The Lost Village(42)

“What a life,” says Emmy, quietly, making my own thoughts echo between the narrow walls. “What a fucking life.”

I’m surprised she cares. On the other hand, I guess she’s always enjoyed taking care of people, so long as it comes at no cost to her. It’s easier to sympathize with dead people, tragic victims long gone. They aren’t nearly as demanding. As compassion goes, it’s cheap.

Or perhaps it’s just that, when standing here between these four closed walls, it’s almost impossible to remain cold to how bleak Birgitta Lidman’s life was.

Tone’s breathing has calmed. Sitting down seems to be doing her good. She leans over the table and runs her fingers across it.

“There’s something here,” she says. I edge my way over to the table, lean in, and squint at the dark wood.

It looks like a finger painting, as though someone has scrawled something in thick, clumsy streaks with their fingertips. The color has dried and faded with age, sunk down into the bumpy wooden surface, but I can still see what it is. Stick figures: uneven, clumsily drawn scribbles, like the restless doodles of a child. The figures’ mouths are furious, like black holes, and the crayon has been pressed so hard it has crumbled.

Suddenly I can’t take it anymore.

I don’t say anything, just push past Emmy and out of the door. The outside air should make me feel better. I look over to the forest’s edge, try to breathe in the fresh air and make that dark, distressing hut leave me alone. I try not to think about the innate na?vety of those small scrawls on the tabletop; about that child trapped in a grown woman’s body, a grown woman’s strength; about how scared she must have been, the anxiety of not knowing what was happening as she was bound to that pole; about that first stone.…

Someone puts their hand on my shoulder, and I turn around.

I’m expecting Tone, but it’s Emmy who’s standing there behind me. I know the look on her face; I’ve seen it a thousand times: every late night I came to her dorm with anxiety gasping at my lungs, every time the black spilled over and she would sit there, taking it in with calm, unyielding eyes, holding my gaze until my heartbeats started to settle, until my breathing calmed.

“We should get Tone back to camp,” she says. “Get some breakfast in her.”

This throws me.

“Yes,” I say, once the words sink in. “Yes, of course.”

I look back at the hut. Tone’s still bowed over the table. Her hair is hanging forward, covering almost all of her face, and her bad leg is stretched out in front of her.

When I step back over the threshold, I can hear her muttering something. But it doesn’t sound like she’s talking to herself; it’s as though she’s responding to something, a disjointed piece of a longer conversation.

“Tone?” I ask. My uncertainty makes her name shrink in my mouth.

She doesn’t look up. Her gaze is glued to the tabletop, where she jerks her hand once, and then again, as though re-creating some sort of pattern. It’s only when I take one step more that I realize what she’s doing.

Transfixed, she’s tracing the outline of one of the small figures on the table, over and over again.

“Tone?” I say again, louder this time, and she stops and looks up.

She blinks repeatedly, as though forcing her vision into focus. Her eyes, normally steady as flint, have the look of an autumnal fog. Out of focus. Like Grandma’s toward the end: half-blind and veiled by cataracts.

My skin starts to prickle. I clear my throat.

“We thought we’d head back for breakfast now,” I say, conscious that I sound like I’m talking to a child. “Are you hungry?”

Tone nods and makes to stand up, but grimaces when she puts weight on her foot.

“Shit,” she says, and it’s as though something clicks. She looks normal again—a tired, wet-haired normal.

“Here, you can lean on me,” I say. “We’re going to the parsonage later on—maybe we can find you a cane or crutch or something there.”

“If not, I’m expecting you to whittle me one from an old pine,” Tone mutters with a weak smile. “I mean, what good is all that research of yours if you can’t do that?”





NOW



By the time we get back to camp, Tone is hobbling, leaning heavily into my arm.

“Why don’t you go rest in the tent?” I say, less a question than a command. “We can make breakfast.”

Tone purses her lips. I expect her to protest, but instead she nods. Her short blond fringe has stuck to her sweaty forehead.

“Might be a good idea.”

I help her into the tent and then walk around to the back of Emmy and Robert’s van, where Emmy is on her knees, rooting around in one of the boxes of tinned goods.

“Could you pass the alcohol stove?” I ask.

Emmy jumps at the sound of my voice, but then reaches in and pulls out the box containing the stove. She hands it to me with a glance over her shoulder, and a firebolt anger in her green eyes that makes me start.

I stand there holding the box for a few seconds, then back away to the middle of our little campsite. I get out the alcohol stove while Emmy continues to poke around in our food stores behind me. When she walks over and puts the open packet of instant coffee, the coffeepot, and water down in front of me, I look up.