Or had he?
Had he in fact been afraid, and made use of Anders to get rid of his fear? He could no longer say for sure. He had lost his foundation and his ballast when he gave away Spiritus, and it was not relief he felt now, but an unpleasant weightlessness.
Thus Simon's night passed as the ferry ploughed through the darkness, reaching the outer rocky islets of the Roslagen archipelago towards morning. When Anna-Greta woke up, they got dressed and went down to breakfast.
When they had helped themselves to rolls, various spreads and coffee, and settled down at a window table, Anna-Greta looked searchingly at Simon and asked, 'Did you sleep last night…' she smiled, '…husband?'
Simon smiled. 'No…wife…it was a bad night.'
'Why?'
Simon rubbed the palm of his hand with his forefinger and stared at the scrambled egg quivering on his plate with the vibrations of the ship. It looked like his brain felt, and he couldn't come up with a good answer. After he had remained silent for a while, Anna-Great asked, 'Isn't there something you have to…do?'
'Like what?'
Anna-Greta nodded towards his jacket pocket. 'With the box.'
The movement of the forefinger became more frantic, and the palm of his hand started to hurt. Simon looked out of the window and saw that the rocky islets had become islands. They had just passed Söderarm. In an hour or so they would arrive in Kappellskar. The finger stopped rubbing and he placed his hands on the table, palms down.
'Well, you see…I gave it to Anders.'
'Gave?'
'Yes, or…handed it over. Passed it on.'
Anna-Greta frowned and shook her head. 'Why?'
'Because…'
Why? Why? Because I'm a coward, because I'm scared, because I'm brave, because Anders…
'Because I thought he might need it.'
Anna-Greta's eyes were fixed firmly on his. 'For what?'
'For…for what he had to do.'
As Simon had feared, Anna-Greta was lost for words. Her hands dropped to her knees and she gazed open-mouthed out of the window at the islands, which seemed to be spooling past on a slow film. Simon picked up his fork and put a small amount of scrambled egg in his mouth. It tasted of ash. He put down the fork again just as the ship gave a jolt and the egg lurched towards the middle of the plate like an amoeba.
Anna-Greta looked at him. Simon's eyes darted away. The ship jolted again, more sharply this time, and when he finally made the supreme effort to look into Anna-Greta's eyes, he found something else there.
They looked at each other. The engine's revs increased and all around them they could hear clinking and clattering as glasses and cutlery trembled and collided. A faint lurch ran through the entire ship; Simon was pushed forward slightly, but didn't take his eyes off Anna-Greta.
The engines roared and everything shook. Raised voices from the tables around tried to make themselves heard above the rattling and roaring. There was a more powerful jolt and Simon's stomach hit the table. Anna-Greta was almost tipped backwards off her chair, but managed to save herself by grabbing hold of the windowsill. They had stopped.
Their eye contact had been broken during the ship's last convulsion, and they both looked out of the window. Simon thought he could just make out Ledinge and Gåvasten in the distance, in a sea that had frozen solid. The ship was trapped in a thick layer of ice, and Simon was intelligent enough to understand.
What have I done? What have I done?
People had got up from their tables and were conducting loud conversations as they ran to the windows to see what was going on. A man and a woman pushed in at their window, obscuring the view and exclaiming incredulously, 'This is just ridiculous…this just can't be happening…how can this happen, we were in open water a few minutes ago…'
Anna-Greta caught his gaze once more. She nodded slowly and said, 'So there we are. Whatever will be, will be.'
She reached out and placed her hand on the table between them, palm upwards. Simon grabbed it and squeezed it.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I couldn't do anything else.'
'No, I realise that,' said Anna-Greta. She let go of his hand and looked at it as it lay there open on the table. With her forefinger she traced the lines on his palm. 'I realise that. My husband.'
A better world
The screams, the racket of the gulls had become part of normality by the time Anders set foot on the rocks of Gåvasten for the third time in his life. He hardly noticed them, they were merely a carpet of sound, a part of the place, now that he no longer feared them.
He climbed up from a sea covered in ice on to an islet where it was still autumn. Where there was no snow, and where odd bushes still had leaves, and the tufts of grass in the crevices were green.
The place he was heading for was on the eastern side of the island. He had seen it the last time he was here, and it was just visible in the background in the photographs, but he hadn't noticed it until now, hadn't dared to formulate the thought.
Standing on the rocks on the eastern side, he couldn't understand how he had been so blind. Maja had tried to show him with the beads, with the lines in the Bamse comic, and it had been right there in front of him all the time: the flat rocks on the eastern side led steeply down into the sea in a broken step formation.
But it wasn't a step formation. It was a flight of steps.
From where he was standing, the top four steps were clearly visible, disappearing down beneath the ice. He recognised them from the dream-like vision when he had been Maja. They were just about three metres wide, and each step was more than half a metre deep. They were so worn down by the water and wind that you could be forgiven if you didn't see immediately what they were.
But it was a flight of steps. Steps leading downwards. Once upon a time, many hundreds of years ago, they must have been completely underwater, but the land elevation had brought them up into the light. Or perhaps they had been there before the ice pressed down the land. Anders stood with his arms wrapped around him and looked down the steps.
Who goes there?
He had to use his hands to help him clamber down the first step. These steps had not been built for human beings, or even by human beings, in all likelihood. Who could possibly have carried out this work in prehistoric times under water?
He moved down another step. It was perhaps slightly less deep than the first one.
Who?
Someone or something beyond the scope of his imagination. Once upon a time, long long ago, it had used this route to make its way up and down, but then stopped because it had grown too old or too weak. Or too big. Now only the route remained.
Another step. And another.
Anders was standing on the ice at the foot of the visible section of the flight of steps. The sky was teeming with white birds on the edge of his field of vision. He pushed his hand into his trouser pocket and took out the box. Then he sat down on the step above with his feet dangling just above the ice.
He opened the box and tipped Spiritus into his hand, closing his fingers around the insect in a gentle fist. The knowledge of the water flowed through him, and with it came a fresh insight. He opened his hand again, looked at the black insect, now as thick as his middle finger, writhing around on his palm.
You belong here.
The wound in his throat was chafing, and Anders scratched it cautiously as he stared down at the semi-transparent layer of ice. Spiritus was tickling his palm as it sleepily moved around in circles.
This is where you come from.
The insect was a part of what was beneath the ice, at the bottom of the steps. Why else would it have turned up on Domarö, a godforsaken-in the true meaning of the word-a godforsaken island in the southern Roslagen archipelago? Because this was where it came from, of course.