But she had started bringing home drawings she’d done at preschool. Many of them showed a woman with yellow hair, sometimes standing in front of a blue sea, sometimes in front of a big red house. Above the picture she had written mommy in sprawling letters.
Livia still asked almost every morning and evening when Katrine was coming home, and Joakim always gave the same answer: “I don’t know.”
An old stone wall ran along the other side of the road, and when they had climbed over it they found themselves at the edge of a flat, gray landscape with open water between patches of reeds and clumps of pale yellow grass. The water was black and still; it was impossible to tell how deep it was.
“This is called a peat bog,” said Joakim.
“Can you drown here?” asked Livia.
She tried pushing a stick down into a muddy puddle, and didn’t notice that the question had made Joakim tense up.
“No… only if you can’t swim.”
“I can swim!” shouted Livia.
She had been to four swimming lessons in Stockholm during the summer.
Gabriel suddenly screamed and started to cry-he had
sunk down and got his galoshes stuck in the grass by the water. The muddy ground let him go with a disappointed slurp when Joakim pulled him out. He put Gabriel down on firm ground, looked out over the black water, and suddenly remembered something the agent who showed them around the house at Eel Point had told them as they were driving past the peat bog.
“Do you know what they used to do out here in the Iron Age?” he asked. “Hundreds and hundreds of years ago?”
“What?” said Livia.
“I’ve heard that they used to sacrifice things to the gods.”
“Sacrifice-what does that mean?”
“It means that you give away things you like,” said Joakim. “In order to get even more back.”
“So what did they give away, then?” asked Livia.
“Silver and gold and swords and that kind of thing. They threw them into the water as a gift to the gods.”
According to the agent, animals and human beings had also been sacrificed sometimes-but stories like that were definitely not for the ears of the children.
“Why?” said Livia.
“I don’t know… but I suppose they believed it would make the gods happy, and they would make life easier.”
“What kind of gods were they?” said Livia.
“Pagan gods.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, it means they were… a bit nasty sometimes,” said Joakim, who wasn’t too good on the history of religion. “Norse gods like Odin and Freya. And nature gods in the earth and the trees. But they don’t exist any longer.”
“Why not?”
“Because people stopped believing in them,” said Joakim, setting off again. “Let’s go. Do you want to sit in the rucksack seat, Gabriel?”
His son shook his head cheerfully and scampered off after Livia again. A narrow path ran along the side of the bog, and
they followed it northward. At the end of the bog lay fields, and beyond them was Rörby with its white church rising up on the horizon.
Joakim would have liked to walk much further, but by the time they got to the fields the children had slowed down considerably. He took off his rucksack.
“Time for a snack.”
It took them a quarter of an hour to empty the flask of hot chocolate and eat up all the pastries. They found dry rocks to sit on, and everything was silent all around them. Joakim knew that the peat bog was a bird sanctuary, but they didn’t see a single bird all day.
After they had eaten, they crossed back over the main road. Joakim chose a path alongside the little wood that grew northwest of Eel Point. The wood was low growing and bushy, like all the woods he had seen on the island. It consisted of pine trees, all leaning slightly inland, away from the harsh winds coming off the sea. Among them grew thickets of hazel and hawthorn.
They continued on down to the sea, where the wind grew stronger and colder. The sun was starting to set, and the sky had lost its blue glow.
“There’s the wreck!” shouted Livia when they had almost reached the shore.
“The wreck!” echoed Gabriel.
“Can we go out there, Daddy?”
From a distance it still bore some resemblance to the hull of a ship, but as they got closer it looked more like a pile of broken old planks of wood. The only thing that hadn’t been smashed to pieces was the keeclass="underline" a warped wooden beam half buried in the sand.
Livia and Gabriel walked all the way around the wreck, but came back disappointed.
“It can’t be fixed, Daddy,” said Livia.
“No,” said Joakim, “I think it’s had it.”
“Did everybody on the boat drown?”
She was always talking about people drowning, thought Joakim.
“No, they survived,” he said. “I’m sure the lighthouse keepers helped them get ashore.”
They walked southward along the damp sandy shore. The waves swirled up onto the sand, and Livia and Gabriel tried to walk as close to them as possible without getting soaked. When a big wave came rushing toward them, they jumped out of the way, screaming and laughing.
After a quarter of an hour they had reached the stone jetty that sheltered the lighthouses. Livia ran over to it across the sand and clambered up onto the first block of stone.
This was where Katrine had gone just three weeks ago. Straight along the jetty and down into the water.
“Don’t go up there, Livia,” called Joakim.
She turned and looked down at him. “Why not?”
“You might slip.”
“I won’t.”
“You might. Come down, please!”
In the end she climbed down again, silent and sullen. Gabriel looked at his sister and his father, unsure which of them was right.
They walked past the stone pathway out to the lighthouses, and Joakim had an idea that might put Livia back in a good mood.
“Maybe we could go and look inside one of the lighthouses,” he said.
Livia turned her head quickly. “Can we?”
“Sure we can,” said Joakim, “as long as we can unlock the door. But I know where there’s a bunch of keys.”
He led the way back up to the house, unlocked the kitchen door, and as usual quelled the impulse to call out to Katrine as he walked in.
In one of the kitchen cupboards was a metal box that the agent had passed on, containing documents relating to the history of the house. The old bunch of keys was also in
the box-an iron ring with a dozen or so keys, some of them larger and heavier than any he had seen before.
Gabriel wanted to stay indoors where it was warm; he wanted to watch a video of Pingu the penguin. Joakim inserted it into the machine.
“We won’t be long,” he said.
Gabriel just nodded, already caught up in the film.
Joakim picked up the clanking bunch of keys and went out into the cold again, with Livia beside him.
“So, which one shall we choose?”
Livia thought it over and pointed. “That one,” she said. “Mommy’s lighthouse.”
Joakim looked at the north tower. That was the one that no longer flashed-even though he did think he had seen a light there just once, at dawn on the day Katrine had walked out along the stone jetty.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll try that one.”
So they walked out into the sea along the stone pathway and took the left fork where it split.
They reached the little island. In front of the metal door of the lighthouse stood a polished slab of limestone, big enough for both father and daughter to stand on.
“Okay, let’s see if we can get in, Livia…”
Joakim looked at the padlock and chose a key that looked as if it might fit, but it was too big for the keyhole. The second key he chose fit into the hole, but wouldn’t turn.
The third key fit too, and when Joakim got a firm grip he was actually able to turn it, although it took some effort.
He pulled on the handle as hard as he could.