‘Where are we?’ she asks, lifting the helmet from her head and pulling the ski mask down so it hangs around her neck.
‘This was my grandparents’ home. It’s mine now,’ Niilo replies as he searches in the snow near a tarpaulin-covered log pile for a wide shovel. ‘Give me a minute and we’ll be inside.’
Making her way over to the log pile, Nari finds a second shovel and joins him on the path. ‘You dig, I dig. OK?’
Niilo accepts with a nod and they clear their way to the low wooden door which bears the evidence, blackened and withered, of a contorted summer rose stretched over a lattice frame surrounding the entrance.
‘It’s going to be cold inside, I haven’t been here for months. There’s no time to get away from the resort during winter and check on the place. But I’ll light a fire and get you warm again. And I brought food too.’
‘You’ve thought of everything then?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Niilo grins, bringing an ornate key from inside the chest pocket of his gákti jacket and opening the door with ease. It swings inwards and Nari steps over the threshold.
‘Sorry, it’s very basic, and it’s not decorated for Christmas day.’
‘I don’t need decorations,’ Nari says with a warm smile, as Niilo runs a hand along the wall by the door, feeling for the fuse box.
The lights flare inside the room and Nari takes in the low-ceilinged kitchen with its scrubbed wooden table, pitted and slashed from decades of use. The grey cabinets and work surfaces around the room are uncluttered, clean, and dating back to the nineteen-eighties at least. Nari is relieved to spot a modern electric stove and a few new-looking radiators which she hears burbling and clanking into life.
‘Go through there, into the lounge. I’ll get the firewood, says Niilo, leaving again by the main door.
Nari makes her way into the little den with its low sofa in front of a tall chimney, a wide hearth, and solitary standard lamp topped with a crooked yellow shade which she straightens as she passes by. The walls are papered in orange and green diamond patterns, the likes of which she hasn’t seen since her earliest childhood. But everything is neat and homely and she knew it would become cosy once the fire was lit.
She watches Niilo returning and kneeling by the grate, first piling on the small pieces of kindling, then scrunched yellowing newspaper and something that looks like dried bundles of lichen. He forms them all into a little pyre. It takes two matches to start the flames licking up the chimney.
After a satisfied moment watching the fire grow, Niilo bundles on the logs. The flames soon build to a bright heat.
‘One moment,’ Niilo says as he leaves the room again.
Waiting expectantly, Nari watches him through the low window as he opens a hatch at the back of the snowmobile and pulls out bundled blankets and a grocery bag.
When he returns he’s careful to close the doors behind him. Crouching by the fire again, he unpacks the bag onto the hearth.
Nari lifts some of the packages and squints at their labels. ‘I don’t recognise any of this food packaging, but if we’re going to cook, I want to help you.’
‘OK, open this.’ He hands her a tall bottle. ‘Cloudberry liqueur. Have you tried it?’
‘Nope, but I’ve heard it’s deathly strong,’ she says with a smile, taking the bottle from him.
‘That’s why we’re drinking it with coffee.’
‘Just coffee?’ Nari pulls a face as she cracks the lid and takes a quick sniff at the boozy vapours emanating from the bottle.
‘And vodka, cream and ice.’ Niilo waggles his eyebrows, making Nari laugh.
‘Oh, you’re a cocktail waiter too?’
‘You’d be surprised, the things I can do. You get resourceful, living out here on your own.’ Niilo pours ground espresso into a silver coffee pot along with water from a plastic bottle and, tightening the lid, he places the pot close to the flames to heat up. Nari simply watches him, her eyes sleepily fond and heavy-lidded.
‘So do you want to tell me about the song you sang this morning? It was beautiful.’
‘I wrote it last night, for you. I couldn’t sleep, and I find I can think most clearly on the occasional winter nights when I’m awake.’ As he spoke, Niilo took a cloth and wiped out the inside of a shining cooking pot by the fireside which had the look of a witch’s cauldron before setting about pouring powdery milled oats, sugar and a carton of milk into it.
‘Me too. What were you thinking about?’
‘That I shouldn’t be such an ass,’ he said with a dry laugh. ‘And I should make your visit to Lapland the best it can possibly be.’
‘So you wrote me a song.’
