One night I dreamt about my parents. I was sitting in the kitchen eating my mother’s food. Father and Mother watched me eat in silence. Then Mother asked me how I was. I told her about the girl, about the beauty of the forest and the man I loved who was a bear during the day and whom I was forbidden to see as a man. Mother looked at me for a long time, then went out and brought back some candle stumps she wrapped in a tea towel and handed to me.
So you can see the one who makes you happy.
Father chewed on his food and said: Don’t do it. It’s good the way it is.
When I awoke I was holding the candle stumps in my hand.
What until then had been so easy, so taken for granted, became impossible. I lit the first candle.
I saw you. How could I not, I tell myself in an effort to explain. It was inevitable. The betrayal was there from the start, implanted in our history, perhaps its very premise.
It’s my fault that we wander now on separate paths, each in our own landscape. It’s my fault that we may never find each other alive. Perhaps I am a mother who failed her child. Perhaps I will never see her again. Perhaps there is no way back. Perhaps you are already dead.
I walked alone in the forest. I no longer know how many nights followed the days.
I saw a light between the trees. A cottage. Little windows and lamps burning inside. It was night. My fists pounded at the door. Is anyone there? Open up. Help me.
Rain battered down.
Was this the last of my strength I mustered?
My lungs expelled the scream from my chest. The earth rumbled and shook. The mountain, suddenly rising up, emerging before my eyes. The eternity of darkness in front of me. Smooth rock reaching into the sky.
The door opened. Shadows steeped in lightless murk. A shuffle of footsteps. A person without the will to lift their feet, passing through the dark.
I peered inside. The fire burning in the open hearth. The golden rings hanging on the wall. A narrow bed. A figure lying outstretched upon it, face hidden beneath a newspaper. Hypodermics littered about the floor.
Ellinor?
A voice from under the paper.
My name. My name. Someone spoke my name.
I stepped forward to the bed. Did I not? I sat down on a stool beside it. I heard the sound of breathing.
Yes, I replied. You know who I am?
Laughter. I waited. I heard his breathing dwindle, a gentle whistle.
I think I slept too. I was exhausted.
When I awoke on the floor, the man was up making coffee. He turned with a mug in his hand and gave it to me as if we were old friends. The radio was playing. A song I heard once, a long time ago. He was handsome this man. He touched something inside me and it must have shown in my face because he laughed at me and straight away I felt angry and restless.
I want you to do something for me, he said. His eyes were blue. He turned back to the fire and heated up some powder in a spoon. He filled a hypodermic, knotted the tie around his arm and stuck the needle deep into his vein.
I have something you need, he said.
I didn’t want to watch him, so I went over to the wall where the golden rings hung. They sparkled in the light of the fire.
That knife you carry. His voice again. So aggravating. Have you used it?
Once I had seen you I couldn’t get enough of you. I had to see you again. Every night I said it would be the last. But each time you put the blindfold over my eyes, I knew I would soon see your face again and the moment you slept I took it off. What is it about beauty that draws us so? I wanted to show you to the world. To the girl. This is your father, I would say. This man looks after you. Looks after me.
I felt so strong. So happy. I snuggled up to you and smoothed my hand over the shapes of your body. Studied you in the light of the candle stumps. Your hands and lips, your closed eyelids. Your allure kept me awake and I thought to myself that it wasn’t right the way we were living. That it wasn’t fair on you to keep you hidden. Dazzled, I absorbed myself in thoughts of your grandeur. I wanted to lift you from our hiding place and stun the world. I became obsessed. The thoughts became a truth. They said the life we led wasn’t good enough, there was another life waiting for us somewhere, and all we had to do was reach out and take it.
Was it my thinking out loud that woke you?
You opened your eyes and looked at me. You looked at me and I saw in your eyes what I had done. We came together there in that look. In the grief of realizing that life as we knew it was over.
Do you see the mountain over there? Can you see beyond it to the other side? The world is small, Ellinor. It’s not like you think. He laughed. The world’s a little dungheap.
Do you see the mountain?
I think back on the night that passed. The tumult and the silence that followed.
He indicated a door at the rear of the house. That way. But I want to give you something first. Don’t you think it’s sad, Ellinor? My having what you need. The only one who has. He took my hand and drew me close. Drew me to the face into which I did not wish to look. His rugged face, the eyes that beguiled me. It was as if he were shouting, though his voice was a whisper.
I’ve been working on them as long as I can remember. You can have them, Ellinor. The iron claws are yours that you may climb the mountain. I shall give you all you need, to do what no one else can. Do you see the mountain, Ellinor? That steep face? Its smooth and endless rock? He laughed again. That’s where your future starts.
Claws of iron.
The needle that sought my blood. My innermost self. His voice inside me there, and all around.
The sudden cold and heat.
Have you ever seen anything more clearly?
No. Never. Never as now.
The exquisite night. The smell of the mountain.
He attached the claws to my outspread fingers. I laughed. The night and the warmth of his body. The dream of who I was, which I was now living out. My laughter rose and echoed back. It came out again as weeping. His face there in the night, in front of me. He was floating. Expanding and diminishing.
Now, Ellinor.
I laughed as he took the knife. The knife I had carried so long I had forgotten what it was. What it could be used for. Now suddenly it was all I saw. The way it shimmered in the dark.
Do it well. He looked at me. I fell silent. The thick taste of metal in the mouth. The taste of fear.
Do it well. The words were like blows. Nothing less. Not now, not since.
I took the knife. Gripped it there as it danced in the air. I held the shaft. My hand, with the claws closed around it.
I followed the knife into his body. I touched his heart. Again and again.
So easy it was to die, I thought, and turned towards the mountain.
All that night, all the day after and the night after that, I climbed the mountain. Scaled the steep face with my claws. I was too scared to look up or down. Too scared to turn my head to the side. I stared straight out in front of me, my hand searching for the next crack that might offer purchase, the next little ledge on which to set my foot. The cold issued from the rock and felt like breath against my face. Fatigue racked my body, wormed its way into my thoughts and settled like a fog behind my eyes. Onwards. Onwards and upwards. I inched my way, claws gouging the rock. Climb the mountain, Ellinor. I saw myself from a distance, a tiny dot moving almost imperceptibly upon the vast surface, the rock, the mountain. I could not think about the girl. I had abandoned all thought of her when I fled from the house in the night. I had left her. If I were to think of her sweet smell after a night in sleep, or of how she would come running towards me when there was something she had done that she wanted to tell me about, the radiance in her eyes, my delirious joy at her existence, I would not have been able to leave her there all on her own. The choice of her or him could only ever be her and her alone. Why, then, was I here? With blood trickling down my arms?