“All hell’s going to break loose,” said Janne.
“Has everybody gone inside to take shelter from the storm?” I wondered.
“They couldn’t have known about it until five minutes ago.”
Suddenly a figure came rushing out of the woodshed. As he ran toward us, the first raindrops began to fall. The air had thickened. It felt like a woolen sweater. There was already a smell that made you think you were on the other side of the world in a jungle. The boy running toward us had short legs that started to gleam as the rain poured down.
It was Sausage.
“Where have you been?” he shouted through the rain.
We didn’t have time to answer. There was a flash of lightning over the lake. It was followed just a few seconds later by a loud crash all around us. Then we saw another flash bigger than the first one. After a couple of seconds there was a huge explosion in the sky.
“It’s dangerous standing out here!” yelled Janne.
We ran toward the woodshed that Sausage had just come from.
There were others standing inside. It was the troop.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“It’s raining,” said Mats.
“But you were in here before it started, weren’t you? The playground was completely deserted when we got here, and the thunder and lightning hadn’t started yet.”
There was another crash. The rain was pouring down like Niagara Falls. A whole summer’s worth of rain was falling all at once. The shallow trough around the merry-go-round was already filling up with water.
Our moat would get filled up now. This would be the last stage. After this cloudburst, the castle would be finished. As long as the roof on the tower held up under the rain, we’d be able to move in.
“Why were you hiding in here?” I asked again.
“We weren’t hiding,” said Mats. “We were waiting.”
“Waiting? Waiting for what?”
“For the others to head off in the other direction.”
“The search party,” said Sven-Åke.
“Search party? For us?”
“No. They haven’t noticed you’re missing yet.”
“Who is missing then?” I asked.
I had a strange feeling that I already knew what Sven-Åke was going to say.
“Kerstin,” said Lennart—who hadn’t spoken until now—repeating the name I expected.
“Kerstin?” repeated Janne.
The others looked at me. I realized they must know more than I thought. Maybe they knew that I’d shown her the castle. Everybody must have seen us talking to each other.
“Did she run away?” I asked.
“Nobody knows.”
“What about her friend? Ann?”
“She’s out looking too,” said Sven-Åke.
“And why aren’t you?” I asked.
“We… might know where she is,” said Lennart.
They hadn’t wanted to tell Matron or the counselors.
Nor Christian.
“He’s come back?” I asked.
“Yesterday evening,” said Lennart, “or during the night.”
“I saw him last night,” said Sven-Åke, “under the window.”
“Which window?” I asked.
“Ours, of course,” said Sven-Åke. He meant the window nearest his bed in the dormitory, which was opposite mine and directly above Kerstin’s. “He was sitting on the merry-go-round smoking. I thought I heard something squeaking, so I looked out and there he was with a red glow coming from his mouth. It was like he was spying on us. I was scared he would see me.”
“Are you sure it was your window he was looking at?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The girls,” I said. “I’ll bet he was staring at their windows.”
“I don’t understand,” said Sausage.
“Lucky for you,” I said.
“Hmm,” mumbled Sausage, who was maybe starting to catch on after all.
“You didn’t want to say anything to the grown-ups about Kerstin?” I said.
“There’s something weird about him,” said Lennart. “About Christian.”
“Does it have something to do with Kerstin?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You said you might know where she is,” I continued. “So, where is she?”
“In the woods, but in the other direction.”
He pointed.
“How do you know?”
“We saw her. Sausage saw her.”
“She was running like a deer,” said Sausage.
“When was that?”
“A few hours ago. This morning.”
“Why didn’t you run after her?”
“I didn’t know she was running away,” said Sausage. “All I saw was that she was running. I mean, everybody runs around here, Kenny.” He looked at the others. “But when they started saying she’d disappeared, I realized…”
I thought about Kerstin when he said that. No doubt she could run like a deer—or like a pony with her mane of hair flowing behind her.
“Did she look scared when she was running?” I asked.
Sausage shrugged.
“But you knew enough not to say anything to the grown-ups?”
I felt a cold chill at the back of my neck as I said that. My hair felt like it wanted to stand on end—like I was having a nightmare or had just had one and still hadn’t woken up properly. What had happened while Janne and I were in town?
“They looked… strange,” said Lennart. “Both Matron and Christian.”
“How? When?”
“When they told us to go out and search for her. I don’t know… Matron came out of her office and Christian was in there, and then he came out too, and both of them looked… well, strange.”
“Strange?” I asked. “What do you mean strange?”
“As if they… knew.” Lennart looked at the others. “Isn’t that strange? But they looked like they knew somehow.”
“Knew? Knew what?”
“Why Kerstin had run away, of course. And that she had run away.”
“She probably ran away for the same reason as the rest of us,” said Sven-Åke. “None of us wants to be here.”
“I don’t know,” said Lennart. “Matron looked sort of… shaken.”
“Let’s go look for Kerstin now,” I said.
It stopped raining just as quickly as it had started. Clouds were still racing across the sky, but now they were heading off to another country. There were big, black pools of water all over the playground and courtyard, but they would soon evaporate. Water surrounded the merry-go-round like a moat. It had never occurred to me before that the rut had become so deep from all the kids kicking at the ground over the years to make the merry-go-round spin. It could be a hundred years old, that moat.
The forest looked like a different place now. It was darker, wetter.
“She was running in that direction,” said Sausage pointing into the darkness.
The sun had disappeared behind the tops of the fir trees on the other side of the lake. We could have used a flashlight. The fir trees seemed to be leaning over us. When I looked up, the sky was no more than a little hole. A black bird fluttered past like a dragon overhead.
We moved farther into the trees. The bird let out a cry as though warning somebody. To our right I could see the lake glittering like silver. Steam was rising from it like it was a hot spring. I’d almost forgotten what it was like after a heavy rain. The ground underfoot was wet and warm. Steam was rising from there too. I noticed that I was sweating so much that it was getting hard to see. Everything was blurred. I wiped my eyes with my hand but everything went blurry again before I had time to blink. It was like trying to wipe water from your face when you were swimming right down at the bottom.
“She could have run for miles,” said Janne.
“Then she’d have to get around the lake,” said Lennart.
I could see the lake glint ag
ain in the darkness. It seemed to be trying to tell us something, to show us something. Was it something to do with Kerstin? I felt that cold chill at the back of my neck again.
“Can she swim?” asked Janne, seeming to read my thoughts.
“Like a fish,” said Lennart. “I mean, she won the swimming competition a few weeks ago, didn’t she?”
“Did she try to swim across the lake?” asked Sausage.
“Let’s go down there,” I said, although I didn’t want to. The lake felt like a more dangerous place than the forest right now. It had turned black. All the silver had vanished from the surface.
We made our way through the dense undergrowth. Lennart was in front of me, and I wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way when he let go of a branch that hit me in the face. It hurt, but I had more important things to think about.
The water’s edge was overgrown with reeds. I took a step out and immediately sank down into the water.
“Your face is bleeding,” said Sausage.
“What?”
“You look like you’ve got war paint on.”
“We don’t use war paint,” I said, and I thought about the explorers. The archer had two red stripes over his cheeks. No doubt I looked a bit like him now.
“I can see something moving out there,” said Janne.
We continued wading through the reeds. It was still shallow at this point, but soon the bottom would become muddy and we’d be forced to turn back. The mud in this lake was like quicksand. If you got caught in it, you couldn’t get out.
“It’s a boat,” said Sausage.
The reeds were thinning out. The mist over the water was starting to fade. I could see something long and narrow moving slowly over the surface.
“It’s a canoe!” said Janne. “The explorers! They’re still here!”
As the canoe drew closer to the shore, I could see that the two explorers were not alone in the canoe. We pulled it in through the clumps of reeds and there sat Kerstin shivering and shuddering after swimming with her clothes on. Her lips were the same dark blue as the sky.
“All of a sudden, there she was swimming,” said the archer.
“In the middle of the lake,” said the one with the hat. “We almost ran right into her in the mist.”
“Kerstin,” I asked gently, “are you all right?”
She was sitting in the middle of the canoe. Her soaking-wet T-shirt was hanging off her, looking like it weighed a ton.
“She hasn’t said a word,” said the archer. “We didn’t really know what to do until we saw you.”
“But we realized that we shouldn’t take her to the camp,” said the one with the hat.
“Did you see anybody?” I asked.
“No. The place looks deserted. But it wasn’t easy to see anything in this mist.”
Kerstin stood up and stumbled out of the canoe. She lost her balance and I grabbed hold of her arm. She was freezing cold—colder than you usually are after a swim.
“Why did you run into the lake like that?” I asked.
“I… heard something and thought that he… that they were after me.”
“Who’s they?”
She didn’t answer.
“You said he. Do you mean Christian?”
She nodded.
“What did he do?”
“He… he…” She couldn’t bring herself to say any more. Instead, she started shivering twice as much as before.
“She could catch pneumonia,” said Sausage.
“We’ve got to get her some dry clothes,” said Janne.
“She’s got her stuff back at the camp,” said Sausage.
“NO!” screamed Kerstin.
She looked at me and then at the others.
“I don’t want to go there!”
“There’s nobody there,” said Janne. “Everybody’s out searching. For you.”
“But… somebody always stays behind,” said Kerstin.
“Put this on for now,” said Janne, starting to take off his shirt.
“We’ve got an old blanket in the canoe,” said the archer. “She didn’t want to put it around her out there.”
“Okay,” I said and started walking toward the camp. “Wait here.”
“Where are you going?” asked Sausage.
“I’m going to check the camp.”
Everything was quiet as I walked across the playground. Most of the water had already drained away from the trough around the merry-go-round, leaving a layer of mud behind. The fog over the lake was gone. A canoe wouldn’t be able to hide out there anymore. Nor would a swimmer.
It looked like everybody was still in the forest searching. I thought I could hear some shouts, but it might have been birdcalls.
I knew which dorm Kerstin slept in but not which bed. But I did know that she kept her suitcase underneath her bed and that her name was stenciled on the side of it.
As I snuck along one of the walls in the mess hall, I could hear an awful clattering coming from the kitchen. Maybe the cook was busy killing a beaver for dinner.
It was quiet in the girls’ dormitory. All the beds were made in a way that would have won first prize in our dorm.
Kerstin’s bed was the third on the right. I could see the case underneath it, but it was too big for me to carry back to the canoe.
I almost felt like a burglar when I opened the case, but I had to do it. I took out some sweaters and underwear and a pair of jeans and some socks. There was a pair of sandals at the bottom and I took those too.
Then it occurred to me that I didn’t have anything to carry all the stuff in. I tried one of the cupboards; there was a pile of sheets inside just like in our dorm. I took one of them, put Kerstin’s things on it, tied it into a bundle, and was just about to slip out through the door when I heard a voice I didn’t want to hear.
“Didn’t you find her?”
I stayed in the girls’ dormitory. Somebody muttered something a ways off, and I realized that Matron was talking through the mess hall window.
“She’s got to be close by,” I heard Matron say.
Somebody mumbled something again.
“She can’t have gotten that far,” said Matron. “She’s got to be close by.”
More mumbling.
“How should I know?”
Mumbling again. I thought it sounded like one of the counselors.
“Let’s just deal with one thing at a time,” said Matron. “We can take care of them later.”
Them. Take care of them. I guessed that she was talking about us. Me.
I didn’t know if somebody had stumbled across the castle while they were out searching, or if they would have cared even if they had found it. They wouldn’t have known what it was anyway.
I looked around the dorm. The window farthest away from me was half open. I could see the courtyard, the playground, the merry-go-round, and beyond that, the lake.
I tiptoed across the floor, unhooked the window, and opened it slowly so that it didn’t squeak like the merry-go-round usually did. I couldn’t see anyone when I leaned out to take a look.
It was only about six feet down to the ground, so I dropped the bundle of clothes. It landed on the grass with a slight thud that nobody could have heard. I jumped out, landed next to the bundle, and ran toward the trees without looking around.
The path became dark when we moved in among the biggest fir trees. It was a roundabout route we were forced to take so as not to bump into all the people out searching. But they wouldn’t keep going for much longer.
“Pretty soon they’ll call the police,” said Sausage.
“I don’t think they will,” I said. “Not tonight, at least.”
“Why not?”
I didn’t answer and neither did Kerstin. She was in front of me and behind Janne. After me came the archer followed by the one with the hat. They had pulled the canoe in among the trees and camouflaged it with twigs and branches. It was impossible to see it if you didn’t know it was there.
>
“Maybe we can be of some use,” the archer had said when they came along with us.
They were tough explorers who always had to be ready for anything. Maybe they could smell the scent of an approaching battle.
Kerstin had gone behind the canoe to get changed. When she came back, her face wasn’t quite as white as it had been, and her lips were not so blue.
She still hadn’t said what had happened.
It was quiet in the woods as we approached the castle from the north.
It struck me that I hadn’t seen Micke at all.
“Where’s Micke?”
“He’s gone over to the other side,” said Sausage.
“The other side of the lake?” I asked.
“To Weine’s troop,” said Lennart, who had overheard us.
“I never thought he’d…” I said mainly to myself.
I was surprised that Micke had changed sides. Why did he want to be on the wrong side? He wasn’t stupid.
“Maybe they’ve taken over the castle,” said Sausage.
“Then we’ll take it back again,” I said.
But I didn’t think they had. Not yet. Not Weine’s troop.
13
As we walked along the path, it struck me that the castle was the only thing I had left that I could still call mine. It seemed that everything had been taken away from me this summer bit by bit. It started with the bag of Twist. It could have all been planned from the start by the grown-ups. They wanted to show us who was in charge. As if we didn’t already know.
But they didn’t just want to be in charge. They wanted to own us. You can do whatever you want with something you own. You can even smash it to pieces.
That’s the way it was. That’s why they’d ordered all the children to go searching through the forest for Kerstin, and why they hadn’t called the police. The police might ask the children questions. And we might say things the grown-ups didn’t want anybody to know.
Would any of us ever get away from here? I could see the back of Kerstin’s neck in front of me. It was thin and white. The sun had disappeared and the colors had crept back underneath the moss and into the trees. Everything in the forest was becoming black and white. Then I saw the outline of the castle. We were home.
Samurai Summer Page 12