Читать книгу The Ice People 47 - Is There Anybody Out There? - Margit Sandemo - Страница 8

Chapter 3

The icy wind howled along the cliff overhang above the group that was waiting for a sign of life from Nataniel. Tiili, who had resided in eternal heat, was bitterly cold, despite the fact that the others had wrapped her with such care in all the clothes they could dispense with.

The day moved slowly forward.

“It looks as if it’s going to snow,” said Tova dryly.

“Only on the mountaintops,” said Marco.

They had crept closer together, all the humans. The demons had flown up onto the rock ledges, close enough for them to be able to hear what was being said.

The demons weren’t cold.

Nor were the spirits of the ancestors.

Only the six living humans were freezing cold. Ellen, Tova, Tiili, Gabriel, Ian and Marco.

But Tiili suffered the most.

“No, I’m going to go look for him,” said Ellen for the umpteenth time.

“No.” Marco stopped her. “That won’t be any use.”

“But what if he needs our help?”

“How are we to help someone who is stuck in the mountain?”

She was impatient and irritable. “Can’t you use telepathy?”

“We mustn’t disturb him. He might be in the middle of performing a spell or something like that and our disturbance might prove fatal.”

Ellen sank back down resignedly.

Tiili stole secret glances at Marco, who sat looking across the valley.

Have I really been so close to that man? she thought. Was he the one who whispered such kind, consoling words in my ears when he penetrated me? He said that he liked me ... How happy that made me feel then! Now he isn’t even bothering to look at me ...

Oh yes, Marco was definitely aware of her presence but he wasn’t sure how she felt. He wanted to give her time to accept her new life. She was taking everything alarmingly calmly, but he was correct in assuming that her consciousness hadn’t yet had enough time to assimilate what had happened. She was in a vacuum, presumably too afraid to absorb all the new impressions because they would be too strong for her if she let them in.

“You haven’t written anything for a long time now, Gabriel,” Ian said more or less quizzically.

The boy started and immediately took out his notebook and pen “No, I ... So much has happened today. What’s the date?”

“If I’m not mistaken it’s the 17th May.”

Tova laughed a little, abruptly and bitterly. “What a way to celebrate the national holiday!”

“Perhaps the best way possible,” Marco said. “To liberate Norway from the lurking danger that Tengel the Evil poses.”

“Well, it’s not over yet,” said Ian. “We still don’t know what the outcome will be.”

“How wonderful not to have to take part in the 17th May celebrations,” said Tova. “Children shouting tiny ‘hurrahs’ at the command of their teachers plodding alongside them in the parade. Old people who are forced to sit on park benches wrapped in blankets in order to watch the children’s parade when they would much rather go and have a beer now that they finally have a day out of the nursing home.”

“And I was supposed to give the speech at school this year,” said Gabriel, his lips pale. “I forgot all about that.”

“Oh, forget it,” said Tova. “Everyone would have been waiting impatiently for you to finish so that they could go out and get their ice cream. And imagine what kind of a 17th May it would have been today! The children’s best new clothes would have had to be covered by dull raincoats, or little angry specks of dust would have whipped in their faces or maliciously settled under their collars or cuffs. And their new shoes would have rubbed. And they would all need to pee and there would be the eternal question, ‘Have we reached the town square yet?’”

“Don’t you have anything good to say about 17th May, Tova?” asked Marco with a little smile.

“Yes, of course! But it’s so much more fun to be bitter.”

“It always has been.”

“What’s happened to Rune?” asked Halkatla.

“Last time we saw him he was wandering across the glacier with Lucifer,” answered Ian.

Halkatla sighed. “I would have liked to see Rune once more.”

“So would we,” said Gabriel. “So would we.”

“I have so much to thank him for,” said Halkatla dreamily.

They fell silent.

Ellen looked up at the clouds. “The day is over. Darkness is falling.”

“Bang! It fell!” said Gabriel.

Marco smiled. He liked the fact that they were able to keep cheerful with their chatting. It was extremely strenuous having to wait like this, not knowing what was going on.

But with a happy feeling he thought of all the warmth that had reigned in the group that day. They had all stuck together and looked after one another. Ian sat with his arms around Tova and she had crept up as close to him as she could. Marco couldn’t help listening to a conversation the two of them were having.

“Well?” Ian said to her. “Do you have any regrets?”

“About what?”

“That we have to stay together. So much has happened, you may have changed your mind.”

She leaned her head against his chin. “How silly of you! I don’t regret it. But do you, since you’re asking me in that way?”

“It’s the best thing that's ever happened to me,” he assured her. “Meeting you, I mean. And that we are going to be parents. I’ve been so concerned for you during all these hardships. How are you?”

“Just fine,” she answered cheerfully. “Thank you for being alive, Ian!”

It made Marco happy to hear that kind of talk. He had always been concerned for the unfortunate Tova. I agree with you, Tova, he thought, thank goodness for Ian, he is the best thing that could have happened to us all!

Trond had made a field marshal’s speech to his troops after the battle. The demons had listened to his pompous oration with an ironic smile on their lips, but Marco sensed that they were actually also a little proud. Perhaps demons aren’t used to being showered with words of praise?

And Gabriel had tried to make them sing “Frère Jacques” but it hadn’t worked at all! All the living creatures and the ancestors of the Ice People had joined in. Estrid and Jahas were so off key that it hurt everyone’s ears, but apart from them there were many nice voices to be heard. But the demons just stared at Gabriel and the newly formed choir, for it was clear that they were not familiar with songs. When they understood that the boy wanted them to participate in these strange sounds, their jaws dropped and their hoarse laughter echoed across the landscape, until the entire round dissolved into a cacophony of laughter and fading notes.

But beneath all this great sense of community and warmth lay fear and concern for Nataniel. It was clear that Ellen was suffering the most, but she, too, tried to keep cheerful.

Sulking wouldn’t do Nataniel any good.

They had waited an entire day. The spring evening shone blue across the Valley of the Ice People. Well, since twilight lasts longer in May, it was night rather than evening.

There wasn’t much food left, but the little that there was they had shared among them, the six who needed food.

Tova sat thinking about Nataniel. When had he last eaten? When you’re in a crisis, you need to have your wits about you. And the mind is immensely dependent on food, perhaps the most of all the body’s organs. When you are hungry you are unable to think clearly. You get irritated and quickly lose heart.

Which was the last thing Nataniel needed!

Why wasn’t anything happening? How long were they to wait?

She secretly looked up at the demons, who most resembled birds roosting in the blue evening light. Birds of prey that had found a shelter for the night but were vigilantly scouting the landscape, prepared for whatever danger might arise.

She thought about them, the demons.

Tova and some of the others had been wondering for quite a while now whom those birds were following. Because there was no doubt in their minds that it was a specific individual.

Now she knew who it was. And that knowledge sent a shiver down her spine. Because it opened a new vista that was so huge and frightening that she didn’t dare think it through to the end.

She remembered Daniel’s words to Shira so long ago: “But I only live on the periphery of the evil story you are about to get dragged into, I don’t know all the threads in the huge net that is being woven around us.”

Tova shuddered. She had had a tiny glimpse of the core of the evil story.

She didn’t want to know more.

Then she noticed that Marco was watching her thoughtfully. Tova collected herself and mustered up a perplexed smile in his direction. The prolonged silence returned ...

Marco happened to glance at Tiili and all at once saw that she was struggling terribly. Her whole body had begun to tremble and her face was utterly white, but not in any way connected to the cold.

He quickly moved over to where she sat, between Villemo and Ellen, and he took the little, wrapped-up creature in his arms, holding her close to him so that she would feel safe.

For the crisis was now about to come.

She gasped for breath, as though she wanted to cry but couldn’t.

“Now, now,” said Marco, stroking her jet-black hair. “Now, now, you’re among friends.”

Tiili tried to speak. “So much is unfamiliar ... and strange to me! Mother is gone, and so is Targenor. I’ll never see them again. You all speak strangely ... Where am I? I know we are in the Valley of the Ice People, but I can’t recognize it. There isn’t a single house or person in the valley. Who are you? You are dressed so strangely! I don’t understand anything!”

The others had grown quiet. They were listening. So were the demons. Their ears were pricked up so as not to miss a thing. They were mere silhouettes in the night.

“Too much is happening. There are so many dangerous creatures here. Although they are kind! But I just don’t understand where I am!”

Marco spoke as gently as he could. “You are now in the twentieth century. You have been held captive in the mountain for seven hundred years. Your life is going to begin now. But we are all going to do our best to make sure that you have as good a life as possible.”

“I don’t know anyone anymore,” she whimpered.

“You know us now. We’re your friends, everyone here, and there are many, many more. Your entire family will help you, both the living and the dead.”

She gave him a frightened look. “Dead?”

“If everything goes well for Nataniel, you will see Dida and Targenor again. It may sound strange, but the Ice People are not an ordinary family. Our evil ancestor Tan-ghil planted a strange seed in us. Mysticism and magic, the ability to see hidden things ...”

Tiili looked around in fright. “How am I to live in such an unfamiliar world?” she asked herself.

And then, quietly anxious: “What will Mother say about what I did today?”

“That was necessary, you know that!” Marco said quickly. “I wanted it as little as you, but ...”

His phrasing was a bit unfortunate. She turned her head and looked at him with an unhappy expression in her eyes.

“You know what I mean,” he said in a low voice, his words meant only for her ears. “You know that I didn’t want to take away your virginity, but since we were in a situation where there was no choice, I wanted to be ... with you.”

She sat for a moment, frozen and dismissive, as though she blamed herself for what had happened, but then Marco caressed her cheek and she looked at him shyly, then quickly looked away and then back again. A small smile hovered on her lips.

“You and me,” he whispered in her ear. “It will be our little secret.”

Well, that wasn’t entirely true because there were several who had grasped what had taken place in the red tunnel. But his words consoled Tiili. Like a child, she leaned her head against his shoulder and relaxed.

“Help me,” she whispered quietly. “I’m afraid ... of this world.”

“If we are allowed to keep this world, you will always be able to count on me,” Marco said just as quietly “I will be by your side whenever you need me.”

“I will always need you,” she said, so faintly that he had to guess her words.

It was a bewitching moment, he thought. Marco wasn’t spoiled when it came to such situations. Their first encounter had been so rushed, so brutally intimate, and a complete shock to them both. But now she sought him, told him that she had forgiven him, perhaps more than that. Perhaps chose him?

Thousands of girls had had crushes on Marco through the years. But he hadn’t allowed himself to get involved with anyone and hadn’t liked them either, not in the right way. He had just felt a longing. The human part of him had had the restless human tendency to long to share love with the one and only.

He just hadn’t found anyone whom he had dared to love. He knew that he was immortal, while an ordinary girl would grow old and die before him.

But what was Tiili’s situation?

He didn’t know. All he knew was that he felt a warm sense of devotion to her.

And that made him uneasy for the future.

Tova woke him from his thoughts. She was paying close attention to something.

“Marco, listen!”

He immediately obeyed. “Yes, I hear them! They are signals coming from Nataniel!”

Ellen jumped up and came closer. The entire group concentrated on what was going on.

“Nataniel,” Ellen whispered. “He’s alive! Thank God! What kind of signals are they?”

“He needs help,” Marco answered.

“Oh no!” Ellen gasped. “We must rush over there!”

“No, no, not that kind of help. Everyone be quiet, now, so that Tova and I can receive the signals!”

It grew deadly quiet. Marco frowned. The others didn’t know that it had to do with the information about the hell hounds helping Nataniel. Then it was quiet for a moment, and Tova and Marco relaxed.

“The exchange is over,” said Marco. “Nataniel wants to get into telepathic contact with Rune.”

“Rune?” said Halkatla. “I wouldn’t mind that either!”

“Calm down, now,” said Marco, smiling. “I’m going to try to contact Rune. Nataniel sends his greetings to you all, and especially to Ellen.”

“Thank you! Oh, thank you!”

They let Marco sink into the strange world of telepathy.

After a while Tova started. “He’s sending another message.”

“Could you take it? I don’t have time.”

Tova collected herself. She looked so concentrated that Villemo had difficulty keeping a straight face.

Then Tova sighed. “The time is approaching,” she said softly, so as not to disturb Marco. “I have been given orders to prepare Shira.”

“Help!” said Gabriel tonelessly, swallowing.

Tova concentrated on contacting Shira and she quickly succeeded. It was harder for Marco to locate Rune.

But soon the mandrake man was there with his squeaky voice, and Marco asked him to seek Nataniel’s thoughts.

Everyone discovered that they had been holding their breath for quite a long time. There was an audible sigh from them all once the tense moment had passed.

“Now I’m going up to look for Nataniel,” said Ellen resolutely.

This time Marco didn’t stop her. Instead he got to his feet and the others followed suit.

“Yes, we may just as well start heading there,” he said, “because things are starting to happen there now.”

It was as though the entire group had gained new strength. They streamed up towards the highest point on the cliff overhang, from where the wide expanse of the moor stretched before them. The May night had already changed: though it was still night, the light was strong.

They were much better able to see the snowy weather from there. It lay heavily across the tops, creating grey-white curtains over the slopes. Had anyone seen them now they would have thought a handful of people were making their way towards the moor. But there were, in fact, more like a hundred of them.

There is so much an ordinary person can’t see, and that might be for the best.

Marco had to be free to concentrate, so Ian carried Tiili on his back. She sat there looking with bewilderment at the flock surrounding her. And when her gaze happened to meet Marco’s she lit up in a quick smile that made her finely chiselled features irresistible.

“You weigh nothing, my girl,” said Ian.

At which she smiled a little. Then she became serious, thoughtful. “It was precisely along this road that I walked with the ... horrible one, back then.”

“Don’t think too much about it.”

“I don’t have that many other memories to think about,” she said.

“Then try to remember the beautiful ones.”

“I will gladly do that.”

To which she added silently to herself, “But the most beautiful one is completely new!”

Out loud she said with a clear shudder, “So you think he has come back? Is he up there? Where are we going?”

“We won’t expose you to any danger, don’t be afraid of that,” said Ian, mustering up all the reassurance he could in his voice.

But she wasn’t entirely reassured.

Ellen stopped. “I’m worried.”

“Me, too,” said Marco. “Come, let’s hurry!”

“But can we enter the mountain?”

“No, but perhaps we will receive a message.”

They didn’t. But something else came instead ...

Everybody stopped abruptly. From somewhere up ahead of them came a strange roar that sounded more like a cry of fear from something that belonged to the earth itself. It didn’t derive from a human or animal or any other living organism ... It was something connected to the elements, they thought. And between two mountain peaks they saw the top of a column of mud or soil, dissolving into dirty drops that were being thrown off it.

The ground was trembling lightly underneath their feet.

Then it grew quiet.

For a long time.

“Something has happened,” said Ian dryly.

They waited.

Tova’s gaze met that of a demon. The bright, expectant look that had crossed the demon’s face at the sound they had just heard made a chill go down her spine.

Doesn’t anyone see the danger? she wondered mutely.

But I can’t say anything. All I can do is be sad, and scared!

“Let’s go on,” said Marco faintly.

They walked in silence, determinedly, obstinately, prepared to encounter problems.

“The day is dawning,” said Tamlin.

“Well, there’s still a way to go,” said Tova. “But it is going in the right direction.”

“Look!” said Gabriel, who stood bent over the unhealthy-looking brook. “Look at the water!”

Everyone went over. Without having to be told, they knew what he was referring to. They could see that the brook no longer had the sick colour it had once had. It wasn’t clean but was much better than it had been.

“Well, what do you know?” said Tova. “Dare we interpret it as a good sign?”

“I think we should,” said Marco calmly, though they could hear the hesitation in his voice.

They fought their way up the last steep hill. They were just at the periphery of the snowstorm, which seemed closer the higher up you looked.

Everyone stopped, touched and bewildered at what they saw now. The light of dawn made it easier for them to see a small bird sitting on a rock in the brook drinking the water. The banks were ruined, of course, and their colours were sick-looking, but the water was crystal clear!

Tova and Ian looked at one another, broad smiles spreading across their faces.

But Ellen knelt slowly down and touched the cold, suffering earth that Tan-ghil’s black water had so contaminated.

“Look!” she whispered. “Look!”

The others bent down. They had to lean rather far down in order to see anything.

“Grass,” Ian whispered. “Tiny shoots!”

Everyone sighed slowly. Marco put words to their thoughts. “That can mean only one thing,” he concluded. “Nataniel and Shira have survived.”

At that very moment they heard distant, shrill screams from the mountaintops.

They looked at each other for a long time.

“Only Tan-ghil screams like that,” Tova muttered.

“Come! We have to go up there,” said Marco.

“But how?”

They looked around at the crevices.

“Among the standing stones,” said Villemo.

“Yes, that’s the best solution.”

A deathly scream that resounded through the mountains made them stop for a moment. The scream vibrated in the air, spreading like ripples in water further and further and further out. Never before had they heard such a wild, powerlessly furious scream: the sound went right through them, while the memory of it lived on in them.

Then they rushed upwards. The demons flew ahead of them, led by Typhoon, accompanied by many eager orders and suggestions from those among them who couldn’t move that easily.

The climb turned out to be rather difficult. The humans had to struggle for a long time, tried other routes, waited for each other, helped each other.

And time passed.

Nataniel, Nataniel, many of them quietly whispered to themselves. A painful feeling of impatience and an even worse sense of helplessness gripped them.

The demons returned.

“Only a big glacier,” Typhoon reported to Marco. “We saw a small depression in the valley with green grass and flowers right next to a massive mountain wall, but there was no one there.”

“What could that mean?” Marco interrupted him. “It would seem that Shira’s clear water was sprinkled there. But ...”

He gestured with his hands to show he didn’t understand

“We didn’t understand a thing, either,” said Typhoon. “Especially because there was nothing but snowdrifts, it was white everywhere.”

“There was nothing to see?”

“Nothing.”

They looked at one another. They lost their courage. How were they to search if there was nowhere to search and nothing to search for?

Ellen started to weep silently. Bitter tears of disappointment.

But none of them could avoid noticing the great sense of relief that emanated from the ground. Gabriel afterwards said that it was as if a huge giant had let out a slow, satisfied sigh under their feet.

Tan-ghil, the curse and fright of the whole world, was gone.