Free Blackwater by Kerstin Ekman Page A

again.
    A foot. Quite white in the thin, uncertain light. Must have been Dan’s? Why was he hiding?
    She went round to the front again, involuntarily walking quietly, creeping along, trying to avoid treading on anything that might make a noise.
    Mia was crying like a baby now, her mouth open and tears smearing her face. Annie couldn’t explain the inexplicable to her, that Dan was there but didn’t want to come out. She couldn’t imagine how Mia would cope with the long walk back; indeed, she was hardly able to imagine how she would herself.
    She carried the little girl into the forest again, out of sight of the cottage. Was it Dan in there? Why had he pulled in his foot? She sat down on a tree stump with Mia in her arms, waving the midges away with a sprig she had broken off. She whispered that they would go back, but only to the blue tent. They would wake whoever was asleep inside and ask for help. Maybe they had a paraffin stove and could make some tea for them. Or cocoa. Then they would be sure to take them to the road and if one of them was a big strong man he would carry Mia. They would drive them down to the village in their Renault 4L, for they must be the owners. And soon, quite soon, in only an hour or two, they would both be tucked up in a warm bed. Mia’s tears had abated and turned into hiccups. She put her thumb in her mouth again and slept for a while.
    The morning sun was coming through the trees as they started walking, the birdsong soaring. Everything seemed so much easier now the sun was warming up. They crossed the river at the same place. She didn’t dare try anywhere else. Once on the other side, they were to make their way back to the tent, but it was not easy to walk along the riverbank. The undergrowth was tangled and the ground churned up by animals. They had to move further up, to the edge of the marshland.
    At last she recognised the two spruces storms had twisted together into a knot, but she couldn’t see the tent. There couldn’t possibly be two other deformed spruces like those by the river. She was having trouble finding landmarks in the marshland, for in the uncertain light it looked as if both trees and undergrowth had moved.
    ‘You stay there,’ she said to Mia. ‘It must be down there by those spruces. I’ll go down and look. Then you won’t have to walk that last bit if I’m wrong.’
    She gave Mia the rucksack to sit on, and a birch sprig to keep off the midges. But the insects appeared to have given up in the morning sun. Mia was anxious and tearful.
    ‘I’m only going down to the river. You’ll be able to see me all the way.’
    It was the right place. As she came down to the spruces, she saw the jeans hanging over one of the branches. But the tent had collapsed. That was why she hadn’t been able to see it from up in the marsh. She went closer.
    What did she actually see? Afterwards, she didn’t know. So many hideous descriptions appeared. She had probably read some of them. She couldn’t remember later.
    For a long time, there was a great empty space there. She saw her own hands under the water, white, even whitish green. She saw the spruces. They had knotted together to form a great nodule, grown together where one of them had been bent by a storm long ago. The wet jeans were hanging over a branch. The swampy patch of small birches on the other side of the river – always softer, greener and more secretive than the side you are on.
    She wanted to run away. But she must have gone on a few steps more. She felt sick and her legs refused to carry her. Then it struck her with great violence. She fell to her knees, the palms of her hands propped against the swaying ground. When she got up, her hands were bloodstained. She rubbed and rubbed them against each other, then tried to wipe them on her skirt, but that wasn’t much use. She staggered away, crawling the first bit, then dipping her hands in the water. It was cold. Strong current. Swift transparent water. Her