‘Why did they not fish?’ says Sigfrid. ‘Did Kiberg not see the shoal?’
Edne shakes her head. ‘The whale neither.’
‘So it was sent for us,’ whispers Toril, and her fear spreads across the pews in muttering waves.
The talk is too loose for a sacred place, full of omens and embellishments, but no one can resist the chance to gossip. Their words are like links they can hang fact upon, tightening with each telling. Many of them seem past caring what is true or not, only desperate for some reason, some order to the rearrangement of their lives, even if it is brought about by a lie. That the whale swam upside down is now beyond question, and though Maren tries to shore herself against the creeping terror their talk brings, she can’t hold steady like Kirsten.
The woman has moved into Mads Petersson’s house, the better to care for the reindeer. Maren regards her, standing firm by the pulpit. They have barely spoken since Kirsten dug them from the snow, except to exchange words of sorrow when their men were pulled rotting from the sea. Maren thinks to speak with her as the kirke meet comes to an end, but Kirsten is already out of the door, striding to her new homestead, bent against the wind.
•
Diinna is back the day they find Pappa. The first Maren hears of her return there is shouting at the boathouse and she runs, imagining all sorts of things: another storm though she can see for herself the sunless sky is calm, or a man found yet living.
There is a cluster of women about the door, Sigfrid and Toril at the fore, their faces twisted in anger. Before them stands Diinna with another Sámi: a short, square man who watches the women coolly. It is not Diinna’s father, but he has a shaman drum at his hip. Between them they hold a furled length of silvery cloth. As Maren comes closer, dizzy with the effort of running, she sees it is birch bark.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asks Diinna, and Toril answers.
‘She wants to bury them in that.’ The woman’s voice is close to hysteria. Spit flecks her chin. ‘Like they do.’
‘Makes no sense to use cloth, not for so many,’ says Diinna. ‘This is—’
‘And I will not have that, not near my boys.’ Toril is panting worse than Maren, looking at the drum as though it were a weapon. Sigfrid Jonsdatter nods her approval as Toril plunges on. ‘Nor my husband. He’s a God-fearing man, and I’ll not have you near him.’
‘I don’t remember you minding my help when you wanted another baby got upon you,’ says Diinna.
Toril puts her hand across her belly, though her babies are long born. ‘I did no such thing.’
‘I know as well as any that you did, Toril,’ says Maren, unable to keep silent at the lie. ‘And you, Sigfrid. Many of you came to her, or her father.’
Toril narrows her eyes. ‘I would never go to a Lapp sorcerer.’
There is a collective hiss. Maren steps forward, but Diinna puts her arm out.
‘I should put a hole in your tongue, Toril. Perhaps it would let some of the poison out.’ It is Toril’s turn to shrink. ‘And it’s not sorcery, and it’s not for them.’
Diinna turns to Maren. She is beautiful in the bluish light, the planes of her face strong, her eyes thickly lashed. ‘It’s for Erik.’
‘And my father.’ Maren’s voice breaks. She cannot bear to separate them, and Pappa loved Diinna, was proud of the match made for his son.
‘He has come back?’ Maren nods, and Diinna clasps her shoulder. ‘And for Herr Magnusson, of course. We will watch them. And any others that want it.’
‘And will your mother be happy with this?’ Toril rounds on Maren, and she is too weary to do anything but nod, her head heavy on her neck.
Eventually it is agreed that anyone who wants the Sámi rites for their men will be taken to the second boathouse, that was to have been Maren’s home. Only two men are moved in next to Erik and Pappa: poor Mads Petersson, who has no family to speak for him, and Baar Ragnvalsson, who was often gone to the low mountain and wore Sámi clothing.
The second boathouse would have made a fine home. The start of the shed alone is as large as Diinna and Erik’s room, and the main space rivals the one at Dag’s father’s house, the largest in the village. Their bed is laid out in planks ready for Dag’s careful hands to knock together.
They take the wood for their fire, and lay her father and Erik on the bare ground. Maren has to leave Dag behind in the first boathouse: his mother, Fru Olufsdatter, has not spoken a word to her, will not meet her eye.
Maren snaps a lock of frozen hair from Erik’s dark head, places it carefully into her pocket. As she leaves Diinna and the noaidi behind in the silent room, Maren loops around to the first boathouse. She sees one of the women has nailed a cross over the door, and it feels less like a blessing on those within than a warding-off of those without.
When she reaches home, Mamma is asleep, her arm flung across her eyes as though she is cowering from a nightmare.
‘Mamma?’ Maren wants to tell her about the noaidi, and the second boathouse. ‘Diinna is back.’
There is no response. Mamma seems barely to breathe, and Maren resists the urge to place her cheek over her mouth to check for life. Instead, she retrieves the lock from her pocket, holds it before the fire. It frills into Erik’s fine curls. She makes a slice in her pillow, places it inside with the heather.
•
Every day after kirke, Maren returns to the second boathouse, though she can’t bring herself to sleep there like Diinna and the man with the drum. He does not speak Norwegian, and will not give an easy version of his name so Maren calls him Varr, vigilant, because it sounds a little like the beginning of what he says he is called before she loses the rest on her unskilled tongue.
Each time she visits her father and Erik she waits outside, listening to Varr and Diinna speak together in their language. They always fall silent the moment she puts her hand on the door, and Maren feels as though she’s walked in on something indecent, or else intensely private. That she’s broken something, clumsy just by being there.
Maren speaks Norwegian to Diinna and Diinna translates to Varr, her sentences always shorter, as though they have the better and more exacting words for what Maren is trying to say. What must it be like to have two languages in your head, in your mouth? Having to keep one tucked like a dark secret at the back of your throat? Diinna has always lived between Vardø and elsewhere, around now and again since Maren was a girl, trailing alongside her silent father who came to fix nets or weave charms.
‘We lived here,’ Diinna told Maren once, when Maren was still a little afraid of her: a girl in trousers and a coat edged with bear fur that she’d skinned and stitched herself.
‘This is your land?’
‘No.’ The girl’s tone was firm as her gaze. ‘We only lived here.’
Sometimes Maren can hear the drum beaten, steady as a heartbeat, and she sleeps easier those nights though there is much muttering from the strictest kirke-goers about it. Diinna tells her the drum will clear the way for the spirits to break cleanly from the bodies, and not be afraid. But Varr never plays it when Maren is about. It is broad as a trough, skin stretched taut over a shallow bowl of pale wood. Small markings punctuate the surface: a reindeer with a sun and moon caught in its antlers, men and women linked like paper chains at the hands in the centre, and a twist of hideous almost-men, almost-beasts writhe across the bottom.