The Lost Village

by Sten, Camilla

  I have a musty taste in my mouth after my nap. Eyeing up the plastic cup Tone got at the gas station in the cup holder, I ask:

  “What’s in there?”

  “Coke. Have some if you want,” she says, adding that it’s Zero before I can even ask.

  I pick up the cup and take a few big gulps of the flat, tepid drink. It’s not particularly refreshing, but I’m thirstier than I thought.

  “There,” says Tone suddenly, and slows down.

  The old exit doesn’t exist on GPS, as we discovered when trying to plan our route. We’ve had to use old maps from the forties and fifties, cross-referencing them with the Swedish Transport Administration’s archive on where the train tracks used to run when trains still puffed their way up to the village twice a week. Max is good with maps, and he guaranteed us that this was where the road would be. But it’s only now, as Tone slows to a crawl to take the narrow, almost completely overgrown exit that was once the only road to the village, that I start to feel sure.

  The van coasts along for a while and then comes to a halt. I look at Tone, thrown.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  She’s even paler than normal, her freckles glowing against her wan skin. Her small mouth looks like a dash across her face, and her hands are clenched tightly around the wheel.

  “Tone?” I ask, quieter this time.

  At first she says nothing, just sits there staring quietly into the trees.

  “I just never thought I’d see it,” she says softly.

  I put my hand on her arm. Under the lightweight fabric of her long-sleeved T-shirt, her muscles are coiled up tightly like springs.

  “Would you like me to drive?” I ask.

  By now the others have stopped, too. The second van is right behind us, with Max’s blue Volvo presumably bringing up the rear.

  Tone lets go of the wheel and leans back slightly.

  “Might be a good idea,” she says. And then, without looking at me, she undoes her seat belt, opens the door, and jumps out.

  I follow her lead: I unfasten my seat belt, jump out of the van, and walk around to the other side. The outside air comes as a shock, clear and fresh and very cold. It cuts right through my thick sweater, even in the absence of any wind.

  By the time I climb into the driver’s seat, Tone has already fastened her seat belt. I wait for her to say something, but nothing comes. So I cautiously put my foot on the gas, and we pull off down the half-overgrown road.

  An almost solemn silence descends on the car. Once we’re swallowed up by the trees, which seem to stoop down over us on the narrow road, the sound of Tone’s voice in the sudden semidarkness makes me jump.

  “Plus it’s only fitting that you should drive into the place. I mean, this is your project. You’re the one who wanted to come here. Right?”

  I snatch a glance at her out of the corner of my eye, but try to keep my attention on maneuvering the unwieldy van over gnarled roots and stones.

  “I guess,” I say.

  It’s a good thing we went for the extra insurance with the rentals; this is definitely not the terrain these vans were made for. But we needed them to get all of our equipment up here, and the cross-country vehicles were so eye-wateringly expensive that just one day’s rental would have blown our budget several times over.

  We drive on in silence. As the minutes pass and we go deeper and deeper into the forest, it hits me just how isolated this small community must have been. From what Grandma said, only some of the villagers had a car, so the train was their only real connection to civilization, and that only ran twice a week. If it’s taken us this long to get here in our vans, it must have been a completely different world when the only option for getting out of town was to walk this entire stretch.

  We drive past a small track that winds off into the forest. At first I wonder if I’ve missed a turnoff, but then I realize it must be the road that led to the mine. I carry on ahead, inching over undergrowth and fallen branches. The van grumbles and moans, but battles on.

  Just when I start to worry that we’ve gotten it wrong—that this was just a forest path, a walking trail, and that we’ll keep on driving further and further into the forest, until we get mired in the weight of our vans and equipment, our stupidity and ambition—the trees open up like a miracle before our eyes.

  “There,” I whisper, more to myself than to Tone.

  It buoys me enough to speed up a little, just a little, and I feel the blood pumping through my veins as the fiery April sky swells before us.

  We exit the forest onto a steep bank. And there it is, at the bottom of a valley that isn’t so much a valley as a slight depression in the ground.

  The church looms large over the small buildings on the eastern side of the village, its tall, proud spire topped by a slender cross that glistens, impossibly bright, in the light of the setting sun. The houses look almost as if they’ve sprouted from the church like little mushrooms, falling and moldering to form walls and silhouettes along the coppery-red river running down to the small woodland lake that gave the village its name: silvertjärn, silver tarn. It may well have been silver at one point, but now it sits, glossy and black, like an aged secret. The mining company’s report stated that the lake had never been searched, nor had they been able to find any information on its depth. For all we know it could stretch all the way down to the groundwater. Bottomless.

  Almost instinctively I undo my seat belt, open the door, jump down onto the soft wet spring topsoil, and look out over the village. It’s completely silent. The only sounds to be heard are the low, ever-present hum of the engine, and the wind’s soft sighs as it sweeps down over the village.

  I hear Tone clamber out of the driver’s door behind me. She doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even close the door behind her.

  I exhale—a prayer, an incantation—a welcome:

  “Silvertjärn.”

  THEN

  Elsa is on her way home from Agneta Lindberg’s house when she realizes something isn’t right.

  The walk should take only fifteen minutes at a brisk pace, but rarely does Elsa make it home in under forty, there are so many people who want to stop for a chat.

  Elsa has been visiting Agneta every week for the past few months, ever since the poor dear got the news. Elsa normally sees her on a Wednesday, as it’s so convenient to pop by after one of the Wednesday lunches hosted by the pharmacist’s wife.

  Nothing much ever gets done at those lunches; in essence they’re just a chance for some of the village ladies to get together and chew the fat, sip coffee from dainty little cups, and feel a fleeting sense of superiority. But it’s all harmless fun, and goodness knows the women of Silvertjärn feel all the better for having something to do. Elsa can’t deny that even she enjoys these sessions, although sometimes she does have to put her foot down when their chitchat becomes a little too barbed.

  Insinuations about the paternity of the schoolmaster’s youngest child won’t do anyone any good. Elsa herself had been to visit him and his poor wife when the boy was refusing to take the breast, and she has rarely seen a father more doting—however red that boy’s hair might be.

  It’s a hot afternoon, unusually close for April, and as Elsa walks she can feel herself start to perspire beneath her blouse. She likes to take the path down by the river’s edge; it’s nice and even underfoot, and if you look up you can see the lake shimmering in the distance. The meltwater has started to stream and ripple below the riverbank, and it’s enough to make you want to stop for a paddle.

  Not that Elsa does that, of course. How it would look if she were to pull up her skirt and start splashing around, like a little girl without a care in the world? That really would give the village women something to gossip about!

  It’s when Elsa smiles at this thought that it first strikes her that something is off, for when she looks around to see who might catch her would-be frolics in the river, she realizes that no one is there.

  The river is lined with ho
uses. It’s the old heart of Silvertjärn, and Elsa has a soft spot for this part of the village. When she and Staffan first moved to Silvertjärn, back when she was scarce more than a child herself, they had lived in one of the new buildings the mine had constructed. It had been a cold, soulless place, and Elsa is convinced that those cracked white walls were the reason why her first pregnancy was so difficult. She had made sure that they had moved away as soon as they could.

  The houses down here by the river are older, with more personality, and Elsa knows everyone who lives down this way. Without boasting or bluster, Elsa can honestly claim to know everyone in Silvertjärn, but the area between the church and the river is her own, which means she goes the extra mile for those who live here. She likes to pass by the house with the sloping roof on the corner to say hello to Pia Etterström and her twin boys; to stop outside Emil Snäll’s porch and ask how his gout is treating him; to pause to admire Lise-Marie’s rosebushes.

  But today not one person has stopped or waved.

  Despite the warm weather, there’s not a soul to be seen in gardens or out on front steps, and not a single window is open. No one has bustled outside to say hello after seeing Elsa pass, even though she can see movements behind the kitchen curtains and closed windows. Everyone seems to have locked themselves away.

  Her stomach turns.

  In days to come, Elsa will wonder if some part of her already knows—before she sets off into a run, before she gets home, sweaty and disheveled, to find Staffan sitting at the kitchen table, his face empty with shock.

  But no, she doesn’t know. She hasn’t realized, hasn’t guessed. She could never have guessed.

  So when Staffan says with the voice of a sleepwalker …

  “They’re shutting down the mine, Elsie. We found out today. They sent us all home.”

  … she faints on the spot for the first and only time in her life.

  NOW

  I’ve never seen Silvertjärn with my own eyes. I’ve pictured it, sure, based on Grandma’s stories, spent late nights googling like a woman possessed, searching for some kind of description, but I’ve found next to nothing.

  I turn around when I hear the click of Tone’s camera. She’s holding it up to her eyes, so half of her face is hidden.

  What we should have done is filmed the view as we drove out of the forest. That would have made for a powerful, attention-grabbing opening, which is what you need when you’re applying for funding. No matter how much we post on Instagram or try to direct people to the Kickstarter page, the hard truth is we’ll need a grant to make the documentary I’ve envisaged. Without some form of state funding, we don’t stand a chance.

  But I’m convinced we’ll get the money in the end.

  I mean, who could resist this?

  The light is pouring down onto the dilapidated buildings, steeping them in reds and oranges. It’s surprising how well they have lasted, in spite of everything. They must have built things differently back then. Even so, the decay is still visible from up here. Some of the roofs have fallen in completely, and nature has started to reclaim the land in earnest; it’s hard to make out where the buildings end and the forest begins. The streets are empty and overgrown, and the rust-withered train tracks jut out of the station and into the forest like a punctured artery.

  It’s beautiful, but in an almost obscene way, like an overblown rose about to shed its petals.

  The clicks stop. I look back at Tone, who has lowered the camera.

  “Get any good shots?” I ask.

  “With a view like this, even an iPhone could get a good shot,” she replies.

  She walks over to me and pulls the images up on the small rectangular screen. We’ve agreed that Tone will be in charge of photographs. Unlike Emmy, Emmy’s friend, and me, she has no background in film: she’s a copywriter. But photography has been her hobby for a few years now, and her shots are better than anything I could come up with on the same camera.

  It was also the easiest way to get her to come along. For a long time she tried to argue her way out of being here at all, saying she wasn’t “essential.” And all of my arguments as to why, as coproducer, she was in fact crucial to the project had done nothing to change her mind. It was only when I took up the photography angle that she started to cave.

  She is essential to the project. Not as a photographer, perhaps. But she’s part of the story, whether she wants to be or not. I just hope this trip helps her to see that.

  I study the miniature village in pixels, then the silhouettes before me. The bright colors and sharp lines make it look like a painting.

  The silence hangs compact. Not even radio signals make it out of here. They say it has something to do with the iron ore in the bedrock—some sort of magnetic field that jams the signals—but no one seems to know for sure. It doesn’t exactly ruin the mystique.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask, tearing my gaze from the buildings below us.

  Tone takes a deep breath of the cool, fresh air, and purses her lips.

  “I don’t know,” she says, looking at me. Then she does another one of her half smiles. “I guess I just never thought I’d actually get here—that it would go this far. It hasn’t really hit me that we’re here yet.”

  “But we are here.” I say, almost as much to myself as to her.

  And now, finally, she smiles for real, showing her white, slightly crooked teeth, and puncturing some of the tension that’s hung between us since I woke up in the van.

  “Yes,” she says, “of course we are. Because you, Alice, are a fucking bulldozer.”

  I burst into laughter—ecstatic, euphoric—because even though my teeth are chattering with cold (my own fault for leaving my jacket in the van), we’re here now. We’re here. And all the planning, all those late nights, all those jobs I didn’t get and those shitty ones I had to take, they’ve finally paid off. We’re here. In Silvertjärn.

  This is happening. The Lost Village is going to happen. The project that started as some sort of prepubescent fantasy is finally coming to life.

  “Fuck me, what a place,” Emmy says behind me, cutting my laughter short.

  I turn around. Emmy and the technician have both gotten out of their van and walked over to ours. Emmy’s leaning against the driver’s side of the van, her misshapen white T-shirt seemingly melting into the paintwork. Her henna-red hair is tied up in a messy ponytail, and the jeans she’s wearing are big enough to fit the guy standing next to her. Come to think of it, they might even belong to him. I’m not really clear what their relationship is, beyond the fact that they’ve worked together before, and that Emmy made a point of telling me that he’s doing this as a favor to her and normally charges three times what we can pay for these five days.

  The technician—Robin? No, that’s not it, he introduced himself at our initial meeting and again at yesterday’s team briefing, but I’ve never been good with names—is right beside her. He’s a redhead in that way that makes you want to stare a little longer than you really should, with loads of golden freckles that crawl all over his face, down his neck and onto his body. If it weren’t for that he could probably be pretty hot—he’s tall and broad-shouldered—but the combination of his carrot top, indiscernible eyebrows and brown eyes make him far too squirrely to be taken seriously. He’s quiet, too: I don’t think I’ve heard him say more than four sentences in all, and that’s including both meetings.

  “So what’s the plan?” Emmy asks, her eyes on me. I clear my throat.

  “We set up camp in the main square,” I say. “That’ll be a good base, as it’s right in the center of the village. We should be able to get there—it’s on the other side of the river, but it said that the bridges are still stable enough for cars.”

  “Where did it say that?” Emmy asks, her eyebrows raised. “I thought there weren’t any good maps of Silvertjärn?”

  I hear another car door open further away. It must be Max, wondering why we’ve stopped.

  “In the r
eport,” I say, trying to subdue a twinge of irritation.

  You knew what you were letting yourself in for when you asked her to come on board, I try to tell myself.

  “The report the mining company made in the late nineties, when they came to survey the land,” I clarify. “There’s a copy of it in the information packs you all have.”

  “And you’re completely sure that information still stands? I mean, it’s twenty years old. Just because the bridges were safe then doesn’t mean they are now.”

  “We’ll drive down and take a look,” I answer sharply. “If they don’t look safe then we’ll make a new plan.”

  I see Max round the second van.

  “What’s going on?” he asks.

  “Nothing!” I say.

  Emmy glances over her shoulder, but seems to dismiss Max as soon as she’s registered his presence.

  Max’s blond hair is flopping down over his forehead, and one side of his collar is standing on end. I’ve known him since back when he used to wear scruffy T-shirts with the names of obscure bands no one except him knew. And even though nowadays he’s successful enough to be here as a project backer—wearing shirts that cost more than my entire wardrobe, at that—he still looks like he’d be more comfortable in those faded old T-shirts.

  Tone looks up at the sky.

  “We should probably get a move on,” she says, and it’s then I realize that darkness has started to fall.

  “Down the bank,” I say to Max, who has just made it over to us, and then, turning to the others, I add:

  “Follow us.”

  Emmy nods without another word, thank god, and I hear her ask the technician:

  “Robert, do you want to take the downhill?”

  Max gives me a thumbs up and heads back toward his car.

  I get in the driver’s seat. Just before I close the door, I hear Emmy shout:

  “But drive carefully—we don’t want to damage the equipment!”

  “As if she’s even paying for it,” I mutter, slamming the door shut behind me.