Dad tied him to the four bedposts. One of the man’s trouser legs had been pushed up slightly, and I spotted a red groove around his ankle, just above his sock. It cut deep into his flesh and it was also bleeding a little. My stomach churned at the sight. It must have really hurt hanging from the harvester. It must really hurt now.
And that was when I realized how much all the rabbits in all those snares must have hurt, if the dark hadn’t been able to take their pain away. I had freed lots of dead rabbits from lots of thin snares and seen how the string had cut deep into their fur and flesh. What if they hadn’t died straightaway? What if they felt the wire carve itself deeper and deeper into them and the darkness had never taken away their pain?
I watched the man’s eyes carefully. When they looked at Dad, they looked scared. When they looked at me, the man looked like the dog when it pleaded for help.
Dad turned to me.
‘Stay here and keep an eye on him, Liv. But from a distance. Fetch me if he tries to escape.’ Then he made his way towards the door. ‘We’ll need him later.’
‘Where are you going?’ I asked anxiously. I didn’t want to be alone with the man. Carl being there, on and off, didn’t really count.
‘I’ve got things to do in the workshop. I’ll leave the door open,’ Dad said from the doorway.
‘Please may I go and see Mum?’
‘No. I want you to stay here. Your mum needs to be alone.’
Then he left.
How could you need to be alone?
I watched the man from the doorway. I had my dagger in my belt. My bow and my quiver of arrows were ready right outside the door. I had placed them there, next to the camping stove, when I moved things around in the white room.
The man just lay there.
He tried speaking through the fabric sausage, but only managed strange noises, which I couldn’t understand. So he stopped. I thought it might be nice if he could write things down instead, but it would have meant me freeing one of his hands, and I didn’t know whether he was right-handed or left-handed. I didn’t want to risk untying them both.
I was left-handed, we had discovered, Mum and I. She was right-handed, but she said that either was fine. In order to prove it, she would sometimes write with her left, always capitals. Perhaps the man could also write with either, so it wouldn’t matter which hand I freed. But in any case I would still need something he could write with and on, and that was upstairs with Mum. And I wasn’t allowed up there. Then I remembered that Dad didn’t want me to loosen anything at all.
I knew that I wasn’t supposed to untie the man. But Carl had turned up, and he wanted to.
He kept pestering me.
All at once, I burst into tears. The man looked at me and made a noise. He flapped the fingers on his right hand.
I stared at them and cried even harder.
Then I went to the workshop.
Dad was also crying.
He was sitting on the edge of the big coffin; the plastic bags he had brought back lay scattered around him. Some gauze had rolled out of one of them. There were canisters of oil over by the workbench, and behind them three sacks of salt.
He didn’t scream or howl. He sobbed quietly, just like I used to. The tears trickled into his beard, and I thought that his beard must be very heavy and wet.
When he saw me he reached out his hand to me. He had nice eyes. Evil eyes can’t cry.
Slowly, I walked up to him. Finally, I was near enough that his hand could grab my sleeve. He pulled me close and put his arm around me. I stood sideways between his legs, and his giant wet beard tickled my neck.
We both cried. I’m not quite sure why I cried, but perhaps it was mostly because I didn’t know why he was crying.
His hand felt warm and nice through my sweater. It was a long time since he had held me like that. I guess that was another reason I was crying. Or perhaps it was because of the coffin.
‘There’s something we have to do,’ he suddenly whispered.
I stood very still behind his hand.
‘I have to help your mum, Liv.’
I said nothing.
‘We want her to be OK, don’t we?’
I nodded and looked right ahead. At the workbench. I could see the sacks of salt and the oil canisters.
‘And we want her to stay here with us. We want to keep her. Don’t we, Liv?’
I nodded again. Tentatively. I really did want to keep Mum, but I wasn’t sure that now was a good time to nod.
‘I’m scared that we’ll lose her if we don’t do something. And we’re the only ones who can.’
‘Help her?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Help her.’
‘What about the man?’
‘He can’t help her. But he can help us help her.’
That made no sense to me.
I realized that we had stopped crying. My neck felt thick on the inside and wet on the outside… where his beard had brushed it.
‘But how…?’
It took a while before he replied.
‘She’s still not… small enough… for us to get her through the door. I think it’s better that we do it upstairs. Then she can lie there with all her books. That would be nice, don’t you think?’
I nodded again.
‘And dry out?’ I asked cautiously, staring at the sacks.
‘Yes.’
‘And grow smaller?’
‘Yes, exactly.’
‘For some weeks. Until you can…’
‘Yes. You’ll have to help me clean the resin. And I think we need to fetch the big glass jars from the chemist’s outhouse. I think they’re by the baker’s pile. But we have plenty of time, Liv. We have all the time in world. She needs her bath first, her salt bath.’
‘But what about the man?’
‘He can help me carry the bathtub upstairs. I can’t carry it on my own, and although you’re very strong you’re not strong enough. So, in a way, it was a stroke of luck that he turned up. I had been wondering how I would…’
Then he stopped talking.
‘But what about the man? Afterwards? Will he leave then?’
Dad hesitated, then he said: ‘Yes, he’ll leave afterwards.’ His voice sounded strange.
‘Then he had better watch out for the traps along the gravel road,’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps I could show him where they are?’
‘Yes… you may.’
I could see that he wanted to add something.
‘Do you know why he came, Liv?’
‘Yes, he was looking for his dog… down by…’
Suddenly my throat tightened. There was something I had to ask Dad. Something about the dog and the trap which had bit deep into its leg, making it scream and howl. Something about the trap with the horrible teeth.
I couldn’t.
I started to cry again.
‘And he was alone?’
I nodded. The tears poured out of me like two small waterfalls that kept on running.
Dad pulled me close.
‘Don’t be sad. Your mum won’t feel a thing. I have some pills for her. They’ll take away all her pain at once. It’ll be quick and she’ll feel so much better afterwards. I think she needs it.’
He had also said that she needed to be alone.
I didn’t want Mum to be alone. I wanted to be with Mum.
‘But then she’ll be all alone?’
‘No, once she’s ready, she’ll be down here with us. She won’t be crying, and she won’t be ill or hungry, and she’ll never be in pain again. You’ll still be able to read to her, and do you know something, Liv…’
He stroked my hair.
‘…she’ll be able to hear you, because she’ll still have her heart.’
He reached his hand into the coffin and pulled something out. ‘And we’ll be able to see her.’
I stared at the most beautiful drawing ever drawn of a human being. I stared at Mum. She was smiling.