“He’s trying to help you,” Halina says loudly from across the room, her voice high and terrified. “Please, little red. Let him help before you hurt yourself.”
Kauko is the only person here who does not seem terrified. He kneels next to me, his brow furrowed with gentle concern. He looks over his shoulder and asks Halina a question. “Breathe,” she replies.
He looks down at me again. “Breathe,” he says. “Breathe.” He presses his lips together and his nostrils flare as he draws in an exaggerated breath, then blows it out through his mouth, then gestures for me to do the same as he asks Halina for more Krigere words.
“Not afraid,” he says as I let out a shaky, frosty breath. “Not afraid.”
“Very afraid,” I whisper, laying my head on the floor as the storm inside me rages. This is no curse. This is who I am now, who I’ll be until I die. The knowledge is too painful to accept.
Kauko spreads his fingers, and the frost around my body melts. When it tries to reform, it turns to water again, then steam. He points to the torches, and their flames shrink, becoming docile once again. I stare with envy and awe as he controls the things that so easily control me. “Teach you,” he says, nodding in thanks at Halina for giving him words. “Teach you. Not be afraid.”
Halina speaks in low tones with Nisse, who is nodding. Thyra has her back against the wall and her arms folded over her chest, her mouth set with tension. She doesn’t look happy that I’m not burning to death in front of her, and it resurrects my resentment. Nisse blocks my view of her a moment later, though. “Ansa, Elder Kauko has taught many Valtias how to use the magic.”
“I’m not the Valtia,” I plead. “I’m Krigere. I’m a warrior.”
“Of course you are,” he says. “You are part of my tribe, no matter where you came from. But you must learn to control this gift you’ve been given, so you can use it on behalf of your people. Will you obey me in this? Will you let this priest instruct you?”
I glance at the others, at Jaspar, who looks resolute and hopeful, at Halina, who wears her stark wariness like a veil, and at Thyra, who is biting her lip and staring at the ground. She doesn’t speak up, doesn’t insist I am hers, not Nisse’s. This must have been the final crack in the ice for her. Not only am I not her love, not her wolf, I am not even her people. Defiance rises in me, brittle but bracing. “Yes,” I say to Nisse. “I’ll do my best to learn quickly.”
Jaspar and Nisse smile, and they look very much alike in this moment. “Perfect, Ansa,” Nisse says. “I know you will make us proud.”
*
I lose count of how many times Kauko has to heal me in the following days. Fortunately, he’s very good at it, and since he does it as soon as the ice or fire sinks its fangs into me, my skin is restored quickly and completely.
It doesn’t save me from the pain. But warriors can endure pain.
Halina stays with us to translate, but Kauko learns the basics of our language quickly and does his best to speak to me directly. He brings Sig into the chamber in which we practice, but it seems he does it mostly to keep an eye on him. The deranged apprentice usually sits in a corner, his collar untied and hanging wide, revealing the scarring down his pale, sweaty chest. His eyes burn as he watches me. Sometimes he seems amused, laughing at jokes that only he hears, but sometimes his gaze is so full of hatred that I swear I see flames in his eyes. Kauko ignores him, mostly, but Halina speaks to him as Kauko works with me, her voice gentle and motherly.
First, Kauko teaches me to breathe, because apparently I haven’t been, at least not when the magic is rising inside. Instead, I’ve been holding my breath and letting it out in gusts, unsteady and sudden. So I breathe and breathe and breathe as I bring the fire and ice up, little by little. It helps, but I still lose control often, requiring Kauko to intervene. Sig sits in his corner and sweats—I think he enjoys when my ice fills the room. He tilts his head back and sighs.
“The boy has fire inside him,” Halina says to me one morning. “It tortures him. Day and night.”
“He told you that?”
She shakes her head. “Isn’t it obvious, though?”
When next I see him, I think cold thoughts and let them blow his way, and he blinks at me, like kindness surprises him.
Next, Kauko teaches me to focus. “If you don’t, it spreads everywhere,” Halina translates as the elder sets up a row of stone water basins along a table. “You have to have a goal.”
He instructs me to freeze the water in specific basins while leaving the others untouched. I try, but when I glare at the water, it turns to steam as often as it does to ice, and usually all the basins are affected instead of just one. We spend days on this, and I show little improvement. Nisse comes to watch one afternoon.
“We’re halfway through the winter,” he says to me. “When do you think you might be able to wield as you did before?”