joy. There’s something remarkably arousing about the cool sea air against her skin and the warmth that simultaneously arises from the earth.
Bjorn looks at her and mumbles that he’s not sexist, but he does want to just look at her for another second. She’s tall; her arms are muscular yet still have a soft roundness to them. Her narrow waist and sinewy thighs make her look like a playful ancient goddess.
Bjorn’s hands shake as he pulls off his T-shirt and his flower-patterned swimming trunks. He’s younger than she is. His body is still boyish, almost hairless.
“Now I want to look at you,” she says.
He blushes and walks over to her with a smile.
“So I can’t look at you?”
He shakes his head and hides his face in her neck and hair.
They begin to kiss standing still. They hold each other tightly. Penelope is so happy she has to force a huge grin from her face so that she can keep kissing. She feels Bjorn’s warm tongue in her mouth, his erection, his heart beating faster and faster. They find a spot between the tufts of grass and stretch out. With his tongue he searches for her breasts and their brown nipples. He kisses her stomach, he opens her thighs. As he looks at her, it strikes him that their bodies have begun to glow in the evening sun, as if illuminated. Everything now is gentle. She’s wet and swollen as he licks her slowly and softly until she has to move his head away. She whispers to him, pulls him to her, steers him with her hand until he slides inside her. He’s breathing heavily into her ear and she stares straight up at the rosy sky.
Afterward, she stands up, naked in the warm grass, and arches toward the sky. She takes a few steps and peers between the trees.
“What is it?” Bjorn asks, his voice thick.
She looks back at him, sitting naked on the ground and smiling up at her.
“You’ve burned your shoulders.”
“Happens every year.”
He gently touches the pink spots.
“Let’s go back-I’m hungry,” she says.
“Let me swim for a bit.”
She pulls her bikini bottom and shorts back on, puts on her sneakers, then stands with her bikini top in her hand. She allows her gaze to wander over his hairless chest, his strong arms, the tattoo on his shoulder, his careless sunburn… and his light, playful look.
“Next time, you’re on the bottom,” she says.
“Next time,” he repeats cheerfully. “You’re stuck on me-I knew it!”
She laughs and waves at him dismissively. She hears him whistle to himself as she walks through the forest toward the tiny, steep beach where they’ve anchored.
She stops for a moment to put on her bikini top before she continues down to the boat.
On board, Penelope wonders whether Viola is still sleeping in the aft cabin. She thinks she should start a pot of fresh potatoes and some crowns of dill and then wash up and change for the evening. Strangely, the deck near the stern is totally damp as if from a rain shower. Viola must have swabbed the deck for some reason. The boat feels different somehow. Penelope can’t say what it is, but all at once she has goose bumps. The birds suddenly stop singing and everything is silent. Penelope is now aware of every one of her movements. She walks down the stairs. The door is open to the guest cabin and the lamp is lit, but Viola is not there. Penelope notices her hand shakes as she knocks on the door to the tiny toilet. She peers inside and returns to the deck. Looking ashore, she can see Bjorn walking down to the water. She waves to him, but he’s not looking her way.
Penelope opens the glass doors to the salon.
“Viola?” she calls softly.
She goes down to the galley, takes out a pot, puts it on the element, and returns to the search. She peers into the large bathroom, then the main cabin where she sleeps with Bjorn. Looking around in the dark cabin, at first she thinks that she sees herself in a mirror.
Viola is sitting on the edge of the bed, her hand resting on the pink pillow from the Salvation Army.
“What are you doing in here?”
As Penelope hears her own voice, she’s also realizing that nothing is as it should be. Viola’s face is cloudy white and wet; her hair hangs down in damp streams.
Penelope takes Viola’s face in her hands. She moans softly, then screams right into her sister’s face, “Viola? What’s wrong? Viola! ”
But she already understands what’s out of place and what’s wrong. Her sister is not breathing, her sister’s skin is not giving off warmth. There is nothing left of Viola. The light of life has been snuffed out.
The narrow room tightens around Penelope. Her voice is a stranger’s. She wails and stumbles backward, knocking her shoulder hard on the doorpost as she turns to run up the stairs.
Up on the aft deck, she gulps down air as if she’s suffocating. She glances about, ice-cold terror filling her bones. One hundred meters away on the beach, she spots a man in black. Somehow Penelope understands how things fit together. She knows this is the man who was underneath the bridge in the military inflatable. This was the man who had his back turned when she passed by. And she knows this is the man who killed Viola-and is not finished.
From the beach, the man waves to Bjorn, who’s now swimming twenty meters from shore. He’s yelling something to Bjorn. Penelope rushes to the steering console and rummages in the tool drawer. She finds a Mora knife and races back to the stern.
She sees Bjorn’s slow swimming strokes and the water rings around him. He’s looking at the man in confusion. The man is waving, motioning for him to come over. Bjorn smiles an uncertain smile and begins to swim toward land.
“Bjorn!” Penelope screams as loud as she can. “Swim to sea!”
The man on the beach turns toward her and begins to run toward the boat. Penelope cuts off the rope, slips on the wet stern deck, leaps back up, and runs to the steering console and starts the motor. Without looking around, she raises the anchor and engages the gear in reverse at the same time.
Bjorn must have heard her, because he turns away from land and starts to swim toward the boat instead. As Penelope steers in his direction, the man in black changes course and starts running toward the other side of the island. Intuitively, she knows that’s where he’s pulled his inflatable ashore, at the northern inlet.
And she knows without a doubt that there is no possible way for them to speed away from it.
Motor rumbling, she steers toward Bjorn, and as she gets closer, she slows and stretches a boat hook toward him. The water is so cold, and he looks exhausted and so frightened. His head keeps bobbing under the surface. She jabs the boat hook his way and accidentally strikes his forehead. He starts to bleed.
“Hold on to it!” Penelope cries out.
The black inflatable is rounding the island. She can clearly hear the roar of its motor. Bjorn grimaces in pain, but after several attempts, he finally manages to wrap his elbow around the boat hook, and Penelope hauls him as quickly as she can to the swimming platform. He reaches the edge and holds on. She lets go of the boat hook and it drops into the water and drifts away.
“Viola is dead!” she screams, and hears the panic and despair in her own voice.
As soon as Bjorn grabs the ladder tight she runs back to the steering console and hits the gas.
He climbs over the railing and she hears him yell that she should steer straight across to the island of Orno and its spit.
She can hear the rubber boat draw closer. She turns in a tight curve and the boat thuds heavily underneath the hull.
Penelope can’t speak, she can only whimper. “That man killed Viola!”
“Watch out for the rocks!” Bjorn warns through chattering teeth.
The inflatable has rounded Stora Kastskar and is now picking up speed on the smooth open water.
Blood runs down Bjorn’s face.
They are swiftly reaching the large island. Bjorn turns to see that the rubber boat is now only three hundred meters behind.
“Head for the dock!”
