Hello and welcome to Track of Words, where today I’m very pleased to offer up an excerpt of Emily Rath’s latest novel North Is The Night, which is out today from Arcadia. Billed as a modern retelling of medieval Finnish saga the Kalevala, this is the first volume of a new duology (although I’m told it works as a standalone story in its own right), and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this excerpt – it’s really evocative, and a brilliant opening to the story. If you’re anything like me, I think you’ll read this and absolutely want to pick up a copy of the book to keep reading.
Before we get onto the excerpt though, here’s the publisher’s synopsis to give you a sense of what to expect:
In the harsh interior of the Finnish wilderness, best friends Aina and Siiri are inseparable despite their opposite natures: Aina is gentle and cautious while Siiri is headstrong and brave. But their friendship is put to the test when Aina is kidnapped by a death goddess and taken to the mythical underworld Tuonela.
Determined to save her friend, Siiri embarks on a dangerous journey north to seek out Väinämöinen, the only mystical shaman to travel to Tuonela and return alive. As the dark winter looms, Siiri uses all the strength she possesses to survive her journey, which is plagued by trappers, a band of roving wolves, and a cunning snow witch with her own quest for power. But finding Väinämöinen is only the beginning. Siiri must convince him to share his magic so she can sneak into Tuonela and save Aina.
In Tuonela, Aina is forced to play the sadistic games of Tuonetar, the cruel queen of the underworld, alongside other captured maidens. But Aina’s kindness allows her to make allies in the dark, harsh environment. She soon discovers that Tuoni, the god of death and king of Tuonela, is also a victim of Tuonetar’s spells that can only be broken when he remarries. To save him and the other girls, Aina offers herself as his bride.
As she spends more time in the underworld, Aina falls in love with Tuoni and must make a decision that will alter the course of her fate forever . . . not knowing her fearless friend is on the way and plotting a daring escape.
Sounds good, right? With that done, here’s the first chapter of North Is The Night:
***
Siiri
A chill autumn wind whips at my face as I stand on the lakeshore, hands on my hips. Aina waits dutifully at my side. Together, we watch as my father calls out to us in greeting. He pulls in his oars just as the bottom of our wooden boat crunches against the pebbly beach. Flipping my braid off my shoulder, I wade in shin-deep and hold the boat steady for him. The water is icy cold, soaking through my socks and the hem of my woolen dress. I bite my lip against the pain. Father hops out, and we grip the sides, giving the small boat two sharp tugs.
“A good catch today,” he says proudly.
We give the boat one more heave, pulling it fully up onto the beach.
I peer inside. It is a good catch. And thank the gods for that. We need more fish if we’re to survive the winter. Father managed to fill a whole basket with perch. The other basket is a mix. Zander, a skinny pike, a handful of roach. A few of these will be set aside and given to Mummi, my grandmother, for tonight’s supper, but the rest must be salted and stored in the njalle for winter.
Father wipes his hands on his breeches. “Your brothers will stay out a bit longer. Help them bring in their catch too. Understood?”
“Yes, Isä,” I reply.
Glancing up at the sky, he judges how much daylight is left. There are still more chores to do before nightfall. “Remember not to stay out too late, Siiri. You, too, Aina. Get yourselves home well before dark.”
We nod, and he leaves us with the baskets.
I don’t fault him his curt manner. Everyone in the village is on edge. A few days ago, some of the menfolk returned from the southern market with chilling news: More young women have been going missing up and down the lakeshore. Strange tales of screams heard in the dark woods, creatures with eyes that glow red, a lingering stench of death in the air. People always talk of such things, but never so close to us, never here. And none of the girls have been found.
These are dark times. If Father could spare me, he would probably make me stay nearer the house with Mummi and my little sister. But winter is coming, and I have two strong hands. We both know he needs me. There’s no time for worry, not when our worries seem endless now.
Once, these forests were a safe haven. The gods give of their bounty, and we Finns take. We must take. And that which is taken is always shared. When the harsh winter comes, and the long, cold night sets in, we sit by our fires and warm each other with good food and stories of summertime. I have golden memories of sitting on my mother’s lap as she told us stories of the old gods – Ukko and the making of his stone hammer, Ahti the seafaring warrior, the clever shaman Väinämöinen and his magical kantele. Summer is the time for hard work and sacrifice. Winter is for stories and family and a quietly lived life.
That was before.
Before the gods went quiet, abandoning us here in these woods. Before bards stopped strumming kanteles and singing the songs. Before Swedish settlers arrived on our shores, stealing farmland across the south, uprooting thousands of us, including my family. We left my mother there, buried in the cold ground outside Turku. No one remains to tend to her grave. No flowers. No songs.
And that was before the whispers of a new god whistled darkly through the woods. Every day, the Christians grow bolder, challenging our gods and threatening our way of life.
In a few short years, the Swedes have turned these forests from a haven into a hell. Powerful men in robes of white now call out from their great stone houses in the south, offering gold and silver to any Finn who would provision them – meat, fur, timber, grain. Our forests are full of thieves who dare to take more than they need, leaving little enough for the rest of us. Each summer, the fight for land becomes bloodier. They slash and burn large swaths of acreage for their cattle. They thin our herds of free-roaming deer and elk. They claim the best of the farmland for their wheat and barley.
Before long, they’ll take even the mushrooms. We Finns will be left with nothing but the brambles in the fens and the bark on the trees.
I gaze down at the baskets in my father’s boat. The Swedes may be trying to claim everything, but Ilmatar hear me, they will not have our small, regular haul of fish. Lifting my hands, I close my eyes and offer up a blessing to the sea goddess. “Vellamo, righteous in beauty, thank you for your bounty.”
Next to me, Aina offers up her own quiet blessing.
“You don’t have to help me.” My tone is half-apologetic, half-hopeful. As much as I know we need these fish to survive the winter, I hate salting them. It’s probably my least favorite chore. With a heavy sigh, I pick up the first basket.
Aina just smiles, taking the other basket. “I don’t mind.
You’re always helping me with my chores.”
I lead the way over to our salting station. A few of the older women are seated together, gossiping quietly as they work. They nod in welcome, their expressions worried, if a little curious too.
Aina frowns, the basket of fish still balanced on her hip. “It’s as if they expect one of us to be taken next.”
“Ignore them,” I mutter, giving the women a fake smile and a wave. “They’re just jealous, because they know no man wants a catty old fishwife with salty fingers in his bed.” I drop down onto a stump and select a crock, preparing it with a base of salt. This is the worst part. The salt finds every scrape and blemish on my skin, burning and stinging so sharply, my eyes water. I hiss, waiting for the sting to numb, as I pick up the first fish, roll it in salt, and layer it in the bottom of the crock.
We’ll have to repeat this whole process in a few days. Once the fish are all repacked, they’ll last for up to nine months. Come winter, we’ll stay warm by our fires eating stews of perch with barley and dried mushrooms.
I try to hold my breath as I work, because the briny smell of the fish makes me gag. Also, I hate the feel of their slippery bodies as I roll them in the salt. On the stump next to me, Aina laughs. When I cast her a glare, she flicks a little salt my way with her fingers. “Don’t,” I mutter, in no mood to be teased.
“You’re such a goose. You like to eat fish, right?” “Of course.”
“Well, you won’t be eating anything this winter if you don’t salt these first.”
I grimace, packing a layer of salt over the first row of perch. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
She turns her attention back to her own work. After a few minutes of silence, she glances my way. “What if these girls aren’t really missing? Perhaps they simply chose to leave.”
My shoulders stiffen. “Why would someone do that? Just disappear like smoke in the wind without a word to anyone? All because you fancy a new life for yourself?”
She huffs, rolling another fish in salt. “Well, I wouldn’t, but other girls might. Not everyone has a mother as kind as mine…or a mummi as protective as yours.”
True.
I smile, thinking of my grandmother, of her warm hands and her cold glare. That woman was born with iron in her spine. She protects her grandchildren with the ferocity of a mother bear, and she loves us just as fiercely. And there really is no kinder woman than Aina’s mother…except perhaps Aina herself.
“You’ve made this point already,” I tease. “More than once.” “Well, it’s as true now as it was this morning,” she count- ers. “We’ve heard these stories for years. Women go missing,
Siiri. Too many women die in childbirth, and that leaves too few of us unmarried women left. And men get lonely-”
I snort, peering out at the boats. “Oh, do they? You wouldn’t know it from Aksel.”
She follows my gaze. We both know how decidedly not lonely my brother is, most nights. If my father catches him with a girl in the barn again, he’s likely to strap Aksel’s hide clean off.
“Fine, some men get lonely,” she clarifies. “And then they get desperate. I’m not saying it’s right,” she adds quickly. “I’m only saying I bet if someone went out and looked, they would find every one of those missing girls scattered somewhere along the lakeshore, adjusting to her lot as a lonely man’s wife.”
Now my grimace has nothing to do with the salt burning my hands. “Gods, why does your theory sound even more horrifying than the one about witches and blood sacrifice?”
She purses her lips, trying to hide her smile. “Perhaps because you are singularly opposed to even the idea of marriage? For you, a woman choosing to marry is as disturbing as being kidnapped by a witch or fed to a stone giant.”
I snort. “Surely I’m not that bad?”
“You are worse, and you know it. No man will ever be good enough for you, Siiri. You’re smarter than they are, funnier than they are.”
“True,” I joke.
“Not to mention you always best them in every contest of will. It’s quite maddening, I assure you.”
“Maddening? For whom?” “For them.”
“How can you know how they feel about it?”
“Because they tell me so,” she replies with a laugh. “Repeatedly. They call you the pickled herring.”
I laugh, too, puffing a little with pride. “Well, perhaps they should try harder to impress me.”
“And since no man is good enough for you,” she says over me, “you’ve decided no man can possibly ever be good enough for me, either. You’ve scared away my last three suitors-”
“Stop right there.” I waggle a salt-crusted finger in her face. “If you call that duck-brained Joki your suitor one more time, gods hear me, I’ll marry you to him myself. See how well you like it when a year from now he’s still telling you the same story of the time he nearly felled a ten-point stag.”
She laughs again despite herself, tossing another fish down on her bed of salt. Leaning over, she gives my knee a gentle squeeze. “Be at peace. I don’t want to marry Joki.”
The tension in my chest eases a bit at her admission.
“But I will eventually marry someone,” she adds, turning back to her work.
Her words stifle the air like a blanket tossed over a fire. I can’t look at her, can’t let her see my face.
“I want a family,” she says, her tone almost apologetic. “I want a home of my own. Gods willing, I’ll have children.”
“Gods willing, you’ll survive it,” I mutter. Too few women do. We lost our dear friend Helka just last month. Her and her baby. That’s three mothers and three babies this summer alone. Just another one of the curses plaguing our land. I swear, sometimes it feels like the gods are laughing at us…if they bother to see us at all.
Maybe my brother Onni is right. Maybe our gods really are dead. What else could account for this cruel, senseless suffering?
But my sweet Aina is ever hopeful. “I’ll have children and a husband who loves me,” she goes on. “A home of my own. A family. A purpose. Don’t you want that for me, Siiri? Don’t you want it for yourself?”
I stare down at my fingers, red and stinging and swollen with salt. A family and a home of my own. That’s supposed to be the dream, right? Children. A warm fire and full bel- lies. My own njalle stocked with provisions to last us the long winter. A man in my bed to warm my back and keep the wolves at bay.
I shake my head. All my life, I’ve tried to see that future for myself. It’s what my mother wanted for me…before she died bringing my little sister into this world. It’s what my grandmother wants for me. Now, it’s what Aina wants for us both.
But what do I want? What do I see when I close my eyes and dream of my happiest self?
I take a deep breath, gazing out across Lake Päijänne, my home for the last fourteen years. The days are getting shorter, the nights colder. I can taste autumn in the air, that crisp smell of drying leaves. The lake is changing too. In summer, she’s as bright as the blue of a jaybird’s wing. In autumn, the lake darkens as the fish sink to her depths. She grows quiet and secretive as she waits for spring.
Watching the boats bob, the truth unravels itself inside me like a spool of golden thread. I want to live the life I already have. I want long summer days running through the forest, hunting deer and snaring rabbits. I want quiet winter nights in Aina’s hayloft, cracking walnuts and laughing until we fall asleep. I want to swim naked in the lake, my hair loose and tangled around my arms. I want us to stay just like this, happy and free forever.
“Siiri?” Aina’s hand brushes my arm. “Are you well?”
Sucking in a sharp breath, I turn to face her. Bracing myself with both hands on her shoulders, I search her face. Her lips part in silent question, her brows lowered with worry.
“Aina, I want you to be happy,” I say at last, giving her shoulders a squeeze. “That’s what I want. Tell me what will make you happy, and I’ll get it for you. If you want to marry Joki, the fish-faced farm boy, I will be the first to light a candle in the great oak tree.”
She rolls her eyes with a soft smile.
“If you want to leave our village and go on that adventure in search of a new love, I will leave with you-”
She leans away. “Siiri-”
“I will,” I say in earnest. Taking her salty hands in mine, I hold them fast. “Aina, you are my oldest and dearest friend. I don’t care about finding myself a good man and settling down. I am perfectly content being my own good man. What I cannot bear is the thought of losing you or making you un- happy. So please, just tell me what you want, and I’ll get it for you.”
She blinks, eyes brimming with tears as she searches my face. I fear what she might see in me. She’s always seen too much – the parts I hide, the parts I pretend not to have. My weaknesses, my fears. She knows me better than any person living or dead.
Slowly, she sighs, shaking her head. “I guess…I wish there was just some way you really could be happy for me if I pick a life you wouldn’t pick for yourself.”
I drop her hands. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” She groans. “Gods, you know, I wish I knew whether there was even one person out there who you thought was good enough for me. I could never marry without your blessing, Siiri, so I need to know. Is there no man living you could bear to see me wed?”
I consider for a moment, heart in my throat. Does she want me to say Joki? The poor man is duller than lichen on rocks. My brothers are both clever enough, I guess, but they’re all wrong for her. They’re both too independent. Aina needs someone who really sees her, someone who listens, someone who needs her.
She watches me, waiting, still searching my face. I can’t sit here and have her looking at me with such hope in her eyes. Taking a deep breath, I hold her gaze. “You want a name? Fine. Let it be Nyyrikki.”
She blinks. After a moment, she laughs. It bubbles out of her like foam off a stream. Before long, she’s gripping her sides with salty fingers. I join her, and we both laugh, tears filling our eyes.
“Nyyrikki?” she says on a tight breath. “God of the hunt and prince of the forest? That’s where I must set my standard of matrimony?”
“You said any man living. And you’d never be hungry,” I add with a shrug. “There would always be game for your table. And he’s supposed to be of famed beauty, with a head of flowing hair…and he lives in a forest palace with gates of wrought gold. You could do worse, Aina.”
She laughs. “Well, next time I stumble across his palace in the woods, I’ll just give those golden gates a knock, shall I?”
“We’ll both knock,” I tease, catching her gaze again. Aina has the most beautiful eyes, bright like new blades of spring grass. She has freckles too, though not so many as me. Hers are soft and small, scattered over her pointed nose. Wisps of her nut-brown hair frame her face, tugged loose by this wind. I want to tuck the strands behind her ear. I want to touch her face. I want to brush my fingertips over the freckles on her nose.
“What is it?”
Looking at her now, I can see the truth so clearly: I don’t want things to change between us. And marriage will change her. It always does. It’s the way of things. Once children come, they will be her world, and I’ll lose her. I’ll lose everything. Call me selfish, but I’m not ready. Not yet. I want just one more summer of being the first in her affections.
I curl my salted fingers until the tips of my nails bite into the meat of my palms.
“Siiri?”
“It’s nothing,” I mutter, turning away.
She drops her hand from my thigh, reaching for another fish. “And…who shall we find for you, then?” She keeps her tone light, trying to move us past my awkwardness. “I don’t believe Nyyrikki has a brother…”
“I don’t need to marry.”
“Ilmarinen could spin gold for you,” she offers.
I huff. “So can the moon goddess. And she’d likely darn her own stockings. Clean up her own messes too. Now, no more talk of god-husbands. Let’s just get this done.”
Before long, I’m packing the last perch into the top of my crock. Aina is crouched over at the water’s edge, washing her hands. She stands, shielding her eyes with her hand, as she gazes out across the lake. The setting sun is casting a glare.
“What are they doing?” she asks.
I glance up, squinting. My brother Aksel is perched in the front of our other fishing boat, waving at us. “Maybe they caught a massive pike,” I say with a shrug. It doesn’t make me happy. It’s just more work.
“They’ll have the boat over if they keep rocking it like that,” Aina warns.
I look up again. Aksel isn’t so much waving as gesturing frantically. Cupping his mouth, he shouts across the water. Meanwhile, Onni faces the opposite way, rowing as hard as he can. I rise to my feet. “What the …
“Run!”
I join Aina at the water’s edge. What is he saying?
“Siiri, run!”
Screams erupt behind us. Up and down the beach, the others scatter. My heart leaps into my throat. On the shore, not fifteen feet from me, stands a woman. No…a monster. She has the body of a woman, draped in heavy black robes. The cloth is soiled and torn, dragging on the ground, hanging off her skeletal frame. Her face is painted – a band of mottled white across her eyes and nose – while her forehead and exposed neck are smeared with what looks like dried, flaking blood. Perched on her head is a set of curling black ram’s horns.
She looks at me with eyes darker than two starless skies. They dare me to leap into their depths. Sucking in a breath, I blink, breaking our connection. Her mouth opens, showing broken, rotting teeth. She hisses, taking a step forward, and one thought fills me.
Run.
Grabbing Aina by the hand, I take off down the beach.
She asks no questions. She just holds my hand, and we sprint. Our feet crunch against the pebbles. I chance a look over my shoulder as I pull her towards the trees. The creature slowly turns and raises her tattooed hand, pointing right at us. In a swirl of black smoke, a monstrous wolf appears at the creature’s side. The jaws of the beast open wide as it pants, exposing rows of sharp white teeth. The glowing red eyes track us like prey. With a growl, it leaps from its mistress’s side.
The chase is on.
“Ilmatar, help us,” I cry to the heavens. “Aina, run.”
***
Photo credit: Jennifer Catherine Photography
Emily Rath was raised in Northern Kentucky. A life-long lover of words, she’s been writing for as long as she could hold a pencil. Her earliest stories were about daring egg burglars, majestic horse lords, and seafaring adventurers.
She holds a BA in political science and philosophy and a PhD in peace studies and political science. She specializes in African politics and credits her time living in Malawi for reigniting her love of writing. She’s currently a full time storyteller and lives in Florida.
Find out more at Emily’s website.
***
Thanks so much to Emily and the lovely folks at Arcadia for sharing this excerpt. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did! North Is The Night is out now from Arcadia.
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