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.Elaborating on the suffering anddeprivation, as Varjo had not, conscious of the fact that he wascoloring the pathos, doing it deliberately, anxious to winWainomoinen over.Wayne was all too aware of how deep-sunkwere the fearful superstitions of the Vanhat, and Wainomoinen, byhis very position as Elder Wizard among them, was no exception.“Was I expected to leave her there to starve, alone?” hedemanded.The face of brown crags and noble planes seemed to pale with aprodigious weariness.“I will try to put wisdom into your head,young Waino, son’s son.You think us ignorant primitives, next tosavages, because we cast our seines in Ahto’s waters for fish and begfrom Tapio and his Mielikld the hunter’s boon; because we dig ourhands into the rich soil of the world we have grown to love as if itwere Otava itself—for these things and others of our simple lives,you term us ignorant and what you call superstitious.”When Wayne opened his mouth to protest, the Wizardinterrupted.“No! I see it in your thoughts as in a clean mountainpool.Remember what I told you of Otava, of the Valmis.Our lessadvanced branch of the Otavat chose to remain simple—we choseto ignore the potential for creating machines and cruel mindlesscities.Simplicity is our blessing and we cherish it.The clean fields ofstars are the same as the round drops of water rushing downKaatrakoski’s cliff-side.All is all, beginning and ending with thesmallest flecks of Creation.Jumala and Ukko are infinitely small asthey are infinitely large.It is the same thing.All is part of Ilmatar’sweaving.”“You told me about Otava and the Valmis,” Wayne said, a littleabrupt in his anxiety for Varjo.“What has all this to do with thegirl?”“It has to do with Louhi.Louhi is a perversion in the tapestry, anevil thread.All that lives with Louhi and surrenders to her will,through weakness or ignorance or whatever, partakes of that evil.”“They tried to burn Varjo and Mummu, right here in Imari!”Wayne’s voice blazed with indignation.“Had you seen the seven horrors, your sword of wrath would betwo-edged.Many children died in agony.Many Mummus.Everyhousehold felt the dark hand of death.” His fierce eyes took on asupernal glaze.Wayne caught half of his inward mutter, more byesp than by ear, before the wizard remembered he was there and cutit off.“I should have done it long ago.I should have—”“Should have what?”“Never mind.” Wainomoinen rose and clapped his handstogether sharply to bring old Elmi bustling in out of the kitchen.“Elmi, find a place for this—this child to sleep.”“Jo.The Koski hut is empty since—”“No.Not in the village.Here.The small lean-to near thestores-room is about empty, since there are no fur pelts these blackdays.Yes.Fix a cot for her.See that she has what she needs.”“Yes, master.” Elmi’s fixed stare when the girl slipped out of thehuge chair was not friendly.She would do as she was told but shewould not like it.Herding the mouse-girl toward the kitchen hall,tight-mouthed and bristling, she whipped her round body about onits axis at the Wizard’s sharp, “And Elmi—”“Jo, master.”“Tell no one.Not just yet.Understand?”“Jo, master.”“The lean-to door has a lock on it, has it not?”“Jo.And a stout one.”Wainomoinen nodded; the flicker in his blue eyes meant nothingand much.Elmi bobbed her head vigorously and bundled out,careful not to touch her new charge.Wayne found that his cheeks were burning.This byplay disturbedhim.The people of the village were not to know of Varjo’s presenceamong them.The prejudice and the fear was not dead, not yet.Louhi’s newest and most shattering outrage, taken with the drivingcold and gnawing hunger, had made the Vanhat vulnerable toviolent mob action.Since they could not reach Louhi herself,someone closer to hand might do, to release crazing emotions.“What did you mean?” he asked Wainomoinen as sharply as hedared.“You ought have done something long ago? What ought youhave done?”“Nothing, Waino.”“Tell me.” Wayne got up and faced the wizard full.“All right, then.I ought to have burned Loviatar’s hut to theground.I ought to have furrowed the Hollow ten spans deep andthen sowed the Hüsi’s cup waist-high with sea salt and powderedgrains of silver.”The days dragged by.The dark deepened.The killing ice moveddown from the boreals.The planet began to die.Even the shaggymammoths took their place under the moving death, in blue glassyshowcases as if on display.Tapio’s children died.The hairyNorsemen and the builders of the Great Circle of Stones died.Onlythe Vanhat, by some perverse Otavan magic deep within theircellular structure, some Ukko’s fire, kept stubbornly alive.They hadspecial words for it.Vakisten.Vdkisten ja sisu.In spite of theunreasonableness of it.To spite Louhi.To demonstrate a depth ofstamina under impossible odds.They lived when there was no senseto it.No sense at all.They should be dead with the rest, but theyrejected the inevitable.They just would not die; they would not giveLouhi the satisfaction.Wayne cursed them for not giving up and wept in secret.Lemminkainen and Ilmarinen did not return.Wainomoinen soughtthe Silences daily, entreating Ukko for a sign, for a smokelike wispof hope in a black storm of desolation.Doom took hold of the planet and squeezed.When the last of the barley and rye were gone and the peoplewere living on pine bark and pithy roots, Wayne prowled the triplecircle from hut to hut twice in each sunless sun’s span; he didn’tneed Wainomoinen to tell him what he was to check for.Now thatthe dogs had been eaten, the storehouse was empty, there was onlyone source of food left.Themselves.They must eat one another, sothat some would survive.The idea was not even repulsive anymore, rather it was simple logic.Yet this must not be, Wainomoinendecreed.It must not happen.One day, on his weakening rounds, Wayne heard a sharpbleating wail.A child’s scream in pain.It tore across the dark pathbetween the curve of huts.A child! Yes, that would be first.One hasgiven it birth and nursed it, so that it does not quite seem—“No!”He wheeled about, zigzagged, sniffed the low wind, found the hut.His boot, with the full strength of thigh and buttock behind it,ripped off the inner wood trip-lock.Banked fireglow gave him onlytenebrous crimson light, but after the pitch black it was enough.Something grayish white moved in the shadows of the room’ssingle bunk.Wayne reached it in three strides
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