stifle a scream. But I learn to endure that pain as well. I am scarred, and I will never be what I was before, but I’m growing stronger.
Oskar seems to be doing the opposite, though. He comes in from days of hunting with his sled piled high with field-dressed game, enough to make the other men grumble with jealousy, but his lips are gray with cold and it takes an hour in front of the fire for him to stop shaking. He’s grown his beard while many young men go clean-shaven. He eats his soup boiling and it’s never hot enough for him. And the nights are the worst. He tosses and turns, his racked breaths huffing from him in a glitter of ice crystals. As the days pass, colder and colder, he grows silent and weary.
I lose count of how many times I almost cross the room to lay a hand on his shoulder, in the quiet hope that I could offer him some comfort. There is something about him that tugs at me. I find myself wanting to put my hands on either side of his face and tell him that I know what he is, ask him how I can help. But the only time he looks at me is in the morning as he leaves. He always turns back right before he steps out of the shelter.
“Elli? You did a good job with the patching.” He raises his elbow and wobbles it in front of me, showing off my somewhat clumsy job. “Like new.”
He says something like that every day, but his smiles are so rare that I want to collect them in a basin and hide them away. I’m sitting in front of the fire one morning after he leaves, eating a dry biscuit and trying to remember what his laugh sounded like, when Freya emerges from her mother’s little chamber. “Get up, Elli. You’re coming with me.” She begins to fold pelts and place them in a basket.
“I have chores to do. I told Maarika I would—”
Maarika pokes her head out of her chamber. “It can wait. You’ve been huddling in this tiny space for days.”
I scoot a little closer to the fire. “Haven’t I been useful?”
The firm line of Maarika’s mouth softens. “Very. But you’re also acting as if you’re hiding out, and that’s making our neighbors nervous. Oskar’s not here as often, so he doesn’t see it.”
Freya snorts. “And no one would dare approach him anyway, especially not now. But they’re talking. I heard Aira telling Senja and her husband a story about you being the daughter of a city councilman, and that you ran away because you got yourself pregnant by a stable boy.”
My mouth drops open.
“Senja’s husband said it would be bad if a councilman came here, thinking we’d kidnapped his wayward daughter,” Freya continues. “He doesn’t want to give the constables one more excuse to attack us.” She leans forward. “So was Aira right? Are you . . .”
She and Maarika glance down at my middle.
I put my hand over my flat belly. “Not even close.”
“Ah. Well, Luukas will be pleased then. He thought that was an idiotic rumor,” Maarika says. But before I can smile, she adds, “He thinks you’re spying on us, trying to figure out which of us are wielders so you can take that information to the councilmen and priests, so that when they return to reclaim the caves and the copper hidden in these tunnel walls, they’ll be able to kill us all. We’ve had spies try to infiltrate the camp before.” The lines around her mouth grow deep. “And we’ve dealt with them before they had a chance to tell our secrets.”
I draw my knees to my chest, imagining how the cave dwellers might “deal” with a spy.
Maarika leans on the wood frame. “Yesterday I heard Luukas in his shelter, telling Veikko—that’s his oldest son, who happens to be a wielder—that they should tell Oskar to get rid of you or they’ll make our whole family leave. Is Luukas right? You did show up only two days after Sig chased off the miners. Are you a spy?”
A hard chill rolls through me. “Definitely not,” I say in a hollow voice.
Freya tugs my arm, trying to pull me to my feet. “But no one will know that if you don’t get out there and act like a normal person.”
I turn to Maarika, and my voice trembles as I say, “I never meant to put