Dusk in Kalevia

by Emily Compton

Kuoppala was staring at Kaija, and for the first time, Toivo saw something akin to fear cross his face. As though in response to this unexpected expression, Vesa chanced a glimpse over his shoulder.

  “Kaija.” Vesa’s voice was strangled.

  “Impossible. I saw you...” Kuoppala, too, seemed to struggle to get his words out.

  “What?” asked Demyan, recovering some of his usual menacing poise. “What did you see? A man shot in his car, a rebel wounded in the storm, a prisoner vanishing from his cell?” He began to advance once more. “Kuoppala, give me the gun.”

  “What are you?”

  “What indeed?” Demyan grinned, and even Toivo flinched at the thorns within that smile.

  Demyan was working on Kuoppala in earnest now, spreading his wings, growing throughout the room unseen. The wall was cracking--dark, invisible ivy pushed its way through crumbling brick. He took another step forward. “Drop it, Kuoppala.”

  “I warned you,” Kuoppala snapped, his voice was tinged with panic. He swung the long barrel of his pistol toward Vesa.

  Toivo dove.

  As he threw himself into the boy’s side, he heard a crack, felt a molten wet sizzle across his cheek and ear as he crushed Vesa into the floor. There was another snap of suppressed fire and a curse from Kuoppala as the shot went wide, piercing the crown of the military cap that had tumbled from Toivo’s head mere centimeters from where they lay.

  Good, thought Toivo. Better he wastes the rounds on someone he can’t kill. He stood up and made a show of brushing himself off, feeling the itching ache as his skin began to crawl back together--and this time, he made no effort to hide it. Toivo almost felt sorry for the way Kuoppala’s hands had begun to tremble. Almost.

  “You were saying?”

  Kuoppala fired again, too slow. Toivo took off along the curve of the windows; panes of glass shattered behind him by wayward bullets, concussions echoing around him. Six, seven... Kuoppala would be out soon, unless...

  The man had stopped firing. Toivo shook glass from his hair and whipped around to face him.

  “One more.” Kuoppala laughed, looking at his gun with a lopsided smile. His eyes trailed across the room.

  “Time to play. Who will it be?”

  Toivo went cold. He dashed back toward the teenagers; Kaija pulled Vesa behind her, thrusting herself protectively between him and Kuoppala’s last potential shot. Demyan snarled and stepped toward the two from their other side, his gun still aimed at Kuoppala’s heart.

  “Shoot and you’re dead,” Demyan growled.

  “Ah, we have a winner.” Kuoppala lowered his weapon.

  And pointed at the beacon light where the bomb waited for a spark.

  Chapter 13

  Kuoppala’s hand steadied as he aimed his pistol at the bomb, his fear fast disappearing. Toivo knew that Kuoppala was fully capable of pulling the trigger, willing to cast his life aside for one last act of revenge.

  Toivo didn’t know what would happen to him in the event of an explosion. He imagined his matter flying madly about until it gradually reconvened; still a far better outcome than the humans could expect.

  “Why?” Toivo asked.

  He felt the wall surrounding Kuoppala’s mind shake, the cracks widening. Kuoppala lurked there on the other side, thin as watered-down milk, grasping fruitlessly for the proper emotion. Toivo felt Demyan’s victorious shadows brush past, only to stop short in the shallow depths.

  “You don’t understand.” Kuoppala’s face was a mask, calm except for a hysterical brightness in his eyes. “I’m going to fix this country.”

  The wall fell. Toivo was in.

  He’d thought back to it often--how, as a child, he had wondered if there was something wrong with him. He watched the others play, saw them cry or laugh or get unreasonably excited over trivial details that left him numb. It was on the Western Front that he received his epiphany when he looked down his scope, consciously blew a hole through another human being, and felt nothing but a small surge of satisfaction. He was not broken--he was strong.

  Kalevia was in danger; it had become a hive teeming with dissidents and saboteurs. The Party had faltered and needed guidance. Like Uusitalo. So weak. So afraid. Take his son away and he would do anything--give Kuoppala any amount of control, set him up to be the savior of Kalevia. He would get rid of the boy; no need to create a martyr’s son. Blame it on rebel sabotage. He would purge the country clean, smelting the imperfections from the ore.

  “No.”

  Toivo turned, his stomach in a knot. Kaija was shaking her head slowly as though an idea had coalesced within.

  “It can’t be fixed,” Kaija continued, stepping forward, an easy target.

  Toivo suddenly understood.

  “What are you doing?” hissed Demyan, before Toivo held up a hand to silence him.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Kaija spoke as though the words came from elsewhere, and she breathed them with the air. “Life here will never be perfect.”

  The bright intensity of her conviction was like a beacon in the room, throwing the shadows of fear that lurked around them into sharp relief. Toivo reached for Demyan, his fingers splaying as he felt for the darkness, the power that matched his own and clung to every human who stepped into the light.

  Demyan wordlessly took his hand.

  “Shut up!” Kuoppala howled.

  “Life isn’t something you can control,” Kaija called. “No matter how much you try. How can you not know that when you’ve lived it?”

  Toivo struggled to restrain his power as the shadows spilled in through Demyan’s palm. Their spirits crashed and fought in the space around them, so much stronger together than they were alone.

  “We struggle. We survive. This terrible, ugly, beautiful life, this light that burns in the darkness. This...” Kaija opened her arms as though to encompass the world. “...is Kalevia.”

  Kalevia.

  The word breached the dam of Toivo’s power, and sent him and the shadows wrapped around him shooting down through the building. In his time on Earth, this was the closest Zophiel had ever come to the bodiless freedom that he longed for; he felt Solas rejoicing beside him and throughout him.

  What Kalevia was to Kaija--her home, her prison, her sorrow, her love--raced into the minds of the crowd below. Sudden memories flitted through the thoughts of every member of the elite as they listened to the Memorial speech.

  For the first time in ages, they could see clearly--the truth of the past laid bare before them in a patchwork of love and loss. What had their lives been up until that point? What had Kalevia been to them, and what had they been to Kalevia? A famous composer swelled with gratitude and pride; an admiral sighed with bitter regret. The Forestry Minister started to cry softly into his handkerchief.

  Up on the podium, the Chairman paused for a moment, looking glassy-eyed into the floodlights.

  He remembered fighting for his homeland, but when he returned as a decorated veteran, his dream of home was no more. Though battered and impoverished, Kalevia was still there, but his wife was gone forever.

  Her singing voice still haunted him, and he couldn’t forget her smile as she had smoothed the unruly strands of his thinning hair into place. The hardest thing was watching Vesa grow and seeing the echoes of her lingering in the son she never knew--her red-blonde hair, her stubborn optimism. He had thrown himself into his work to try to forget, but he knew he never would. He had only managed to lose sight of all the important things in his life. Compassion. Forgiveness.

  His son.

  Kalevia.

  Kuoppala screamed, his eyes bulging as he was dragged on the unfamiliar tide. Toivo was yanked back into the tower to experience Kuoppala’s confusion and madness as emotion poured in, seemingly from the abominations in front of him. For the first time in his life, Kuoppala felt the weight of the world he lived in.

  Was this how they all lived, so afraid, yet...? He hadn’t understood. The young rebel shielding Vesa--the look in her eye
s. All of them, all of Kalevia...

  He didn’t know how they lived with such pain.

  As Kuoppala spun and ran to the window, Toivo felt him burn with a painfully human regret. It was the last clear emotion before Kuoppala hurled himself through the glass.

  Kaija sagged to the floor almost immediately, Vesa’s unconscious body dragging them both down. Toivo moved to rouse them, but Demyan pulled him back.

  “That was a bit too much for them,” he said, letting go of Toivo’s hand. “Let them be. They’ll sleep it off and forget.”

  Toivo shuddered as he looked at the shards of glass clinging to the edges of the window frame. “Is it over?”

  “Wait.” Before Toivo realized what he meant, Demyan had already stepped toward the automatic lamp that awaited the sunset, and deftly plucked a short coil of wire from the explosive device. He regarded the severed terminal for a moment before tossing it aside with a snort. Gently, he eased the brown pack of chemical putty out from under the lamp and set it on the floor; only then did he look back at Toivo.

  “Now it’s over.”

  That was the moment. Toivo could feel it leaving them--the tension that bound them to this place diffusing like mist in the sun. Demyan stood, his eyes closed, and Toivo watched him sigh, echoing the shudder that ran through Toivo’s body at the advent of complete freedom.

  “What now?” Toivo whispered, reaching toward Demyan. The call of the darkness remained even as he felt his other ties fade. Zophiel curled his hand around the back of Solas’ neck.

  The lamp turned on. Dusk had fallen.

  **

  Kaija woke to the night wind stirring her hair. Vesa lay beside her, his hand warm in hers. She tightened her fingers around it, to assure herself it was real.

  She tried to remember how they had ended up on the floor of this tiny room with broken windows. A dim recollection of a fight welled up in her head. A fight and...something else...

  Kaija looked around them--at the gently blowing corners of the drop cloth tucked over Taisto’s body, at the broken window, at the toothless bomb lying in a tangle of wires, missing its detonator. She had a momentary conviction that she was missing something vital, a hole knocked out of the memory of the struggle. Some person, some thing, a burst of courage and fear--what was it?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by shouting on the stairs outside. She shook herself to dislodge the dream.

  Vesa was awake now, stretching his arms and sitting up, his face full of the same bewilderment that she felt. The footsteps grew louder, warning of their owners’ imminent arrival. As Kaija’s thoughts clarified, she gripped Vesa in a panic.

  How can we explain...?

  Vesa shook his head. “I won’t let them hurt you.”

  As Mika burst through the door with a host of other guardsmen at his heels, she pulled Vesa into a hug so tight he gasped.

  **

  “He jumped of his own free will?”

  “Suicide.” Kaija took a sip of instant coffee.

  It had been a strange few weeks.

  Kaija hadn’t imagined an interrogation in the dreaded gray tower would involve sitting in an armchair in the Deputy Chairman’s sunny office, being provided with snacks and drinks for the marathon questioning session. Although everyone had been remarkably polite to her, she still couldn’t wait for it to end. She pressed herself back into the cushion of the armchair, eyeing the short, highly decorated officer behind the desk.

  “And why do you think he killed himself?”

  “I think maybe he knew he had failed? I...I can’t say for sure.”

  “Quite a story.” The Deputy Chairman of State Security clasped his hands behind his back as he rose. He slowly paced the length of his office, not looking at his prisoner.

  “A conspiracy to bomb the Palace of Culture,” he clarified. “He planned to blame it on the partisans so he could step in and seize power... The kidnapping plot, the Forest Clan... It all sounds a little far-fetched, don’t you think?”

  “But that’s how it happened.”

  From his face it appeared that the Deputy Chairman was on the verge of concocting a retort, but a knock called him over to the door. He stepped outside to have a quiet conversation with his visitor, leaving Kaija sitting uncomfortably with her still-steaming cup in her hands.

  Kaija was well aware that hers was a delicate situation--her role in the coup d’état was a troublesome enigma to those in the highest echelons of the intelligence agency. At the very least, she had Vesa as an advocate, and the gratitude of his exceedingly powerful father.

  After all the years Kaija had seen the Party Chairman as the genesis of all suffering, it was strange to meet the mournful, bearded man in whose face she could see echoes of Vesa. He had been kind to her after the rescue, and later she would hear accounts of the heartfelt speech he’d given during the Punaiset Day ceremonies. While it had shocked many by championing intellectual freedom and amnesty for political prisoners, all seemed to agree that it was one for the history books--an inspired ode to the Kalevian people--and even the handful of foreign correspondents in attendance wrote favorably of it in their Western journals. For his part, Vesa seemed somewhat leery of this newfound sentimental streak, but he accepted the de-escalation of tensions with his father as a positive development.

  Finally, the Deputy Chairman reappeared and gestured brusquely toward the door.

  “Your story checks out. You’re free to go.”

  Mika was waiting for her on the other side, new medals pinned to his chest. If Vesa’s loyal bodyguard hadn’t caught her during her reckless break-in, she didn’t know if she would’ve managed the rescue.

  “Vesa told them you were his girlfriend,” Mika said sheepishly. “And that sneaking us into the hall in uniform was his idea.”

  “And that’s all it took? ” Kaija asked, shaking her head. “Neither of us was supposed to be there. How did they not rip you apart for this?”

  “Oh, they probably would have, but...” He paused, as though unsure if he should share the information. “I heard they discovered some notes implicating Kuoppala as a conspirator in an unused office this morning, when they were getting it ready for the new KGB liaison. They found all sorts of weird stuff--space books, memos in Russian. The old guy must have been investigating something before he got recalled.”

  “So he knew, too?” Kaija peered sideways at Mika. “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know. Never met him.”

  Kaija thought she was on the verge of remembering something important, but the next moment it was gone, like a momentary flash of déjà vu.

  “Weird,” was all she said.

  “Besides,” Mika continued, his grin returning, “We’re heroes now. We’re golden. I’m off suspension; they’ll give us anything we want.”

  I want to go home, thought Kaija.

  **

  A fence blocked the road ahead, its barbed wire glinting in the floodlight glare of the border station. Mika cut the engine.

  “They’re waiting for you,” he said gently.

  “Just give us a minute,” sighed Vesa. Kaija wove their fingers together more tightly and pressed herself into his shoulder.

  She was on the verge of achieving her dream, and she couldn’t believe she was having second thoughts. She clutched the exit visa in her pocket, her heart soothed by the feel of the precious paper against her fingers. He had given her this chance. She had to go.

  She and Vesa got out of the car and stretched their legs, their hands still linked as the gate rattled open. The wind that blew grit around her boots carried the smell of the coming thaw.

  “This is it, then.” She swallowed, pained by a sudden lump in her throat. “I’ll miss you.”

  “Kaija, listen. Whatever happens, I’ll never...” Vesa stopped, and blinked rapidly. “I’ll never forget you.”

  Kaija drew him into her arms and kissed him. Her chest tightened at the calm intensity of his response, his mouth moving against hers as though in t
hat moment, he refused to let himself think about anything else. It was different from the last time they had kissed in farewell; this tasted of acceptance.

  When she heard Mika cough behind her, she finally tore herself away.

  “I’m coming,” she said, not looking at him. She could see the lights on the fence reflected like stars in Vesa’s eyes.

  “Ready?” he asked her, his voice shaking ever so slightly.

  “Yes,” she breathed, and let go.

  She didn’t look back as she walked through the gate, afraid she would see him break down and feel compelled to run back. Forty meters away, past another fence and beyond the tangled, mine-riddled wasteland that separated Kalevia from Finland, car headlights beckoned.

  They were waiting for her.

  Her mother was waiting for her.

  Only when the second gate clanged shut behind her did she turn back and show Vesa the rare sight of tears on her cheeks, knowing that he could no longer follow. She could barely make out his silhouette standing by the car in the twilight. She waved, once, and then turned to face her new life.

  Epilogue

  Vesa Uusitalo sipped his glass of wine on the balcony of the Kalevian consulate.

  The party was in full swing inside; diplomats from a number of countries mingled and traded news within the confines of their respective alliances. The event at the embassy was ostensibly to celebrate passage of the Openness Pact between Finland and Kalevia, that last tricky bit of diplomacy preceding the retirement of his father. He wondered if the new Communist administration in Kalevia would carry on the liberalization that Chairman Uusitalo had been known for. Vesa was optimistic. He stared up at the purple sky and took another swallow of the Gewürtztraminer.

  When he’d been awarded the Consular post at the Kalevian embassy in Helsinki so soon after university, Vesa had been overjoyed. After his father had shipped him off to Moscow for boarding school following that fateful winter, he’d developed an intense interest in international relations. The world was bigger than just Kalevia--once he did not feel confined by its language and borders, he stopped seeing his birthplace as his prison. Things were going well; he could see a career for himself here.