We all sighed heavily.
Memories of Finlay’s and Petr’s faces invaded my mind, lingering even as I tried urgently to push them away. So did the memories of countless other faces.
“We did what we had to do to survive,” I replied with insistence so hard that my teeth nearly broke on it. “Uninfected lives had to take priority, or else we wouldn’t have made it.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Renny, dear.” Dave took another long sip before continuing in a voice that was unusual for him, low and strained and humourless. “Priority is one thing. Acting as if infected lives didn’t matter at all is another. Let’s be honest, hun, I think he made us do a lot more than was strictly speaking necessary to survive.”
I was reluctant to dignify that with an answer, not wanting to get into a discussion we had had countless times before. We sat lost in silence for a few moments, the twins far too occupied by licking their plates clean to make much noise. We had a view of the stately Edinburgh Castle from where we sat, and I marvelled at the passive endurance of the weathered stone. Perched gloomily atop Castle Hill, with its walls both rounded and angular, it resembled a dragon that had lain down to rest and observe, wings pulled close to its scaly body.
And what hadn’t it seen: burning of witches, processions of royalty and prisoners, enemy attacks. More recently, it had witnessed a near collapse of its creators and remained unmarked by it, indifferent to it even. Looking at it, I felt a connection to all the decades and centuries of human destiny that it had observed in silence. And to one human in particular, who had once gazed upon the stony facade with his icy blue eyes. I imagined that the trace of Scottish accent would have been stronger in his voice then than when I knew him. What would he have said to all those accusations? I only knew that he would have had an answer, but I did not know what that answer would have been.
A man crossed the street outside, and I nearly gasped out loud. His hair was red instead of the familiar hue of ash and gold, but he was tall with broad, square shoulders, and the similarity in his gait was striking. As it often did in the past, a warm bloom of lust in my lower abdomen stirred me from my melancholy thoughts.
But later that night, I had a vivid dream of large hands sliding up my hips, and I woke up sweating and breathless to the echo of the voice from my dream still resonating in my ears. “You’re mine, you understand? Mine! And I will not let you go!”
“How could I not understand?” I wanted to ask. But found myself mute and helpless, as one often does in that surreal state somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. “Do you think thatIcould ever letyougo?”
Five more years had passed. I was walking back towards the farm, a white and red smudge on the bright green plain below, nestled between the gently rolling hillocks. Strands of my grey-streaked hair flew in a flurry in front of my face, whipped around by the fresh summer wind. I wanted to pin them back into the messy bun from which they had broken free, but I carried a shovel in one hand and an empty tree seedling container in the other. And so I was obliged to just let them fly as they pleased.
It had been three years since an active infected sighting was last reported worldwide. I remembered that day like it had been yesterday because, coincidentally, it was also the day that I arrived in Iceland with my sons. Once we passed through the security controls and blood tests, we checked into a temporary migrant accommodation that I had reserved for us in case my plan didn’t quite work out. I didn’t expect it to, either. It had been so many years after all.
Yet I could not quell the longing hope that rose in my chest with each mile that we passed in a rental car, each mile that brought us closer to the farm where Einar had grown up.Not that I knew its exact location. I had merely deduced a probable radius based on what he had told me, and I intended to drive around until I found it. It turned out easier than I had anticipated. There was only one little L-shaped white farmhouse with a red roof and a red garage door. And about a mile away from it, hidden from view by a rocky outcrop, rested another one, consisting of a few scattered wooden buildings. Exactly where it should have been based on Einar’s description. Standing on its footstep with the boys, almost as tall as me by then, I rang the doorbell and waited anxiously as its ringing echoed from the inside.
The door opened, and an elderly man with a kind face and a huge grey walrus moustache came out. He froze, looking at Alex and Danny, emotion shifting in his face from a mingled disbelief to bottomless amazement. He said something in Icelandic first. The only word I could understand in the sentence was Einar’s name. Noting our incomprehension, the man spoke in English next:
“You’re Einar’s sons. You must be, I swear it.”
It wasn’t a question.
“They are,” I confirmed as the boys smiled shyly. “And I am his wife. It’s so nice to finally meet you in person.”
Tears welled behind his thick-lensed glasses. He murmured something in Icelandic again before enveloping the three of us in a hug with a stifled sob. Alex and Danny stiffened uncomfortably next to me, but I leaned gratefully into the embrace.
“Welcome home, my dears,” Gunnar Bjornsson said shakily once he regained his composure.
He would not enquire about Einar’s fate until later that night, after the boys had gone to bed. Instead of asking any questions whatsoever, he showed us our new home and helped us settle.
Only an hour later, I found myself inside the small kitchen of Einar’s father’s farm for the very first time. Evening sun fellthrough the dust-layered window as I ran my fingers along the whitewashed doorframe with markings of Einar’s growth as a child. I noted that when he was their age, he was the same height as Alex and Danny were then.
Like in a dream, I knelt by the wall in one of the two tiny bedrooms and examined a child’s drawing of a horse in bright red marker that countless coats of paint didn’t quite cover.
And then there was the crowded storage room in the erstwhile barn, its floor lined with towers of old, frayed boxes, some of which fell apart at mere touch. At the very bottom were boxes of toy trucks and drawings. The middle layer was occupied by school textbooks, comic books, Lego sets, and a visibly used children’s chemistry set. Photographs were in the top layer.
Framed pictures of an impossibly young Einar. Einar, with braces and pimples and his nose straight and unbroken, smiling up from next to a pile of Christmas presents by a decorated tree. Einar, dressed warmly against the backdrop of a glacier, his arm thrown casually around the shoulders of a slighter man. A man whose face looked so much like Einar’s that, without ever meeting him, I recognised him as his father. Einar, with his nose already slightly crooked from a fight, his grey sweater threatening to burst around his shoulder while hanging quite limp around the rest of his tall, lean frame and his boyish, unlined, clean-shaven face, soft and tender, flushed with a proud smile as he held what I assumed was his high school graduation diploma.
As I neared my home, my reminiscence was interrupted by discovering that I had visitors. An unfamiliar black car was parked behind my own in the driveway. Dropping the shovel and the seedling container, I took off running, my mind racing through a miscellany of catastrophic possibilities, all involving my sons, accidents, outbreaks, and attacks.
A young woman with glossy red hair awaited me at my door. Her companion, a corpulent man with a receding hairline and glasses, still sat in the car, watching my hastened approach impassively.
“Are you Renata Andersen?” the woman asked me in English with a tremendous smile, dimples appearing in her unblemished cheeks.
“Y-yes.” I bent forward, breathless, hands pressed against my thighs. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” She shrugged nonchalantly, unperturbed. “I’m Isabella Moreno from the Reykjavik Gazette. May we have a few words with you for our readers?”
“What?”
I straightened up and tried to stare her down, which was hard not only because she was taller than I was but also because she was young and gorgeous while I was set firmly on my course to the plump, greying middle age of a woman no longer interested in her looks. Not to mention the various smudges of dirt on my overalls.
