Harbour (66 page)

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 GÃ¥vasten 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 GÃ¥vasten there was now a new island, the same height as the rock on which the lighthouse stood, and at least five times as wide.

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

A shudder ran through the sea and the jetty rocked beneath his feet. Both GÃ¥vasten 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…I 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 GÃ¥vasten 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.'

‘Is Mummy going to die?'

‘She isn't here. She's a long way away. She's fine.'

‘Why is she a long way away?'

An elderly couple whose names Anders couldn't recall, who lived a couple of blocks up from the shop, opened their front door and looked out. ‘Where's the fire?' asked the old man. Mats stopped and pointed out to sea.

‘A wave is coming. Get out of here.'

The old man peered out to sea and his eyes opened wide. He grabbed his wife by the hand. ‘Come on, Astrid.'

By the time the old couple had put on their clogs and got down their front steps, there was a deafening crash from the harbour, and a blast of air made Anders wobble forwards. Maja squealed, thinking he was going to fall on top of her, but he managed to regain his balance and staggered on towards the forest.

He could hear a thundering sound like a waterfall behind him, and a few seconds later sea water was swirling over his feet. A sharp pain shot up his leg as a shard of ice hit his right foot. He gritted his teeth and limped along, picking his way between large and small pieces of ice that were floating on the water as it was sucked back towards the sea.

Fortunately the old couple were of tough archipelago stock, and they plodded along with their clogs splashing through the water a couple of metres ahead of him, just behind Mats and Ingrid. Maja hauled herself up and looked over his shoulder.

‘Daddy, there's another one coming!'

He looked back. The boathouses down by the harbour were gone, and the shoreline had risen by several metres, as if Domarö too had shaken itself up and risen from the sea to meet the threat. Unfortunately this was not the case. It was the wave sucking the water towards it. The next wave.

Mats noticed that Anders was limping, and offered to carry Maja, but Anders shook his head. He had carried her this far, he would carry her all the way. The only problem was that he could hardly walk.

‘Wait, just hang on a minute!' the old man shouted to Anders, waving the others on. Anders stood with Maja in his arms as the man ran back to his house. Now he remembered the man. He used to buy herring from Anders; he was already an old man in those days, and Anders thought he had such an unusual name for an old man.

Kristoffer
, Anders thought.
His name is Kristoffer Ek. Torgny's dad.

Kristoffer disappeared out of sight and Anders looked anxiously at the sea. It would take a while before the next wave reached them, but when it did…

I am the sea.

He was still standing with his feet in water and the water linked him directly to the wall of sea water that was approaching from out in the bay. He rose against it and Spiritus burned in his stomach as he left his consciousness and became one with the hurtling wave.

Stop! Stop!

He was in the wave and the wave was in him, its insane power ran through Spiritus and out into his fingers, clenching into fists around Maja's body as he tried to restrain, to brake. The insect in his stomach tensed like a muscle strained to breaking point, and this was not meant for humans.

He knew it was pointless. Like trying to hold back a bolting horse with a fishing line. And yet he resisted until it all became too much, and something burst inside him. He felt a searing pain in his stomach. His contact with the water was broken.

‘Ouch, Daddy! You're pinching!'

He returned to the solid world, where his arms were squeezing his daughter tightly. He relaxed; he had to concentrate to stop his legs giving way beneath him. Close by his ear, Maja asked, ‘Why is Mummy a long way away?'

‘We'll ring her later, sweetheart. Afterwards.'

The wave shimmered like a gigantic mirror being dragged across the surface of the sea, the broken pieces of ice were like cracks and marks on its shining surface. It was not within human power to stop it. Anders had turned and started to run once again when he heard the sound of an engine starting up, and the next moment Kristoffer pulled out of his drive on a bright blue platform moped.

‘Jump on!' he shouted.

Anders clambered on to the platform with Maja in his arms, and as Kristoffer accelerated along the forest track, she whispered in his ear, ‘Who's
that
?'

‘That's Kristoffer,' said Anders. ‘He's helping us.'

Maja nodded. ‘He looks nice. A bit like Simon.'

Anders hadn't given Simon and Anna-Greta a thought since this all started, he had just registered the fact that they were
out of the way
and therefore safe. Either at sea or in Kapellskär.

Domarö. It only wants to get at Domarö.

They caught up with the others. Kristoffer braked and Astrid perched gratefully on the edge of the platform. Kristoffer waved to Mats and Ingrid, but Mats shook his head and kept on running with his wife. Presumably the moped would lose so much speed with them on board that it was quicker to keep running.

‘To the rock!' shouted Anders. ‘The erratic boulder. That's the highest point.'

Kristoffer nodded, and they shot off along the track. As they passed Mats and Ingrid, Anders shouted the same thing to them.

After a hundred metres Kristoffer turned off and they bounced along over roots and stones. But they were moving upwards, climbing all the time.

It was impossible to ride along the last bit, and despite the fact that his feet were hurting so much it brought tears to his eyes, Anders clung to Maja and she clung to him as they got down from the platform and began to climb.

They reached the boulder just in time to see the wave come crashing in over Domarö. Like a dark blue fifteen-metre wall with a crown of ice shards, it came down over the community. Anders sank down at the edge of the rock and watched as what the first wave had left of the Shack was swallowed up by the mass of water.

The chunks of ice flew off the crest of the wave and destroyed the roofs of Anna-Greta and Simon's houses just seconds before the alarm bell tower collapsed under the pressure and the wall of water smashed the whole thing to driftwood dancing in the foam, and then were was nothing left. The six refugees were standing on a tiny island a dozen or so metres above a rushing, roaring sea, with wreckage swirling around them.

Anders looked up. GÃ¥vasten lighthouse could no longer be seen. The little island was still out there, but the lighthouse itself had disappeared, swept away by the wave. A shudder ran from the sea through the earth, continued into their bodies through the rock, and the island that had appeared next to GÃ¥vasten began to sink.

The water beneath their feet ebbed away. Above his head, Anders heard Mats say, ‘There were people there…'

Anders leaned back and saw that Mats was looking through his telescope. He lowered it and shook his head as he gestured out towards the sinking island. ‘There were people out there. On the island. Lots of people. They're gone now.'

Anders hugged Maja and buried his nose in the hollow at the back of her neck. The water sank down, exposing a village that was no longer there. Beneath them lay nothing but a muddy mess of fallen trees and the wreckage of houses and outbuildings. Here and there lay large or small pieces of smashed boats. The only thing that was left was the lump of concrete that formed the steamboat jetty.

It's dangerous. Not only for you. For all those who live here.

This was what Anna-Greta had meant, what she had wanted to prevent. Anders pushed his nose harder into Maja's neck, rubbing his cheek over her back.

‘Ouch Daddy, you're all prickly. Stop it.'

Anders smiled and turned her to face him, stroking her cheek gently with one finger. Maja clamped her lips together in a way that meant she was thinking.

‘Daddy?'

‘Yes.'

‘I dreamed I was calling to you. A lot. Was I?'

‘Yes, you were.'

Maja nodded grimly, as if this confirmed something she had suspected for a long time.

‘What did you do then?'

Anders looked into her serious, worried eyes. He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and kissed her forehead.

‘I came to find you. Of course.'

In the churchyard in NÃ¥ten there is an anchor. An enormous anchor made of cast iron, with a memorial plaque:

IN MEMORY OF THOSE LOST AT SEA

After the incomprehensible storm, the anchor was no longer there. From the spot where the anchor had been, a fresh trench ran down to the shore. As if the anchor had been dragged along by its chain, dragged through the earth like a plough, leaving the furrow behind it before it disappeared into the sea.

Whatever had been fastened to the anchor had torn itself free. Or been set free.