Samurai Summer (20 page)

All of a sudden a larger tongue of flame shot out from the wall.

The archer bent down over the water bucket.

Janne came into the kitchen. He was holding the banner with our coat of arms: the circle with the two lines that were as black as the soot on the walls.

I thought about what Janne had said once when we were sitting in the castle. If the camp didn’t exist, he had said, then we could stay here as long as we wanted. But it does exist, I had said. It’s over there behind the trees. If there were no camp. If it didn’t exist at all. The camp doesn’t exist. The camp is no more.

The archer raised the bucket of water.

“Put it down,” I said.

In the shadows from the fire, everyone looked like warriors. We moved around the bonfire in a wide circle. Everything became ten times bigger in the shadows against the sky, the forest, and the lake. It was like a theater show of cardboard cutouts—shadow figures—just like when we trained for battle. Our long and narrow banners were sharp silhouettes against the sky that had almost turned white from the fire.

Kerstin, Sausage, Ann, Lennart, Micke, Janne, and I stood silently watching the fire swallow up the camp. Nobody said anything. The explorers had gone to check on their canoe. Weine and his troop guarded Matron and the cook, who were sitting petrified in the grass behind the counselors’ barracks. What was it that I had heard Christian say?
It’s all too late
. Christian himself had disappeared.

Matron had gone mute and so had the cook. I had asked Matron about Christian but had got no answer.

I looked at her. She looked at the fire with the same vacant stare she had had in her office.

I could hear the sirens through the forest and across the lake.

“Here they come,” said Janne.

I began to make out headlights among the trees.

“A bit late now,” said Micke and smiled.

But it wasn’t just the fire department I had called from Matron’s office. When the police car turned in through the front gate as the first car in a long line of vehicles, I walked out and waved to it.

I
t’s long past midnight now. Morning, you could say. There’s not much more to tell. The explorers found Christian as he was swimming out toward the middle of the lake. It was when they went to get their canoe to paddle a few of the younger kids over to the other beach. Christian had swum out there in the moonlight and then started to sink like a stone. The explorers put a rope around his chest and dragged him back. They saved his life, of course, and I guess every life is worth saving, both the good ones and the bad. If you save the bad, they have to think about what they’ve done. They’re not saved by death. That’s what I think. And maybe they can change. I believe most people can change. I know I did.

Christian didn’t say anything while he was lying on the beach. There was no room for any words amidst all the spitting and coughing from the water in his lungs. He looked
scared when he finally raised his head and looked at the kids standing around. He seemed small. Like the smallest person there. The smallest person in the world.

No one else said anything either. There was nothing more to say.

I looked at Kerstin. She seemed calm. She was going to be okay. She had already had a long talk with a woman police officer, or at least it seemed like a long talk. They’d been sitting in a police car, and the police officer gave her a hug when they stepped out of the car. I knew there were going to be more talks for Kerstin in the coming days—maybe a lot. They were going to take care of her. The police officer looked nice—old but nice. Maybe she was even over thirty.

Kerstin’s mom was coming in the morning, and Kerstin would be going home in a couple of days. Christian would be going to jail, or the nut house, or both. Anyway, he was going to be locked up for a very long time. I stopped thinking about him. He was out of my world now. He rode in the same police car as Matron. The cook went by ambulance because she had suffered smoke inhalation.

Matron looked back at me through the rear window. I couldn’t see any life left in her eyes, not even sadness or defeat. There was nothing there, just two black coals. She had said that no grown-up would believe me, but it wasn’t true.

Matron still seemed to believe her own lies even when the
police officers had surrounded her, like the samurai used to do when they surrounded the compound of a bad landlord.

“There he is!” she’d screamed pointing at me. “That boy started it all!”

They didn’t believe her, of course.

Maybe she still didn’t believe she was going to be put away for a century or more for what she’d done—and had tried to do.

The kids had won this one. I had explained some to the police when I called them earlier. “We’re not losing this one,” I’d said. “We’re not gonna die,” I’d said.

And the truth was all there to see in the light of the fire. It was the biggest in the world.

The moon is still casting its blue light over the castle. That’s where I’m sitting right now. We’re going to build it up again, stone by stone, tower by tower. It might not be possible right now, but one day we’re going to do it. We’ve promised each other.

It smells of smoke from the camp. I’m not sure any of this can be explained. Things happen, sometimes because they have to, sometimes even though they don’t have to. Sometimes it’s horrible. And the most horrible things are the most difficult to explain.

I can hear sounds in the night. I’m alone now. I still have my
katana
and my
wakizashi
with me. The bird is still screeching out over the lake. It can’t sleep either. It just flies around aimlessly and screeches. Soon the grebes will be up and so will the jackdaws and the gulls and the swans. Tomorrow, or today, I’m going to meet Kerstin. Maybe we’ll just talk. I don’t think she wants to practice
kenjutsu
—not right now, anyway. We’re going to eat a good breakfast, too, now that the kitchen no longer exists. Grilled perch maybe. That’s almost as good as the pieces of chocolate in the bag of Twist. They’re finally where they belong. In my stomach. And in Sausage’s and Kerstin’s and Janne’s, and everybody else’s. The bag of Twist went a long way. No matter how many pieces I handed out, there were still plenty left in the bag.

Janne isn’t here right now. He went into town with the explorers. The archer is going to ask his mom and dad if Janne can live with them instead of becoming a farmhand. My mother’s supposed to be coming soon like all the other kids’ parents or foster parents or whatever family they have. Mama’s not on the run anymore. The police managed to find her somewhere way up in Norrland. I’ll have to ask her what she was doing up there, if I have the energy. I don’t have any energy left. But I’ll be in touch sometime. From Japan maybe.