She looks me in the eye and smiles, a small, shaky smile.
“Is she home now?” she asks quietly.
Then her eyes roll back into her head and she loses consciousness.
THEN
The pastor raises his torch high above his head.
“Today we have taken a great step,” he says in his smooth, singsong voice. “We have taken one step toward enlightenment. Toward the kingdom of heaven.”
Elsa can’t see the congregation behind her, but she can sense them: their glittering, staring eyes; the scent of their anxiety and excitement.
The dark water shimmers behind him, languid and impenetrable, and the air smells of clay and minerals.
“God sees our sacrifices and endeavors. But He doesn’t only see those who live in His truth; He also sees those who have turned their faces from Him. He sees those who have strayed from the true way, those who have allowed themselves to be seduced by Satan’s lies.”
The pastor lowers his torch so that it is in line with Elsa’s eyes.
“He sees them, and He welcomes their return,” he says. “None of God’s children are strangers to Him. Like the prodigal son, one can always return to God’s embrace and be welcomed home. God is love.”
Elsa hears Dagny give a quiet sob beside her. She gropes around for her hand, and when she finds it she gives it a squeeze. She gets no response. It hangs soft and limp in Elsa’ fingers.
“Would you like to return to God?” he asks them, staring at Elsa. The torch’s flame dances in miniature in his eyes.
“Yes,” Dagny sobs sloppily. “Yes. Yes.”
Ingrid says nothing. She stares resolutely ahead, down into the water. Perhaps she, like Elsa, understands what awaits them. Her face is hard and determined. Her nose is swollen, but it isn’t bleeding anymore.
“God’s arms are open to you,” he says to them, but in a loud, vaulting voice, as though sermonizing. “You can return. You can be cleansed of your sins. You can rise anew, freed of your burdens and regrets.”
Dagny’s sobs intensify until her shoulders start to shake. Elsa lets go of her hand. She can’t bear to feel her trembling.
“Let us help them,” says Pastor Mattias, raising the torch once again so that the sharp shadows transform his lovely, androgynous features into the cruel vision of an avenging angel. “Let us restore them to our Lord. Let us cleanse them, and cleanse ourselves.”
“Amen,” Elsa hears behind her, nearly nine hundred whispering voices that spread in caresses along the cavern’s dripping walls and tunnels. “Amen.”
The pastor nods at the boys behind them. Heavy hands land on Elsa’s shoulders, forcing her roughly to her knees. The rocks scrape the skin on her knees and calves.
The knife he draws from his belt is nothing special; it’s a pocketknife, the type carried by every man and boy in the village. Its handle is black, and its blade glistens in the glare of the torch.
The pastor hands the torch to one of the multitude of people standing behind them and bends forward. He places his hand on Elsa’s head. It’s dry and warm.
“Don’t worry,” he says, “she isn’t here.” It’s a whisper, directed at Elsa alone. “She’s above ground with the baby. She won’t see this.”
Aina.
The gratitude that wells up in Elsa is perverse, a thick, sluggish delirium that mixes with the hatred she feels until she can no longer separate the two, until they become one in her body.
She looks him in the eye.
His dry lips kiss her forehead.
Dagny’s sobs have risen to a full-on cry, and she is begging and pleading:
“No, please, please, let me go, I didn’t mean to, I promise to never … never…”
Her voice turns into a howl, then a whimper, and Elsa doesn’t get to hear what it is that she will never do.
The pastor straightens up.
“I submit this soul to You, O Lord, for You to welcome her into Your Grace and cleanse her of the sin and blackness of the world,” he orates. The hand on Elsa’s head grows heavier. He digs his fingers into her hair and pulls her head back, exposing her neck.
He raises the knife, a silver sword in the glare of the flickering torch.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy—” he says, but his voice is drowned out by another sound.
A rumble above their heads. It runs through the rock above them like a peal of thunder: weakened structures that have been cut and hollowed out time and again; beams that have rotted and weakened and now start to give way; thousands of tons of bedrock, buckling under the strain of its own weight.
Some of the congregation scream—short, shocked cries. Elsa hears the sound of backing, stumbling feet. Most of them can’t move at all; there are too many of them, in too small a space. There is nowhere for them to go.
The pastor looks up again and opens his mouth.
“No,” he says quickly. A command, not a prayer.
Elsa closes her eyes.
As the world comes crashing down the short cries turn into panicked screams, but even those are drowned out by the bellows of the bedrock as it caves in and consumes them.
How funny, Elsa thinks, the second before the world dissolves around her and everything turns to nothing.
The muffled roar of the rock above them sounds just like Birgitta.
NOW
Robert carries Tone as we limp our way back toward the village. The night sky is in full bloom above us, and the bright, glowing half moon makes the kerosene lamp redundant. Just as well: the last of the kerosene has burnt out, and the wick fades to a thin glow before going out.
“I’ll leave it here,” I say quietly to Robert, who nods, and I put it down by the path. There it will stay, like a little marker. A dropped bread crumb showing where we’ve been.
We walk toward the square, as if in silent agreement. It was where we slept when we first arrived; we can spend one last night there.
