Harbour

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  She came to me...

  He raised his head and looked at the little blue figure next to the bed who had now picked up a heart-shaped bead tile and was busy pressing beads into place. Maja.

  But this was not Maja. The person who was Maja, who had memories and pictures and who could talk, had come to him, had somehow managed to escape into the sea. What was sitting by the bed was only her body, or that part of her that was necessary to enable him to see what he wanted to see.

  Maja?

  There was a point where both worlds collided and mingled together. That point was himself, since she existed within him. He closed his eyes and searched for her.

  We're not playing hide and seek any more, little one. You can come out. Out you come! The game is over, it's safe now.

  He concentrated on what had happened with Elin. The thing that had been in the bucket, that had been forced out of her and had to be returned to the sea. Somewhere inside him was something similar. He called to it now, searched in the darkness of his own body.

  Where are you.. .where are you...

  Like the silvery flash of a fish in the net far below the surface, he caught sight of it. It was dispersed throughout his entire body, but he approached it from all directions at the same time and made it come together, gather into a formless, hovering mass that he could take hold of and localise with his consciousness. It was in his stomach now, circling around the insect down there that was floundering and thrashing about in a panic.

  Everything around him was gone, was unreal. His strength and his thoughts were focused on one single thing: holding on to something intangible. As he moved towards Maja's body on the floor, his eyes closed, he had to divert a minute amount of his attention to his own movements, and the other thing threatened to slip from his grasp like the eel had slipped through his father's fingers.

  He pushed away the eel, couldn't think about the eel, couldn't think about his own knees as they slid across the floor, couldn't hope or wish for anything as his fingers once again moved over Maja's body until he was sitting right in front of her. He still hadn't lost his grip, she was still there in the darkness in his hands, in his mind as he leaned forward and placed his mouth over hers.

  Come. Out.

  He pushed it in front of him, up from his stomach, up through his throat, and he really could feel it like a little body, a stream of silky liquid sliding over his tongue, out through his lips and into her mouth.

  He gasped and collapsed. Part of him had left his body. He didn't dare look. There was nothing more now. He closed his eyes, and there was only silence. Then he heard Maja's voice:

  'Daddy, what's the matter?'

  Slowly he opened his eyes. Maja was sitting there looking at him with a puzzled frown.

  'Are you sad? Why have you got Bamse?'

  He looked into her eyes. Her hazel eyes that were looking enquiringly at him. A large body shifted position, and a shudder ran through the world.

  The rattle that emerged from his throat told him that he too was now capable of producing sound. Maja's concerned expression was on the point of tipping over into fear, because he was behaving so oddly. He swallowed down everything that wanted to come spurting out of him, pulled Bamse free and held him out to Maja.

  'I brought him for you.'

  Maja grabbed Bamse and hugged him, rocking back and forth. Anders could hear a faint rustling as her elbows moved across her knees, he leaned towards her and smelled the familiar scent of her shampoo. He stroked her cheek.

  'Maja, sweetheart...'

  Maja glanced up, looked at him. Another shudder passed through the house and he felt it as a powerful vibration in the floorboards. Maja screamed.

  'What's that?'

  'I think...' said Anders, taking her hand and getting to his feet, . .1 think we have to go now.'

  Maja was pulling away. 'Where are we going? I don't want to go!'

  The house shook, and Anders saw the poker fall over next to the fireplace. Maja's piles of beads collapsed and mixed together, and she freed herself from his grasp so that she could start sorting them out again.

  He bent down and picked her up. She kicked and protested in his arms, but he took no notice, he held her close to his body and ran through the house, towards the front door.

  He was through the garden and running down towards the steamboat jetty when Maja relaxed in his arms and started to laugh.

  'Gee up, Daddy!' she screamed, clicking her tongue.

  He heard the sound of his own feet moving along the track, but he was no longer running on gravel. The gravel was disintegrating, collapsing in on itself, and the lilies-of-the-valley along the edge of the track wilted, were drawn down to the ground and disappeared.

  He took the shortest route across the rocks, but they had become dark and slippery. The sky was dissolving like a cloud in a storm. Down by the jetty, two people in old-fashioned clothes stood screaming at each other as they looked around in terror.

  Everything except the people was shrinking and imploding in slow motion, and as Anders ran out towards the boat with Maja in his arms, he saw for a fraction of a second what he was not permitted to see. What this world actually consisted of. He would have fallen on his face in terror or adoration if he hadn't—

  'Gee up, Daddy!'

  —if he hadn't had to get Maja away from here.

  When he jumped down into the boat and placed Maja on the seat, he realised the run had taken no more than a few seconds. He had come out on to the rocks and thought that they looked slippery, and then he was past them without even noticing how it had happened.

  He started the engine and just about managed to turn the boat, and then they had reached Gåvasten. Distances were being drawn in on themselves, and everything was getting closer to everything else.

  Gåvasten was still there. The white lighthouse still extended up towards the sky, which was now as dark as night, but when Anders turned around towards Domarö, the island was only a few dozen metres away. The perspective had shifted. Domarö was the same size as when he had seen it from a kilometre away, but he understood that it was closer because he could see the people. Could see their waving arms, their running bodies.

  And the height of Domarö continued to diminish. The island was sinking.

  'Come on, sweetheart! Quick as you can!'

  Maja crawled out of the prow and jumped down on to the rocky shore. She had seen what he could see, and was frightened. 'Where are we going?'

  She lifted her arms up to him; he picked her up and ran towards the eastern side of the island.

  Let it still be there, let it still be there...

  The steps were still there, but when he got to the rocks on the eastern side, the sea too had begun to drop the mask, and was in the process of dissolving into a leaden mist with the flight of steps running down through it.

  Anders put Maja down; she was hugging Bamse tightly. He crouched down and said as cheerfully as he could manage, 'Up you come. You can ride on my shoulders.'

  Maja stuck her thumb in her mouth and nodded. Anders moved down from the top step, and with some difficulty Maja climbed on to his shoulders with her legs around his neck. She didn't want to take her thumb out of her mouth, or let go of Bamse. He held on to her knees tightly so that she wouldn't fall, and started the downward climb.

  They were moving in their narrow corridor of air, and the downward climb became an upward climb without him even noticing. Somewhere along the way the steps changed direction and the mist around him turned into water. The sweat was pouring into his eyes; it didn't occur to him to ask it to stop. His legs were aching, his back, the back of his neck, but he clutched Maja's knees and kept on moving upwards, constantly afraid that he would trip and fall on the uneven steps.

  His lungs were burning by the time he was standing on the rocks on the other Gåvasten once again, and every gasping breath brought with it puffs of ingrained tobacco smoke, loosened during his flight. When he crouched down to let Maja slide off his should
ers, he fell over. Maja shrieked and tumbled sideways on to the rocks, but landed on Bamse.

  She neither cried nor screamed. She sat there curled up with her eyes open wide and her thumb in her mouth, hugging Bamse. Anders reached out a feeble hand and touched her foot, as if to check that she was really there. She looked at him with those same wide eyes, but said nothing.

  The inside of his body was blasted as if it had been in a furnace, he had used up the very last of his strength in running and climbing, and all he could do was lie there full length on the rocks, gasping for breath and looking at his terrified daughter.

  She'll he fine. She doesn't understand. She'll he fine.

  It wasn't Anders who was shaking, it was the rock itself. A roaring rumble was rising from the very bowels of the earth, and it was growing in strength. He was lying with his ear to the ground, and he could hear it.

  It's coming...

  For a brief moment he had caught sight of it through the webs of illusion in which it concealed itself. The thing that held the people captive, the thing that needed their strength in order to live and grow. The threat from the underworld, the spirit of the sea, or the creature whose presence gave rise to legends. The monster.

  There was no point in trying to describe it. It was great power and many-headed vision, a black muscle with millions of eyes, blind and without a body. It did not exist. It was all that existed.

  The vibrations in the rock were transmitted into Anders' skull. His little brain splashed around inside trying to frame an idea of what he had been through, but without success. The important thing was not to be here when it came.

  Anders rolled over on to his back and sat up, placed a hand on Maja's knee. He didn't really have the strength, but as some sergeant had said to him during his military service, 'You're going to run until even your own mother thinks you're dead, and then you're going to run a little bit more.'

  His mother was out of the picture, he had only himself to rely on, and he didn't think he was dead. So there must be something left inside him. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and looked out across the ice-covered sea.

  The birds...

  They were no longer circling around the island, but they had not disappeared completely as in the other place. The whole flock had now gathered in an area about a hundred metres to the east. Many were flying around as before, but even more were standing on the ice, walking restlessly to and fro as if waiting for something.

  There was no time to think. They were back in this world now, where it was October. His body was still steaming with heat, but...

  'Here, little one.'

  He untied the snowsuit from around his waist and moved closer to Maja, who was still sitting with her knees drawn up, sucking her thumb. Her eyes were staring in a way that made him uncomfortable. He tried to ease Bamse from her grip so that he could put the snowsuit on. She wouldn't let go.

  'Sweetheart, it's cold. You need to put this on.'

  Despite the fact that it impeded what he was trying to do, he was relieved when she shook her head violently. He tugged at Bamse's hat to get the bear away from her. The vibrations in the ground were getting stronger, and he had to make a real effort to speak calmly.

  'Come on now, poppet, you'll catch a cold...'

  He pulled at Bamse's hat and Maja held on tight. He felt a kind of cough in his chest, and a laugh burst out of him. He was laughing. His stomach was bubbling with sheer joy, and he carried on laughing. It was just so stupid.

  He had fetched her from the other side, an earthquake was approaching from somewhere beneath them, and he was sitting here tugging at Bamse's felt hat while she held on tight and shook her head.

  Maja tilted her head on one side and took her thumb out of her mouth, 'I'm not cold, Daddy. Just my feet, a little bit. Where's Mummy? I want her to come too.'

  'OK,' said Anders, swallowing the laughter. 'OK. Mummy's coming later.

  Maja looked critically at the snowsuit in his hands. 'And that's dirty. Really dirty.'

  The fabric was stained with patches of dried blood, which in places had become sticky with the heat of his body during their flight. Yes, it certainly was really dirty.

  Maja looked around her. 'What's that noise?'

  'I don't know,' he lied. 'But we have to go now.'

  He picked Maja up in his arms again and she let go of Bamse so that she could wrap her arms around his neck, while Bamse lay safely pressed between them. The rumbling was growing louder, and by the time they reached the shore on the south side, the layer of ice covering the sea had broken away from the island. He had to leap across a strip of open water so that he could run to the boat, which was still stuck fast in the ice out there.

  By the time he reached the boat and put Maja down, the ice had begun to crack and explode. Deep cracks were beginning to run through the shining surface, and all the birds rose into the air, screaming excitedly as the ice broke and dark strips of water appeared.

  I am the sea.

  He turned the ice in front of the boat into water, he grabbed hold of the boat and pulled it along. Maja almost fell as the boat shot through the passageway of open water appearing ahead of the prow. She clung to the rail and laughed.

  'Faster! Faster!'

  Anders shook his head. She wasn't interested in how this was possible. The important thing was that it was fun, that they were going fast. He was the sea and he thrust the boat ahead of him with greater power. Maja's hair fluttered in the wind as she held on to the rail, bobbing up and down with her upper body as if to help, to urge the boat on.

  A loud bang echoed through the air, and Anders turned. East of Gåvasten a black shape rose up, smashing the thick ice to pieces along its edges. It was already about a metre high and twenty metres wide, growing in size as it rose.

  They were so far away that Anders could barely make out individual birds, but he could see the flock diving at the thing that was rising from the sea, attacking it, doing no more damage than a mosquito bite with their little beaks.

  He turned to face Domarö, which was coming up rapidly. A mosquito was tiny, nothing compared with a man, who could squash it with his little finger. But a thousand mosquitoes was another matter. Perhaps the gulls' battle was not as hopeless as it seemed.

  The ice had broken up into huge pieces as Anders steered the boat in towards the same jetty where he had moored it in the other world. He helped Maja up on to the jetty and turned to face the sea once again.

  Next to Gåvasten there was now a new island, the same height as the rock on which the lighthouse stood, and at least five times as wide.

  Gunnilsdra. Gunnil's ear. Gilded ear. The island of dreams.

  A shudder ran through the sea and the jetty rocked beneath his feet. Both Gåvasten and the other island disappeared, and Anders blinked in bewilderment. The line of the horizon was moving, undulating like tarmac in hot sunshine.

  He understood. Once again he picked Maja up and carried her ashore. As he was running towards the steamboat jetty he saw Mats, the shopkeeper, standing up there looking through a telescope. His wife Ingrid was next to him. Mats lowered the telescope and shook his head, said something to her.

  'Hello!' yelled Anders. 'Mats! Hello!'

  Mats caught sight of him. 'Anders, what...' He stared at the blue bundle in Anders' arms and pointed. 'Is that...?'

  Anders made it on to the jetty.

  'Yes,' he said. 'Sound the fire alarm, now!'

  'But how.. .1 mean...'

  'Please Mats, just trust me. It's all going to hell. Sound the fire alarm and...' Anders glanced out to sea. The horizon had risen a little further towards the sky.'.. .get out of here. Right now!'

  Mats looked out to see and his jaw dropped as he too saw what was coming. With Ingrid beside him he raced up to the shop. Anders followed them with Maja in his arms, and arrived just as Mats was opening the cupboard. He pressed the alarm button and it sent its mournful wail out across the island.

  'People aren't at home,' said Mats,
locking the cupboard again out of habit.

  As they ran uphill Anders thanked some lucky star that the children were still in school, and that those who had jobs on the mainland were at work.

  He turned around.

  The wave was now only a few hundred metres away. Despite the fact that Anders was now on higher ground, the wave was so tall that it obscured the view of Gåvasten and the thing beside it. Maja saw it too.

  'Daddy, are we going to die?'

  'No, sweetheart,' said Anders, following Mats and Ingrid as they moved higher still. 'We're not. Not after all this. No way.'