A heavy snow had blanketed the countryside the night before Epiphany. Days later some of the drifts were still as high as Siiri’s nose as she trudged down the village’s narrow lane. Her father left for the church building before the sun was up, forgetting all about the bread they had set aside for his breakfast the night before. She pulled her hat down tightly around her ears as a gust of frigid air swept down her path.
Arvi, her younger brother, was still asleep when she left. No doubt he would hardly have stirred by the time she returned, placid in the warmth of the fire that she carefully stoked just before stepping quietly outside. Her father had marked the beginning of the boy’s fourth winter on Christmas Eve by making him a gift of a tiny, carved wooden sword—no bigger than a man’s finger, really. Siiri wondered whether the joy she felt when she saw his eyes light up was merely that of a sister or something more motherly, for in truth she thought of the boy almost as her own child. She had, after all, lived sixteen winters, and little Arvi—though he resembled her rather closely—was only her half-brother, the son of her father’s second wife who died giving birth to the boy.
Finding the knocker fused to the door with a gnarled layer of ice, she merely let herself inside. No one would be at the humble church building at that hour but her father, and she knew he would not be cross with her for delivering his food.
“Isä, I’ve brought your—”
“Shut that door and come in quickly,” came the reply.
She obeyed hastily, pushing against the door with her shoulder to keep the winter air at bay. Her father was often grave in his manner, but almost never curt. Something troubled him, she thought, assuming it had something to do with his duties as pastor’s assistant of their humble parish.
“You left your bread. I brought you a bit of cheese to go with it too.”
“Set it down there,” he said, gesturing to the familiar, three-legged stool in the corner. It was her grandfather’s handiwork, but the craftsman himself she rarely saw though he lived just on the outskirts of their town. Once, she overheard some of the older women saying that he and isä had not spoken to one another since the day isä remarried. Siiri did not know whether it was true; as a girl she had been too timid to ask her father about it and now as a young woman she thought it unwise.
“Will your work keep you long this morning?”
“I don’t know. I need you to do something.”
He crossed the tiny room that served both as a bedchamber for the pastor when he came to town and a makeshift study. Stooping down he retrieved a small wooden box, about as long and wide as Siiri’s forearm and hardly more than a handbreadth deep. It was stained a dark color and covered with a simple lid to match. He held it out to his daughter who dutifully accepted it; she felt something shift inside, but the wind outside muffled any sounds that might have revealed its contents.
She looked up at him. His expression was a mixture of anxiety and resolve … and something else she could not quite identify at that moment.
“You must take this to our home and hide it. Ask no questions, but simply obey me in this. Tell no one of its whereabouts and do not move it from the hiding place unless …”
“Unless what, isä?”
“Unless you absolutely must.”
“But how will I—”
“No more questions, please, Siiri. You are no longer a child. If the time comes to remove it from hiding, I trust you will know.”
She nodded. Placing the box under her arm, she adjusted her hat and refastened the top clasp of her coat in preparation to face the cold once more. The girl turned to go, but her father gently caught her arm.
“Don’t speak of this to Arvi. He … I don’t want him …”
“Yes, isä. I’ll be sure to hide it before waking him.”
Her father nodded slowly then clasped her in a warm embrace. Perhaps other men of the village could be too sparing with their affections, but he had never been such a one. Nevertheless, she felt as if he kept her in his arms, face pressed against the familiar roughness of his overcoat, just a moment or two longer than he ordinarily would have.
Siiri stepped outside to find that the wind was dying down. Wisps of smoke rose nearly as straight as arrows from every house. By that time of the morning she would have expected at least some of the familiar sounds of the village’s activities, yet some unusual silence lay over everything. Even the crunch of her boots on the snow seemed muffled. She had an idea why the townspeople might not be about their usual business that morning, but she pushed it out of her mind. Though some of the village’s mothers treated her as one of their own number, Siiri had come to realize that childish ignorance provided a kind of comfort that one did not truly appreciate until it was gone.
Without the sounds of the village’s usual morning activities perhaps, Siiri thought, Arvi would still be sleeping by the time she returned home. She pushed their door open as quietly as she could, tensing momentarily as it reached the point in its arc that usually produced a harsh creak. Only when there was no sound did she remember that her father oiled the hinge just a few days earlier. A thin sliver of light knifed across the cottage’s single room, illuminating the ruddy cheeks of her little brother who was, despite her efforts, awake.
“What’s in that box?” he said. The back of a chubby hand rose involuntarily to rub at one of his eyes.
“Nothing for you,” she said. She had not meant to be sharp with the boy whose natural curiosity seemed to exceed all his other boyish traits. “I only mean isä says I’m not supposed to tell you.” No doubt that would make the boy suspect it was a present, but it was the truth. “Now turn toward the wall, close your eyes, and sing the ‘Our Father’ while I hide it. No peeking or else.”
Arvi did as he was told. He began singing in a voice that teetered on the edge between the shrill and the sublime.
“Isä meidän, joka olet taivaissa …”
Siiri tip-toed toward the hearth. “Sing a little louder. I don’t want you to hear and get any clues.”
“Pyhitetty olkoon sinun nimesi,” Arvi continued.
She crouched down to the left of the fire, quickly testing the temperature of the stones by extending her palm. Finding that it was sufficiently cool, Siiri set the box to one side and then worked her fingers under the edge of the stone with the distinctive streak across its face. She lifted it up, finding the small space underneath empty; it would be just large enough to fit the box. The only thing she had ever seen in the space before was a small bag of money that her father kept there when the town took up a collection to make improvements to the church building. He had entrusted her with the location of his hiding spot then, saying, “You are old enough now. Only your mother ever knew that this is here.”
“Sillä sinun on valtakunta ja voima ja kunnia iankaikkisesti. Aamen,” Arvi concluded, just as Siiri returned the stone to its place.
“Don’t turn over yet,” she said.
“You really can’t tell me about the box?”
“No. Now come over here closer to the fireplace while I stoke these coals and get you something to eat.”
She set about her work as the boy climbed down from the bed and trundled up to her side. He was still in his night shirt—the one she used to wear and had mended more times than she could count—and was draggin one of the quilts along with him, wrapped around his little shoulders and trailing behind him like the train of some great lord.
“There’s a bit of sausage left. I’ll just warm it up in the pan.”
“I’m tired of that sausage,” Arvi whined. “Don’t we have anything else?”
The coals were gleaming a bright orange once more. Siiri leveled them a bit before setting the pan down.
“I like the porridge better,” he continued.
Siiri ignored the comment as she retrieved the sausage from where she hung it the day before, just above the hearth. She did not doubt that Arvi was thinking only of the special porridge they had for the Christmas season, sweetened with the last of the lingonberries that their father set aside for that special observance. Porridge they kept in relative abundance, but the berries were a delicacy for which they must wait until summer.
“Is your bowl ready?” she asked, peering at the boy out of the side of her eye. He let the quilt slip off his shoulders and hastily scurried over to where Siiri kept the washbin and the family’s few dishes. A thin smile creased her lips as she heard him clunkily searching for his bowl. It was one of only a very few things in the house that were decidedly his; the grin on his face when he returned to his place under the quilt was as proud a one as Siiri had ever seen.
“There you are,” she said. A tiny bit of grease spilled out of the pan and into his bowl along with the last few pieces of sausage. It wasn’t much, but Arvi was still rather small and rarely ate much for breakfast in any event.
“What are we going to do today, Siiri?” he asked after the first bite or two.
“We have our chores, of course,” she replied. “After that I suppose we should—”
Just then there was a banging on the door. Siiri expected no one at that early hour and the knocking was more hurried than usual for a social caller. She got up from her place near the fire, gesturing to Arvi to finish eating, and called out “Who is it?” before cracking the door open.
“Is your father here?” came the breathless answer. The face, nearly pressed into the narrow gap of the door, was that of Akseli Termonen whose modest farm was on the eastern edge of town.
“No, he’s at the church building.”
Akseli sprang away from the door, nearly closing it on Siiri’s fingers in his haste.
“What is it?” she called out after him, but whether he did not hear or was in too much of a hurry the result was the same.
“Who was that?” Arvi asked. He had just put the last piece of sausage in his mouth and his curiosity got the better of his manners.
“It was Farmer Termonen.”
“What did he want?”
“I don’t know.” It was only a half truth, she knew, but until she learned the reason the man was seeking her father she considered it best not to take a chance at alarming her younger brother. “Make the bed and then we’ll feed the goats.”
Arvi straightened the bed as well as his hands could manage; Siiri would improve on his work later when he was distracted. A few minutes later they had bundled up against the cold and trudged around the corner of the house to the modest barn where the goats awaited. Siiri tossed straw down from the loft and Arvi gathered as much as his arms could carry before he deposited it in the feeding trough. His flaxen hair poked out from underneath his little red cap, every bit as straight as the load he carried, though much finer and softer. Before long, of course, the boy would grow too big for the cap and only a few years after that the straw-like hair would begin to sprout from his upper lip and under his chin. For the time, however, Siiri would never miss a chance to bask in her brother’s innocence.
They returned to the house and Siiri was deciding whether to continue teaching Arvi his numbers or his letters first that day. Arvi was playing with his miniature sword. A gust of wind blew the door open and Siiri rose to fasten it more securely. Before she could close it, however, she was met with a confusing sight: men were sprinting down the lane, ducking in and out of houses—some of them were carrying pitchforks or other tools. A moment later the scene grew even more unusual when she saw a man pushing a roughhewn sled. He wore a red cap that matched the one Arvi had hung up by the fire only minutes before.
“Pappa!” Siiri cried out before she realized it. It had been weeks since she had seen her grandfather, months since she had spoken to him, and years since his face had appeared near her father’s doorstep.
“Bring your brother and come quickly,” he said. “You’ll have to ski or else I won’t be able to push the sled.
“What is it?” She took a tentative step out into the snow.
“Questions later. Coat, boots—hurry! There’s no time!”
Siiri retreated inside. “Arvi, get dressed. We have to go out.”
“Why?”
“Come quickly and you can meet Pappa.”
The boy’s face lit up and he scurried away to put on his boots and coat. Siiri had never told the child that he had a grandfather, but somehow he found out. Their father said nothing when the boy asked about him. Later, Siiri explained what grandparents were; he seemed to understand, though only somewhat dimly. The boy had only ever known a father and a sister, making it difficult for his young mind to grasp the idea of other family relations.
While he was busy with clothing himself against the cold, Siiri retrieved the box her father entrusted to her. She could not have put into words exactly how she knew that was the moment her father had spoken of, but her intuition that she should take the box with them was too strong to resist.
“Walk quickly, Arvi.”
Older sister grasped the mittened hand of younger brother firmly as they stepped outside and made their way across the snow-blanketed yard. It made it harder to carry both the box and the skis, but the boy would not otherwise have kept up the pace.
“Will Pappa like me?” he whispered.
“Of course.”
Siiri supposed it must be true, though no one ever spoke of it. She always noticed the way that the gray-headed residents of the village delighted in bouncing the children on their knees or secretly passing them treats to eat. Dim memories of her own Pappa suggested that he was no different. But Arvi was the son of another woman. That should make no difference, she had always thought, but if she had learned anything by that point in her life it was that people did not always act as one would expect them to.
Though the sled was only half loaded, Siiri noticed that among the cargo were two items she never remembered seeing with her grandfather before: an axe and a crossbow. The old man made no attempt to hide weapons.
“Put the boy there.” Pappa removed the axe from its place, looping the stout handle through the leather strap that encircled his waist. He squinted slightly at Siiri’s cargo and said, “You can put the box in his lap.”
The little one eagerly clambered his way into the sled, somehow managing to maintain his balance despite keeping his eyes locked on his grandfather. “I’m Arvi, Pappa.”
The old man grunted and extended his hand slightly, as if he were going to pat the child on his head, but pulled back. Siiri almost missed the half-gesture as she adjusted her skis.
“Try to keep up. We have to move quickly.”
“Where are we going, Pappa?” Arvi asked.
Siiri marveled at the boy’s innocence and grieved for what she was sure would be its impending loss.
“You’ll see when we get there,” she replied. She did not know whether Pappa would spare Arvi’s infantile emotions. The old man said nothing, but nodded his head in agreement, while the young boy smiled up at his sister, seemingly satisfied with her vague answer.
For her own part, though she did not know exactly what her grandfather had in mind, over the past weeks she had gleaned enough information from her father and assorted town gossips to have a general but well-formed idea of the danger they were in. King Sigismund’s name was known to all; that he was from Poland and that he was a Roman Catholic, she knew well, but hardly a whit else. That winter some conflict arose between one of the king’s men—Fleming was his name, she thought—and Jaakko Ilkka, who was a landowner in a neighboring region of the country. The fighting might have been more about the conflict between Swedish nobility and Finnish peasants than it was the conflict between Catholics and Lutherans, but such things were beyond her ken. Theirs had always seemed a simple life, but would that be the day when that changed forever?
Siiri shuffled alongside her grandfather’s sled at a moderate pace. She breathed faster, but was not yet truly laboring. Glancing over at Pappa, she saw no signs of exertion; his face was set like stone and the only trace of activity was the breath that steamed from his mouth and nose. Leaning gently forward to get up a slight rise in the path, one of her ropey braids fell across her shoulder; it was then she realized that in her haste to retrieve her father’s box she had forgotten her own hat. Before she had a moment to bemoan her blunder and the discomfort that would inevitably follow, an unusual sound fell upon her ears. It was faint, at first, so that if the forgotten hat had been covering her ears it might have escaped her notice. As much as anything else it made her think of the way that the pots and pans would clank together on Einar the tinker’s cart whenever he came to town. But it was not Einar, she knew.
Looking back she saw the line of men-at-arms, with two or three mounted knights at its head, marching steadily up the road that led into town. They were more than close enough for her to see that many of them wore heavy armor, yet not not quite close enough to make out their faces. Siiri had suspected—though deep in her mind it felt more like certain knowledge—that her family’s hasty exodus was owing to impending violence. Never had she been more distraught that one of her suspicions turned out to be true.
“Keep your eyes ahead, girl,” her grandfather barked. “And hurry.”
Tamping down thoughts of where they were going and where isä was, Siiri quickened her strides. Arvi craned and stretched his neck, but could see nothing from where he was seated in the front of the sled. A minute later, Pappa turned the sled off the path that would have led to the next town, pointing them instead toward the rock outcropping that stood to the south. It was an unmistakable landmark that signaled one’s approach to the town from almost every direction; on a typical summer’s day a handful of children could be seen scaling its low sides and inventing all kinds of games or fairy worlds. On that day, however, the rock formation was smothered under a layer of snow, a cold, imposing prominence jutting out from the surrounding plain.
Positioning them so that the rocks stood between them and the town, Pappa wrestled the sled back into a small alcove. Arvi climbed down from his seat and started to walk toward the side of the rock wall. Pappa snatched the boy’s collar; the eyes of both child and man grew large for an instant at the shock of the action.
“Sit here and help me load my crossbow,” he said softly, bowing forward to bring their faces close together, punctuating his words with a smile and a wink. “You hand me the bolts and your sister will go look and tell us what she sees.”
No doubt the boy had been on the verge of tears, but the prospect of handling a real weapon placated him. He seated himself at Pappa’s feet. A worried expression began to spread across the boy’s face and Siiri watched in amazement as he reached out, hugging his grandfather’s leg and pressing his cheek to the old man’s knee. Pappa cast a sidelong glance down at Arvi and continued preparing the crossbow.
“What do you see?”
Siiri turned her gaze back toward the town. Already, columns of black smoke billowed upward; bright flames swept across the roof of the church building.
“Fire, Pappa.”
She turned and slid to the ground with her back against the cold rock. A handful of snow dropped from the ledge where she had looked over, falling down her back, but she hardly noticed. The town where Siiri had grown up—the only home she had ever known—would surely be reduced to ashes.
“Siiri! Siiri!” Pappa called, snapping her out of her torpor. “Stand back up there, girl! We must keep watch.”
She pushed herself to her feet, willing her eyes to focus on the distant village. How much time had passed she could not tell but the scene had changed. The smoke and fire remained, but added to them was a line of soldiers between the town and the rocks where she and her brother and grandfather took refuge.
She turned back toward Pappa, trying as best as she could not to betray her emotions with a facial expression that even little Arvi would be sure to understand.
“Arvi, cover your ears and hum the ‘Our Father’ to yourself—quietly. I need to tell Pappa a secret.”
Arvi gave his sister an uncertain look, but did as he was told.
“The soldiers are leaving town. They’re coming in our direction. What do we—”
“We do nothing until we have to. No reason they’d suspect anyone is hiding here nor any reason to think they’d be looking to do anyone else harm after they’ve burnt the village. We’ll keep quiet and wait for them to pass on.”
“But what if …”
“We do nothing until we have to.”
Pappa motioned for her to come sit with Arvi. She traded places with her grandfather and her brother climbed into her lap. Siiri pulled him closer to herself, as much for comfort as for the extra warmth. Several minutes passed while Pappa peered over the edge of the rocks, sporadically adjusting the grip on his crossbow.
“Pass me the axe,” he whispered. He had removed it when they left town in order to more easily push the sled, but now placed it back in position at his waist.
“Pappa—” Arvi started to say, but the old man cut him off with a shushing sound and a finger to his lips. He inclined his head ever so slightly to his right and Siiri followed his gaze. The soldiers were passing away from the town and could now be seen beyond the other side of the rocks. As long as Siiri, Arvi, and Pappa remained still and silent the armed men would never know they were there. The peril was nearly past, then, she thought; they needed only to wait.
It seemed to take the men forever to disappear over the horizon. Arvi had done remarkably well to remain in place for so long—rare was the boy his age who could do such a thing—and Siiri thought it would only be a few minutes more before the last of the men would be out of sight at last. Then they could return to town, though what they would find there she shuddered to think about; by now the columns of smoke had drifted far enough that they could be seen clearly even from where she was seated behind the rocks.
Two sharp clicks from her grandfather’s tongue brought her attention back to the present. “There’s one coming back, straight toward us. I’ll have to come out , but you and Arvi can get away. Listen closely and I’ll give you a sign to run.”
“What? Pappa, no! Stay with us. Please.”
He shook his head resolutely. “It’s the only way. They can’t find out that you’re here; they can’t find your father’s box.”
“You know what’s in the box?” she glanced down at where she had placed the item on the sled.
“It’s not hard to guess what your father would keep in there. Stay quiet and get ready. You’ll be safe, girl, I promise.”
Pappa examined something on the crossbow—though what it was, Siiri could not have said—then slipped around the side of the rocks. For what seemed like a long time Siiri heard nothing. Then, above the sound of the swirling winds, she heard her grandfather yell, “Get out of here!” Knowing that must be the sign, she scooped up Arvi and was just about to run away from the rocks to the distant line of trees when she remembered the box. She went back to retrieve it and heard the unmistakable thwack of the crossbow firing. A cry of anguish rang out, but it was followed quickly by bellowing rage. Pappa must have missed. The clash of metal upon metal was next to come as axe and mail collided, glanced off one another, and then repeated the grim liturgy.
Siiri realized at that moment that she would not be able to carry both Arvi and the box. In the deep snow the boy would never be able to keep up, yet she could not bear the thought of leaving the box to be discovered and its precious contents—whatever they may have been—to be destroyed. It was just then, however, that a memory sprung to her mind. Many were the times that she and the other children of the village played at those rocks, yet she had been the first to find the hiding place. One needed to squeeze under a low ledge, then through a narrow crevice that led to a hollowed out place. It was big enough only to hold two or three children, yet once inside it was totally concealed from view. It would be cold and cramped, but it was their only chance. She scolded herself for not thinking of it sooner.
Siiri saw the frightened look on Arvi’s face. “We’ll be safe if we stay quiet. That’s what Pappa wanted.”
She could see tears welling up in her brother’s eyes, but he followed her as quickly as his little feet could take him. At first he was afraid to pass beneath the ledge, but Siiri held his hand and he crept through. She set the box down and pushed it through before following herself. Once in place, she placed the box on the ground and sat on it, wrapping Arvi in her coat and closing it over his head. This kept them both a trifle warmer and muffled the sounds of the boy’s soft crying.
Wind whistled through the rocks, but it was not enough to drown out the sounds of the struggle outside. Siiri heard Pappa straining and grunting; the other man seemed to match him blow for blow. Before long, however, she could tell that the old man was running out of strength. He let out a thundering cry which was followed by a sickening crunching sound and then all was quiet.
Siiri waited for what felt like an eternity. She was sure that the other soldiers would come looking for their missing man and she was proved correct. About the time the sun had passed directly overhead, she heard voices.
“I told you we shouldn’t have sent Tuomas.”
The first voice was interrupted by the sound of another man retching.
“The first time you’ve seen a man lose his head, I suppose?” the first man said with a laugh. “It probably won’t be the last, so you’d better get used to it.”
“What about the old man?” asked the second man. “Is he dead too?”
“No. You can see him breathing. With all that blood … he won’t last long. Let’s go.”
“But what about Tuomas? The … body?”
“No time. The peasants will see to the burial, devout fools that they are.”
The voices carried on in conversation but slowly faded away. Siiri waited a long time after they left her hearing before she dared move. How much had Arvi heard? How much would he understand?
She unwrapped his head and face. Peering down into his eyes she said, “Stay here and don’t make a sound. I’ll be right back.”
“Siiri!”
“Shh. We must keep quiet until we know it’s safe.”
The boy’s bottom lip began to quiver, but he balled up his little fists in his mittens and nodded slowly.
Siiri emerged from the hiding place and climbed carefully to the highest point of the rocks, staying as flat as possible against the snowy surface to avoid detection. When she reached the top, however, her fear of discovery proved unnecessary. She scanned the horizon in every direction, but not even the trace of another human appeared, let alone the mass of violent men she feared. The fires in the village had died out almost completely; only thin wisps of gray smoke rose from the hollowed remains of houses and barns. The one thing she could not see from her vantage point was Pappa. Quickly, she climbed down and returned to fetch Arvi and the box.
It did not take the pair long to find their grandfather. By the sounds of the struggle and the direction in which Pappa had left them, Siiri was fairly sure where they would find him. What worried her was what they would find when they got there. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a fleeting glimpse of what must have caused the second soldier to become sick. She jerked her head away, shielding her eyes with one hand and steering Arvi with the other.
They found Pappa where he had somehow propped himself up against the face of the outcropping. His face was paler than Siiri had ever seen it, even when he was sick with that terrible cough all those years ago. The snow beneath him was stained a horrifying reddish-brown color that needed no explanation. He was breathing, she could tell, but they were shallow, ragged breaths.
“Pappa?” she said, gently placing her hand on the side of his face.
With what seemed a great effort he raised his eyelids, creating the narrowest of slits.
“Siiri,” he breathed out. “Take … Arvi … the box …”
“Don’t try to talk, Pappa. We’ll go get help.”
“Too late … be …”
She didn’t waste a moment to scold him for his foolishness. The amount of blood frightened her, but she assured herself that sewing him up and getting him by the fire would guarantee his recovery. She ought to have known better, something whispered to her, but she ignored it.
“Come on, Arvi. We have to be fast.”
“No.”
“What do you mean? We have to go get help. Pappa needs us.”
“You go. I will stay with Pappa.”
Their grandfather inclined his head slightly in the direction of the boy. Siiri could not tell whether the movement was voluntary, but she had time neither to ponder that nor to argue with her little brother.
“Fine. Sit on the box and keep it safe,” she said. Turning, she ran back toward the town as fast as she could go, hugging close to the tracks that the sled had made earlier that morning.
As she drew nearer to the town, the unnatural silence was what struck her first. There ought to have been some sounds, but even the crackling of the last, low flames seemed to escape her ears. It felt as if one of their goats had rammed her in the stomach when she saw the church building: a cracked and blackened husk stood in the place where once had risen the thatched roof that the whole town came together to construct. Anguish at the fate of their church building was suddenly overwhelmed by panic when Siiri realized that she did not know where her father was. She had not consciously understood until that moment that she had always meant to find him and take him back to Pappa. She thrust her face into her hands and released the sob she had been unwittingly holding in for most of the day. The thought of being alone in the world drove her to her knees and it was not long before she collapsed the rest of the way forward, shielding her face from the mud and snow with her forearms.
“Siiri?”
The voice came from behind her somewhere. She could not bear to look up as the footsteps crunched and sloshed closer. Then a gentle hand was laid upon her back and her father repeated her name.
“Siiri, are you hurt? Where is Arvi?”
“Oh, isä! You must come. Hurry!”
Her father looked confused, but he followed her as she led the way back to the outcropping. His face, she saw, was covered with soot, and his upper lip was swollen where someone must have struck him, but other than that he seemed uninjured. How exactly he had evaded the soldiers would have to be a story for another day; she had barely enough breath to explain that Pappa was badly wounded as he saved her and Arvi from the soldiers.
They found Arvi and Pappa just where Siiri had left them. Grandson held his grandfather’s hand, laying his head gently against the old man’s shoulder.
“We’re here, Pappa,” she said. “I’ve brought isä with me and … now we can …”
The girl’s father laid his hand gently on her shoulder as she bent down next to Pappa. Her grandfather opened his eyes, though the effort seemed great.
“Gustav,” he managed to whisper. “You came.”
Pappa’s breaths were even shallower than before. Siiri put a hand to her mouth to hold back her despair.
“I am here, appi,” her father said. “Don’t try to speak.”
“I must,” Pappa managed to croak. “We have not spoken … for so long.”
Siiri could tell that Pappa was trying to gather whatever strength remained in his body. He breathed deeply for a few seconds, then spoke again, clearly and more forcefully.
“I have wronged you and your children these past years. You were a good husband to my daughter—” He winced at what must have been some sharp, unseen pain, but continued. “And you have been a good father to my granddaughter … and to little Arvi. I beg your forgiveness—and yours too, Siiri—so that I may … pass on in peace.”
Tears welled up in Siiri’s eyes as her father said, “Yes, of course.” He knelt down next to his father-in-law and placed a hand behind his head, trying to gently make him more comfortable.
“Only do one thing more for me,” Pappa said. “Have Siiri read to me from the book that she’s saved from the flames.”
“Certainly. Arvi, bring the box to your sister.”
She accepted it, but gave her father a hesitant glance. He nodded at her and made signs for her to open the box. She removed the lid and set it to one side, instantly recognizing the contents. It was a stack of three books. On top was the Abckiria, the very one that she and the other children of the village used for their reading lessons. Below that was Bishop Agricola’s Rucouskiria Bibliasta from which she had heard her father read more prayers than she could begin to count. Last was the most precious of them all: the town’s precious copy of Se Wsi Testamenti, the very Word of God, containing not only the stories of the disciples, but the words of Blessed Christ the Savior Himself. Siiri had not held the book often, but whenever she did she treated it with the utmost care. She held it out to her father who turned a few pages and handed it back to her, indicating where she should begin. She cleared her throat—more to tamp down the lump that was beginning to form than anything—and started to read.
“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.”
Siiri looked up briefly to see that Pappa’s eyes were closed. She didn’t want to think about Pappa’s becoming one of “them which are asleep” but she plodded on through the verses as best as she could. At the sentence, “Wherefore comfort one another with these words,” for no reason that she could understand, she did feel a kind of comfort, even in her sadness.
Pappa was still and quiet for several minutes after that, though his chest rose and fell weakly. His lips started to move, but no sound came out at first.
“Arvi … sweet boy,” he rasped. “Will you … sing … to me … that song you … were humming … before?”
“The ‘Our Father’, Pappa?” Arvi asked.
“Yes, that’s the one,” Siiri responded. She took Pappa’s hand in her own and he gave it a feeble squeeze.
The boy began to sing clearly and sweetly. Siiri found that there was a new weight to the words “And forgive us our sins, just as we also forgive those who have sinned against us.” She felt Pappa relax his grip. He opened his eyes, looking at each of them in turn and managed a thin smile just as Arvi sang “Amen.” Her brother placed his head on Pappa’s shoulder and then the old man closed his eyes, released a long, sighing breath, and drifted off into eternity.
They retrieved the sled from the far side of the rocks; Siiri helped isä gently place Pappa on it. Arvi wanted to help push on the way back to town, so he walked underneath his father’s arms and reached up as far as his own stubby arms would go.
It was only upon that return trip that Siiri realized the extent to which their beloved hamlet lay in ruins. Livestock wandered aimlessly, a few men and women were still beating at flames with blankets, somewhere a child was wailing, and not a single structure seemed to have escaped the flames. It should have been overwhelming, but she found that Pappa’s death had exhausted the store of her emotions.
Though their house now lacked a roof and one wall looked to be on the point of collapse, the family’s barn had miraculously escaped the flames. It was there that Siiri helped her father lay Pappa’s body, just as the setting sun was about to touch the horizon.
“I must go and help the other townspeople where I can,” her father told her. “Keep Arvi close and see what you can gather out of the house. Be careful.”
He kissed her on the forehead before stooping down to offer the same affection to Arvi.
After their isä left, sister and brother stood silently for several minutes in the barn. Tears streamed down both their faces. A flood of questions rushed through Siiri’s head. Why did the soldiers come here? Why hadn’t she thought of the hiding place before Pappa sacrificed himself? What would they do now?
It was Arvi who brought her mind back to the present with a question of his own.
“Siiri?”
“Yes?”
“Did Pappa like me?”
It was the same question he had asked her that morning—or very nearly the same—yet she had not remembered his innocent query until that moment. Siiri had been a little unsure of her answer before, but at that moment she felt a kind of certainty, a confidence she could not quite explain.
“Pappa loved you, Arvi.”
Her brother smiled. He brushed away his tears with the back of his mitten and extended the other hand to his sister. Hand in hand they walked slowly back to the house, leaving a trail of doubled footprints in the ashes and the snow.
This story was prompted by the painting at the top of the post. I read and enjoyed “The Veldt” by Pongo at Whatever Blues (which was also born from an image prompt) and was inspired to try something similar.
P.S. In the (rather unlikely) event that anyone from Finland reads this and I flubbed the language references, my apologies. I tried to do the best I could using online sources.