the older woman and ushered her from the house. She collapsed in her sons’ arms, her angry words muffled, melting into sobs as she disappeared outside.
Linnea remained frozen, a thin line of blood trickling from her nose, where she was struck. She gazed into the fire, indifferent to everything happening around her.
Eventually the house emptied. Even Skadi left. She had her own children to tend, and her husband was a bit of a tyrant. After the funeral he demanded Skadi return home to their family to resume her duties. I watched helplessly as she left, pleading on deaf ears for her to stay for Linnea’s sake.
Isak’s sister stepped up and took Linnea’s other children with her.
At least there was that. A necessary reprieve.
Neither Linnea nor Isak were in any shape to care for them.
I told myself Linnea would eventually return to herself and be well enough to be a mother again.
Her love for Stefan and the babe would bring her back.
For hours, Linnea and Isak stared into the hearth, the site of their daughter’s accident.
Accident. It felt like such a mild and trivial word, minimizing the magnitude of their loss.
After some time, Isak blinked and turned to his wife with a sigh, as though remembering her presence. He gazed at her for a long moment with her waxy skin and flat, empty eyes. Then, without a word, he left the house, the door thudding after him as he left his wife alone where she sat.
I sank down on the bench beside her, compelled to stay with her. Someone had to be there for her, even if it was just me.
She sat with her eyes wide open, awake yet asleep. Alive yet dead. I understood that more than I wanted to.
She didn’t move an inch all through the night, but that did not mean there was nothing happening inside her.
Just as no one heard me, no one heard her either. And yet I knew. Behind that silent facade, behind those dead eyes and unmoving lips, she was still there.
And she was screaming.