Amatka

by Karin Tidbeck

  “Keep her sedated until it’s done,” Ladis’ Harri said from far away.

  LATER

  The bed was comfortable. The pillow was so soft against Vanja’s cheek. The blankets were warm and snuggly, and someone had dressed her in soft sleep clothes. She considered getting up but abandoned the thought. She was warm. She hadn’t been warm for such a long time. Even her toes and the tip of her nose were warm.

  —

  Vanja was a little girl. Lars put his arms around her, and she burrowed her face into his shoulder. He smelled of soil and coffee and beard.

  “I missed you,” she told him. “I missed you, too,” he said.

  She drew away and looked at him. His temples were covered in black scabs. “They got you.”

  He nodded gravely. “So they did.”

  “I understand now,” Vanja said. “We don’t know where we are.”

  “Good girl,” Lars said, and patted her cheek. “Good girl.”

  —

  Two voices were talking to each other above her head. She tried looking at the speakers but couldn’t seem to focus her eyes.

  “Could you please be quick about it,” the lower voice said. “I have somewhere to be.”

  “Calm down,” an older, higher voice replied. “It’ll take as long as it takes.”

  Something tightened above Vanja’s left elbow. A couple of fingers tapped at the crook of her arm.

  “I can’t find a vein,” the high voice said.

  “I heard the whole first quadrant locked themselves in the mushroom chambers,” the low voice said. “But no one issued an order for that, did they?”

  A sigh. The pressure around her left arm eased. “No.”

  A tightening above the right elbow. Tap, tap at the crook of her arm. “There we go. No, there was no order. I guess the first quadrant panicked.”

  “But why aren’t we heading down there? Why are we standing around in here? Everything’s going crazy.”

  A wet cold grazed the inside of Vanja’s arm. “Because the mushroom farm isn’t safe. If we’re going anywhere, it’s to the commune office. And besides, hiding isn’t exactly sensible. If everyone hides, we have no defense. Amatka is here because we are.”

  A sharp prick of pain sank into Vanja’s skin.

  —

  Vanja was a girl again. She was standing on the ice. Daylight fell across the lake, but the ice lay clear and black under her feet. Lars stood a couple of feet away, a little smile on his face.

  “Let me show you something,” he said.

  He stepped behind her, then took her head between his hands and pressed his thumbs against her temples. “Look up, Vanja. Look at the sky.”

  The clouds drew aside. The sky opened. The light was unbearably bright.

  —

  Someone came into the room and gave her water. Her head hurt. She forced her eyes open, but they wouldn’t focus. Her eyelids closed again. She said something, and a hand lightly stroked her forehead in response. She asked where she was. The hand patted her on the shoulder and straightened her blankets.

  —

  A warm hand on hers. “Vanja?”

  Fingers weaving themselves with her own. “Vanja, it’s Nina. Can you hear me?”

  Vanja turned her head. It hurt. She said something.

  “I’m so sorry, Vanja,” Nina said. “I’m so sorry. I did what I thought was right.”

  It’s all right, Vanja tried to say, I’m all right. A noise came out, something that was not what she had wanted to say.

  “Let’s give it some time,” Nina said. “You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”

  Cool lips on her cheek.

  “I have to go,” Nina said. “They don’t know I’m here. I’ll be back.”

  —

  A voice Vanja recognized, a man’s voice. Someone leaning in close. The smell of coffee and liquor. “What’s her condition?”

  A woman’s voice: “The procedure was successful. It’s still early on, but she’s shown signs of aphasia. What type of aphasia remains to be seen, but it’s clear that she can’t form words.”

  “Good.”

  “Why is she so important, Harri?”

  “I’m not at liberty to tell you that. Only that it’s very, very important that she doesn’t speak.”

  “Well, we’ve made sure of that.”

  “Very good.”

  “What’s really happening out there?”

  “We need to stay strong,” Harri replied. “Let me know if there’s any change in her condition.”

  “Will do.”

  Ladis’ Harri’s presence disappeared. Vanja managed to open her eyes. A woman’s face swam into view, a very young nurse. “Can you hear me?” she said.

  Vanja replied. “It’s all right,” the nurse said. “Just nod or shake your head for yes and no. Do you understand?”

  Vanja nodded. “Do you understand what happened to you, Vanja?”

  Vanja nodded again, slowly.

  The nurse reached out and wiped her cheek. “I’m so sorry. Please don’t cry. I don’t know why they did this to you. I just do the aftercare. I have to go. Something’s happening out there.”

  The nurse left. Vanja heard the sound of a key being turned in a lock.

  —

  There was a window on the left side of the bed. Darkness was falling. No one came to turn any lights on in her room. The sound of running feet and a murmur of voices came through the window. Vanja turned on her side. Her pillow was so soft her whole face sank into it. She could glimpse a piece of sky through the upper-right corner of her window. Little lights scurried back and forth up there. She watched them until her eyes fell shut again.

  —

  Vanja stood on the tundra. Ulla stood in front of her. Her funnel rested against her shoulder and her hair was sprinkled with frost. She looked at Vanja and nodded.

  “It’s done,” she said. “Anna is coming.”

  —

  Clamoring could be heard from outside: short and long shouts; rumbling, mechanical shrieks. Vanja listened to them for a while. She had to pee. No one came to give her a bottle or a bedpan. Eventually her belly began to hurt. She sat up. When her vision cleared, she could see her legs stretch out from her body in a bed with three blankets. To the left there was a wall with a window, at the foot of the bed another wall. On the right stood a little table, and beyond the table there was a wall with a closed door. A pitcher of water stood on the table. Vanja reached for the pitcher with her right hand, but her fingers wouldn’t close around the handle. After a couple of failed attempts, she grabbed it with her left hand instead. The water was tepid and sweet. Some of it trickled out the right corner of her mouth. She put the pitcher back and took three shaky steps toward the door. Her legs were fairly steady, although the right foot dragged a little. She couldn’t get the door handle to budge.

  She took the pitcher and set it down on the floor, fumbled her pants down to her knees, and crouched. The commotion outside continued unabated. She pulled her pants back up and crawled onto the bed. Sirens began to wail. She couldn’t keep her eyes open.

  —

  A banging noise on the door. “Vanja! Vanja!”

  More banging.

  Was that Nina? It was Nina. Why didn’t she come in?

  “Vanja? Vanja! It’s Nina. We’re evacuating to the commune office. I’ll come get you soon. I love you, Vanja. I don’t care what you did. I’m not leaving you here.” The voice broke and paused. “I don’t have the keys, but I’ll come back when it’s your turn, it’ll be your turn soon. I promise.”

  —

  Vanja woke up. She looked out the window, and for the first time, properly outside. The commune office towered in the middle of the plaza, angular and solid. Faces looked out from the windows. People were running over the plaza toward the tower. Patients in white robes were walking, hobbling, and rolling out through the hospital doors below. Above them all, pipes towered. Darkness seeped out of their curved mouths, bleeding into the
sky. The gray vault was ripped through with dark streaks. Pinpricks of light glowed in the tears.

  She sank back into the bed. She was still so tired.

  —

  She stood in front of the machine. It was running at full speed, its wheel turning so fast that the spokes were a blur. She could see the pipes now, running away from the machine and into the walls of the cave. The machine glowed with its own light. It made a noise like thunder.

  —

  She woke up in front of the window. She didn’t know how long she had been sitting there. The sky was dark; a glowing sphere hung in the black, striped in orange and brown. The plaza was deserted. Gaps had appeared in the innermost ring, which had been marked and re-marked with block letters; the pharmacy and the general store were gone. Through the gaps, parts of the residential ring were visible. The lights above the front doors had extended over the street, waving on thin stalks. The doors all stood open.

  Vanja’s room was high enough that she could see the plant houses at the colony’s edge, if that was what they still were. One of them had stretched into a pyramid shape that reflected the light from the thing that sat in the sky. The plant house next to it was moving restlessly. As Vanja watched, it shook itself free and rose up in a rain of soil and roots. The windowpane vibrated against Vanja’s fingers as the plant house struck out across the tundra on six unsynchronized, rickety legs.

  A man came into view, walking from a side street below Vanja’s window toward the commune office. He glanced up at the clinic but didn’t see her. It was the man who had held Vanja’s hand that night in the leisure center, the man who had slapped his daughter. He turned his eyes back toward the plaza, leaning forward as if against a strong wind.

  At first it wasn’t there, and then it was: a small, half-shaped thing the size of a child, walking next to him. It climbed up the man’s trouser leg and onto his back, where it wrapped its arms around his neck. Vanja could hear his screams through the window. He fell to his knees and then onto his side before rolling onto his back. The child-shadow straddled his chest. The man’s screams had disintegrated into convulsive howls. He banged his head against the ground. After a while he stopped and lay still. The faces watched from the commune office’s windows.

  Vanja slid off the bed and walked over to the door. She ran her left hand over the surface. She had opened a door without a key once. Thinking was such slow work, but there was a memory: making a key from something else, telling a thing what it should be. The room was empty except for the pitcher, and that was full. She fetched the pillow from the bed. It would have to do. “Aflar,” she told the pillow.

  She frowned at the word that came out and tried again. Key. “Muleg,” her mouth said.

  Vanja tried again and again. Each time her mouth spurted gibberish. She dropped the pillow and gingerly touched her temple, the shaved spot, the wound. They had taken her words.

  The man was still lying prone in the plaza. The child-shape sat on his chest. The man’s mouth was moving. It moved quickly at first; he was speaking to the child. Then he shuddered and gasped. Then he spoke again, slowly, and his words sent shockwaves through the air. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He lay very still for a moment, like Ivar had, as though he had departed his body.

  Eventually as the plant house to the left of the pyramid split down the middle and released a stream of furiously flapping greenery, the man opened his eyes again. He put his arms around the child. It curled up against his chest and sank into his body. Then it was gone. The man stood up on legs that seemed to bend in more than one place. He turned around and staggered off toward the residential ring and its swaying lanterns; he walked into a house and didn’t come out again.

  Someone jumped from the top floor of the commune office. The ground split open where the body landed. Cracks rushed across the ground and a wedge-shaped section of the plaza fell away without a sound, exposing part of an underground tunnel. Its walls were covered in a pale network of heavy root threads that trembled and shrunk back as daylight rushed in. Round fruiting bodies in shades of faded pink and brown bulged from the mycelium. The fruits swiveled slowly on their short necks, and what might once have been the citizens of the first quadrant raised their white eyes toward the sudden sky.

  Vanja remained by the window, watching people jump from the commune office’s windows or leave through the front doors and run for the beckoning lanterns of the residential ring. The walls of the commune office had begun to warp, as if buckling under great pressure. The remaining buildings around the plaza were falling in on themselves, one by one. Raw gloop from the dissolved buildings trickled into the exposed mushroom tunnel. The air in the residential and factory rings was turning blue and hazy. Seen through the haze, the low factories and workshops looked wobbly and deformed.

  “I’m back,” Nina’s voice said behind her. “I’ve come for you.”

  Nina stood in the doorway of what remained of Vanja’s room. The walls beyond the bed and the window had softened, sagging limply from where they were still attached to the ceiling. The door lay crumpled up next to the bed. Vanja hadn’t heard it happen.

  It was Nina and yet not: she had expanded, as if her body had become too small to contain her. Heat pulsed from her in waves. She carefully enunciated the words one by one, as if speaking was an effort.

  “I said I’ll come back for you. I’ve come back for you.”

  Nina bent down, cradled Vanja’s neck in her hand, and pressed her lips against hers. They burned. Blisters formed where their tongues met. She drew back a little.

  “Give up or give in,” Nina whispered. “I gave in. I gave myself to the world.”

  Vanja tried to say her name, over and over again. Nina tilted her head, expressions flitting rapidly across her face. Her eyes leaked fluid.

  “Don’t worry,” she said eventually.

  Nina took Vanja’s hand and led her down the corridor. The floor yielded to their weight; the walls had assumed an oily, slithery shine. Flabby doorways to the left led to rooms where the furniture had dissolved into slime. All empty, except for the last one. Below the window in the last room sat a man with a red beard. Vanja strained to look. The room stank of old excrement, concentrated around Evgen where he huddled, knees drawn up to his chest. He was leaning against the wall, gazing with pale eyes at the sliver of sky that showed through the window. The wound on his temple looked infected. His beard was stiff with dried saliva.

  Vanja poked Evgen’s shoulder. He didn’t react. Nina pulled her back up and led her onward, down to the ground floor. They stepped out of the clinic and into the open space in the middle of what had been Amatka.

  To the east, between the undulating ruins of factories and beckoning residences, the view toward the lake was clear. The sky above was robed in black, adorned with brilliantly striped and mottled spheres. On the path from the lake came a crowd; ahead of them strode the being that was Berols’ Anna. No one else shone and shimmered like she did. At her side walked Ulla, back straight, eyes gleaming.

  Berols’ Anna opened her mouth and spoke, and her voice billowed through the air: the voice that had once written the Plant House books, the voice that both mastered matter and belonged to it. She had come to fulfill her promise.

  Berols’ Anna stopped in front of Vanja where she stood in Nina’s embrace. The brightening light from above had not made her features easier to discern; it merely made them glow more strongly than ever. Her eyes mirrored a different landscape than the one they occupied.

  “Will you give yourself to the world?”

  Anna’s voice crashed into Vanja’s body like a wave, making her gasp for breath. That’s what Vanja was supposed to do. Vanja said it, that she gave herself, that she surrendered, everything she was. A string of syllables dribbled out of her mouth, flat and nonsensical.

  Berols’ Anna watched Vanja in silence, her hair floating around her like a living thing. After a moment, she grunted. “A person creates the word. Gives in to the world, and
becomes the word.” It sounded like a sigh. “You have no words. You have been separated.”

  Separated from her words. The world was built on a new language, and she would not be part of it, only an observer, a watcher.

  Berols’ Anna turned her head and gazed out on the chaos. “When all of this has become, you will remain; the people like you will remain, all of you, as you are, separate. But we will carry you.” She stroked Vanja’s cheek. “We will always carry you, little herald.”

  An observer, a watcher, but beloved. Nina would be with her; Anna would be with her.

  Vanja watched as Anna drifted toward the commune office, the only building still standing in the middle of the chaos. It looked out of place, no longer with any meaning, surrounded now by the citizens of Anna’s colony. Terrified faces stared out from the windows. Berols’ Anna and her people settled down to wait.

  —

  Nina and Vanja stayed where they were. They watched from a distance as Berols’ Anna and her people sang to the last citizens of Amatka, invited them to take part of the new world or perish with the old. It was something like “The Marking Song,” but the words were different; it was a song of making and unmaking, a song not of things that were, but that could be.

  Nina folded Vanja into her arms. She still smelled the same. The heat made Vanja drowsy.

  She was wrenched from her torpor when Nina stretched and seemed to pull herself together.

  “Now,” Nina said, “I’m fetching my children from Essre.”

  She walked out onto the southern part of the plaza. Some kind of communication beyond hearing must have taken place, because from everywhere people came drifting into the plaza. They shone, flew, undulated. They filed out of the colony’s ruins, toward the railway in the southwest.

  Vanja hung on to Nina’s hand. Her right leg wouldn’t quite carry her weight, and her bare feet had lost their warmth, but she kept walking. She would walk with them for as long as she could, and when she could walk no more, they would carry her. They all followed the railway south. It thrilled and sang beneath their feet.