Chapter Two: Baby Horse

February 20th, 1957

Upon agreeing on a bivouac, life continued in that ugly little cottage.

It was a rather practical home for its size. It had a coal heated stove, tinware hung on the walls, a Hoosier cabinet, a kitchen island used for dining, cupboards among cupboards supplemented with cookware, pastry rollers, brushes, whisks of both celluloid and stainless steel, aprons, and terry cloth hand towels. There was an astiankuivauskaappi system, 2 basins, and a wellbore with a yellow painted roof just outside. Although, you could never really tell if it was yellow, since snow often shrouded the canopy. Someone had to go out every day with a broom and smash the sheet of ice on top with the hard side.

Outside of Dan’s window were a few, low Evergreen Rhododendron bushes and one Bird-Cherry tree that Dan felt like talking to every now and then. It looked almost human because it was boney and shaped like an anthropoid. If you squint hard enough you could almost make out the figure of someone approaching the window.

Outside the front door from where Dan couldn't see was a derelict cemetery, owned by Chernobog because he was the sexton. They didn't have any conceivable neighbors or even a postbox for letters nearby, and you couldn’t tell one curtilage from another. Their house was in a dorp called Sinbad, just off of Nyänget, Sweden, but you would never know that unless someone told you so. It was so small and dormant. You could clearly see where there had been lines of chicken wire set up but collapsed, leaving icy, yellowed patches of grass around the lawn.

Routinely, Tora or Chernobog would call out things along the lines of, ‘Stay inside and keep the radio running on the porch’ before shutting the door and not returning for hours at a time, sometimes with groceries, sometimes with packages or letters, sometimes with pills, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, elderflower syrup. Every time one of them left, Dan couldn’t help but wonder if they were ambling past his possible family in the city without knowing it.

Everything was so easily heard through the thin walls that it became hard to talk to yourself. He sort of felt like a machine, a broken one, plugged into the wall that people would come in periodically to try and fix.

He slept in a large, ornate room in an alcove box bed that was filled with Amish quilts, comforters, and naffixed pillows. Above him was a little, red, curvy slat to finish off the frame. It could be covered by two peach colored curtains that were often shut for a little extra privacy and a chiffon skirt that swept the floor. He had stopped sleeping on drop sheets once the regular bed sheets were washed.

The room itself was laden with books and newspapers from the 1910s and early 40s. It had a quartermaster’s desk in which there were some discarded feathered pens and ink jars that looked like they had been pushed off the side of the desk a few times due to the deep-set stains on the floor, and a 1910’s gustavian style vitrine that had a few kitsch ceramic animals stored. Dan was staying in the rarely used, sanctum-like office of the house, but it felt more like a linen closet.

He was not allowed to get out of bed without Ximena or Tora to hook their arms around him to keep him from falling and hurting himself even more, so he primarily stayed in bed for most of the day to stave off the embarrassment of asking for elp. He would have been happier with crutches, but the only ones they had were too tall and wouldn’t go any shorter. He didn't ask to get a better pair. He didn't expect to be staying for very long.

The most outside time he could get was by sitting on the white rocking chair that collected ice on Tora’s porch. The radio was constantly on. He was assigned to watching the rabbit and deer meat cure as it hung from metal hangers attached to the facia. He could never be alone out there. Someone always had to watch him.

He still used the bath, but something was likely wrong with you if you considered a space behind a locked door heavenly. They had only ½ of a full waterway system, so there was no water supply line other than the well. He was given a canister of water and a ceramic baking dish and sent into the bathroom.

Dan never cried for his parents. After all, he didn't know who they were and had no motherly attachments to anyone. When he was alone, he would crawl on the hardwood floors and delve the shelves and drawers, taking the smallest, sleekest things, like kronor and bits of bent jewelry and put them in his trouser pockets, searching for evidence that the room he was sleeping in was even real. He did want to suddenly wake up somewhere else and not be able to communicate where he was before, since his words never made any dent on anyone.

Ximena talked a lot. Ximena would probably talk to the pictures on the walls if she thought they were listening. She would sit on either the bed or the banquette-looking cabriolet across the room from Dan. Dan never truly listened to what she had to say, for he had no interest in Ximena’s home near the Canadian grain mills or how loud the USSR was. The only time when they could ever truly communicate was over phone books given to Dan to read and find his parent’s phone numbers.

Sometimes Ximena would bring paper and charcoal and would draw. She would also leave her mohair fabric bears and plush farm animals stuffed with wood shavings in a basket by the door. Dan began to question how old Ximena thought he was. Dan didn’t look all that younger or older than Ximena. His voice was male-oriented but that of a shrew, but still, it wasn’t a child’s voice.

The window supra and to the left of his bed was Dan’s only elude from the house. He often would kneel on the bedside table and lean his body out the chambranle until the dense fur on his arms would rise and his teeth began to chatter.

“Dan?”, someone said from the hallway, followed by the sounds of shuffling slippers, “Dan are you in there?”

“I'm in here”, Dan answered the voice, flatly, sort of surprised why anyone would ask unless making sure he hadn’t run off somewhere. The doorknob twisted and Ximena let themself in.

“Can I talk to you a bit?”, she asked quietly, “My bed sheets are in the dryer and I don’t want to sleep on the bare mattress”

Dan nodded, not really having a choice and tossed his legs off the edge of the bed diligently. Ximena sat down across from Dan on the cabriolet and began,

“Mattresses are kind of expensive, don’t you think?”

Dan nodded, although unsure.

“I was so busy today to put them in earlier”, Ximena began, edging forward off her seat a bit and plotting her forearms on her thighs, resting her shoulders, “It's hard to get laundry done when you start at one in the afternoon”

Dan realized upon hearing this that there was no clock in the office.

“I wash my bed sheets whenever I have a nightmare”

“Really?”, Dan asked, his voice rising in pitch.

“Well, maybe not every night”, Ximena responded, “But this one felt particularly bad”.

“What happened?”, Dan asked, genuinely wondering what Ximena’s understanding of “bad” was.

“In this recent nightmare, I guess maybe I was a nurse or something. Maybe a clock hanging on the wall, since I wasn’t doing anything and only watching a woman give birth from high up”.

Dan itched his eyebrow.

“I’ve never seen a woman give birth, so, kudos to my twisted imagination. Anyways, this woman gave birth to a clear looking baby. Have you ever seen a baby horse? Their stomachs are like glass. Anyways, for some reason, I knew why the baby was clear. The baby was clear because nothing ever happened to the baby yet because it was a newborn. I think everything that happens to us makes us deeper, and less clean”.

The room was quiet for a moment.

“And this was a nightmare? It scares you?”

“I don’t really know why it scared me. I suppose that's what makes a nightmare a nightmare”, Ximena answered, “I only bother telling you because it reminded me of you”.

Dan’s head tilted upwards.

“Why?”, he asked once his face was at level with Ximena's. Ximena was quiet for a moment and then smiled. Ximena was funny like that. She had a cordiality and rosiness Dan had never felt before. But again, perhaps he did, but couldn’t remember.

“Well, your eyes are very dark like soil, so, I guess you must have experienced a lot of things with your eyes. Your hands are dark too”

Dan looked down at his hands. Upon inspection, he noticed how fake they looked, as if they were carved out of wood.

“I say ‘must have’ because I'm not really sure who you are or what you were doing before you came here”, Ximena added on.

“Well I suppose that makes two of us”, Dan hummed. Ximena got up from the couch making its spongy interior rise and took a close seat next to Dan.

“You don’t really think it was a beartrap that got you, do you?”, she asked. Dan felt the wind suddenly get knocked out of him.

“No”, he said, out of breath.

“Tora only made me say that because shes a firm disbeliever in those nasty folk stories”

“Is she scared?”

“I’m sure”, Ximena finished, her voice steady and confident in this answer.

“What is it then?”, inquired Dan, beginning to kick his leg gently off the side of the bed mindlessly. He didn't really see an answer to this. It was only a sentence to fill the space between them.

“Den sista Kyrkogrim”, said Ximena with the same lack of hum in her voice. She didn't go any further with this response. She must have thought Dan was cognizant of what she was talking about. Dan pushed his eyebrows together until there was a crease across his forehead once more.

“Den sista Kyrkogrim?”, he asked. Ximena nodded, preparing herself to prelect.

“Perhaps you knew about them before you ‘lost’ your memory. It's an urban legend about a creature called Den sista Kyrkogrim, the Swedish grim who lingers in the timberland of Västernorrlands Län. Its very popular around this region, but not in the same way it is here in Sinbad. Here in Sinbad, it’s a natural law. Everyone knows it's not just a story”, She said, “It's what got you last week in February”.

Dan itched his eyebrow a little muddled.

“If its real, then why doesn’t someone just kill it already?”, asked Dan.

“It’s not that simple. Den Sista Kyrkogrim is a uniquely vicious thing”, Ximena replied, “It leaves moose skeletons on people’s roofs just for fun and is as quick as a whip”.

Dan thought about the size of a moose and felt his skin begin to prickle.

“Tora didn’t know the dorp was haunted”, Ximena began again, “I honestly feel really bad for her. She loves this house and the beach, she’s the most frightened of Den Sista Kyrkogrim out of all of us. If you’ve ever wondered why she instructs us to keep the radio playing on the portch at all times, its actually to keep Den Sista Kyrkogrim away”.

“Does it hate music?”, Dan asked, genuinely. Ximena giggled a little bit.

“It hates electromagnetic waves. It would be the same if you used a telephone or a television, or anything with electromagnetic waves for that matter, but obviously you cant carry those like you’d carry a small radio”.

Dan smiled and let out a sigh of relief. At long last, someone had believed him. Ximena began again, brushing a thin strip of her fringe out of her face, letting Dan catch a narrow glimpse of her eyes and some of the foremost part of her face. From what Dan could see, Ximena had freckles darker than her hair and all over her skin like a coppery blush and a small dip just below the glabella. Presumably, there had been a very grave cut that scarred over, leaving the smallest inclination.

“Now, what about your memory?”

“That”

“Tora and I were going to get lightbulbs from the gasstation on the tenth”, she began, “You weren't the way you are now. We found you in the form of a bird in the middle of a glade surrounded by what looked like oil or blood”

“But surely no bear trap”, Dan wondered out loud.

“No bear trap at all. I think the little General Electric radio Tora had on her pants looked scared the damn thing away”, Ximena said, “My mother always taught me to be kind to injured birds because they are fallen angels. Tora and I took you home right away without getting the lightbulbs. I browned some rice on the stove and put it in a thick sock and placed it next to you as you laid on the bed in the study”

“When did I become a human?”

“I went in a few times to tend to the fire. On my second trip, I noticed a sock of rice had spilled onto the floor. I checked the bed and sure enough, you were there. Your blood had gotten all over the quilt, I made Chernobog grab all the spare blankets and drop sheets from the basement”

Dan looked down at the bed near his thighs and suddenly felt his face heat up.

“I hope it wasn’t too hard to clean”, he said, nervously.

“No!”, Ximena said, her voice sounding joyful and melodus. Dan laughed with her and for a moment their happiness was in sync.

“You really haven’t been an onus to me, or Tora or Chernobog for that matter. I think if I knew who you were, even as that little bird, I would have taken you home anyways”, Ximena said between breaths. Dan’s laughter suddenly fled.

“You’re growing weak”, he said without thinking. Ximena stopped laughing and took a large breath in, her pinafore tightening around her chest.

“I was kind of expecting you to say that”, she said, almost hysterically, “Getting along with you was worth a try” Ximena got up from the bed at that moment, turned around and said the last words of the evening,

“I think my bedsheets are dry now”