Interlude XII — Seven Decembers

  December, nineteen ninety-four, in Helsinki.

  White flakes fell in thick sheets, thrown around by the harsh wind. The other kids whined and complained, because their clothes were getting soaked and they could barely see, but she didn't. Aulikki Häyhä loved the snow.

  When it wasn't snowing so much, she had to watch her steps, careful to follow existing footprints. Her own feet fit neatly into the large pits made by adults, stuffed into shoes too small for her. Her toes were always sore all scrunched together, but it was still better than her feet freezing and falling off. That's what happened if you let your feet get too cold. Everybody on the street knew that.

  "Likki!" shouted another kid down the block. "Seuraa minua!" Follow me!

  Likki shook her head. She was still going to be careful. Nobody could track her. Forget that all the other kids gave away the spot all the time, they didn't understand how important it was to stay out of sight. She was one of the oldest in the group, twelve while most of them were only eight or nine. She had to protect them.

  "Likki! Kiirehdi!" came another shout. Hurry! It was much fainter this time. Likki could barely hear him anymore.

  The blizzard was coming down thick now. Still, Likki stubbornly kept to her pattern—step into this hole, then into that one, make sure they couldn't follow her little footsteps. It wasn't the police they worried about. Everybody knew the police didn't hate them, but weren't really on their side either.

  Finland was supposedly dealing with the homeless "problem". Everybody said the new laws were going to make it better. Likki wasn't so sure, but she wasn't very good at understanding how laws worked anyway. She never expected anybody to give her anything. Nobody ever had.

  A third shout, but Likki couldn't even tell it was her name anymore. She looked up again, and realized she was lost. The blizzard had gotten so thick, she couldn't even see the edges of the street anymore. Flakes of snow pounded into her jacket from the wind, sticking in her ripped scarf and plastering her hair. She had to hold her teeth still to keep them from chattering.

  She turned. There was no way she was making it home in this—if their sad excuse for a home even survived the blizzard. Likki made her way into the space between the nearest buildings, crunching through the snow. The spot was covered by rooftops, so Likki wasn't about to get a pile dumped on her head.

  The cold wouldn't leave.

  It pressed into her bones, seeping into her blood. Likki was usually good with cold, but this seemed worse. Every limb felt stiff and raw, like it really had frozen. She had to force herself to move. Every step hurt a little bit more.

  She didn't love the snowfall so much anymore in that moment.

  In the dark night, with sheets of snow filling the air, Likki huddled up, waiting for the ghosts to come. She was already expecting them to, even though they never had. The ghosts and spirits haunted every street, every dark shadow. She'd heard all about them. Other kids told her she was probably born to them, if she kept seeing them everywhere. It made more sense than her parents just not existing, like she believed. Spirits and ghosts were her real parents, according to all the other street kids.

  Likki never saw any, but she acted like she had anyway. If she didn't, they might think she was pretending they didn't exist. Everyone knew if you pretended they didn't exist, that's when they really got angry.

  And now, she was sure, the ghosts were watching her again. Painfully, Likki struggled back to her feet. She walked forward, and each step was a little easier. The movement started to warm her up, get blood flowing again.

  A vague memory of a speech from some adult flashed through her mind, about how staying still was the worst thing to do. She could get covered up by flurries or drifts, or just freeze from the cold. Likki had to keep moving and find real shelter, not an alley in the middle of the streets.

  She wondered if this was the sort of thing you learned in school. Likki had gone to school for a little while, but then the teachers started wondering who she was and where she came from. She didn't stick around for them to ask questions she couldn't answer. She learned enough, and soon after, she was back on the streets again.

  Of course kids in schools wouldn't learn stuff like this, she told herself. Kids in schools got to live in real homes, not makeshift mazes of boxes and crates in back alleys downtown. If they were in a blizzard, they'd just get in their cars and go home, or they could go into a restaurant or a bank or something. People would let them in, with their nice clean clothes and clean faces.

  Likki brushed her messy, frozen hair out of her face as best she could. She started marching quicker, even managing to dart between gaps in the alleys and stay out of the blizzard as much as possible. But she was moving out of the city, not further into it. There were more homes and less places to hide this way. She knew the city—she didn't know this area at all.

  Except… further into the city meant further into the blizzard. The storm was moving away from her. If Likki kept going, she'd get out. She'd be in an unfamiliar, possibly dangerous place, but at least she'd be away from the immediate threat.

  She kept going.

  As she'd hoped, the blizzard died down little by little. Soon enough, she wasn't getting blown around whenever she had to leave the cover of the walls. She kept going though—partly because she was afraid to stop moving, where the ghosts might come for her, but also because she wanted to see what else was out there. She'd never been this far out of the city before.

  Normally, Likki probably would've been chased off by now, or maybe picked up by the police. She was afraid of that more than anything. What if they took her away from her home? What would they do with her? Nothing good, she was sure. Everybody knew the police couldn't be trusted.

  A vague scent wafted through the air. Likki smelled something delicious. It reminded her of the soup kitchen downtown, where some kids lined up in the mornings to get food from the nice ladies with silly Santa hats. Likki never did. She didn't want their food. She could get her own.

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  Sometimes, though, she had to make do with what was around.

  Likki made her way toward the scent. Someone had made fresh bread, or something along those lines. She wasn't quite sure—in her state, anything fresh smelled good—but she was drawn to it like a flame. Likki had no idea how long she'd been out in the snow at this point, but she knew one thing for sure.

  She needed to eat.

  The house had a car in the garage. Likki wasn't sure if they might see her coming or not, so she stole down the other side of their fence. With more than a little pain, she heaved herself over the top. One of her shoes got caught on the wooden post, but Likki managed to tap it before she fell down on the other side, landing in a pile of snow. Her shoe fell down onto her face with a soft thump.

  Likki brushed the snow off, trying to ignore the aches in her joints, and put her shoe back on. Her foot was wet now. She'd have to find a way to dry it off before it froze up.

  She crouched low and walked toward the house, careful to tip-toe through the little footprints in their backyard. Likki guessed it was a dog, or some other large animal she didn't know. Maybe they were from haltija who hadn't gone to help Joulupukki prepare presents this year. The other kids teased her and told her there were no such things, but she knew better. Little creatures like that knew how to hide, just like she'd learned. They just wanted to be left alone.

  Besides, the other were dumb for believing in things like peikko. No huge rock men were taking them away from their parents. Their parents abandoned them. Likki knew that. Everybody knew that. They were just too stupid to believe it.

  Likki got to the porch, and found one a window that was low enough for her to reach. She pulled out a flat sharp piece of glass, remarkably strong for how brittle it looked, and slid it between the cracks, flipping the lock open. As quietly as she could, Likki crept inside, closing the window before it let out too much heat and woke anyone up.

  A TV was quietly droning in the other room. Likki didn't understand the language they were speaking. Did the people who lived here not come from Finland? One of those other countries people talked about, way far away?

  She was curious, but she didn't want to waste any more time thinking about it, because there was a beautiful half-eaten loaf of Christmas bread lying in front of her on the kitchen counter. She could tell even from a distance, the ruislimppu bread was still warm, and she could smell molasses and cinnamon wafting through the house too. With the heat now trickling through her clothes and the aroma filling her nose, Likki felt like she'd broken into heaven.

  Carefully taking off her shoes so they wouldn't squeak, and to let her feet dry off a bit while she still could, Likki started slicing off pieces of bread. She stuffed as much as she could into her jacket, as well as any other loose bits still lying around the kitchen, and a sharp knife she could definitely use. Once she'd grabbed as much as she could, Likki turned back to the bread and sliced off a fresh piece, and bit down.

  Her eyes practically rolled back inside her head. Her lashes fluttered involuntarily. She had to stop herself from trembling. It was incredible.

  Likki ate practically half of the loaf before she could stop herself. Nobody came in the room while she dug in, to her relief. The TV kept on droning in the other room. With a half-eaten slice still clamped to her teeth, she crept through the doorway. She needed to know if she could risk resting any longer, or if she needed to be prepared to run.

  Not that she wasn't prepared to run. Likki was always ready to run.

  Except for the TV and the crackle of a fire, the house was quiet. As Likki took another few careful, quiet steps, her shoes in her outer jacket pockets so she wouldn't lose them, she came around to the front side of the couch facing the TV.

  A woman was at the end of the couch, a book open on her lap. She leaned on one hand, elbow propped up by the couch cushion. Her other hand was buried in the thick brown hair of her daughter, whose head lay on her mother's lap. Both were fast asleep, wrapped in blankets and seated near the still-crackling fire.

  Likki just stared at them for a moment. She wondered what they were watching. The TV looked like it was on the news, but she wasn't quite sure. They were still talking in another language. If she had to guess, it sounded like English, but Likki didn't know it very well.

  "...Mexican Peso depreciated by another significant margin today, as President Zedillo allowed the currency's exchange rate to float. Investors are abandoning local markets for foreign ones, particularly after claims by the Zedillo government to not devalue the peso were abandoned two days ago on the twentieth. Experts suggest a continuing downward trend in the value…"

  She stopped trying to pay attention. There were graphs and charts and things, but Likki hadn't really been in school enough to understand what was going on. She knew how numbers worked, and she was pretty good at math, but it didn't really matter to her. What good was math when she'd never actually have any money?

  Likki finished the last piece of bread. She was considering walking behind the couch and sitting closer to the fire, but something about the duo had her stuck in place. Likki felt something, deep inside her, a longing desire to be just like her.

  Not like the little girl. Likki didn't have parents, and she didn't want them anymore. It had been too long. She wouldn't accept them even if they did show up. But… watching the woman, seeing a girl curled up next to her, fully trusting in her to keep them both safe and warm and fed…

  She wanted that.

  The little girl's eyes fluttered open.

  Likki tensed up. If that little girl opened her mouth, Likki would run, as fast as she could. She wasn't going to disturb this scene, this family.

  The little girl didn't open her mouth. She slowly lifted one hand, and gave Likki a little wave.

  Likki very slowly, with dull pain still tracing the joints of her arm, lifted her own hand and waved back.

  The girl smiled. She opened her mouth.

  Likki bolted. She wasn't about to wait around for anything the girl might say. She ran for the back window, heedless of the pain, shoving each shoe back onto her feet as she went. The woman had woken up with a start, and Likki heard another voice calling after her, but she was already gone.

  She burst out through the window, back into the yard, across the snow—for once, she didn't bother to follow the existing footsteps—and over the fence. Likki ran back into the city, back to the streets and alleys she knew best.

  Finally, just as she was starting to get exhausted again, she slowed down. There was a joulukuusi in a warm-looking corner, sitting in front of a store already closed for the night. It was sheltered from the wind, and nobody else was in sight. Likki could disappear there, since somebody would have to walk between the tree and the wall just to see her. She'd found a perfect place to set up for the night.

  Likki took up a spot just behind the tree, out of sight from the street proper, and pulled out another slice of bread. She wasn't very hungry, but it was still warm, and she wanted as much as she could while it was fresh.

  As she ate, Likki looked up at the tree. This was her tree, she decided. She'd get presents under it this year, one way or another. Or maybe, she realized, she'd already gotten them. She'd gotten a new knife, food, and a warm place to sleep that night.

  It wasn't what she wanted though, as Likki wrapped up for the night. She looked up at the sky, where the clouds were drifting away, and found her favorite star. Likki closed her eyes and made a wish, just like she did every year in December. Normally, she wished for simple things, like a better place to sleep or better food. She used to wish for a real home, but she'd stopped expecting that to ever happen.

  I want to be like that woman on the couch, wished Aulikki that night, as she opened her eyes again and found the star. I want to have a daughter. I'd keep her safe and warm and full, and I'd never make her sleep on the street. I'd take care of her.

  I want to be a mother someday, she wished, as her mind drifted away and she fell asleep, safe in her little spot behind the tree on the streets of Helsinki.