“Must be the original bridge, huh?” she says. “From before the state nationalized the mine and started expanding.”
“Exactly,” I agree, continuing toward the bridge. “They must have gotten it wrong in the report. This is the bridge that’s supposed to be safe.”
Tone raises her eyebrows.
“Are you sure?” she asks. “If it’s that old, it might not be stable. I don’t know how solid their constructions were back then—it was built for horses and farmers, not vans.”
For a moment I hesitate. But then I shake my head and tentatively put my foot on the gas.
“It’ll hold,” I say, driving onto the bridge.
For a few seconds I expect it to disappear from beneath us, that lurching, falling sensation. But it never comes. The bridge holds, and in a matter of seconds we’re on the other side.
Tone shakes her head, but I smile jubilantly. I knew it would hold. It wouldn’t dare try anything else.
I’ve fought to get here. Tooth and nail, for every little break. Nothing is going to stop me now.
The road runs straight up from the bridge to the main square, and we slowly make our ascent over heather and cobblestones.
On one side of the square there’s a building with a grizzled stone façade that claims to be the village hall, and on the other, an old, Villa Villekulla–type building that can only be the village school. Its doorframes gape, the doors hanging open.
The square is smaller than expected, cobbled and overgrown. Dry yellow blades of last summer’s grass poke up from between the cracks in the stones, and a few of the stone slabs have been completely overturned by particularly ambitious pine shoots that appear to have then succumbed to winter.
We drive into the middle of the square and stop. I put on the hand brake, and the engine goes quiet.
“Well,” Tone says as we both look up at the church. The last rays of light give in to the blue dusk, throwing even the church spire into shadow. I hear Emmy’s van pull up beside us and stop, and Max’s Volvo right behind.
“We’ve made it.”
I try to make a mental note of everything around me: that last buzz of sunshine, the artificial smell of spruce in the car, the feel of the cold air against my cheeks as I open the car door.
This is Silvertjärn.
This is where it all begins.
NOW
It’s colder than I thought it would be. What little warmth the pale April sun gave off doesn’t stick around long after darkness, and the chill of winter is still set deep underground, beaming up through the cobblestones to fill the night with the scent of frozen soil.
We have a little campfire going, and there’s something perversely cozy about the whole setup. At Emmy’s request, Robert has managed to hot-wire a small speaker to the generator we brought with us, which is now playing tinny dad rock. I don’t know if it was Emmy or Robert who chose the music, but it brings back old memories of cold student dorms and warm beer. Emmy’s head heavy against my shoulder. Tipsy, lighthearted pre-party chatter.
The camping mat I’m sitting on isn’t really thick enough, so I can feel the heather beneath my thighs, the bumps in every cobblestone. Tone is sitting to my left, poking quietly at her hastily heated-up lentil stew. To be safe, we’ve brought enough food to last us a week, but this is no culinary master class; both Emmy and Tone are vegetarians, so we’re mainly sticking to lentils and beans.
Max is sitting to my right, slightly closer than Tone, his shoulder brushing against mine. He’s thrown a thick, gray knitted sweater on over his shirt, which is slightly too long in the sleeves. He’s taken charge of the cooking, and every so often he gives the stew we’ve shoved on the fire a self-important little stir. Typical Max. He wants everything to be done just right, and he never seems to trust anyone else to know what that could possibly mean. That’s why he insisted on driving up in his own car instead of riding in one of the vans, and I suspect it’s also why he insisted on coming with us on the shoot, despite having no filmmaking experience at all.
We first got to know each other after I graduated, when we fell in with the same loose circle of friends in those confused, midtwenties years. He was a computer geek with a taste for indie pop and a never-ending supply of puns. And extremely pedantic, even then.
On the other hand, it’s served him well. That meticulous side of him has meant that, by twenty-nine, he’s been able to amass a small fortune from Blockchain transactions. It’s also meant that he could put enough money into The Lost Village for us to actually be able to float it.
I look at Max and smile, and he smiles right back at me, his boyish, slightly asymmetrical face lighting up in the flicker of the fire.
“What?” he asks, and I shake my head.
“I just can’t believe we’re finally here,” I say. “I can’t believe I’m in Silvertjärn.”
Out of the corner of my eye I see Emmy trail off midwhisper to Robert and look our way, so I’m only half listening when Max replies:
“Yeah, it’s pretty unreal.”
Emmy’s holding a hip flask, which she sips from while looking around her at the square. The stars above us are like a trail of shattered glass through the vaulted skies, the slim crescent moon is a sliver of an eye. The wind is no more than a whisper through the village, but it still manages to find its way in under my clothes. I shiver. Max makes to take off his warm sweater to offer it to me, but I shake my head before he gets the chance.
“I’m fine, it was
