By Daniel Stride
Copyright ©2024
Annabel sipped the steaming coffee, and sighed. No milk, and bitter as sin. Lovely. January was the month for coffee. Coffee and skiing, in a land not her own.
Emma put freshly-baked buns on the table.
“It's just you this year?”
“He's not skiing with a broken leg.”
“You should be home with him.”
“His mother’s staying. It made for a claustrophobic Christmas.” Annabel shrugged.
“Andrew's fine.” He wants to marry me. “But I need time. Time for myself. Time to think.”
“You rejected him again.”
It was not a question. Annabel took a long sip of coffee.
“Yes. I rejected him. Again. What of it?”
“Five years is a long time with a man.”
“I'm too young for a mortgage. Nine-to-five is bad enough. I want the untamed wilds. Andrew did too, once. Hell, when we first met at Wacken Open Air... I thought I'd found a man who'd never stop. Who'd join me on my adventures.” Skiing and fucking in wildest Lapland during Kaamos. “Then he got stuck in routines. Even his music tastes... I can't remember the last time he listened to a new album. Now he's home, leg in plaster, and I'm alone, for the first time in years.”
“Aleksi and I are here for you.”
“I'll manage. It's a year for something different.”
**
She was here. He would start the song.
**
Kaamos. The Polar Night. Pitch-blackness beneath pitiless stars. It evoked Fingolfin crossing the Helcaraxë. Metal with gorgeous guitar solos and indecipherable lyrics.
Reality was different: the Sun never crossed the horizon, but a strange twilight ran from ten to three. Light enough for off-trail skiing.
Annabel glided over the slopes, weaving through the spruces. The crispness kept her mind sharp, made her feel alive. The day was cloudless, showcasing the Lapland sky. Blues in the north, reds in the south. Annabel's heart soared. Andrew... once he'd have been here.
Once.
That Andrew had cartwheeled beneath the shimmering Aurora. Today's Andrew talked about property values in Aberdeen.
The spruces opened out into a clearing. To the left lay a nameless lake, frozen, obscured by snowdrifts. Annabel never tired of this place. A slice of the real wilderness.
She slowed, and slid into an easy hockey stop.
Annabel unzipped her fleece pocket. She fished out her phone.
Sininen hetki, the locals called it. The Blue Moment. The fifteen minutes where tree, snow, and sky turned bright blue in the Kaamos twilight.
There.
Family friends had first taken Annabel to Lapland, long before she met Andrew. It was how she knew Emma and Aleksi. But the Blue Moment drew her back.
Tapping on the phone, she photographed the lake, the spruces, the chimney smoke...
Annabel blinked. She had never seen that before.
**
She had come. He stared into space. Waiting.
**
A log hut, with smoke rising from the chimney. Someone else had found this icy paradise, and built a shack. Part of her hated this person. Another part was curious, even attracted. Maybe we can ice-fish on the lake before I fly home?
She knocked.
Footsteps on bare floorboards. The door creaked open.
“Anteeksi,” she began. “Olen...”
A man in woollen sweater and black jeans. Not just any man – she'd met her share of hard-bitten rednecks – but a handsome one. Sharp cheekbones, green eyes. And strange for one so young, a tousled mop of silver hair.
“Hello.”
Annabel blinked.
“Moi...”
“Come in. I have pea soup on the stove, and pancakes.”
**
Her skis and poles leant against the interior wall. Hat, gloves, scarf, and boots sat in a heap in the corner. Annabel dropped her ski-jacket onto the pile.
“Your English is good.”
Better than good. There's no accent. In truth, she was irritated the man had spotted her foreignness. Blasted Finns... always using you to improve their English.
The silver-haired man ladled soup into a bowl.
“Your name?”
“Annabel. Yours?”
“Väinö.”
A lantern hung from the ceiling. Beneath stood an unvarnished table, and two chairs. Annabel discerned a not-unpleasant aroma of musk.
The room was larger than she'd expected. Cupboards, table, bookshelf, an unmade bed. An armchair next to the wood stove. The stove kept the air cosy, while the curtains were drawn tight against the Polar Night.
Väinö put the soup-bowl on the table, together with a plate of pancakes.
Annabel nodded.
“Kiitos.”
He speaks English, you idiot. She tried the soup. Hot but good.
“What brings you to Lapland?”
“Skiing, scenery.” The Blue Moment. “I normally come with Andrew.”
“Andrew?”
“My boyfriend. Who would be my fiancé. We've drifted apart. He makes me feel constrained. Caged in grey, unchanging mundaneness.” She shook her head. “Sorry. Too much information.”
“Not at all. We have much in common.”
Annabel ate her soup in silence. Väinö sat silent too. A golden silence, it allowed her time for thought. Another thing she loved about January.
She dropped the spoon into the empty bowl.
“Delicious.”
“Try a pancake.”
“I always come to Lapland. Perhaps I'm in a rut of my own. But it's an escape from Aberdeen, from nine-to-five and answering phones.” And now an escape from Andrew. “I'm staying with Emma. Lovely lady, lives in the 1950s. Wants me to settle down. Not sure what you think...”
“Do as your heart desires. A cage is a terrible thing.”
“Speaking of Emma, I'll need to call her. She worries if I'm home after dark.”
“Kaamos is always dark.”
Annabel grinned.
**
No reception inside. Annabel pulled on her hat, jacket, and boots.
“Sorry. I need to make the call.”
Väinö nodded, as though strange Scottish women invaded his hut every day.
Phone in hand, Annabel opened the door. And stopped.
“Sininen hetki.”
The Blue Moment lasted fifteen minutes. It should have been dark. Proper dark.
Annabel had a torch, and returning to Emma's did not faze her. But a Blue Moment that lasted... how long? She looked at her phone.
“The clock's broken too!”
Väinö pushed in his chair.
“It is not broken.”
“It reads the same time as when I arrived.”
“It is.”
“I took off my things. We talked. I ate a bowl of soup!”
“Such is my cage.”
“Your cage?”
Väinö's handsome face was a study in sorrow.
“I am outside time, and cannot leave.”
Annabel marched out into the snow. The bright blue snow. She looked at her phone. The clock ticked one minute onwards.
Väinö stood in the doorway.
“I shall explain.”
One of us is crazy, but he's not dangerous. Besides, her skis were still inside.
**
Annabel stood beside the stove.
“Who are you? What are you? Human?”
The silver-haired man looked up from the armchair.
“So many questions. I am Väinö.”
“I have never seen your hut before.”
“I did not sing for you then. I sang for another. They left. Like the others.”
“I'm free to leave. But you are trapped?”
“I do not change. The food... I sang for it.”
Annabel peeked behind the curtain. The Blue Moment continued as before.
“See the madman speaks truly. Within my cage, it is always Sininen hetki.”
“I am so sorry. I had no idea.”
“For you, this place is escape. For me, it is your grey mundaneness.”
“Who did this?”
“It is a long tale.”
“Then tell me.” She held up her phone, clock frozen. “I have all the time in the world.”
**
Väinö sang. Not in English, nor even the modern Finnish she spoke passably. The song he sang was older. The sorrow of long ago, mixed with the strings of the Kantele.
Annabel understood him now. Not through words. Nothing so simple. Through the magic of song, and the moving of spirit.
She trekked the forest paths with him, swam in the chill depths of the lake, tasted apples and honey, spoke to men and women long dead. Shared lost love, laughed and cried. He sang of the curse, the awful fate that condemned him.
Tears ran down her cheeks. This strange, beautiful man was her.
When his song died away, they both sat in silence for a long time.
Or no time at all.
She took his hand. And gestured at the bed.
“We...”
“You may go. You heard my song.”
“I have my own cage. If I can't free you, I can at least do this.”
“An illusion.”
“Do I feel like an illusion? Let's escape, together. For a time.”
He drew his lips to hers.
“For no time.”
**
She lay on the bed, and savoured the body beside her. The cage had done no harm to his physique, his lean muscles evident, and if his manhood stood smaller than Andrew’s, no matter. Technique ruled, not endowment.
Väinö found her mouth. Their tongues met in urgent contest. It stirred hunger within her, and suddenly her heart beat apace. Annabel felt tingling as his saliva blended with hers, a melding of desire and lust. She grasped at his tousled hair. So soft.
His fingertips ran slow and gentle across her skin. He cupped a breast, teasing and toying. Then his mouth was at her nipple. Licking. Sucking. Nibbling.
Annabel groaned, and gave herself up to him.
“Fuck. Fuck yes.”
His hand crept over her abdomen. Then between her thighs. She felt a finger within her. Curving, beckoning.
“Wet,” whispered Väinö. “So wet.”
Wet as the lakes you sang of.
“Take me.”
Soft laughter.
“Not yet.”
And then his tongue was down there. Taunting, deft, delectable.
A shudder surged through Annabel’s body. She gasped, and raked the bedsheets with her fingers. A rising tide of ecstasy, sweet and hot…
“God. Fucking God.”
The molten moment passed.
She smiled down at him. Väinö knelt before her, his own dreamy smile on his face. The pupils of his eyes stared back, wide and dark.
And eager.
**
Annabel gazed up at his chest, drinking in the sight of his pectorals. She patted his shoulder.
Väinö eased himself forward. She felt him push past her vaginal lips, little by little, until he lay fully sheathed within her.
A man inside me. So good.
Then came the rhythm of the thrusts.
Slow and tender. Achingly slow. Passionate and glorious.
His mouth was again at hers: lips, teeth, and hot tongue.
Her hands explored the smooth skin of his back, her fingertips delighting in the touch.
**
Sweet escape.
Annabel lost herself. Sweat beaded on her body, and on his. She had tasted the salt on her tongue. The warmth of him, so close… it was heaven.
She gasped and groaned. His thrusts had grown intense, more urgent and powerful. They were slipping into the fires of wild abandon. The lust of the wilderness, which Annabel so craved.
They sang together now. Sang as one, with hands and mouth, with limbs entwined within the sheets. They sang through the slick and ardent motions of the deed.
Hell. Fucking. Fucking. Hell.
The shuddering wave rose within her once more. The golden music.
In due harmony, Väinö released. She felt his hot seed within her.
And all was perfect.
**
Annabel ran her fingers over his sweat-slick chest, and round his nipple.
Väinö’s eyelids drooped and his breathing softened. She pushed off the coverlet. He murmured something. Then nothing.
She smiled. There was more than one way to escape, and Annabel wished him pleasant dreams.
She crawled from the bed, and stretched.
Väinö’s bare chest rose and fell, his strange hair a silver cloud upon the pillow.
I can't wake him.
Annabel pulled on her clothes and skiing gear. She felt a bit sore, but nothing a sauna session couldn't fix.
I won't tell Emma about breaking up with Andrew though. Not yet.
She donned her skis.
As she closed the hut door, she whispered:
“Thank you.”
**
Annabel set off across the bright blue snow. She turned amid the spruces, and slid to a stop. Heart aflutter, she looked back.
The Blue Moment had passed, and Väinö’s hut was gone.
About Daniel Stride:
Daniel Stride has a lifelong love of literature in general, and speculative fiction in particular. He writes both short stories and poetry; his work has been previously published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Bards and Sages Quarterly, and The Lesbian Historical Motif Podcast. His steampunk-flavoured dark fantasy novel, Wise Phuul, was published in 2016 by small UK press, Inspired Quill, and a sequel Old Phuul is due out in 2025. Daniel can be found blogging about the works of Tolkien - among other things - at A Phuulish Fellow (https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/). He lives in Dunedin, New Zealand.
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