It was also the easiest way to get her to come along. For a long time she tried to argue her way out of being here at all, saying she wasn’t “essential.” And all of my arguments as to why, as coproducer, she was in fact crucial to the project had done nothing to change her mind. It was only when I took up the photography angle that she started to cave.
She is essential to the project. Not as a photographer, perhaps. But she’s part of the story, whether she wants to be or not. I just hope this trip helps her to see that.
I study the miniature village in pixels, then the silhouettes before me. The bright colors and sharp lines make it look like a painting.
The silence hangs compact. Not even radio signals make it out of here. They say it has something to do with the iron ore in the bedrock—some sort of magnetic field that jams the signals—but no one seems to know for sure. It doesn’t exactly ruin the mystique.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, tearing my gaze from the buildings below us.
Tone takes a deep breath of the cool, fresh air, and purses her lips.
“I don’t know,” she says, looking at me. Then she does another one of her half smiles. “I guess I just never thought I’d actually get here—that it would go this far. It hasn’t really hit me that we’re here yet.”
“But we are here.” I say, almost as much to myself as to her.
And now, finally, she smiles for real, showing her white, slightly crooked teeth, and puncturing some of the tension that’s hung between us since I woke up in the van.
“Yes,” she says, “of course we are. Because you, Alice, are a fucking bulldozer.”
I burst into laughter—ecstatic, euphoric—because even though my teeth are chattering with cold (my own fault for leaving my jacket in the van), we’re here now. We’re here. And all the planning, all those late nights, all those jobs I didn’t get and those shitty ones I had to take, they’ve finally paid off. We’re here. In Silvertjärn.
This is happening. The Lost Village is going to happen. The project that started as some sort of prepubescent fantasy is finally coming to life.
“Fuck me, what a place,” Emmy says behind me, cutting my laughter short.
I turn around. Emmy and the technician have both gotten out of their van and walked over to ours. Emmy’s leaning against the driver’s side of the van, her misshapen white T-shirt seemingly melting into the paintwork. Her henna-red hair is tied up in a messy ponytail, and the jeans she’s wearing are big enough to fit the guy standing next to her. Come to think of it, they might even belong to him. I’m not really clear what their relationship is, beyond the fact that they’ve worked together before, and that Emmy made a point of telling me that he’s doing this as a favor to her and normally charges three times what we can pay for these five days.
The technician—Robin? No, that’s not it, he introduced himself at our initial meeting and again at yesterday’s team briefing, but I’ve never been good with names—is right beside her. He’s a redhead in that way that makes you want to stare a little longer than you really should, with loads of golden freckles that crawl all over his face, down his neck and onto his body. If it weren’t for that he could probably be pretty hot—he’s tall and broad-shouldered—but the combination of his carrot top, indiscernible eyebrows and brown eyes make him far too squirrely to be taken seriously. He’s quiet, too: I don’t think I’ve heard him say more than four sentences in all, and that’s including both meetings.
“So what’s the plan?” Emmy asks, her eyes on me. I clear my throat.
“We set up camp in the main square,” I say. “That’ll be a good base, as it’s right in the center of the village. We should be able to get there—it’s on the other side of the river, but it said that the bridges are still stable enough for cars.”
“Where did it say that?” Emmy asks, her eyebrows raised. “I thought there weren’t any good maps of Silvertjärn?”
I hear another car door open further away. It must be Max, wondering why we’ve stopped.
“In the report,” I say, trying to subdue a twinge of irritation.
You knew what you were letting yourself in for when you asked her to come on board, I try to tell myself.
“The report the mining company made in the late nineties, when they came to survey the land,” I clarify. “There’s a copy of it in the information packs you all have.”
“And you’re completely sure that information still stands? I mean, it’s twenty years old. Just because the bridges were safe then doesn’t mean they are now.”
“We’ll drive down and take a look,” I answer sharply. “If they don’t look safe then we’ll make a new plan.”
I see Max round the second van.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“Nothing!” I say.
Emmy glances over her shoulder, but seems to dismiss Max as soon as she’s registered his presence.
Max’s blond hair is flopping down over his forehead, and one side of his collar is standing on end. I’ve known him since back when he used to wear scruffy T-shirts with the names of obscure bands no one except him knew. And even though nowadays he’s successful enough to be here as a project backer—wearing shirts that cost more than my entire wardrobe, at that—he still looks like he’d be more comfortable in those faded old T-shirts.
Tone looks up at the sky.
“We should probably get a move on,” she says, and it’s then I realize that darkness has started to fall.
“Down the bank,” I say
