out of her and had to be returned to the sea. Somewhere inside him was something similar. He called to it now, searched in the darkness of his own body.
Like the silvery flash of a fish in the net far below the surface, he caught sight of it. It was dispersed throughout his entire body, but he approached it from all directions at the same time and made it come together, gather into a formless, hovering mass that he could take hold of and localise with his consciousness. It was in his stomach now, circling around the insect down there that was floundering and thrashing about in a panic.
Everything around him was gone, was unreal. His strength and his thoughts were focused on one single thing: holding on to something intangible. As he moved towards Maja's body on the floor, his eyes closed, he had to divert a minute amount of his attention to his own movements, and the other thing threatened to slip from his grasp like the eel had slipped through his father's fingers.
He pushed away the eel, couldn't think about the eel, couldn't think about his own knees as they slid across the floor, couldn't hope or wish for anything as his fingers once again moved over Maja's body until he was sitting right in front of her. He still hadn't lost his grip, she was still there in the darkness in his hands, in his mind as he leaned forward and placed his mouth over hers.
He pushed it in front of him, up from his stomach, up through his throat, and he really could feel it like a little body, a stream of silky liquid sliding over his tongue, out through his lips and into her mouth.
He gasped and collapsed. Part of him had left his body. He didn't dare look. There was nothing more now. He closed his eyes, and there was only silence. Then he heard Maja's voice:
'Daddy, what's the matter?'
Slowly he opened his eyes. Maja was sitting there looking at him with a puzzled frown.
'Are you sad? Why have you got Bamse?'
He looked into her eyes. Her hazel eyes that were looking enquiringly at him. A large body shifted position, and a shudder ran through the world.
The rattle that emerged from his throat told him that he too was now capable of producing sound. Maja's concerned expression was on the point of tipping over into fear, because he was behaving so oddly. He swallowed down everything that wanted to come spurting out of him, pulled Bamse free and held him out to Maja.
'I brought him for you.'
Maja grabbed Bamse and hugged him, rocking back and forth. Anders could hear a faint rustling as her elbows moved across her knees, he leaned towards her and smelled the familiar scent of her shampoo. He stroked her cheek.
'Maja, sweetheart…'
Maja glanced up, looked at him. Another shudder passed through the house and he felt it as a powerful vibration in the floorboards. Maja screamed.
'What's that?'
'I think…' said Anders, taking her hand and getting to his feet,..1 think we have to go now.'
Maja was pulling away. 'Where are we going? I don't want to go!'
The house shook, and Anders saw the poker fall over next to the fireplace. Maja's piles of beads collapsed and mixed together, and she freed herself from his grasp so that she could start sorting them out again.
He bent down and picked her up. She kicked and protested in his arms, but he took no notice, he held her close to his body and ran through the house, towards the front door.
He was through the garden and running down towards the steamboat jetty when Maja relaxed in his arms and started to laugh.
'Gee up, Daddy!' she screamed, clicking her tongue.
He heard the sound of his own feet moving along the track, but he was no longer running on gravel. The gravel was disintegrating, collapsing in on itself, and the lilies-of-the-valley along the edge of the track wilted, were drawn down to the ground and disappeared.
He took the shortest route across the rocks, but they had become dark and slippery. The sky was dissolving like a cloud in a storm. Down by the jetty, two people in old-fashioned clothes stood screaming at each other as they looked around in terror.
Everything except the people was shrinking and imploding in slow motion, and as Anders ran out towards the boat with Maja in his arms, he saw for a fraction of a second what he was not permitted to see. What this world actually consisted of. He would have fallen on his face in terror or adoration if he hadn't-
'Gee up, Daddy!'
– if he hadn't had to get Maja away from here.
When he jumped down into the boat and placed Maja on the seat, he realised the run had taken no more than a few seconds. He had come out on to the rocks and thought that they looked slippery, and then he was past them without even noticing how it had happened.
He started the engine and just about managed to turn the boat, and then they had reached Gavasten. Distances were being drawn in on themselves, and everything was getting closer to everything else.
Gavasten was still there. The white lighthouse still extended up towards the sky, which was now as dark as night, but when Anders turned around towards Domaro, the island was only a few dozen metres away. The perspective had shifted. Domaro was the same size as when he had seen it from a kilometre away, but he understood that it was closer because he could see the people. Could see their waving arms, their running bodies.
And the height of Domaro continued to diminish. The island was sinking.
'Come on, sweetheart! Quick as you can!'
Maja crawled out of the prow and jumped down on to the rocky shore. She had seen what he could see, and was frightened. 'Where are we going?'
She lifted her arms up to him; he picked her up and ran towards the eastern side of the island.
The steps were still there, but when he got to the rocks on the eastern side, the sea too had begun to drop the mask, and was in the process of dissolving into a leaden mist with the flight of steps running down through it.
Anders put Maja down; she was hugging Bamse tightly. He crouched down and said as cheerfully as he could manage, 'Up you come. You can ride on my shoulders.'
Maja stuck her thumb in her mouth and nodded. Anders moved down from the top step, and with some difficulty Maja climbed on to his shoulders with her legs around his neck. She didn't want to take her thumb out of her mouth, or let go of Bamse. He held on to her knees tightly so that she wouldn't fall, and started the downward climb.
They were moving in their narrow corridor of air, and the downward climb became an upward climb without him even noticing. Somewhere along the way the steps changed direction and the mist around him turned into water. The sweat was pouring into his eyes; it didn't occur to him to ask it to stop. His legs were aching, his back, the back of his neck, but he clutched Maja's knees and kept on moving upwards, constantly afraid that he would trip and fall on the uneven steps.
His lungs were burning by the time he was standing on the rocks on the other Gavasten once again, and every gasping breath brought with it puffs of ingrained tobacco smoke, loosened during his flight. When he crouched down to let Maja slide off his shoulders, he fell over. Maja shrieked and tumbled sideways on to the rocks, but landed on Bamse.
She neither cried nor screamed. She sat there curled up with her eyes open wide and her thumb in her mouth, hugging Bamse. Anders reached out a feeble hand and touched her foot, as if to check that she was really there. She looked at him with those same wide eyes, but said nothing.
The inside of his body was blasted as if it had been in a furnace, he had used up the very last of his strength in running and climbing, and all he could do was lie there full length on the rocks, gasping for breath and looking at his terrified daughter.
It wasn't Anders who was shaking, it was the rock itself. A roaring rumble was rising from the very bowels of the earth, and it was growing in strength. He was lying with his ear to the ground, and he could hear it.
