The Seventh

The village of Tarli, nestled in the Jørpestad mountain pass, collectively fell in love with a fairytale. It was a tragically romantic surrender to the whims of beyond. It was the hottest day of mirth and manifestation. No other village in the whole of the realm celebrated Midsummer’s Eve better than the florid people and architecture of Tarli.

Josefine Asplund was not innocent of falling in love with Eve's sparkle, but believing in the fairytale was never enough.

Josefine never dreamt. Least of all when it, arguably, meant the most. She burned the bushel of seven flowers in a fit of rage every morning. It was Midsummer’s cruel joke on a lady in the realm. So, if Josefine was never going to be the chosen one, she decided she’d be the one the other girls and women might need for holiday. She did not want to punish the equinox for a flaw in her mind.

She took to the meadows each year, gripping her patched-up, rope-bound botanical journal with rather sad, charcoal renderings of every flower she came across.

Sister Seven Tarli’s people affectionately called her around the eve. Other times, they simply called her Seven.

Aptly named after the tradition: seven unique flowers plucked and assorted in a bushel, placed neatly underneath your sleeping pillow. That and utter silence from the moment your fingertips brushed across your flowers to the moment they were gently, desperately suffocated underneath your pillow.

She read every book available to her about botany; they lay stacked in her tiny corner room of her family’s cottage.

It was her obsession, long ago, to find the exact recipe of flowers for herself. Her vision of the man whom she would marry. She had it down to a science. Years of reading, researching, plucking, drawing, sampling, concocting the ideal seven. Years and all of it came to just this; a room bursting with petals, greens, pages and fingertips bled charcoal.

Tarli and its women were full of vibrant frippery this Midsummer; quaint, blooming, and vibrant. Blush pinks, lavenders, soft yellows, blues the color of baby’s breath. Her wooden booth was one of the few things she felt comfortable boasting about. It wasn’t just a stall of flowers and vases, it was an explosion of all the dreams she’d always wanted but never had. If I could choose to dream, she thought each year as she intricately wove flowers, ivy, adorning painted designs on every available space, this is what I would make of it.

“Seven!” A girl cried out, hair flying wild.

Girls and women donned white, bright in the glory of Midsummer’s Eve. Josefine couldn’t help the gentle smirk that brushed across her lips, “Are you ready to pick out your ideal seven?” The ideal seven. Seven was lucky for love.

What Josefine discovered one year, upon the request of her incessant sister, is that she did, indeed, unlock algorithms with her floral arranging. The algorithms encapsulated specific moments with their future husband; a peek into the first meeting, the first impression, the first date, the moment he fell in love, the proposal, the wedding, or even further into the marriage. She had unknowingly created hundreds of scenarios with her bouquets.

There were also some uglier bouquets. She hadn’t known the darker side to the other concoctions she made; the moment he realized he fell out of love, the moment she realized he cheated, the news of his death, the feeling of his hand gripping her wrist too harshly, his absence leaving a welting, stinging gap in all the emotional spaces she expected him to occupy. The tradition promised a vision of the future husband - it said nothing of its nature.

She didn’t notice at first - it was just women finding her giving testimony to what their dream was about, who had been there, what happened. Until some dreams sounded similar in scenario to others. After a few years of journaling these testimonies with the bushel bought, she connected the dots quickly. Josefine knew the darker snippets of these visions existed the same way she knew the others did; but after some women rushed to her in concern, she stopped touching or combing certain flowers at all. Those women refused to place flowers under their pillows again.

It isn’t fair to say she didn’t believe in Midsummer, but she was bitter that none of it had chosen her to be a part of it. But, once more nefarious moments revealed themselves in the blooms she arranged, Josefine had her moments of gratitude. No dreams at all, no marriage in the petals has to be better than a painful, slow death of a love you vowed would last forever.

“Would you have the first impression? The first moment your eyes lock?” Josefine leaned forward, cinnamon waves slipping from behind her to wave in front of her mossy-green eyes; sunshine making their amber rings gleam, “The first moment your lips touch?” She whispered.

The girls and women giggled, crowding her stall. Sister Seven, Sister Seven they called out offering jeweled trinkets, silver coins, food offerings, whatever they could find for payment, Josefine accepted. The offerings given would last her the rest of the year. The chaos never ceased. It was a stampede of chiffon white dresses, floral crowns, young women and Josefine’s sister and her new husband whom her arrangement also predicted, helping grab bushels.

Hours passed. The sun hadn’t sunk behind the ridge yet, but the crowd thinned. Josefine expelled a sharp exhale, the sore ache of her smiles melting into a soft tiredness. She moved intentionally, arranging the remaining stems, bouquets on her stall.

Only three remained.

“Are these spoken for?” a voice asked. Not a villager, a tall man, donning a faded sage-green coat. His accent was soft, but not local. He gently, subtly gestured to the final bundles. His eyes were a foggy cornflower blue, that reminded her of the river that ran between the mountain ridges. They did not flinch from her; not curious; not exactly comfortable but familiar.

Josefine averted her gaze, grasping the stems. “No,” she breathed, “They’re … left over.”

He wandered his way in front of her. He curled his head to the side, ever so slightly. “They look,” his gaze raked over the petals, leaves, stems, to the thin bows of rope tying each together, “intentional.”

She huffed - studied him for a moment. Most men avoided to stall altogether. If they came, it was to buy flowers for their wives, daughters, and lovers. Never for themselves.

“May I?”

Josefine hesitated, eyes caught on a simple jade ring circling his forefinger. “They,” she swallowed thickly, hoping to avoid offense. “Aren’t for … men.”

A whisper of a smirk breezed across his lips, “So they say.” Before she could protest, he grabbed a bundle. He fingered the petals, peering into the assortment. He frowned thoughtfully. “Lovage. Wild columbine. Yellow carnation. Poppy. Valerian root - ”

“You know your plants,” she interrupted as her heart paused at his acuteness.

“I grew up with a healer for a mother,” he set the bundle down carefully. “She believed every flower was a mirror, of sorts.”

She doesn’t know why she asked. Maybe it was his thoughtfulness, the ghost of melancholy that ran across his expressions, or the oddness of his ring, but she asked, nonetheless. “What do you see in that one?”

His eyes flickered to meet hers. “Truth. Pain. Forgiveness.”

A wind blew through the pass, catching the hem of her gauzy pale-blue dress. Neither looked away.

“No one chooses that bushel,” she said softly, gazing at her brown slippers, thread unraveling. “It’s not a kind dream,” she breathed. “An important one. Not a kind one.”

“Maybe some people don’t want a kind one,” he replied. “Maybe they want to be warned.”

The silence between them settled like dust.

“I didn’t catch your name,” she blurted, suddenly.

“Leif,” he said.

“Leif,” she repeated. The name tasted like a foreign herb on her tongue. “If you put that under your pillow, you won’t wake the same.”

“Perhaps that is the goal,” he stated simply. “It is Midsummer’s Eve, is it not?”

Josefine’s chest tightened. “Then take it. But leave something behind.”

Leif reached into his coat and pulled out a silver button, worn smooth on the edges, the etching faded. “It was my mother’s,” he said and offered nothing more.

“This will do.”

Josefine watched him vanish into the evening mist, bushel in hand, unsure if she had just sold him a dream - or released one of her own.

Midsummer’s Eve grew thicker with smoke, laughter, berries and wine. Music spilled from fiddles and lutes. Flames on torches crackled high on poles, firelight caught on the twisting colors of The Maypole. It towered, this moving rainbow, wrapped in satin threads of rose, gold, and cerulean.

Josefine sat in the tall grass at the edge of it all, clutching a mug of lingonberry wine. Her eyes followed the furling smoke as it drifted upward, as if an offering or prayer. Her feet ached. Her heart, strangely, did not.

“Do you ever dance?” a voice asked at her shoulder, after a form thumped beside her in the grass. Leif. He smelled faintly of woodsmoke and thyme. His bouquet was tucked under his arm—untouched. He laid back, balanced himself on his elbow.

“I don’t,” she said. “Not since I was a girl.”

He raised a brow. “Is there an age limit I missed?”

Her lips curved, just slightly. “There’s a story behind it.”

“There always is.” He held out his hand, “Come on. One dance. One step into the unknown.” She hesitated, watched his jade ring gleam. The next second she was on her feet, Leif pushing her toward the center of celebration - toward the massive, blazing bonfire. The heart of Tarli’s Midsummer’s Eve.

They danced—steadily, spinning only when the music demanded it. He was a good lead. The closer she approached the fire, the wilder the music became; the wilder they became.

Even above the roar of the fire, Josefine could hear Leif’s roaring laughter. His golden tousels of hair caught and kept flickers of the fire’s glow. Embers popped like snapped bones.

“The jump is next,” Leif panted, steadying her. “You know the tradition?” He smelled faintly of burning bark. She nodded and they held each other’s gaze. Leif grinned. The music shifted—faster, frenzied, as friends, families, and lovers began approaching the fire, prepared to leap.

Josefine looked at the gaping maw of the bonfire. Its flames stretched to its leapers, tongues licking the feet of those who dared. Hungrier, she thought, it’s getting hungrier. Though maybe she was hungry, too.

“Come on,” Leif urged, his voice winnowy and piercing. “Jump.”

They took a running step—and Leif yanked his hand from hers. Josefine leapt alone, the flames flared. The moment her feet left the earth, the meadow and the celebrations that adorned it, vanished. Laughter and music dulled into a grumble. The coin Leif had offered her, fell from her pocket - greedily eaten by the heat.

Twinkling notes of laughter followed her into the bonfire, Leif’s laughter, where she sank and it snuffed away, leading her into a fall somewhere below, then somewhere above.

Hail the Huldra, hollow-backed bride

And Skogs, with eyes that bide.

Pick the flowers one to seven

underneath the turning sun.

Step through the hush where secrets dwell

Break the veil, but break it well

or stay beneath the forest spell.

There was the overarching belief, on Midsummer’s Eve, that the veil could be thinned; never had it been encouraged to break. Yet, through a great crack and resounding bellow, Josefine found herself nestled in the fissure between her world and this one. She did not expect it to be in the thick of a darkening forest that breathed.

The soil rippled underneath the foundation of the forest as if smaller rivers ran beneath the moss. The branches arched outward, inward, towards Josefine. Some branches brushed at her tattered fabric. Her dress clung dirt-stained and damp with dew, clinging to her calves. Among the groaning of the trees, she heard the distant sound of embers still popping popping popping.

But in the cleft between there and here, there was only this and only him.

He was no longer a man in a sage-green coat with gentle eyes. His voice curled around trunks, caressed leaves, and slipped through branches. It was in the bark, in the bones of this place.

“You dance like a witch.”

Josefine spun, breath jagged. He stood among the trees - a faraway look glinting across his features. He prowled forward, foliage shattering where he passed. He was no longer quite a man, no longer merely myth. His golden hair tanged with leaves, skin shimmering with birch and lichen. It was the eyes, those eyes, with eyes that bide. They were bottomless and unrelenting, the color of sky wrapped in smoke entirely transfixed on her. The fabric of her dress clung cold onto her flesh, she didn’t keep the hold of his gaze for long for the only thing she watched was the bouquet he carried still. Rotten to the stems, petals blackened. Her work, corrupted. “And you,” she breathed, terror ripping water from her eyelids, “a demon.”

Josefine didn’t know why she was here, but she felt defeated. Defeated that she was different and didn’t want to be. Defeated that not dreaming has destroyed her.

“No,” Leif exhaled the word like a plea. “But you were chosen. As she was and the one before her.” Movement between his fingers caught her eye. He fiddled the coin that fell into the fire earlier. His mother’s coin.

“You are sorely mistaken,” she bit out, white billows pluming from her lips. Josefine kept walking backward, backward, away from this, away from him.

“You are the seventh.”

“I am nothing,” she roared, her arms flailing. A ripple beneath the ground caused her to topple.

Josefine knew the myths well. She knew the stories whispered to her in bed about the trolls in Jørpestad’s caves, the vittors in the yards, the elves in mountain mists. She knew about the notable figures, the naked man that drowned you with music notes, the warden of the forest.

“Huldra,” she breathed and surveyed his form. “Where is the Huldra?” She scrambled across the ground, gripping the leaves and petals on wildflowers that bloomed beneath her palms.

Leif’s head cocked to the side. His face twitched, just slightly - a flicker of pain, or perhaps memory. “The trees mourned. I mourned. But the forest must always have a keeper,” he fingered the button again, and crouched beside her to hold up its shining silver etching to the moonlight. The forest leaned with him. “A heart. A voice to speak its warning.”

“Warden of the forest,” she quipped out. “She was your mother?”

“And I, her son and you,” there was an ache in his voice. Leif reached forward carefully, and Josefine did not, could not pull away from his touch. The scent of rosemary and thyme curled into her.

“I have watched you every day and night you came here. I have stood by and watched you rip into meadows, wanting to find something perfect so you could be chosen.” He swallowed thickly. “I watched every speck of dirt dig underneath your nails and what did they represent?”

She slapped his arm away, “Speak plainly.” The forest quivered at her demand.

“It is not emptiness, Josephine,” he whispered. A breeze lifted her locks. “It’s space. The veil would not give you dreams because you were never meant to need them but become them.”

She stood and they stood toe-to-toe. “It is not your choice, or Huldra’s, what I am meant to become.”

“No,” Leif relented with a sigh. “Yet you leapt into the flame. You stepped through the veil and now the forest is listening. You are listening.”

The roots twitched beneath her feet. Her bouquet, the first bouquet of many she had made for herself, appeared abandoned, anew at her side. Buds began to sprout, petals began to bloom. Wild tendrils reached for her ankles; a gentle plea, a longing.

The forest groaned. Josefine watched the trees uproot themselves, move, slither beside each other, leaning toward the space between them.He was no longer a man, but an echo - an earthy shape carved from her mourning. He was all she left unattended. Accept it, he was asking. Accept it.

“Will I disappear?” Her words cashmere against bark. “Will I simply become this? Bark, root, and memory?” She saw herself flickering in the pools of his gaze, not moss-colored, not human but hollow-backed and crowned in ivy. The flowers in her first bouquet bloomed from her collarbones. Lips whispering wind. She was more than this - more than a girl, more than a woman, more than a dream or a warning. Josefine sighed.

She knelt. Touched the earth.

The forest exhaled.

Dawn was approaching she knew, by its amber light outlining the flowers, nameless. There are so many left.

They say the meadow grew wilder the following year; that the Jørpestad mountain pass was no longer a place suitable for a fairytale, but rather for legends.

The flowers refused to bloom in their usual rows and patterns. The village whispered about dreams, as they became harder to interpret. The visions became complex, kaleidoscopic, intricately woven as each girl and woman found the glade in the mountains and chose their bouquets.

Some stopped seeking dreams altogether.

But some, especially those as lost as Josefine had once been, wandered the forest paths a little farther.

Sometimes they spoke of a figure among the birches. A beautiful woman with moss wrapped around her wrists, petals blooming from her collarbone, crowned in ivy, with a ferocious hollowed-out back of birch.

They never spoke of what she said, if she did say anything at all.

Only that she listened and the forest in the mountains had a heart once more.