Halfway down the ladder that was fixed to the wall, I heard the voices more clearly. I recognized them.
“What have you DONE?” That was Christian.
“He just came rushing at me. You saw that.”
“Is that… is that his sword?”
“Who else’s would it be? It’s not mine anyway.”
“Is he… is he…”
It was Christian who was asking. I felt the terror surging up inside me just as palpably as if it had hit me while flapping by in the night.
I jumped the final feet down to the ground and landed softly. I didn’t hear what Matron said in answer to Christian’s question, but I understood that they had captured Sausage.
Out of nowhere, a bolt of lightning lit up the entire sky.
16
A split second after the flash of lightning there was a deafening crash, and in the next second another bolt of lightning struck. It was like standing in the middle of an explosion. Everything was lit up brighter and sharper than in the middle of the day.
I waited for a third flash of lightning but I didn’t see one, and there were no more thunderclaps.
I rushed back to the gate. There was no time now to creep and crawl through the grass.
There was no one at the edge of the forest. Had everyone disappeared? A hand was waving, making a white circle in the darkness by a tree fifteen feet away. I ran over and Kerstin stepped out from behind it.
“We were so worried!”
“Where are the others?”
“Janne’s run back to the rest of the troop. Micke is down by the lake, I think.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s scouting around.”
Scouting, I thought. Was he trying to find a position of attack? Or was he planning to ambush us? Could we trust him or not?
“Did you see Sausage?” I asked.
“Yeah, my god, he just rushed right past us before we could stop him.”
“Did you try?”
“We didn’t get a chance. He just rushed right past us, and then he was inside the grounds and we couldn’t run after him. There weren’t enough of us. That’s why Janne is getting the others.”
“Didn’t you call out to Sausage?”
“We tried but he didn’t hear us. He didn’t seem to hear anything.”
“Did you see what happened to him after that?
“No. He disappeared behind the building.” She pointed at the building and then looked at me. “Why did he do that? It was completely idiotic. Pure suicide.”
Suicide, I thought. A samurai always has to be ready to commit suicide. But not just whenever and by whatever means. If it’s going to happen, it has to be a seppuku or harakiri as it’s also called. That means “belly cut.” You slice open your belly with the little knife. Hara is Japanese for belly. Kiri means cut.
There’s a reason why samurai do it that way. The stomach is the center of the body and the soul. When the stomach doesn’t work, neither does anything else. All samurai know that. But to rush straight into the arms of Matron wasn’t harakiri. It was just stupid.
“What do we do now?” asked Kerstin.
I didn’t answer. I was still thinking about Sausage.
“We have to do something!” she continued. “We can’t just stand around here anymore. I can’t stand around here anymore. We have to save Sausage. And the others.”
“Have you seen any of them?” I asked.
“They’ve looked out the window a few times, but it’s dark.”
We heard a noise behind us and turned around. It was Micke.
“They dragged Sausage in through the main door,” he said.
“You saw that?”
“I was standing down at the tree by the water.”
“Did you see who it was?”
“Matron. I saw Christian too.”
“What did they do with him?”
“Hit him with a stick,” said Micke. “Matron just whacked him. He fell like a rock.”
“My god,” said Kerstin.
“Isn’t Janne back?” Micke asked.
Just then we heard a branch crack in the forest. Micke grabbed his sword. We heard more cracking sounds, and then saw a figure emerge from the forest, and then another. The troop was assembled.
We snuck forward in a long line with fifteen feet between us. We covered the whole distance from the edge of the forest to the edge of the lake.
Weine was at the far end of the right flank and Micke was farthest to the left, closest to the forest. I was in the middle with Kerstin next to me. We all had our swords ready. Kerstin was breathing so loudly that anyone nearby could hear her.
I had just seen a light flare up and disappear again in a window on the first floor. I looked up at the sky, but there was no more lightning. The sky was completely black. There was no light left. The moon had disappeared behind the blackness too. We could hardly see each other anymore.
Then there was another short flicker of light.
“It’s on fire!”
I recognized Janne’s voice in the darkness. He was walking on my right.
“A fire’s broken out below the dormitory!”
“That’s the kitchen!” shouted Micke.
I saw a glimmer of light again, but this time it didn’t disappear. It grew. First the light flickered in the window farthest to the left, then in the window next to it, and then in a third. We weren’t sneaking forward anymore. We ran up to the building as fast as we could. One of the trees outside the kitchen had caught fire. The trunk grew at an angle toward the building, and the flames were licking their way down the trunk and in through the open kitchen window.
Kerstin ran past me. She was faster than I was. Someone wrenched open a window upstairs.
“Help! Help!”
A face appeared. It was speckled from the fire. I recognized one of the little boys but couldn’t remember his name.
“Help! We can’t get out!”
I tried to judge the distance from the window down to the ground.
“They’ve locked us inside!”
It was at least twenty feet to the ground—maybe twenty-five. Those who tried to jump would break every bone in their body including their neck. There was no soft grass underneath the windows, just a few benches that we wouldn’t have time to pull out of the way.
“Is it burning inside the room?” I shouted.
“No,” someone answered up there.
“It was struck by lightning!” I shouted.
I could see flames in the windows in front of me and there was a strong smell of smoke. Kerstin was headed toward the mess hall.
“Kerstin!”
She didn’t turn around when I shouted so I started running after her. At the same time, I saw the explorers come running across the grounds.
“It’s on fire!” shouted the archer.
“I know! We have to get everyone out!”
“Where are they?”
“Up there,” I shouted and pointed as I ran.
I had almost reached the steps to the mess hall. “Try to put out the fire!”
In the next second, I was up the steps and I threw myself inside. The explorers came in right behind me. I saw Kerstin rush up the stairs to the dormitory and disappear around the corner.
“In there!” I shouted and pointed at the kitchen. Smoke was coming through the doorway, but there wasn’t a lot. “Maybe it hasn’t really caught yet.”
“Maybe we can put it out,” said the one with the hat. “There’s water in there.”
I heard Kerstin yell something from upstairs.
The explorers ran toward the kitchen. Kerstin’s face appeared from around the corner.
“They’re all locked inside the same room!”
“We’re trying to put out the fire down here!”
“Where’s the key?” she shouted.
Yeah, where? Wherever Matron is, I thought.
I heard voices behind me. The rest o
f the troop stormed in.
“We have to put out the fire!” shouted Lennart, who stopped next to me. “We have to get everyone out of here!”
“Help the explorers in the kitchen,” I shouted. “Ann, Weine, and Mats, help Kerstin upstairs.”
The three of them rushed up the steps. The others ran off toward the kitchen.
I thought of Matron’s office. That’s where the keys would be. That must be where they took Sausage. I ran down the hallway. The door to the office was shut. I stopped outside and tried to slow my breathing. It was quiet inside. I didn’t smell any fire here and I couldn’t hear anything from upstairs anymore.
I grasped the handle and pressed down. The door was unlocked and I pushed it open.
Nothing moved inside. All the lamps seemed to be on and there was light everywhere. The window was open. Outside, the lake was glittering and twinkling. I could see Matron’s desk. There was only one thing on the desk: my bag of Twist.
“I knew you’d come.”
Matron’s voice startled me.
When I turned around, she was standing in the middle of the room. She must have been waiting behind the door when I opened it. Now she blocked the exit. She was holding out her arms like swords. But the only sword in here was the one I had in my belt. I touched the hilt. It was cold. The cold made me calmer.
“The kitchen’s on fire,” I said.
“I haven’t noticed anything,” said Matron without moving. She looked straight at me, but it seemed like her eyes couldn’t see. It looked like she was sleepwalking. Her voice sounded like it came from a dream.
“The kids are locked upstairs,” I continued. “We’ve got to get them out quickly.”
She didn’t respond.
“Where are the keys?”
She didn’t respond to that either.
“WHERE ARE THE KEYS?”
When I raised my voice, something happened to her. Her eyes seemed to see again. She shuddered as if she suddenly felt cold.
“It wasn’t me,” she said.
“What?”
“I wasn’t me,” she repeated. “I’ve never done anyone any harm, have I?”
She took a step forward.
“Right, Tommy? Kenny? You’ve always had it good here with me, haven’t you? You’ve been here a few summers. You know, Kenny!”
I heard shouting from the kitchen. Maybe the fire was spreading. Maybe they couldn’t make it down the stairs anymore.
“Just give me the keys,” I said.
I still felt calm, but at the same time I was very worried. Now I was being tested as a samurai.
“You can have the keys. If you don’t say anything.”
She took another step.
“About what happened. About that girl.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“It was nothing,” she said. “Nothing happened.”
Just like always around here, I thought. Nothing that happened ever actually happened. Not even when the worst happened did they ever say that anything had happened.
“Then there’s nothing I have to say anything about,” I said, “if nothing happened.”
“Nobody’s going to believe you anyway, Kenny.”
She was holding her bunch of keys in her hand. There were four or five of them attached to a little chain. It looked thin. She dangled them from her forefinger.
“Then it doesn’t make any difference whether I say anything or not,” I said.
“But it’s so unnecessary to say a bunch of lies about someone who hasn’t done anything,” she said.
I could smell the smoke. She must have smelled it too. But it was more important for her to buy my silence with those keys than it was to get everyone to safety and to keep the camp from burning down.
In that moment, it struck me that she was never going to give me those keys. Then I heard a heavy pounding upstairs. It was resonating through the ceiling. I guessed that Kerstin and the others were trying to break down the door to the dormitory, but it would be difficult. The doors here were made of solid wood—just like in a prison.
The pounding stopped. The smell of smoke was still in the air but all was quiet again as though Matron and I were the only ones here. Somehow it had always felt that way. It was Kenny against Matron. There was no Christian here. I hadn’t even had time to think about where he had gone. I hadn’t had time to think about where Sausage was.
The keys rattled. Matron was still dangling them from her finger. I heard the pounding from upstairs again, and it sounded like someone was screaming for help. Matron stood just a few steps away from me. There were maybe ten feet between us.
I drew my sword. She took a long step toward me, like a lunge, and in that exact split second, I threw myself forward and chopped the key chain off half an inch below Matron’s finger. The keys fell to the ground as if in slow motion. I saw Matron slowly raise her finger and look at it.
There wasn’t so much as a drop of blood on her finger. The chain still hung there like a thin worm. It would fall off in a few seconds, but first, the keys hit the floor. I put my sword back, bent down, and gathered up all the keys. Then I ran for the door, past Matron who was still standing there staring at her finger.
The mess hall was full of smoke. I heard someone coughing. When I turned around, I saw the cook sitting at one of the long mess hall tables. It must have been the first time she’d ever sat there. She coughed again and looked up, but she didn’t appear to see me. Maybe it was the smoke, maybe something else. She looked down at the table again and shook her head.
I ran up the stairs. The troop had managed to smash a hole in the door, but it was too little. They had used a small table as a battering ram.
“I’ve got the keys,” I said. “Get out of the way!”
After two failed attempts, the third key fit. We got the door open and the kids inside tried to rush out all at the same time.
“Take it easy!” shouted Lennart. “Is everyone okay?”
It smelled of smoke in the room but not too much.
Weine, Janne, and I quickly checked to make sure that no one had passed out inside.
“Go down the stairs,” said Lennart.
He was my deputy now. He was doing a good job.
“How’s it going with the fire in the kitchen?” I asked.
“It’s under control,” he answered.
“How about Sausage?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s what I’m going to find out now.”
Matron was gone when I got back to the office. It was still just as light in there. I walked around to the other side of the desk. Sausage was lying on the floor with his back to me. I bent over and gently grasped his shoulder, but he seemed lifeless. I didn’t see any blood.
“Sausage?” I said but got no answer. He didn’t open his eyes.
They didn’t seem completely closed when I looked more closely. I tried to hear if he was breathing. As I leaned in, he opened his eyes.
“Kenny!”
“Sausage!”
“I saw the bag of Twist, Kenny!”
The archer came toward us in the mess hall. Sausage had difficulty walking. He had been hit in the head and was pretty dizzy.
“Matron whacked me,” he said.
“You’re alive, anyway,” said the archer, patting him on the shoulder.
The smoke had thinned a little. I couldn’t see the cook.
“Where is she?” I asked as I pointed at the mess hall table. The archer understood.
“Outside somewhere,” he answered. “I saw that old Matron woman rush outside, too, a moment ago.”
“What are they doing?”
“No idea.”
“How’s it going with the fire?”
“Under control.”
“Let me see.”
We stood in the kitchen. Here, too, the smoke was clearing and becoming regular air. I could see out the window. The fog was floating across the lake as though the smoke had moved out there.
&
nbsp; “The lightning really hit hard,” said the archer, and he pointed at the wall beyond the stove.
I could see a black hole next to the window where the fire had made its way inside from the tree. There was still a bit of fire left—like little tongues. If we left the kitchen without putting it out completely, the place would be engulfed in flames within an hour. The entire building was made of wood, and the fire would spread from the kitchen in a few minutes.
All of a sudden a larger tongue of flame shot out from the wall.
The archer bent down over the water bucket.
Janne came into the kitchen. He was holding the banner with our coat of arms: the circle with the two lines that were as black as the soot on the walls.
I thought about what Janne had said once when we were sitting in the castle. If the camp didn’t exist, he had said, then we could stay here as long as we wanted. But it does exist, I had said. It’s over there behind the trees. If there were no camp. If it didn’t exist at all. The camp doesn’t exist. The camp is no more.
The archer raised the bucket of water.
“Put it down,” I said.
In the shadows from the fire, everyone looked like warriors. We moved around the bonfire in a wide circle. Everything became ten times bigger in the shadows against the sky, the forest, and the lake. It was like a theater show of cardboard cutouts—shadow figures—just like when we trained for battle. Our long and narrow banners were sharp silhouettes against the sky that had almost turned white from the fire.
Kerstin, Sausage, Ann, Lennart, Micke, Janne, and I stood silently watching the fire swallow up the camp. Nobody said anything. The explorers had gone to check on their canoe. Weine and his troop guarded Matron and the cook, who were sitting petrified in the grass behind the counselors’ barracks. What was it that I had heard Christian say? It’s all too late. Christian himself had disappeared.
Matron had gone mute and so had the cook. I had asked Matron about Christian but had got no answer.
I looked at her. She looked at the fire with the same vacant stare she had had in her office.
I could hear the sirens through the forest and across the lake.
Samurai Summer Page 15