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Juhani’s call: u-uui, u-uui, u-uui.
    Marja tries to make her way towards the sound, but the echo travels around the wilderness so the direction is unclear. Soon Juhani takes off, leaving her alone, the pond abandoned. If Juhani gets away, the children will not be born.
    Suddenly, the black pond water glimmers far ahead. Too far. Marja begins to run towards it, keeping the pond in sight. But the setting sun blinds her for a moment and soon she cannot see the water. Juhani’s call comes from afar, from another direction. U-uui, u-uui.
    Marja freezes. She hears the weeping and wailing of the ghosts of dead children ahead. Winter is near. It is closing in, already twisting and turning, restless and angry, inside a pike skull. Soon the pike will open its jaws. The cry of ‘u-uui’ is now far, far away.
     
    Mataleena wakes before the others, but she stays lying on the bench, looking at the room, which has gone topsy-turvy:the wall with the door is now the floor, the floor and the ceiling have become walls, and the stove sits on the ceiling.
    ‘Don’t you forget: only give beggars gruel. Thin gruel,’ the man says.
    Mataleena laughs softly; the man and woman are flies, sitting on the wall in summer. Then she sits up, and the room assumes its normal position. The man and the woman turn to look at her.
    ‘Poor child,’ the woman says, sighing.
    The man comes and sits down next to Mataleena.
    ‘My name is Retrikki and my wife is called Hilta. We’ve no children of our own, they died years ago, long before these lean years. But we can’t feed you here. And soon new beggars will come. Folk with no bread, they’re all on the move. Though there’s nothing to be found elsewhere, wherever you’re thinking of going. You’re chasing a will-o’-the-wisp; still, you can’t do anything else,’ the man says.
    Mataleena nods. Retrikki strokes her hair; clumps of it come off and cling to the man’s mitten.
    Retrikki stands up and says he is going to harness the sledge.
    ‘Don’t you worry about that old ogre, child, we’ll find you something,’ Hilta says.
    ‘My name’s Mataleena.’
    ‘That’s a beautiful name. Christian. That’s good.’
    Hilta fills the wooden bowl from the previous day. The gruel is thicker this time, porridgey. Hilta also brings halfa loaf of bark bread to the table, and some dried pike, which she stirs into the porridge.
    ‘Eat, child.’
    And Mataleena eats. She wolfs down the porridge before Retrikki can come in and take the bowl away. The woman gives her watery milk, which helps wash down the bread in a flash. Hilta refills the bowl. When Retrikki comes back in, Hilta snatches the empty bowl from Mataleena. The girl smiles at Hilta, whose eyes well with tears.
    The slamming of the door wakes Juho and Marja. Hilta makes them some thin gruel. She breaks off small pieces of bark bread and hands them to the three visitors. Then she glances at Retrikki and hands out small pieces of dried pike too. Retrikki remains silent.
    Juho puts a piece of pike in his mouth, digs it out with his fingers, looks at it briefly. He places the morsel back on to his tongue for a moment, then takes it out again to squeeze it tightly in his fist. Retrikki observes the boy’s antics and laughs.
    ‘You’ll be back on the road soon. Where are you off to, actually?’
    ‘St Petersburg.’
    St Petersburg. Marja cannot imagine anyone being permitted to starve in the Tsar’s city. There is enough bread for everyone in St Petersburg. And it contains no bark or lichen, let alone straw. But St Petersburg is a long way away. Not beyond the next hill, not even after the next village, but far away, in Russia.
    ‘How will you ever make it to St Petersburg?’ Retrikki sighs.
    Marja looks out of the window, through the ice flowers. The sun glints, among clouds of snow. The same sun that gilds the Tsar’s palace in St Petersburg.
    ‘First we have to get to Helsinki. St Petersburg’s beyond Helsinki,’ Marja