Will-o’-the-Wisp

       He flew above the grass, between wild roses and grey alder trunks, under fir paws, barely touching wild grass eaves or clover heads. Stars of anemones or sparks of chickweed flitted on the dark ground in his light, and real stars twinkled high above, in the equally dark sky. That is, if he got into a forest clearing or bog. In the forest, branches closed the space, and he was the only light around. He was light, he was fire. Leaves and twigs showed through the sylvan murk around him and faded into shadows behind him. The black water of mires glistened when he flashed above it; at first, those glimpses frightened him, but he then realised it was his own reflection, his own flame. Yes, there was a first time, he remembered when he had evolved into this world—or had the world come into being around him? The dark dome of the sky, streams of rain, droplets knocking on the asp leaves, leaves trembling, sparks flitting in the raindrops, flame flashing in water between hillocks and duckweed, and gleaming on a wet granite side of a boulder where moss is torn in uneven flaps. Flamey is shaken by sickening fear, and so he darts away, flies away without touching the ground, and ash leaves are clapping, chasing him forth and forth into the forest thicket. There, nothing drops or rustles or blinks, and Flamey comes to a stop. It is dark here, and his circle of light catches just a mishmash of bare branches, a coat of reddish needles on the ground, and an old, dry toad-stool. He moves slowly now, spinning around, watching around, searching he knows not what. He must do some-thing. Flee or stay? Or realise something? But whenever he focuses on that something, it grows needles. It hurts and singes, scares with a distant thunder. And he is scared. He dashes back and forth into the glass and bush, through glistening cobwebs, leaf walls, stumps dark with all that moisture, between white, almost shining birches. Flight is soothing. The forest is beautiful. It wraps Flamey in hustles and whispers of all the small life in its depth. Flamey feels the pull, but not its direction. So, he doesn’t try to understand and just flies, turns, stops, crosses clearings right through the stalks of flowers. Rain flies through him, and raindrops reflect greenish fire. But then the sky grows lighter. It is terribly vast when seen from a dry pine top. Terror creeps in with that light, and Flamey falls down and back, and soon, unbeknownst to himself, he finds himself near the boulder with torn moss. Alien light blinds, and Flamey seeps through the stone to go numb in peace and cold. But the spark of an-guish drives him out when the sky is dark again. He kept returning into the stone at the end of each darkness, which grew shorter with each day as the air grew warmer. At one moment, Flamey could not get outside at all. But then coolness and dark came into their own. Greenery was spotted with yellow, then brown, and fell into a moist crust over the ground. Even pines and firs sombred even without taking off their needles. And once, snow fell and smoothed out, and brightened up everything, even the everlasting anxiety. Flamey never wandered far from his stone—his snow drift, to be more precise. He glittered in one spot, relishing in the sparks on the snow and hoarfrost. Sometimes banners of similar greenish, eerie light were snaking and glowing above in the dark. But the daylight was gaining back its time, the snow was retreating, the forest dipped its branches in green, and the splinter of anguish ached sharper again. The worst season was when intolerable light was diminishing, and tiny red globes gleamed through the moss and glossy green leaves of lingonberry. They made Flamey shudder every time he flew by. For a split second, he was feeling falling. He’d flee, but in the forest, carved leaves were splattered with reddish dots of stone bramble, and puddles of cranberries were spreading in the mires. Berries would go, to the soil or to humans. Flamey knew it, as humans sometimes would linger till dark, and he could glimpse them hurrying far away, to the brim of the forest. Humans were alarming too, even more than berries. But people were easy to evade. They walked loudly, all twigs, grass, and leaves screeching under their feet. Flamey had enough time to flee, even though un-willingly. Sometimes he could not understand when the fear was sharper, when he approached humans or moved away from them. After such encounters, his core would tremble for a day or two. Now Flamey knew well all the habits of the sky, the moon, clouds, trees, and animals. They all changed appearances many times. Beasts and night birds no longer recoiled when he passed by their noses and beaks, reflecting as a green spark in their eyes. He was the only one unchanging. Right, he could shine brighter or dim out, or even burn the fluff of willow or rosebay willowherb seeds to ashes. He could shrink smaller than a midge and fly between grass leaves without stirring them, or flare in anger with his uncer-tainties and send an orange flame up a fallen alder trunk. But his anguish would never go or clear up, no matter how long he circled through the swamps and forest. *** They showed up in the dark—strange lights over a pine-overgrown slope. Two pairs of steady yellow lights on dull muzzles of... Right, vehicles, he remembered (he knew not where from, even if two seconds ago he had no idea of what that was). Two small vehicles, each bearing one human on top. The usual alarm filled Flamey with an inner scream, his usual anguish howled and pulled him to people, and Flamey quiv-ered above a deep spot of the mire like a swarm of midges. Two light beams cut through the air, barely missing him. Humans stopped; the roar of their vehicles fell to a purr. “Did you see it?” One man said. “What was that?” A human voice. Not a bird's cry or a wolf's howl. The sound singed Flamey; the meaningful words shook him. One more moment, and he’d even understand why he was so attracted to and scared of them. No, it didn’t happen. “Wow, a fluttering fire! I’ve never seen any!” the other man replied. Flamey was upset: a fluttering fire? Just that? Well, actually, he was fire, he moved a lot, but inside him, something moaned—it was wrong! He’s not… “Like in fairytales, where it shows where a treasure is hidden?” The first intruder spoke. “Let’s take a look.” And his vehicle roared, turning towards Flamey, its beams surrounding him. Flamey flinched away, not knowing whether he wanted to move closer and tell or ask the strangers something—or dart away out of sight. “Imbecile! It can be too deep!” The second man raised his voice but led his vehicle down the slope too. Four beams were too much for Flamey, he dashed to the side, then back, away—and froze. Shouldn’t he tell them something? If only he knew what. Treasure, they said? What treasure? All he had was his fire essence, the forest, the black depths of the mire, and the large mossy boulder. (Moss had long healed its wounds and ruptures and covered all the grey granite sides.) Flamey didn’t notice reaching his boulder until he touched its green coat, and then an unclear terror seized him. No good, no good at all! He shouldn’t stand on the stone, shouldn’t let anyone come from behind murmuring something, it would end badly, terribly—what? Why? Still, Flamey could not keep away from the stone. It’s bad, but it’s right. All he succeeded in the hopeless fight with that pull was to shrink to a midge-sized spark and hide in the grass by the water while the human was stomping above and cursing when he was slipping on the moss. Flamey listened to that voice, trying to match it to something. Or, what if he evolved from the opposite side of the stone, creeped up to the human so close as to hear his breath and the tinkling of tags and button straps? Closer, yet closer, and then flash full power so that the human yelps and falls from the boulder into the deep pool, leaving tracks of torn moss on the granite, shouts for help, but then shuts up not to swallow water getting into mouth when hands beat over the sludgy surface, but the stone is too slippery to grip it, and thick silt does not give support for feet, and water creeps to the ears like a slipknot… He trembled with reflected human fear and fled, right into the light beams of the second vehicle, where the second human came down and ran to the first one, shouting at him to stop thrashing around. Flamey barely jerked away to the vehicle and flashed to scare the human off. Don’t touch him, don’t torment him with unknown something! Let them leave him alone! Something boiled under the hide of iron and burst into light, fire, and thunder, and scraps flying away. Flamey nearly faded. For a long time, he cowered under a smouldering, broken birch sapling until the fire sprayed by the burst went out, the mirror of mire went smooth over both bodies, and bubbles did not rise anymore. Slowly, Flamey hovered around his boulder once more, then again, in a wider round. Motion did not soothe him today. The next night, he left his stone in vague anxiety, which became clear at once. Someone visited his mire during daylight. Someone left a wheel track in the grass and limy slope. Someone took away the metal vehicles, both intact and burnt one. Someone disturbed the mire, and silt was already drying on the moss. Someone was here. Flamey cringed into a knot, as if those hands were feeling his insides. And fear was back, twice stronger. What did they look for? What did they find? He followed the track through a marshy copse, through pines, and through a birch grove, as far as he had never been before. The forest ended with his resolution. Dozens of lights shone in front of him, and the track joined a wide, smooth, and hard path. The noise of vaguely familiar life reached him from the lights’ direction. While Flamey wavered between the pull and the fear, the sky went lighter on one side. And his home was so far away! Would here be a good stone, would it let a guest from other places in? He darted back. He got back in time. But his daylight slumber was jarred with pictures of the mire torn apart in his memory, forebodings fluttered inside, not unlike he had been last night. In the next dark hour, he hurried to check the traces. Humans had been there again. New twigs and grass leaves were broken, tracks in the moss became even deeper. Flamey flew directly to the edge of the forest and circled outside of the light spots in the settlement all night long, scurrying away from other vehicles and rare passers-by. They remained enticing and scaring, and any thoughts of them hurt. Night after night, he kept coming to the settlement and dashed back whenever he’d give himself away: by burning a heap of dry grass in a flimsy wooden house with his burst of fright, by touching strange ropes bound everywhere between poles and houses—the ropes would give off sparks, and the light would go out in the houses beneath. By running into a dog that would howl like a wolf proper. He’d howl himself if he could: was he doomed to wander here along the borders of light forever? *** Forever ended soon. They came to his abode. Leaving his stone, he felt the intrusion at once, even if they stood in the dark without those lights of theirs. Two of them again. They froze almost by the stone, his stone. One of them was shorter but imposed much stronger fear, making Flamey feel like fleeing far, far away. No, it was them who should go! Maybe then the feeling of terrible vulnerability faded. He felt hor-ribly fragile between them and the mire, but could not force himself to retreat. What if they took away something valuable again? Flamey darted to the first man but didn’t get close; he crashed into an invisible barrier. His flash lit a weathered, bearded face, a canvas jacket, a broken-square pendant on a rope on the chest. The sharp bends of the pendant repelled and numbed Flamey. He sprang to the second man, but that one had the same pendant over a blue jacket with white letters. “Damn!” The second man staggered, though Flamey did not reach him. “Shut up!” The first one snapped at him. “Don’t croak trouble, this one is enough.” His piercing gaze followed Flamey as he spoke again, but not to his comrade. And in a different manner. “Useless is you light elusive, you won’t wound the one of wisdom; for I see the source of all things, roots of trouble and birth of beings, and your origin I reckon: you are not a sprite of grasses, not a lowly glow of wetlands, not a guardian of treasure, not a lackey or a lantern of the folks in hillocks hidden–” Cadent and heavy, the words made Flamey flutter and twinkle, kept him in place, and confused his mind, and he was thrashing away from the first man or against the second one in vain. The second one was scary too, but he was scared as well, starting and stepping back to the trees on the slope, tripping on the hillocks. “You are husk of human spirit, soul that’s called a ”self”, an itse, set asunder from its substance by a bloody act of violence–“ Inner trembling rose so high that it felt like screaming. Flamey didn’t know he could scream. Blindly, he lunged at the second man, but the latter stepped aside, and Flamey nearly crashed into a dry, thin tree. His light flashed over the pine bark and over resin beads on a patch with the bark piled away, casting shadows in the grooves of symbols—letters—cut in the wood. He knew the letters, he couldn’t stop understanding them, powerless to turn or fly away, and the meaning cut deep from inside, like the voice of the first man was enveloping him on the outside. “You were Eero Kivikoski, twenty years and eight more summers did you see before the gunshot breaking heartbeat, blowing body into dark and dreary water–“ The same name loomed in the letters cut on the tree. The name thundered like a shot, shook his whole being. Anxiety ringing slightly in the background all the time zoomed in in a blink, like a dark, cold water he falls face down before he can grip at the sharp pain in the chest. “Bear your bones to earth and ashes, lengthen not your false existence, spirits never see their solace, phantoms never flee their fears, not until your fate you follow to the timeless strands of Tuoni–“ Flamey imagined a red splatter among the green spots of duckweed in the mire water, he had a moment of feeling like screaming, but the cold water closed around him, dampening down the fire of fear and pain, wiping away the glimpse of memory of another day and another life, and smothering the thoughts, feel-ings, and everything. Only freezing stillness and darkness remain. *** “Can I cuss now?” The man in the dark blue jacket with Poliisi letters on the breast pocket and back asked his companion. He leant then on the pine and switched on a powerful flashlight. A wide light spot searched through the moss and duckweed. The water was still, holes in the duckweed already closing after the search works. “No,” the other, in a canvas jacket, grumbled. He listened warily to the night sounds and looked around. “Not until we leave the forest. Deal with it. What sort of policeman are you if you can’t keep silent for an hour?” “I can keep silent!” The policeman retorted in a whisper. “I can’t come up with any idea what to write in the report! Like, two tourists were drowned and one quad bike busted by a ghost of a guy dead for thirty years, and the same ghost has set one haybarn on fire and disrupted electric communications in the whole village? And a shaman from the neighbouring community has exorcised it and guarantees it won’t happen again? I’d be recalled for commission the next day!” “Write whatever you wish,” the said shaman snorted. “I’m not here to do your homework in literature.” But then he calmed down and added, “Cite an accident, it will be safe and close to truth. A very accidental accident.” And he headed to the dark wall of woods. The policeman, still jumpy and wary, followed him.