Daniel bent down to greet the dog sitting patiently by the front door and rubbed the soft, furry head. His old friend looked at her owner with her mismatched eyes, one blue, one brown, and blinked against the softly falling snow, as if letting him know she was happy to see him too. Then he rubbed the second, younger dog’s head. Both dogs wagged their tails as though he’d been away for a month rather than a night. Clearly they thought he’d left them again, like he had before, leaving his sister Elsá in charge.
He was pleased to be home, back in Tallfors, on the farm. There was nothing for him in Stockholm any more. That was his past now; yesterday’s meeting with his solicitor had seen to that. Where he was going to go now, though, or what he was going to do, he had no idea. But he was going to have a lot of time to think over the next few days, and hopefully he’d work something out.
He pushed open the front door of the cold farmhouse and threw his black case onto the sofa, then pulled off his grey beanie hat and rubbed his curly reddish-blond curls and his much redder thick beard. It might be good to be back, but the farmhouse felt empty and unloved. His father was in the old people’s home, the new purpose-built flats in town. It’d been a shock to hear from his sister that he’d been moved there after a fall. She had continued to look in on the farmhouse every day, travelling in from the apartment she shared with her boyfriend in town to look after the dog team and the other two dogs. But she was finding it hard to juggle everything, he knew that. At least he could help out while he was back.
The air was as cold inside the farmhouse as out. He looked at the empty wood-burning stove and thought about lighting it. The fire was never out in this house. It was like the heart of the home, and now it felt like that heart was missing. He looked out of the window. There was no point lighting the fire. The big full moon was too good an opportunity to miss. The snow was light, if steady. It was ideal conditions, finally. He needed to make the most of it. He needed to get going. It was time.
He went to his bedroom and pulled a big holdall down from the top of the wardrobe, filling it with clothes – thermal layers, socks, gloves – and grabbing his sleeping bag and a spare, just in case one got wet. Having somewhere warm to sleep was going to be essential on this trip. He felt butterflies of excitement. It had been a long time since he’d done a trip like this to find the herd. It felt good. Good to be putting miles between him and what he’d just left behind.
He tried the number on his phone again. It went straight to voicemail. He couldn’t wait. He had to go. He took his fur-trimmed trapper-style hat from the hook by the front door, put it on and pulled it right down by the ear flaps. Then his luhkka, like a blue poncho, which he draped over his coat. He knew from experience how cold it could get out there, despite it being so still at the moment. He pulled on his boots and finally wrapped his belt around him and slipped his knife into the sheath. After that, he quickly went round the kitchen, gathering supplies, and piled everything on the veranda at the front of the house, where the two dogs were panting patiently in anticipation.
He took a final look around the farmhouse and at his overnight case on the settee. There was nothing in the case that he needed. He left it where it was and stepped outside, pulling the red wooden door tightly shut behind him. A flurry of snow fell from the porch roof and the icicles hanging from the gutter sparkled in the bright moonlight. He had to make the most of this light. He could get a few miles under his belt before finally pitching the tent for the night. The light would be fading by about 2:30p.m. and it wouldn’t be back until around eleven tomorrow morning. At this time of year the sun barely made it above the horizon, but if the moon stayed like this he could carry on much longer, start earlier in the morning.
He called to the dogs, who were beside him in an instant. They both knew the drill, and he was going to need them today, especially if he couldn’t get hold of his sister. He had no idea where she was. He just hoped she was going to meet him there. He wished his dad could be with him on this trip, but it was impossible. He was old and frail now. The memory of seeing him for the first time a couple of weeks ago after being away for so long still shocked Daniel, and the guilt twisted like a knife in his guts. He should have come back more often.
He took another look at the farmhouse. His father had built it when he’d married his mother. She’d got a job as a teacher in town, and the cabin his dad had grown up in near the summer grazing close to the mountains was too far away. Before that, there had been a cabin on the site, built by Daniel’s grandparents so that they could keep an eye on the herd nearer the forests, during the winter months. And before that, there had just been a lavvu, a tepee-like tent.
Outside, the dogs in their kennels had got wind of the fact that their owner was home and a trip was in the offing. They began to bark and howl. The anticipation was growing in the snowy air. The moon was throwing out its silver light like a cape across the undulating snowy fields that surrounded the farmhouse. Daniel stood for a moment, wondering what would happen to this place now his father wasn’t here. He shook away the thoughts bundling into his head: his happy childhood memories growing up here, and then the memories he had been so eager to leave behind when he left after his mother’s short illness.
He walked forward through the deep snow, shuffling to make a path, the dogs’ barking getting even louder, like a classroom of enthusiastic pupils waving their hands in the air, shouting, ‘Pick me! Pick me!’
‘Hej, hej.’ He opened the pen door and was greeted by dogs standing on their hind legs, desperate to welcome him back. His doubts about whether they would still recognise him after all this time melted away. Having patted each and every one of them, he went to the shed and flicked on the light, the soft orange glow illuminating the rows of harnesses hanging there. He pulled on the head torch hanging on a peg, and slung his lasso across his body. Then he loaded the sled with the essentials: dog food and bowls, fishing lines, snow shoes and skis, tent and stove, as well as the provisions from the house.
It would probably take a couple of nights to get to where he was going: north across the Arctic tundra to where his reindeer herd had been grazing all summer and autumn, to bring them south – south-east to be exact – back to the forest around the farmhouse for the winter. The weather had been so bad, the annual migration was really, really late this year. None of the herders had been able to round up the reindeer because of the snow, until now.
Under normal circumstances, his sister and father would have coped. But this year, things were different and the reindeer had moved higher than before into the mountains, away from the wind farm that had been built there. In the spring they’d be going back to the mountains, but right now, he needed to bring them down to the forests behind the farmhouse. He needed to get them home and happy. Away from the wind farm. He had to make sure his females weren’t put under any undue stress. An unhappy herd was never going to breed well. The sooner he moved them to the lower land of the forest and the lichen they could feed off there, the better.
He harnessed up his lead dog and attached him to the central cable. He’d been doing this since he was a boy, taught by his mother. It felt really good to be back working with the dogs again. He harnessed the rest of the team one by one, while those not being picked barked and howled into the white moonlight. He wished he could take them all, but he couldn’t. He would take a big team, though, and then split them when he got to where the reindeer were being taken off the mountainside and corralled – and hopefully where he would meet his sister. Of course, the snowmobile would have been much faster, if Elsá hadn’t run it into a tree and now it had gone for repairs. He couldn’t wait for it to come back. The weather was too good an opportunity to miss. It had to be now. But the dog team would be fine and he might just enjoy it. Blow away the stresses of the last few weeks.
With the final dog harnessed, he did a quick check, closing up everything left behind, then attached the sled with the provisions to the leading one. It wasn’t ideal, but he didn’t have a choice until he could meet up with Elsá. He checked his phone one last time, while he still had signal. Finally! She’d texted to say she’d been delayed but she’d catch him up as soon as possible. Her boyfriend would drive over and look after the dogs left behind at the kennels.
The sled was bouncing as the dogs strained and pulled to get going. Daniel switched on the torches attached to the frame and watched as they lit up the undulating landscape in front of him. The dogs being left behind howled and barked. He looked out into the snow falling ahead of him, the glittery flakes dancing in the torchlight, then pulled his fur-trimmed hat further down over his ears, took a deep breath and released the sled from where it was anchored.
‘Hike, hike!’ he called to the team in front of him, and the dogs shot forward into the snowy late afternoon, the sled gliding along behind with Daniel at the helm, feeling the thrill of speed that never failed to make him come alive, the dogs’ obedience at his command, and the cold against his face, raw and real. The urgency to get to his herd and bring them home filled him with a sense of purpose and drove him on, leaving the stresses of Stockholm far behind him.