Dusk in Kalevia: Chapter 9

Kaija didn’t know how long she had been wandering. There was no time anymore, no direction–only white and cold and pain. With every step, a fiery jolt shot up through her wounded leg, but she still limped forward, dragging a furrow in the snow that the blizzard filled in after her. The storm harbored her in the freezing blankness of its bosom, hiding her from her pursuers, but she wasn’t fooled–it was merely keeping her for itself.

The blood that pumped out of her shoulder and leg was pleasantly warm at the source, but immediately trickled down to become a cold wetness, freezing stiff on her clothes. Her hands were numb, her face was numb, and she stared down at her fingers, glad to see that they had not yet gone completely white. At least she didn’t have to experience the stabbing pain of the wind on her extremities any longer.

She was becoming terribly dizzy. She found herself thinking about a time long past, when she’d been a small child and someone had given her a balloon. She had held onto its string so tightly, terrified that it would float up and away forever and ever, but now it was her head being pulled up into the sky, barely attached to her body, drifting as light as air.

Now, for the first time in what had seemed like hours, the pain seemed to abate, and she no longer felt cold. No, more that that, she felt warm–warm and cozy, and so, so tired. All she wanted to do was curl up in the fluffy white, a down quilt over her body, and rest, just for a few minutes. She had been running all her life, so didn’t she deserve that much?

She stopped and stared ahead. Something seemed off; there were no more trees ahead of her, just a white plain as open and bare as the surface of the moon. The snowfall had slackened, and she realized was looking out across the ice of a frozen lake, blue-gray in the swiftly fading daylight. The rolling storm clouds parted for a moment, and she caught a glimpse of Venus, shining green and beautiful in the dusk.

So this is where I end, she thought. At last.

She felt neither sadness nor panic at the thought of her death. It was better than she had ever hoped for: a chance to drift off to sleep under the stars. She would die free and alone, a poetic death–her mossy bones resting by the shore, picked clean by the ravens of the wood. Dying in the beauty of Kalevia, surrounded by the one thing the Communists couldn’t control.

She sank to her knees in the soft snow. No more running. No regrets. None.

None?

“Kill the hostage.”

No, there was one great and terrible regret, and the memory of it drew tears from her eyes that left streaks of ice across her cheeks.

Vesa was going to die.

He wouldn’t be granted a beautiful death, but a betrayal at the hands of a corrupt monster–the fate of a pawn in their games. He was caught up in something she didn’t understand, and she was powerless to stop it. If her own death could save him, then it would all be worthwhile, but dying here and now meant that she could do no more.

Kaija howled up at the sky like a dying animal, her voice going weaker and thinner as she spilt her grief into the frozen wastes. She clawed at the snow, churning it up around her, turning this way and that as she poured out the last of her energy in a fit of impotent rage…until she suddenly stopped when her eye caught something down at the shore.

It was a cabin. A little summer house deserted for the season, standing all alone by the lake. At first she wondered if it were just a hallucination brought on by hypothermia, but it didn’t matter–it gave her something to struggle for. She pulled herself to her feet.

One step, two. Every footstep was a battle, dragging the curse of her half-frozen body.

Just a little rest, just let me sleep. Just a little.

Down the bank, so slowly.

No! You’re almost there. For Vesa–do it for him!

Touching the wall, up the steps.

Don’t you dare, don’t you dare quit now.

The key was on a hook by the door, like it was expecting her.

How kind of them, she thought.

How kind…to save my life…

And his…

To be continued in Chapter 9.

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