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It had been a long winter when they turned up.
One of the worst on record, my father said. I’d spend my days chopping wood, though there was never enough. Place log on cutting block, curl numb, frozen fingers around axe, find a grip through the slippery wetness of gloves, swing axe round with aching arms, over the head, down, cut, repeat. Sometimes it took four or five goes on one log, my reindeer fur-lined coat stretching at the seams – under the armpits, along the length, across the small of my back and bust – as I tried to free up my cold-stiffened body.
Mornings were a sleepy blur of hot coffee, hands desperately wrapped around the mug, layering wool over wool over fur, trying to cover every inch of exposed skin. Then outside, crunch crunching over the fresh, crisp snow that had settled in overnight.
It was always dark.
Even at midday the sky still loomed grey and moody overhead. The snow brightened up the sorry scene, but after so long it became a drag. It became the nagging, nipping cold that seeped into my every pore. Everyone was the same. At first it had been fine, we expected a bad winter, but no one knew how bad until we were slap bang in the middle of it with no way out.
We had to keep crunching through, though. What else was there to do?
Crunch, crunch, crunch. Chop, chop, chop.
It was all we could do to stop ourselves from freezing to death. At one point, I swear I forgot what my father looked like – his big, bright eyes, bushy brows and warm smile replaced with the woolly rim of a hat and a fur balaclava that dressed him up in anonymity. The same happened to most people around town. I’d only know whose name to throw out by what context I met them in. By the lagoon? That’s gotta be Jim. Behind the bar? Stefan, of course. I was stumped a few times when people were in the wrong places.
No one seemed to care.
People had started walking around like ghosts, blending right in with the eerie white landscape that had taken over our home.
Every night we dragged ourselves to the bar because it was warmer than our cabin. We wrapped up in scarves, hats, gloves, three-four pairs of socks. Then we’d head over, my mother, my sister, my father and me.
“It’s good to laugh once in a while,” my mother would say as we stiffly moved coloured counters around an old, peeling games board. I begged to differ, my chapped lips stinging at the edges like the Cheshire cat. “Your hair is so dry,” she’d say to me, grabbing a chunk of it in her hands and grimacing. She wanted to cut it, but I wanted it for warmth. It was another tool and another layer I desperately needed. I won.
Sometimes, if we were lucky, Carl and the cabin boys would get out their instruments and perform. The lively sounds of the saxophone and the tinny strums of the guitar seemed to provide more heat than the layers of wool and the underfloor pipes. Sometimes, if someone had got carried away on the hot wine, they’d get up and dance, leaning into whoever was on the guitar like a way-past-it rock star. They’d sit back down again, unzipping their jacket and wiping sweat from their brow and we’d all look jealously at them. But being cold was preferable to being that person who everyone spoke about the next day.
Because people did speak.
We were a small town of less than one hundred people. Everyone knew everyone’s business as if we’d passed round our diaries at book club. When the days were dark and the air was frigid, people talked. There was nothing better to do. It took people’s minds off their pin-pricked limbs.
No gossip was better than when they arrived though.
It was a Wednesday or Thursday, I think – the days merged into one long nightmare. Jim had come rushing over, interrupting me mid axe-swing. I missed and the blade wedged in the snow inches from my feet. I looked up at him, wild-eyed, but he was already focused on something else.
We’d all rushed over, my mother, my sister, my father and me, along with Julia and Larry who lived next door and Bryn who lived in the cabin next to the bar. Jim led the way to the edge of the lagoon. If we hadn’t been so entrenched in winter, surrounded by its snarly, frost-bitten fingers every day, I might have stopped to admire its beauty. It was a milky pinky-purple, smooth as an egg. Not a ripple in sight.
Until there was.
After the ripples came the boat.
Not a big, impressive cruise-liner type boat, more of a crew-ship. A wooden trading ship, was my first thought. My second thought was what the hell they were doing this far north. My third thought was how the hell they’d got this far at all.
We all waited at the edge, the gang of us, the welcome party, like we were pet dogs waiting patiently for our owners to return.
As they neared we were in a standoff, them watching us and us watching them, neither side quite knowing what to make of the other.
Jim moved forward, arms wide, shouting. My father joined in. We all joined in, without really knowing why.
Then they beached on a crust of ice, disembarked.
There were nine of them, I think. Anonymous in pulled-down parka hoods and thick, steel-capped boots. As they walked over I remember feeling a sharp shot of panic. Should we be greeting these people? Who were they? How had they made it this far? Images of old folk stories, myths, legends, nightmares, flashed through my brain – that’s what the long winters do to me, they prod and push at my imagination until it takes on a mind of its own.
I looked along the row of us all, eyes wide, expectant, exhaling thick wispy plumes of smoke as hot met cold.
Then they were in front of us, all sighs of relief and rubbing hands together.
Turns out they’d got lost many miles to the south, a penetrating mist had obscured their way and the raging cold had cracked through all their back-up tools. They were fishermen, but they didn’t have any fish. Said they’d stopped trying once they’d realised they were way off track.
I was suspicious, but then again I’d read too many crime novels.
My mother invited them all to the bar: “You can warm up with some hot wine and good music,” she said.
That’s where I first saw him. Well, where I first noticed him.
The bar was crowded with the nine men in it, ‘our guests’ as my mother kept emphasising. I was wedged up against the back of a wooden booth, fumbling with my gloves, and he was at the bar. He’d taken his outer layers off and as he turned round I saw he was all chiselled cheekbones, low, broody brows, and dark, Slavic eyes. For a brief moment he looked directly at me and I think he smiled but I don’t remember. My cheeks burned and I reached my hands up to touch them, not sure if I was siphoning their heat or trying to hide them.
Then he came over, sloshing his glass of hot wine over the table and showing a row of brilliant white teeth to make up for it.
His name was Erik and my winter had just got a little bit warmer.
He told us about their trip, where it had all gone horribly wrong, and then he started going backwards, telling us about his home and his studies and his family.
“What about you?” he shot across at me, with a twitch threatening at the corner of his mouth – I noticed this because I’d spent the last hour staring at it.
“Um, not much to tell,” I said, going back to fumbling with my gloves.
“Oh that’s not true,” my mother chipped in in her chirpy phone voice. “Olivia is studying art. Well, she was until before this winter. At the moment she’s actually just chopping logs.”
I must’ve said “the girl who chops logs” out loud under my breath because when we left the bar later, he stopped me by the door. Put a hand on my shoulder, called me the girl who chops logs, flashed me those pearly whites.
Then we were outside, round the back of the bar, a nail from the wooden panels digging into my shoulder blade, his lips on mine. He was warm and hungrily we tried to suck the heat from each other, trying to feel through the layers of wool and fur and fur and wool.
I could still feel his warmth the next day, but I buckled up anyway, wrapped my hands around my coffee, and then crunched through the snow to starting chopping.
After lunch he was there, asking my father questions about wood and all I could think about were his hands – now safely tucked away inside a pair of thick, thick gloves – all over me. His sloping, Slavic eyes glanced across at me whenever a pause would allow, sparkling with the secret we had shared.
When my father went to fetch more wood, Erik was next to me, wrapping his arms around me, his hands over mine from behind, picking up the axe, both of us swinging it precisely. Chop. His chest against my back, the log expertly cut in half. I turned and he smiled down at me and I laughed. Oh, how I laughed.
My mother was right: it was good to laugh sometimes.
Then he was at dinner with us, spooning up chunks of meat and steaming broth across the table from me. He thanked my mother profusely: “such a gentleman,” she said, then he snuck into my room and kept me warm through the night.
“You look good,” my father said to me at some point after Erik’s arrival.
I felt good.
My body had been heated by a warmth from the inside. My fingers were no longer numb for every hour of every day, and I began to enjoy the crack of wood and the thud of axe meeting cutting block.
Winter was thawing.
“When does it end?” Erik asked me one day, his cold nose brushing my ear.
I’d shrugged. Who knew? No one, that’s who.
He smiled and we went to the bar. We drank hot wine and when Carl and the cabin boys got up to perform, Erik pulled me over to the small space that had been cleared between two tables – the dance floor. I was that person. Or rather, we were that person. With Erik it was okay. Everyone loved him. I loved him. We shimmied back and forth, flashing our pearly whites at each other, then we went back to my cabin and danced some more.
Two weeks they stayed. It felt like a lifetime.
One night he’d been there, behind me, arms around me, keeping me warm, and in the morning he was gone. The lagoon was empty, the boat nowhere to be seen. I watched the pinky-purple water, praying for a ripple.
It never came.
Place log on cutting block, curl numb, frozen fingers around axe, find a grip through the slippery wetness of gloves, swing axe round with aching arms, over the head, down, cut, repeat.
About Lizzie Davey
Lizzie is a freelance travel writer based between Brighton and Barcelona. She spends her days writing about awesome places all over the world, and by night she's stoically attempting to finish her very first novel. She's visited more than 30 countries, was awarded second place in National Geographic Traveller's Travel Writer of the Year competition in 2012, and has had work published on The Huffington Post and circulated with the Lonely Planet Magazine. Now she's trying her hand at fiction. So far, so good.
