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underneath Kalle. It was not blood, but water seeping from the body, Roope said.
    Lauri did not leave a puddle, though they said his mouth was black. From the poison, according to Father, but Mataleena wondered if the soul can escape through the mouth and leave the colour behind.
    Roope said there is no soul inside a human being, only blood and black water, flowing around before they just run out; then he shrivels up. Two kinds of wetness go into the making of a human being: man’s water and woman’s water. Mataleena asked how that happens, and Roope explained that a man ejects his own liquid into a woman’s liquids, and that is how a new person is created. But Mother forbade Roope to say such things in the presence of a child. She asked a question herself, though: who provides the blood and who the black liquid.
    Then Mataleena is again sitting with Father in the boat, and when she finally comes to, she has already crossed the lake.
    ‘The house has got to be beyond that hill,’ Mother gasps in front of her.
    Mataleena looks back. No sign of Father, only the open lake, covered by snow; Father has rowed out of sight, into the whiteness.
     
    All of a sudden, the sun drops down to the horizon from behind the curtain of clouds. Only now does Mataleena spot the house and the outbuilding, which are inflamed as light sweeps away the blizzard. Juho falls out of Marja’s arms and stays sitting in the snowdrift. Mataleena tries to pull him up. The boy stands, but at the same time Mataleena falls.
    Marja stares at the gaping, hungry jaws on the grey barn wall.
    ‘Pike heads.’ She finally realizes what they are.
    Snow stuck to the skulls has sculpted strange expressions, and the reddish rays of the setting sun cause the eye sockets to glow uncannily. Mataleena sees a dark figure approaching; at the same time, the whole world turns red.
     
    Small trickles of water flow in through both corners of her mouth. Mataleena comes to. She feels the warmth of a hand supporting the back of her neck. The grey planks of the ceiling above her undulate for a moment, then settle down. The thin face of a woman comes intoview. Mataleena turns her head and sees Mother and Juho sitting on a bench by the door.
    ‘Make gruel, thin gruel for the beggars,’ a man’s voice says.
    ‘Surely we can find some real food, at least for the children. They look so hungry,’ the woman says.
    ‘Gruel is fine, even thin gruel,’ Marja whispers.
    ‘Everybody looks hungry these days. When did you last see someone with a bit of meat on their bones, apart from in a pulpit?’
    ‘Shame on you – such talk at a time like this. When did you last go to church?’ the woman retorts.
    She ladles gruel out of a saucepan into a wooden bowl. Juho is already seated at the table, and he begins to devour the grey gruel. Mataleena awaits her turn. She gets her share after Juho, in the same bowl. The girl is still eating when Juho falls asleep on the bench by the wall.
    ‘The beggars can stay. We’re not in the habit of turning people out into the night here at Vääräjärvi, particularly not women and children. But you’ve got to leave in the morning. I’ll give you a lift to the church in the sledge; I’m going to see if there’s any flour left in the communal silo, from the emergency supply,’ the man says.
    Marja nods in response. The woman brings her the bowl. Marja slurps down the contents before the woman has time to bring a spoon. Then she falls asleep. Juhani is calling her.
    *
    Juhani is a bird, a loon. It is summer, autumn and spring, all the snow-free seasons. Marja wanders around in a pine forest. She sees a pond, flashing between the trees; the water is black but bright. Even so, Marja cannot find the way to the edge. New trees keep appearing in front of her and she has to dodge them. Finally, she realizes she has turned in the wrong direction.
    She does not recognize the forest but she knows the pond. Juhani took her there years ago. She hears