Page 17 of A Winter in Wonderland
Chapter 8
With the seat-belt sign switched off, I scrabbled to drag my coat out from under my seat and legs, trying to put it on me without clubbing the guy next to me in the face. From behind the small window, I could see it was looking pretty cold out there.
My neighbour, American Guy, was one of those people who wanted to let everyone else go first and help with everybody’s luggage, but eventually we made our way off the plane and onto the air-bridge, and then into a glass corridor, where I caught my first panoramic view of Lapland.
‘Wow,’ I breathed against the glass, fogging it up and wiping it clean again with the sleeve of my coat with a squeak. Despite the dark, I could make out white ground with white aeroplanes that swirled grey where the wheels had waltzed through the snow on the runway.
And look at that … I don’t know what I’d expected, exactly, but it wasn’t like we touched down to the Rockettesand Santa Claus guiding the plane in with marshalling wands.This– snow and serenity and all the best bits of winter – were A-OK with me.
Realising I was now alone, I scuttled to catch up with my fellow passengers.
As I waited for my backpack, I spotted American Guy across from me, and when he turned I gave him a goodbye wave and our eyes met again for a moment. He smiled, and though I knew nothing about him and would probably never see him again, for a tiny moment in time it was nice to have somebody smile at me with a modicum of familiarity in a place a million miles from home.
I’d been told a rep from Love Adventuring Lapland would be meeting me at the airport, and we’d be heading to a hotel on the edge of the city of Rovaniemi for two nights before travelling deeper into the Arctic Circle, to an area nearby the village of Luosto, which was tucked within the border of Pyhä-Luosto National Park, that would be my new home for the next two and a half months.
So when I entered the arrivals terminal, feeling almost lost inside my huge coat with my enormous turtle-shell of a backpack heavy on me, I looked around for the rep. It was a small airport, neat, signs in Finnish as well as English, and big windows that showed the muted white sky and white ground outside. Then I saw a sign being held in the air, a little way back from the barriers, beside a coffee cart.Welcome, Love Adventuring Lapland Santa Helpers!
I shuffled over and joined a small gathering of people, perhaps around fifteen of us, adults of all ages, all lookinga touch nervous, like me, but the key difference being that despite the nerves, they had big, excited smiles on their faces. The rep was smiling and greeting everyone as they walked over, ticking people off a list.
‘Hei,’ I said, practising my ‘hello’, my voice coming out more timidly than I’d intended, since this was hands-down the easiest Finnish word to attempt as it basically was me just saying ‘Hi’.
The rep looked up at me and smiled kindly. ‘Hei, my name is Daan, I’m the head of operations for Love Adventuring Lapland. Welcome to Rovaniemi, the official hometown of Santa Claus in Lapland. What’s your name?’
‘Myla Everwood.’ I watched as he ticked me off on his list.
‘All right, we just have a couple more people to come through on this flight and then we’ll make our way to our hotel.’ His voice was gentle and slow, instantly soothing like one of those stories you listen to in order to fall asleep.
I shifted the weight of the backpack, heavy on my shoulders, and lifted the corners of my mouth at the people around me.
I began to remove my scarf when Daan said, ‘You’ll probably want to keep that on. When we leave the airport to walk to our shuttle bus it might feel very much colder than you’re used to.’
‘It’s true,’ said a British girl beside me who looked athletic and outdoorsy. ‘I came here once with my family for Christmas and it really makes you appreciate that “cold” in the UK is actually pretty mild, comparatively. Have you been to Lapland before?’
‘Never,’ I answered.
‘You must besoexcited,’ the girl enthused.
‘Yeah,’ I said, hoping it sounded genuine.
A couple more people joined the group and Daan was introducing himself to them. ‘And what’s your name?’ I heard him say from the other end of the group.
‘Josh. Josh Roberts.’
I knew that voice. Turning my whole body as best I could in my Iron Man-like get-up, there he was, American Guy, standing with our group. He’d layered up since I last saw him, now in a thick coat also, plus gloves and scarf all covering over the flannel shirt. He had a woollen hat pulled over his thick hair but his dark eyelashes were still prominent.
Josh.
At that moment, Daan found his name on the list, and Josh looked up and around at the rest of us, catching my eye though I looked away quickly.
‘All right, everybody, follow me,’ said Daan, putting away his clipboard and pulling on his own humungous mittens. We shuffled along behind him; the straps of the backpack pressed into my shoulders and I hooked my thumbs under them to try and relieve some of the weight.
As the airport doors slid open, a rush of cold air hit my face and immediately froze me like Bette Midler inHocus Pocus(sorry for the spoiler, but also, that movie has been out for thirty years). My eyelashes all fell off like icicles and my breath stopped in the air like a dying wish.
Lapland wasn’t joking around, this wascold. The chill air stroked my cheeks, tracing its way over my lips, looking intomy eyes, running its fingers through my hair and I wished I had a hat. It was icy and eerie and freezing, but also fresh and invigorating. Under my feet the snow was thick and compressed, crunching with all our footsteps.
And before I could get used to it, we were at a shuttle and my rucksack was being lifted off my shoulders by maybe a guardian angel and I was following the group into the warm sanctuary of the minibus and sitting down.
With the bus door closed, the heating blasting through, it was like those moments of frozen silence had never happened, and we pulled out of the airport to head to our hotel. I was on a single seat, so I spent the journey peering out of the window. At this time, in November, I’d read that ‘daylight’ was between about nine and three. It was soon after six p.m. now and the dark denim blue of the sky told me we’d already moved through ‘civil’ and ‘nautical’ twilight, and were now in ‘astronomical’ twilight. By six-thirty-ish it would be night-time until all the twilights started again come the morning. Who knew there were three types of twilight? Stephenie Meyer could write a whole spin-off series …
