I woke before sunrise, though, as north as we were in mid-winter, that did not mean much. The sun wouldn't rise till ten AM, and even then, it was unlikely to bother to prod even a single breather hole into the cap of clouds above Iron Lake.

It would be better to say that I was the first to rise, save for Aatami, whose prayers scuttled like spiders from the crack under his door. I squashed them under my feet. My woollen socks had fallen off in the night, sucked somewhere into the folds of the blankets I nested under, and I imagined each line of worship pockmarking the bare soles of my feet.

In the kitchen, I took the final bag of roast venison out of the freezer to thaw. Yesterday's deer was shoved between bags of frozen berries in a second freezer in the utility room, waiting to be traded or cooked.

We were down to our last bread loaf, too. After church, the day would be spent baking. We had better get flour in our next rations, or we would all be left eating pine needles.

I boiled six eggs. Memories of Roope's flushed face at the market on Tuesday bobbed on the surface of my mind. Whatever he had been doing during his absence must have been how he caught the Sin.

I fished my egg out first. I liked it best when the yolk was entirely raw, when the white was still somewhat reminiscent of vaginal discharge.

When I had first encountered it on toilet paper, I had thought God had decided to turn me into an amphibian. I was no good as a human, and vitally, as a girl, and He realised His mistake in the body He gave me. I was always meant to be something else entirely.

I would scoop the slime off my underwear before leaving them in the wash lest Mummi find out about my fate to soon reside in the mud and slop surrounding the lake, then flush it down like sin.

Father Matias assured me that God did not turn sweet girls into toads when I eventually confessed my oncoming transformation to him. I wondered whether Father Matias had ever read a book beyond scripture. Stories were full of girls turned and transformed.

When we were sixteen, Isolde had pirated Cronenberg's The Fly for us to watch during a sleepover. I had never felt as close a kinship to anyone or anything as I did to Seth Brundle begging to be killed before he turned monstrous.

Aatami's egg was left to boil the longest. He liked it to resemble a rock.

When I had first taken on cooking duties after Mother died, I used to think of the wolf from Red Riding Hood—the version where the hunter cuts open the wolf's stomach and fills it with rocks so that, when the wolf goes to drink from the well, it falls in and drowns.

I used to think of Aatami at the bottom of a well, his limbs twisted in every direction but the correct one. I used to think of finding a smooth white rock from Isolde's parents' garden and putting it on his plate at breakfast. His teeth shattered against it.

Of course, I wouldn't want Aatami at the bottom of a well or with blood in place of teeth. Those thoughts were not unique to him. I used to imagine myself at the bottom of a well just as vividly.

Once the bread had thawed and the eggs were each boiled to accommodate specific preferences, I started the coffee. Coffee was a luxury item in quarantine. People had started to mix in chicory and sawdust, as they had during the war¹.

I suppose it was lucky that Mummi, whose mind never left the war, hoarded coffee long before there was a whisper of the Covid pandemic or the disease that spread across Iron Lake after. We still had a whole shelf of Paulig's dark roast, stacked like bricks without a hairline fracture of air between them.

It was our family's most guarded secret. The people of Iron Lake would circle our home with pitchforks if they discovered that we were still enjoying full cups in the morning and the evening while they were drinking slop made of leaves and mud.

It was the one thing Aatami would not give away. Not even priests are forbidden caffeine addictions in the Arctic Circle.

Severi was the first to trudge into the kitchen, eyes still half shut like a newborn kitten. I was peeling the strips of roasted venison apart so that they would thaw all the way and cast him a smile over my shoulder.

He wrapped me in a hug from behind. Brushing my ash blonde hair out of the way, he even dared a kiss on my neck.

"Morning, baby."

My body eased into his warmth. For a moment, I allowed myself to simply enjoy it. "Good morning, love."

Severi helped me set the table so that, by the time the coffee had finished dripping, breakfast was ready. I stepped into the hall where I yelled into the house to let them know. Jopi's door slammed into the opposite wall, immediately followed by Mummi's disciplining 'Johannes!' from the ground floor.

I turned back to the kitchen so that I could enjoy my final seconds of peace with Severi. I nestled into him. He was barely taller than I, and I could rest my chin on his shoulder comfortably.

He still slept on a camper bed in Jopi's room. Mummi and Father had ruled it inappropriate for him to share mine since we were not yet married, never mind that when we arrived, we had already been in a relationship for almost five years and had lived together for four of them. Certainly, moving in together after a single year would be considered too soon by most, but with the price of rent in Helsinki, it was a financial necessity that I caved into despite Father's stern disapproval when I suggested it on the phone.

Though Father had passed from Covid and my parents' room was vacant, and Mummi, too, had already accepted him as part of the family without marriage, Severi remained in Jopi's room.

Perhaps Severi felt, as I did, that change would shatter something, break some final layer of protection. It would force us to face the life we were living and the increasing possibility that we would never return to normal.

All the same, I missed him, I missed time alone with him. In Iron Lake, there was, of course, no such thing as time without God.

"You sleep okay?" The question stumbled out of his mouth.

Such mundane morning conversations were always riddled with barbs and sharp edges in those days. I grew so out of the habit of asking how anyone was that now, I offend even the most antisocial Finn with my lack of small talk.

I smiled. "Yes. You?"

"Sure, as good as anyone can sleep after all that."

He may have been stuck here for the past year and a half with the rest of us, but Iron Lake was strange to him before the Sin came. It was especially difficult for him to cope with.

There were no words of comfort left. I hugged him instead.

Cradling his face, I caressed the scar over his upper lip. "Will you join for Third Hour² today?"

I had expected that he would say no, but he nodded. It was not that last night's death had reawakened some deeply embedded faith within him. He simply did not want to be alone in the house. I couldn't blame him.

🫀

Notes

1. When we talk about the war or wartime in Finland, it refers to the Winter War (1939-40) and Continuation War (1941-44) against the Soviet Union during WWII, and the Lapland War (1944-45) against Germany.

2. Third Hour: Orthodox church service that starts at 9 am.