He could poke it with his finger and push it in, but it was too much. After all, it had saved his life the previous night. In the junk drawer he found a box of matches for lighting the fire, which was slightly bigger. He tipped the matches out and moved Spiritus into the bigger box.
Anders couldn't tell whether the insect was happier in its new prison, but at least he could close the box without resistance. He stood up and put the new box in his trouser pocket.
He should have been hungry, but he wasn't. It was as if his stomach had solidified around its own emptiness, and was unwilling to let in any food. And that was fine. In any case, he couldn't begin to imagine what he might eat.
He filled a glass with water from the kitchen tap and drank it, cheers, sweetheart, filled it up again. And again. His stomach, already stiff, contracted around the cold liquid.
On the worktop stood the bottle of wormwood. Without weighing up the pros and cons, Anders raised it to his lips and took a couple of deep swigs. His mouth tasted like shit and the dizziness went straight to his head, making him sway where he was standing.
With his back to the sink, he slid giggling to the floor. When his bottom hit the linoleum with a hard thud, the giggling turned into gasps of laughter. He slapped the palm of his hand on the floor but couldn't stop laughing, he just had to get it out, so he sang in a loud voice:
'Thunder honey, Grandma's thunder honey, that's what he eats when it's time to start a fight.'
Still giggling, he staggered into the bedroom and found Bamse. He pushed the bear underneath the knotted sleeve of the snowsuit so that Bamse's head was sticking up above his hip and the short legs were dangling down his left thigh. He patted Bamse's hat, said, 'How lucky I am to have such a friend!', and by leaning on the walls and the furniture, he managed to make his way through the house and on to the porch.
His head cleared slightly once he got out into the fresh air. He rubbed his eyes hard with his knuckles and stopped giggling, blinking in the sunlight. It was a beautiful, calm day, a wonderful autumn day not unlike the winter's day almost two years ago that had brought him to this point.
His legs carried him steadily down towards the jetty. He could see the natural world around him with exaggerated clarity, he could feel the water inside, beneath and in front of him. He was an oversensitive consciousness transported in a fragile body, an infinitely complex organic computer inside a shell of rusty metal.
And the strongest hear in the world!
He loosened the mooring rope and clambered down into the boat, sat down and picked up the fuel can, gave it a shake. The liquid splashed to and fro ominously. He looked up and gazed over towards Gavasten.
Well, I'm only going in one direction, aren't I? I'm hardly likely to be coming back.
He looked at the bubble of air that marked the level of the fuel. It sank to the bottom when he put the can down, and at the same time something sank inside him. The fatalistic calm that had filled his spirit since he got dressed faded in the face of this practical fact: there was no need for him to fill up with fuel, because he wouldn't be coming home.
Slowly, slowly the boat drifted south, while he sat with his arms resting on his knees, staring towards Gåvasten. Then he nodded briefly, pumped up the petrol, pulled out the choke and yanked on the starter.
As long as the little boat can sail…
The engine started and he shut down his mind against any questions, engaged the clutch and set off as slowly as possible. Gåvasten was gliding towards him across the sea and he was thinking about nothing at all, he just kept his eyes firmly fixed on the lighthouse and watched the distance diminish. When he was about halfway he could see that the birds were still out there. Hundreds or perhaps thousands of little white dots swarmed around the glowing white walls of the lighthouse like moths around a bright light.
With only a few hundred metres to go, the engine coughed. He was running out of fuel, but the strange thing was that the boat seemed to be moving even more slowly. When he had travelled another hundred metres or so, he heard a cracking noise.
Terrified, Anders looked along the sides of the boat, because it sounded as if the old fibreglass were splitting. There was no sign of anything, but the noise grew louder and the boat began to vibrate.
What the fuck…
The engine coughed again and when it got going once more it felt as if it were struggling into a headwind. It was roaring for all it was worth, but the boat was barely moving forward. The vibrations became jolts and jerks and the engine began to cough.
'Come on! Come on!'
Anders turned around and slapped the engine as if to stop it from falling asleep. When his hand flew back from the cowling, he saw something that made him realise his efforts were pointless. He could whip the engine until it bled, he still wouldn't get anywhere.
The whole bay had frozen. He was surrounded by ice in all directions. The engine gave a couple of final coughs, then died.
No lapping of the waves, no wind, no engine humming. The only sound was the screaming of the gulls as they moved around the prayer wheel of the lighthouse like white-clad pilgrims. Anders tilted his head to one side and looked at them. They were moving in a clockwise direction.
The central axis.
It wasn't difficult to see, alone in the stillness on the desolate sea, where the only sound and the only movement was coming from the gulls. They were the ones keeping the world in motion by circling around the central axis.
His thoughts were about to fly away, but were interrupted by a fresh cracking sound. This time it was not the boat's progress through the freezing water that was creating the noise. This time it was what he had first thought. The fibreglass hull of the boat was cracking as the ice grabbed hold of it and squeezed. Anders shook his head.
Sorry. It's not going to be that easy.
If there was some form of thinking entity behind what was happening, it wasn't particularly intelligent. It had certainly managed to bring the boat to a standstill. But it wasn't so easy to bring him to a standstill. Anders patted Bamse tenderly and clambered over the rail.
The ice bore his weight. He left the boat and set off across the water towards the lighthouse.
The honeymoon
The ferry was a floating microcosm of pleasures. You walked a few steps to eat, a few more to enjoy duty-free shopping You went around the corner to dance and up or down a flight of stairs when it was time for bed. Simon usually thought this was a pleasant change from all the difficulties caused by the distances on Domaro, but on this vovage the ship was inducing a feeling of claustrophobia rather than freedom And yet he and Anna-Greta had a bigger and better cabin than on previous trips. It wasn't exactly a suite, but it was above deck and had windows. Simon was usually quite happy in a cabin below deck as the throbbing of the engines lulled him to sleep, but the previous night he had lain awake with Anna-Greta beside him and a lump in his chest.
Did I do the right thing?
That was the question that was tormenting him. He had given Spiritus to Anders, and had done it in a way that could only be interpreted as encouragement to tackle things as he saw fit. Had it been the right thing to do?
Simon lay awake in his bunk, listening to the sea surging along the sides of the ship and feeling weightless with doubt and anxiety. He had committed himself to following his fate, together with Spiritus, to whatever the bitter end might be. He had not been particularly afraid.