The Lost Village

by Sten, Camilla

  I’m shoved into the wall by something storming past me. Robert throws himself at Aina, his bound hands raised. He slams into her forcefully, throwing her off-balance and sending her headfirst into the water.

  “Robert!” I shout, and I have no time to think, no time to see anything, because then she’s back above the surface again, hissing and spluttering, thigh-deep in the water.

  Robert, however, is struggling to get up on the slippery bedrock; he slips and falls with his bound hands in front of him, and I see him land heavily. Aina lets go of Tone’s matted hair and shoves her toward the other wall. She takes two long strides toward Robert, her teeth bared like an animal.

  “You took him,” she says, “you took him from me,” then she shoves him underwater with one knee to his back and holds him there. I see her take his head in both hands and pound it down onto the floor beneath the surface, see the muscles in her withered arms tense and the tendons in her neck tauten, and I throw myself into the water and try to tear her away, grab hold of her arms, but her slight body is stronger than what should be possible, and she claws at my face until my blood starts to run, and when I reach for my cheek in shock she throws me off her.

  Robert’s flails have started to weaken. In the flickering light I see blood bloom out into the water from his face.

  I get to my feet and suddenly—

  everything stops.

  Aina has frozen on the spot. The muscles in her arms tense up and release, tense up and … release.

  The knifepoint that has sprung through her neck releases a trickle of blood that pools in the depression above her clavicle. She puts one hand to her neck and runs her fingertips over the blade, which glitters like a necklace beneath her jaw.

  She opens her mouth as though to say something, but no sound escapes her lips.

  Slowly she falls off Robert and down under the surface. I see the shadow that is Aina sink, lightly and gracefully, toward the bottom, and then start to drift toward the edge of the passage.

  Tone stays standing there, her legs spread wide, her eyes on Aina’s body. Her breaths are heavy, and her face is covered in sweat. The cut that has now dried on her neck is in almost exactly the same spot as where the knife pierced through Aina’s.

  Her hands are still clenched in front of her, as though around the handle of a knife.

  My stupor is broken, and I throw myself at Robert. I grab hold of his arm and pull him up over the surface, then drag his leaden body halfway onto dry land and turn him faceup. His nose is a fleshy mess, and the blood drips from it in slow quivers that mix with the water in his hair. His lips are slightly parted, and his eyes are closed.

  “No, no, no,” I whisper, hardly aware of the tears spilling from my eyes. “No. Please, no.”

  I lean down toward his smashed face, and my tears drip down and mix with his blood, but just as I’m about to put my hand over what remains of his nose, he makes a sound.

  His eyes flutter open.

  His body lurches and he coughs, a gurgling sound that brings with it a belch of water. I move back slightly, sobbing, laughing, shaking, and Robert rolls over onto his side and throws up. He makes to wipe his mouth, but his hands are still bound. Trembling, I crawl around and untie the rope.

  I look out over the water and see Tone standing there, her eyes still fixed on the dark shadow about ten feet from her. It drifts ever closer to the spot where the passage turns down into the underworld, leaving a mirage of blood in its trail.

  Then suddenly she’s gone.

  Aina has dropped over the edge.

  It’s completely silent. Tone clenches her fists once, twice. I hear the echo of a little sigh, and then her shoulders relax.

  I think I hear something in the distance.

  It sounds like tinny kids’ cries.

  Then Tone suddenly sinks to the floor, as though the strings holding her up have been cut.

  She looks me in the eye and smiles, a small, shaky smile.

  “Is she home now?” she asks quietly.

  Then her eyes roll back into her head and she loses consciousness.

  THEN

  The pastor raises his torch high above his head.

  “Today we have taken a great step,” he says in his smooth, singsong voice. “We have taken one step toward enlightenment. Toward the kingdom of heaven.”

  Elsa can’t see the congregation behind her, but she can sense them: their glittering, staring eyes; the scent of their anxiety and excitement.

  The dark water shimmers behind him, languid and impenetrable, and the air smells of clay and minerals.

  “God sees our sacrifices and endeavors. But He doesn’t only see those who live in His truth; He also sees those who have turned their faces from Him. He sees those who have strayed from the true way, those who have allowed themselves to be seduced by Satan’s lies.”

  The pastor lowers his torch so that it is in line with Elsa’s eyes.

  “He sees them, and He welcomes their return,” he says. “None of God’s children are strangers to Him. Like the prodigal son, one can always return to God’s embrace and be welcomed home. God is love.”

  Elsa hears Dagny give a quiet sob beside her. She gropes around for her hand, and when she finds it she gives it a squeeze. She gets no response. It hangs soft and limp in Elsa’ fingers.

  “Would you like to return to God?” he asks them, staring at Elsa. The torch’s flame dances in miniature in his eyes.

  “Yes,” Dagny sobs sloppily. “Yes. Yes.”

  Ingrid says nothing. She stares resolutely ahead, down into the water. Perhaps she, like Elsa, understands what awaits them. Her face is hard and determined. Her nose is swollen, but it isn’t bleeding anymore.

  “God’s arms are open to you,” he says to them, but in a loud, vaulting voice, as though sermonizing. “You can return. You can be cleansed of your sins. You can rise anew, freed of your burdens and regrets.”

  Dagny’s sobs intensify until her shoulders start to shake. Elsa lets go of her hand. She can’t bear to feel her trembling.

  “Let us help them,” says Pastor Mattias, raising the torch once again so that the sharp shadows transform his lovely, androgynous features into the cruel vision of an avenging angel. “Let us restore them to our Lord. Let us cleanse them, and cleanse ourselves.”

  “Amen,” Elsa hears behind her, nearly nine hundred whispering voices that spread in caresses along the cavern’s dripping walls and tunnels. “Amen.”

  The pastor nods at the boys behind them. Heavy hands land on Elsa’s shoulders, forcing her roughly to her knees. The rocks scrape the skin on her knees and calves.

  The knife he draws from his belt is nothing special; it’s a pocketknife, the type carried by every man and boy in the village. Its handle is black, and its blade glistens in the glare of the torch.

  The pastor hands the torch to one of the multitude of people standing behind them and bends forward. He places his hand on Elsa’s head. It’s dry and warm.

  “Don’t worry,” he says, “she isn’t here.” It’s a whisper, directed at Elsa alone. “She’s above ground with the baby. She won’t see this.”

  Aina.

  The gratitude that wells up in Elsa is perverse, a thick, sluggish delirium that mixes with the hatred she feels until she can no longer separate the two, until they become one in her body.

  She looks him in the eye.

  His dry lips kiss her forehead.

  Dagny’s sobs have risen to a full-on cry, and she is begging and pleading:

  “No, please, please, let me go, I didn’t mean to, I promise to never … never…”

  Her voice turns into a howl, then a whimper, and Elsa doesn’t get to hear what it is that she will never do.

  The pastor straightens up.

  “I submit this soul to You, O Lord, for You to welcome her into Your Grace and cleanse her of the sin and blackness of the world,” he orates. The hand on Elsa’s head grows heavier. He digs his fingers into her hair and pulls her head
back, exposing her neck.

  He raises the knife, a silver sword in the glare of the flickering torch.

  “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy—” he says, but his voice is drowned out by another sound.

  A rumble above their heads. It runs through the rock above them like a peal of thunder: weakened structures that have been cut and hollowed out time and again; beams that have rotted and weakened and now start to give way; thousands of tons of bedrock, buckling under the strain of its own weight.

  Some of the congregation scream—short, shocked cries. Elsa hears the sound of backing, stumbling feet. Most of them can’t move at all; there are too many of them, in too small a space. There is nowhere for them to go.

  The pastor looks up again and opens his mouth.

  “No,” he says quickly. A command, not a prayer.

  Elsa closes her eyes.

  As the world comes crashing down the short cries turn into panicked screams, but even those are drowned out by the bellows of the bedrock as it caves in and consumes them.

  How funny, Elsa thinks, the second before the world dissolves around her and everything turns to nothing.

  The muffled roar of the rock above them sounds just like Birgitta.

  NOW

  Robert carries Tone as we limp our way back toward the village. The night sky is in full bloom above us, and the bright, glowing half moon makes the kerosene lamp redundant. Just as well: the last of the kerosene has burnt out, and the wick fades to a thin glow before going out.

  “I’ll leave it here,” I say quietly to Robert, who nods, and I put it down by the path. There it will stay, like a little marker. A dropped bread crumb showing where we’ve been.

  We walk toward the square, as if in silent agreement. It was where we slept when we first arrived; we can spend one last night there. One last night before they come to get us.

  The square is completely still when we reach it. The April night tints the ruins of the cars dark blue, but they don’t feel threatening anymore. The last of the stench of burning metal has started to pass. Robert lays Tone down carefully on the ground. She is wet and her skin feels hot, but she looks better now than before. The water washed off the worst of the blood and dirt from her face.

  I stroke her head gently. Her breaths are quiet and regular. I can’t tell if she’s asleep or unconscious, but her facial features are calm and flat.

  “Will you stay with her?” I ask Robert, and he nods. He has twisted his nose back into place as well as he can, but it still looks awful. I don’t know how it’s going to heal.

  “Where are you going?” he asks.

  “I thought I’d get some blankets and sheets from the school,” I say. “We can make a fire with them. Warm ourselves up.”

  He nods. There’s not much more to be said.

  I walk around the school to reach the fire escape, then climb it carefully. It creaks, but holds. It’s darker in there without the moonlight, but my eyes adjust and I find my way around.

  I gather as many blankets and sheets as I can carry, and put them in a pile by the window. Then I step into the hall.

  The white figure by the wall is almost invisible in the darkness, but I know where she is. I walk over and kneel down beside her, then pull back the sheet from her face.

  She is cold and stiff. Her lips are frozen.

  The tears well up in me again, and this time I let it all out. My sobs are quietly draining, not loud or dramatic, and I let them flow through my body until they ebb away. Then I just sit there for a few minutes, until my breathing calms, until my hands find their way into my lap and I can look at her, at her still, light face in the flimsy glow of the moonlight outside.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I’m so, so sorry. Forgive me.”

  I take in a deep breath and let it out. The air tastes of dust and old sunshine.

  Then I lean forward and kiss her on the forehead. Her skin is icy under my lips.

  “Thank you,” I whisper.

  I feel my way around her neck and find the delicate gold chain. The clasp is small, and it’s hard to open in the darkness. I have to use my nails to get hold of the small catch.

  Then I fold the sheet back up over her head, so she can rest away from this world.

  * * *

  Once the fire starts to take, Tone curls up exhausted beside it and immediately falls asleep. Her chest rises and falls steadily under the blanket. At first I hardly dare take my eyes off her, but after a while I feel some of my tension release.

  Robert is gazing deeply into the fire. I clear my throat.

  “Robert,” I say quietly. He looks up at me.

  “I have something,” I say. I reach into my pocket and fish out the necklace with the gold heart.

  “I got it,” I say. “Up there.”

  His eyes follow the swinging heart in the glow of the fire.

  “Her mother should have it,” I say quietly. “I thought that … that you should give it to her.”

  The words sting in my throat.

  At first he says nothing. But then he holds out his hand, and I let the thin necklace chain wind down into his palm. He holds it carefully, like something fragile. It almost disappears in his big hand.

  Robert looks at it for a long time. I wrap my arms around my knees and sit in silence.

  He closes his hand.

  “She regretted it, you know,” he says eventually. His voice is slightly claggy from the swelling in his nose. “She never stopped regretting it.”

  I try to swallow the tears that well up in my throat. My voice doesn’t want to carry. I purse my lips and stare into the fire until my vision cracks into a thousand sparks.

  “I know,” I say, biting my cheek hard.

  Then I say quietly:

  “She saved my life.”

  The faint breeze blowing across the square is surprisingly warm, almost mild. Summer is on its way.

  An unexpected sound from above makes me look up. It’s light, almost warbling. It takes me a few seconds to place it, but then I see the slight break in the school’s silhouette. There’s a bird sitting on one of the gutters.

  “That’s the first bird I’ve seen since we got here,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

  It twitters again. I wish I were the sort of person who could identify birds by their song alone. I have no idea what type this is.

  But it’s beautiful.

  EPILOGUE

  I waited, but no one came.

  I waited and waited, and I fed the child, but they never came back. So in the end I went to our church’s entrance, climbed, shaking, down into the tunnel, and followed the path in the darkness. I refused to take any torch or lamp with me. Only he was allowed to do that, for he was our lightbearer.

  He told me to stay above ground with the child. He told me that she was important, and that I was to stay with her. That I was to wait for them, and that they would be back soon. When I reached the rubble I didn’t understand what it was; I thought I had gone the wrong way, accidentally climbed down into a different tunnel that had collapsed, and gotten myself lost. I started to panic. I thought I would die down there, alone in a secluded tunnel, with only the sound of dripping water for company.

  But then I found my way back, and the exit was where it was supposed to be.

  Four times I walked back and forth before I understood.

  The days passed. Cars came driving into town, and I left the child to them in the school. Perhaps it was her fault that they hadn’t returned, that devil-spawn. If they just took her away with them then he would have to come back to me.

  I hid down in the tunnels, for I remembered what he had said: that those outside God’s grace would take me from him and destroy our paradise, for they knew no better. That the woman who had been my mother would surely have fed them lies about us.

  They would never understand. No one could understand.

  But then the water started to rise over the rubble. A
nd I remembered what my father had said, back when I still had a father: they used to have to pump away the groundwater, to stop the passages from flooding.

  I wanted to stay down there and let the water take me, but I knew I couldn’t do that. To take one’s own life is a sin, and those who waste themselves are the ones who burn most furiously in hell.

  I had no choice but to wait for them. I had given my word.

  I knew that he would come back to me.

  After a while the food ran out. I had to go into others’ kitchens and start eating from their pantries. But I could never bring myself to go back into her house, my false mother’s house. I had a feeling in my bones that this was all her fault, or at least in part. She had always loved that witch more than she loved me, in spite of everything.

  I let the rest of the congregation look after me. I slept in their beds and ate of their food. We were all one, and what belonged to one of us belonged to us all, I tried to persuade myself. That was what he had told me. But it felt wrong, and I started to feel sad. At night I would cry.

  Sometimes I felt the doubts creep up on me, like stinging little devils. What if they didn’t come back? What if he was wrong?

  But I beat them off, fiercely and furiously. He had promised. He was God’s chosen one, and he had told me we would be together for all eternity. That we would create paradise on earth.

  I went back out into the forest, to the path that led to our church. I took a lamp with me this time: perhaps their light had gone out, and they had gotten lost in the darkness. He used to call me his light. His divine light. His angel.

  Perhaps I could show them the way out of the darkness. Perhaps I could help them to return.

  I went as far down into the tunnel as I could. The water had risen so high that I couldn’t even see the rubble anymore. Soon the tunnels would be completely flooded.

  I sat there until the lamp burned out, and then I cried again.

  But then I heard them. From out of the ground itself.

  I heard them singing.

  And then I cried again, but this time in relief.