The Way Past Winter Read online

  Also by Kiran Millwood Hargrave:

  The Girl of Ink & Stars

  The Island at the End of Everything

  For N, & my brother John, the brave ones

  First published in the United States of America in 2020 by Chronicle Books LLC.

  Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Chicken House Ltd.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.

  Illustrations © 2020 by Lauren O’Hara.

  Hand lettering © 2020 by Natalia O’Hara.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

  ISBN 978-1-4521-8155-4 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-4521-8161-5 (epub, mobi)

  Design by Jennifer Tolo Pierce.

  Typeset in Fairfield LH and Bookeyed Susan.

  Chronicle Books LLC

  680 Second Street

  San Francisco, California 94107

  Chronicle Books—we see things differently. Become part of our community at www.chroniclekids.com.

  Once upon a time far distant from our own, in a place very near, there lived a bear named Eldbjørn. He was the child of two ancient spirits, born on the timeless island of Thule. He was brought here to this wood when the forest was seeds, and grew with it until he was old and mighty as an oak, and rooted just as deeply.

  His den was beneath a vast birch that grew in the heart-center of the forest, cupped in its hollow trunk. All winter he slumbered, and his snores shook the icicles from the trees for miles around. In summer he woke and fed on the honey scooped from the combs of bees, and fish from the rushing river. He loved the sun, would stretch his claws out like a joyful cat and knead the baked Earth, basking in the warmth of her. For centuries he watched his forest blossom and freeze, the turning of seasons neat and right as the new moon.

  But in the forest’s thousandth year, men arrived. The first Eldbjørn knew of it was a shaking within the Earth. The running of a hundred foxes, the worrying of two hundred hares. Then the wolves came bounding, farther into the dense trees than ever before. Over his head, birds came flocking, turning startled wheels in the sky.

  Eldbjørn knew it was an especially bad sign that the creatures of the underground, the land, and the sky were fleeing, for bad things come in threes. He lumbered his bulk through the scared animals, moving fast to find what they ran from. His heart broke at what he saw. Three larch trees felled. A square mile of moss ripped up, and mounted on wood:

  A house.

  It had sprouted at the boundary of the forest, built from the stolen homes of songbirds and snakes. He saw glinting axes, and sap-bleeding trees, and reindeer leashed to a sleigh, their haunches matted with blood from whips.

  In his heart was sadness, and fear, and from these grew their dangerous cousin: anger. His swiped at the house and sent the thatch flying. He tore the men from its walls like honey from a hive, and threw them from his bounds. He unleased the reindeer, and they trembled by the sleigh, already unable to remember what freedom was.

  But these settlers were just the start. More and more came, and though Eldbjørn raged and wept, there was nothing he could do to stop the humans from coming and cutting and building. Each passing year, he shrank a little more, his grief swallowing him whole. He kept closer and closer to his heart-tree. Finally, one day, when the humans’ homes outnumbered the bear caves, Eldbjørn had become nothing more than a sad soul. Now he was just a spirit secreted inside his tree’s trunk.

  You might not be able to see him anymore, but Eldbjørn is the reason the forest stays alive. Men may live and die here, but Eldbjørn ensures the forest will survive forever, its guardian the pulse that ties it to life, even as men bring small deaths—

  “And women?”

  Mila started, jolted from the reverie of her mother’s tale by her brother’s interruption. They were warm beside the fire, their bodies pressed together in a line before Mama, who sat on the woven seat of the low chair Papa had built her. The wooden beams of their home arched over her head like branches, and the whole room smelled of lingonberry stew and sap glue. Tucked as she was beneath her father’s arm, Mila could imagine she was Eldbjørn, nestled in his beloved trunk, safe from the world. That was, until Oskar interrupted. He was seated on her other side, and beyond him was her sister Sanna.

  “Oskar!” snapped Sanna, and Mila could tell she was rolling her eyes. She was only a year older than Oskar but acted like she was a grown woman. “Not everything is boys versus girls.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Yes. Because girls would win.”

  Mama smiled and arched her back, tilting her belly toward the licking flames. Mila thought she could see it ripple, imagined her brother or sister inside, nearly ready to come into the world. Mila couldn’t wait to no longer be the youngest. But more than that, she couldn’t wait to hear the end of Mama’s story.

  “Oskar’s right,” continued Mama, and Oskar preened. “And women. We are all of us guilty of making our mark on the forest.”

  “But women make things, not break them. We make homes out of the wood men destroy,” said Sanna. Oscar shoved her and she shoved him in return, but Papa reached over Mila’s head and pulled Oscar back by his collar, his garnet ring glinting in the firelight.

  “What can we do?” said Mila, stricken. “Should we leave?”

  “It is our right as much as the animals’ to be here,” said Papa. “Don’t listen to your mama’s story. That is all it is.”

  “Stories are just another way of telling the truth,” said Mama, her dark eyes shining.

  “So is that why you’re having another baby?” said Mila, wide-eyed. “Because bad things come in threes?”

  Mama laughed softly. “Perhaps, though I was thinking this story is mainly true because it reminds us that we must take care of our forest.”

  “I will,” said Mila, feeling a fierceness alight in her belly. She rested her hand on Mama’s and felt her sibling moving. “I will look after the trees as well as my little sister.”

  Oskar made a retching sound. “You’re so soft, Mila.”

  Mila flushed, but Mama’s warm hand enclosed hers, and she brought her head down as close as she could to Mila’s ear, so only she could hear. “My Milenka,” she whispered. “The softest of us all—and so the strongest.”

  Chapter One

  The House in Eldbjørn Forest

  It was a winter they would tell tales about. A winter that arrived so sudden and sharp it stuck birds to branches, and caught the rivers in such a frost their spray froze and scattered down like clouded crystals on the stilled water. A winter that came, and never left.

  A whole year passed, then three, and still it stayed. People spoke of curses and offered up prayers and promises. They blamed mages, or their neighbors, or the jarls who ruled their villages and towns.

  But blame didn’t break the winter, and soon no one could remember warmth except from fire, or green apart from the silvery hue of the fir trees. Carts were abandoned in favor of sleighs, fine horses lost their worth until they were all traded for mountain ponies or mewling husky pups or other animals that knew snow. Bears sank into perpetual hibernation, wolves slunk into the shadows of the vast forest. Some folk moved from their frozen land, but most stayed, and, as people do, changed to fit their changed world.

  They changed their stories, too. Gone were tellings of honey and plenty: Tales became warnings, sharp as bee stings. The fire-geese who bore the sun on their backs in summer became ice-swans who nip at exposed fingers and toes, snapping them clean off. The river nymphs became ice maidens who stalk the bottom of frozen lakes, waiting to p
ull wayward children under. Wistful voices spoke of magical islands where spring waited, of golden waterfalls streaming into pools of sunlight, but always these places were beyond reach, just past the frozen horizon.

  In the winter’s fifth year, its grip still tightening on the southern river towns and northern mountain cities, a whole new order of cold wove itself tight as a basket about the families that lived in the remotest parts of the land. And it was in a small house folded into a narrow pocket of forest rimed with snow window-high, that three sisters and their brother were having a disagreement over a cabbage.

  “Please don’t boil it again, Sanna,” pleaded Pípa, the youngest. She sat shivering, her hands over her cold ears, lip curled as she regarded the shriveled, hard-leafed vegetable. “We have had nothing but boiled all week.”

  “I’ll not be told what to do by a child not even old enough for her given name,” said Sanna briskly, like a superstitious woman thrice her seventeen years might, for Pípa was seven. It would be another year before they could be sure the evil eye had passed over her, when she would be regifted with her true name. “And besides, it’s the way to get the most good out.”

  She stood with her cutting knife hovering, looking for the best incision point for the particularly hard and meager cabbage.

  “There’s dripping,” said Mila hopefully, trying not to echo her little sister’s whine. “We could fry—”

  “And use up firewood to get the dripping hot enough?” chided Oskar from his spot furthest from the fire. “We must boil it. Grow up, Pípa. I’ve had enough of your trembling lip.”

  “Leave her, Oskar,” said Mila, wrapping her arm around Pípa and frowning at their big brother. He was nothing like he used to be before Papa left; he was becoming a stranger. Then, they could not get him to be silent. Now he spoke only to spit thanks at Sanna for the food she gave him each morning before he waded into the thigh-high snow to check his traps, or to tell one of his little sisters off.

  Mila caught up Pípa’s stiff fingers and blew her hot breath on them. “Come, Píp, let’s not trouble Sanna—she knows her cabbages.”

  “That I do!” said Sanna, having located the cabbage’s weakest point and bringing the knife down with a satisfying thwack. “Boiled it is.”

  Outside, one of the dogs started to bark. Mila knew it was Dusha—her voice was higher than her brother’s, more whiny and insistent, like Pípa’s. A moment later it was joined by Danya’s whip-crack yowl.

  “Those dogs!” huffed Sanna. “Oskar—”

  But Mila was already on her feet, taking her fur-lined boots from beside the fire. “I’ll go.”

  She threw on her russet cloak and wrapped her fox fur around her brown hair, but before she could unbolt the door, someone knocked twice, and then twice more, in a jaunty rhythm that had become familiar to the family over the past months.

  “Wait!” called Sanna, but Mila grinned mischievously and drew the bolt. She heard her sister swear loudly and clatter the saucepans, searching for the copper one that they sometimes used as a mirror.

  A mountain pony was tied to the mounting post in the yard and a boy stood before Mila. He was Sanna’s age and Oskar’s height, with a plump, handsome face, fair where all the Oreksons were dark. He flushed when he saw Mila’s teasing smile.

  “Back again, Geir?” said Mila. “I didn’t think we’d sent any knives for sharpening this week.”

  “Just the one,” said Geir as Mila heard Sanna skidding into place behind her. Mila looked up at her big sister from under her fox fur and waggled her eyebrows. Sanna had let her hair down and pinched her cheeks into a rosy flush. She’d even bitten her lips in an effort to redden them, and she’d broken the skin slightly on the lower one. She pulled Mila out of the way with a pincer grip.

  “Hello, Geir.” Sanna’s voice was oddly husky, as if she had a cold.

  “Hello, Sanna,” squeaked Geir.

  Mila snorted and stomped her way back to the kitchen, pulling the door closed behind her to keep the warmth in. They’d grown used to the pathetic exchanges that passed for conversation between their sister and the knife-sharpener from Stavgar.

  Oskar looked up from where he was finishing slicing the cabbage with his hunting knife. Its handle was intricately carved to look like roots twisted across it, and it had a thick blade, better suited to cutting rope and wood than vegetables. “Geir again?”

  “Yep,” said Mila, removing her hat and rolling her eyes.

  “Were they kissing?” giggled Pípa.

  “Pípa!” scolded Oskar. “Don’t be ridiculous.” He looked at Mila, disgust clear on his face at the thought of their older sister kissing a boy. “They weren’t, were they?”

  Mila thought about teasing him, but then her stomach rumbled. She didn’t have the energy. “Of course not. He’s just bringing a knife.”

  “Another one?”

  “Mmm.” She collapsed on the bench beside the fire, watching the steam rising from the water that would soon be the same thin grayish cabbage soup they’d eaten for weeks now.

  Mila listened to the knife ripping through the cabbage and strained to hear the murmurs of Sanna and Geir’s exchange. The lovely bell of Sanna’s laugh, so like Mama’s, rang out before the front door closed with a creak and a bang, blowing the kitchen door open and sending cold fingers of wind raking across Mila’s cheeks. Sanna floated in, a faraway look on her thin face as she gazed at something in her palm.

  “What’s that?” asked Pípa.

  “Nothing,” said Sanna hurriedly, pinning the something, gleaming, onto her cloak. “A gift.” It was a brooch, intricately worked from elk horn, full of pale swirls that recalled a foaming sea. It was very fine.

  “And what did you give in return?” asked Mila, bringing vivid spots of red to her sister’s cheeks.

  “Nothing,” said Sanna briskly, brandishing the newly sharpened knife mock-threateningly at Mila. “A gift shouldn’t be given with the expectation of something in return.”

  “That’s the fourth time he’s been round in a week,” said Oskar.

  “Hmm,” said Sanna, purse-lipped.

  “It’s a long way from Stavgar—he’ll be riding back in the dark.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Perhaps next time you could invite him in for dinner?”

  Mila saw a look pass between her older siblings, full of something she didn’t understand.

  “Yes,” said Sanna. “Maybe I will.” She swallowed, then said in a firm tone that meant the subject was closed, “Now please tell me you’re done butchering that cabbage.”

  The dim day fell into the dark lap of dusk, and the small house filled with the smell of boiled cabbage soup that meant dinner was ready. Sanna was just about to ladle Pípa’s portion into her chipped wooden bowl when Dusha set about barking, followed by Danya.

  “Not Geir again?” said Oskar, and Sanna shook her head.

  “Probably just spooked. I’ll go and calm them,” said Mila, in no hurry for her bowl of soup. She put on her cloak and hat for the second time, opened the door a crack, and stepped into the snow, which glowed a silvery gray in the uncertain light.

  “Coming, Dush-Dush! Coming, Danya!”

  Keeping her head bowed against the biting wind, she heaved the door closed behind her and began to trudge through the drifts toward the dog shed with its wooden gate, hands tucked under her armpits to keep them warm. But she had not taken more than three steps before she collided with something.

  “Javoyt!” Mila stumbled back, stepped on her cloak, and nearly fell. She regained her balance and looked up. Her heart thudded almost as loud as the wind. Now she knew why the dogs were barking.

  Chapter Two

  The Stranger

  Man’s language from such a little girl,” said a voice, deep and punchy as Danya’s barks, which grew louder. “What is your name?”

  Mila pulled her scarf up to cover her lips, swallowing down a fearful tang as she smelled a horrifying animal scent, bitter as rotten leaves.
Before her stood a horse, as square and as huge, it seemed to her, as a barn. On its back sat a man so swathed in fur he looked as large as the horse itself, a beast on a beast. A woodcutter’s axe like her father’s glinted at his waist, and his eyes flashed gold and wild above shadowy stubble.

  Behind him were a dozen smaller figures on ponies, cloaked and hooded and bearing torches. One of them carried a pennant, embroidered, Mila saw, with a bear beneath a tree. The tree’s roots, elaborately tangled, glinted with gold as the pennant flickered in the wind.

  From all of them there lifted a steam of heat, and the ponies were snorting and stamping, shying away from the dogs, who were throwing themselves at the gate. The man raised a hand, and both dogs fell silent, collapsing on the ground like emptied sails.

  “No!” Mila wrenched her feet from where they seemed frozen in the snow. “Dush! Dan—”

  But the dogs were only lying quietly, noses resting on their forepaws, eyebrows twitching above wide-open eyes. Even the trees behind them seemed to still.

  Mila turned cautiously back to the assembled company. She peered past the man at the next rider. His chin was unstubbled, as if he were a boy of Oskar’s age. Perhaps he was this man’s son? She looked into the next face, then the next. All the riders were boys, some perhaps only a year older than she. Surely one man could not have so many sons?

  Her voice was caught in her throat, fluttering like a captured bird. The man swung his huge leg over the back of the horse and landed in the snow. No, that wasn’t quite right. . . .

  Mila stared at the man’s feet. He wore fine, unscuffed black leather boots that showed no signs of a hard journey, but that was not what made her stare.

  The man had not landed in the snow—he had landed on it. He hadn’t sunk into the soft powder, even though she could feel it seeping over the tops of her boots, and his companions’ ponies were in almost to their hocks.

  Mila dragged her head up and saw he was looking directly at her, with those fierce eyes. When Mila again looked down, he was up to his calves in snow. What’s more, the tops of his fine boots were now tied about his calves with lengths of golden cord, like the tree roots on the pennant.