January 24th, 2023

Boahjenásti​
by RON RIEKKI

This story first appeared on Dark Moon Digest in 2018.

​Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.


​When Arne, the neighbor’s boy, went missing, my daughter Brooklyn casually mentioned Vuorwro and I told her to never casually mention Vuorwro. In fact, I told her to never mention Vuorwro at all. Her reply was to ask me if Vuorwro only eats boys. I told her that, no, Vuorwro eats anything alive.

“Would she eat a steak?”

“No. But she would eat a cow.”

“Would she eat a dead child?”

I told her not to say things like that and then I told her that, no, Vuorwro does not eat dead children, only living children.

“Then I’d kill myself before she ate me.”

Outside the window a tree in the front yard looked in on us. My daughter saw what I was looking at. “That tree wasn’t there before,” she said.

“Yes, it was. I think.”

“No,” she said and the front door slammed. My daughter walked up to the tree. It was just a tree. Or maybe not.

Vuorwro isn’t a witch. Vuorwro would eat witches. Vuorwro is one of the great Saami ghosts. I am Saami. My daughter is Saami. We are Laplanders but we never use the word Lapland. That horrible word translates as the “land of idiots.” It is a colonizer word, a word of humiliation, the way that language tries to suck on your blood unless you reclaim the word. Saami is the Saami word for Saami. It is our word. And we have our ghosts. We have our stories. But for us, our stories are real. This is Kajaani. In Kainuu territory. I have a secret for you. People go north, thinking the aurora borealis is better up there, but it actually weakens the farther north you go. The reason my people have lived here since before Columbus is because with the northern lights, this is the most beautiful place in the world. My ex-wife is Anishinaabe. She told me the Anishinaabe call those lights “the northern ghosts.” Our most beautiful moment, actually the world’s most beautiful moment, is when the sky is filled with ghosts. Or what looks like ghosts. And this was last night. And one of those ghosts came down and took Arne. He would not take my daughter. Or my son. They would put up too much of a fight. I know. I experience that wonderful fight daily.

My son Rob is addicted to the couch. He could sleep through Armageddon. In fact, all of the rumbling would just lullaby him to sleep. He’d count locusts like sheep and drift off into one of his beautiful nightmares. He is the only boy I know who has a nightmare and wakes me up in the middle of the night to tell me it wasn’t scary enough. In the dark, the moonlight failing to do any good at seeing his face clearly, he’d say, “The snakes of my dreams are too lethargic.”

“Did you just use the word ‘lethargic’?”

“Isn’t that right? I mean, lazy, like the snakes didn’t even come after me or anything.”

I told him to go to sleep. He did. I look at him on the couch. Vuorwro, if she comes tonight, I’m assuming will mistake him for dead; he’d be safe. It’s my little girl I worry about. And at that thought I heard her outside, screaming at the tree.

From the window I watched her having a deep conversation with the branches. I assumed she was warning it. Maybe not. Who knows with her? She stormed back into the house, announcing that Vuorwro’s coming tonight.

“Don’t say that!”

“Get ready.”

Her bedroom door would have slammed but she didn’t have a bedroom door. I’d taken it off. She broken the thing so many times that I figured it was better for her to slam air. I told her she still had a door but it was now invisible. I told her I thought she’d prefer an invisible door to a visible door. She thought about that and agreed.

Later that night while eating supper, Brooklyn cleared her throat and said, “Mr. Thomas told me that when people burn to death they smell like pork.”

“Who’s Mr. Thomas?”

“The paramedic.”

“What paramedic?”

“The one who came to the neighbor’s last night.”

“A paramedic came to the neighbor’s last night?”

“Don’t you have eyes?”

“You are two seconds from being sent to your room.”

I took a bite of roast and told Rob to wake up while he was eating.

“I am awake.”

“Then open your eyes. When we’re awake, we keep our eyes open. It’s a thing humans do.”

Rob opened his eyes and tried to keep them open without blinking. I could tell it hurt him. I put my fork down and waited to see how long he could go. He went long. I imagined him becoming a Navy Seal one day. Except Navy Seals have to wake up at 3 a.m. I imagined him being a seal one day, a mammal sun-tanning its stomach on a lagoon rock having its twelfth straight hour of daydreaming.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Brooklyn.

I went to pour myself some milk, but my glass was already full.

“Are we going to be eaten tonight?” she asked.

“No,” I said and poured more gravy instead. “We have to all keep water in our bedrooms tonight.”

“We know.” I had told them already: Vuorwro can’t enter a room if it contains water. My daughter before had asked me how much water exactly. I didn’t know. I just know that all smart Saami keep water in their bedrooms. Otherwise Vuorwro can enter. And all doors are invisible to Vuorwro. All walls too. She can walk through anything. Except bodies. Those she can eat. But she can’t stay long enough to eat anyone if there’s water.
I’d seen the ambulance next door. I knew there was a paramedic. I wondered what the neighbor’s bedroom looked like. To eat an entire child, I imagined, would not be clean and clear and easy. I imagined the red. I imagined every shade of red. Tuscan and electric crimson and rose and rust and oxblood and red-violet, all over that boy’s bedroom.

In Saami stories, there is a lot of cannibalism. Because of our stallo, our cannibalistic giants of the wild. And because of our starved ghosts. They all seem so hungry. So eager for the flesh of those who still feel cold. I imagined the millions of ghosts of the world all brutally craving cold. In the Saami language, there are more than one hundred ways to say snow. We actually have a word for the ghosts of the snow, those ghosts who are seen in blizzards, in storms, their body almost snow-blind. I can’t say the word. You’re not supposed to say the word.

“Vuorwro,” my daughter says and twirls her spoon in her potatoes.

That night I ensure and reinsure that my daughter and son have more than one cup of water in their rooms. I only had one thermos so I saved it for my daughter who would be much more likely to knock a cup over. I didn’t want the water to be absorbed or evaporated or in any way not be there. I wanted water to claim the room. I even hid a couple of glasses in the back of each of their closets. Brooklyn asked if it would be smarter if we all just drank a bunch of water before going to sleep, but I didn’t want her getting up in the middle of the night and wandering the house. I told her to stay in her room for the night. She said she wanted to stay in my room. I tried to ensure her that Vuorwro is a myth, folklore. Brooklyn looked down at the floor, the cups of water at her feet by her bed.

“I thought all we need is one?” she said.

“I’m being safe.”

I went to bed. I couldn’t sleep. I listened to the house, its thirst. I drifted off. Night happens. It gets into your skin. The dark lulls.

The yell woke me up. I believe it was the word dad. Or maybe dead. I sat up. I heard it again. It was dad. I turned on the light and picked up a cup of water, holding it before me like a lantern.

I turned on the hallway light. In a row in front of Brooklyn’s bedroom stood all of the cups, the thermos on its side, empty. Next to the thermos stood Rob.

“She should show you what she done.”

“Who should? Vuorwro? Or you mean Brooklyn?”

“Both,” said Rob.

Brooklyn stepped out of the shadows of her room.

“Where’s her water?”

“She took it out.”

“Why!”

“She did something bad.”

“What!”

Brooklyn came to the edge of her bedroom, standing before her door, a step outside of the hallway.

“Explain yourself,” I yelled at my daughter.

“She can’t,” said Rob.

“She can’t?”

“She can’t speak.”

I imagined Vuorwro eating her throat. I looked to see if her neck was only blood. But she looked the same. Maybe her cheeks were a little swollen.

“Put the water back in your room,” I said.

Brooklyn shook her head no.

I stepped forward with the cup, about to go into her room, but Rob grabbed me. 
“She ate Vuorwro.”

“She what?”

“Vuorwro is in her stomach.”

“Quit playing games and get to sleep.”

I picked up the thermos. I saw a spider inside and dropped the bottle. It clattered on the floor and rolled to Brooklyn’s feet. The spider crawled out. Rob stared at his sister, ignoring the spider.

“Show him,” Rob said.

“Enough,” I said.

“Should she have not eaten Vuorwro?”

“No.”

“I told you so,” Rob said.

“Say something,” I said to my silent daughter.

Brooklyn opened her mouth and kept opening it and kept opening as a fingernail emerged and another and a hand and another hand and a half-human, half-reindeer head that seemed to gasp for air and then the skeleton that is Vuorwro’s body, its feet-hooves stamping on my daughter’s tongue and then leaping into the room, hovering there, midair, then swinging around and exploding through a wall so that my daughter stood alone on an empty stomach. She walked by me to the front room, turning on all of the lights, and then, before going outside, she turned on the front porch light.

On the steps, she took my hands and put them on her shoulders.

“The tree,” she said. “Gone.”

It was. The absence was calming. You could see the sky, the third quarter moon, and, clearly visible, the North Star. We believe that the North Star is the top point of the pole that holds up the world. If the North Star should slip, the entirety of our world would plummet into oblivion. My daughter stood still, staring up at it, her posture of iron and steel.



Ron Riekki’s books include Blood/Not Blood Then the Gates (Middle West Press, poetry), My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press, hybrid), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle, nonfiction), and U.P. (Ghost Road Press, fiction).  Right now, Riekki’s listening to James' "Laid."

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