One day Maarika sends me off to mind Kukka while Senja bakes. The little girl delights in her magic, luring icicles from cracks in the rocks and making them grow like fragile twigs right before my eyes. “Mommy taught me,” she says, giggling, making me wonder what Kupari would be like if magic wielders lived like everyone else, had families like everyone else. If magic was taught as naturally as children learn to speak and behave—under the watchful eyes of their parents instead of in the temple, under the strict guidance of the priests. Would we be stronger as a people, or weaker? Would we have more magic among us, or less?
When Senja returns, I go back to the shelter and find Maarika building up the fire. “Oskar will be home soon,” she murmurs.
I squat next to her and begin to pile flat stones at the edge of the pit—when he comes in gray and shivering, he’ll be able to spread a cloak over them and have a warm place to sit. Maarika’s gaze takes in my movements, and she presses her lips together. “I always wonder if today will be the day he doesn’t make it home,” she says.
The stark admission makes me fumble one of the rocks, and it topples off the edge of the pit and lands just a hairbreadth from my toes. Maarika lets out a quiet breath of laughter and helps me pick it up again. “I think it every day, but I rarely say it.”
And now I’m thinking it, and I don’t like the way it makes me feel at all. “Oskar seems very strong.”
She shrugs. “I know. But people are lost in an instant in the outlands. It has always been that way.” She sits back to let me continue my work, a haunted, faraway look in her eyes.
“You’ve lost someone.” My voice is hushed—I’m afraid to scare away her words, because Maarika shares so few of them.
“My husband, many years ago.” Her eyes flick to mine and then away. “A hunting accident. And before that, my brother and his entire family. They lived on the shore, in the house where I was born, where my parents died.” She throws a bit of stray bark onto the flames. “We used to visit them often. My brother’s daughter, little Ansa . . .” She smiles and leans over quickly, her rough fingers stroking at the ends of my hair before falling away. “She had hair like yours, and it gleamed in the sunlight. She and Oskar used to race each other up and down the dunes, and she would always beat him.”
My brows rise as I start to chuckle. “Oskar’s legs are very long—she must have been fast.”
Maarika blinks several times and looks away. “Oh, yes. Very fast. She was a tiny fierce thing. Freya is a bit like her.”
I place another stone on the rim of the pit, waiting.
“It was the Soturi,” Maarika finally whispers. “They came up from the Motherlake one night. They stole everything of value and burned the place to the ground. One day my brother had the perfect life, a family, a beautiful daughter, and the next, all of them were gone. Ashes and cinders. It makes you wonder why we ever believe in tomorrow, why we assume we have the next minute, and the next, and the next.”
“But you do,” I say, gesturing at the fire, the rocks, the shelter. “And you believe Oskar does as well.”
She gives me a flickering smile. “Oh, yes. I have hope.” She touches a warming stone. “And I will protect it to my last breath, with whatever strength I have, however small it may be.” Her eyes meet mine, and I read the message there. Oskar is her hope. Her family is her life.
She is trusting me—and warning me. Does she know that Oskar is a wielder—and does she suspect I know as well? I want so badly to ask her why he’s hiding, why he suffers like he does, but I have too many secrets to keep myself.
“If I had a family of my own,” I say slowly, “I would protect them, as you do.”
Her gaze is unwavering. “But right now, we are your family.”
“Then this is the family I will work to protect. Even if all I can do is heat stones by the fire.”
Maarika squeezes my arm and then disappears back into her private area, and I stare at the place where she was, hoping I passed the test she just set before me.
The next afternoon I go down the trail into the dark rear caverns with Freya, where the underground stream sends icy water rushing through a wide trough before disappearing under the rock again. We peel off our stockings to wash. “Does Oskar seem all right to you?” I ask, haunted by my memories of his tortured sleep the night before.
Freya shrugs. “He’s always grumpy in the winter, but it’s definitely worse this year.”
“It’s more than grumpiness,” I say, wincing as the soles of my feet touch the water. I only wash with my left hand, because my right is fearfully sensitive to cold now, something I discovered the hard way the first time I dipped it into the stream. It took hours for it to stop hurting, and the whole time, I thought of Oskar, how pained he looks when he comes in from the icy marshlands. “Do you think he might be sick?”
I’m so eager for her reply that I forget to be careful.
“Hey,” she says when she spots the blood-flame mark on my calf. “What’s that?”
I quickly yank my gown over it. “Just a scar,” I say, my voice loud and creaky. “Once when I was little, I got too curious around the fire and burned myself with a poker.”
Freya cringes. “That must have hurt terribly,” she says quietly. “Burns are the worst.”