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Back home Andrejs grabbed me by the back of my collar and shook me. And then he suddenly sat down at the table and started sobbing — please, that I wouldn’t, for the love of God, leave him! That he’d already figured things out about me and that little shit.

I asked him — how could you figure things out if it only just started tonight? Maybe, I said, I hadn’t even known it myself! I said, I now know clearly that it won’t end with Aksels because I love him!

And I love you, he said in a voice I could barely hear.

You don’t know how to love, I answered cruelly. Because at that moment I remembered that half-dead rabbit in the wheat field.

Then he retreated into himself, started selling the livestock and even sold the tractor so he could pay off the bank loan before term. He sold everything, didn’t even leave me the kitchen table. He didn’t talk to me anymore, was acting out of his mind, smoothing Monta’s hair and crying. I was afraid he’d take her away from me.

And well, it was on that same insane morning that Aksels — who’d been left by himself at the bar — slowly made his way home to the forester’s house. The door was locked from the inside, he pounded on it, pounded, then opened the window — he knew which one could be unlatched from the outside. And the entire house went up with Stase in it, with all of Aksels’s belongings. Up in flames.

After the funeral he came to live with us. Yes, there was a time when all five of us were staying at the Zari house. How we made it work, I still can’t explain. No, wait, I can — we didn’t speak. At all. Nobody spoke to anyone else. For a long time it was as if the Zari house was a kingdom placed under a spell. Everything is possible when you don’t speak. The only thing is that you can’t deal with that kind of silence for too long. Then Andrejs went off to work as a car mechanic in Riga, and Gran went back to the seaside.

Aksels and I are going to leave for Riga soon. If we stay here we’re just going to die of hunger. For now we plan on asking Mom and Dad if we can stay at their place. Your room is going to be empty for at least another year. If they say no, we’ll figure something else out.

And that’s all, little brother.

This time — without any quotes.

— Keep your fingers crossed for us — Ieva

Destiny

Ieva walks through the village and cuts down dandelions with a knotted stick.

She doesn’t want to go home.

The head of the village, Sarmis, is a gaunt old man with bright eyes who can’t keep his hands to himself whether it’s in the store or village hall. A slap on the thigh, a tickle to the ribcage, a caress of the shoulder. And when he comes to order smoked salmon from Gran, he always says in a surprised manner — how beautiful Ieva’s grown up to be, a woman, a real woman!

Gran just laughs and sends Ieva to the cellar for mushrooms — Ieva is happy to go, because this strange word “woman” and Sarmis’s bleary stare sends blood pounding to her temples.

But a strange devil moves her to quickly get the mushrooms and hurry back, her hair whipping behind her. Back to sit near Sarmis and to laugh, pretending not to notice him staring. Let him look, Ieva tells herself, nothing bad will happen from just looking. It’s a little scary, but Gran and Roberts are right here. But it’s interesting — what does Sarmis see when he looks at Ieva? She’d like to find out sometime, but it’s not possible to climb into someone else’s skin.

Sarmis is a lesser evil compared to the forester Buliņš. They run into each other along the road and Buliņš speaks ardently. And his words stick to Ieva’s heart like linden leaves — soft and gentle. His speech is sensible, his thoughts clear. Upward, beautiful, magnificent. School, studies, the future. But then Ieva happens to look at Buliņš when he doesn’t expect it. The blue eyes staring at her have the same hungry look as Sarmis!

Buliņš doesn’t let up. One day he comes to see Roberts with a bag filled with canned meats. He just happened to be passing by and decided to stop in to give them a taste! Gran thanks him, Roberts praises him — ground stag with bacon, a real forester’s feast! Gran sends Ieva to bring the empty jars back to Buliņš at the forester’s house, but Ieva refuses. “Just take them,” Gran scolds her, “is that so hard? He had no trouble preparing the meats or bringing them over here, a single man living by himself in a forester’s hut, but so hardworking!”

“I’ve got nothing to do with his troubles!” is Ieva’s unexpectedly curt reply.

As if that’s not enough, Buliņš sends them a load of dried pine logs. Enough to cover the yard of their small fishing hut. But it’s such lovely firewood that Gran can only gesture and lift the logs to her nose and breathe in their scent. Yellow, light as a feather, strong as medicinal balsam, with the crisp scent of sap! Roberts, however, points out that burning pine logs clogs up the chimney.

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!” Gran scolds and shakes the two logs in her hands at him. “They could be wet! But they’re dry, chopped! It would be a sin to complain.”

Neither of them bothers to wonder why the forester has suddenly become so generous.

Soon enough Buliņš comes to the house in person, on a night when Gran and Roberts aren’t home. No matter, he’ll just sit in the kitchen until they get back and have a cup of tea. Ieva shrugs, makes him a big mug of tea and goes into the other room. Let him wait!

But Buliņš follows her silently. His hand searches for the light switch on the wall and — click! — the room sinks into darkness. Ieva gets up from the couch and heads toward the door to turn the light back on, she’s stubborn and wants to scold the forester — what is he thinking! — but she runs like a fish right into his arms. He grabs hold of her by the elbows, says nothing, just brings his face to her and tries to kiss her. His eyes glisten in the light reflecting from the snow. Ieva feels like a hypnotized rabbit, because there’s no reason to scream, or tell him off, or to hit him — the guy is being gentle and quiet. Ieva can only murmur — no, no! She lowers her chin, presses it into her chest, then pulls away and runs.

If she was less embarrassed, she’d tell Gran. But Gran is an angel who can’t hear those kinds of things, and Ieva even feels that she herself would become impure from telling those kinds of stories. And in the end she neither likes, nor hates Buliņš.

Ieva wanders down the long stretch of road between the sea and the lake, whacking dandelions with a stick — she scatters their white, fluffy heads, and thinks, thinks. Wracks her brain.

“Hey, Ieva, what’re you looking for?” asks Edvīns, the village driver as he rolls past.

“Yesterday,” Ieva replies and turns her back to him.

“Maybe we can look together?”

“You’re all talk!”

“What can I do, honey, I’ve gotta work! You coming to the bar tonight?”

“Yeah, when pigs fly!”

Edvīns’s friend Armīns leans out of the other window.

“Then come swimming with us at lunch! I’d like to sit you down on my lap!”

“You can hold on to your piece yourself!”

To fall into the clutches of those loudmouths — like a honey pot to a bear! The entire county would know about it by the next morning. Ieva is too proud to let someone go around town bragging — I got Ieva Eglīte!

There is one boy who Ieva likes more than the others, but that’s why she has to stay away from him. Because it’s almost like it’s meant to be, so strangely familiar that it terrifies her.