The van coasts along for a while and then comes to a halt. I look at Tone, thrown.
“What is it?” I ask.
She’s even paler than normal, her freckles glowing against her wan skin. Her small mouth looks like a dash across her face, and her hands are clenched tightly around the wheel.
“Tone?” I ask, quieter this time.
At first she says nothing, just sits there staring quietly into the trees.
“I just never thought I’d see it,” she says softly.
I put my hand on her arm. Under the lightweight fabric of her long-sleeved T-shirt, her muscles are coiled up tightly like springs.
“Would you like me to drive?” I ask.
By now the others have stopped, too. The second van is right behind us, with Max’s blue Volvo presumably bringing up the rear.
Tone lets go of the wheel and leans back slightly.
“Might be a good idea,” she says. And then, without looking at me, she undoes her seat belt, opens the door, and jumps out.
I follow her lead: I unfasten my seat belt, jump out of the van, and walk around to the other side. The outside air comes as a shock, clear and fresh and very cold. It cuts right through my thick sweater, even in the absence of any wind.
By the time I climb into the driver’s seat, Tone has already fastened her seat belt. I wait for her to say something, but nothing comes. So I cautiously put my foot on the gas, and we pull off down the half-overgrown road.
An almost solemn silence descends on the car. Once we’re swallowed up by the trees, which seem to stoop down over us on the narrow road, the sound of Tone’s voice in the sudden semidarkness makes me jump.
“Plus it’s only fitting that you should drive into the place. I mean, this is your project. You’re the one who wanted to come here. Right?”
I snatch a glance at her out of the corner of my eye, but try to keep my attention on maneuvering the unwieldy van over gnarled roots and stones.
“I guess,” I say.
It’s a good thing we went for the extra insurance with the rentals; this is definitely not the terrain these vans were made for. But we needed them to get all of our equipment up here, and the cross-country vehicles were so eye-wateringly expensive that just one day’s rental would have blown our budget several times over.
We drive on in silence. As the minutes pass and we go deeper and deeper into the forest, it hits me just how isolated this small community must have been. From what Grandma said, only some of the villagers had a car, so the train was their only real connection to civilization, and that only ran twice a week. If it’s taken us this long to get here in our vans, it must have been a completely different world when the only option for getting out of town was to walk this entire stretch.
We drive past a small track that winds off into the forest. At first I wonder if I’ve missed a turnoff, but then I realize it must be the road that led to the mine. I carry on ahead, inching over undergrowth and fallen branches. The van grumbles and moans, but battles on.
Just when I start to worry that we’ve gotten it wrong—that this was just a forest path, a walking trail, and that we’ll keep on driving further and further into the forest, until we get mired in the weight of our vans and equipment, our stupidity and ambition—the trees open up like a miracle before our eyes.
“There,” I whisper, more to myself than to Tone.
It buoys me enough to speed up a little, just a little, and I feel the blood pumping through my veins as the fiery April sky swells before us.
We exit the forest onto a steep bank. And there it is, at the bottom of a valley that isn’t so much a valley as a slight depression in the ground.
The church looms large over the small buildings on the eastern side of the village, its tall, proud spire topped by a slender cross that glistens, impossibly bright, in the light of the setting sun. The houses look almost as if they’ve sprouted from the church like little mushrooms, falling and moldering to form walls and silhouettes along the coppery-red river running down to the small woodland lake that gave the village its name: silvertjärn, silver tarn. It may well have been silver at one point, but now it sits, glossy and black, like an aged secret. The mining company’s report stated that the lake had never been searched, nor had they been able to find any information on its depth. For all we know it could stretch all the way down to the groundwater. Bottomless.
Almost instinctively I undo my seat belt, open the door, jump down onto the soft wet spring topsoil, and look out over the village. It’s completely silent. The only sounds to be heard are the low, ever-present hum of the engine, and the wind’s soft sighs as it sweeps down over the village.
I hear Tone clamber out of the driver’s door behind me. She doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even close the door behind her.
I exhale—a prayer, an incantation—a welcome:
“Silvertjärn.”
THEN
Elsa is on her way home from Agneta Lindberg’s house when she realizes something isn’t right.
The walk should take only fifteen minutes at a brisk pace, but rarely does Elsa make it home in under forty, there are so many people who want to stop for a chat.
Elsa has been visiting Agneta every week for the
