‘What the hell was that?’ said Nari with unexaggerated panic.
Niilo laughs. ‘Only an eagle, I imagine.’
‘An eagle?Goldeneagles? They can snatch human babies from prams, can’t they?’
‘Or it might have been a wolverine.’
‘Up a tree?’
His delighted laughter helps quell her fear. Niilo seems to be enjoying teaching his guest about his homeland and, more than that, he’s enjoying the way she has grabbed his arm and is still applying the lightest pressure to his bicep through the thick layers. ‘Possibly, they’re like little bears really.’
‘They’re not wolves, then?’
‘Nothing like a wolf, more like a big weasel.’
‘Are you pulling my leg?’
‘You said you would believe anything I told you,’ he replied with an arched brow and a smile. ‘It’s all true.’
The forest has grown thick and black and they find they’ve come to a natural stopping point on their walk.
‘Here?’ asks Nari.
Niilo nods, and the pair crouch, placing the candles in the thin snow at the foot of a towering birch. Standing again, looking at the glow from the jars, they find each other’s hands once more, and observe a reverent silence.
‘Do you pray? Nari whispers after a peaceful moment.
‘No, do you?’
‘No, but Dad would have done. Scottish Catholic. He was a chorister in Glasgow as a boy, before his itchy feet carried him off around the world. He was a wanderer like me, and he met my mum while he was working in Seoul.’
‘I’d love to see Scotland… and Seoul, come to think of it.’
‘You see! You do have the wanderlust in you.’
Niilo reaches into his snowsuit pocket and pulls out two torches, handing one to Nari. As their lights cut through the darkness, eerily illuminating the white tree trunks and their footprints leading their way back to Niilo’s family home, a piercing howl rings out in the night. Saying nothing, Nari yanks at Niilo’s arm, gaping in wide-eyed horror.
‘It’s OK, it might just be a lynx,’ Niilo shrugs, nonchalantly, before adding in a wicked whisper, ‘or a hungry bear.’
‘That’s it, I’m done, let’s go. One of the best things about travelling solo is that nobody gets to see me doing this face.’ She turns to him, making him laugh joyously at her comically bared teeth and horror-struck expression. ‘My Instagram feed shows me smiling, happy, confident, but never the moments when I’m behind a hotel room door terrified someone’s trying to get in, or when I’ve got my keys between my fingers walking back to my villa at night.’
‘A very different kind of wildlife you’re describing there?’
‘Hmm, yes. Give me bears and wolverines in a dark forest any day.’
‘But you still travel. You’re not that afraid.’
‘I am! I’m scaredallthe time, but I’m not letting them win. You can’t shut me out from half the world.’
‘Won’t you travel with someone, one day?’
‘I never wanted to, before.’
As Nari speaks, her voice low and contemplative, they emerge from the trees into the clearing where the little cottage stands. Above it, like a hologram projected onto the firmament, flash the rippling lights of the aurora, bold and breathtaking.
Nari gasps, while Niilo grins up at them, nodding proudly, the corners of his mouth curling, as though he were thinking the phenomenon was right on time, just as he had planned.
‘Guovssahasat,’ he whispers.
