The Lost Village by Sten, Camilla (reading women TXT) 📕

The square is completely still when we reach it. The April night tints the ruins of the cars dark blue, but they don’t feel threatening anymore. The last of the stench of burning metal has started to pass. Robert lays Tone down carefully on the ground. She is wet and her skin feels hot, but she looks better now than before. The water washed off the worst of the blood and dirt from her face.

I stroke her head gently. Her breaths are quiet and regular. I can’t tell if she’s asleep or unconscious, but her facial features are calm and flat.

“Will you stay with her?” I ask Robert, and he nods. He has twisted his nose back into place as well as he can, but it still looks awful. I don’t know how it’s going to heal.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“I thought I’d get some blankets and sheets from the school,” I say. “We can make a fire with them. Warm ourselves up.”

He nods. There’s not much more to be said.

I walk around the school to reach the fire escape, then climb it carefully. It creaks, but holds. It’s darker in there without the moonlight, but my eyes adjust and I find my way around.

I gather as many blankets and sheets as I can carry, and put them in a pile by the window. Then I step into the hall.

The white figure by the wall is almost invisible in the darkness, but I know where she is. I walk over and kneel down beside her, then pull back the sheet from her face.

She is cold and stiff. Her lips are frozen.

The tears well up in me again, and this time I let it all out. My sobs are quietly draining, not loud or dramatic, and I let them flow through my body until they ebb away. Then I just sit there for a few minutes, until my breathing calms, until my hands find their way into my lap and I can look at her, at her still, light face in the flimsy glow of the moonlight outside.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I’m so, so sorry. Forgive me.”

I take in a deep breath and let it out. The air tastes of dust and old sunshine.

Then I lean forward and kiss her on the forehead. Her skin is icy under my lips.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

I feel my way around her neck and find the delicate gold chain. The clasp is small, and it’s hard to open in the darkness. I have to use my nails to get hold of the small catch.

Then I fold the sheet back up over her head, so she can rest away from this world.

Once the fire starts to take, Tone curls up exhausted beside it and immediately falls asleep. Her chest rises and falls steadily under the blanket. At first I hardly dare take my eyes off her, but after a while I feel some of my tension release.

Robert is gazing deeply into the fire. I clear my throat.

“Robert,” I say quietly. He looks up at me.

“I have something,” I say. I reach into my pocket and fish out the necklace with the gold heart.

“I got it,” I say. “Up there.”

His eyes follow the swinging heart in the glow of the fire.

“Her mother should have it,” I say quietly. “I thought that … that you should give it to her.”

The words sting in my throat.

At first he says nothing. But then he holds out his hand, and I let the thin necklace chain wind down into his palm. He holds it carefully, like something fragile. It almost disappears in his big hand.

Robert looks at it for a long time. I wrap my arms around my knees and sit in silence.

He closes his hand.

“She regretted it, you know,” he says eventually. His voice is slightly claggy from the swelling in his nose. “She never stopped regretting it.”

I try to swallow the tears that well up in my throat. My voice doesn’t want to carry. I purse my lips and stare into the fire until my vision cracks into a thousand sparks.

“I know,” I say, biting my cheek hard.

Then I say quietly:

“She saved my life.”

The faint breeze blowing across the square is surprisingly warm, almost mild. Summer is on its way.

An unexpected sound from above makes me look up. It’s light, almost warbling. It takes me a few seconds to place it, but then I see the slight break in the school’s silhouette. There’s a bird sitting on one of the gutters.

“That’s the first bird I’ve seen since we got here,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

It twitters again. I wish I were the sort of person who could identify birds by their song alone. I have no idea what type this is.

But it’s beautiful.

EPILOGUE

I waited, but no one came.

I waited and waited, and I fed the child, but they never came back. So in the end I went to our church’s entrance, climbed, shaking, down into the tunnel, and followed the path in the darkness. I refused to take any torch or lamp with me. Only he was allowed to do that, for he was our lightbearer.

He told me to stay above ground with the child. He told me that she was important, and that I was to stay with her. That I was to wait for them, and that they would be back soon. When I reached the rubble I didn’t understand what it was; I thought I had gone the wrong way, accidentally climbed down into a different tunnel that had collapsed, and gotten myself lost. I started to panic. I thought I would die down there, alone in a secluded tunnel, with only the sound of dripping water for company.

But then I found my way back, and the exit was where it was supposed to be.

Four times I walked back and forth before I understood.

The days passed. Cars came driving into town, and I left