A note…

“Editing is for December.” (NaNoWriMo proverb)

I know I make lots of mistakes. Part from needing to be Englishified, there are a lot of inconsistency in the manuscript how numbers are written, and of course other embarrasing errors.

There are small parts missing, they will (=might) be added.

If you read my Novel, just remember it’s at draft level. Then hope it will ever become something different.

Orphaned novel…

I guess it happens. I felt it didn’t deserved the attention to be fixed up and edited.

See you next Nano!

November is over. Yay. Kinda.

Copyright stuff

Insentient dark by Nathel Moonstone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Sweden License.

Part one

The fjord lay still, dark and cold. She couldn’t see the mountains on the other side, but she knew they were there. She had seen them many times. Some days she felt it was too many times. They were on her side of the fjord too, they were everywhere. The repetition made her awkwardly nauseated and claustrophobic sometimes. Yet, she loved them. She couldn’t live without them. Quite majestic they were. Like they were sculptured, hinting a creator. Starting with a quiet slope, escalating to something resembling huge and steep steps and ending with a rather flat top. There was no deeper meaning, everything was a result of tectonic movements and erosion. They had been forming for millions of years. But they meant home.

The light from Tilde’s flashlight flickered and died. She grabbed the crank and spun it to recharge the battery. She let a sigh of weariness slip and then she let the light play over the fjord again. The dog had sneaked up on her, and now sniffed her hand. Broad, brown nose, somewhat dry and cracked from the cold. She stroke the dog on her head and back, then turned around and went inside. There was really no point of being outside in the dark. The short day of dusk had already passed. But she needed to feel she could still be out there, that she still belonged and was allowed in the world, despite the dark.

Her nose had been cleared by the arctic fresh air outside, so she actually sensed the smell inside the house. Fire, coal, horse. She debated with herself, start the generator and charge the battery or do it tomorrow. Light a candle and read and cook over the open flame in the fireplace. How many hours til sleep now? Five, maybe, if she went to bed early. She shook her head and went back outside, better get the generator going. Would be a while until the battery was charged anyway. Tilde started scooping coal in the faint light from the flashlight placed on a rock in front of her, she was getting warm instead of chilly, tried to focus on what she was doing rather than on her feelings and she restarted the burner. Good job. Finally she could get some rest.

There was a single candle lit. Candles are valuable. Especially if you can’t get more of them. Tilde had climbed into the box stall. There was no door into the stall from the only room in the house, but she had climbed the stone wall more than once. She knew exactly what rock to put her foot on to to get a good swing over the edge. She leaned against the bumpy wall, exchanging comfort for support and watched Solfagur. He was a pretty horse, a sorrel Icelandic with the same red color of the coat and mane. He had a few white hairs on his forehead, else was he bright, soft red. The cold had made him grow a thick, fuzzy coat and the mane had grown long and wild.

She had asked if he wanted to come out with her, he was no chicken by any means, but he had preferred not to enter the dark outside. The dog, Chinook, had come with her, of course. She followed Tilde at most times, at least she didn’t want her human out of her sight. The dog was now asleep on the only rug in the house. Tilde knew she should pick up a brush and groom the horse, but she was tired. The hard work of living where she did made her tired of course, as did the lack of daylight. But she had worked up some extra energy to take care of things, just to have it wiped out by the bad news.

She was stuck. Stuck in a place most people should refer to as ”Nowhere”. A more correct description would be at Billefjorden, on Svalbard. 78°34′ north with a distance of 42 kilometers from Longyearbyen and 16 kilometers from Pyramiden.  If it had been somewhere else, forty-or-so kilometers would have meant nothing. A half an hour drive, maybe. Out here, with no roads, and now the days disappearing into nothing, the distance seemed enormous. It actually was enormous.  To reach Longyearbyen she would have to round Billefjorden, Tempelfjorden and Adventfjorden following the coastline. Crossing the fjords would be possible later on in the winter on the ice, and shortcutting over the mountains would be doable with a snowmobile. People actually went on rather long trips that way. She had no snowmobile. It didn’t matter. She still had to take the horse with her. Crossing the mountains by horse would be deadly. Traveling the safer route would be 160 kilometers, and still include crossing a glacier and very dangerous ground. She thought, this is how big the world really IS, without cheating using cars and airplanes.

She had to let the facts sink in. Then try to take some kind of decision on what to do. She left the box stall. She flipped the horse feed box open and the horses ears shot forwards, and she let him eat a scoop of pelleted food. Poor thing. Alone in the Arctic with no fields and no horse friends. Tilde felt a sting of guilt. She pushed it away by going outside quickly to get two buckets of snow that she put inside to melt. At least Solfagur, or Solo for short, would have water. She turned on the power and blew out the candle and seeing the light on stable, she started up the laptop.
___

In 2013, Tilde had started to miss Svalbard. The barren, not-so-barren very special countryside with the rare little flowers, the bright green scattered patches of grass, the all inclusive freedom and the undefined simplicity that spoke to her so much. She had been there as a tourist twice, and at once gotten the feeling of ”I belong here”. She knew she would. She knew she would belong even before even setting foot there. It was quite odd.

In 2009, something remarkable happened, something she actually didn’t expect, as her friend and she won the horse races. She didn’t have any hunches, neither did the friend, and they were just expecting the same old same when all the seven horses they bet on, won, and quite easily. There was already a plan for this, there had been for years, if they won they would get a small farm.

Two years later, at the age of 42, she had moved to the farm permanently. It was her dream life. Of course there were the problems there always had been, but the setting was much nicer, the place they had picked was perfect, not too expensive, since they actually didn’t win all that much, in the woods just as she liked it, in the Swedish north, but not so far north there wasn’t anything growing. The farm had a small main building, two even smaller buildings of which she had made hers, a stable for four horses and a shelter for small animals. All painted red with white details. She never thought she would leave there.

They survived December 2012. The world didn’t end. The Californian earthquake in October had really had people stirred up, but then everything had calmed down. Tilde was quite annoyed. She hadn’t expected the world to totally end, not at all, but she had hoped for a big shift. Something to shake up people, change things, make her farm life ideal for the new world instead of looking rather plain.

She had been horseback riding, the horse was a 24 year old brown former trotter, when she suddenly realized she wanted to do something different, it was as if the good life made her want even more. She knew inside she would get used to this life and refuse to let it go, if she didn’t do something. She had already spent more than ten years in a city she didn’t really care for much, and it had taken her two years to get used to the idea of actually moving to the farm on a permanent basis. She had almost counted on the 2012 crisis to be the thing that pushed her forward in her life.

“I actually miss Svalbard so much,” she had said to herself, the thought had just appeared in her head as from nowhere. She had, deep down, always felt she had given up on that dream when she settled on the farm. Now she realized it didn’t have to be either or. She could have it all.

 She had shared her thought with the friend over a cup of tea that night.

“So you move north to be here, and it’s not north enough?” her friend said, which was very expected.

“Yup,” Tilde answered, as it was her way to express a strong will, without any need for excuses.

“I will still live here,” she said, spilling some tea and wiping it up with her sleeve.

“I will go there and spend some time in the summer, when the sun is up all the time. I will come back and live here for the rest of the time. It’s not like I can’t afford it. I’ve made an estimate, and my part of the rest of the winnings will be enough for air fares and to build a house.”

“We don’t have THAT much money left…” the friend said just to get a quick reply:

“I will of course build my own house. From stones at the site. That part will cost nothing.”

___

One week of November 2014 had passed. And she was stuck. She watched the laptop battery charge, twenty-four percent, thirty-eight percent, forty-three percent… She pulled out the cord and turned off the light. The generator battery would charge much faster if she didn’t start draining it as it charged. She knew its rhythm like she knew her computer, a strange symbiosis with the machines. She let the laptop connect to the satellite and let the Trillian auto connect. At once, Eva-Lotta, her friend, or Lottis as Tilde preferred to call her, messaged her.

“WTH??? Are you online? Where are you?”

Tilde thought for a moment. She hadn’t even figured out what to tell Lottis.

“I’m still here. The ferry was canceled.”

She hit enter. She looked at the words. Then continued.

“IT WAS FREAKING CANCELED!!!!! Ahhhh!!!”

Better. That actually started up a feeling she thought she should have. Irritation. A bit of anger. Half pretend dejection.

“How will you get to the airport in Longyearbyen?”

“I don’t know. I won’t, I guess.”

“Can you get away from there by any means?”

“Well, yea. I could probably go on the Mi-8 helicopter, that delivers food to Pyramiden, if I could get to Pyramiden.”

“Can you?”

Could she? Chinook woke up and looked at Tilde. Then she put her white and reddish brown head back on her front paws and sighed delighted as she went back to sleep. Tilde got up and grabbed a cup and poured some vodka into it. She would be OK now. Warmer. Relaxed. Different.

“Are you still here?”

“Yeah. And yeah I can ride to Pyramiden. I doubt they will take care of Solo until next spring, though.”

“Will you at least ask them?”

“You could bring some horse feed with you. And you could order more to have delivered with the helicopter.”

Lottis knew Tilde. She knew Tilde would actually try to mysteriously sabotage her own chances of getting back to Sweden, so she already offered a solution. Tilde felt the idea popping up in her head.

“If I can get there, I could as well get there to pick up own supplies to last me through the winter.”

“Ahhhh. NO!”

Tilde felt the effect of the vodka. This wasn’t bad. For having the internal want for stability and sameness in her life, she handled abrupt changes and emergencies really well. Better than most.

“I will get back when the Russians start going there with their new tugboat.”

“When is that?”

She wanted to be vague on that. May, probably, when the ice was finally gone. It took a long time for it to settle, the fjord would be OK for boating for several months more. But the tourists stopped going at the end of October. The plan had been to rent a spot on the tugboat for herself, Solo and Chinook to go to Longyearbyen. She already had a promise that Solo could stay in the stable in Longyearbyen during the winter, if they could borrow him to carry around tourists in June. It sounded like a good deal. Chinook and she would fly to Sweden.

Then the tugboat actually sank in a strange accident in Adventfjorden. No one died, but the crew suffered hypothermia and had to recover in hospital. So the Russians had rented the tourist ferry, Polargirl 2, to deliver food and supplies twice. The second time would have been tomorrow. She was promised to be able to go on it. Before she started packing, she checked her email. No reason was given for canceling the ferry. Just a ”Sorry for bringing you bad news”.

“March. Or April.”

“That is a while…”

“Yeah. But if we start going really crazy out here we can go to Pyramiden as soon as there is some daylight and stay with the people there.”

“Can’t you do it NOW?”

“No. They would drive me nuts. Especially Dmitri.”

“Yes, him. You told me about him. Does he still believe the Russians will come and save ‘his’ town?”

“Yeah. His grandiose delusions are so extreme.”

“Yes, I understand. He sounds like my mom.”

Tilde laughed out loud to herself. She had needed to laugh for a long while, even if it was a rather short and more of a mean giggle.

She looked at the clock. It was only seven in the evening. It felt like much later. Felt like night.

She needed a hot meal. She had had some tea in the morning, and later on in the day she had munched on home made hard tack and instant soup. She knew pretty well what food she had left, but didn’t feel much like making any calculations to learn how long it actually would last. She would do that later. So what would dinner be? Tilde felt an inkling of food fatigue, what happens when you haven’t had much variation or choice for a while. Spaghetti maybe. Would be a good choice.

She turned on the light again, one single lamp hanging from the roof. She wondered if there would be any benefit from turning on the lights in the small greenhouse compartment. Since she was going to leave for the winter, she had eaten basically all of her small garden, but there was a row of radishes left next to the wall. No, they needed no extra light. They would be OK. She wondered if she should sow the rest of the seeds. That would probably be a good idea. She would do that if she felt bored.

Bored, now that would be a novel idea. No, she most have meant the need to have accomplished something. She didn’t get bored. There were always things that needed to get done. There were always new ideas, new little projects to do. Part from that, there were still books to read, paper to write on, shortwave radio to listen to and the computer. No need to be bored with the world at your feet. People to chat with, read the news, post on forums, read up about exciting, new things. Maybe even download some new music. She hadn’t even used her MP3 player at all for the last few months.

She had tried to get used to the idea of leaving for the winter. In a way she really wanted to. Just relax, have food made for you some days or just microwave something from the freezer, be able to take a hot shower, do laundry in a washer and meet the cat and the young horses, just let the furnaces deal with the heating on their own, just have electricity and yes of course, seeing her friend again. Right now, it was the hot shower she missed the most.

On the other hand, she wasn’t really done with here this time. Maybe it was just habit. The need for sameness. But she had almost made her mind settle with the idea of leaving. And now she wasn’t leaving. And she had to understand and process that. Spaghetti sounded great actually, after all.

She poured the few liters of water that was all that remained of the snow into the other bucket. She took enough water too cook the spaghetti from the horse bucket, she had stopped caring what would have been seen as clean or not, and put the pan on the top of the coal stove. Put a lid on. Pulled out a package of spaghetti and placed it on the counter. Solo looked at her. She went up to him and let him rub his head against her chest.

“You are such a pretty horse!” she said as she hugged his head with one arm and stroke his nose with the other hand.

He wanted the water, so she lifted the bucket over the wall, climbing up, leaning over and safely placed the bucket on his side. He started to drink, and didn’t finish until there was so more water. Tilde took both buckets and went out and refilled them with snow.

Oh, yeah, the bigger battery for the computer needed to get charged. She hadn’t cared much about that lately, just ran on the smaller battery. But if something happened, that would last her only forty minutes. She shook her head. She had taken these things very seriously for quite a long time. She seemed to lack fear in some areas. She said goodbye to her friend and shut down the computer. She put the other battery in. The water just started to boil so she grabbed a big bunch of spaghetti straws and snapped it into half and put the spaghetti to cook.

___

It’s just a shame some things take such a long while. Things would be really different if we had all the facts from the start. Or at least a few years before we actually gain some knowledge. Learning takes time, it takes way too long. Just one little insight can take months and years to form in our subconscious and get strong enough to break through the needs and wants, the fears, the concepts to finally reach “us”, the masters of our minds. It’s like a tip of an iceberg, who thinks it’s all there is, because it can say ”I am”. What it doesn’t know is that it’s just a part of something much bigger. It shouldn’t be embarrassed about that fact. It should appreciate the nameless creature within, that puts things on the right shelves in their enormous inner library, that make connections and draws conclusions while the ”I am” is thinking of something totally different, that comes up with ideas, that creates and that sucks up every impression like a sponge and decides which ones are important enough to reach the ”I am”, according to patterns established a long time ago. Without it we couldn’t tell a tree from the sky or disconnect us from the stream of people at the subway station. We would see and know every detail of their faces, clothes, hairstyles, would see every crack in the floor, every brick in the wall. The world would be unbearable.

It’s not anything magical and it’s not an ”id” for certain. It doesn’t bubble with conflicts of drives and it will only use symbols if you tell it to. It handles conflicting information every day, it’s quite used to that. It tries to give you a smooth, doctored picture of what is really going on. You could say it lies to us. It does that all the time.

Sometimes it holds back information you really wanted, things that would have made you understand better. Understand a situation, others, yourself… But it is a bit too efficient to allow those things. It wasn’t made for those things. It was meant to take you through the day and into the next. Still, with enough information it can give you what you wanted, some extra input made it flip the scale to claim what was in line with the system now is not, and you must change your mind. The system has changed and became more complete.

___

Tilde put more coal in the oven after she removed the pan and let the hot water seep into a large bowl. She looked into the flames for a short moment, getting a strange feeling of being thrown into the present. Like being the very edge of a line that is been drawn. It was a very unpleasant feeling. It felt unsheltered, too clear, too bright. She shrugged a little and went back to focus on the food. Food could be any day, every day, a more benign broad flow of time, a time that seemed to go nowhere, be everywhere and around. Dried soy for the pasta, dehydrated onions, spices and a little oil.

She went back to the armchair and the computer. She opened the world again and she refocused. Things felt very right now. The dysphoria was gone, the feeling of being well and being home was back. Food helped. And vodka. She actually smiled.

A few hours later she did her night routine. It was pretty much the same every day. Feed and give water to the horse, feed and give water to the dog, take medication, crank the flashlight, let the dog out for a pee, take the buckets out, visit the outhouse, refill the buckets with snow away from the dog, go back inside and take medication. She didn’t call on the dog this time, because the dog was right beside her. But she liked calling on the dog: “Chinook! Chiiinooook!” Liked the sound of her voice in the silence or whispers of the ice cold wind. It made her feel like a righteous owner of that spot on the planet.

She had started to pull out the bed to sleep in front of the stove. It made more sense than sleeping next to the cold wall, even if it meant she had to put it away every morning. It was made from two sections of styrofoam with a mattress on top. It kept the cold from the ground away. She got her pyjamas on, a once white cotton shirt, a grey fleece shirt with ragged sleeves, a pair of white long johns and fleece pants.

She had taken a mental note of the outside temperature and went to look at the inside thermometer. She wrote the figures down in a notebook and made a short note about the weather. “-15°C/+14°C, cloudy”. She didn’t even know why she did that. If she had lived a hundred years earlier it would have made sense. Now everything of significance was measured and recorded by computers. But she couldn’t stop doing it.

She knew the sleep medication would kick in after a while, give her a fuzzy feeling which made her feel she already did. Chinook left her rug to lie down beside Tilde. She let her owner scratch her chin and chest. Her coat was coarse and a bit long, Tilde played with it, to really feel it between her fingers. She smelled her fingers and then the dogs head.

“You smell nice. You smell like a dog,” she mumbled.

The dog seemed happy with sleeping next to her human. They shared a bed a lot. Chinook knew when Tilde had finished tucking herself in, then she lay down on the covers. It was much too warm for her to want to lie beneath them for long.

___

The first two years on the farm had started with moving out a little of this and that. Things you need in a summer home. Pots, pans, silverware, kerosene lamps in case of a power outage, extra clothes, rubber boots, a battery radio and some oil paint, brushes and canvasses. Because there were less than two years left until the End of the world, as we know it, Lottis pushing the idea, they started to stock up on cans of food, pasta, oats, flour, dried beans and lentils, animal feed, soap, toilet paper, kerosene and even ordered washable menstrual pads online. One walk in closet looking room in one on the smaller houses was filled with all those things. Tilde didn’t oppose to the idea, actually it was her that had first started talking about those things. But things would work much better if Lottis thought she was somehow the smart one, pride would boost her energy.

Since Tilde didn’t work, she had started to live on the farm more and more. She started growing some vegetables and planting fruit trees. They already had one old apple tree and a plum tree, but they looked old. They could in fact had been very old, since two of the three houses for living were from the late 1800’s. Lottis never had much belongings, Tilde on the other hand seemed to hoard a lot of things, mostly unusable items and paper. Lot of paper. Some of it were journals, some were poems, some of it was from school, there were a lot of drawings and paintings.

When she was forced to sort and pack it, she couldn’t help thinking back on the times they had been produced. Late teen years, early adult years (she got rid of a lot of junk, mostly papers other students had written), early teen years, second and third grade, her late twenties and some few things from when she must have been around eleven. She felt like her head was going to explode. She just had so many memories, and every item started new associations and a new cascade of memories. Did all people feel like this? She was in her early forties. How could people stand growing older and have to just deal with the overload of memories?

She ended up with five big boxes of paper. She was happy everything was sorted. She had thought about doing that many times but never started. The job had seemed too much. This was her life. Every paper was a part of her, of her own mind, personality and life. She knew it wasn’t likely she would look at them too often or at all. But still, they needed to be there.

Finally they moved in for real. Tilde, Lottis and Vante, the cat. Life was pretty good. Tilde got her disability money and Lottis, that had a strange, autoimmune liver disease that had a short flare, was given a fifty per cent deal where she was given half a pension and was supposed to work around four hours a day. Since she had worked a lot more than Tilde and the pension was based on that, her income wasn’t much lower already. Together they had more than enough to feed themselves and pursue their interests. And they still had some of that money in the bank. The only thing else than food, which wasn’t a big bill since they bought cheap groceries and cooked most everything from scratch and the free food from the garden they had, was paying the electric bill, their Internet provider, insurances and property tax.

They even managed to make some money. They sold some artwork and some wood from their pine tree forest. Tilde suggested they finally got some horses since they both liked them. Lottis had grown up with a wild, crazy pony. Tilde had never had anything like that and was a bit envious. They could both ride, even if they were untrained and would need a lot of practice to regain their former ability.

“What kind of horse do you want?” had Lottis asked.

“I want a Nordsvensk draft horse. You know I always liked them.”

Lottis wanted a Pinto horse. Neither of them got what they planned.

After reading a lot of ads, Lottis had found golden horse, tall as a house, with white mane. The gelding was seven years old, not chunky, not slender. He was a gentle giant, still a very alert horse.

Tilde, on the other hand, had found an old trotter she felt sorry for. The mare was already twenty-two years old, unwanted, given away to anyone that could promise her “A good life until the end”. The horse was quite content, calm and somewhat boring. She was dark brown, looking exactly like all the other trotters the horse race industry so loved to mass produce. Tilde was probably just cheap. Free horse. Or maybe she felt she needed to do a good deed.

Then came three goats, all female. Black and white miniature goats. The plan was to let them have new babies and start producing milk again, but not now, in the future. Tilde spent a lot of time playing with the goats and make up new silly goat games to play. She hid and the goat came looking for her. She chased the goats. She played dead. Then the goats always stopped doing what other mischief they were up to, and came to sniff her. They kept the weeds and unwanted brushes away. They were great as long as fruit trees and vegetables could be protected. They didn’t have too many incidents though, less than their fair share, since the goats were escaping several times a month.

Lottis managed to get a job in the town, a forty minute drive that she usually made in twenty. She worked three days a week in a church, helping out with this and that. Tilde was happy just staying on the farm that was embedded in forest, or riding around on her ancient mare. Lottis needed to see more people, so she was happy to be working again. She liked the job itself too. And it brought more money in. For a while there it had looked like they would need to use some of their savings as the horses had increased their expenses.

They had three good fields for horses to grace on. They only used two, shifting between them to go easy on the grass. Tilde could be quite an opportunist and suggested they get more horses. Lottis had protested, the work load would be a bit much. Tilde showed her a website that was dedicated to save Icelandic foals from slaughter. Their mothers were only made pregnant to produce some hormone that the business wanted, and drained blood from the horses to get it. After the foal was weaned, the mare would stop producing it and be made pregnant again. The foals were rather cheap, the shipping of course would cost a bit.

“Listen. They can be outside almost year around. They are on Iceland. They only eat hay, no grains. They only need to be handled now and then. They can basically raise themselves. When they are three, we break them in and sell them. Icelandic horses that age are really, really expensive. It will be a good profit.”

“Will these be the the last animals?”

Lottis looked quizzical. She knew Tilde always tried to get more pets than she could take care of.

“Just these. And a dog.”

It was settled.

They spent some time looking at the web page, offering the foals. There were twenty-something of them. On most pictures they were standing beside their mom. There was one bay and one palomino, most of the others were different shades of dun. Lottis thought they all looked cute. She said she would be happy having any of them. And they weren’t keepers anyway. Tilde picked three of them, two mares, a grulla named Bikkja meaning witch, a dark brown dun called Grembla, meaning trouble, and a dark brown stallion with a silver mane, called Hjalti. Most Icelandic horses are named after their looks or temperament.

Tilde means powerful battler. She was named that after a great grandmother. Actually she was named Tilde Anneli, with the intention to be called Anneli which she was until the age of nineteen, when she demanded to be called Tilde. She hated the name Anneli. It’s a name without a clear meaning. It was a name they gave every tenth girl by the time of her birth, people seemed afraid of giving their children any name being even slightly unusual. This resulted in a name fatigue, and most people born at the end of the 60’s or in the seventies share names with each other but with no one else. However, it seemed OK to give the child a second name from an older generation. Tilde was glad she had been given a name like that. Eva-Lotta had the exact same fate, people could guess what generation she was, just by the name. She didn’t seem to care much though.

The girls rented a horse trailer and went on a rather long road trip to the pickup point a few months later. They always had fun on road trips, talking about the weirdest things, listening to music and singing. What they didn’t do so much these days was daydreaming. They lived their dream now. They came up with projects they sometimes started on and sometimes not, had new ideas how to solve things but it stayed at that. Most of their ideas had to do with something creative, with the animals or with the property. They still worked on the food and supply storage, after all 2012 was just a year away.

There were several cars, trailers and people at the pickup point. Some children. One of the women had a business with Icelandic horseback riding tours. Before the day was over, everyone seemed irritated at her pushy style, bragging and nosy questions. She had a flower pattern thermos flask that she carried around, like if she would drop dead not having constant access to caffeine. She approached Tilde and asked her a number of questions about contests for Icelandic horses. Tilde gave her a blank stare, she was too busy obsessing about the horses. Were all of them OK? What would they be like?

“I don’t know what you are talking about. We don’t enter any contests. So I don’t know the lingo.”

The woman looked perplex. Everyone else she had spoken to had just nodded and tried to say things this woman would at least accept as not outright stupid.

“But, if you don’t like horses, why are you getting the foals?”

“I like horses fine. I’m just not interested in contests.”

“Why NOT?”

“Too many people, that is one thing.”

“Don’t you like…?”

Tilde had turned around and started to walk away. It was late and the sun had set. They all stood there in the dusk, waiting. Someone had picked up their cell phone when the truck pulled up. Tilde had almost stopped believing they would come.

One by one they were lead out, papers were signed and exchanged. Some of the horses looked slightly similar, and you could feel the people thinking, “Is THAT my horse?” Lottis was saying something, Tilde realized she had talked for a while now, and if she made an effort she could probably remember what it was about. But their horses was just being unloaded and Tilde pushed her friend n jumped a little on the spot and said:

“Look! Look! There they are!”

They signed their papers. Formally the stallion now belonged to Tilde, and the mares to Lottis. They had tied their new little horses to their trailer and Tilde were talking to Bikkja.

“Did you have an OK trip? Did they treat you well? It was scary flying, wasn’t it? Do you miss your mommy? We will take care of you now. Yeah, your other friends here are getting new homes too. But Hjalti and Grembla will live with us, just like you.”

They started leading the horses into the trailer. Grembla just walked right in, she looked more sleepy than anything. Bikkja danced a little and acted childish but soon walked in as well. Hjalti just didn’t want his hooves on the ramp. Lottis tried to make him walk up, a tiny bit at the time, but the horse suddenly took a jump back.

“He doesn’t like the ramp. He says so,” Lottis said.

Tilde did a lot of talking to animals, but Lottis actually listened to them She said she could hear their thoughts. She had been right about many strange things involving animals. Tilde also knew he didn’t want to walk up the ramp, but more from observing. Tilde was ordered to get the car mats from the car and place on the ramp.

“He said he wanted something soft.”

Of course Hjalti walked into the trailer now. Tilde was a bit annoyed it had actually worked, but put on a fake smile and they got into the car. Now they only needed to pick up some Coca-Cola and chocolate, and they would have a nice ride home.

___

A new day. Already. Chinook was licking Tildes face. It was way too early. It was still dark. Waking up and all you see is a nothing is quite weird, even scary, but you get used to it. She turned on the light and looked at the clock. It was nine o’clock. Solo made some sounds, she had probably woken him up, because he kicked some pebbles and snorted.

“Morning Solo.”

Solo nickered an answer. Chinook jumped around a little, trying to hold herself back.

“And morning to you, dog.”

The dog looked like she smiled and made a few higher jumps. She focused on her human with her blue Husky eyes. She sat down and waited. Tilde got up and shuddered a little. She gave the stove a new feed of coal and looked around for water. Oh yeah, no water left. Tea would have been nice.

On Svalbard there is no milk production. When the Russians still used the mining town Pyramiden, it had a farm with not only cows but also pigs and chicken. There was a green house. There is still real grass, tall grass. This is not to be seen anywhere else in the archipelago. There are even dandelions. It is like a small area of Europe in the middle of the rough Arctic. But there was a patch of grass just like that, underneath the snow, in the valley behind Tilde’s house.

Longyearbyen, the Norwegian town of 2,000 people, depends on getting everything shipped in. There are no cows there, the Norwegians seem to prefer their shipments. With good salaries and no income tax, it doesn’t bother them that they produce virtually no food. Milk is terribly expensive, since you pay for jet fuel. Food that comes in by boat is still not cheap, but not ridiculously pricey. Tilde loved milk. She could easily drink a liter, just by herself, within ten minutes. They had bought fresh milk from a farm just ten kilometers from their home in Sweden. It was lovely. The store milk, the low pasteurized type, wasn’t bad either. She fought off her milk cravings, no milk until May, or perhaps June. There was still powder milk for her tea and cooking, but you cannot really drink that, it’s just not the same.

She turned on the radio. Depending on the day, she could catch some FM broadcasting from Longyearbyen. Norwegian radio didn’t interest her too much, maybe if she could catch a science show or the news it could catch her attention. She had a decent radio with separate shortwave, medium wave and longwave dials, the Swedish radio was coming in strong on longwave, while medium wave could bring her BBC or on some really good days, Bavarian open radio. Radio was nice. It had helped her through many sleepless nights when she was a child.

There was a hint of daylight outside. That was her cue. She got up, got her boots on and stepped out. It was extremely cloudy. Cloudy early winter days are the norm on Svalbard but it was even cloudier than the day before. It didn’t feel so cold. She had a look at the thermometer. It was -5 C. Not bad at all. Maybe it would snow. She filled all her three buckets with snow, filled the pan too, and put it near the stove. Scooping up the snow wasn’t all that easy, there wasn’t enough snow on the ground to just carelessly swing the bucket. By the look of the roof, the snow depth was perhaps eight centimeters.

She walked around the corner and opened the door to Solo’s box stall and the horse gladly walked out. He didn’t seem at all bothered by any cold weather but she liked keeping him inside overnight. She didn’t want him alone out in the darkness, after all he was a horse and needed company. And who knew, maybe a hungry polar bear could attack him. Solo scraped his hooves against the ground, trying to graze.

There was the morning duties, take medication, do a quick sponge bath, get dressed, brush teeth, look after the generator and get more coal inside. She actually felt quite happy when the tasks were done, then she was free to make some tea and just relax. It was as bright as the day would get now. It was a bit darker than yesterday, because of the overcast. But it was day. The 26th of October the sun sets for the winter. But the daylight looking dusk doesn’t stop until much later. It makes a day of five hours to begin with. Now it was already down to three hours.

The changes come fast that far north. From April to end of August the sun is up all day. It just circles the cardinal points. Then there is a period of both day and night. Tilde was used to days getting shorter rather fast, since she lived in Sweden and knew little of anything else. But on Svalbard this happens much faster. It goes from polar day with only daylight, to polar night, with only dark, in only two months.

After she had the tea, big leaf Ceylon tea with powder milk and a sweetener tablet. She was alone in the house now, Solo walking around leisurely outside and Chinook running, jumping, sniffing and rolling. She was quite a patient dog, but in the mornings she always had some extra energy to burn. The radio was on, playing alternative music, some of the songs Tilde found rather good. The generator flame had gone out again, but there was still some power in the battery.

Insisting on understanding everything and and building most of her things herself, she had wanted to also build the generator. She was told it would be virtually impossible to scale down a real steam and coal based device, but found a thermodynamic one would probably do. However, in the end she bought a used Seebeck generator, that will turn heat into an electric current. The watts weren’t impressive, but they were enough for the laptop and the lights. She had been somewhat annoyed she couldn’t keep it inside to save the extra heat from it, but it produced quite a nasty smoke. She was proud to have built the chimney and most parts of the stove herself from just rock and concrete. It fed itself to an amount, just using a small, gravity based compartment. It could get very warm.

It was full dusk outside. Light, but no sun, it was below the horizon. Tilde took her morning medication and ate four pieces of hardtack, dipped in instant soup. She went outside and poured Solos breakfast, the same old pellets, on the ground, and Chinook’s food a few meters away. They gulped down their shares within a few minutes. It had started to snow. Big, pretty snowflakes was falling, it was still, no wind, and not so cold. It could have been a day on the farm. They probably just had a very few degrees warmer weather there right now.

The reason Svalbard isn’t a hell frozen over, like Greenland or say, Nunavut or even Saskatchewan, is the Gulf Stream. Not only does it provide north Europe with heat which makes it very livable, but reaches far north and creates open sea, where on the American side at the same latitude, has an eternal ice age. This makes Svalbard pretty friendly with summer temperatures of around seven degrees Celsius and winters of around minus fifteen. Today, it was a mild, early winter day of minus five. That wasn’t bad for being only 1,000 kilometers from the North pole. Less than twenty people were further north than she was.

Tilde walked down to the fjord in the snowfall. The sky had started shifting into pink, more and more, it was quite beautiful. Solo had followed her and was blowing through his nose just behind her. She startled at the sudden sound, then patted the gelding on his furry neck, grabbed his made and swung up on his back. She was amazed she had learned this, she had always been rather clumsy, slow and stubborn rather than fast and agile, and with her illness, she wasn’t always strong either. He wasn’t a tall horse though. Icelandics usually are quite small horses, being another breed, it would have been suitable for a child of around nine years old.

She just let the gelding stroll as he pleased, watching the snow, the intense pink color of the clouds and the parts of the mountains she could see that weren’t engulfed in the foggy clouds. Here and there, the dark ground was visible, the snow layer wasn’t thick on the mountains yet. That would probably change now. The horse was warm and safe under her. He was her sun. Solfagur, his proper name, means pretty as the sun. She assumed her red color had lead his breeder to associate with the rising, red sun.

If she contacted Longyearbyen, the would pick her up. Horse and all. She was quite convinced of that. She wasn’t tired and annoyed today, so she didn’t bother with the thought more than a few seconds. Not many there knew she was out here. She wanted it that way. It was enough that the Russian Pyramiden team knew, and much likely the small American research station just across the fjord from Pyramiden. Dmitri had a radio which he used to call in for supplies, and his base in Barentsburg could easily email her, as they had done to tell her about the canceled ferry. They could check up on her if they wished. She was not going to contact them just yet.

Part from getting more water and keep the fires going, Tilde needed to do some laundry. She didn’t have any hard to wash, heavy clothes with her, just thinner clothes to wear in layers or fleece, and some windbreaker pants and coat. It was funny how what was seen as clean here, similar to when you go camping, probably would be seen as dirty in the mid civilization. Same as personal hygiene. It was kept to basics. Keep body germ and relatively smell free, sponge baths and a warm “shower” once in a while. Clothes needed not to be spotless just clean enough to preserve body heat. Dirty fibers stick together and can’t hold any air, which is what keeps you warm.

Laundry was relatively easy. The fjord was not frozen, and fetching water from there was way easier than finding a good spot for snow deep enough not having to scoop forever. It included some heavy carrying and splashing oneself with ice cold water, but it wasn’t so bad still. The water was fine for washing, but a bit salty, so drinking it was out of the question. She heated a big pan of water, poured into a bucket, adding some cold water and soap and finally the clothes. She let them soak and poked them once in a while. Then she brought them back to the water, rinsed, let them hang outside for a while, wrung them and hung them inside.

With the work done, it already started to get dark. She made herself more tea, and just stared into nothing. She groomed the horse with a plastic brush and cleaned his hooves. He had strong hooves and didn’t need shoes, but they would need to get trimmed soon. The stable in Longyearbyen was supposed to take care of that. Now she had to fix that herself. She had often watched the horses at the farm, as they got their feet taken care of. She told herself to trim Solo’s hooves in a few days.

The daylight had been gone for about an hour when a faint light started to show near the horizon. It was the moon. She watched it with a feeling of joy. It would soon disappear. But in a few days it would stay up more, a pretty, little bigger than half moon. A moon crescent can only be seen in the summer. It can be hard to see, since the sun will be up too. In the winters, there is only big moons. The crescent moon will be beneath the horizon. It was really a strange world, this.

She had a rather strange meal made from instant potatoes and radishes. It wasn’t good at all, actually. She rewarded herself with some vodka afterwards, letting Chinook lick the plate. Everyone was inside again. Tilde wished she had some chips as she watched a movie online. She didn’t do that all too much, but she felt it would happen more now, that and reading books. Maybe she would actually read the books she brought last summer. Her download speed was fair, the upload speed was just horrible. So buffering the movie didn’t take all that long. She rubbed the dogs stomach, her white and pastel reddish brown, semi long fur seemed a little oily. The dog made a sound of pleasure. The movie wasn’t too bad. It was about vampires. The horse was asleep. Tilde caught a strange thought how normal all this seemed to her. She had everything she needed. Even a movie. But no chips. No milk. She had some popcorn she could pop, but she didn’t feel like popcorn. She poured herself a new drink instead.

It had been less than a week. But the hours of day were only a vague dusk now. Forgiving enough to make it possible to walk safely without a flashlight, but it was now clear it would soon disappear and eternal night would follow. Suddenly Longyearbyen, the small, modern town, seemed very attractive. For a visitor, just being in town seems exotic and wild. But to Tilde, even the small settlement had seemed too big and too modern after months of isolation. She had spent a month out here this year, then taken a temporary job for one month in July in Longyearbyen, trying and succeeding in making some money. It was OK, she actually had enjoyed being in civilization. A proper internet connection from the library, shopping food, cooking on an electric stove and having hot water from a tap. She liked a visit to Longyearbyen now and then, knowing she would always come back here.

She knew the town would now be a thousand points of light. It would be seen from a long distance, clearly giving away the presence of people. For some reason, that thought seemed somewhat repulsive. She didn’t know why. But she knew life would be easy there. When she had worked, she had been given a free room at the guesthouse. It was closed now. If she went back to town, she would have to go to Sweden. There would be nowhere for her to stay.

The horse already had his accommodation planned out. The stable owner was told Solo would be there ”over the winter”. Whatever that meant. Tilde realized he would be missed sooner or later. Herself, she would have to catch a plane. Chinook, being a medium sized dog, would have to fly as cargo. Poor dog. She had before, and seemed fine with it. She had gotten him a year earlier, before Solo. She had always adored small dogs, being more of a cat person. Bigger dogs seemed too dog like. But she realized a small dog would not like neither their farm in winters, nor most days in the Arctic. It would have a too small body to preserve body heat.

___

She had visited a number of dog shelters. There were mostly dogs looking like German shepherds and dingo looking dogs. One black, large dog that was really pretty too, She had almost just walked by Chinook. She looked again. The dog, according to the documentation, was called ”Cilla”, meaning this was not the previous owners choice, the dog was really nameless, and she was a ”4?” year old Husky mix. She looked at the dog. She was almost as tall as a husky, a bit chunkier, had a coat that looked a little longer and a little less thick. He had a cinnamon colored body and white legs. Her forehead was cinnamon with a narrow stripe down to her nose, the rest of her head was white. Her head markings reminded of a Husky, but the soft color, instead of cold, dark grey, made her look kind instead of tough. She asked permission to acquaintance the dog and walked inside it’s stall. The dog lay still and showed little interest. Tilde began petting and talking to her, and the dog seemed to accept the attention as real. She showed some cautious happiness, almost gratitude. Tilde spent an hour with the dog, giving her treats, trying to walk her on a leash and playing a little with her.

“You are a big dog. I don’t really like or understand big dogs. But I like YOU.” Tilde whispered to the dog.

The dog looked a little hurt.

“Do you want to come with me?”

The dog very much wanted that.

They took the train home to the farm. No one else was sitting in the pet compartment. Lottis would pick them up at the train station, she had offered to pick them up at the dog shelter but Tilde thought it was unnecessary.

“Now you have to tell me your name. Cilla just doesn’t fit you. Maybe you need a cool, Arctic name. Maybe Nanook. That means polar bear.”

The dog wasn’t impressed. Tilde tried other names. When the dog finally lifted her head and looked at her, it was set. Chinook. It doesn’t get more Arctic than that.

___

As the moon grew, life became easier. The daylight still came and went, and she used it for the chores outside and for a little riding. She took Solo out for some proper exercise, using both the bridle and the bareback pad. It was rather nice and comfortable to have stirrups and still the bareback feeling. She let him tölt for quite a while, enjoying the landscape and the freedom being far away from the house. It was strange how this was the same place she had been in the summer, when it was green and lit by the always present sun.

The horse seemed happy to be outside not just alone, but with his owner. For a while she hadn’t bothered riding much. Now he gladly tölted at his best speed, with snow flying around him. Sometimes they saw foxes running by, sometimes they saw a reindeer, which did not seem very afraid on them. The reindeers were small. Arctic reindeers. Tilde thought they were quite cute. At the same time she thought about how nice some fresh meat would be.

Some days were rather dark, because the heavy layers of clouds. Those days they stayed home. On clearer days they sometimes could see the Boeing 737 leave Longyearbyen, or come in to land. She let Solo gallop for short rushes, wondering when the dark and the possibility of more snow would make it impossible.

Less than two weeks later, daylight was even fainter. But the full moon had come up. Some days were colder, even down to minus eighteen degrees Celsius, and those days were sometimes clear and bright. The full moon was higher in the sky, especially at night. It didn’t set. The full moon cast its light on everything, making it pretty and mysterious. Tilde felt some energy back. If she had been in civilization, she would already be taking medication for seasonal depression. Winters could be harsh on her. Now she would have to do with only her low dose usual antidepressant, the medication for energy that had helped her put life back into her life at age 40, the sleep med and the medication for her physical illness. She feared a little what would come, when the moon went away, and all the sunlight would be gone. In just two weeks, that would happen. That would be the beginning of December.

___

When she was around 30, depression had started to invade her life. There was no fighting it. It was dark, strong, and sucked her dry from all energy. She couldn’t even think. There had been this doctor claiming she faked it to get disability money, but in the end she was approved, and also started trying medication that was of no real help. Three years later, she found a medication that would change things and bring her back to life. Treating physical symptoms came next, which also made a difference, she now could push herself a little without becoming totally physically exhausted, a fatigue that had been blamed in full on depression. She was still somewhat inert, didn’t suffer from that horrible lack of energy anymore, but realized she could not run a small farm, what her friend and her planned for the future. She had fought to get the energy enhancing medication, and it had worked well. Still, winters could be quite bad, and she could feel it coming back to her, a rather terrifying feeling. But luckily there was this new medication for that, for just the darker months, that would cheer her up and make her sleep better, that and a light therapy lamp.

When you get depressed, you let time pass, you procrastinate and you neglect your duties. Tilde wondered for a few seconds what would happen to her, all alone, without any chemical help, with no extra light, in a place much darker than her home. The farm was far north enough to only provide short winter days, but the sun was still up every day, in all its glamour. She had never been on Svalbard during the winter. She had been there as early as March, when the days started to come back. This would be new, all new.

___

She finally came around to check on her food supply. She had always wanted to have a rather big supply, dragging more food there every time she went to Longyearbyen for some reason. The food supplies were not as great as she had hoped. She thought she was running out of horse feed, since horses eat rather much, but that seemed almost OK. It looked like she would need some dog food and some food for herself if they were going to last. There was no use in trying to grow anything inside, it wouldn’t be enough to make a real difference.

She had started to chat some. She talked a little about every other day with her friend on messenger. But she wanted more contact, especially with people she didn’t know, who would just talk about this and that. She ran the generator more now, all the time she was awake. It was needed to produce light and give enough power to the laptop batteries. Mostly she chatted with Americans and Canadians on a site for mental problems. She liked that better than talking to just anyone. She had used chat to pass time and just survive her worst days many years ago. Some chatters seemed to become her new friends. That was rather nice. People who asked how things were going, how she felt… Her situation was still different from theirs. Some of them had good lives but felt bad inside. Herself, her problems were quite real and focused on her living conditions and pure survival. But it didn’t really matter. Everyone fights their own battles, and none of them can be dismissed.

She usually kept rather quiet about her situation to new chatters. The old ones knew and had accepted it now. She kept quiet about it to be able to be a part of the normal world sometimes, and sometimes for shock effect later on. She could find herself giggle childishly when she played some of her games with the chatters.

Someone was eating pizza. She said she really, really wanted a pizza. The chatter said, well order one! Tilde said she could probably order one, but it would be very hard to pick it up. Then the chatter seemed quite impatient and irritable and claim ”Every place delivers!”, which in itself might hold true for America, but not Europe. Tilde then wondered if they would deliver to the Arctic and the chatter was suddenly quiet. Tilde laughed.

Some didn’t even believe her. Said she was making things up for attention. Tilde didn’t care. When she was in her twenties, she had had many battles with authorities. She was quite convinced she was right, that she was smarter than them, and they were corrupted. Entering the thirties, things changed, there was a lot of negativity towards her. Some of it because she seemed strong and too self secure, and people felt she just needed to be broken or humbled. Sometimes people were just upset because she seemed different. Those things are harder to hide as you grow older and can’t any longer blame it on youth. Sometimes she just upset people with her bluntness, and they struck back much harder, which confused her, since she perceived she had done nothing.

___

She had felt broken inside, like a bad person, useless, unwanted. Wrong and unacceptable. Everywhere she turned, there was proof for this. It didn’t matter to others if she was right. She was always wrong anyway. From around thirty three to thirty nine, she had thought hard about how other people worked, why they said and did things and how they felt inside. She had developed a deep understanding of others, based on very much thought. She could feel annoyed other people didn’t every make this effort. They assumed everyone was just like them, and the person crying the loudest, hurts the most. Still it was their way that was labeled as sane and empathic. After a lot of realization about other peoples reasoning and thought patterns, Tilde could finally say to herself, that she was no less than them. She could even think a lot of them were quite dull and brainless. They didn’t matter as much anymore. What they said didn’t matter. It didn’t hurt now. If people told her she lied, she would just brush them off. She realized, feeling this calm about things, she could also manipulate people and have them riled up and angry, while she seemed innocent. She tried to do this as little as possible. When she was in the twenties, she could do this just for fun. Now she had the strange feeling she would be punished for being too mean.

___

Full moon and a whole month until the next full moon. She contacted Barentsburg, suddenly realizing action was needed. They was sending a helicopter to Pyramiden just two days later. She asked if she could put in an order, which was fine. The American research team was also using their services. She described what food items she wanted, and there was some emailing back and forth, about what was around and what it would cost. Russian food. The delivery fee wasn’t too bad. She payed for it online, in advance. She would still have the money to buy a plane ticket. That was good.

How long would the ride take? She had no idea. She had gone for long rides in the summer. But winter was very different. The landscape looked totally different. There was no soft ground, patches of gravel, shifts in the landscape, now it was all white. You had no idea how deep the snow was, if it was icy and hard and could hold even a horse, or soft, no way of knowing what was underneath. And the only light would be the full moon and a flashlight. She decided to use the battery flashlight, she had a few batteries for it.

She decided to play safe and leave home ten hours before the transport helicopter was supposed to arrive. She had a makeshift saddle bag to attach to the girth. All she could do now was prepare best she could. Dmitri and the gang would probably expect her. She gave the horse and dog some extra food, made sure they drank and ate a good meal herself. She brought a little water and food.

She had had one of those weird Internet chat conversations again. Someone who knew about where she lived, answered “How nice!” when she said she was going to attempt a very long ride. Tilde had said it wasn’t exactly for fun and she didn’t know if she would make it back alive. The chatter seemed confused and told Tilde to dress warm. She would.

Tilde called the dog, closed the door, went to the other door and took the horse out. She brushed him a little, picked his hooves and got his gear on. She got up on his back and started going north. She would follow the fjord, there was nothing to navigation. She would not get lost. She kicked the horses sides a little, and the fearless horse started trotting. This was crazy. She had done this trip by boat, but she had no idea if the coastline was even ridable all the way to Pyramiden. There was something strangely surreal about the situation.

She slowed the horse down to a walk. She had just needed to make sure she was going. The dog walked beside them. There were no sounds. The silence was compact. The cliffs to her left, were tall and steep. There were small valleys, there were less angular cliffs. Then back to the steep slope. It was minus eleven degrees Celsius, not too cold, but colder than she preferred. The clouds weren’t so thick, and some of the light from the moon. could get through. This was a spooky, dead landscape.

Some very vague aurora borealis danced across the sky. A vague, green fast snake of light. It came back, went away, came back a little more. It was pretty. The side of the fjord was frozen. She had the horse to try it. It could hold his weight. She wondered if it would be slippery beneath the snow. She tried a slow tölt and it seemed fine so far.

The dog looked a little tired, having to run to keep up. Tilde stopped, got off the horse and put the dog on the horses back. She tried to hold the dog and got back up. She pushed the dog against her chest with one arm. Chinook accepted the strange way of transport and they tölted ahead. She saw nothing yet, just darkness ahead. Rocks and more rocks. At places the snow was deeper and Solo had to struggle.

The flashlight was attached to the horses neck and cast its silly cone of light into the darkness. At least she could see the ground. She let the dog down again and they all walked for a while. Tilde’s fingers and face felt a bit cold. The top of her thighs felt cold and numb. She stopped and gave the dog and horse some water. The horse seemed thirsty and she let him drink the rest of the water after having a few sips herself. Horses need drink more than a bottle, but he would have to drink more when they arrived. They had a little snack and Tilde ate as she looked across the fjord.

They got going again. She knew Solo could usually tölt for a long time but he hadn’t had that much exercise lately. He seemed a little tired. She was a bit worried. She let him walk again. She wondered where they were. If they were nearly there. Or if it was a long way yet. The sky was breaking up here and there, looking strangely blue in the moon light. Tilde’s mind started to feel numb. There were really not many thoughts anymore, like she wasn’t even there. Like she was really elsewhere. She decided to wake herself up from that feeling later. It was almost a feeling of giving up, a dark feeling. But it seemed to make time go more unnoticed.

The dog panted and her tongue hung out. The horse breathed clouds of hot air. Tilde looked up. Was that a light. It was. She smiled. She felt warm of a sudden. She could see nothing else at first, but then the town came closer. She could see buildings. Square, dead, big houses. She stopped. Looked.

“We are there!”

Chinook looked at her. Solo seemed confused. Like he wondered why they stopped. She kicked his sides gently and they were suddenly there. The empty houses were dark. She always had a strange feeling, visiting the ghost town. It wasn’t normal for a town of that size to be almost empty. She looked for the light she had seen. Tilde wondered what the time was. It must be really early morning. She suddenly felt tired and sleepy.

The light came from one of two trailers. She got off the horse and knocked on the door. No one answered. She knocked again. A young woman opened. She looked at Tilde and said something in Russian.

“Hi!” said Tilde.

“Long time until the chopper comes?

The Russian woman said one short sentence in Russian. Oh, great, she didn’t speak English.

“Where is Dmitri… Dimka?”

The woman pointed at the other trailer. Tilde nodded towards it if asking if she dared knocking on the door to the dark trailer. The woman had gotten her boots on and went over and knocked hard on the door and shouted. There was some life inside. Tilde could hear the generator in the background. Dmitri came out, and when he saw Tilde he smiled widely and said:

“Oh, you! Welcome to Russia once more.”

“Thanks. When will the chopper come?”

“Hours and hours! We welcome you in.”

He made a gesture.

Tilde got the equipment off the horse and let him lose. Another Russian woman had appeared and put a blanket on the horse. Tilde asked and got water for him. Then he was let to stroll on his own. The people went into Dmitri’s trailer, Chinook followed. There were three women from the other trailer, and two men from the one they were in. They introduced themselves with some help from Dmitri. On of the women also spoke English. She helped translating the other womans questions. Where did Tilde live? What was she doing here.

Tilde explained vaguely where she lived. She said she had some goods coming in. The Russians had not been told. Tilde wasn’t surprised. She yawned a little. The Russian woman laughed and put the side of her head to her hands, gestured sleep. Tilde laughed a little back. The women were talking to each other.

“You need sleep. We will sleep a little more. You come with us.”

“OK.”

They got up and into the womens trailer. They got their shoes off. There was one bunk bed and a couch. One of the Russians slept on the couch. Tilde got her coat and windbreaker pants off.

“You can sleep here.”

Two of the women had got up on the top bed and left the bottom one just for Tilde.

“Thank you very much.” Tilde said.

It was really kind. Tilde was tired and went into bed. The trailer was warmer than her house. Almost a little too warm. The dog lay flat on the floor. She already slept. Poor dog. Must have been very tired. Suddenly Tilde was also asleep.

There was this strange sound. Tilde couldn’t identify it. It became stronger. It was a really annoying sound. She was suddenly wide awake. Oh, it was the helicopter. She was all alone with the dog in the trailer. The others might have been out working for hours already. She got her pants, jacket and boots on and went outside. The dog ran in a circle, then peed a large puddle before happily looking for the other people. She jumped on the Russians and howled a little. She seemed very happy being in a larger pack. Tilde rubbed her eyes and went towards the people and the massive helicopter.

Everyone was talking to each other. The pilot pointed at Tilde and said something about the Swedish person. They started to unload and Tilde helped out passing packages and big bottles of Diesel fuel. The Russian man on board the helicopter pointed at the next package. Oh, that one was hers! She left her place and went to open it inside. Food. Good food. She started to pack it into the saddle bag. She put it away and went outside looking for Solo. She found him and a Russian woman giving him water and feeding him something. He was well looked after. She walked up to him and petted his nose. The helicopter was already on its way back to base. They were called by another woman. Tilde had already forgot their names.

She was invited for breakfast. She realized how hungry she was. They had porridge and butter and thick slices of sausage. It tasted great. The woman who had taken care of Solo was now feeding Chinook. They all talked, they seemed happy about having a new person around. They laughed, pushed each others and teased. Tilde wanted to know more about their work, and those who could, explained what they were working with.

“Are you staying all day and leave tomorrow?” the woman asked.

“I don’t know. Well, I think so”.

“You leave in the morning. And we can have a party.”

A party. Tilde wondered what a party of six people in a ghost town would mean.

“We can show you the culture house. You have already seen it. But we can go there and you look again. It’s very beautiful.” Dmitri said.

She actually felt quite sore and tired. Resting a while wouldn’t be bad. She agreed on staying. But then she would have to leave. Dmitri had started to talk about the old days when Pyramiden was up and running and everything was good. It was quite silly. He didn’t look more than twenty-five. He was only a child when Pyramiden was closed in the end of the 90s. And he was born in Russia, not here. But at least his talking made it easy. She didn’t have to talk much. In the summers, she had always been happy seeing people, talking to anyone, being friendly and open. Summers made her more sociable. Now Tilde felt quiet and almost shy.

The group of six got into the culture house, after Dmitri unlocked the front door. Outside, a bust of Lenin guarded the building. They came into the big hall, using flashlights to look around. There was a stair to a second floor, and black ornaments. The roof was a big mirror and golden ornaments. The walls were painted in soft colors, and there was also wood panelling. They got up to the second floor. Tilde looked into the abandoned library. Hardly any book shelves or books left. They moved onwards.

There was a music room at the right. Everything was gone, part from a piano. Tilde went in and touched one of the keys. The sound sounded strange in the dark, empty building. Sounded lonely. She hit a few more keys. The piano was not too out of tune, despite being abandoned for so long, and in the cold. She played the first notes to a Requiem. The sound seemed to come out strong and powerful.

“Please! Continue!” urged Dmitri.

She played as much as she remembered. It was rather nice to be lost in the music. Also, it felt almost holy, playing the piano that almost no one played the last sixteen or so years, part from the summer tourists maybe. The summers were much different, the ferry with tourists came almost every day. Dmitri and his colleagues worked with repairing the buildings, trying to restore the old look. They had opened the restaurant again, and they served food and drinks. There were many silly Russian souvenirs to buy. They were hired by the mining corporation Arktikugol, that had once run the town and was still running Barentsburg. The buildings were disintegrating faster than they could do anything about it. Still, Dmitri bragged about how they would rebuild the town. There wasn’t much they could even do during the winter. They only had electric for their own caravans and the restaurant.

She ended the Requiem with a few fading, low notes that sizzled out in the dark and died. The Russian gave her a small applause. They continued to walk through the culture house. When they had looked at everything, they went out and into the restaurant. The walls were red and velvety. One of the women turned on the lights. Tilde blinked. What a bright light. She felt like some kind of subterranean animal, accidentally facing the day.

“What do you think? Its very beautiful!” exclaimed Dmitri.

Tilde nodded.

“We have a guest. We will party. We rarely have guests. Not at all in winter.”

He ordered two of the women to fetch food and something to drink, and they hurried off. They didn’t seem too happy.

“Oh, imagine when the miners were here, with their wives. And gave them roses. They grew roses. The romantic dinners. After the hard work. They knew how to treat a woman.”

Tilde sat down at a table. The other man went out in the kitchen and got a CD player and started the CD. Contemporary pop music. How horrible. Dmitri did a little dance. Tilde tapped a foot to be polite.

There was a small radiator that had also been turned on. Soon they could get their jackets off. The women had returned and Tilde escaped into the kitchen with one of them, the one speaking English.

“I can help out. What are we cooking?”

“We will have chicken and rice. Vegetables.”

There was a box of frozen chicken. Real, non dehydrated meat. Nice. And frozen, real vegetables. Couldn’t get any better. The Russian woman started to cook on the electric stove, she put the chicken in a big pan and boiled it in water and unknown brown powder from a bag. Tilde seemed of no big help, but she didn’t want to return to the others yet. They chatted a little about this and that. The woman didn’t seem to mind them not talking all the time. Tilde found that a nice trait. She felt more relaxed now.

“The house is serving drinks now! The best Russian vodka. Do you ladies want a glass?” Dmitri shouted as he barged into the kitchen.

Tilde left the pans of spicy chicken, vegetables and rice. The smell was nothing short of fantastic. She sat down in the restaurant again. The young adults were now talking and laughing and seemed in a good mood. Dmitri handed Tilde a glass of vodka.

“Drink up! Drink up! Soon you will feel no cold. Just the warm love from Russia. No problems in the world.”

Tilde took a sip. It was vodka alright. She had missed it. There was a yelping from outside, and they let Chinook in. Tilde petted the dog. It really felt better with the dog at her side. One of the women asked Dmitri something.

“She wants to know the name. Of the dog.”

Tilde turned to the woman.

“She is called Chinook. Chinook.”

“Chinook,” said the woman.

“Right.”

The dog ran out in the kitchen, sniffing in the air, the yelping some more. She was replied in Russian and sat down. Waited. Tilde drank some more from the glass.

“The glass are original. Original from Pyramiden,” said Dmitri.

It actually was a nice glass. Tilde only had a few enamel cups. A few of the young people danced a little. She felt a little tipsy and sleepy. When the food was finally ready, she felt oddly distant and drunk. But the food was good. The best food she had in many months. Did it taste OK? Oh, she had even forgot to tell the chef. It was really great. Thank you. Where were her manners? Did she want some more food? Oh, more food, yes please! She felt better now.

The other Russian man had too much to drink, and had fallen asleep in a corner. One of the women were resting against Dmitri’s shoulder, had too much as well. Despite this, he managed to smoke a cigarette, sing and wave his hands. Behavior had degraded, but Tilde didn’t mind. It meant she didn’t need to be at her best behavior either. She rested her head against her arms on the tabled and relaxed. The others remained in party mood for yet almost an hour until everyone dragged themselves back to the caravans. Tilde curled up with one of the Russian women with Chinook close. The woman was already snoring. Tilde lay awake and wondered a little about how going back home would be. It would be very hard. Maybe she shouldn’t think about it yet. She would have more energy in the morning, It would seem easier.

She felt a bit stiff and had a slight hangover the next morning. Sleeping in some of the clothes she arrived wearing, she felt a little grungy. She didn’t really feel like breakfast, but forced herself to eat a bit. Solo had wandered off and was munching on some old grass he dug up from under the snow. He had been given plenty of water. Tilde hung the pack saddle on him and started to fill it up with items. She had brought some string which she used to tie the bigger bags on top of his back. It looked a bit heavy but quite steady. Dmitri gave her two bottles of Russian vodka, which she also managed to squeeze in. She felt a bit uneasy and was eager to get going. The feeling of dread from last night was gone.

“Come visit Russia anytime!” Dmitri cheered.

“Bye bye Dimka, bye gang!” waved Tilde and started walking in the hoof steps they made arriving, leading the horse.

After walking for quite a while, she looked back. She could still see the outlines of the town. The moonlight was bright and the air cold and crisp. She was a little annoyed she hadn’t come any farther. She took a deep breathe and continued. A cold wind was blowing now and then. Nothing is like the Arctic winds. They could cut through anything, like sharp knives.

She was eager, feeling too much with the situation. It would be easier to just accept a really dull and hard couple of hours and go inside her own little world. The horse seemed to already have taken on that approach. Even the dog was striding ahead, like an arrow, through the snow. Snow.

It snowed. The sky had suddenly turned grey, put a lid on, the moon was no longer visible. The wind was picking up. Tilde frowned and continued to walk, each step seemed a little harder than the last. She was kicking up some snow, it was draining walking through it. She stopped, tried to catch her breath, looked at the black water. It was still visible, but for how long?

They started walking again, the flashlight, now in Tildes hand, lit their way. The snow, now falling more heavily, seemed to make up a fluent, dancing wall in front of them. It seemed to provide very little help in where to set their feet. There was nothing else than to struggle on. She felt like she almost pulled the horse, Solo seemed unwilling to continue.

She looked carefully. Yes, they were still on the right course. She looked at the horse. His forelock looked like it was entangled with a white, puffy matter. She stopped, pulled out a little dog food, Chinkook ate, looking somewhat lost and worried. She fed the horse some oats. He smacked and begged for more. Tilde pulled up one of the bottles of vodka and had a few sips. Probably a bad idea, but she needed to feel different, numbing her little voice saying “This will never work.”

She freed the horse from some snow on his head, and pulled his reins. They continued. They could have been elsewhere. She could have been on the farm, eating gingerbread snaps, having fresh milk, watching stupid things on TV… It suddenly sounded like a really good way of living. She felt sad and weary. She took a few more sips from the bottle.

The world seemed to be a little more distant and hostile now. Not hostile. Uncaring. Sure would she make some headlines if she disappeared out here, only to be found by spring, if ever. But the world wouldn’t care. The Arctic would be still and emotionless. If she was going to make it, it would be through her own will. She realized, suddenly, that it was what it was all about. Doing it on her own. Without help or interfering. It suddenly gave her some new energy. If she could do it, it would prove once and for all, she was strong, capable, not in need of support. She would have sung a little song, but she needed her breath.

She thought of her supplies. They would make life a little easier. She could even celebrate a little, if she wanted. There was a bag of nuts in there somewhere. They would be perfect for a little party of one. Else than that, there would not be any big changes, rice, pasta, soups. She recalled the chicken meal she had had. Tried to remember what it tasted like. All food should be delicious like that. Food fatigue is very real. If you keep eating the same things over and over, you won’t be hungry for them. Especially if the foods are low in nutrients.

She moved like in a trance. She had a third look at the bottle, deciding this was the last vodka she would have until she was home. Her feet felt oddly numb. Her face felt warm. Left right, left right, left right.

She felt snow against her face. How long had she been lying down? She looked into the darkness. She closed her eyes. Just rest for a little longer. Just a minute. She could feel herself drifting off. It wasn’t a bad feeling. She felt warm.

She sat up. Told herself she could rest a bit, sitting up. She knew she would probably wake up, if she fell to the ground. She felt a little swimmy. She blinked. Sighed. Got up.

The horse looked nothing less than miserable. He was half asleep, covered in snow. The dog seemed eager to continue. She pulled the reigns again.

“Poor Solo. What am I doing to you?”

The horse listened. Understood and forgave.

Her feet were wet. Her fingertips cold. She blew hot air into the cold dark. She suddenly felt like laughing and started to giggle. The horse blew through his nose, wondering what was going on. She felt light. She knew they were goin to make it now. They would be home soon.

The landscape repeated itself. The snowfall was less intense. There was this heavy feeling in her feet, but she could fight against that. Step by step. Each one bringing them closer home. She was careful now to look for anything familiar. It would be bad if they missed where they lived. A sad ending, indeed.

Didn’t it look a little familiar now? She couldn’t tell. They kept walking. This small valley seemed familiar for sure. They were walking through it and past the next ridge. Past the next valley, the next valley, the next ridge. The next valley were where they lived. She felt this bubbling feeling inside her tired body. She made a turn and walked into the valley. The last steps were hard. But this was it. They were home. She looked at the grey, insignificant very small house that was the reason she could survive. Her spot of normalcy in the dark and cold. It didn’t look really real yet. She had to get used to the thought of actually being home.

She took the load off the horse. Her fingers were frozen and uncooperative. She let the bags sit on the ground. She could just as well leave them there until the next morning. She took the horse inside, took off his tack and went inside her own part of the house. There was not much water. She gave the dog a little, and the horse the rest. She was going to get more after she rested. She fed the animals. Too bad she hadn’t prepared for this earlier. She was a little angry with herself for not have thought about it.

She lit the fire and changed from her cold, damp clothes to clean pants and shirt. Now, if she fell asleep, she wouldn’t expire in the cold. Now she was safe. She went to the bed and lay down. The minute later she was asleep.

Something was scratching against her head. Tilde woke up, a bit cold and confused, feeling tired and achy. Chinook was pawing at her hair. She pulled the dog down and petted her. The dog felt dry and warm. That was good. They got up. She went to give the horse a hug, rubbed his head, patting his neck. He deserved a good brush in the morning. She opened up the packs and spread out the food items. There were the nuts. A freeze fried dish of meat and potatoes. She carried that inside, leaving the rest. She got the buckets of snow in and went to start the generator. She felt good about having done so. She felt relieved that the hassle was over. She also felt strangely tired and grumpy. Maybe food could fix that.

Indeed, eating lifted her spirits a little. Made her feel calm and warm. She sat in front of the stove for a while, just enjoying the heat. Solo slept. Chinook slept. It was still. She wanted some stillness yet, no radio, no computer. In time, she would pull out the laptop. She just had to get a little more used to being home.

After a while she felt a bit bored. She got the notebook, and marked yesterdays weather with two big question marks. She turned on the computer and listened to the news. That brought her the right feeling of getting up to speed, being part of the world.

Tilde turned on the computer. Lottis messaged her shortly, wondering how she was doing, if everything was OK. She hadn’t been told about Tilde’s little trip to Pyramiden. No use worrying Lottis. Lottis soon had to go to bed. Just as well. Right now she didn’t belong in Tilde’s world. Tilde didn’t want to think of home and people close to her. She went into chat, too tired to watch a movie or look up some interesting facts. There was this woman of fifty-something, calling herself Sweetrose. Tilde hated feminine, cute names. Usually Americans used them. They were raised like that. Tilde called herself Quark, and it being winter, she now changed to Quark of Nifelheim. Nifelheim, a place in the Norse mythology, a kind of hell, a frozen over hell.

“You should get out more, Quark!” Sweetrose said.

“But I just came home from that weird party I told you about.”

“Can’t you go anywhere else to see people?”

“No. There is no one out here. Just me.”

“Just drive to the nearest city.”

“I told you there are no roads. And no cities. Part from that, I don’t really want to meet people.”

“Why not? Everyone likes seeing people.”

“I guess I’m just different.”

“No, you are like everyone else! You just hide it from yourself. We all have the same needs. Would you say you don’t need food either?”

“Sure I need food. But the same with food and company. Some need more, some need less.”

“So will you see people when you go back home?”

“Yeah. I will see more people then I’m sure.”

“What will you do? There are so many things you can do if you’re not going to work.”

“i’m sure I’ll be busy just with the animals. And there are other things to do as well.”

“I mean something with other people. I think you should start knitting.”

Tilde had to laugh. She was good at many things, but knitting wasn’t one of them. Sweetrose continued:

“I belong to a club called Knit for Christ. We meet in Church on Saturdays and we knit. It’s really fun! You should do something like that.”

Tilde was laughing hard now. “Knit for Christ”. Bizarre.

“Do you go to church?”

“No. I was never a church goer.”

“But you pray.”

That was a statement. Or a wish.

“No, I don’t pray either. I don’t really believe in God and if I did, I’m sure he would help people the same, if they pray or not.”

“He helps people who pray. You should start praying. Pray before you go to bed tonight. And see what happens.”

“I’m not going to. It’s against what I believe in.”

“You should try it anyway.”

“If prayers are like wishes, and you have a lot of family and friends praying for you, someone all alone that doesn’t have that will be worse off. I can’t believe it is like that.”

“Everyone that needs it will get prayers.”

Tilde was shaking her head.

“So you won’t even say a small prayer? Then I will pray for you.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. Because I don’t think prayers is the right thing.”

“I offer you help. And you turn me down. I tell you what you should do, and you don’t like it either.”

“I’m not unhappy with my life. Lack of light is dragging me down. But light will come back, hopefully.”

“I think you are unhappy. I feel those things. Is it really dark there?”

“Pitch black. Unless the moon is up.”

“Even in the day?”

“Even in the day.”

“I could never live like that. I’d get depressed!”

“It’s what I’m saying. But in a way i feel I owe this to the Arctic. I come here in the summers and enjoy it, and the sun is up day and night. I feel I need to know the full circle of nature here. Not just one part.”

“You can’t do that. It’s like in life. You pick the joy and you leave the rest.”

“I’m afraid I was never that way. I always wanted more from life.”

“Ah, THAT is why you get depressed! So silly!”

Tilde had enough of Sweetrose. She said a quick goodbye and left.

___

Was this way of living just freedom and self sufficiency? Doing something new, something few people have done,  the adventure? It was about these things. But also curiosity. Deep down, Tilde was just a child still. She knew that. She had to try things for herself to really understand. She liked to just experience her surroundings, she could sometimes just pick up and look at beautiful pieces of rock for hours.

There was something else, too. She had spent so much time trying to understand people, and she did it quite well now, and herself. She realized that it was time to move on. To focus on other things. Now, it was nature, the world. Most everything about it fascinated her. Astronomy, string theory, geology. She wanted to KNOW the world. She read some books, read a lot on the Internet. There was just so much to know. Tilde had been thrilled.

Now, when the world was mostly dark, she shifted her focus to mans place in the world. There was quantum physics. They seemed warm and forgiving, when the traditional scientific views seemed cold. There was something about multiple dimensions and time as nothing absolute, that she really liked. For some reason, it might mean, life wasn’t a static line. You are born, you live, you die. The end. She had always been very uncomfortable with that idea, and it had always been presented as the correct and only way of seeing things.

Not even taking part of Christian children’s after school groups changed that. Tilde had lived in a rather small town with little to do as a child. But there was always things to do with church. So she joined the groups there were. She had always liked the way they ran it. There was time set off for doing something creative, then they had a snack break, and the children set the table. They always said a short prayer before they ate. None of the children did that at home, but they seemed to like it and the responsibility of fixing the snack. Then there was a short service and after, there was the collection. The children passed around a small money box with a black child sitting on it. When you inserted a coin, the child nodded to say thank you. The children asked their parents before they went, for small change, so they could make the boy nod many times .

She had believed in God then. It was probably all the Christian groups. She had thought God was there. But her God didn’t really do anything, and he didn’t save people from death either. But she thought, she could feel his presence. That feeling faded as she grew up. When she was eleven, it was already gone.

She had started thinking about why she was born, why she was her and  what makes up conscious, very early in life. Then started to ask herself what the purpose was and what happens when you die. She really didn’t have many to ask. There had been this feeling of emptiness and fear, on and off, for almost as long as she could remember. Were things just the same now? She didn’t want to think so. She liked to think there was a meaning to things that she just didn’t understand. After all, even science said, things weren’t simple. Science seemed on her side. It almost seemed to need the concept of consciousness, the existence of the universe seemed almost to depend on it.

And just the fact that other people were believers, no matter what they believed in, sometimes helped her. Maybe that many people are not wrong… Or was it just evolution that gave us a way to believe, because it would decrease the will of life if they realized life was pointless? Religion and an idea of life after death seemed to be present even in cultures that had been sheltered from the rest of the world. Did that mean anything? Or did it simply mean the human brain prefers it?

There were things pointing towards a living universe. Towards life not being pointless. But still, that was not enough. She would have to live life anyway, not knowing anything, just living one day to the other without any hints or guidance. Mostly life was life, too busy to even think about things. But sometimes it was the annoying little voice asking the questions she wanted to ignore, or at least close in onto from a safe position. She usually just silenced the voice as soon as it showed its nasty self.

___

Something was needed to bring her back to the reality she liked more. There was the matter of Solo’s feet. She raked out the pebbles in his box stall, flushed the ground, flushed the pebbles and put them back. She tied the horse outside to the door. She had a few tools that would come in handy, and she gently trimmed his soles, then rasped them until they seemed symmetrical, in the light of the flashlight. She let the horse trot back and force, and he seemed fine, he moved perfectly. It had taken quite a while, there should be some kind of reward. She gave Solo some extra pellets and treated herself to some soup and a piece of the hardtack she had baked when she was working and had access to a real kitchen.

___

She thought about aliens. How could you not? The days when the sky was clear and black, you couldn’t but wonder. She knew she would be really surprised if she saw any kind of means of transport, part from the daily aircrafts to and from Longyearbyen, that she sometimes caught a glimpse of. And there were satellites, moving in wide orbits close to the horizon. Sometimes she saw meteorites, lovely flashes cutting through the whole sky. But no extraterrestrials. She tried to find UFO documentaries to watch, they seemed appropriate. She read the books she had brought mostly last year, some novels, a book on quantum mechanics, a book about the human brain and one on classical music. She sat on her bed, or in the chair, the only piece of proper furniture, for long hours. Sometimes she had to stretch and take a walk in the dark outside. Being it December and with the moon going away, darkness could not be ignored anymore.

No, no UFO’s this time either. Why couldn’t they come and just entertain her for a while? It wasn’t like she could actually tell anyone. She wondered how she would react to seeing an alien aircraft. Aliens sure could be real. Why would be be alone? Only if there was a God that only created life once, it could be possible. Surely there must be life out there. Sure, it would change her ways of seeing things, she couldn’t deny that. She would be quite shocked and amazed. But it would not change what she felt about LIFE. Aliens would not prove or  refute anything much. But they would be fun, no doubt.

It was actually nice to ”do nothing”, have no TV, no phone, no around the clock connection to the Internet, music just once in a while or a movie when she was more in a party mood. She could sort her thoughts out, write them down, write poems and read. Tilde always put those things last when she was in Sweden, there was always something more fun and stimulating to do. Something that could just feed her with impressions and urged her to multitask, like video games or doing many things on the computer. Now she could focus on the things that were not pure kicks. Things that were not like speed to her mind. There was something really nice about having little choices,

She found herself listening to radio amateurs. Most of them hammered out their code frantically, doing it with the same ease as she typed on a keyboard. But some were slower, newbies perhaps, and she could understand what they said, if she wrote it down. At first, she didn’t remember much, but it came back to her, a little at a time. She had her own call sign, but never really used it, losing interest being  very young and heading for new things.

She had thought about picking it up, but no, too much hassle. Maybe in the future. The Internet was enough. Ham radio didn’t seem to have a place anymore. In the past, it had been not just a hobby, but true connecting where there would be no connections otherwise, now, the Internet had reduced it to a mere hobby, something just for geeks. It was still fun to relearn. It brought some good feelings from her youth back. She didn’t dwell on them though, it somehow felt spooky that there had even been a past. It was there and it wasn’t there. It had been there, but was gone now. Moments in the past seemed faded and unreal. Time was surely a strange thing.

She had also picked up Spanish and Arabic again, she would write down words and sentences from online and repeated them to herself. She spent some time writing the Arabic letters and words, really trying to make those letters her own. Her studies were low pace, just fun enough to catch her attention. If she had nothing to do, there was always learning grammar and new words. When there was something she needed to hear, there was always the Internet for that. She really wondered how people could get bored. There was always something to do.

She started to draw, she was good at art when she had been younger. But for some reason, she suddenly couldn’t do it anymore. She had analyzed it, and thought she knew why now. Drawing what was around her, was easy. The things around her, the dog and the horse. She would made several sketches of the same things. She was getting better and better at it. If she didn’t care about expressing something, just drew things as she saw them, drawing wasn’t hard. She realized she was as skilled as she was when she was at her peak as a seventeen year old again. She liked the drawings of the horse and the dog. She would bring them with her when she left.

She wished she had a few more books on science. Then she could just read and not have to search for things online and read on a worn down screen. But it would have to do, for now. She bumped into Sweetrose again online, and her and another person discussed science and religion. Sweetrose claimed religion was true, that the Bible was true and science was fraudulent. There was no fossil record, the earth was really young and there was no evolution or progression. Life, had been the same through all the time.

The other chatter thought religion said things science didn’t say, but science was basically true and religion something people liked to cling onto. If there was a God, he had to accept the limits of the world. Tilde shook her head at Sweetrose. People like that made her mad. People who believed in a God that put false leads that would be picked up by science. She thought logic was the key, and anything illogical, simply could not be true. She wasn’t happy with the other chatter either. If there was a God, he didn’t simply work within the frames of the universe, he was outside the frames, since he created the universe, not just create in an already set universe.

She found herself having an unusual viewpoint. She said that, if science reflects the real world, and if religion is true, they must say the same things, just in different ways. No. Surely she must understand that science and religion are opposites. She didn’t. They couldn’t be opposites and describe the same universe. She wasn’t so surprised at people anymore. They were different than her. She had come to accept it, more or less. She was more interested in the world now.

Like when she was a young adult. She liked to learn about Eastern religions. She had found a lot in them to seem true, or at least worth thinking about. She had thought those ideas were far more advanced than the Western thinking. Zen buddhism was mind bending and quite cool. Taoism came out as wiser than most things. She had forgotten how she had felt about those things. She had been young, the mind expanding ideas appealed to her. She wondered why she had stopped thinking about those things, and went onward to other ideas, a more Western type of approach. It was of course good in a way. Just stopping, thinking you have answers had never been what she was about. But somehow, she wondered, she had started seeing the world in a simpler way. She had accepted the ”self” as impossible to split, or merge with other ”selves”. Back then, she had thought, maybe one ”me” is just really part of a bigger ”me”.

There truly was something mystical with this ghost in the machine. It wasn’t one whole. There were patients who seemed to have more than one ”self”, people who had underwent surgery to separate the two parts of the brain. In that way, the Eastern way seemed somewhat right, the ”self” sure wasn’t a unit just in itself. That surely was strange.

The most important question was of course, was there a self, the body being there or not. A lot of people seemed to think so. But the brain seemed to be able to answer for everything happening in it, even consciousness. An Occam’s razor would cut off the soul, just like that. All other things being equal, the simplest theory is usually the best. How did you know if the factors you really needed, were the ones you cut away? Was this really science thinking? No. It couldn’t be like that. It was actually really hard to know, which parts of an equation that were needed or not.

Did she believe in the “ghost”? She wished she did. Life seemed easier if you did. Life seemed short, too short to really accomplish anything. That was it? Eighty years, rushing by, a complex person created out of nothing, and from one day to another, take that complexity and make it nothing? It seemed cruel. One cycle only, spring, the summer and fall, and back into the dark? Did she know more about life, than compared to when she was eight? She did not. She knew a lot more details, she knew now there were far more faiths than she ever had known. But part from that, she knew nothing. She was still just eight. For some reason, that thought didn’t scare her, but felt like a comfort.

___

Everyone started talking about Christmas. Not surprisingly, Tilde didn’t like, or even accept Christmas as a holiday. She liked nothing about it. The stress people so loved to experience and also inflict on others, the expensive gifts and the tacky, red decorations were just too much for her. She liked smaller events and doing things whenever, around the year. Her Internet friends could not stop talking about the holidays, mostly how they hated them but celebrated them anyway. She didn’t want to hear. She didn’t need to be dragged into their anxiety, if they wanted to be stupid, she should suffer alone.

Didn’t she miss Christmas one little bit? She sure had to miss it, she was told. She said, she didn’t. But didn’t she have any decorations at all? She didn’t. She was told she had a miserable and depressing life. She did feel depressed now, she couldn’t hide it, but lack of Christmas spirit wasn’t the reason. Oh, surely at least she was going to eat something special? She got misceivious and said she would catch and kill one of the Caribous, a reindeer. There was an outcry. Eat Santa’s reindeers! She surely must be a cold hearted person. Tilde laughed. She had made some pretty good and understanding online friends as well. They knew she was joking. The others, they could at least provide some fun being shocked. They could keep their sheltered lives. Tilde had never been fond of too much comfort anyway. And now, she really had learned what life was about. She felt, it was them who was missing out.

On winter solstice, she had a party, just her and some vodka and a movie. But still, it felt special. She put the songs on her MP3 player on the computer, and used up some battery just playing music through the tiny speaker. She sang to the music, let herself get caught up in the emotions of the songs. The songs were quite dark, rapid pulsating, dark but alive. She let herself feel that way for a while. Just letting go felt good. Feeling emotional and alive. It wasn’t the way she normally felt. her darkness was less dark, less appealing, less alive. She danced with Chinook, raised her up on her hind leg.

“This is a great song!” shouted Tilde and clapped her hands.

There was just the moment. No usual worries and planning, no ideas, no struggles, no fear. Just this.

On Christmas day, a caribou actually walked past her house. She told the chatters about the event, Chinook had howled and she saw the animal in the light from the flashlight, fearless standing outside her door for a long while, before it decided to move on. It must be hard being a caribou, did they even see in the dark? Tilde didn’t know. The chatters were cheering in typing, one said that proves there is a Santa. They joked and acted silly. Tilde thought a holiday is something you create with your actions, you can’t just assume it ”is” Christmas all over the world. She knew no one would agree.

It was strange how people’s ideas of Christmas could reach her even out here. It made her a little mad. How dared they involve her? But, maybe it was just fair. She involved them in her life as well. She tried not to talk much of her situation, but of other things she thought about. But yes, she did share her life as well. Her best online friends knew her, knew who she was, they even knew Solo and Chinook even if they had never seen them.

When Christmas was finally over, things returned to normal. Even if they had passed winter solstice, but with no daylight at all now, it didn’t matter. Nothing would visibly change yet. It was a relief that the holidays were oven, but a dull, boring, gravel like feeling had replaced the stress and irritation. She should feel better now. Things were supposed to go in the right direction. But life was hard and heavy. Life was cruel and cold. Tilde felt like nothing would be OK again.

___

January had been dark and depressing. The third full moon of the dark season was gone. The half moon began its silly dance, rising, setting, coming back, going away. There was not much life in life. It was odd how fast the summer months had passed, and how slow time went by now. Just the passing of time was depressing. Time passed. Passing time. Getting older. Life disappearing. Wasting time that was life. So much of life wasted already. Too much wasted for nothing. Those years spent just ill and surviving.

But was there anything to live for? Life didn’t seem fun now. It didn’t seem worth it. Life was just a hassle. A problem. Could life really be filled with something remotely joyful? The summer seemed distant and fake. An easier life could not be real. A life full of doing things. Must have been extremely hard. She didn’t remember it as hard. She knew it had been easier. But she couldn’t accept it. Because THIS was real. This was the true way to feel. Night was numb, night was a nothing. Life was a nothing. It didn’t mean anything.

There was no meaning, no God, no reason. People continue because they are blind. They don’t realize life is a hopeless chase for something that is not real. There are moments of happiness, meals, things to keep them alive yet another day. But that is all there is. They just fight the night, death, lack of meaning with tools that only last if you can fool yourself.

Tilde looked out the window at the dead, lifeless darkness and scratched her greasy hair. The dog tried to comfort her, but what did a dog know about life? She had spent several nights on the horses back sitting backwards, lying down on his bum, sucking the heat from his body. Some nights she had cried into his thick coat. She felt stupid and weak. She normally didn’t cry. Nights, days, they were the same. The animals had lost their sense of night and day as well. Night was between meals. When chores were done.

She pretended to be happy when talking to Lottis. Things were running normally on the farm. That was good at least. They were presented with a very good offer on Grembla, and despite that horse being Lottis’, they had decided to treat all of them as belonging to both of them. It would mean quite a large sum for Tilde since they split it. She couldn’t be very happy about it. She knew it was good. It meant less trouble for her, since she had spent most of her savings on the Arctic project. But it didn’t seem to make a difference. The buyer wanted the three year old Grembla now, despite fact she wasn’t trained at all. It seemed she presented a very fast tölt and a really impressive flying pace when just left alone to play. She was a natural. Normally, Icelandic horses prefer trot and gallop if just moving around by themselves.

“Won’t you miss her?” Lottis asked.

“No. It’s alright.”

“Sure? She won’t be all that far away if you want to go see her when you come back to Sweden.”

“Yeah. I know. That is good.”

Grembla would have a new life. She would probably be in contests in the future, and her owner would brag about her.

Tilde’s chat friends seemed a little worried about her. They claimed she was depressed and should get treatment. Treatment. A luxury. She always felt those silly Americans ran to the doctor with everything. Where was their own responsibility to fix things?

“You can’t live like that anymore! It’s not healthy!”

Things like that they said. What did they know about life? Was life only worth it for them, served on a silver plate, with luxuries and comfort. They talked way too much about all the candy and cake they consumed. Gluttony. Tilde shivered a little. She didn’t want to be like that, taking for granted she had the right to everything good in life. For them, they claimed they needed it, no matter the cost or who would suffer in the end. She didn’t envy them. She didn’t want their cars and their new TV’s. She was even fine with her old laptop running on the obsolete Windows Vista.

And of course, they complained of her lack of human contact. The truth was, she didn’t need it like they did. They needed people in the same room. She wondered what it was about them that they needed so bad. To look at them, to listen to their voices, to smell them? What was so more real about sharing the physical space? Sharing the virtual one, seemed to let people get into each others minds more. Maybe Tilde valued peoples minds more and their bodies less. Other claimed the bodies explained their minds more. Tilde couldn’t disagree more. She knew, she would never be friends with a lot of them, just real life given. And the same would be true in reverse. They just didn’t want to admit to it. They were funny creatures, the humans.

A playful light started to show middays. Could it be? It was still January, even if it was the latter part. At first Tilde acted like it wasn’t even there. An illusion. Nothing real. The snow and ice would still be there. Until May. But it WAS twilight. It seemed to grow stronger every day.

The animals could start being out by their own around noon. No extra light was needed. Solo sometimes just stood still outside, holding his head high, proud and wild and full of silent life. He was beautiful. At least he hadn’t killed his spirits. Chinook was happy when Tilde was happy. She dared wagging her tail now, checking if it was OK. It wouldn’t upset anyone. She still wanted to stay near Tilde, to protect her. But outside she could actually leap playfully again and dig up snow.

Even the dark could seem pretty now. Tilde had always liked watching the stars. When the Arctic night fell, it had been cloudy most days. Now, skies were clear a lot. It was rather cold most days. The night sky was stunning without any clouds or moon. It was incredibly black, and the stars were amazingly bright and many. She could tell the time of day from the stars and which direction they were. Orion slowly climbing up around six in the afternoon. Disappearing after midnight. Stars rising and setting happened very cautiously, the angle of their courses sloped. Tilde liked it. This world didn’t like rapid changes either.

Orion, climbing the cliffs of the mountains on the other side of the fjord, She could only sense the landscape. Orion standing in the south, where she knew there would be open water, where Billefjorden finally reached its destiny and disappeared into the bigger Isfjorden. Betelgeuse, the red star, a giant star she knew. Bellatrix. Rigel, the little bright, blue star. She had found the star names sounding so mysterious when she was little. Now, knowing some Arabic, she know the meanings, and how they would really be pronounced. Betelgeuse, sounding almost French. A mad corruption of Yad al-Jauza, the hand of the central one. Going from Yad to Bet- seemed to have been a problem with reading Arabic, and missing one dot. Very weird indeed. Bellatrix, is simply latin, meaning female warrior. And Rigel, Ridgil, just meaning foot.

Then there also was Deneb, the tail, of the Swan she assumed, Arcturus, which the Big Dipper pointed at, Greek for bear guard, Mirfak, Arabic for elbow, and its neighbor Algol, Al-Rul, the ghoul, the demon. And there was the constellation she knew, part from Orion, the Big and Little Dipper, or the big and small bear, the W shaped Cassiopeia, the Pleiades, the Swan and the Lyra. Then she didn’t know any more of them. She would study and learn them all. The had the time.

February arrived as the vodka and tea was running out. With it arrived some more snow and milder weather, some days only minus five degrees Celsius. The dusk got stronger, there were a few hours of daylight every day, a new freedom, now she could believe in it, the reality of the day. And there was a new full moon. In the middle of February, the light was officially back. The sun was back. That day was cloudy, but Tilde made it a party for herself and the animals. She gave them some extra treats, and cooked herself some instant potato mash and canned mackerel. It tasted lovely. She had the last of the vodka. Instead of tea, she could drink hot cocoa for a while. Until the powder milk was all used up. She sang songs to the animals, ran around and cheered, jumped in piles of snow and threw show at the annoyed horse.

A few days after she could actually see the sun. It was there, all real. It was quite a sight. Solo pushed her with his nose, maybe thinking she had stood still for too long.

“Look, Solo, there it is!”

The horse didn’t seem impressed. She rubbed his head and he pushed back, enjoying the cuddle. The sky was bright and white, painted the sky near it orange and cast a bright orange light on the top of the mountains. The rest of the sky was bright, icy blue. Not black. She pointed at the sun.

“It’s so pretty. And you, you are Solfagur, pretty as the sun.”

He looked as if he agreed.

The days got longer fast now. It was breath taking. As February ended, the sun had decided to stay up almost eight hours. And a few hours of dusk. It meant only five or so hours awake in the darkness Tilde was now used to. It seemed quite short, and she spent it reading a book, listening to the radio or surfing the Web. It felt like cheating, after the compact darkness. It even felt as if the light came on too fast. But Tilde decided she would just try to enjoy it. In the days she worked or spent time outside. She went for long rides. She was told this winter had produced less snow than normal. For her, it was just as well, as the horse still could get around.

One nice and calm day she found herself all the way to the south lands and the mouth of Billefjorden. It was about seventeen kilometers from her house, about the same distance as to Pyramiden, but in the other direction. It seemed much shorter in the daylight, without all the snow to plunge through. She suddenly felt a little odd. She felt totally safe, but no one know where she was and no one would save her if something happened. She looked around. She felt mysteriously watched. She looked at Chinook. She looked strangely scared.

Tilde looked around. There was nothing. Everything was covered in splendid white snow. The ground, the mountains. Chinook stared at something. Solo was nervously taking a few steps on the spot, then shaking his head and his long, thick, red mane.

She kicked his sides, pulling the horse to the right. Solo would barely move. There was this sound. A very soft sound of something. Tilde looked in the direction of it. When it finally moved, she saw it clearly. It was not a fox or a reindeer, but a polar bear. She had never seen a live one. Not a single one. People always joked, more or less seriously, how she would get eaten, being away from the safety of a settlement, Out here, there was little that would scare a bear away.

She knew they were vicious animals. They kill for food, and attacks almost anything. Lack of food has made it far more dangerous than any other bear that might just ignore any human and walk away. Sometimes before the human even realizing being watched. Despite that, she could not just look. It was beautiful, magnificent, looking like the cold weather didn’t bother it at all. Of course the bear had seen her, it surely must have looked at her for quite a while. There was still a hundred meters between her and the bear. The bear just watched her, from the corner of its eye.

She turned the horse around and slowly made the horse walk away from the bear, in a bit of an angle so she could still look at it with ease. She hoped Chinook wouldn’t howl, but the dog was very quiet. The bear stood still. It didn’t react. It slowly turned around and was watching Tilde straight on now. She breathed carefully, like if just the sound of her breath would trigger the bear to attack. Nothing happened. They got further and further away. She kicked the sides of the horse and he started trotting, eager to get away. He then switched to a slow canter, and within minutes she decided they were safe.

Tilde started to tremble a little, as she relaxed. She had always brushed off the polar bear threat as something almost mythical, because everyone else made such a big deal out of it. But sharing an island with 2,000 of them, maybe she should be a little careful. She felt happy now she never had one on her door step. She hoped this one would not end up roaming around her house, and attack either of her animals. But worrying about that would do no good. She could just as well not think very much more of it.

It was still a beautiful, clear day with a blue sky. But she should set off to go home. There was only about an hour left of the daylight. She tried to take the whole landscape in. The white ground, the fjord, the mountains, the sky, the smell of unpolluted air, the crazy freshness of the world. She was sure there could be nothing more beautiful than this.

There was a few hours ride home. Solo fell into his stable tölt. They would be home after the sun set, but before it was dark. She would have a nice cup of hot cocoa. She knew she would never have a day like this ever again.

Even though they had gotten more food at their December trip to Pyramiden, there was little left to choose from. She would give fishing a go again. She had tried pole fishing in the summer, without great luck. Now things seemed to have improved. Maybe it was the season. Now she caught a number of odd looking, slender fish with big fins. She gave the smaller ones to Chinook, who ate them with great happiness. The bigger ones, she cleaned and cooked. They tasted quite well. Fresh food actually tasted great.

There seemed only to be that particular fish around, or at least the only type biting. If she caught more than she could eat, she stored them with the other food, in the part of the building meant for storage. Despite being part of the house, the stone wall between seemed to almost isolate the heat, keeping the storage cool. Life was good. She even saw a sail boat pass by while fishing. There was still life.

She even enjoyed cleaning the fish. There was something nice about the repetitive, dirty work. It was practical, hands on. She realized she liked doing things with her hands.

___

It had been spring, 2013. Tilde wondered about the possibility to live in the Arctic, but it seemed quite hard. She had stayed in a guesthouse when she visited on Svalbard, and she didn’t want to have to do that anymore. She wanted something of her own. She did a lot of research. There was this treaty, that talked about countries equal opportunity to develop business and do research, but reality looked much different. Companies already owned a large area, the area of Longyearbyen was pretty much devoted to itself and the rest, much further away, was National parks. Tilde scrutinized a map. There actually were areas here and there that looked like if they were up for grabs. In either case, no one would know exactly where she was. No one could just come and demand her to tear down her building. She had no fear of the land itself, just the people.

She decided to go look at the areas around Billefjorden, it would be easy to access. She stayed at a guest house, just taking it easy and planning for a few days, then borrowed a tent, a pad and a sleeping bag from a new friend at the guesthouse. She decided to go with Polargirl 2, on one of its trips to Pyramiden. She asked if they could drop her off on the west coast of the fjord, in the small bay they always seemed to go into anyway. But since there actually was a place they could stop at and it was possible to reach land, they made a deal. For a little extra, they would drop her off and pick her up three days later. Polargirl 2, being a much smaller boat than the original Polargirl that still made trips to Barentsburg, had no problems in the more shallow parts of the Fjord. They didn’t have many tourists it was still early June and the tourist season had not started yet, and a little extra seemed welcome. Also, the crew seemed bored and were happy, if still reluctant, to do something different.

She had just stood and stared for a long. long while. Then laughed. Then patted the ground. She had walked away from the fjord, happily treading the land many people had not set foot on. There was the short leaves of grass, the small white and yellow flowers… It was perfect in its simple beauty. She put her bag down, sat down and had a sandwich and some Coca Cola. She was finally alone. All alone in the wilderness.

After, she started to walk north. She scrutinized every little rock as she moved forward at a relaxed pace. Was she crazy? Probably. It didn’t matter. The freedom and the beauty had already swept her away. She was euphoric, energetic, let the impressions shower over her. Did not worry about any plans or ideas. Yet.

She just kept strolling north. When she was tired, she pitched the tent and had some juice and more sandwiches. It had been rather strange trying to sleep in the tent, in the sunlight. She had left the tent the second day, only bringing a water bottle, and continued to go north. She had walked around all day, just looking. She had spotted something much different. There was a curious, black hole in the mountain. She hurried there. It sure was an old, deserted coal mine. With piles of coal still covering the floor of the man made cave. Coal all the way into the deep mountain.

“Free coal,” the opportunist in Tilde thought.

There was only a fifteen minutes walk to a small, valley. She wandered into it. It seemed like a nice place. Sheltered. If she walked a bit further, she could no longer see the fjord. It meant, this place could not be seen from the water either. It didn’t feel like the place waited for her. There was no feeling of this being “right”. But she knew this place was as good as any.

When she was tired, she returned to the tent, then after sleeping, returned to the bay where she was picked up. She now knew she had to make a decision. It was a leap of faith. Would she risk being exposed, ridiculed, to go live in a place of utter beauty? Yes. She would. She would show some settler’s spirit in this world of comfort and conservatism.

The next step had not been easy. It had taken a certain amount of planning, purchasing three large bags of mortar, waiting for it to arrive, and shipping it to her place of choice. She still had a paranoid feeling about it. She had made friends with some people with a sail boat, and they seemed more than happy to help. They were tourists and a little too much on the adventurous side. They also shipped some wood out, actually asking if they could help with that.

There are no trees on Svalbard. No brushes. Nothing much you can use in a fire place. There is no natural material to build from. Everything is built from shipped in material, mostly wood. In Pyramiden there are also brick buildings. She had studied the art of building stone houses, and found no reason why it should not be possible to build one. Some of the rocks were soft, but depending on where you looked, there were also rounded, hard rocks, the size of bricks.

She made and remade a sketch of her house. One room, with a chimney, a part of the room dedicated to storage. And a part, for animals. She found the thought quite silly, but maybe, just maybe she could get some goats out here. Grow some real grass. She secretly loved the way of the people in the former settlement Pyramiden. Self sufficiency. Using the land you had. The stall would have an own entrance.

Building the house was actually much more fun than she had expected. She could complete large parts, just within a day. The doorways and the two, small windows presented much less trouble than she thought they would. She giggled childishly as she walked around the ruin looking building. It was not especially pretty. But it was solid. It was a real house. She had built a real house. She was actually impressed.

The flooring and roofing was hard to do all alone, and it took a while. She wondered if the roof was sloped enough, or if it would just cave in when the snow fell. She would also cover it, to protect it from rain, the little rain that fell now and then. Fitting the doors was the hardest task, and she put it off for a few weeks. There still needed to be some plastic to make up the windows. The extra cover on the roof. Some utensils for the inside of the house. But part from that, it was done. The roof was fit in the area meant for living. She had built a bench, a pretend kitchen bench.

There was the matter of making a stove. She would have to study that separately. The next round she had made on Polargirl 2, carrying all the utensils she could carry. She spent some days working, some only relaxing and enjoying doing nothing. She needed the rest, she told herself.

Polargirl 2 passed by several times a week. She knew the crew, they knew about her. It made her feel safe. Safe to actually know the people, knowing they would not tell on her or care what she was up to. Safe seeing life every now and then. It sometimes gave her a feeling of not being in the wilderness, but living next to a normal street.

With the roof, windows and stove completed, a bed made, she realized she had done it. It was ready. This was it. It was end of August. It was soon time to go home. She had been a bit sad, at the same time, she longed for the farm now. In September she finally left and went back to Sweden. She had gotten away with it. Surely people must talk in a town of just 2,000, but no one had ever confronted her. She had felt safer and safer, more and more at home, and she left with the feeling being a Svalbardian just as much as anyone else.

___

After Tilde found Chinook, her old horse had to be put down. At twenty-four she had had the old race horse for two years. She was rather sad actually, not really realizing she had grown fond of the old horse. But the horse had had two good years, together with Lottis’ horse and the three brats, with a little exercise now and then.

She spent more time with the Icelandic horses, enjoying their more feisty temperament and sense of humor. She took Lottis’ horse out for rides at times. That had to be enough. It wasn’t until the next spring she found Solo. He was an awkwardly cheap four gaited horse. He was a Swedish born Icelandic. She went to look at him and realized he was a quite sturdy, calm horse with a strong presence. There was no way she could not love this horse. The seller was eager to get rid of him, as the family was moving just the next month. He had not been for a full year, and was said not to have a lot of training before. That must be untrue. He did everything she asked of him, she didn’t expect him to be a dressage horse and he wasn’t. But he would go where she wanted him to, change gaits when she asked and stop when he was told to.

Tilde spent a lot of time riding and caring for her new horse. He was everything her old horse was not, small, chunky, hardy and with an enormous endurance. Strong feet too. No need for shoes. They had a lot of fun together, and he could be outside with the other Icelandic horses. They were just rotated them into the stable to present some company for Lottis’ horse, and certain days of really bad weather they could all come inside.

Of course she would bring the dog with her on her next trip. She thought about the horse. She had visited Pyramiden once, last fall, and there was this awkward person, Dmitri, who had promised her this and that. Transport on the new tugboat. Welcome to visit whenever. He was all alone in Pyramiden at that time, waiting for his team to arrive. He must have gone a little crazy from just seeing the tourists a few times a week. She was a kind of bright and fun person in the summer. That helped. People became friendly. He would transport a generator, if she found one, clothes, food and whatever she needed. What about animals? Yes, them too. And some fertilizer, and animal feed? No problem. For a fee, it would be possible. And no one would even know. The Russians stayed away from the Norwegians as much as they could.

So she contacted him when she knew he was in Barentsburg, and asked if he could arrange transporting her, a horse, a dog, and a massive amount of animal feed. And he said it would be possible, split up on two occasions. They discussed the cost and it was settled. Would it actually work?

It was, strangely enough she thought, possible to have her horse flown in. She booked a flight for her and her dog, and they took off. She could not really believe things would work until they actually arrived at her house. She had made a small sleigh for the horse and he had pulled things from the pick up point at the bay on the bare ground to the house. She had spent some days trying to make the generator work, and had Solo to pull several rounds of coal to the house. She had put up the satellite disc for her computer and contacted the world outside. It was rather strange. This should just not be possible. But it was.

When the next load of things arrived two weeks later, she had spread out topsoil and fertilizer and started to grow non Arctic grass. It was just a small experiment. If allowed, Solo would eat that grass in a matter of two days. She also started up twelve boxes of seeds of various vegetables. It couldn’t be more home like now. A lot of days were hard work, but some days seemed quite surreal. Tilde pushed that feeling away. There was nothing strange with what she was doing. See, it did work. Everything was possible.

Living was easy, the constant daylight energized them all. Water came fresh from the melting snow uphill. Fresh, lovely and plentiful. The weather was sometimes warm, up to twelve degrees Celsius. The weather shifted every day and within days. Some days were windy and less warm, there were clouds forming and dissolving every day, sometimes they zoned in on the top of the mountains, sometimes the sky was blue. Rarely it rained, a very soft and cautious rain.

Not a lot of things grow on Svalbard. It’s not just because of the cold. The soil lacks nutrients, and many things simply cannot grow because of that. Life in the water is richer. There are birds catching fish. Foxes eating bird eggs and chicken. Tiny reindeers trying to graze. Not a lot of animal excrement. That is why the land is so barren.

Tilde liked it. It was frail, but simple. When she had come back to Sweden the last season, she had been overwhelmed by the impressions, by all the LIFE. There seemed to be pine trees exactly everywhere. People, cars, plants, bugs… It had taken time getting used to. She thought it was somewhat silly, as she was told she lived in an area that itself didn’t have so many people, and the land was not very rich.

The second summer had been lovely and full of hope for the future. Nothing seemed out of the question. The vegetables were growing like crazy, the boxes were outside and the plants could thrive in the constant sunlight. She would bring them in when weather got harsher in the fall.

She could warm the house up quite easily, and cook on the stove. It didn’t seem to matter there was no insulation, the building was so small it didn’t take much to keep it warm. She lit a fire for cooking, but it was also nice to have a warm house to retreat to.

Solo didn’t need so much pellets. He seemed to be happy grazing on the short, Arctic grass. Chinook had dry dog food. She was fine with that. It was what she had at home too. Tilde cooked meals of pasta, soy, instant mashed potatoes, soups and had endless cups of tea. When the vegetables started to grow, she could happily add them to her meals. She had exceeded her budget a little. That was a small worry. Maybe she could try to find a job, if only for a short while, to make up for the loss.

She had hitched a ride on the tug boat, and spent a few days in town. She had asked a newly started tourist business if they had a job for her. They did. She would cook breakfasts in one of the guesthouses, do laundry and take tourists for short tours. The job would last only a month, but the pay was really good. She went to the stable and asked if they needed her horse. She would lend him for free for a month. They didn’t mind but were quite amazed there was another Icelandic horse on the island. He normally lived in Barentsburg, she lied. They seemed happy with the answer. And would they consider keeping him over the winter if she could have him back in spring, and then they could borrow him over the tourist season? They seemed quite happy with the offer. They didn’t have enough horses and were happy having one more, with the possibility of making more money.

She started working in the middle of July. She immediately found she hated working. She disliked getting up the same time every day and having to have people around all day. She liked the tourists. Many of them were just happy visiting, amazed and impressed and without no real knowledge of the place. She was very happy sharing everything she knew.

At night, she sat in her room alone, exhausted from the work and meeting all those people. On one level it was fun. On another, it was terrible. Her boss was a quiet man, and when he spoke, he always seemed like he looked down on people, or didn’t care much about them. Sometimes she spent the nights weeping, just wishing for the weeks to pass quicker.

She had a small room at the guesthouse for the first two weeks, the last two, she had to share with an Asian girl who was very gentle and quiet. Tilde was quite happy she was like that, she couldn’t have shared with someone asking her too many questions, or someone full of themselves. She started spending more time in the small lounge, just watching TV. Some days she treated herself to an expensive liter of milk. Those times were lovely.

Chinook had to stay outside, in a small shelter. Tilde always brought her on the short trips she guided. The dog was liked by most, and gave her a sense of safety. When there was nothing more to do or say, she could always pet the dog and focus on her. Tilde was quite liked by the tourists. She was happy about that. Since she didn’t have a good experience with people, she assumed there would be some kind of problem. But they seemed happy that she mastered so many languages and was willing to answer every little question they had. She was good at talking when she knew what to say.

She had taken her laptop with her, and having a day off she usually spent it outside the tiny mall with the library and its free wireless network. Those were good days. Having her dog with her. Treating herself to a cup of coffee and a sandwich from the cafe. She would just watch people go past, being a part of the group of tourists just relaxing. No responsibilities. Just friendly faces and no pressure.

When her four weeks of work was over, she was relieved. She needed to work when she was up to it, not when she was told. It was hard for her to keep that kind of a schedule. She didn’t know how others did it. Getting up, going to work, getting home, cook, eat, sleep. It seemed like a really hard life. But she had made it. She had the new money in her account. That felt good. She had spent two extra days where she had had to pay for the room, happy to know the tugboat would come so soon. She was really lucky it didn’t just go every month, which she was told it had in the past.

There was not much she could bring back to the house. She had bought some extra food, that was all. She had only had time to see Solo once in a while, she was too tired to walk to the stable often. She asked how he had behaved, and they said he had done well, both with the tourists and the other horses. They had cared for his hooves too, which was not a part of the deal, but was a pleasant bonus.

She had been very happy being back at her house. It was just as she had left it. She realized, it would probably just stand there, for years and years, if she stopped visiting. It was a little spooky. She remembered in the past, when she had entered old houses, finding food packages as they looked fifteen years ago and old newspapers to confirm the fact. She never had liked that feeling. 

___

Tilde looked at the dark, cold water. The sides of the Fjord was frozen solid. She wondered if the fjord would close up totally, and when. She thought back on building the house, how she had felt a stranger, an intruder. She didn’t have that feeling anymore. She knew if they found her now, they would not yell at her, not fine her, but only be happy she wasn’t frozen solid, causing one more adventurer accident. She knew what to expect nowadays. The people didn’t appear hostile, most of them were very friendly. Longyearbyen was her third home. It was a harbor of safety, comfort.

One more small fish. She let it back into the water. She went back to the house with the two, bigger fish. Fried fish and rice. Milk would be nice. And bread. She shook her head, angrily. Bananas. Apples. She made an angry sound. She stabbed the fish with her only fork and finished her meal.

The next day seemed quite similar at first. She daydreamed and fished, moved around a little to keep warm.

“How stupid.” she thought right after she slipped.

“How utterly unnecessary and stupid.”

She felt like she stopped breathing as she was suddenly cold, cold.

“OK, great, I fell into the water.” Tilde thought irritated.

She would be cold and wet. She pictured herself as she had to get out of the wet clothes and get warm. But of course, there was this matter of getting out of the water too. She clawed the ice, but her body was just too heavy and her fingers too weak. She knew she would have to get out of the water soon, her strength would soon disappear.

She frowned. Dying now? It was a strange thought. It just didn’t seem like a good time to enter the insentient dark. Not now, after the winter gone, the depression ceasing and just life lying ahead. She looked at the fishing pole she had dropped. She grasped it with both hands and stabbed the ice with it and dragged herself up a little. It worked! She hit the ice further away and dragged herself up some more. She would do it. She would actually rescue herself. With no one around. All alone. She made a final effort and was out of the water, panting, on the ice. She laughed.

“Where were YOU to rescue me?” she said to Chinook as she sat in front of the hot stove, with her pyjamas on.

The dog looked at her and yawned. She had been chasing a fox maybe. She looked tired and happy. No fish today. It really didn’t seem to matter much. She was still alive, reminded she had taken life for granted. It wasn’t bad. She turned the radio on.

She liked the sound of the radio. Tilde turned the dial and listened. When she was little, there was no night time TV, basically no night time FM radio and such thing as the Internet could not even be dreamed about. At times of anxiety and insomnia, there were books to try to escape into. Sometimes the books were her friends, sometimes they just were not enough.

She discovered AM radio. She had an old tube radio. She remembered how she watched it warm up and the green light of the tube closing in on itself. Out there was comfort. A thousand of different radio channels. They rarely played anything even reminding of modern music, the peaces played were classical, sometimes jazz. She could rememeber piano music from the speakers, through the interference, fading out, fading in… And the voices. The anomymous, strict ageless voices. The languages, French, German, English. She found herself looking for rarer and rarer channels. There was one Soviet channel broadcasting in Swedish, with a Russian accent. She was always so amazed by that. Someone over there learned her language, maybe only to do radio. And there was a Peruvian, Christian channel, also having Swedish broadcasts. They were mostly about God. She couldn’t listen to them for very long, she found them quite boring. But after listening to them she mailed them and received their QSL card. She still remembered the print: “We don’t know all the answers. But we know one who does.” She had liked that. Even if she didn’t truly believe, it provided comfort. Those lines were more powerful than any sermon. ”But we know someone who does…”

Radio really hadn’t changed much. It was still the same cloned voices, sometimes overlapping, reading their text with utter perfection. AM radio was still an antique. She wasn’t sure she disliked that. But there was far more music now, modern music. But still, there were those silly songs of the broadcasting country, smooth, soulless songs in Eastern European languages and German.

But overall, the radio still felt comforting. Not only was it a link to the outside world, it was a link back in time. It was about not letting go of the simpler and sometimes more superior technology. Radio was simple. She could probably build her own radio transmittor if she wanted. Still, she would not give up her computer. There was something fascinating with the false ease with which she contacted the world. It seemed rather natural and easy. But the technology behind it was quite complex and bizarre. She wondered if there was one person who could grasp the whole concept of computers.

The end of March was quite cold, with temperatures down to minus twenty. Having daylight was really nice, but now it was cold instead, really cold. The notebook showed, even inside it was sometimes only nine, ten degrees. It should probably feel really cold even inside, but compared to the outside, ten degrees was livable. And she had gotten used to the cold. Tilde liked the coal stove, near it, it was really warm. She could sit in front of her, her front side feeling really hot and cosy, while her back was cold. She liked that kind of heat. It felt real. It wasn’t just all around, while you didn’t even think of it. She liked this much better. They had two open fireplaces at the farm, that was one reason why she liked it.

Nights were cold, clear and amazing. Some nights, there was a vague green rapid moving light across the sky. Other nights, were stunning. There was a magical, green fire burning in the sky. Tilde put on some extra clothes and went out to watch. How could the light even move so fast across the sky? It seemed alien and unreal. It moved sideways, flickered, created vertical patterns, floated, jumped, burned and drifted like smoke or liquid. The sky was sure a stage this night. The green light seemed to be ceaseless, the energy seemed awkwardly never fading. It was like something divine made it happen, it seemed intended, as it made complex patterns all over the night sky. It sometimes looked playful, swam like a giant snake, pranced. At times the sky was so bright, it was like walking in moonlight. Indeed it was amazing. Aurora borealis. Even the name sounded mystical.  

After a long while she went inside. She found herself cut off from the world. The radio was just static. The satellite connection was broken. She scrutinized her thoughts. Did she like the break? Or did it actually scare her a little? It was OK. It felt like time slowed down as she was left to herself. It was a strange feeling, being totally isolated from the world. She was a cheater, she knew that. It bugged her a little, but she also knew how good it felt to have the connection with the outside world. Conflicting feelings. She had never been fond of them.

The aurora ceased and came back for several days. She could barely send an email to Lottis, and she was thrown offline again. At least, now it was done. She could catch some of the major, really dull radio stations, but sometimes they too disappeared into the white noise. It was a quite exciting time, she didn’t know from the hour to the next how things would work. Taking things as they come, it was good to have to do that sometimes. There were always something she could read. She found one of the novels to be utterly boring, but to her surprise, she read though it anyway.

___

The ground opened and dark smoke started to seep out. The smoke got brighter and separated and disappeared into the orange sky. There was silence. Then suddenly a roar and a rumbling sound as the ground shook and shattered. Hot lava was ejected and fell in small, lethal clots. The ground seemed to boil with anger. Then ice spread, Filled every little crack with a glowing bright blue sparkly matter. She didn’t know where she was at first. The location was totally unfamiliar, but it also gave her the vague idea she should know. Oh, yeah, it must be Io, on of Jupiter’s moons. It cycles from extremely hot to icy, which gives it an orange and white color.

She looked around. Was she alone here? Yes. There was no one here. No one at all. There was no one in this world but her. She stood on the surface and looked at the sky. The stars twinkled in yellow, red and pink. She felt a feeling of sinking. It looked so pretty. Yet there was no life out there. The stars were just huge, energy producing machines. They would fade and die. The universe would grow colder, bigger and dissolve. She didn’t like it at all.

“Hello?” she called out.

“Is anyone listening? Is God out there” I demand to speak to God!”

She listened. Nothing.

She knew it. There was no one out there. No one listened. The universe was cold and dead. Pointless. Dark. Would get darker in time. And die. Like her. They would all die. The darkness was numb and motionless. It had no character and no soul. She wished it had a soul. That it would speak to her. That the universe would answer.

She knew this was the ultimate truth. Life on earth was cushioned. People busy with their every day lives. They didn’t care. They didn’t want to care that there was no God. They wanted to sit on a couch and eat chips and feel safe. They didn’t want to meet the universe as it really was.

She looked in a catalogue. There was this green couch that looked good. It looked quite comforting. She could probably order it from earth. She looked to find a phone, and found one on a telephone pole. It was grey and old. She dialed a number.

“Hello! Who is this and what do you want?”

The lady on the phone sounded angry.

“I’m on Io. I decided to order your green couch.”

“The green cough? You can’t be serious. It’s really ugly.”

“If it’s so ugly, why are you selling it?”

The lady didn’t seem to want to answer.

“It’s made of algae. It’s not very nice”

“Why is it made  of algae? That is insane!”

“They thought it was a good idea to make it that way when they started the production. But that was three hundred years ago.”

“Oh, I don’t think I want it now.”

“Do you want a rug then?”

“Is it also made of algae?”

“Yes.”

“But…? Isn’t it just the same?”

“Don’t be silly! This is a high quality rug!”

“Do you have any other couches? That are made of normal stuff?”

“We have a lot of couches. What do you want it to me made of?”

She didn’t remember what they were made of normally. She felt a little desperate.

“Sheep. I think they are made of sheep.”

The lady was laughing. It wasn’t a kind laugh.

“Call us again when you have something smart to say!”

The lady had hung up on her. Incredible. She felt deflated and hurt.

Oh. The ground was cracking up again. She stepped in the lava. It was probably a bad idea. Dangerous. It was thick and smooth, like spaghetti sauce. She pulled her foot up and started walking towards a hill. The ground seemed OK there. When the ground froze again, she went back to the telephone and dialed another number. A man answered.

“Is this the police?” she asked.

“It is.”

“Oh good. You have to help me.”

“With what? I’m not sure we want to help.”

“Why not? I pay taxes too!”

“You only payed ten pence this year! Who are you trying to fool?”

“I need help anyway. I’m on Io and I want to go to earth.”

“You should not have gone there in the first place, It’s your own fault.”

“But… I don’t know how I ended up here. I was just here. I don’t remember!”

“So now we are supposed to just pick you up and fix your mistakes?”

“Please! Can’t you pick me up?”

“No! But we will send you a Christmas tree. Good afternoon!”

The policeman had hung up. She had nowhere to call now. She looked at the tree. She touched it. It was spiky and unpleasant. It wasn’t decorated. It was just a plain pine tree. She kicked the tree and it fell over. She felt a little bad for it. She tried to get it up, but it had already frozen to the ground. She pulled the tree really hard. It didn’t seem to matter.

She looked at the sky. There was this odd vortex that hadn’t been there before. It seemed to attract and suck in the stars. One by one they disappeared. Oh no! A black hole! She saw a tall lamp, a long rug and a small table sucked in, followed by a car and a letterbox. She understood now it would get the earth too and her too! The feeling of fright made her weak.

She woke up and looked into the very faint light. Where was she? She reached after the flashlight and looked around. The dog had moved away from her and was in a deep sleep on the rug. The horse looked at her, like asking her what was up. What a strange dream! She was fully awake now. But the feeling from the dream was still there, a raw, unforgiving and unpleasant one. She needed something nice to think about. So she could feel better and go back to sleep. She imagined how they built an indoors beach at the farm. There are such beaches. With wallpaper looking like trees and sky. And a full spectrum lamp. Real sand of course. And nature sounds from a recording. That sounded like a good idea. Warm sand. Barefoot. Reading a good book or talking. Drawing in the sand. She fell back asleep.

___

So she had survived. There was light and life. The contrast was quite amazing. The dark, the light, her inner darkness and the hope life that was back again. Soon the light would be all around, no nights. Just day. The weather was milder again, it always changed rapidly, both in the summer and winter. In just a month, in April, sun would be up all day, all night. Days, nights… it was strange she still thought in those terms. She had had two polar days now, two summers. The sun would just circle around, never get very high in the sky. She could almost feel the days getting longer, from day to day, allowing more and more outside activity. The nights, and the recurrent aurora slipped away, more and more.

She had to make a decision pretty soon. Was she going to leave in June or not? She had proved to herself she could do almost anything. On the other hand, no one could make it alone. She had been transported. A lot of the food she ate was produced by someone else. She didn’t like it, but it was fact. You can’t live without other people. She really liked the small farm. It wasn’t near other peoples houses. It wasn’t big. It was manageable. She didn’t lose focus there. Still, she could go elsewhere. Buy things in town. Take what was best from both worlds. Her own room there, cozy, painted walls, sloped ceiling. Her fireplace downstairs. Making tea in the small kitchen. That was nice.

Her house had a small living room and a kitchen downstairs. Worn down cabinets painted soft, bright blue, probably thirty years before. A wooden staircase. A bedroom on the second floor. A nice bed. A window from where she could see the lake through the tree tops. Birch and pine trees outside. No luxuries, just plain old comfortable life. A place that would be livable even without the pellet heater that circulated hot water to the radiators. Backup systems. But no need to light a fire unless you wanted to. Wood, a lot of wood. An own well. Taps with hot and cold water in the bigger house where Lottis lived. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Maybe she could work from home. Translating books. She was quite good at that. And do more gardening. Lottis hadn’t grown a lot of things while she had been away. It was enough to take care of the goats and chase them around when they escaped. Maybe it was time to return home. To have a warm, Swedish summer with gentle nights, bright, warm nights. But with no sun, just the dusk. It actually sounded good.

She was saying farewell to the Arctic. At least for this time. She just knew it. She spent several days just experiencing the life there, the surroundings. A long goodbye. It was somehow sad. Bitter sweet. But still, it wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. This place would always be in her heart. She could return. But it was time to leave.

The snow and the cold weather actually seemed quite dull now. She wished it would go away. She loved the bare, Arctic soil, much more than the snow. But it wouldn’t go away for a long while. Snow could be there still, in June. The fjord could continue to freeze more and more, until then. She felt a little bored, irritated at the snow.

There were the same chores. All the water needed. Keep the fires going. Cooking, trying to keep clean and laundry. Cleaning the box stall. Caring for the animals. There was something safe and nice about the repetition, the chores, food and Internet as a reward. She knew everything by heart. But it was starting to be too little variation. There were just the same things to do. It never really changed much. What she was doing could not be expanded very much. Was she bored? Maybe. And there was no tea left. Almost no medication left. Not even any powder milk. No milk.

She was just reading her email. Some of her online friends emailed her when they missed her in chat, she wasn’t online for more than a few hours every night, so it was quite easy to miss her. Lottis emailed about details in her life, a life Tilde wasn’t part of, that she was just taking in and commented on to be kind and polite. There was one more email. It was from the captain of Polargirl 2. They were going to drop some scientists off at Svenskehuset. They could pick her up there. In just five days.

Five days. That is not a long time. Would she need more time, or was it enough? She had already decided. But she needed to get used to the thought. She would be pulled up and brutally placed somewhere else. She could do it. After all, she was quite tired. She longed for the civilization to just take care of her.

Svenskehuset, or the Swedish house, has a quite remarkable history. It is oddly placed at just before Billefjorden, where the cold winds haunt the bigger Isfjorden. Open water, no shelter. The house is away from the coastline, it’s not visible when you pass by by boat. But it’s there. An odd house in an odd location.

It’s a quite big, wooden house. It looks like it belongs somewhere else. Nordenskiöld, had it built in the 1870s. As a mineralist and explorer, he intended for the house to be a base of trial coal mining and research. Ten years later it was used as a shelter in the winter for polar expeditions. It also comes with a tragedy in 1873. Seventeen men, seal hunters, died there, stuck in the Arctic over the winter. In the summer, when they were going to be rescued, they were all already dead. There were a handful of bodies outside, wrapped up and taken care of. The rest of the bodies were inside. No one had taken care of them, they must have been overcome with their fate.

At Christmas all the men were ill and there had been deaths prior. There was a diary, the last entry in April. The deaths must have been quite horrific, no one knowing what the enemy was. The diary was not very specific about the nature of the illness. The men died in different locations in the house, on the floor, in their beds. The men were probably suffering from a variety of symptoms, constipation, diarrhea, vomiting, severe stomach pain, headaches, mood swings, weakness and finally lethargy and seizures. It was suggested that a germ or scurvy had overcome the men, but it was later found out, the canned food had contained an  extreme amount of lead.      

Tilde was just five or so kilometers from it, when encountering the polar bear. It would take a few hours riding there. Not a problem at all really. She emailed back. She would be there. It would be interesting to see the house. She had only seen pictures of it.

There was nothing to do, nothing to be packed. Tilde roamed around the place, nervously, almost wanting to leave already. There were times of strange nostalgia, but reality still played the bigger part. She was still out there, it was still a cold and quite hostile world. The day arrived when she was leaving, now there was just a warm feeling of happiness. She was surprised she felt like that.

She decided to leave everything as it was. She picked up around the house, cleaned it, put everything in order. She would leave the radio, the books and the clothes. She packed the laptop, some papers and sketches and the notebook. The rest would wait for her. She didn’t need it anyway.

She put the tack on Solo and climbed up on his back. Chinook was standing a few meters away. She took a long look at the house. It was quite strange how she had spent such a long time there. It had sheltered her from the coldest polar winds. Just a simple, grey stone house. It was a good story, a well written chapter of her life, that had been completed. She rode off.

___

The stable had accepted Solo and they had decided he would be sent back to Tilde in August. A promise was a promise. She got a room at the guesthouse in Nybyen outside Longyearbyen. Was she allowed to bring the dog? The manager had muttered, but agreed to it. Waking up in a warm, clean room was nice. It was even nice talking to the few, early tourists. Did she know what was worth seeing? She told them what they wanted to know.

There were two men from Spain that had been on Svalbard twice before. They went for long trips camping, just enjoying nature, to come back to the guesthouse once in a while to rest up and shower. They had never been there during the cold season before, though. Did she know somewhere they could go that they didn’t know of? She stopped to think. Then she showed them on the map on the wall. Here, you can go by snowmobile, cross the fjords here and here. She pointed. And here, there is a small cabin made of stone. Really? Was there? Yes, really. There was a working stove, they would be inside and could keep warm. The men seemed quite happy, cheerful. Tilde left, and went back to her room.

She was booked on the flight two days later. She could spend the days in Longyearbyen, being happy with just passing time. Nothing needed to be done. There was this ease, this after fact feeling. A nice, untouchable calm. She sat outside the cafe, connected to the Internet, making sure everyone knew where she was and where she was going. The sun was shining. It was biting cold. The time seemed to stand still. Tilde sipped some milk from the box. She would go inside soon, buying some snacks and food for the night. Next day, it would be time to leave.

Part two

Utter stupidity! Erwin actually felt irritated. This was not a good idea. He felt angry with himself, for agreeing on the trip, and with his friends who invited him, despite him being open about his issues.

This couldn’t go well. He had already been through a few nervous breakdowns with little support, mostly he had kept to himself, playing games on his PDA or on his Gameboy. If he could disconnect from the world, it was actually bearable. He was squeezed into a small seat with no leg space, between two strangers. Cindi sat a few rows ahead. The rest of them were spread out in the Boeing 747.

This was worse than the first leg of the journey. Then he had been alone, scared, insecure, nervous, shaking, like a child that got lost from its mother. After they actually took off, he felt a little better. On that flight, he had been sitting next to the window, just staring into the dark, feeling like he would be stuck there forever. Still, it wasn’t that bad. No one had talked to him. He had slept for quite a while. exhausted from everything happening so far. He had listened to music and played on his Gameboy.

He had met up Cindi, Jonathan and the three other women he hadn’t learned the names of her, on an airport in Auckland, New Zealand. The airport had been very busy, and Erwin was suddenly panicked that he wouldn’t find his friends.

Cindi had been his Internet friend for many years. Despite their differences, they played well together. Cindy was like a mother to Erwin, he thought. He could help out with her computer problems and he listened to all the problems she had with her family and work. She liked when he listened. She said he was very kind. Erwin didn’t really understood that part. Yes, he listened, but rarely he could relate to her problems. They were mostly about things he never encountered, understood or was interested in. Social game play. Who said what. Problems repeated forever and ever, never a different approach. She thought he was really intelligent. That, of course was true. But he wasn’t like her. He reminded her. She forgot. But he needed her. She was safe, warm.

“How will we find each other?” he had asked her.

“You have seen my picture, silly!” she had replied.

“No guarantee I will recognize you. I’m not good at remembering faces.”

Not an answer she had liked, it seemed. She acted hurt. How couldn’t he recognize her, after all the photos swapped, after all they had talked on the phone? It was typical. Others was hurt by his shortcomings, like he did it on purpose.

They had decided on a spot to meet. Erwin had got off the plane, nervous again to be at a new airport. It was huge. How could anyone find their way there? OK, New Zealand. He knew nothing about New Zealand. He had found it on a map, so he would have an idea of where he was. But that was all. People, people everywhere! He stopped and leaned against a rail. His hand gripping it was pale. Luckily enough, his baggage would be shifted to the new plane without any interruption. He just had a green bag, his hand baggage. It was enough keep in mind.

He found the place where they were going to meet. A group of people stood there, talking loudly, laughed, like they had known each other forever. Surely it could not be them. He had met them on the Internet, in a group for people with problems. These people he saw, were all normal and happy. They were already friends. He approached them, slowly. He didn’t know what to say. If he would have to try to get their attention. He stopped a few meters away from them. Stopped, and looked. Not at their faces, more at their waist area.

One of them looked up. A tall, somewhat obese, blond woman with a round, maked up face. It was her. He remembered now what she looked like. That was Cindi, his friend. He quickly looked away from what he perceived as a grotesque mask of paint. The other people were empty faces, still.

“This must be Uuurvin!” Cindi seemed to shout.

Erwin’s ears still felt strange from the landing. He didn’t hear so well yet. He decided to correct her.

“I’m Erwin, maybe you can learn to say my name.”

He smiled. People smiled when they wanted to say something bad and then make it OK. Cindi laughed. He had done it right.

He looked at the others. One male. That was easy. That was Jonathan. And three girls. He would figure them out later. He realized he should greet them as well.

“Hi… all..” he said.

“So this is Erwin, nice to meet you,” Jonathan said.

The girls said hello too.

Cindi introduced them. Names, faces. Three girls looking the same. In time he would learn their names and who was who.

“We should get something to eat,” said Cindy.

“I’m completely starved! I have to eat now!” one of the girls complained.

He was puzzled. She was one of them. They took themselves and their needs so seriously. Like they were the center of the world and people really cared. Was he hungry? He was. But nerves would make it hard to eat anyway. It didn’t matter if he was hungry.

The went to a restaurant in the airport. The others were still yapping with each other. He knew Cindi from online, knew a lot about her. Yet, she appeared a little like a completely new person. Of course the others had no problem with those things. They just threw themselves in each others arms, at once. Erwin had wanted to just talk to Cindi for a while. He had explained those things to her. That he wasn’t like other people. That she had to treat him differently and according to his needs. She didn’t seem to care. She was talking to him, and to the others and no one waited for him to talk. He felt rather confused.

They had all ordered steaks and fries and things of that kind. Erwin had looked a long time in the menu, wanted the right thing for him. Something not too heavy, something he could manage.

“C’mon! Choose before the plane takes off!” one of the girls teased.

Very funny. The plane would leave in over four hours. Nice joke. Now he would feel even more stressed. He had finally chosen an ice cream dessert. That he could eat. Of course, it would be seen as weird.

“I’m so glad Erwin decided to join us! See, Erwin, nothing to worry about! We’re all nice, this place is nice! I’m so proud of Erwin, he is just so smart!”

Cindi still called him Uuurvin. And now she had told him how anxious he had been about going somewhere, meeting people. Great, just great. A lot of the time she simply just forgot he was autistic, and treated his feelings like they were just normal feelings of worry, something she could relate to. And he had explained many times, that he was extremely sensitive to a lot of things, change, new environments, being near people… His condition made him that way. It wasn’t anything he could just stop or get used to. He did need special care, but he guessed Cindi decided he just needed some ”normal” interaction, and he would be cured.

“Erwin, tell them your name!”

Erwin played with the spoon in the empty bowl. Couldn’t she see it wasn’t good timing for making him the laughing matter?

“It’s so funny when you say it. C’mon! We’re all friends here!”

She tried to say his full name. After making fun of it by pretending she couldn’t say it, he had enough.

“Erwin Bastiaansdr Dorlan,” he said, in a neutral tone.

One of the girls said:

“But it’s a normal name in Holland.”

“It’s a perfectly normal name, yes.”

Erwin lived in Holland. Cindi lived in Boston. The other girls also lived in USA. Jonathan lived in Canada.

The had boarded the big airliner. It would take them to Suva in Fiji. Then, the next day, they would go to a smaller island. There always had been those jokes and dreams in chat. If they could just go live on a deserted island together, with no ”normal” people, only people who understood their problems, things would be just great. Erwin had never agreed. They saw their group as people very similar to each other, and very different from people on the outside. Erwin, as the only autistic person, wondered if they really understood each other the way they wanted to believe. At least, they didn’t understand HIM. He thought they were more similar to the outsiders, and he was the one who was different.

He knew Cindi well. He knew Jonathan somewhat from chat. The other three girls, he must have talked to them, Cindi knew them and said they were good people. Cindi was almost fifty. Jonathan was closer to sixty. Erwin was twenty-eight. He felt like the youngest, but he always did, whether it was true or not. He had been promised he would be a perfect fit for the group. Of course he had not believed them. He never fitted in anywhere. But if he said so, people would become angry and say he WOULD fit in with them, because they are nice, they are different.

So the group had decided on a long vacation, on a Fijian island. It wouldn’t be their own, but they would be able to just hang out and relax. Leave the cold, dark winter and go to a stunning beach with palm trees and green water. Erwin had said he didn’t really liked beaches and heat. All people do, he was told. He wasn’t surprised. Of course he wasn’t going to come. Cindi would treat him to the trip. Cindi’s husband had gotten a big, Christmas bonus and a raise. There had been some problems with the relationship, but Cindi and her husband had decided to continue, but they would take separate vacations and really do what they wanted to do. Surely Erwin couldn’t deny her his company. She needed someone to take care of. He had said, that she would actually have to. Help him with most everything that most people can do, like how you order and pay for things, how you act at a hotel, how just to function. He had issues with that every day. It would be worse in a strange place. And, he would need help with where to go. He could get lost very easily. No problem. She would take care of him. She would help him with everything he needed. She promised. For some reason he had accepted to come along.

It couldn’t be so bad. He remembered he had thought that. Now he was in a small airplane seat, his feet and knees were aching, but he couldn’t move to a better position. He would just have to suffer. He stared into the seat in front of him.

So. Now he was away from his safety in the city, from his safe apartment where he knew where everything was. Away from his computer and game consoles. Away from everything familiar, his cups, plates, the same bread he always bought, away from his cuddly toys, away from his other toys. He had his PDA, the handheld computer, the Gameboy and a small plush toy. He needed the safety of those things. They were in the hand baggage at his feet. He looked. Yes, it was still there.

He listened to the noise from the jet engines. What a grating, terrible sound. The weird feeling in his head. Most people were calm and quiet, but some talked and laughed. He felt both crowded and lonely. No, not lonely, deserted. Did Cindi still like him as a friend? Did she think he was weird? She would take care of him, right?

The plane started tilting down and did a right turn. Too bad it couldn’t do more turns. They were fun. You could really feel the G’s and the big airplane would flip to its side. Time for landing. Erwin’s ears hurt. He tried to swallow some orange juice, and his ears got better for a while. He felt a little dizzy, he started to have a bit of a headache.

The plane stopped and he unbuckled. He grabbed his bag and stood up. People were pushing to get out. He waited. He saw Cindi disappear away, so he pushed out into the aisle to not lose her from sight. They stopped in the hall where they entered. The big group of people was dissolving around them. There was only Erwin and Cindi for a while.

“How do you feel?” said Cindi in a warm, caring voice.

There she was. The Cindi he knew. How he would just want to sit and talk with her for a long while. Just them.

“One of the worst things I’ve done!” Erwin said.

“Oh, poor guy. I didn’t know it was that bad. But you made it! You really made it!”

The others had now gotten off the plane. They were talking and pointing. Erwin stood and looked out the window. Nothing really he could do. He didn’t really know how to help. The aircraft, how big it was! Amazing they had been in it.

“We will go this way,” one of the women said and grabbed Erwin’s arm and pulled him along.

He got lose. He followed the group as they walked across the airport, reading different signs. He had managed the airport in Amsterdam. But he had been hours early, taken time figuring things out, and asked a host that had helped him. Now he couldn’t keep up that kind of focus so he just tagged along. They got their checked in baggage. Erwin only had one more, not so big bag. The others had bigger, fancier bags. Those things they couldn’t be without.

They came to an exit. He looked around as they stepped out. It was warm, really. Sunny.  A lot of people around. The street looked strange. The vegetation and the trees too. It didn’t look real. He shut off the impressions, and kept following. They got into two different cabs. Where were they going? Oh, to the hotel. Cindi had helped Erwin with the booking everything. He didn’t remember much of it. Not even the name of the hotel.

Suva. Fiji. He didn’t know much about this place. The hotel was a broad but not tall building of only three stories. It looked like it was built in the 70s.

“Oh! It’s so beautiful here! Look at that blue sky! And I hear we have a pool too. This is life, It can’t be more relaxed than this!” one of the girls exclaimed.

Erwin didn’t feel impressed or relaxed. It was a nightmare. Why was he here?

They went to their rooms, they had three double rooms for one night. Erwin was told he would share with Jonathan. They were given a key.

“You take responsibility of the key,” Erwin said to Jonathan.

They sat down on their beds. Jonathan patted his bed. Erwin bumped on his bed. Seemed soft. He was feeling a little bit more relaxed now. At least this room would be his safe place in this scary world for one night.

Erwin felt tired, almost of a sudden. The others just seemed energetic and cheerful. They were chatting about how they were going to go to the swimming pool. It was rather late in the afternoon and sleeping on planes isn’t ideal. The women were in the corridor, talking and laughing. They peaked into Erwin’s and Jonathan’s room.

“So are you coming? You sure need to work on that tan.”

Erwin didn’t know if it was him or Jonathan that supposedly needed that. He was quite pale, he knew that. People had told him he looked sick with the black hair contrasting to his pale skin, and he was constantly told he was too skinny, even if he was actually was quite normally built. Jonathan didn’t have any tan either. So he just didn’t know.

“I am very tired. I will stay and rest,” said Erwin.

One of the women sighed and then said:

“What about you, Jon? Will you be boring too?”

To Erwin’s surprise, Jonathan said he would also stay and rest. He had taken for granted everyone in the group would feel the same. The women disappeared and Jon closed the door.

“Ah, the sound of silence!” he said and smiled, lying outstretched on his bed with his hands under his head.

“Those ladies sure can chat away. Kind of reminds me of my ex wife,” he said a while later.

Erwin didn’t say anything. He sat on his bed, wanting to find something to play around with, but was too tired to really move. Jon got up.

“A drink then?”

Jonathan found the mini-bar and extracted five small bottles.

“Brandy, whiskey, whiskey, gin and,,. Hm, don’t know what these are. I’ll have the gin i think.”

Jon unscrewed the bottle and emptied it within a matter of seconds. Erwin smiled a curious smile. He reached for a bottle. It had some strange pink content. Nice color. He decided to give it a go. It tasted surprisingly fresh, Erwin had expected it to taste like cough medication, or worse, liquid penicillin.

“Any good?” asked Jon.

“Yeah. Not bad.”

Jon went for another two bottles, and Erwin snatched the last one. It wasn’t as good. It was also sweet, but tasted more of peach than of pineapple. Jon actually seemed like he was going to fall asleep. Erwin lay on his stomach on his bed, and spun an empty bottle on the floor. He felt quite relaxed.

It was strange to think they were on a small island on the back side of the globe. The part that only has water. How could people have ended up out here? That was quite strange. So here they were. It was around twenty-five degrees maybe, and sunny. So different from the cold and rainy winter in Holland. He looked at the bottle and the floor. Linoleum, maybe? Jon was waking up and asked Erwin if he was hungry. He shook his head.

“You need to eat anyway, I think. When was the last time you ate?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I’m going to the restaurant. Coming?”

Erwin shook his head again.

“I’ll bring something for you.”

“Oh, no need.”

“I’ll be glad to. It’s no trouble.”

“Oh. OK.”

Jonathan was gone for two hours. Erwin had investigated the whole room, looked in the mini-bar, touched the walls and the furniture. He finally looked out the window. He could see the pool from there. It was a small, round pool with turquoise water. A few people were in the pool, but most were just scattered around it. They looked kind of silly. Erwin picked up a few tourist brochures and started reading.

Jonathan came back, declaring he had had some curry that was really good. So India seemed to have some influence. He had brought Erwin a soda and some food. Chicken sandwich and a big slice of cake. Tasted OK.

“What’s in this cake?” Erwin asked, happy to know something to say.

“Hm. Banana. Coconut. And um, cassava i think. I also had a piece of that. Quite good.”

“Yeah. What’s cassava?”

“I don’t know.”

Jon didn’t know. Erwin had to know.

Cindi came and checked on them, and he asked her.

“It’s some kind of root i think. Like a long potato.”

That had to do. At least for now. He was told the plans for the next day. Get up early. Catch a plane to a smaller island. They would stay there and go to a Lovo, some kind of food celebration. At least Cindi remembered to tell him what was going to happen. He had told her that was really important.

It was just early night, but Erwin was already in bed. He tried to focus away from his thoughts. He focused on a new thought, and then focused away from that too. He let his fingers tap rhythmically on the white sheet until he could make himself fall asleep.

He woke up before anyone else. That was nice, really. He got up and went out of the room. He took notice of the room number and the turns in the corridor, the stair down. He made sure he would remember and find his way back. Outside was quiet. Not many people around. It wasn’t really warm yet. Still humid. It looked like it could rain. He started to walk down a street, humming to himself, making sure he was OK, let his fingers play with each other and looked from the corner of his eye at everything needed to be looked at.

It seemed like a rather big city. Houses looked rather normal. Palm trees, They didn’t look normal. Cars passing by. People lived here and called it home. Strange. He felt a bit lost. It was time to go back before he got too anxious. He went back to their room. He wanted to wake Jon. He felt a little panicky. But he had to wait. People would wake up in time. He sat on the bed, rocking a little. It was OK. No one was looking at him.

He was happy when he finally heard a knock on the door. It was Cindi wanting them to get up. Erwin finally woke Jon up, Jon snored, opened his eyes, looked tired and a bit confused. He didn’t seem fully awake until they sat down for breakfast. Erwin had coffee and bread. He ripped small pieces from his sandwiches and folded them before putting them in his mouth. The coffee tasted quite well.

They left the hotel and went back to the airport. They sat down and waited. Erwin felt like a sheep, pushed in different directions without much sense of purpose. People went on these trips for fun. Was this fun? A very strange kind of fun. He wished he had stayed home. He could be sitting on the floor eating chips and playing on his playstation instead of being here.

They made a small queue to board the plane. This was quite different to the really big Boeing planes. This plane was really small, red, with two propellers, no jet engines and with a protruding nose. There were the six of them and three new strangers. They boarded the plane and Erwin finally got to sit next to Cindi.

The sound from the engines were vibrant and floppy. They could feel every little move the airplane made. The small plane taxied slowly, then turned around, increased its speed, made a small jump and was in the air. Erwin looked out the window. It was quite a sight seeing the city getting smaller and smaller, but this time they didn’t break through the clouds and the ground was still visible. That was nice. They were already over water. Now he could only see blue, and no land.

Cindi looked a little scared. Maybe she didn’t like being in such small airplane. But he liked it. He enjoyed the feeling of landing and taking off as they left the three unknown tourists on another island that seemed really small. Was their island like that too? They left for open sea again. How long would this leg take. He didn’t know. He didn’t feel like asking either. It seemed to take quite a while.

Cindi sat at the window, so he finally stopped trying to look through the window and started looking at the worn out fabric on the seat in front of him. He had blocked out what everyone else was doing. He didn’t know, but he was the first one to react to the unusual sound from the right wing. He looked up, then out the window. The propeller was still spinning as it was twisting and shaking. It came to a halt when the engine bent over the wing backwards, It rested there for a second before it came loose and ripped off a part of the wing.

“Metal fatigue,” Erwin thought to himself.

The plane turned left sharply, then right then back to left. The thin door to the cockpit flew open. Erwin could clearly see the pilots. They were looking focused and frantic, and were talking to each other.

“The right engine fell off.” Erwin said in a not so loud voice.

“Shhh! Don’t say that!” one of the women said, or did he imagine that?

“The right engine fell off.” he repeated.

“The right engine fell off! he heard Jonathan shout, as if to help him.

The pilots looked like they understood. They worked to try to stabilize the plane. Sure an airplane could fly on one engine. Still he thought he heard screaming to the left of him. He looked at Cindi. She had folded her hands and were chanting something about the ”Lord”. They were closer to water now. The pilots seemed to want to pull the plane up. The made a small turn to the left. Then they started to descend again.

“Brace positions!” one of the pilots shouted, turning backwards for a moment.

Erwin folded himself. He waited. Was there a beach to land on? No, they couldn’t be that lucky. They were going to die. Not that all plane crashes killed everyone on-board, he knew that. He waited some more, hoping something would happen soon. There was just silence, no movement and no passing of time. He knew he wasn’t dead already.

A sudden jolt and a bang and then a screeching sound made time unfreeze. The sunlight itself seemed to flicker. The plane bounced violently and then dipped its nose, it seemed to want to make a somersault. There was something hitting Erwin over the head. The world seemed to get disrupted, then come back, seeming a little darker. There was some more shaking, but it slowed down and stopped. Erwin looked up. The plane looked different. The insides looked beaten and old. There was some clothes on the floor and an open book. It really looked messy. The floor then just dropped into nothing, it just disappeared. Erwin took a more focused look. There was water. Yes, definitely water.

Erwin got out of his seat, grabbing his bag and squeezing it against his chest. There was this sharp, fuel like smell. Cindi also had gotten up, she looked pale and zombie like. One of the women, was hanging sideways with a trail of blood coming out of from under her short, dark brown hair. There was water all over the floor now. Jonathan was coming walking through the water. One of the other women, the fair one, was waving her arms, screaming. It didn’t look like anything was wrong with her.

Erwin released the seat belt and the unconscious woman fell into his arms. He tried to hold her, but she kept slipping. The fair woman was yelling for him to help her. He didn’t look at her. He wished she would shut up. The darker woman was plunging out through the hole in the airplane and disappeared. Erwin grabbed Cindi and led her in the same direction. She too disappeared. Jon started to help him with the woman, trying to drag her as the water came flushing in.

“Help ME! Help ME!” shouted the annoying woman as Erwin and Jon reached the hole in the fuselage.

Jon went back to her. She was tearing at her seat belt, squirming and kicking. Jon opened the seat belt and she got lose and ran across the unconscious woman, placing one of her feet in her stomach. Erwin looked angry. That woman really deserved no help. She was just selfish and couldn’t even unbuckle her seat belt, demanded someone to assist her even though she was OK.

They pulled the woman through the hole and splashed into the sea. Jon had her in a good grip now, keeping her head above the surface. Erwin treaded water, coughing, looking around. He could see a couple of heads sticking up, like balls floating on the surface. There was something else sticking up from the water to the left of them. It actually looked like trees. He pointed at them and jon started swimming in that direction. He swam after him, still holding his bag. Jon was a fast swimmer and Erwin was soon behind. The other people were somewhere around too. He could see someone passing him meters away.

He pushed himself to keep swimming, swallowing some salty water. He lost sight of land, had to stop, look again, it seemed far away. Maybe he would drown. That would be rather stupid and weak. The others were probably doing much better. He kept swimming and was exhausted when his hands finally scraped against rock. He stopped, panted. He grabbed a rock, clinged to it while trying to slow down his breath. He felt like he couldn’t get enough air.

The cliffs seemed too tall to climb. He looked for somewhere where he could climb up. He kept following the coastline and finally found a slope. Small rocks came loose as he grabbed them and he dug his fingers into the hard sandy soul. Finally he had some grip. He managed to climb over the edge, and rolled over, into the dark green vegetation and looked at the blue sky.

He thought he would not move. He would stay there forever. But there was someone calling out, and he remembered Jon and the woman in trouble. He sat up. His clothes were sandy and his hands were scraped and bloody. He looked at his hands. He got up and started to limp towards the voice. It was the black haired woman.

There was another voice further away, and they went in that direction. The woman said something to him. He didn’t know what to say. There was a gap in the vegetation, and Jon was there, sitting on the ground, propping up the woman that blinked and seemed to roll her eyes.

“Paige? Paige??? Are you OK?” he urged.

OK, so that was Paige. He dropped the bag and kneeled at her side. He stroke some hair off her face and looked at her face. She didn’t look like she was aware of what was going on. What could they really do? She looked like she could die without help. Would someone come to rescue them soon, and be in time to save Paige? He felt it wouldn’t happen.

The fair woman came out of the other side of the bush and just stood and stared at them. Maybe she was in shock. Where was Cindi? He needed Cindi to be there. What if she had drowned? A shock of horror hit Erwin. No, that couldn’t happen. He needed her. She was his old friend. He got up and walked past the fair woman.

“You seen Cindi?” he managed to ask.

“No idea,” she said, like it didn’t matter.

He wished he could call out for her. But somehow he could never really make loud noises. He didn’t know why. He just couldn’t. There was something down by the water. It couldn’t be her. Couldn’t be that lucky. But it was her. She was sitting with chubby legs over the rock edge. She was alright. He broke out in a smile.

“Hey…” he said carefully.

“Oh, hi,” she answered.

“You OK?”

“Yes, thank God! I’m OK.”

“Jon seems OK,” he tried, maybe she wanted that information.

She looked at him with a blank stare.

“But Paige seems in a bad way. The other two seem fine.”

“Oh. Lauren and Jamie.”

“Yeah. Lauren and Jamie.”

He repeated the names to himself.

“But Paige looks bad.”

“God saved us. God will save Paige. I will pray for him to save her.”

Erwin looked annoyed. He would rather humans came to her rescue. He didn’t believe in sitting, doing nothing, and think a god would fix everything. How could she be so stupid? He went back to Jon and Paige. His right ankle had started to hurt. He wondered what he had done to injure it. He didn’t remember.

Paige had regained consciousness, but looked faint and weak. The black haired girl was sitting a few meters away, crying. She was sobbing like she couldn’t stop. His ankle could take no more. He had to sit down. He would rest now. There was no words exchanged for a long while. Then the fair woman started walking back and forth.

“When will those lazy Fijians come and rescue us? Surely they must miss us by now? They will come soon, right? They will come soon,” she spoke, angrily.

“Lauren, please calm down, they will come soon,” said Jon.

Lauren looked like she could be on the front page of some magazine, Erwin thought. She was what people saw as perfect. A sharp nose and chin, a rather long face, tall, rather skinny, blond hair, make up to make her look mature. The black haired woman was Jamie then. She looked nicer. She looked like a teenager, but she must be older, she looked rather innocent. She had a round face and a sandy brown skin color. She didn’t look all white.

Lauren kicked up sand and yelled about crappy airplanes and pilots that should be fired or sent back to school. That she would ask for her money back. Jon tried to calm her again. She finally sat down and made irritating, tearless crying sounds.

Erwin looked at his foot. He jerked off the sneaker and sock. His ankle and foot was really swollen. He tried to get up and walk, but his foot sent sharp pain into his mind. He put the toes down cautiously, and managed to hop all the way to where his bag was. He brought it back. Cold sweat was rushing down his face and he suddenly felt cold and weak. He sat down next to Jon and Paige and opened the bag. He had a full bottle of orange soda. He pulled it out and opened it.

“I think Paige should have this,” he said.

Jon nodded and said thanks. Paige was awake enough to drink a little. Jon got up his gameboy. It was still working. He started up a game and zoned out his surroundings, and the voice of Lauren yelling to him to stop.

Nothing happened. No one was there yet to rescue them. Surely they would come, insisted Erwin. They didn’t just leave people to rot. Cindi had joined them. They all sat in the opening of the dense forest of strange trees and brushes.

“OK now, all people try their cell phones now! Get up your cell phones!” Lauren ordered.

She got her out of her pocket but it didn’t seem to work. Cindi tried hers.

“Doubt there is any reception here. Need a cell phone tower,” said Erwin.

“Don’t be so negative,” said Lauren.

Erwin looked at Cindi to help him, to back him up.

“Oh, it can’t hurt to try,” said CIndi.

How stupid! But he didn’t say anything. Cindi circled around with her cell phone outstretched. He didn’t want to look at her. It somehow hurt his mind. Cindi and Lauren finally sat down. Now they were checking if they were really OK. Lauren had some cuts and bruises, so did Jon. Cindi had a swollen knee. Erwin had a bump on his head and a swollen ankle.

“I wonder if it’s broken.” he said.

“It’s not broken. You walked on it. That means it’s not broken,” said Lauren.

It really hurt still. It even hurt a lot when he was just sitting down now. He couldn’t push the pain out of his head.

“Doesn’t look like you’re hurting too bad”, said Cindi.

Erwin didn’t say anything. It really didn’t matter what he said. They gave Paige some more soda. It was quite warm. They would all need to drink something soon. Erwin looked up a suitable stick to use as a cane. Now he could move around a little. He wondered where they were. Everything was just small islands out here. They were very lucky to be on an island, and not just in the water, he knew.

“Can someone look after Paige?” Jon asked.

Lauren offered. Jon wanted to look around now, see if he could find some people that could help them. He encouraged Jamie to come along. He seemed to know how to make people feel better. Cindi would also go. They left. It was just him, Paige and Lauren now. Paige looked as if she was sleeping. Lauren picked up the soda bottle and drank. Erwin looked surprised.

“Don’t do that! She needs fluids. She’s sick.”

“I needed a drink! I need it too!” insisted Lauren, and suddenly her voice sounded meaner, sharper.

“But.. You have to think about Paige…”

“I think about ME!”

She drank the rest of the soda, then threw the bottle aside. Erwin curled up and tried to think. He didn’t understand this woman and her intentions, and it scared him. He wanted to get his gameboy out again, but he was afraid of how Lauren would react. There was silence. He stared at the water, there was just water and more water, all the way to the horizon. He knew people found sights like these pretty. But he didn’t like the wide space of curly water, and then nothing. It was too big.

He looked at the vegetation again. The brushes were full of pointy leaves. The trees looked a bit like pine trees, they had brushy tops but the leaves looked like thick pine needles. There were some insects running around, something looking like a spider and a caterpillar. He watched the caterpillar move slowly. He wished the others would come back soon.

A long time passed, then there were voices, real live voices breaking the silence, and footsteps. There was Jamie and Jon, and after them came Cindi. It looked like the walk had done them good. They seemed more live and cheerful.

“Hey. Did you find anything?” Erwin asked.

“Not a hell of a lot. Seems like we’re alone here,” said Jonathan.

“Not a very big island. We saw most of it,” spoke Jamie a bit shyly.

“Yup. Nothing else in sight. We need to just stay tight and they would come for us. How is Paige?” Jon continued.

Erwin looked at Paige and then at Lauren. Lauren stared back at him then smiled at the others and said:

“She seems fine.”

“Hey, there is a really pretty beach in that direction. Maybe we should move there. It’s a lot nicer,” said Jon.

“Can make a fire, maybe,” said Erwin.

“We’ll make a fire! It’s soon dark. They will spot the fire,” said Lauren loudly, interrupting him.

“Good idea, Lauren!” Jon said warmly.

Jamie and Lauren helped Jon carrying Paige. They were going slowly, but Erwin still couldn’t keep up. Cindi waited for him and reached out a hand.

“Don’t touch me!” Erwin wanted to yell, but said nothing, just waved a ”No thanks”.

They were far behind now. It was like Cindi suddenly remembered he was a friend now, that they were actually close.

“I’m so sorry for getting you into this mess!” she exclaimed.

Erwin looked puzzled.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know, but I shouldn’t have brought you out here.”

“It’s OK.”

Should he tell her what Lauren had done? He didn’t know.

“What do you think happened to the pilots?” he said instead.

“Oh, poor souls! They are with God now.”

“How can you be sure they died?”

“Oh, Erwin. They are gone.”

He couldn’t accept it just like that. He had seen the nose part just disappearing. The impact had been bad. He knew that. But still, how could she know for sure?

“They are with God. They are OK. You don’t need to worry about that now.”

He never liked the God talk. How could it be OK that they were just gone? How could such a thing ever be OK? How come now she suddenly seemed to want to protect him? She had just left him at the hotel. And now she felt bad for him being here, which wasn’t even her fault. He tried to sort his thoughts out. How did she reason? It was quite strange. He thought about a new hotel, maybe like the one they had been in. Restaurants and bars. People running around. He actually preferred this. Here the others were as lost as him. Maybe they felt what he usually felt? He wasn’t the mentally handicapped person here. He was just another person. He thought about the pilots and Paige, and suddenly he felt bad about his thoughts.

Erwin had to sit in the sand while the others were finding firewood. He didn’t know if it was real, but he felt Lauren looking angrily at him. He sat with Paige, making sure she was OK. She came around at times, but seemed very tired. Branches and old, big leaves lay on the ground before him together with some dried coconut shells.

“Are there coconuts here?” he asked Cindi when she made a new round for new firewood.

“I’m not sure. Why?”

Why? Silly question.

“There is coconut milk, right. In coconuts. We might need fluids.”

“Oh, they will come for us soon. No need for that.”

He wanted to say maybe Paige needed it, since she was hurt. He didn’t dare to. It was saying the wrong thing. He usually said the wrong things and people got really mad at him, and he didn’t know why really. Better keep quiet, he had learned. So he started to limp off, using his stick as much as he could. There were a lot of trees that looked like palm trees. He didn’t know these things well. Palm trees was something unreal, something that only existed in movies. The trees didn’t seem to have any coconuts. Maybe it was the wrong kind of tree. He tried to ignore the pain in his foot. There were some more trees resting in a bizarre angle and stretched out over the water. They did seem to have nuts.

There was just no way he could climb out there. The angle made it possible for anyone that didn’t have an injured foot to climb up. He needed to ask someone. He didn’t like it. He would ask Jon. That was the best. He went back, but Jon seemed busy lighting the fire. He spoke to Jamie instead. He asked if she would come and look at the trees. She hesitated. Looked at Lauren.

“Hey, Lauren? Erwin says there are palms with coconuts here. Should I go look?”

“Fine. Go look at the trees.”

She didn’t seem happy, but Jamie didn’t notice that. She helped Erwin and they went back to where the vegetation started again. Jamie took one short look at the tree, then climbed up like it was nothing. She seemed to pull at the coconuts, and one came off. She threw that to Erwin. It landed right in front of him. Then she went for another one. After she had pulled four of them off, she came back down. She picked them up and carried them back to the beach while Erwin followed behind her.

The fire was burning now, big, yellow flames reached for the sky. It looked so nice. Erwin knew he could just sit and looked into the fire if allowed. It would shift and shift some more, endlessly, beautifully.

Just in time. It was getting dark. And fast, Erwin had never seen darkness fall this rapidly. Jon had taken one of the coconuts, walked to the cliffs and hit them with the nut. Finally it had opened. He had given half to Lauren, and was feeding Paige some coconut milk with the other half. She didn’t seem to want to wake up to drink.

“Yuck! This is nasty!” exclaimed Lauren, but continued to drink.

Then she took the other half as well and finished the rest of the liquid and threw the shell into the fire. It looked as if there was a lot of white flesh inside. Lauren had just thrown it away. They all shared the rest of the nuts. Erwin got one half, and somehow Lauren had gotten a third half with more milk in it than he got. He was actually quite thirsty. The taste of the coconut milk was kind of bland and earth like. He chewed at the white fleshy part, it tasted more like what he thought of as coconut flavor,

The others were talking, but he couldn’t focus on what they said anymore. He put the sound of their voices in the background. If it wasn’t for the pain in his foot, he could have fallen asleep. It wasn’t as warm, he actually felt a bit cold now, but he sat down closer to the fire that was dying down. It still radiated out a lot of heat from the embers. Cindi came closer to him. Lauren told Jamie to sit with her, then lay down on her lap.

“At least we are among great people out here.” said Cindi to Erwin.

Erwin looked at her, shortly. She continued:

“You really have found some great people. They are all so caring, loving. All special people.”

He didn’t know. Jamie seemed a little insecure and distant. Lauren seemed cold. Jon seemed OK. Only sometimes Cindi was the person he knew from online. He was tired and negative, he knew that. He lay down and tried to think of something else. The foot was pulsating, radiating pain up his leg. He wished it would stop.

They wouldn’t come for them until next morning. He knew that. It was all dark now. When he had to pee, he could hardly see where he was going. The world was very, very dark. He tried to light his way with the gameboy. The others seemed to have learned from him and used their cell phones.

He tried to sleep a little. Were the others asleep? They were quiet. He went in and out of sleep. He wished the dark sleep could just take him away, but it didn’t seem to happen. He was even aware when he was asleep, it felt like. When the morning came, he was happy. Maybe he could sleep a little, now that it was warmer. His clothes had dried really fast the day before, but he was still feeling cold inside for a long while.

He hopped over to check on Paige. She looked rather peaceful and asleep. He pulled a little at Jonathan’s arm to wake him. He opened his eyes, they looked tired in the deep eye sockets. He scratched his grey beard.

“Should we move he out of the sun?” Erwin said in a very low voice.

Not low enough. Lauren was awake now.

“Should you really move her around? You never know what internal injuries she has. What are you trying to? Kill her?” she said, spitefully.

“Maybe build a little shelter then?” Erwin said.

“I wonder when they will come!” Lauren said loudly.

“Can only hope it’s soon, my smokes were spoiled,” joked Jon.

Lauren and Cindi laughed. Cindi smoked too, Erwin knew.

“Oh, you can build a shelter right here, for Paige,” said Lauren.

“Great idea!” Jon said and walked away, to get something to build it with, Erwin guessed.

“Do it yourself,” Erwin thought.

Jamie went with Jon. Cindi had sneaked up on Erwin and made him startle as she spoke:

“And she’s clever as well, that girl. Great person! Kind and clever.”

He didn’t understand. She must have meant Lauren. But Cindi was his friend. Why didn’t she see Lauren as she really was? He didn’t know. It hurt his head to think about it.

Jon was quite good with his hands. He seemed to know what would work. Erwin was impressed. Jon had built a quite steady looking lean-to which now was covered with green branches. He leaned some branches on the front site as well, fastened them with something looking like roots and weaved in leaves. They carefully placed Page inside. Lauren sat inside as well. Jonathan plopped down in the sand outside, red in the face, wiping sweat from his forehead.

Erwin hopped away, he wanted to get his bag from where he had gotten out of the water. He picked up the water bottle as well, put it back in the bag. As he returned to the beach, Cindi told him she had fetched his things if he had asked. He hadn’t even thought about that possibility.

“How is your knee?” he asked.

“It really hurts. But it will get better soon. How is your ankle?”

He sat down and pulled up the leg of the pants and showed her. His foot was still swollen and the ankle itself was thick and a bit blue.

“Maybe it’s broken,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

He started drawing in the sand. The sand felt nice against his fingers. He grabbed the sand with one hand and let it run into his other hand. He took off his other shoe and felt the sand with the foot. It felt good. He continued to draw in the sand. He used some ashes to make patterns. He didn’t really feel the world around him until Cindi said:

“That is pretty! You are so talented.”

People say nice things because it’s what they think others want to hear. No one knows what they really think. They just try to suck up. Erwin didn’t like things like that. He had only meant to pass some time, not make a piece of art.

His PDA actually worked now. It was somehow strange. It should have been ruined. The screen flickered a bit. It froze and he had to start the device back up again.

“Can’t you do something with that thing? You have Internet on it? Does it have radio? Or is it totally useless?” Lauren asked.

“No one HAS the Internet. No, no WIFI out here. And no, it doesn’t have radio.”

“Oh, don’t be like that. Someone must come up with ideas you  know!”

Cindi smiled at Lauren and said:

“He means well. Remember he’s autistic. And you have great ideas. We really owe you.”

Erwin put the earphones in his ears and started up a song. He really needed the music. It was strong, warm, interesting and full of life. Lauren sometimes sat in the shelter, sometimes on the beach. Jamie went for more coconuts. Jon just looked tired now.

Lauren waited for Jon to open he coconut. Then she disappeared into the shelter.

“She’s so thoughtful. Taking care of Paige so well.”

The sun was actually a bit to warm now. Being in a shelter would be nice and cold, Erwin thought. He chewed on some coconut flesh. He was a bit warm, and looked at his clothes. He had a pair of white, thin longjons, and then almost knee long, dark blue sturdy shorts on top. He had a white shirt with long sleeves, and a dark grey t-shirt on top of that. It was how he liked to dress, although for the occasion he had chosen clothes that mostly weren’t thick. He didn’t like exposing his body. And he disliked clothes that weren’t soft and comfortable. Sure he was seen as geeky and odd, but he didn’t care.

He actually didn’t like how the others dressed. Jon had knee long jeans shorts and a t-shirt. That was OK. Cindi had shorter, pink shorts and a short sleeve quite tight blouse. He thought like she looked a bit like a stuffed sausage. She had cotton, flat shoes that looked uncomfortable. She had a pink, scarf looking thing around her neck. Jamie was probably prettiest he thought, but also knowing Lauren and even the chubby Cindi were seen as prettier. Jamie looked natural. She didn’t seem to wear makeup, but her eyes were still dark and distinct. He wondered if she was part Asian or something. She was dressed in sporty, soft capris, a tank top and had sneakers on her feet. And Lauren. She had a short tunic with narrow shoulder straps, revealing some black bra straps. It also showed the crack between her breasts. It had some kind of blue pattern. She had tight, really short shorts on and sandals with heals.

His clothes were quite sandy and dirty. He had an extra shirt in his bag. And a toothbrush. He wondered if he would dare brushing his teeth, since no one else seemed to have a tooth brush. But he took off both of his shirts and put on his fake double shirt. It was really just a long sleeve shirt, but it looked like there was a t-shirt on top. He took off his pants and just put on the shorts. It felt a little weird, but he felt he could stand leaving his lower legs uncovered.

He went down to the water and washed his clothes best he could, and hung them over a bush. While he was up and going anyway, he would take a look at the island, he thought. He soon found a better stick, it was perfect to lean to, and made him able to move a little faster. He went in the opposite direction from where he had climbed out if the water, passing the coconut trees. Vegetation was dense, and it was hard to move through it. He turned a little to the left, away from the water, and there was an opening in the vegetation. There was some overgrown cliffs, making a hill. He climbed it slowly, on his hands and knees. From up there he could see most of the island. It sure wasn’t big. The hill had a big, almost flat top with something looking like grass, some scattered brush sticks and some short, skinny trees. Then the hill sloped down quickly on the other side, with some mean looking brushes and trees, and no place to set foot.

Around there was that dark, green vegetation. So there was the small beach, this hill, dense green trees and bushes that grew almost all the way to the water, where there was a one or two meter jump into the ocean. He didn’t see any other land. Just this small, green spot. However, land seemed to continue beyond the vegetation. Erwin couldn’t really make it out. He would have to go there.

He tried to slide carefully down the hill. He picked up his cane again and went trough the vegetation. He passed a tree, it was rather big and bushy with narrow pointy leaves. It definitely had fruit. The fruits were small, oval and green, some were red and yellow too. He reached for a fruit that had red on it. It wasn’t bigger than a prune. He smelled it, then put his teeth into it. He had expected it to be sour, but it wasn’t. It was quite sweet, and had a sticky juice. He realized how hungry and thirsty he was, so he picked a few more fruits and ate as he rested. When he got up he suddenly felt much better.

It took some effort to reach the mysterious end of the island. But it was worth it. This was just stunning, in its strangeness. The water around the island looked mysteriously turquoise, but here it was almost a different shade. The spot of vegetation on the island seemed like an egg yolk that had shifted to its one side. This looked like the albumen in a frying pan. This part was much bigger than the other part of the island. It seemed to have a white lining and a brighter turquoise center. There was water, but very shallow. There was a strip of sand between the vegetation and the water. If you followed the white ground sticking up, you would go far away, you would basically stand in the ocean itself. It made a big, oval shallow natural pool. Beautiful, Erwin thought.

He also thought very little of the island had vegetation, maybe there were more fruit trees and more coconut trees. He really hoped so. It was nice to eat, and they really needed the liquids. He went towards the beach, following the coastline. There was something floating on the surface. A few rain drops hit him. Rain was good. Something to collect the water in would be better. It looked like a piece of fuselage. He realized he would have to swim out there so he tried not to scrape his hands and feet as he slid down the cliffs. The water felt warm. He hesitated. He would get all wet again. But he didn’t want to take his clothes off. He started swimming.

The piece of fuselage were farther away than he had thought. But he finally reached it and looked. It was about two meters long and maybe a little less than one meter wide. It was a bit bowl shaped. It could probably hold some water. It just depended on how much it would rain. He held it in one hand and started swimming to the beach. It wasn’t as hard as he thought, the metal just followed him. He dragged it up a bit for it to be safe and not drift off. He had left his cane, so he crawled on his hands and knees  past the dead fireplace.

As he sat down he noticed that Jamie and Cindi stood at the end of the beach. He couldn’t see the others. Cindi held and hugged Jamie. Lauren came out if the shelter and quietly sat down by the water. Her face was blank and hard. Jon also came out from the shelter.

“Erwin…. Paige… well… Paige has passed away.”

“She died?”

He had to look for himself. She looked very white. He touched her arm. It was cold. He didn’t understand. How could she already be this cold? Lauren had been in there and looked after her. She must have checked on her, Noticed that she got worse and died. Or had she just used the shelter and not taken care of Paige at all. That just could not be true.

“I’m sorry,” Jon said and put his big hand on Erwin’s back.

He froze. Waited. Jon finally removed his hand. He could hear Cindi talking in a sad but comforting voice. He could hear Jamie cry. He didn’t know what to say.

“Poor Jamie. Jamie and Paige had been friends for a long time.” Jon spoke.

“Like me and Cindi?”

“Yes, similar to that.”

“Jamie got to be really sad now,” Erwin concluded.

Lauren had taken off her top and lay outstretched in the sand in just her minimal shorts and bra. Erwin pointed to the piece of fuselage. He explained how maybe they could catch some rain water in it.

“If they don’t come for us soon. Need to drink. Every day,” explained Erwin and thought about the soda that had been refused Paige.

“True.”

Jon got up to drag it past the beach and onto the grass. He had looked at Lauren.

“Can just as well get an even tan. Nothing else to do,” Lauren said and looked like she was going to yawn.

Cindi and Jamie returned. Jamie couldn’t speak, it just resulted in more tears. Lauren looked at them and said:

“You will have to move her body.”

“Unfortunately she is right,” said Jonathan.

“Yes. She always knows what to do,” Cindi said.

It was Jon’s and Cindi’s job to carry Paige’s body away. They put her in one of the openings in the woods. Erwin came along, and found his cane again. He wished he could have helped. Jamie couldn’t, he understood that. And Lauren’s job seemed to be telling people what to do.

“We can’t bury her, can we?” Jon asked, actually sounded helpless.

“Maybe you could cover her with rocks,” Erwin said to himself.

Jamie started getting stones and Jon and Cindi got sand from the beach. They managed to make a sandy lump with rocks on top. At least she was not exposed now, and when they were rescued, it would be easy to dig her up.

“I will get Lauren. Poor Lauren. She is just so sensitive. It is like that when you have a lot of empathy. You hurt for everybody else,” stated Cindi.

She came back with Lauren. They all stood spread out around the sandy bump that was Paige. Erwin tried to understand. She had been here. Now she was gone. Just gone. She was a person. He wondered how it had felt. He felt sorry for her that she was gone now. It seemed so unreal.

Cindi said a prayer about how they all prayed for Paige and asked God to take her into his arms. She went on for some minutes. Then Jon said a ”Rest in peace” and Jamie cried and said how she would always keep Paige in her heart. Erwin said nothing. Lauren spoke up quite loud, and said something that seemed somehow bizarre to Erwin. How Paige was the best person and they would remember all the love she had spread and how Paige would now watch over them and keep them safe.

They went back to the beach after a while. Erwin approached Jon and asked if he could help move the piece of fuselage to the grass Jonathan said he would be happy to, and asked if it was meant to collect water. Erwin said it was.

“I guess we need to plan how to stay alive. Even for the few days it might take for them to find us.”

Erwin felt happy inside. Jon had understood and also had the same thought as him. It was a safe feeling, but unusual.

“And, Jon…”

“Yes.”

“There is a fruit tree in that direction.”

Erwin pointed into the woods.

“What kind?”

“Don’t know. But it has fruits that are red and green. Like apples. They are yellow inside. They taste good.”

“Will have to look into it then.”

“And, Jon?”

“Yes?”

“What do you think about Lauren?”

“Oh, don’t worry about her. She can sound a little edgy at times. Just do what she says. That keeps the peace.”

It was the wrong answer. The right answer would have been that Jon thought she was kind and caring. He even thought, if Jon was really clever, he’d say she isn’t a nice person. And said they should stop her from doing things. He had really hoped for that. Lauren was his ENEMY now. But strangely enough, Jon knew she was bad, but still thought everything was in order. There was no logic in that. He had even thought maybe Jon would protect him from her, because Cindi sure didn’t. But now he could forget about that.

He was a little angry and slapped the sand with his cane. He looked at the sand as it rose and fell back.

“We need a new fire,” Lauren said that had approached them, then looked at Erwin and said:

“Try to be at least a little useful!”

Erwin’s eyes burned. So many times he had heard that. “Why can’t you do something useful?” “Why do you do stupid things?” “Why do you always mess up?”

He hobbled to the coconut trees and collected all the empty shells he could find. He put them in his bag and returned. Maybe he could improve his foot a little. He fetched the clothes that hung in a tree and made a small hole in the long johns. He ripped off the leg as evenly as he could and continued with the other leg. Then he went back and forth, ripping each leg into one long bandage. He took off his shorts that were still damp and put on the long johns shorts. They just about covered his knees. He got out of the shirt, washed it and the shorts and hung them, and put on the other long sleeve shirt, without the t-shirt on top.

He started bandaging his foot when Cindi came asking him if he needed help. Sure, she could help him. Getting some support, the ankle didn’t hurt nearly as bad. He would sleep better tonight.

Lauren passed them, carrying some dry leaves, and Erwin thought she was giving them a mean look. Jon came to light the fire. They took a break and said they would get more firewood later. For when it was getting dark. Erwin felt his lips being dry and cracked. Maybe he needed more water, but how? There were guesses about when they would be rescued. But more and more people started talking about their lives. Who would miss them if they didn’t return.

Cindi’s husband would miss Cindi. She said she had said more how she loved him. Jamie said her sisters and mother would miss her. And her next birthday would be her 30th, she hoped she wouldn’t miss it. So she was three years older than Erwin. She looked so young. Cindi asked something about her family and she answered:

“Yes, we’re  Cherokee. My father is white though.”

So she was an indian. That was cool.

“And you, Erwin, do you only come from Holland?”

“To my knowledge, yeah. I have never looked into it.”

Cindi had some old roots in Ireland. Jonathan, the Canadian, had some roots in Germany. He said he really didn’t have a lot to return to. Erwin was going to say something comforting, tried to think about what, when Lauren said loudly that all her workmates, her nieces and her boyfriend would all miss her, she had so many friends too, they would die without her. Then she started talking about something else. Erwin wondered why he hadn’t been asked. But of course, he had nothing exciting to say, he had his mother and father. They came over once in a week to his apartment, to see that everything was OK, that bills were payed and the place was clean enough. They always had to help somehow. Even when he was little and they insisted he was normal, just not motivated to listen, and lazy. Such a bright kid. How could he be so stupid?

Somehow they went back to talking about birthdays. Lauren had just turned 25 and had had a big party with a lot of presents, alcohol and friends. She complained and laughed about some of the gifts that she had gotten, things that were just cheap crap. Erwin looked at Lauren when she didn’t watch. Was she only 25? He was actually older. She seemed so mature, so determined. She had to be 35, at least. She looked much older than Jamie too. Yet another mystery thing.

Finally Jon said that Erwin had said something about a tree. Erwin said that maybe there are more than just once. So it was decided that Jon and Cindi were going to look for it. He had wanted to discuss something with Jon. It had to wait. Instead, to have something to do, he fetched a coconut that was floating in the water, it must have just dropped. He tried to smash it against a sharp rock near the tree, but the nut just bounced back. He tried a little harder. A small crack opened, and he drank the milk inside it. It was good he was out of sight. He then used more force and the nut split in half.

He went back to the fire, and placed one of the halves in the ember. He just sat and watched it. The meat looked as if it almost melted. Then it started to curl. He let it sit there for maybe half an hour. Then he pulled it out, using some sticks.  He waited a little, then tore off a piece and put in his mouth. It came off the shell easily. The white piece tasted better than he had expected. It tasted from smoke, nicely sweet and quite rich. This was much better than just raw coconut. He realized there were probably many things you could do with coconuts.

He put the other half in the ember. Then he gave a large piece of smoked, soft coconut flesh to Lauren and one piece to Jamie. Jamie sniffed her piece and looked so funny Erwin almost wanted to laugh. She took a bite and said:

“Mmmmm!”

He knew that meant she liked it.

“Tastes really nice. Thank you,” she said.

“No, thank YOU, for being kind,” he thought.

Lauren ate her piece in silence.

Erwin and Jamie went to collect more firewood. He put it in piles, and without asking, Jamie picked them up and carried them away and put them next to the fire. He didn’t have to walk so much. They were a good team. As they returned, Erwin noticed that the last half of the coconut was gone. He had planned to give it to Cindi and Jon. He was filled with anger when he realized that Lauren had eaten it. How dared she, really? She must have known they would know it was her.

“Think these are mangos,” said Jon as he barged into the camp.

He looked as he was carrying at least ten. Cindi was way behind, but also carrying a few.

“I thought mangos were much bigger,”Erwin said.

Lauren grabbed a mango and started chewing. She glared at Erwin and said:

“I understand you don’t really know what a mango is. You can’t get out so much. Things must be very hard to understand for you.”

Erwin heard Jon sigh a little. Then Cindi said:

“Yes, it’s so incredible how complex and confusing this world must be to Erwin! It’s not easy to be autistic. So many things that we all can do and take for granted, and it’s just to difficult for him! Still, he does so well, I think!”

He knew he had problems. But this was just too much. She usually told other people how smart he was. It was like he was her pet. And now she just said he was stupid and handicapped. He turned around and hopped away, trying to put as little weight on his right foot as possible and still keep up speed. He needed to get away. Far away. He didn’t stop until he reached the other end where the lagoon was. He sunk down in the sand and cried. He was tired, really tired of everything, of the whole ordeal, but he was so hurt by Cindi’s words. She was his friend. She always said she understood him and would never hurt him.

He wasn’t just an idiot. There were things he could do that no one else could do. He would show them that he was just as able as them. When he had no more tears he decided to return to the others. But he had also decided on something. He would build his shelter here. It would be just for him.

He came back to the beach and no one looked at him twice. Cindi said something about how Lauren had come up with cooking coconuts and how brilliant she was. Erwin didn’t even listen. He was offered a mango, but didn’t feel like eating anymore. Jonathan was missing. Then he came back and started building a second shelter. He was smart, Erwin thought. Now people could stay away from the sun if the needed to, and sit inside if it started raining. Jamie helped him out a little and Cindi fetched leaves to floor the hut with. It looked nice. Erwin still had no chance talking to Jon.

As evening fell, the sat around the fire, eating some coconuts and mangos. Lauren complained about the food. Jon said he could go for a steak and smiled. Cindi started to sing. She had a good voice, a little raspy. She played the guitar, he knew that and wished he could have heard that. But just the singing was good too. Jamie sang when she knew the words. Erwin thought she was really cute. She was agile, like a monkey, fast, maybe not so intelligent but had a spontaneous way now that her shyness was gone. There was no trace left of the sadness from the death of her friend. She must live in the present, Erwin thought, and realized he actually liked her. In a different world she would have been the pet, not him.

Lauren started talking about her nieces. She had quite a few. They were great girls. But there was one of them who had cerebral palsy. She didn’t have great motor skills and used a wheelchair a lot.

“Can you imagine the shock my sister had when she had Eve? Talk about awful. Here you think you will have one more normal child, and you get something damaged. My sister really didn’t deserve that. She had taken care of herself the whole pregnancy. Gave up coffee. Ate healthy food. Her husband was shocked as well. I feel so bad for those people.”

“So only perfect children are welcome in your world,” Erwin thought.

Lauren continued:

“If I had a child like that I would feel it was better it died. I mean, not for my sakes, but for the child’s. It wouldn’t have a full life. It would miss out on everything.”

Erwin had realized he was different long before his parents knew, or accepted it. But when he had been in third grade, his teacher had finally talked his parents into some kind of evaluation. He didn’t remember most of it. But afterwards his mom had cried. When Erwin had become older, he had asked his mom about it, why she had cried. Because he was the same child he was before. She had said she had needed to grieve the death of the normal child because she could accept he was autistic. Now she knew for real her child wouldn’t have a normal life. He wouldn’t be able to do everything someone growing up should do. Maybe he couldn’t even get a job.

He still didn’t understand. He had thought her mother was selfish and took things for granted. When getting a child, you get an individual, you can’t pick and choose. Life throws you any child. People should understand it before planning to have children, he thought. You can’t think you are bigger than life and just order a normal child and complain when you get a different child. And call it grieving? Like your real child died and was replaced by something nasty and unwanted. But why would you want a normal child anyway? Why would you need your child to go through every milestone normal children do? Why do you want a clone? Why do you just want repetition of a theme that had been done a million times before? What was good about that. He didn’t know. Other people accused him of stereotypical behavior and repeating. But the normals did the same thing, just on a bigger scale. Why hadn’y his parents been happy about getting a special child? They had accepted it. But not with any kind of joy.

Darkness had fallen and Lauren went into the new shelter, saying something about how you can’t sleep where someone had died. Erwin put his shorts in the bag and went to the other hut. There was some confusion about who would sleep where. But Cindi chose Erwin’s hut, and because Jon also was a bigger person, he went in with Lauren. Jamie for some reason chose to be with Erwin and Cindi. Jamie lay down near the back wall and Cindi eased herself down beside her. Erwin lay down next to the opening. He had brough his shirt and his t-shirt. The women were lying on their side, Jamie’s front faced Cindi’s back. He tried to cover them with the shirt. It wasn’t much, but if they were like him, sleeping with no cover felt a little scary. Cindi looked really surprised and smiled and said a warm “Thanks.” Erwin smiled inside. Jamie said it was nice of him. He lay down with his head on the bag and tried to cover himself with the t-shirt. He felt Cindi’s chest to his back. She was warm. That was nice. As long as she didn’t try to hold him the way Jamie held her, he would be OK. If she did, he would remove her arm after she fell asleep. But there was no need. A minute later, the dark sleep had taken him away.

It rained, and it rained a lot. At first, Erwin was annoyed that the rain had woken him up. Then, he realized, rain meant something to drink. He pulled out the empty bottle and put it under a branch in the corner, that seemed to collect a lot of the water. Then he sipped water from some dripping leaves. He had been so thirsty!

He gave Cindi a kick to wake her up. He giggled a little, she looked like she was sleeping still. Cindi woke Jamie. He actually felt happy. Now there would be some water in the wreckage part too.

“Please remind me of how well water tastes, if I ever complain about that again!” Cindi said.

It didn’t seem to stop. It continued to fall. Feeling better, Erwin decided to take a walk in the rain. Maybe he could put his shoes back on. The left one was no problem. He opened the right one widely and pushed his foot in. It hurt. He made a small knot and stood up and reached for his cane.

The other two people had woken up too. Jon sang some silly song and danced a little in the rain. Lauren looked annoyed. She looked quite different now, without any makeup. No one could say she was pretty now. Her hair was messy and her face was dirty. The others had managed better to keep up their normal looks. It was like they understood how to clean themselves even out here.

When the rain finally stopped, Erwin and Jon sat on the beach by the water, talking. The sky was clearing up and the world was pretty. Jon started talking about meat, what dishes he would have when he came home.

“Maybe we can fish?” Erwin said.

“Yes, thought about that too. Need a piece of string, a weight and a hook.”

Jon started playing with a stick, standing in the shallow water. He cursed as he pushed the stick into the sand. Erwin watched him curiously. There were indeed some very small fish swimming around.

“Yeah! I got one!” cheered Jon.

He pulled the stick up, it had almost crushed the small fish.

“Now I only need a cat to eat it.” he joked.

“Seriously,” he continued, “I need something to do. Fishing would be nice.”

Erwin jumped when Jon called for Cindi. Jon had quite a strong voice, and the sound came too sudden. Cindi came, and Jon asked about her scarf. She went to get it.

“Sure we can ruin it?” asked Jon.

“Yes, of course! It was on sale, even.”

They started to pull a long string of pink yarn from the scarf. It was handed to Erwin who started rolling it into a ball.

“Lot of yarn. Could even make a net,” he said.

“Let’s start with a fishing pole.”

Jonathan attached a long string of yarn to a branch. Then tying a piece of wood to it and a key.

“Need a hook now. Anyone has a hook?”

He smiled. So it was a joke.

“Maybe a safety pin?” Jon asked instead.

No one had that.

“Earring maybe?” Erwin suggested.

It was Lauren that had to donate an earring. Jon sharpened one end of it against a rock and attached it to the string and put a small piece of fish on the hook.

“OK, I’ll go fishing now,” he said and just walked off.

Erwin wondered if he needed to be alone. He asked if he could have some of the leftover string and Cindi said a ”Yes, of course”. He walked slowly to the lagoon. It was beautiful. And it was his place. Just behind the narrow line of sand, young trees were growing. He sat down and looked for a long time. He needed to plan this out in detail. Improvising wasn’t his thing. There were four trees that made a half circle opening up towards the lagoon. They would be walls and roof. He tied them together by the tops with the pink yarn and broke off the branches that were not vertical to the other trees. Then he placed branches between the trees and used more yarn. He remembered what Jon had done, and weaved in leafy branches, making walls.

He had a hut now. He could lie outstretched inside, he could sit up in it, without hitting the roof. It had a big opening, but he decided to leave it like that. It was like a cave and would be OK unless the wind blew rain his way. He cleared the ground inside it and put in some sand and big leaves. Then he built a small fireplace on the beach and put some sticks and dead leaves beside it. He was happy. He had a home now. No one would bother him.

He took off some of his clothes and swam in the lagoon. The water was nice and warm and green. It was sure a piece of paradise. He swam under water and tried to make out the bottom. It looked uneven, had different colors, green yellow and orange. Some purple. Looked like plants somehow. He touched them, they were spiky and hard. Such strange things. He knew he had to show Cindi this, or he would be selfish.

He dried in the sun, got dressed and went back to camp. He took his bag and the rest of his clothes and asked Cindi to come with him. She was talking to Jamie and Lauren and was told to wait, but instead he went back to his hut and put his things down. His bottle was full of fresh water. He felt hungry and wondered how the fishing went. He played on his gameboy and relaxed his mind. His life was OK now.

When he finally returned to the others, he noticed that Jonathan had come back. The fire was burning and smoking. Lauren made silly, fake gagging sounds. Erwin approached them. Jon was trying to explain how to clean fish, but only Jamie seemed interested. She used a small, sharp rock.

“I’ll try,” said Erwin and Jon explained to him how the fish had guts in its stomach.

He needed to open the stomach and take the guts out, the wash the fish. They could remove bones and skin after they cooked the fish. Erwin tried his best. Some of the fish looked unusual, one was green, one had a big head. But most of the fish were round in shape and grey. Some were quite big.

“I think that one is a Barracuda,” said Jon and pointed at the big headed fish.

“Oh,” said Erwin.

He had heard the name before. He didn’t know it was a fish.

“You are good at fishing.”

“He he. Yes, Erwin, I should be. I’ve fished since I was a little boy.”

Erwin felt a little bad. He didn’t know that it could be normal to just have skills like that. Jamie had cleaned what looked like seven fish, Erwin had managed two. There were around ten fish in all. Two for each person. Jon showed them how to get the fish steady on a stick, so it wouldn’t fall off and how to fry it over the ember. Lauren pretended to be busy so Jon made a stick with a fish on for her. Erwin found a good spot and rotated his fish slowly. Jon told him it looked as if it was done now. Erwin let it cool off and pealed off its skin, it came off easy, opened it and took the backbone out. Then he ate it carefully, trying not to eat too many bones. It tasted nothing short of great. He cooked his second fish that was a bit larger.

“Save thea heads so I can use them as bate,” said Jon.

“You really did this well! This was super!” said Cindi.

“Oh, Jamie and Erwin helped too. And Erwin gave me a good idea,” Jon answered.

There seemed that the attention was shifted off Lauren now. Erwin liked that. It was Jon that had helped them all the most. Erwin went to the water to wash his hands. He bent down and felt someone sneaking up. Then he felt an intense pain in his ankle. He fell forwards and he almost fell on his stomach into the water. His hands had stopped the fall. He didn’t understand at first.

“Eeerwin helped too! Oh the freak helped. Like we need the freak to help!”

It was Lauren. She had kicked him.

He got up from the water. His foot was pulsating still. The others were busy with different things. None of them had seen anything. She had waited for a good moment. He remembered school. When the teachers weren’t around he was prey. Then his peer’s faces had gotten mean and hard. They had punched him in the stomach and shoved him into walls.

Why were some people still acting like mean kids? What had he done to anger Lauren? He had just kept to himself, spoken when talked to, he had really tried not to be irritating.

Everyone had drunk from the water in the fuselage. It was empty again. So Cindi and Jamie went hunting for mangos. Maybe they could even find more coconut trees. At least Erwin’s hunger was gone. And he loved all the food they had had. It was all good. Jon had stayed in camp to rest. He said he was old, so he had lain down in a hut. Didn’t Lauren help with anything, ever? Erwin sat poking in the smoking ashes watching Lauren from the corner of his eye. No one seemed to realize that. He felt strange. He started to shake. He knew he had to talk, but he really didn’t have the courage to.

“Lauren,” he said.

She looked up without saying anything, then she started picking her nails.

“Lauren?”

“Yes?!”

She sounded like a snake.

“Why do you never help out?

She made a surprised face. It looked ugly and fake.

“Says YOU? You are just in the way. All you do is use up food and water and being useless!”

His eyes burned and watered. What had he expected? Yes, she was probably right. He always managed to take up more resources than he deserved. He could never act normal and people always got mad at him. He walked off. He could hear footsteps behind him and tried to hurry up, but it was hopeless.

“Erwin.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder. He was startled and shook it off and turned around. It wasn’t Lauren. It was Jon.

“What’s wrong?”

Erwin could barely talk. He tried not to cry.

“Lauren is always mean to me.”

“Oh. She is just stressed. We all had a bad time with this.”

“So it’s OK she’s picking on me?”

“I don’t think she means to do that. It’s just not easy for her.”

“She hurt me on purpose.”

“She did?”

Jonathan stroke his beard.

“Well, Erwin. We’re all in this together. It’s better that we don’t fight.”

It was clear that he wouldn’t side with anyone. Erwin had expected Jon to change his mind and understand him and side with him. Maybe tell Lauren what was acceptable. Now Erwin was just told not to fight. But he hadn’t fought anyone. It was so unfair.

“Come back and we will all have some mangos.”

Erwin shook his head and walked away. It was much better to be alone than to be with people who didn’t care what happened to him, that didn’t care what was right and wrong. He had thought Jon would be strong and do the morally right thing. Now Erwin felt betrayed.

He sat by his hut, drawing in the sand and trying to listen to MP3’s on his PDA. Battery seemed to be low. He blocked out the world and most of his thoughts as he listened to the music and scribbled in the sand. Soon the world was gone. It didn’t exist. It was just as well.

He drank half his water. The air felt warm, but not too hot. He rested inside his hut, felt quite depressed and not motivated to do anything. Not that it mattered. Nothing he did was ever good enough. He could just lie there. At least his foot felt better when he didn’t move at all. He wished he could stop feeling, totally. That nothing would exist anymore. That the world would just disappear into the dark. One day it would be over. He longed for that to happen, longed for the dark.

It looked like evening would come soon. The sun became visible as it went down and shone into his hut. So he had some evening sun. Not bad really. The sun would set over the lagoon. Did he want to be elsewhere? The sad thing was, that it actually didn’t matter. The best he could do, anywhere he was, was hide. He used to hide in his apartment.

Someone was shouting. Erwin sighed. Someone called his name. It sounded like Cindi. She came closer. What could he do? When she was close enough he called her name, as loud as he dared. She had heard him and came trampling down vegetation.

“I found you”! she said.

He couldn’t argue with that. She looked around.

“What is..?”

“I decided to move. I live here now.”

They sat down inside his hut.

“Is something wrong?” Cindi asked.

He thought about it. A movie played through his mind. He told Cindi what Lauren had done and she would side with Lauren. It would hurt too bad.

“It’s better that I stay out of your way. And I need to be alone.”

“Something happened, didn’t it? I’m your friend, remember? We always talked about these things.”

He remembered. He used to trust her. She was never unkind and she wanted him to accept and like himself. She didn’t understand him too well, she just knew he was different. But she had always protected him. Treated him like his son. He didn’t know who she was now. Did she just put up an act online? He wished that he had never met her. That thought made him sad. He cried.

“Oh, tell me what’s wrong? Are you sad about Paige?”

He had even forgotten Paige, again. How could he? What kind of person was he? He wiped the tears off his face and started to walk towards the water, stepped in, broke off a small piece of coral and got back up, then started to follow the shore. There were some white and yellow flowers. He picked a few. He found some strange looking purple flowers, like spiky balls, and took a few of them too. They walked in silence.

They reached the spot where Paige’s body was. Erwin placed the flowers on the mound with the piece of coral on top. He could just as well go to the camp now.

“So you found him,” said Jon, and actually looked a little happy.

Erwin knew that usually would make him feel a little better, but he felt sad and tired. He sat down. The others started to rebuild the fire. He didn’t help. Why should he? He was just told he did nothing, and no one cared how much his foot hurt as he tried to do as much as possible.

The all sat down and talked. Jamie seemed closer again to Lauren. She ran little errands for her, got her a fruit, tried to scoop up some water from the very bottom of the wreckage for her and tried to brush her hair with a piece of branch.

“How do you feel now, Erwin?” Cindi asked.

He was just about to say “Fine” when he was interrupted.

“Cindi, can’t you sing something?”

Cindi looked surprised and happy. Like someone had told her she mattered. She went along with Lauren’s request and sang a song from the sixties.

“I remember that song,” Jon smiled.

Lauren said that she sang well and Cindi thanked her and told her how kind she was.

Erwin wanted to scream. He could hear when Lauren’s words were not honest. Her voice got sharper then. No one else seemed to hear it. Or maybe it was part of the game. To feel good because someone said something nice, even if they knew it was a lie.

“Erwin found a most beautiful spot!” said Cindi, of a sudden.

He wanted to tell her to be quiet.

“I think he needs to be alone sometimes.” she explained.

“But, we like you to be here,” said Lauren and smiled.

“Yes we do, said Jon.”

“I will go to bed now,” Erwin said and left.

Lauren made some kind of sound. It sounded like his bullies had sounded. A sound to tell others he was stupid and ridiculous.

He went to bed as the sun went down. A quiet rain had started to fall again. He drank the last of his water and arranged some branches to lead water into the bottle again. He thought about how easily he had fallen asleep the last few days. He usually had a hard time falling asleep. This night, sleep didn’t come easy. His head was too full of thoughts. He couldn’t turn them off. He relaxed his body and folded his hands into fists. It was how he relaxed. He never felt his hands weren’t relaxed, he felt they didn’t require any energy to be shut tight. They did that themselves. There was no muscle tone in the rest of his body. He knew he could keep his mind busy thinking about his ideas and theories, but that would keep him awake. He needed calmer and more repetitive thoughts. He listened to the water. He could hear the waves but just very vaguely. He liked that sound. After a while he could feel sleep catching him, trying to abduct him. He tried not to fight back. He didn’t know why he did sometimes. Finally sleep came and erased the world as he knew it.

He must have been really tired. He felt much better when he woke up. Sometimes, when he was really tired, things could seem hopeless. Today would be a better day. Maybe they would even be rescued. It was about time. It was strange, really. People must have known what route they were taking and look there, between where the other tourists got off and where they were going. Planes even have a transmitter device that can be zoomed in on.

His bottle was full to one third. No use saving that water. He drank it. He could just as well go talk to Cindi. Maybe they could try to find some more food. When he came into camp, Jamie came up to him and hugged him. It was a short, strong hug that didn’t feel bad. Her eyes were a little teary.

“Thank you for putting those flowers on Paige’s grave,” she said and turned away, like if she was embarrassed about her emotions.

He didn’t know what to say, but it was OK, she was already gone to do something. Jonathan went fishing after complaining about how he wanted to smoke. Erwin didn’t want to be alone with Lauren that probably was around somewhere, so he asked Cindi to come with him. Cindi wasn’t as agile as Jamie, she took a long time climbing out above the water to get some coconuts. It took a long while before they found any mangos to pick.

“There isn’t much to eat on this island. I think we’re running out of food now,” Erwin stated.

“Oh, you think?”

He told Cindi what he had thought about how they should have been rescued by now. She looked a little scared, then said:

“God will rescue us. I pray all the time about it.”

“You know I don’t believe in God. I never did.”

“Yes, yes Erwin. But God believes in you!”

It felt good now that it was just her and him. It was always so hard when he had to share her. Not that he really minded. But the conversations got so shallow when more people were involved. People were just talking about new things all the time, shifting focus every minute. No one really cared what anyone else said. This was better. She listened to him and he had time to think about what she said.

They came back and drank a little water from coconut shells. Lauren was sunbathing. She looked healthier again. Erwin drew a game in the sand, and Cindi and him played. When they got tired of the game, Erwin came up with new rules. Cindi told him he was intelligent. Jamie came and played too, but couldn’t figure things out so they made a checkers board with sand and ashes and played with sticks and stones. Cindi and Jamie played, and the winner played Erwin, and he always won.

Jonathan took his time and only came back with four fish. It would be something at least. They waited until the late afternoon, then they cooked fish in coconut shells and grilled mango. Lauren had a headache and had to lie down in one of the huts right after she ate. The others worked up a party mood laughed, told jokes and sang. Erwin found different things he could drum on. They all had a good time. They told things about their lives. Cindi urged Erwin to talk about himself too. She said he was smart, much smarter than any of them. She made him talk a little about the art he did at home and his writing. He didn’t feel left out anymore. He was one of them now.

“Can’t you read a poem?” Jamie asked.

“Yes,” said Cindi, read us a poem!”

“Well… I wrote one in my head yesterday. But, I don’t think you’d like it.”

“Of course we will like it!”

How could Cindi know that? She hadn’t heard it yet.

“It’s not a happy poem.”

“It’s OK. You can write a happy one when they come get us,” smiled Cindi.

“OK then.”

He scrambled his courage,

“This world, and its entitlement
To do its deeds, impenitent
The emptiness is ambient
Darkness, all insentient

Life is light, is brightness
Will ask for what’s good
Craving, thirsting rightness
And to be understood

When souls will ask for meaning
There will be no reply
No Jesus, intervening
No new star in the sky

So days will run their course
Conventional, mundane
Life will think about its source
Of something more arcane

It reaches out to others
And thinks they are the same
But lacking sisters, brothers
It plays a different game

So it wanders off alone
Hurt by life, it burns
But it can’t even be alone
It’s everywhere it turns

The soul will look for solace
For comfort in the dark
To try to reminisce
Time before life’s spark

In darkness there’s no tears
No soul’s storms or squall
No single, little fear
There’s nothing there at all

Enter, souls of discontent
Dissolve, and be somnolescent
The emptiness is ambient
Darkness, being imminent
Darkness, all insentient.”

“That’s all,” he said.

“That was really good. Sad but pretty. You are so talented. I hope you know that,” said Cindi, and sounded like she meant it.

“Quite a dark horse you are,” Jon said and nodded in approval.

“I wish we had some wine,” said Jamie.

Erwin had to laugh. He just loved when Jamie said things like she didn’t thought first. It made him smile inside.

They talked some more, and Jamie asked Erwin what he did for a living. He said he was on a kind of disability income. He had tried to work with different things. It had never really worked out. She said that with a mind like that, he needed to be a professor or something, a scientist. He said he could never do that, it was just too hard getting along with people and handle the stress.

“At least you could flip burgers at Mc Donald’s. Everyone can do that!”

It was Lauren. She had woken up and was coming out of the hut. He tried to explain.

“That is possibly one of the hardest jobs for me. You have to do everything simultaneously, do everything right and at the same time. Talk to people. It sounds like a really difficult job for me.”

“It’s not hard! Even an idiot can do it. And you should really work. You can’t just take for granted other people will pay your way as you do nothing.”

“I work on a theory too.”

“Like what?”

“It has a little game theory in it…”

“Game theory? Like that gameboy you always play on?”

“No no. game theory has to do with math and social sciences. If you know Myerson, Hurwicz and Maskin… They won the Nobel prize i think seven years ago. Anyway, also my theory has to do with statistics. Say you roll a dice and it comes up a six nine times… You can either see the chance of a new six as one to six or to the whole of ten throws. And if you have the same lottery number week after week, does that really give you a better chance of winning? This actually makes a big difference, not only on paper, but how people think instinctively about those things and what outcome to expect.”

“What IS he talking about?” said Lauren and rolled her eyes.

This time people didn’t laugh and think it was a funny joke. Lauren seemed insecure for a moment.

“I miss my boyfriend. I don’t want him to think I’m dead,” she suddenly cried.

Cindi ran to her and hugged her and said nice things. Assured her that everything would be OK, that she understood how Lauren was sensitive like all good souls. Erwin didn’t know what to think. He looked at Jamie to try to figure out what she thought, but she just looked down. Jon’s face was blank and he revealed nothing.

He thought about what he knew about them now. Cindi had had a most dreadful life, but he always knew that. She didn’t like to talk about it and take up place, but he childhood had been rough, with an older brother that had beat her a lot. When she was a teen she had done some drugs and been out all night. Then she developed some mental problems and slowed down and started living responsively. Now she seemed to care about others more than herself. Jon had had a relatively normal life but had had a breakdown after a bad divorce. He seemed quite stable on the outside, but Erwin knew those people were usually the ones falling through, those who were most at risk of suicide. Jamie had grown up poor with a mother that had tried to do everything for the family. The father had died when she was little, and then one of her sisters had died as well. And now she had lost her good friend Paige too. It wasn’t fair.

He didn’t know much about Lauren. He didn’t know why she had looked for a chat room to talk about life issues. All he knew about her, was from her bragging about her boyfriend and her job. She was really quite mysterious.

Erwin expected the next day to be good. He didn’t know why, he just had that feeling. But it was a disaster. He felt sleepy and after walking around, he had sat down to rest. The air was buzzing, warm and alive. Life was kind. He drifted off in a haze, in a trance, almost. He was actually still quite tired, so he lay down and napped. There were no place to go, no appointments to keep, so it was OK. When he woke up, he felt a bit sick, groggy and raw. He went to the camp. It looked empty.

When he could feel people coming back, things happened fast. There was a scream and a splash. Lauren came out of nowhere, shoved him and shouted, all wet. There was rapid footsteps. Jamie and Cindi.

“He pushed me into the water! He tried to drown me! Don’t let yourselves be fooled! He is evil. He wanted to kill me!” Lauren shouted.

He was stunned. What had happened? He didn’t do this. Still it looked real. Cindi was looking at him, her face was twisted, looked mean and ugly. What could he do?

“I didn’t do anything,” he said, weakly and with a stutter.

“Don’t believe him! He hates me! He always hated me! He says these things to me when you don’t hear!”

It really looked like she meant it.

“I didn’t…”

“Erwin! You can’t do things like that! I understand you are disabled and everything, but you just can’t hurt people. It’s not allowed!”

He looked at Cindi. Not her too.

“I thought I knew you better than this. You don’t understand maybe, but you have to try. Lauren is a human being and you can’t hurt her.”

He hadn’t seen Cindi angry before. He was scared. The words hurt him, like knives. He couldn’t protect himself.

“We will have to keep an eye on you. Obviously you can’t run around on your own. It’s like you say. Someone needs to take care of you.”

And now his own words were used as weapons against him. He hated Cindi. He hated her so bad. Lauren said nothing. Jamie was also quiet, but she looked like she was very disappointed. He didn’t like that look. He wanted her to like him.

“You will still be our friend, Erwin. We will forgive you. Lauren will forgive you. God will forgive you. But now you have to do better. Say you are sorry.”

He looked straight at Lauren. Her face revealed nothing. She was stronger than him. She had set him up. He realized that now. It wasn’t a dream. He found some comfort in understanding. He hadn’t expected a sneaky attack like that. He didn’t understand people could think them up or why. But he knew now that it had happened.

“Will you say you are sorry?”

He could barely speak. He didn’t know what to say and the words wouldn’t come out.

“No,” he said.

“Fine. We will talk to you when you say sorry.”

Cindi turned away. The others did too, like if they had been ordered, and they went on with what they were doing. Great. Now he was shunned. He went to sit at the foot of a palm tree. He knew when he was beaten. Now he could just absorb their blows. He knew the deal, it had happened many times in the past.

As he sat there, Jon walked into the camp. He was way too cheery to fit in. His face was a little pink, not brown, but it looked like he belonged there, in nature. He puts feet on the ground like it was home. Maybe he had hiked a lot in his days.

“Hi guy and girls! Everything OK? I saw you fell into the water Lauren.”

He smiled at her, like she had done something silly, to tease her. She looked angry.

“I didn’t…”

“She didn’t fall in. I know it’s hard to believe, but Erwin pushed her,” Cindi jumped in.

“Oh, now that has to be some mistake. I stood over there,” he pointed, “And I saw her fall. I only saw one person. I heard her scream, but she got up so I thought she was OK.”

“What! Are you sure?” said Cindi.

“No way!” muttered Jamie, but sounding like she meant the opposite.

“Well I’m pretty sure. I’m old, but my eyes are good.”

Jon still smiled. He didn’t seem to understand the severity of it all. It was just as well. If he had known what had occurred, maybe he hadn’t said what he did. Cindi seemed to suddenly remember Erwin was also there.

“Oh, my dear friend! I thought… Can you forgive me?”

He didn’t really understand what people mean when they talked about forgiveness, They had tried to explain, but he had never understood, or wanted to understand. It didn’t seem like something real or valid.

“I’m so sorry!”

He wanted to say it was OK. But it wasn’t. She hadn’t trusted him. But she immediately had thought Jon was speaking the truth. And she had believed Lauren without questioning. She should have trusted him.

Jamie looked at Cindi with some kind of disgust, but it was as she didn’t dare to say anything. She turned around and walked off. Maybe that was some kind of statement.

Jon started working on the yarn. It seemed like he was making a net. Erwin remembered that was his idea and felt a little warm. He had zoned out Cindi. Now he was watching the camp like it had no sound, and movements were slow and stereotypical. Cindi gave up and left. Lauren walked off, quickly, and passing Erwin he slapped the top of his head and whispered “Freak!” It was a strange, soundless sound.

He went to sit with Jon and watched him making the net. He held the yarn as he was instructed. Cindi came to him again.

“You have to forgive me now. I have said sorry.”

So that was all that was needed. A sorry. Then it should all be OK. He didn’t think it should work that way. And she had done nothing to set Lauren straight. Not yelled at her like she had with him.

“You two just make up now,” said Jon.

“I have to think about it,” said Erwin, and realized he could speak again, the tension was gone.

“Good enough,” said Jon.

Lauren sat down and they started to talk. Jonathan wondered what kind of name Ogden was and teased Cindi. That was her last name, Ogden. Erwin had always hated it.

“I think Dorlan is a fantastic name. It sounds so romantic,” said Cindi.

Erwin could smile.

“But you think Bastiaansdr is a joke,” he teased.

“It’s actually really cool. We don’t have names like that.”

She tried to please him. Make him nicer to her. For once, he just let it pass in his head. Jamie came back, Lauren was still gone. Jamie was silent, but gave Erwin a quick stroke on the cheek. He could feel tears to his eyes. Jamie was OK. She was like a child. It started to rain. Rain was good. Erwin stroke some water out of his face.

Things felt oddly OK. Lauren was gone all tried to collect and drink water. They always had mentioned very little about the crash itself, but somehow they started talking about it. How they had been scared. Thinking they would die. Erwin didn’t remember being scared. He thought back on it. He didn’t know how many days it was ago, even. He hadn’t kept track. The girls said that Erwin and Jon had reacted, while the others didn’t know what to do. They were called nice names. They had even noticed in the mayhem, who was really hurt, had tried their best to save her and still made sure everyone had gone out. Erwin and Jon were heroes.

Why now, suddenly, was it OK to say positive things about anyone? Was it because Lauren was gone? Why had they made her their boss and only acted in ways she would approve of? Even gone, she still had a little of that power. No one would talk about what she had done. People, not only Lauren, were really strange. Erwin would never fully understand them.

And the question about rescue came up again. Jamie wondered what would happen id they never got rescued. Jon said there is still just a limited numbers of inhabited islands, of course they would look on all of them. He sounded safe and correct. So maybe they had just started looking at the wrong ones. Erwin didn’t say anything about how they should know their route and how there should be a device sending out signals of their location. He didn’t want to ruin their good mood.

When the rain ceased, he walked to check on his hut. He didn’t even recall rigging the water bottle. No he hadn’t. He hoped more rain would fall soon. It didn’t seem unusual. Cindi followed him, a few meters behind. He sat down in his hut. He was still a bit proud of it. He looked at the lagoon. So he would leave here? A shame really. Cindi sat down beside him.

“Hey… I didn’t know Lauren could be like that,” she said, breaking the silence.

“Caught me by surprise, to say the least. Having all of you screaming around me.”

“Oh, that must have been just awful for you!”

“It was.”

“Do you have to make me feel worse?”

He didn’t know he was doing that. He just said how it was. And what about his feelings?

“You have to understand Lauren can’t be well.”

He had had many people in his life just disliking who he was. They weren’t sick.

“What is she sick with?” he asked.

“There is a lot of stress on a person who is caring. She helps taking care of her nieces. Sometimes people who have a big heart, forget to think about themselves too. And they work too hard, they run themselves down. And even here, she has taken care of us all. She inspires us and keep us happy.”

“You get a lot of firewood, so does Jamie. Jamie climbs coconut trees. We all look for food. Jon made a fishing pole and a net and caught a lot of fish. Lauren does nothing.”

He couldn’t keep quiet anymore.

“She got that airplane part for us to collect water.”

“That was me.”

“Oh was it? Well she still does a lot.”

“It feels like she is your friend and I’m only your pretend friend. You always value her better and higher.”

Cindi looked a bit shocked, sad.

“But no! You are special to me. We are not perfect. I’m not perfect. I make mistakes too!”

“Are my mistakes worse?” Erwin asked.

Cindi wasn’t ready for that question.

“No. Why do you say that?”

“Everytime someone else make a mistake, it’s instantly forgiven and forgotten. When I make a mistake, I have to hear it for ages, and I have to be told a lot of things about myself. I can never just make a mistake. IT’s always treated like a crime. Like something incredibly evil and dirty.”

“Oh, poor guy! People can be really mean. It’s because they don’t understand you. You are different. But you have friends too. I would never do something like that to you.”

“And yet you did,” Erwin thought.

“I’m so glad we’re talking like this,” Cindi smiled, ”I’m glad you forgave me for the misunderstanding with Lauren.”

His turn to look surprised. When had he said she was forgiven?

“I’m so glad we had this talk! I feel happy now. I’m glad we’re OK again! Now I can stop thinking about it.” Cindi almost sang and got ready to leave.

Now he was left with all the loose ends and the bad feelings. But he was used to that. He swam again and played in the water. He wished there were places like these in Holland, too. It was like a natural playground. He dried after the swim and felt some hunger pains in his stomach. He really needed to help finding some food again, get back to work and not just eating what others provided. It was hard with his foot, but he had done it before, and could again. He was halfway to the camp when he heard a sound from beside the small trail that had appeared, that he made.

“You left me to die!”

There she was.

“You should have helped me. I could have drowned, you idiot!”

So it was about the crash.

“You were not injured. You just had to open your seat belt. And you were helped.”

She was speechless for a while. Maybe she understood there was no attempt on her life and that she couldn’t make it to be that.

“You don’t deserve to be alive. People like you shouldn’t exist. Everybody hates you! Everybody! You don’t understand anything, you act like a four-year-old. You are not normal! No one likes you! No one! And still you just everywhere, annoying people, living on their money. Like it’s your right! Why don’t you just become normal like the rest of us? Why don’t you think you have to be normal? What makes you special? Be normal so people can stand you. That, or die!”, she yelled, Erwin thought she looked insane.

This time he didn’t care. He knew it wasn’t true. He did annoy people, but some people liked him too. Not everyone hated him. Not everyone thought everyone must act cool and perfect.

“I’m still here. I was born. I have the same right to live. I can’t help how I was born. You just have to accept it,” he stated.

He was going to say something in terms of when they get off the island, they won’t see each other ever again, but he never got the chance. She grabbed his cane and swung it and hit his head on the right side. There was nothing, just darkness.

He heard someone calling something that sounded like his name. He knew it wasn’t real. He didn’t listen. The darkness was real and he was supposed to rest in there.

“Erwin!,” can you hear me.

He opened his eyes. The world changed. This was a bright world. Cindi looked sad, was crying. Jamie and Jon were there too. He sat up and rubbed his head.

“Take it easy!” said Cindy in a worried tone of voice.

There were some sharp flashes of pain when he turned his head. But else, he felt fine. His cane was gone. Erwin couldn’t figure out why. He was a little confused what had happened, it was something important, he knew. He had to put his arms around CIndi’s and Jamie’s necks and they almost carried him to camp. There was a small fire. Maybe they were cooking. Erwin wondered what time of day it was.

“You sure you are OK?” asked Jamie.

Erwin nodded.

“What happened? Jon asked.

They all seemed so concerned about him. Why?

“I… I don’t know.”

Someone gave him water. He leaned to the side and vomited, nothing much came up, but he had felt sick of a sudden.

“Oh geez, I’m sorry,” he said, feeling embarrassed.

“It’s fine. Don’t worry. I really hope you are OK”.

Cindi sat beside him and her body touched his. For some reason he liked when Cindi sounded this worried. Maybe it made him matter. Maybe he was just starved of human contact.

“Don’t you remember what happened?” she urged.

“I think I do remember. I was just walking. And then I saw Lauren.”

“She did something to you?”

“I think she hit me with my stick. I remember that she screamed and pulled it out of my hand.”

“Oh boy. I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it! That bitch.”

Now Cindi was angry with Lauren. Finally she was angry. Jon shook his head in disbelief Jamie gave him some more water to drink and very carefully looked at his head, feeling it with her fingers. Erwin almost wanted to laugh at a sudden, at all the attention.

He stayed in a hut with Cindi. Now it was just them. They chatted until they fell asleep. When the morning came, the weather got hotter and no sign of rain. They were all feeling slow and down, thirsty. Erwin noticed tiny, dry flakes came off the skin of his hands. His mouth felt dry.

He needed a new stick. After he found one he was happy with, he made it to his hut. It looked like someone had been there. There had been some water in the bottle. The water was gone. Was it Lauren? Maybe she had even slept here. It was like a switch in his head. At once he knew he was going to do something and what. He suddenly felt like a different person.

He filled the bottle from the lagoon. Then he took what he had left of the pink yarn. It was quite hard to climb up on the hill from where he had looked at the island, but he was in no hurry. There was a lot of vegetation at the top, all the way to the rocky side where it came down in a steep slope. He tied some string between some small trees. He repeated it twice, not far between. He tried to see the camp. It was hard to see. Just as well. He didn’t want to be seen. A path at the foot of the hill had developed. Maybe Jon, Cindi or Jamie would pass here. He hoped not. It wasn’t easy to hide up there, but he did his best.

He had waited for so long. Most of the day must have passed. But finally she was there. Would she see him? Would he have to call out for her? She looked at him. He pretended to drink from his bottle. She was fast, the made the hill in ten seconds.

“Want some water?” Erwin asked.

“Give me the bottle!” Lauren sneered.

He handed her the bottle. She took it. She drank, coughed and spat. She was just going to complain when he pushed her toward the edge. She lost and regained her balance, but then her foot was trapped on a string and she lost her balance again. She waved her arms a little, then she fell. She screamed in panic, then there was just a thumping sound as her body rolled down the hill and disappeared.

Erwin held his breath. He had done it. It had been so easy. He just needed to stand there and think, and yet not think. But not too long. He ripped the yarn from the ground and picked up the bottle and poured the rest of the water out. She hadn’t brought it down with her. Good. He tried to hurry down the hill. He didn’t want to be seen around it. He went to pick up some firewood, went back to camp and threw it in the fire together with the little ball of yarn still attached to the trunks.

He was asked if he was OK still. He stopped to think. He was a little shaky inside from throwing Lauren off a cliff. But he also felt strange in another way. His head had started hurting more and more, it was a dull ache. He just hadn’t noticed it until now. He felt a little dizzy too, but just a little and it went away. But he had to sit down.

“How are you dear?” said Cindi and sat in front of him.

He was going to say he was fine. He suddenly felt blank and puzzled.

“I don’t know.”

He was tired now. Very tired.

“I think I need to… to… need to lie down.”

Cindi helped him into the hut. She didn’t leave him He sat at his head and stroke his hair. It didn’t feel bad. It was a repetitive, calming motion. He didn’t know if he had slept, or if time just could go missing. Sometimes Jamie was there, sometimes Jon.

After a while, he didn’t know how long, he felt better, he got up and peed. But his left leg and arm felt weaker, which was strange. He had a problem closing his left hand. He went back and sat down. Jon urged him to look at him, then look at his eyes. Erwin had a feeling Jon thought they looked strange.

His head hurt still. He was given a little coconut milk to drink. Was asked if he felt better and he nodded. There was a little food shared between them as they sat around the fire. Erwin didn’t know if it was the same day, or the next. But suddenly he felt tired again, like he almost couldn’t move. He felt strange, hazy, like he wasn’t fully awake. He had to lie down. His friends talked to him, but sometimes he couldn’t really say anything. He didn’t know why. He just didn’t have any words to say. And when he could talk, his word came out slurred.

Cindi put his head in her lap. She was nice. He liked her again. She cared now. After a while they tried to get his attention. But he couldn’t focus through the haze so he just tried to wave them off with his arm and made angry sounds. Then he was in the hut and it was night. And it was day. He woke up in a panic, because he was in his own hut at the lagoon and he was alone and Lauren was coming, he heard her. She would hill him. He had to shake it off. It wasn’t real.

He felt almost normal again, just distant. There was finally a little rain. He sat outside the hut. The water on him felt good. He knew he couldn’t really walk well anymore, he would need assistance next time he needed to pee. But there was no need yet. Not enough water. He knew where he was now, he didn’t have that strange feeling of disorientation. And still, there was Lauren.

She held her arm pushed to her chest. She was dirty, her hair was messy and there were brown and pink vertical lines on her face. Cindi stood still and just looked. Jamie called for Jon. Lauren sat down on the ground.

“Give me some water!” she said in a mean, angry voice.

Jamie hesitated, but gave her some. Lauren drank it, then throwing the coconut shell away and growled:

“He tried to kill me! He pushed me off a cliff!”

“Lauren…” Jonathan tried.

“Lauren, you are not well. You are sick. Don’t start that again. He didn’t do anything to you!” said Cindi, her voice being sharper than Jon’s.

Erwin listened from his position a few meters away. Cindi had lectured him. Like she had done him. Finally. He just found it so odd she wasn’t dead. He had thought she would be. His mind had said she was dead. This was strange. But maybe that was the best. She had tried to kill him. He had broken the rules, he had been bad too, but just because she had tormented him so many times. So he had tried to kill her. Were they even now. Yes, they were even. He hadn’t lost this time, he hadn’t been pushed away. And he had stood up against her.

They examined Lauren. Her shoulder hurt and she was full of scrapes and bruises, but that was all. Somehow now, he was glad she was still alive. She still insisted she had been pushed but was told to look at Erwin, how could he hurt someone? He was very, very ill. They told her they knew she had injured him. The police would investigate it. Put her in jail.

He couldn’t hold the world together anymore. It didn’t make sense. He was tired, too tired. The darkness wanted him. Cindi held him. She said things. Nice things, he could hear that from the tone of her voice. Time was brutally cut.

Two days later, they had been rescued. A boat had landed on the water and taken Erwin and Lauren away, and then come back for the others. They had all been taken to hospital in Suva, and the police came to interview them. Erwin was told he had spoken, but he had no memory of that. Jonathan and Jamie stayed in hospital over night and then in the hotel one night. They were booked on a flight to USA, Jon would help Jamie talk to Paige’s family and help with the funeral when Paige’s body was recovered and released.

Lauren was treated for a broken collarbone. Cindi told the police Lauren had attacked Erwin, but he said he didn’t want to press charges. She had to give up. Erwin’s head had been CT-scanned, and there was something not wright with his head.

They had sent him and Cindi to Auckland. Air Pacific had payed their expenses. In Auckland Erwin had been treated in hospital. He had suffered from a subdural hematoma. Blood from a vein had leaked and made a larger and larger blood clot between the layers surrounding his brain. They had had to make a hole in his scull and suck the clot out and repair the leaking blood vessel.

Then they had repaired the broken bones in his ankle surgically. He actually had a bad break and was later asked how he could walk around with that at all.

Cindi stayed at a hotel, the closest one to the hospital, that had a room for her. She visited Erwin every day. He was getting better quickly. He had a few, small seizures and they had to put him on medication from those. He didn’t like the med, it made him feel slow.

Cindi had contacted everyone that needed it, and turned down the newspapers that wanted an interview, Erwin’s parents had been shocked, they thought he was still on his vacation. She took care of him well.

He needed to know everything about the rescue and what the police in Fiji had said. She told him everything she knew. She asked him what he could recall. He couldn’t remember anything from the rescue, and nothing from being in the first hospital. Cindi told him he was awake and alert many times. He couldn’t remember. His first memory seemed to be of post op in Auckland. Then his memories were more coherent.

They had shaved off a lot of his black, spiky hair on the right side of his head. The scar looked like a horse shoe shaped train track. Secretly, he was proud of the scar. He was happier than he had been. Cindi bought toys for him, and  he sat in bed playing with them. The food was good, even thought Cindi said the food at the hotel was better.

He had to do some physical training, He found that rather useless and boring. He could walk fine, he thought. He had pain medication and could put as much weight at his damaged food as they wanted him too. His left leg was a bit weak and he still couldn’t make a fist with his left hand. But that was OK. They cared about that more than he did.

The time came for them to go home. Cindi’s plane would depart two hours before Erwin’s. Cindi bought candy and cigarettes. Erwin had a soda. He followed her to the gate.

“I don’t like goodbyes,” said Cindi and smiled as she cried.

“I’ll talk to you on messenger in a few days.”

“Yes, we will stay in touch. Of course.”

Cindi didn’t walk towards the exit. So Erwin said ”Bye” and turned around and started walking. Otherwise, she would want to hug him.

Part three

Yet not written.