What am I doing?
He knew what he was doing: he didn’t know what he was doing. One hound didn’t know. They were circling around each other, sniffing at each other’s tails. He hugged himself, said in a gentle, reassuring voice, ‘It’s OK. Everything’s fine. I’m not cross. Nobody’s cross.’
Sure?
‘Yes, yes. Quite sure. The engine was stupid.’
Don’t say that about the engine. It’ll be upset.
It wasn’t Maja’s voice he was hearing, it was just his own thoughts, but they were being…guided. He was being led into patterns, ideas that were not his. He pressed his wrists against his temples.
This is driving me mad. That’s the sort of thing people say, but this…this really is driving me mad.
He straightened up and took a couple of deep breaths. He was in control, he was Anders. He heard the faint soughing of the wind in his ears, the lapping of the waves and voices from over on the steamboat jetty. Agitated voices and the sound of children screaming. For a moment he thought it was something to do with him, but it was too far away. There were a lot of people standing on the jetty and there was some kind of quarrel, but he couldn’t tell what it was about.
It’s nothing to do with me.
He pulled himself together and walked away from the sea. Simon had said he could borrow his boat whenever he wanted, and that was precisely what he intended to do.
The confusion left him; with every step he took towards Simon’s jetty, more and more of the morning’s decisiveness and clarity returned. He knew what he had to do, he had a direction.
Now all he had to do was follow it.
Horrid children
Seven children in years 1 to 6 lived on Domarö. Seven children who stood on the steamboat jetty at quarter to eight every morning, waiting for the tender to the mainland, to Nåten and school. Adults and high-school children travelled earlier in order to get to their school in Rådmanby or to their jobs in Norrtälje.
Despite the fact that the children’s ages ranged from Mårten and Emma in Year 1 to Arvid in Year 6, there was a sense of community in the group. The smaller ones were taught the routine by the older ones, and they travelled together, waited together and made sure everything happened as it should.
Up to a point this sense of community extended into life at school as well. If a younger Domarö child was teased or bullied in the playground, it could easily happen that one of the older children from the group would step in and put a stop to it. Perhaps it was for the honour of Domarö, perhaps it was so that they could look each other in the eye, perhaps it was due to a spontaneous empathy, acquired during those mornings in the rain and cold, or brilliant sunshine.
At any rate, they were a group, and they knew it. There were seven of them, and they were from Domarö.
On this particular morning, several of the children were preoccupied with the large number of gulls gathered in the bay. The temperature had fallen by several degrees during the night, and the birds looked frozen as they sat there drifting along with the currents, shaking themselves from time to time as if to try and keep warm.
The children were more warmly dressed. Mårten and Emma wrapped up in snowsuits, Maria in Year 5 wearing an enormous hat and scarf, Johan and Elin in Year 3 somewhat more modestly but still warmly clad.
Arvid was inside the shelter, shivering. He had inherited a leather jacket from his grandfather and it was his most treasured possession, but it didn’t provide much warmth on a day like today. His grandfather had worked for the coastguard and was immune to both the cold and the heat. He pulled nets out of holes in the ice with his bare hands and extinguished his cigarettes between his thumb and forefinger. He had been Arvid’s idol, but he had died of cancer a few months earlier. Arvid had taken over his jacket and had discovered that it was much too big and provided little warmth. But it was Grandfather’s and—if the truth were told—it also looked pretty good.
That made six children. There was no sign of the seventh yet. Sofia Bergwall, the daughter of Lasse and Lina. She was late this morning. Maria gazed up towards the road. Despite the fact that Sofia was a year younger, she was Maria’s best friend, and they had been together since they went to day care together. Waiting for the boat was boring when Sofia wasn’t here. Maria turned towards the sea, and saw the tender approaching just beyond the carpet of gulls. It would be a few minutes before it hove to, but Sofia was always there in plenty of time. Maria chewed on her lip and spotted Sofia, walking up from the shop.
Maria waved, but her best friend didn’t seem to notice her. There was something stiff and odd about the way she was walking; she was dressed in thin clothes and seemed preoccupied by some difficult problem. Maria knew what had happened to her father, Lasse, the previous day, and thought it probably had something to do with that.
Sofia didn’t even say hello when she reached the jetty, she simply went and stood at the far end and stared at the gulls, which had begun to take off in disorganised flocks as the boat came closer.
‘Soffi, what is it?’ Maria placed a hand on her friend’s shoulder, but Sofia merely snorted and turned away. Maria inspected her clothes and shook her head. It didn’t make any sense. Sofia’s mother always made sure Sofia was suitably dressed, but today she had no hat, no gloves, and only a thin anorak that wouldn’t provide much protection from the wind.
There was an ache in Maria’s chest. Ever since she was very small she had been a sensitive soul, who felt pain when someone else had a problem. Therefore she took off her scarf and began to wind it around Sofia’s neck.
‘You must be frozen, I mean it’s—’
The words ‘really cold’ froze on her lips as Sofia turned around. The expression in her eyes was so horrible that Maria whimpered and let go of the scarf.
‘Don’t touch me!’ snapped Sofia, and Maria held up her hands to defend herself or to indicate that she had no intention of doing anything else, but before she had time to say a word, Sofia grabbed hold of her jacket.
Arvid was studying the graffiti in the shelter. He heard Maria scream and didn’t take any notice, assuming the girls were just being silly. But then the tone of the scream altered, and shortly afterwards he heard a splash.
Arvid looked out of the shelter just in time to see Sofia running over to Mårten and Emma. She grabbed their snowsuits by the chest and pulled them towards her. Emma managed to twist herself free, which gave Sofia two hands to hold on to Mårten. The little boy screamed at the top of his voice as Sofia dragged him towards the edge of the jetty and threw him over. The scream continued as he went over the edge, then stopped abruptly.
The tender was perhaps fifty metres from the jetty and the gulls rose into the air, hauled up into the sky like a flapping, screaming curtain.
The whole thing was so far beyond rhyme and reason that it took a few seconds before Arvid’s brain was able to accept that they were not playing tag or some other game, that Sofia really had thrown little Mårten down into the ice-cold water.
And where’s Maria?
Sofia bared her teeth and rushed towards the other children, who fled from the jetty with terrified squeals. It was like What’s the Time, Mr Wolf?—but this wolf really was dangerous, and tiptoeing gingerly forward wasn’t going to help.
As Arvid ran over to the edge of the jetty he could see that the tender was still too far out for Roger to be able to help. He looked down into the water and saw Mårten’s pale blue snowsuit just below the surface.
He hesitated. He shouldn’t be the one doing this sort of thing. He was only thirteen and the temperature of the water was close to freezing and there must be some adult who—
Grandfather. Grandfather would—
He didn’t get any further before his hands took the initiative, unzipping the leather jacket and dragging it off. The pale blue of Mårten’s snowsuit grew darker as he sank, and there was no one but Arvid who could save him.
He had just managed to get the jacket off and was about to take a deep breath when a hard s
hove from behind sent him over the edge. He half turned and saw Sofia staring at him with madness in her eyes before he fell two metres and hit the water.
The cold knocked all the air out of him and his lungs contracted, preventing him from taking in more. He could see the sharp prow of the tender perhaps ten metres away. It was heading straight for him, and he could hear the engines roaring as Roger slammed it into reverse.
Purely by exerting his muscles Arvid managed to take in a tiny amount of air, held his breath, put his face in the water and swam downwards. His nose, mouth and eyes froze instantly, but right now there was only one thing on his mind, and that was to reach the blue shape directly below him.
He swam another stroke and the roaring of the engines filled his head as he felt his feet leave the surface. There was an immense pressure in his ears and he tried unsuccessfully to kick off his heavy boots, but he took another stroke, the last one before he ran out of air, stuck out his arm and managed to grab hold of the fabric on Mårten’s back.
Incredibly, he had the presence of mind to swerve to one side before he swam to the surface. He flapped his free arm, pushed as hard as he could with his legs and forced Mårten up out of the water as if he were lifting a trophy before following on himself, gasping for air.
Their heads broke the surface just a metre from the metal hull of the tender. He could no longer hear anything, it was as if he were wearing earplugs made of ice. Above his head, the sky was swarming with silent gulls.
Mårten’s snowsuit was full of water and would have dragged them both down, but Arvid managed to grab hold of one of the tractor tyres fixed to the edge of the jetty, then pulled himself along and switched his grip to the next tyre. When he reached the corner of the jetty he heard someone shouting to him from far away, but took no notice. He kept Mårten’s head above the water and made his way towards the shore.
He edged around the corner and became vaguely aware of another figure crawling ashore a few metres away.
Maria…good…good…
His hands were no longer prepared to obey him. When he tried to get a grip on the last tractor tyre his fingers were frozen stiff, and slipped on the hard rubber surface.
Someone reached down from the jetty with a boat hook, but he couldn’t manage to close his fingers around the pole. He thought he was going to sink, but the hook caught the neck of his pullover and he was pulled towards the shore with his burden.
After a couple of metres he noticed that his legs were moving oddly, and realised they were dragging along the bottom. The hook was detached from his pullover and water splashed in his face as Roger jumped in and hauled him ashore. He noticed that Maria was already lying there, staring at him with wide-open eyes and a face as white as paper.
Somebody was tugging at him.
‘Arvid, Arvid. Let go. You need to let go.’
Roger was pulling at his left arm, the arm that was holding Mårten. Arvid tried to let go, but couldn’t; the arm was locked. The only place where there was any warmth left was inside his mouth, and he managed to part his lips and say, ‘I can’t.’
He looked at Mårten and saw something wonderful. His mouth was moving, and he coughed up a little water over Arvid’s face. He was alive. With gentle force Roger managed to move Arvid’s arm and release Mårten.
While Roger worked to get Mårten’s snowsuit off and wrap him in his own fleece, Ulla and Lennart Qvist, who had been aboard the tender, came to look after Maria and Arvid.
There was the sound of screaming from up on the jetty, and when Arvid managed to get to his feet with some support, he could see that two adults were holding on to Sofia, who was flinging herself from side to side, howling like an animal and trying to bite them. The gulls were circling above the scene like an excited audience at a boxing match, flapping around them, screaming and urging them on.
Mårten wept in Roger’s arms as he was carried home, and Maria was also sobbing, her lips blue with cold, as Ulla led her along by the hand. Arvid took off his pullover and Lennart wrapped him in a big overcoat, patting him on the shoulder.
‘Well done, Arvid. Well done.’
Arvid’s jaws were trembling so much he could hardly speak. He nodded stiffly towards the crazed gulls and Sofia, who was being dragged along swearing and kicking. ‘Why. Is it. Like this?’
‘Nobody knows,’ said Lennart. ‘Nobody knows. Let’s get you home.’
On shaking legs Arvid allowed himself to be led around the sea buckthorn thicket and up towards the village. When he saw that his path was going to cross Sofia’s, he stopped.
‘Could you do me a favour?’
‘Of course,’ said Lennart. ‘Anything.’
‘Could you get my jacket?’
While Lennart went back for the jacket, Arvid stood there with the overcoat tightly wrapped around him, watching as Sofia was bundled towards her home. The gulls pursued them, circling above their heads as if they had spotted their prey and were just waiting for the right moment to swoop.
When Lennart came back Arvid returned his coat, pulled the leather jacket over his bare skin and said he would be fine now. Then he staggered homeward, with water squelching in his boots.
When he reached the shop he stopped and looked along the track where Mårten was being carried home to his mum and dad, still wailing loudly, but alive. Arvid pulled his jacket closer and thought about how he felt.
It was strange, somehow.
For the first time it felt as if the jacket was warming him. And it was no longer too big. It fitted. Perfectly.
Back to Gåvasten
The cold nipped at Anders’ cheeks and brought tears to his eyes. He had wrapped up as warmly as he could and was wearing a lifejacket under his padded jacket, but the headwind found its way into every nook and cranny and by the time he was halfway to Gåvasten, he was frozen through.
At first he had thought there was something odd about his eyes, that he was seeing dots, but from this distance he could see that the dots swarming across the sky around Gåvasten were actually birds. It was impossible to tell what kind they were, but it looked as if they were different sizes, and therefore different species.
Simon’s twenty-horsepower engine hummed monotonously and the fibreglass hull slapped against the waves. Anders’ face was so stiff with the cold that he no longer felt it when a few drops flew up and hit his cheeks or chin. He kept his eyes fixed on Gåvasten and his left hand clenched around the throttle, turned up to maximum. He was an arrow fired from Domarö, heading straight for his target: the lighthouse.
And yet he couldn’t prevent something from seeping in and eating away at his deep-frozen resolve. An unpleasant, jelly-like quivering was growing in his chest the closer he got to the lighthouse and the teeming birds. A feeling as familiar as an obnoxious relative: fear. Good old fear, causing the arrow to veer off-course and slow down.
The resonance of the engine deepened as he cut the speed and allowed the boat to chug along for the last hundred metres. The birds around the lighthouse really were a mixture of species. The wildly flapping wings of golden-eyes, the heavy bodies of the eider ducks and the elegance of the gulls, soaring along on the air currents. There were even a number of swans bobbing on the sea off the lighthouse.
What are they doing?
Many of the birds were up in the air circling around the lighthouse, but even more were gathered on the surface of the water. Their behaviour didn’t appear to have any purpose, other than to show a united front, to say: Here we are. And yet it was unpleasant. Anders hadn’t see The Birds, but he could well imagine what it would be like if such a large number of birds decided to attack. They were showing no inclination to do so at the moment, but perhaps when he stepped ashore?
When the boat slipped in among the first group of birds, they paddled quickly out of the way glaring at him aggressively, he thought. He decided to use the only weapon, or at least protection, to which he had access.
He let go of the throttle and allowed the engine to idl
e as he picked up the plastic bottle, took a deep breath then took a couple of swigs of the wormwood concentrate.
The nausea seared his mouth, his throat, his stomach, and the flames shot up into his head, licking around his brain. He fought back the urge to vomit, put the top back on and grasped the throttle. The birds swam away, leaving him a feather-free route up to the rock.
He hesitated for a few seconds before setting foot ashore. Then he climbed out of the boat and looked around. The birds were still whirling around in the air and it seemed to him that their screams were becoming more intense. But they weren’t attacking. He pulled up the boat as far as he could and fastened the mooring rope to a rock.
And so he was standing on Gåvasten once again.
The first and last time he had been here before, the rocks had been covered in snow. Now he could see that they had been polished by the sea, and that veins of pink and white ran through the grey rock, forming a pattern beneath the spatter of guano. He stood motionless, his arms dangling by his sides and his mouth open, as the pattern freed itself from its foundation and drifted together, forming itself into…an alphabet.
A language.
The lines running vertically and horizontally, the separate dots and curlicues were all characters, parts of a system of writing that was so complex his brain was unable to encompass it; he could only establish that it existed.
Like a baby who has picked up a bible and tosses it aside when it proves impossible to chew, Anders tore his gaze away from the writing on the rock and carried on up towards the eastern side of the island. It was not his language, it meant nothing to him.
He didn’t know how to look because he didn’t know what he was looking for, but his consciousness was sounding out the area as if it were a knot that must be untied. He needed to find the point where there was a little slack, where he could get his finger in and start to work it.
He couldn’t find any such point. The world was impenetrably solid and filled with messages he was unable to interpret.
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