13. Keeper of Secrets #2
Sometimes I wondered if they could see me. The animals I encountered recognized me. As with animals, perhaps there was something within the very young, an unfiltered innocence, a lack of cognition, that saved them from a witch’s spell and made them immune to its magic.
“Stefan and Ulrika,” Linnea chastised the twins, “stop playing with your food.”
The two toddlers, the result of Isak’s three thrusts in an ice shack, hesitated only a moment at their mother’s reprimand, glanced at each other, and as though through some implicit agreement went back to flinging their soggy meal at each other.
Ulrika, the spitting image of her mother with her enormous dark eyes, grabbed a fistful of apples and oats, the yellow-gray mush escaping between her chubby fingers as she raised her hand and launched the contents at her harried mother.
“Ulrika!” Linnea sputtered, oats and bits of apples speckling her face and headscarf.
The toddlers shrieked with laughter, banging plump fists and rattling the crockery on the table. I shook my head, marveling at the destruction such tiny people could wreak.
The babe in Linnea’s arms went still, her head bobbing back as she watched the spectacle of her mother in gape-mouthed wonder. I felt my own lips twitch.
Linnea was a sight. She did not appear to find humor in the moment as I did.
She blinked long and hard, as though willing herself somewhere else—or at least willing this situation away.
She released a long huff of breath. Her eyes grew wet and red-rimmed.
Her head drooped, clearly overcome. She looked down, averting her face, not even reacting when her baby tugged hard at her scarf, pulling it from her hair with a crow of triumph.
I winced. “Come now. You’re doing fine,” I soothed my friend, stepping closer and catching a whiff of her.
She smelled ripe, and I wondered when she had last bathed.
The hair now exposed was oily and in need of washing.
“This will pass,” I said, pretending I knew the first thing about rearing children.
“They’re only babies now. But not forever. ”
Of course Linnea couldn’t hear me, but that didn’t stop me from talking.
She lifted her head and stared bleakly at her children, taking them all in as though they were something alien that she had never seen before, strangers that had arrived uninvited into her home.
I continued, “Soon they will be babies no more. They will grow, and before you know it, they will be staring you in the eye, talking to you . . . their own people that love and help you through your day, that ease your burdens.”
At least that was the thing I always heard parents say over the years. It felt the thing to say to her in this lowest of low moments. Not that she could hear me.
I always talked. It kept me grounded. Steady on the days when I most felt like I was unraveling. The sound of my voice was usually for my sake. My words ringing in my ears served as a testament, proof that I was still here. Not gone. Not a ghost. Even if unheard and unseen and unremembered.
Except today the sound of my voice was for her. For my friend. Even if she did not know it.
Linnea stared with a glassy-eyed expression that I could not read, appearing very much like the one who needed to be saved from unraveling.
“Come now,” I clucked. “Ulrika will be wearing your clothes and itching to leave this place and your overbearing rule soon enough.” Like all children chafing against the authority of their parents.
Like me. I had been so eager to leave I’d run headlong into the prison I now found myself trapped in.
For six years. I swallowed against the thickness in my throat.
“When that happens, you will miss these days.”
I sat down at the table in Isak’s spot, his breakfast plate and cup still sitting where he’d left it, picked clean with nary a crumb on it, unlike the rest of the mess littering the table and floor.
With a mutter, Linnea finally moved, spinning around, moving to the little annex room where she did their laundry and kept all their cleaning supplies. I watched idly from Isak’s seat, elbows on the table, crossing my legs and swinging a booted foot in the air, awaiting her return.
In the absence of her mother, Ulrika slid down from her perch on the bench, the belt strapping her in place coming loose.
Or maybe Linnea had not fully secured it?
I wasn’t sure, but I sat up straighter as the child slid free, her stockinged feet landing silently on the wood planks of the kitchen.
A mischievous light glinted in her eyes, a warning to be heeded.
“Where are you going?” I glanced toward the annex, willing Linnea to return before—
Ulrika, very adept on her feet for such a small toddler, moved from the table to seize hold of the poker beside the fire. Even though it was summer, every house lit a fire and kept it smoldering through the day to cook food.
Brown curls bouncing, Ulrika staggered beneath the weight of the iron, her little hands fisting determinedly around the rod.
“Linnea!” I shouted, my body lifting up from where I sat as I glanced anxiously toward the annex where my friend had disappeared, urging her to return and take her child in hand. “You need to get back in here!”
Linnea didn’t return.
I watched helplessly as Ulrika toddled closer to the hearth, using the poker to clumsily nudge aside the screen, as she had doubtlessly seen her mother and father do countless times when tending the fire.
Her brother laughed and clapped his chubby hands at her antics in approval, jiggling against his strap, clearly wishing to be free to join her.
“Ulrika!” I shouted futilely as the child squeezed past the screen and leaned in precariously close to take a stab at the flames in a weak imitation of Linnea stoking the fire.
The girl’s giggles bubbled up delightedly as she attacked the flames that crackled higher than her tiny body.
She brandished the unwieldy metal stick with gleeful determination, plunging it into the fiery nest until it caught on a burning log.
The tip snagged on the crumbling wood and Ulrika lost her balance, pitching forward so easily, so quickly in that way top-heavy toddlers do when unbalanced.
I screamed, lunging forward even as I knew there would be no reaching her, no getting to her.
No saving her.
I could touch nothing. Make no contact.
The small body fell forward and instantly became one with the fire in a great gust of spark and flame.
The child’s anguished shrieks were like nothing I had ever heard before. The sound vibrated in my ears as red-orange flames that snapped blue at the center devoured Ulrika.
And I could do nothing but watch.
Watch and unleash my silent scream.