Elin paused, held her aching back, and looked at her long and hard before answering.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘The sea is like a big lake, I think. I suppose there are waves. But I just don’t know if the sea has currents.’
‘But surely Renström must have told you? He said he’d been to sea, didn’t he?’
‘It might not have been completely true. Everything he said might have only happened inside his head. But all he ever said about the sea is that it was big.’
Elin bent down to pick up the twigs and branches they had sawed and chopped off. But Hanna didn’t want to give up just yet. A child stopped asking questions when it had the feeling that enough was enough: but she was grown up now, she had the right to go on asking.
‘I have no idea what is in store for me,’ she said. ‘Will I be living in a house with other people? Will I be sharing a bed with somebody else?’
Elin scowled and dropped a bundle of sawn-off branches into their birch-bark basket.
‘You are asking too many questions,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you what you can expect to find. But there is no future for you here. At least there are people who can help you there.’
‘I only want to know,’ said Hanna.
‘Stop asking now,’ said Elin. ‘I’m getting a headache from all your questions. I don’t have any answers.’
They returned in silence to the house from whose chimney a thin column of smoke was rising vertically into the pale sky. Olaus and Vera were looking after the fire. But both Elin and Hanna made sure that they were never any further away from the house than would prevent them from climbing up on to a high rock, taking a look at the chimney and establishing that the fire had not gone out. Or that nothing even worse had happened: that it hadn’t crept out of the open hearth and begun jumping around the room like a madman.
It was snowing at night now, and there was frost every morning. But the really heavy snowfalls that never lasted for less than three days had still not come creeping over the western mountains. And Hanna knew that if there wasn’t sufficient snow, no sleigh would be able to approach through the forests from the main routes further south.
But a few days later the snow finally arrived. As almost always happened, it crept up silently during the night. When Hanna got up to light the fire, Elin was standing by the door which she had opened slightly.
She stood there motionless, staring out. The ground outside was white. There were low drifts against the walls of the house. Hanna could see the tracks of crows in the snow, perhaps also of a mouse and a hare.
It was still snowing.
‘This snow’s going to lay,’ said Elin. ‘It’s winter now. There’ll be no bare ground again until the spring, at the end of May or the beginning of June.’
It continued snowing the whole of the following week. At first the cold wasn’t too severe, only a few degrees below zero. But once the snow had stopped falling the sky became clear and the temperature dropped significantly.
They had a thermometer that Renström had bought at some market or other a long time ago. Or perhaps he had won it in an arm-wrestling competition, since he was so strong? The thermometer had an attachment enabling it to be fixed to an outside wall, but it was treated with great care: there was always a risk that somebody might be careless and break the little tube containing the dangerous mercury.
Extremely carefully Elin placed it out in the snow, at the side of the house that was always in shade. Now that the seriously cold weather had arrived, it was more than thirty degrees below zero for three days in succession.
During the coldest days they did nothing but tend the fire, make sure the cow and the two goats had something to chew at, and eat something of the little food they had for themselves. They used up all their strength in efforts to keep the cold at bay. Every extra degree below zero was like yet another enemy army added to those already besieging them.
Hanna could see that Elin was scared. What would happen if something broke? A window, or a wall? They had nowhere to flee to, apart from the little cattle shed where the animals were kept. But they were also freezing cold, and it was not possible to make a fire there.
It was during these bitterly cold days that Hanna felt for the first time that the imminent change in her life might not be so bad after all. An opening in a dark forest where sunlight suddenly shone down into an unexpected glade. A life that might possibly be better than the one she was living now, besieged by the armies of cold and famine? Her fear of the unknown suddenly became a longing for what might be in store for her. Away from the forests, in the fertile plains to the south-east.
But she said nothing about this to Elin. She remained silent about her vague longing.
9
On 17 December, shortly after half past two in the afternoon, they heard the sound of sleigh-bells coming from the forest. It was Vera who heard the horse. She had gone out to see if the hens had laid any eggs, despite the onset of winter. As she returned empty-handed along the narrow passage that had been dug between the metre-high drifts, she heard the bells. Elin and Hanna came running out when she shouted. The worst of the cold had receded, and it had been thawing during the day: but now there was a covering of new powdery snow over the frozen crust after a snowfall during the night.
The sound of the bells came closer, then they caught sight of the black horse looking like a troll or a bear at the edge of the forest. The driver, wrapped in furs, tightened the reins and came to a halt just outside the cottage, which was surrounded by deep snow and misery.
By then Elin had already told Hanna what she had expected to hear.
‘It’s Jonathan Forsman.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Nobody else has a black horse like his. And nobody else wears so many furs.’
Hanna could see that was true when the man in the sleigh had stood up and they all entered the cottage. He was wearing furs from both bears and wolves, had been sitting on a reindeer skin in his sleigh, and had a red fox fur wrapped round his neck. When he wormed his way out of all the furs, which were dripping with snow and sweat, it was like watching a man who had been sitting for too long in front of a fire. His face was red and unshaven, his sweaty hair was stuck to his forehead: but Hanna could see that Elin was right — the man who was going to take her away was neither malicious nor threatening. He was friendly, sat down on a stool beside the fire and gave Elin a present: a hymn book he had bought for her in Røros.
‘It’s in Norwegian,’ he said. ‘But the covers are attractive, genuine leather, and the gold embossing sparkles if you keep it clean. Besides, Elin Renström, you can hardly read in any case! Or am I wrong?’
‘I can puzzle out the words,’ said Elin. ‘If that amounts to reading, then I can.’
It was only in the evening, when the younger children were in bed, that Elin broached the subject of Hanna’s journey. They were sitting round the fire. Forsman was resting his enormous hands. Before the youngsters had gone to sleep, he had sung a hymn in his deep, resonant voice. Hanna had never heard a man sing like that before. The vicar who conducted services in Ljungdalen had a soft, squeaky voice. When he sung a hymn it sounded as if somebody was pinching him. But here was a man whose singing even silenced the cold that creaked and groaned in the walls.
Elin explained the situation. In just a few words, but nothing more was needed.
‘Can you take Hanna with you?’ she asked. ‘She has to go to Sundsvall, to relatives who will take care of her.’