The Core of the Sun

by Johanna Sinisalo

  JARE SPEAKS

  August 2017

  I drive right up to the front door at Neulapää, like I did when I posed as a Food Bureau inspector; hit the brakes hard, leaving tire tracks on the driveway; and get out at a run, scanning the area, wondering where everybody is. In the forest greenhouses, of course. I stand in the door and yell V’s name, but there’s no answer. She might be in the house though, too absorbed in reading to hear me. I run to the door of her room and yank it open without bothering to knock.

  V is standing motionless in front of her desk. There’s a little wooden cutting board in front of her, and a knife and a dark red chili like a splash of coagulated blood. I recognize it immediately.

  Core of the Sun. V, oh V, what have you gone and done?

  I grab her by the shoulders and shake her. “V! V!”

  She doesn’t answer. Her eyes are glassy with the empty look of brain damage.

  VANNA/VERA

  August 2017

  Jare comes running into my room. It’s interesting, like watching a silent movie in slow motion. His movements are big, exaggerated. The room fills with tartness and rosemary, a smell that’s almost suffocating, and—

  My perspective jerks so suddenly that it almost hurts. I’m looking at my own face, my own waxy, frozen expression, from very close, almost like looking in a mirror, but it isn’t a mirror.

  I’m looking at myself through Jare’s eyes.

  And at the same time, I’m here, inside, and I sense pale colors, bluish and reddish and greenish, but they’re just hints, a drop of watercolor in a tumbler of water. Everything else is bright gray, the shade of heavy crystallized snow in late spring, and like snow it refracts the light from every imperfection, every crystal facet; but the light isn’t coming from the sky—it’s a glow from inside.

  I’m in a completely different world. On an alien planet. But it’s not a planet, there is no direction, no gravity. I’m swimming, floating among strange mountains and leafy tendrils. The shapes that surround me are rough, semitransparent, rising up on every side randomly, chaotically, but with an underlying logic, emerging from above, below, and beside me. They remind me of snowdrifts, the south side of snow-covered furrows when the sun at the end of March warms the snow and melts sharp, beveled, granular shapes into it, as if the melting of the snow uncovered the rough scales of a dragon sleeping beneath it. Tapered points, crystalline towers, jagged stalactites repeating just as they do in drifts of snow: all from the same root, a result of the same process, and yet every form as individual as a ledge of coral in a vast reef.

  I’m moving in a way that I can’t understand—maybe my brain is telling me to swim, or fly—and I’m soaring through rushing scales of snow and crystal towers and somewhere ahead I see a darkish spot and I speed toward it, or rather I will myself to go to it, or rather it sucks me toward it and I’m not floating anymore, I’m streaking toward it, and it gets bigger and bigger, it’s like a well, or an open jaw, and I fall into the abyss, or maybe I’m shooting upward, like a diver forced up toward the surface, but I’m going toward something that looks dark but isn’t dark, it’s a friendly blackness, a warm, starry night, and there’s something there.

  It’s smooth and firm and slippery and squirming; it’s pulsating, panicked, hard-shelled, cautious; it’s alive and supple and soft and unyielding; it changes its shape and yet stays the same; it’s unpredictable and safe and it’s calling my name. I can’t hear it but I sense it, like a dream where you can tell that a thing looks like one thing but means something else. It’s saying V, but it means Vera, and it pulses toward me and engulfs me in itself, and it no longer matters who or what is pushing the coral- and snow-scale-shaped rosemary and lavender and apple and citrus and cranberry into me, the light, colors, forming something to grasp, something to understand, something that I don’t know how to feel but it knows how, something akin to the smell of fresh-cut grass that floated around Manna so that the air was full of it, back when she had her crush on Jare, and this is the same smell but it’s ripened into rosemary, adult, plaintive, saturating everything, every single thing that can fit right now in Jare’s head, and all of it mixed with the sour of worry . . .

  I know what that smell is now.

  Oh no oh no oh no.

  I come out of the shock with a jerk and it takes a fraction of a second before my eyes can focus. There he is. Jare, his face a couple of centimeters from mine, his hands shaking my shoulders and his mouth shouting something into my sealed ears. V, V, V, V, V, what’s wrong, what happened, what—

  Another jerk, and although I can’t hear anything, I sense the change in air pressure in my clogged ear canals—someone else has come into the room, and Terhi steps into my narrowed field of vision and immediately starts to open her mouth, vehement, and exchanges gestures with Jare and they’re talking about me. I sense that it’s lunchtime and that’s why they’ve come in from the farm, but that doesn’t matter because I’m still floating half outside of myself and nothing seems to particularly matter much. Jare and Terhi lead me between them into the living room and over to the sofa and they sit me down and put two blankets over me, and Jare brings me hot sugar water and half forces me to drink it. The hot liquid hurts my mouth, burns like fire, and for a moment I think that it has capsaicin in it, too, but that’s just because my mouth is tender and sore. Once I’m wrapped up and have a warm drink the trembling in my body starts to gradually subside.

  Through the sweat and the shivering and the soreness in my mouth I’m aware of Jare and Terhi and Valtteri and Mirko looming around me. A real tribal council.

  “You had to try it,” Terhi’s voice says.

  I don’t answer. I might not be able to, because at the moment my teeth are chattering uncontrollably.

  Terhi looks at Jare. “Did you know about this?”

  Jare is extremely agitated—I can easily sense it. On overdrive. Why? This isn’t some great crime, is it?

  “Vanna’s not an eloi. She doesn’t have a masco who’s personally responsible for her! I didn’t know!”

  “No need to get you knickers in a bunch. Just asking.”

  Terhi sits on the edge of the sofa. The blankets and sugar water and time since the Core of the Sun began its work have all calmed the worst of the shakes. Terhi reaches under the blanket and takes my hand.

  “Vanna, you’re like ice.”

  I nod; her hand feels burning hot in mine. As if all the blood in the veins under my skin had retracted into my organs to extinguish the raging fire inside me. The look of genuine worry on Terhi’s face and what I’ve just learned about Jare and the sensitivity the capsaicin has lent to all my senses and the pain in my mouth fading to a dull throb—it’s all too much, and I start to cry.

  Terhi pulls me against her chest and holds on to me, not squeezing, not patting me, just holds me in her arms. When I close my eyes I’m with Aulikki for a moment.

  “Congratulations,” I mutter.

  Although my face is half pressed against Terhi’s chest, I can tell by the movements of her muscles that she’s looking at the others. At Mirko and Valtteri.

  “I left my body.”

  Terhi pushes me back by the shoulders and looks at my face to see if I’m serious. Her cheeks start to redden. “What happened?”

  “I saw myself from the outside, from the ceiling. Look on top of the wardrobe. Is there a dead spider there? I can’t reach it, but I saw it.”

  Valtteri and Mirko both let out a sound like a sigh mixed with a whine, then they burst into talk at the same time, and Terhi joins the chorus.

  “Trance possession!”

  “But what if it’s just some kind of . . . self-hypnosis?” Jare says doubtfully.

  “No, it couldn’t be. It’s a state that has real neurophysiological changes that can be measured with an EEG. And there are physical signs, just like the ones Vanna had: convulsions, tremors, shi
vering. In former times the shamans’ possession trances were a precursor to a loss of consciousness. With practice you can succeed in deepening the experience to the point that your connection to waking life is cut off completely.”

  Valtteri looks into my mouth with a little pocket flashlight. “You have inflammation in your mouth. The insides of your lips are quite swollen. But that’s to be expected, of course. It will go away in a few days.”

  “We have to remember Vanna’s tolerance. If it works for her, . . .” Mirko says, almost to himself.

  “It’s a breakthrough.”

  “It’s a definite breakthrough.”

  “We can concentrate on just this variety—”

  “We have to get the variety stabilized as soon as we can—”

  “It’s just a matter of time.”

  “We’ve got it.”

  “We’ve got the Core of the Sun!”

  They ask some more questions, and I’m filled with immense energy, my knowledge boundless—I own all of Europe and I rule half of the rest of the world, too—telling them about my experience in clever turns of phrase, how it felt as if I could move into an earthworm, a little bird, or a lynx slinking around Neulapää. I haven’t even gotten to the fly, not to mention Jare, when I realize that something about the mood has changed. The Gaians look at one another, at Jare, at me. There’s a whiff of tar and smoke.

  That’s when Jare takes a deep breath and clears his throat and everyone gets quiet. There’s something so significant in that sound, and I look at Jare and his eyes are filled with hopelessness, and even though I’m as far away from the Cellar as I could be, an icy avalanche of fear flashes through my belly.

  “I should have told you right away, but V . . . well, now that she seems to be OK, listen. We’ve got a hell of an urgent situation.”

  JARE SPEAKS

  August 2017

  We have to leave, too, V. You’re my wife; you’ll come with me. You’ve said you can’t go until you know what happened to Manna, but I won’t take that for an answer anymore. You’ve burrowed your way into me, built a nest in my brain. I’d just as soon cut off my hands, or cut out my heart, as leave you here. I know you can get along without me—that’s what’s painful about this. You can get through anything you set your mind to, and that independence from me is the worst part of it.

  Because I’m hooked on you.

  I have to convince you. This isn’t just about your obsession with your sister’s disappearance. At one point you mentioned your precious books, how you supposedly couldn’t ever leave them behind, but I’ve heard about amazing things in the decadent states, like tiny portable devices where a person can store a thousand books—a thousand books filled with information that’s completely up-to-date. I’ve heard about data networks that can give you the answer to any question that’s on your mind at the press of a button. I can offer that world to you. It’s something you can’t do by yourself.

  You’re my adrenaline, my new game of chance.

  I can see that you’re starting to give in, deep inside. You are going to come with me. You’ve got to.

  VANNA/VERA

  August 2017

  Jare and I are covered in sweat, carrying the lights and the seedling boxes out of the forest. There’s no way we can fit all the full-grown plants into the hidden cargo hold; all we can do is put a couple of the most precious adult plants there. We’ll harvest the rest of the ripe fruit for seed.

  Mirko, Valtteri, and Terhi take down the forest greenhouses and carry the parts to the yard. They can haul them in the visible portion of the truck beds. There’s nothing we can do about the impressions left in the ground, but we can disguise the traces of where the floors and corner posts were to some extent with brush and sticks.

  I think it would have made more sense to wait a little while in case the authorities showed up right behind Jare. There might have been some small chance they wouldn’t find any evidence. If somebody comes now our guilt will be as obvious as if we’d been standing over a dead body with a smoking gun in our hands. But for some reason the Gaians want to leave immediately.

  As if they were fleeing more than just the authorities.

  Jare suggests that Valtteri sink the leftover stems and roots of the plants in Riihi Swamp. He should be able to shove them into the black water under the moss until there’s almost no trace of them, and even if they were found it would be hard to tell them from all the other plant debris in various stages of decay.

  “But why would the Authority be so ineffectual?” I wonder out loud. “If it really was a bust and they let you get away so they could follow you, they would have already thrown us in the slammer. And if they lost you at some point, I’m sure they could have just looked up your license number. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe they’re collecting more evidence. Want to be sure.”

  I nod toward the plastic bags glowing red and yellow and green that Mirko and Terhi are carrying to the car in both hands. “There couldn’t be any more abundant evidence than that.” I hand some boards up to Jare where he’s standing in the truck bed. “And what if this so-called Erkki wasn’t a bad mark or a cop? What if he’s a free agent?”

  “Free agent?”

  “A private detective. Or a bounty hunter. Somebody who’s paid to find things out and report back. All he needed was to grab a piece of evidence and run. And even if he went straight to the Authority and sold them the Ukko’s Dart for a good price, they wouldn’t have any more hard evidence than the chili itself. They’d have Erkki’s description of you, maybe a grainy surveillance video from someplace near the bar, the fact that you said your name was Petri, and I guess now our method for making contacts, but it’s a big step from that to connecting the crime to Jare Valkinen, Gaian devotee and vegetable vendor.”

  Jare’s tension eases a bit. “There just might be a heck of a lot of sense in that. But it gives us only a little more time. We have to get at least twenty-five thousand together really fast; that’s how much we’re short in the kitty. There’s more than enough stuff to do it, and we can sell it cheap if we can find somebody to buy it wholesale. To hell with maximizing our returns.”

  “With half the drug agents in Tampere on the lookout for dealers?”

  We look at each other. Jare jumps down from the loading bed and goes over to the other truck. “Mirko, can you spare another half a kilo? It doesn’t matter what kind; just give us whichever one you have plenty of seed or seedlings for.”

  Mirko grabs one of the bags and tosses it to Jare without a glance. Jare snatches it out of the air. Mirko’s coolness might be a reaction to Jare’s recklessness, and the fact that he worried about me first and about the emergency second. But I don’t think so. Something else is bothering him.

  Jare walks back over to me and holds up the bag. “These and the flake under the floor should be enough.” He goes to stash the bag in the house.

  “Last boxes!” Terhi yells to Mirko. Valtteri returns from his trip to the swamp, red and panting, his shoes wet from the bog moss.

  The Gaians don’t waste their time getting emotional. When the trucks are loaded, when the divider separating the secret section of the cargo hold is in place and their few personal belongings are gathered up, they’re ready to go.

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Northeast. The Kainuu woods. The growing season there is starting to get long enough, now that exceptionally cold winters are happening less often. People in the countryside are used to the Gaians’ nomadic ways. No one will think anything of it when we show up and unpack. We’ll find a little fallow piece of land to rent. Keep a low profile.”

  I start to feel relieved. If we thoroughly clean up all traces of the Gaians’ stay here, we can claim that we just had a couple of them come to teach us bioaura farming at the beginning of the growing season, and nothing more. Luckily they’ve been so busy
growing chilis that the amount of vegetables we’ve been bringing to the market to sell has been about as much as two hardworking people could manage to grow on their own.

  Valtteri and Terhi jump into one truck, Mirko into the other. Mirko waves and drives out the gate. Valtteri starts his engine, too. The wheels are already starting to roll away when the truck stops, the door swings open, and Terhi hops out of the cab. She runs to me, takes something out of her pocket, puts it in my hand, and folds my fingers around it.

  “I told Valtteri that I forgot to thank you. Use it wisely.”

  She runs with quick, long strides back to the truck, jumps in, and slams the door in one smooth movement. The engine roars.

  The two trucks pull out onto the gravel road and disappear around a curve into the spruce woods.

  I open my fist. Lying on my palm is a ripe pepper about as long as my finger, the color of clotted blood. The Core of the Sun.

  “I can’t leave until I know—”

  “Shut your trap.”

  I’m stunned into silence. Jare has never talked to me like that before.

  “Listen. It’s possible, though very unlikely, that Manna’s body will still be found. But what satisfaction will that give you?”

  “I would be sure.”

  “We just don’t have time. Whoever it was who stole the Ukko’s Dart from me won’t leave it at that.”

  I’m still shaking my head.

  “Do you remember I told you about those two guys who managed to float out of the country on a big pile of money? One of them took his wife with him. It doesn’t cost much more.”

  “I won’t leave Manna.”

  Jare is silent, his hands in fists, his knuckles white.

  “Out there—in some other place—you could be Vera.”

  Vera. The name is precious and remote to me at the same time. It’s a name that belongs to someone I am and am not. I read in a book once that my original name comes from the Latin word for “truth.”