Jonas had grown used to the quiet rhythm of Håvardby. The village, pressed between the fjord and the endless forest, moved at the pace of tides and seasons. But lately, the rhythm faltered. The smith's apprentice stumbled in his work. Marta, once quick with laughter, stared blankly at her loom. Children whimpered in the night, refusing to sleep alone. It was as if some unseen hand pressed on them all, draining their strength.
Jonas noticed because he had always been the one who noticed. He had been born with a patience for silences, for listening where others hurried past. In the fishing towns he'd lived before coming here, he had been the man people turned to with their stories, their griefs. He'd thought Håvardby would be the same. But here, the silences held something heavier, something that did not bend to words.
He asked Marta once if she was unwell. She shook her head, her hands trembling as she drew the shuttle through the loom. "It's nothing, Jonas. The winter, perhaps." Then she crossed herself three times, as if that might banish whatever clung to her.
At the forge, the blacksmith muttered that his apprentice had gone soft in the arms, as though overnight. "The lad was strong last week," he said, wiping soot from his brow. "Now he drops iron like it burns him." When Jonas suggested the boy might be sickening, the smith only spat into the snow and said, "Something's wrong in this place."
Jonas carried these scraps of unease with him, piecing them together like a puzzle missing half its edges. The village was not ill, not in the way he understood illness. It was as though some invisible frost had crept into their marrow.
And then there was Sarah.
He thought of her more often than he should, her pale face framed by dark hair, her voice soft yet heavy with unspoken things. She was kind, always kind, but there was something watchful in her eyes, as if she lived in two worlds at once one he could see, and one he could not.
That evening, he met her on the path by the river. The light was fading, the sky stained red where it brushed the mountains. Sarah stood still, her gaze fixed on the water, her expression unreadable.
"Sarah," he called gently.
She turned, startled, then softened at the sight of him. "Jonas."
He joined her by the bank, hands buried in the pockets of his coat. For a while, they stood in silence, watching the river curl between the ice.
"The village feels different," he said at last. "Have you noticed?"
Sarah's fingers tightened on the folds of her cloak. "Different?"
"People are weary. Distant. It's as though the life has been drawn out of them." He glanced at her, hesitant. "You've felt it too, haven't you?"
For a heartbeat, her eyes betrayed her a flicker of something sharp, guilty, almost fearful. Then she looked back at the water. "Perhaps it is the winter," she said softly. "It wears us all thin."
Jonas wanted to believe that. Yet the winter had never pressed on him like this before. There was a weight to the air, to the very walls of the cottages, as though the village itself was holding its breath.
He studied her profile, the pale curve of her cheek, the shadows beneath her eyes. There was more she wished to say, he was certain, but she carried silence like a shield.
"Sarah," he said gently, "if something troubles you, you can tell me."
Her lips parted, but no words came. Her throat worked as though the truth pressed there, begging release, yet she forced it down, burying it deep. She only shook her head. "It is nothing."
Jonas did not press her. But as he walked her back toward the village, he could not shake the
feeling that the heart of whatever troubled Håvardby rested not in the weather or in weariness
but in Sarah herselfAnd though he could not name why, he felt both drawn to her and afraid of
what would happen if he looked too closely.