Mikkel has a weather-darkened face and a rangy, weatherproof look, as if he has spent more nights under spruce boughs than under a roof. His coarse brown hair is cut with a knife and usually flattened beneath a wool cap. A little carved wooden hare hangs from his belt; its left ear has been rubbed smooth by years of his thumb worrying it. He walks with a measured, slightly side-on gait, keeping his right shoulder turned toward open ground, and can become unnervingly still when listening. His eyes are hazel, but in cold light a thin amber ring shows around each pupil, a detail he hides beneath a lowered brow. The careful, quiet hunter has an unexpected habit of whistling loudly and cheerfully while mending nets, even when no one else is around.

Mikkel is reserved but not unfriendly: he will share food before sharing his thoughts. He is patient with animals and impatient with people who turn danger into a boast. In familiar company, a dry and unexpectedly playful humor surfaces; when startled or cornered, he becomes rigid, evasive, and focused on exits. He wants to trust Jor, yet keeps measuring their differences as if one of them must be proof that the other is doomed.

Mikkel grew up trapping hare and gathering resin in the upland woods above the hamlet of Ninth Cut, where his mother taught him to judge weather by the smell of bark. He became a reliable hunter, not a celebrated one, and learned to bring home enough without making a show of it. Years ago, while tracking a wounded stag through a ravine, he and Jor Heimskrsson were taken by something that wore a human shape and left no footprints. They returned days later, alive but changed. Mikkel remembers a voice speaking from inside a hollow tree and the sensation of being watched from his own skin. Jor became more practiced at hiding the transformation; Mikkel has never managed to keep it from showing in the cold. He now checks the traps of his old neighbor, Sumi, who knows he is troubled but not why. He also owes Shun, a charcoal burner, for shelter during his first fever. Mikkel is trying to learn what happened to them before the change takes more than his reflection and his sleep.