White Hunger

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The rowlocks screech, like a bird.

Two skinny pikes lie at the bottom of the boat. They look more like snakes than fish. They no longer twitch; the cold has made them stiff. Their jaws gape, still trickling blood, which blends in slender swirls with the water around Mataleena’s feet.

Mataleena dips her hand in the cold lake, lets it glide lazily alongside the boat until the chill makes her joints ache. The wind tugs waves out of the water. The sky reflected there is patchy, fragmentary, as if smashed.

Juhani stretches out his sinewy neck like a crane, looking up. Mataleena takes in her father’s face, the thin bridge of his nose, and then the sky, an immense silver spoon over the lake.

‘They’re already heading south.’ Juhani sighs.

‘What are?’

‘The swans.’

‘I can’t see any birds.’

‘That’s because they’ve already gone.’

Juhani looks down, to Mataleena.

‘Anyway, we got some fish.’

*

Juhani pulls the boat up between some bushes. Marja has come to meet them, carrying Juho. She lowers the boy to the ground, and Mataleena takes her little brother by the hand. Marja looks into the boat.

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