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Fiction

The Sea Gives Us Children

By Thórdís Helgadóttir
Translated from Icelandic by Larissa Kyzer
On a strange island uninhabited by adults, danger lurks in this story by Thórdís Helgadóttir.
Listen to Thórdís Helgadóttir read "The Sea Gives Us Children" in the original Icelandic
 
 

There are no boats on the island. Sometimes, Guðrún and I go down to the beach, just to let the wind beat our faces. We come home with salty lips and red ears. The wind whets our features until they become sharper, our similarities harder to discern. I always have a runny nose, but somehow Guðrún never does. She’s made from sterner stuff.

The beach is unsheltered. But even though I’m standing before the open sea with infinity all around me, I can’t shake my claustrophobia. The sky hangs low and vast, like a lid atop the island, matte and white. Milk, not water.

I ask Guðrún if she thinks other islands exist. She shakes her head.

The quiet hour begins at seven o’clock. No one’s allowed out later than that. I shore up my courage and complain. It isn’t fair. My bedtime’s not until nine—I’m quite capable of being careful while I play.

Guðrún looks at me severely. I should know better. We have this rule for the sake of the little ones, who grow so quickly and need to go to sleep early. As I well know. We can’t take any risks. Not with their souls.

Which is why, at seven on the dot, we nestle down under our quilts with ice water and books on our bedside tables. We flip through the pages carefully, as if they were butterfly wings. 

***

Our books are about other islands. Some are about boats. One of the girls I sometimes play with in the lava field says her brother has a telescope and has seen other islands. Her name is Karen and I’ve caught her lying more than once. She says we’re forbidden to take the telescope out into the lava field. And that her brother doesn’t want strangers using it either.

One morning, Karen doesn’t come out to play. I fool around on my own—climb, make mud pies, and decorate them with snapdragons and horsetails. Later that day, I find out that a new child has arrived at theirs. I remember how the sea was that morning, how choppy it was, how the surf had suddenly shrieked aloud. It must have been at that exact moment that the child was born.

A few days later, she comes out with Karen. A little sister, plumped up like a teddy bear and sturdy on short, fat legs. She stuffs her mouth with berries and pees into crannies. Karen says she’s called Angela.

If there aren’t any other islands, then where do the children come from? I ask Guðrún. Then where did Angela come from? Guðrún just shakes her head, disappointed with me. Do I really think infants swim over here from far-flung islands? It’s unlikely, I have to admit. Angela can’t even run. It’s hard for her to walk a few steps without falling on her butt. Her body’s so little I don’t get how a whole person can fit in there.

***

I’m sitting in bed reading during the quiet hour when all of a sudden I notice something moving atop my quilt. A tiny dot. I hold my breath and whisper for Guðrún, who hears me through the wall and glides into my room like the wind. She crouches silently by my bed.

We can’t take any risks.

For a long time, we say nothing, just watch the spider as it inches its way along the quilt. It disappears into a fold, reappears, and continues toward the footboard, along the side rail, onto the bed leg, and finally all the way down to the floor. It’s an itsy-bitsy dwarf spider—dark brown with a bulbous belly that looks soft to the touch. It traces its way along the floorboards and eventually disappears into a crack in the molding. For a long time after, I sit there frozen and don’t dare go to sleep, even though Guðrún’s being nice to me. She strokes my hair and says I’ll be safe while I sleep. But she doesn’t understand what it is that I’m afraid of.   

After this, I stop complaining about the quiet hour.

***

Karen says she’s seen it when the souls begin their perambulations. Everyone shares a single bedroom at her house. Her brother is always early to bed, she says. I have my doubts. Karen’s brother is a teenager, like Guðrún, and she always goes to sleep long after I do.

But then there’s Angela. She’s so little that she’s always having to lie down. Karen tucks her in, sings until she sees her little sister nod off. Once her eyelashes are resting on her cheek, says Karen, it’s only a few minutes before she sees the soul come crawling out of Angela’s left ear. It spins a delicate thread, tiptoes weightlessly up the wall, and finds its way out through an open window. I shudder. What color is it? I ask Karen. Black, she says. Tiny, furry, and black as coal.

***

Guðrún never has time to play in the lava field with me anymore. I try to get her to come down to the beach for a salt scrub from the wind, but she’s busy. She sits in the big easy chair in the living room and reads. Angela’s sick, so Karen doesn’t come out either. The streets are empty and bathed in harsh sunlight. The wind is biting. I forgot to bring mittens, so my hands turn red and stiff in the cold. I walk all around the village but don’t run into anyone. Snot leaks onto my upper lip and I feel sorry for myself. I come home very late.

***

Angela is dead. We wake to a dreadful, piercing sound. A throat choking on tears. Screams that seem like they’re ripping a teen boy’s vocal cords to shreds. Karen’s brother holds the body of his youngest sister and trembles like a skeleton. He tries to get some words out, but they’re drowned in the other sounds—the ones coming out of him that he’s not making himself.

It doesn’t take long to discover who’s responsible. I was hoping they’d say it had been an accident. But the guilty party’s been found. It’s a boy Guðrún’s age. He’s ugly, with heavy brown bags under his eyes. He doesn’t have any siblings and can often be seen down on the beach, throwing stones or burning driftwood. Karen says they saw him loitering around their house the night Angela died. He was waiting outside in the twilight, they say, just biding his time.

He denies all charges, which is why no one believes him. Maybe if he said it had been an accident, Guðrún says. People would trust that. But how could anyone be so certain?

***

We’re sent outside while the older kids have a meeting. Karen doesn’t want to go out in the lava field, so we go to the beach. We find two good sticks. I scrawl a hopscotch board in the sand. Karen beats her stick against the beach stones so that it gradually turns into a blizzard of angry little splinters.             

***

Guðrún is cooking us porridge when I come home. We eat in silence and I try not to betray any emotion. Try not to let Guðrún see how I have to force the food down past my heart, which is lodged in my throat. After dinner, she lies on the sofa while I clean up. She looks older. With her eyes closed, she looks like a grown woman, and I think about the children in our books—children on big, faraway islands who all have mamas. But Guðrún isn’t sleeping. She opens her eyes when I sit down next to her. Looks up at the cupboard.

There’s a box.

Don’t, says Guðrún, when I start climbing. But I’m not going to touch it, I just want to see this new thing that’s appeared at the top of the cupboard. It’s a small box made of clear plastic. I don’t have to open it to see what’s inside.

A spider.

Brown with yellow streaks on its back. It doesn’t move at all. I look at the spider and hold my breath until I start getting woozy. Then, all of a sudden, it wiggles a leg.

***

The next time I look, the box is gone. Guðrún says she put it somewhere I won’t find it. She knows very well that I’m not a little kid. But we can’t take any risks. We have to look after the box for one week. After that, the next family will take over, keep it for a week, and so on and so forth, one after the other. When all the families in the village have done their shift, the boy will be released, on a trial basis.

It’s not as much work this way, says Guðrún. Not as much responsibility. If we all take turns.

It’s not until later that I dare ask. Guðrún confirms what I’ve heard. The plan had been to kill him. A life for a life. But everyone had to be in agreement. And they weren’t. Not Guðrún.

For the first time in a long while, I manage to expel all the air from my lungs. I want to fling myself around Guðrún’s neck. Instead, I nod calmly to show that I understand the seriousness of the matter.

Of course, I say. We can’t take any risks.

Guðrún gives me a strange look.

Risks? she says. What do you mean?

***

I go down to the beach and scream a little at the sea. The sky presses in on my head from all sides, and it aches. The wind fills my mouth. I imagine myself leaping off a cliff, but not seriously.

I go out into the lava field. Out where Karen and I built a fort. It’s well sheltered. Now that I think about it, it makes sense that Angela’s soul came here in its sleep. She’d seen so little—what else would she have dreamed about?

It wasn’t an accident. And yet, who would have expected to see a spider out in the lava? It hadn’t even gotten dark yet. I was looking for crowberries and then, without warning, it crawled out of the heather and up onto the back of my hand—long-legged and quick. I was so shocked I fell over. And then there was this feeling in my fingers, this kind of crushing feeling. They turned into crushyfingers. I was hurt and wanted to avenge myself, to hit back. I didn’t remember the little ones who needed to sleep so much. Didn’t remember that Angela even existed. Guðrún would have helped me remember. Karen, too. But I was all by myself.

Guðrún said something strange to me. We’re free, she said. The sea gives us children, but no explanations. No rules. It’s unbearable. Intolerable. We’re forced to make our own rules. But that means we can also decide what rules we have. We decide what kind of world this is.

I had to be careful not to laugh. If we’d decided on it ourselves, the world wouldn’t be this way: the cliffs, the sky, the smothering sea . . . Listen, said Guðrún. She’d worked herself up a bit. We can be the sea. If we decide to be. Because no one is saying anything else. If we say the rule is that we’re sacred, then we’re sacred!

The moss is soft. I can feel now how tired I am. My eyelids flutter closed once again, and I let my head loll. Half asleep, I feel a tickle in my ear. I think about the spider with the yellow streaks and its legs and how they’d moved. Then I give myself over to sleep.


“Hafið gefur okkur börn”
© Thórdís Helgadóttir. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2021 by Larissa Kyzer. All rights reserved.

English Icelandic (Original)

There are no boats on the island. Sometimes, Guðrún and I go down to the beach, just to let the wind beat our faces. We come home with salty lips and red ears. The wind whets our features until they become sharper, our similarities harder to discern. I always have a runny nose, but somehow Guðrún never does. She’s made from sterner stuff.

The beach is unsheltered. But even though I’m standing before the open sea with infinity all around me, I can’t shake my claustrophobia. The sky hangs low and vast, like a lid atop the island, matte and white. Milk, not water.

I ask Guðrún if she thinks other islands exist. She shakes her head.

The quiet hour begins at seven o’clock. No one’s allowed out later than that. I shore up my courage and complain. It isn’t fair. My bedtime’s not until nine—I’m quite capable of being careful while I play.

Guðrún looks at me severely. I should know better. We have this rule for the sake of the little ones, who grow so quickly and need to go to sleep early. As I well know. We can’t take any risks. Not with their souls.

Which is why, at seven on the dot, we nestle down under our quilts with ice water and books on our bedside tables. We flip through the pages carefully, as if they were butterfly wings. 

***

Our books are about other islands. Some are about boats. One of the girls I sometimes play with in the lava field says her brother has a telescope and has seen other islands. Her name is Karen and I’ve caught her lying more than once. She says we’re forbidden to take the telescope out into the lava field. And that her brother doesn’t want strangers using it either.

One morning, Karen doesn’t come out to play. I fool around on my own—climb, make mud pies, and decorate them with snapdragons and horsetails. Later that day, I find out that a new child has arrived at theirs. I remember how the sea was that morning, how choppy it was, how the surf had suddenly shrieked aloud. It must have been at that exact moment that the child was born.

A few days later, she comes out with Karen. A little sister, plumped up like a teddy bear and sturdy on short, fat legs. She stuffs her mouth with berries and pees into crannies. Karen says she’s called Angela.

If there aren’t any other islands, then where do the children come from? I ask Guðrún. Then where did Angela come from? Guðrún just shakes her head, disappointed with me. Do I really think infants swim over here from far-flung islands? It’s unlikely, I have to admit. Angela can’t even run. It’s hard for her to walk a few steps without falling on her butt. Her body’s so little I don’t get how a whole person can fit in there.

***

I’m sitting in bed reading during the quiet hour when all of a sudden I notice something moving atop my quilt. A tiny dot. I hold my breath and whisper for Guðrún, who hears me through the wall and glides into my room like the wind. She crouches silently by my bed.

We can’t take any risks.

For a long time, we say nothing, just watch the spider as it inches its way along the quilt. It disappears into a fold, reappears, and continues toward the footboard, along the side rail, onto the bed leg, and finally all the way down to the floor. It’s an itsy-bitsy dwarf spider—dark brown with a bulbous belly that looks soft to the touch. It traces its way along the floorboards and eventually disappears into a crack in the molding. For a long time after, I sit there frozen and don’t dare go to sleep, even though Guðrún’s being nice to me. She strokes my hair and says I’ll be safe while I sleep. But she doesn’t understand what it is that I’m afraid of.   

After this, I stop complaining about the quiet hour.

***

Karen says she’s seen it when the souls begin their perambulations. Everyone shares a single bedroom at her house. Her brother is always early to bed, she says. I have my doubts. Karen’s brother is a teenager, like Guðrún, and she always goes to sleep long after I do.

But then there’s Angela. She’s so little that she’s always having to lie down. Karen tucks her in, sings until she sees her little sister nod off. Once her eyelashes are resting on her cheek, says Karen, it’s only a few minutes before she sees the soul come crawling out of Angela’s left ear. It spins a delicate thread, tiptoes weightlessly up the wall, and finds its way out through an open window. I shudder. What color is it? I ask Karen. Black, she says. Tiny, furry, and black as coal.

***

Guðrún never has time to play in the lava field with me anymore. I try to get her to come down to the beach for a salt scrub from the wind, but she’s busy. She sits in the big easy chair in the living room and reads. Angela’s sick, so Karen doesn’t come out either. The streets are empty and bathed in harsh sunlight. The wind is biting. I forgot to bring mittens, so my hands turn red and stiff in the cold. I walk all around the village but don’t run into anyone. Snot leaks onto my upper lip and I feel sorry for myself. I come home very late.

***

Angela is dead. We wake to a dreadful, piercing sound. A throat choking on tears. Screams that seem like they’re ripping a teen boy’s vocal cords to shreds. Karen’s brother holds the body of his youngest sister and trembles like a skeleton. He tries to get some words out, but they’re drowned in the other sounds—the ones coming out of him that he’s not making himself.

It doesn’t take long to discover who’s responsible. I was hoping they’d say it had been an accident. But the guilty party’s been found. It’s a boy Guðrún’s age. He’s ugly, with heavy brown bags under his eyes. He doesn’t have any siblings and can often be seen down on the beach, throwing stones or burning driftwood. Karen says they saw him loitering around their house the night Angela died. He was waiting outside in the twilight, they say, just biding his time.

He denies all charges, which is why no one believes him. Maybe if he said it had been an accident, Guðrún says. People would trust that. But how could anyone be so certain?

***

We’re sent outside while the older kids have a meeting. Karen doesn’t want to go out in the lava field, so we go to the beach. We find two good sticks. I scrawl a hopscotch board in the sand. Karen beats her stick against the beach stones so that it gradually turns into a blizzard of angry little splinters.             

***

Guðrún is cooking us porridge when I come home. We eat in silence and I try not to betray any emotion. Try not to let Guðrún see how I have to force the food down past my heart, which is lodged in my throat. After dinner, she lies on the sofa while I clean up. She looks older. With her eyes closed, she looks like a grown woman, and I think about the children in our books—children on big, faraway islands who all have mamas. But Guðrún isn’t sleeping. She opens her eyes when I sit down next to her. Looks up at the cupboard.

There’s a box.

Don’t, says Guðrún, when I start climbing. But I’m not going to touch it, I just want to see this new thing that’s appeared at the top of the cupboard. It’s a small box made of clear plastic. I don’t have to open it to see what’s inside.

A spider.

Brown with yellow streaks on its back. It doesn’t move at all. I look at the spider and hold my breath until I start getting woozy. Then, all of a sudden, it wiggles a leg.

***

The next time I look, the box is gone. Guðrún says she put it somewhere I won’t find it. She knows very well that I’m not a little kid. But we can’t take any risks. We have to look after the box for one week. After that, the next family will take over, keep it for a week, and so on and so forth, one after the other. When all the families in the village have done their shift, the boy will be released, on a trial basis.

It’s not as much work this way, says Guðrún. Not as much responsibility. If we all take turns.

It’s not until later that I dare ask. Guðrún confirms what I’ve heard. The plan had been to kill him. A life for a life. But everyone had to be in agreement. And they weren’t. Not Guðrún.

For the first time in a long while, I manage to expel all the air from my lungs. I want to fling myself around Guðrún’s neck. Instead, I nod calmly to show that I understand the seriousness of the matter.

Of course, I say. We can’t take any risks.

Guðrún gives me a strange look.

Risks? she says. What do you mean?

***

I go down to the beach and scream a little at the sea. The sky presses in on my head from all sides, and it aches. The wind fills my mouth. I imagine myself leaping off a cliff, but not seriously.

I go out into the lava field. Out where Karen and I built a fort. It’s well sheltered. Now that I think about it, it makes sense that Angela’s soul came here in its sleep. She’d seen so little—what else would she have dreamed about?

It wasn’t an accident. And yet, who would have expected to see a spider out in the lava? It hadn’t even gotten dark yet. I was looking for crowberries and then, without warning, it crawled out of the heather and up onto the back of my hand—long-legged and quick. I was so shocked I fell over. And then there was this feeling in my fingers, this kind of crushing feeling. They turned into crushyfingers. I was hurt and wanted to avenge myself, to hit back. I didn’t remember the little ones who needed to sleep so much. Didn’t remember that Angela even existed. Guðrún would have helped me remember. Karen, too. But I was all by myself.

Guðrún said something strange to me. We’re free, she said. The sea gives us children, but no explanations. No rules. It’s unbearable. Intolerable. We’re forced to make our own rules. But that means we can also decide what rules we have. We decide what kind of world this is.

I had to be careful not to laugh. If we’d decided on it ourselves, the world wouldn’t be this way: the cliffs, the sky, the smothering sea . . . Listen, said Guðrún. She’d worked herself up a bit. We can be the sea. If we decide to be. Because no one is saying anything else. If we say the rule is that we’re sacred, then we’re sacred!

The moss is soft. I can feel now how tired I am. My eyelids flutter closed once again, and I let my head loll. Half asleep, I feel a tickle in my ear. I think about the spider with the yellow streaks and its legs and how they’d moved. Then I give myself over to sleep.


“Hafið gefur okkur börn”
© Thórdís Helgadóttir. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2021 by Larissa Kyzer. All rights reserved.

Hafið Gefur Okkur Börn

Á eyjunni eru engir bátar. Við Guðrún förum stundum niður í fjöru bara til að láta rokið lemja okkur í framan. Við komum heim með saltar varir og rauð eyru. Vindhviðurnar slípa á okkur húðina þannig að andlitsdrættirnir virðast skarpari, líkindin á milli okkar minni. Ég er alltaf með nefrennsli en einhvern veginn sleppur Guðrún. Hún er harðari af sér.

Ströndin er berangur. Þótt ég standi frammi fyrir opnu hafinu með óendanleikann á allar hliðar tekst mér ekki að losna við innilokunarkenndina. Himinninn er lágur og gleiður, eins og lok yfir eyjunni, mattur og hvítur. Mjólk en ekki vatn.

Ég spyr Guðrúnu hvort hún haldi að það séu til aðrar eyjar. Hún hristir höfuðið.

Kyrrðartíminn byrjar klukkan sjö á kvöldin. Eftir það er bannað að vera á ferli. Ég safna kjarki til að kvarta. Þetta er ekki sanngjarnt. Minn háttatími er ekki fyrr en níu – ég get alveg leikið mér gætilega.

Guðrún er ströng á svipinn. Ég á að vita betur. Reglan er út af litlu börnunum, sem eru að vaxa svo hratt og verða að fara snemma að sofa. Eins og ég veit vel. Það er ekki hægt að taka neina áhættu. Ekki með sálirnar þeirra.

Þannig að við breiðum yfir okkur sængurnar á slaginu sjö, með ísmolavatn og bækur á náttborðinu. Við flettum varlega, eins og blaðsíðurnar séu fiðrildavængir.

 

Bækurnar fjalla um aðrar eyjar. Sumar fjalla um báta. Stelpa sem ég er stundum að leika við úti í hrauni segir að bróðir sinn eigi kíki og hafi séð yfir á aðrar eyjar. Hún heitir Karen og ég hef oft staðið hana að því að ljúga. Hún segir að það megi alls ekki vera með kíkinn úti í hrauninu. Og að bróðir hennar vilji heldur ekki leyfa ókunnugum að prófa hann.

Einn morguninn kemur Karen ekki út að leika. Ég dunda mér ein, klifra, bý til drullukökur og skreyti með ljónsmunna og elftingu. Seinna um daginn frétti ég að það hafi komið til þeirra nýtt barn. Ég man hvernig sjórinn var um morguninn, hvað hann var úfinn og hvað brimið öskraði skyndilega hátt. Það hlýtur að hafa verið einmitt á því augnabliki þegar litla barnið fæddist.

Eftir nokkra daga er hún komin út með Karen. Lítil systir, bólstruð eins og bangsi og stöðug á stuttum, feitum fótum. Hún stingur upp í sig berjum og pissar í gjótu. Karen segir að hún eigi að heita Angela.

Ef það eru engar aðrar eyjar, hvaðan koma þá börnin? spyr ég Guðrúnu. Hvaðan kemur Angela? Guðrún hristir bara höfuðið, vonsvikin með mig. Finnst mér virkilega líklegt að pelabörn syndi hingað frá fjarlægum eyjum? Ég verð að viðurkenna að það er ekki sennilegt. Angela kann ekki einu sinni að hlaupa. Hún á erfitt með að labba nokkur skref án þess að detta á rassinn. Líkaminn er svo lítill að ég skil ekki einu sinni hvernig heil manneskja getur rúmast í honum.

 

Í kyrrðartímanum sit ég uppi í rúmi og les þegar ég tek allt í einu eftir einhverju sem hreyfist ofan á sænginni. Agnarlitlum punkti. Ég held niðri í mér andanum og hvísla nafn Guðrúnar, sem heyrir það í gegnum vegginn og svífur til mín eins og vindurinn. Hún krýpur hljóðlaust við rúmið.

Það er ekki hægt að taka neina áhættu.

Lengi segjum við ekki neitt en fylgjumst með kóngulónni feta sína leið eftir sænginni. Hún hverfur ofan í krumpu, birtist svo aftur og heldur að fótagaflinum, upp á bríkina, niður eftir rúmfætinum og loks alla leið niður á gólf. Þetta er ofurlítill dordingull, dökkbrúnn, með kúlulaga belg sem virðist mjúkur viðkomu. Hann þræðir gólffjalirnar og hverfur á endanum inn um skoru í gólflistanum. Ég sit frosin í langan tíma á eftir og þori ekki að sofna, sama þótt Guðrún sé góð við mig. Hún strýkur á mér hárið og segir að ég verði óhult á meðan ég sofi. En hún skilur ekki hvað það er sem ég er hrædd við.

Eftir þetta hætti ég að kvarta yfir kyrrðartímanum.

 

Karen segist hafa séð þegar sálirnar fara á stjá. Heima hjá henni deila þau öll einu svefnherbergi. Bróðir hennar er kvöldsvæfur, segir hún. Ég er tortryggin. Bróðir hennar Karenar er unglingur eins og Guðrún, og hún sofnar alltaf löngu á eftir mér.

En svo er það Angela. Hún er svo lítil að hún þarf alltaf að vera að leggja sig. Karen svæfir hana stundum, syngur þar til hún sér litlu systur sína detta út af. Þegar augnhárin eru lögst niður á kinn líða ekki nema nokkrar mínútur, segir Karen, þar til hún sér sálina koma skríðandi út um vinstra eyrað á Angelu. Hún spinnur mjóan þráð, tiplar þyngdarlaus upp veggina og finnur sér leið út um opinn glugga. Ég fæ gæsahúð. Hvernig er hún á litinn? spyr ég. Svört, segir Karen. Pínulítil, loðin og kolbikasvört.

 

Guðrún hefur aldrei tíma til að leika með mér úti í hrauni lengur. Ég reyni að fá hana niður í fjöru að fá saltskrúbb hjá rokinu, en hún er upptekin. Hún situr í stóra hægindastólnum í stofunni og les. Angela er lasin, svo Karen kemst heldur ekki út. Göturnar eru auðar og baðaðar hörðu sólskini. Vindurinn er hvass. Ég gleymdi að taka með mér vettlinga, svo hendurnar á mér verða rauðar og stífar í kuldanum. Ég geng um allt þorpið en hitti engan. Það lekur hor niður á efri vör og ég vorkenni sjálfri mér. Ég kem allt of seint heim.

 

Angela er dáin. Við erum vaktar með nístandi vondu hljóði. Kok sem er að kafna úr gráti. Öskur sem virðist ætla að rífa í sundur raddböndin í unglingsstrák. Bróðir Karenar heldur á líki yngstu systur sinnar og skelfur eins og beinagrind. Hann er að reyna að koma upp einhverjum orðum en þau drukkna í hinum hljóðunum – þessum sem koma úr honum án þess að hann búi þau sjálfur til.

Það kemur fljótlega í ljós hver er ábyrgur. Ég var að vona að þau myndu segja að þetta hefði verið slys. En nú er búið að finna þann seka. Það er strákur á aldur við Guðrúnu. Hann er ljótur, með djúpa brúna bauga undir augunum. Hann á engin systkini og það sést oft til hans niðri í fjöru, að grýta máva eða brenna rekavið. Karen segist hafa séð hann vera að sniglast í kringum húsið þeirra kvöldið sem Angela dó. Hann beið úti í ljósaskiptunum, segja þau, og sætti lagi.

Hann neitar allri sök og þess vegna trúir honum enginn. Kannski ef hann héldi því fram að þetta hefði verið óvart, segir Guðrún. Það væri trúverðugt. En hvernig getur nokkur verið svona viss í sinni sök?

 

Við erum send út á meðan eldri krakkarnir funda. Karen vill ekki fara út í hraun þannig að við stefnum á fjöruna. Við finnum tvö góð prik. Ég krota parís í sandinn. Karen lemur sínu priki í fjörugrjót svo það verður smám saman að skæðadrífu af litlum, reiðum flísum.

 

Guðrún er að elda graut handa okkur þegar ég kem heim. Við borðum í hljóði og ég reyni að láta ekki á neinu bera. Reyni að láta Guðrúnu ekki sjá hvernig ég þarf að ýta á eftir matnum ofan í háls fram hjá hjartanu sem situr þar fast. Eftir matinn leggst hún í sófann meðan ég geng frá. Hún er eldri á svipinn. Með lokuð augun líkist hún fullorðinni konu og ég hugsa um börnin í bókunum okkar, á stórum fjarlægum eyjum, sem öll eiga mömmur. En Guðrún er ekki sofandi. Hún opnar augun þegar ég sest hjá henni. Horfir upp á stofuskápinn.

Þar er kassi.

Ekki, segir Guðrún, þegar ég byrja að klifra. En ég ætla ekkert að snerta, bara skoða með augunum þennan nýja hlut sem hefur birst uppi á skápnum. Þetta er lítill kassi úr glæru plasti. Ég þarf ekki að opna hann til að sjá hvað er inni í honum.

Kónguló.

Brún með gular rákir á bakinu. Hún er fullkomlega hreyfingarlaus. Ég horfi á kóngulóna og held niðri í mér andanum þangað til mig svimar. Þá bærir hún skyndilega einn fót.

 

Svo er kassinn horfinn. Guðrún segist hafa sett hann einhvers staðar þar sem ég nái ekki til. Hún veit vel að ég er ekkert smábarn. En það er bara ekki hægt að taka neina áhættu. Við eigum að passa kassann í eina viku. Eftir það tekur næsta fjölskylda við, geymir hann í viku og þannig koll af kolli. Þegar allar fjölskyldurnar í þorpinu hafa staðið vaktina fær strákurinn prufulausn.

Þannig er þetta ekki eins mikil vinna, segir Guðrún. Ekki eins mikil ábyrgð. Ef við skiptumst öll á.

Það er ekki fyrr en seinna sem ég þori að spyrja. Jú, Guðrún staðfestir það sem ég hef heyrt. Það var meiningin að drepa hann. Líf fyrir líf. En allir hefðu þá þurft að vera samþykkir. Öll eldri börnin. Og þau voru það ekki öll. Ekki Guðrún.

Í fyrsta skiptið í langan tíma næ ég að tæma allt loftið úr lungunum. Mig langar að hlaupa upp um hálsinn á Guðrúnu. Í staðinn kinka ég rólega kolli til að sýna að ég skilji alvöru málsins.

Einmitt, segi ég. Það er ekki hægt að taka neina áhættu.

Guðrún setur upp undarlegan svip.

Áhættu? segir hún. Hvað meinarðu?

 

Ég fer niður í fjöru og öskra dálítið á hafið. Himinninn þrengir að höfðinu á mér úr öllum áttum svo mig verkjar. Vindurinn fyllir á mér munninn. Ég ímynda mér að stökkva fram af klettunum en ég meina ekkert með því í alvörunni.

Ég fer út í hraun. Þangað sem við Karen eigum bú. Það er aðeins skjólsælla þar. Eftir á að hyggja er ekkert skrýtið að sálin hennar Angelu skuli hafa komið hingað í svefni. Hún hafði séð svo fátt, hvað annað átti hana að dreyma?

Þetta var ekki slys. En hver á samt von á að sjá kónguló úti í hrauni? Það var ekki einu sinni orðið dimmt. Ég var að leita að krækiberjum og þá var hún allt í einu bara skriðin upp úr lynginu og upp á handarbakið á mér, háfætt og snögg. Mér brá svo mikið að ég hrasaði. Og þá kom bara eitthvað í fingurna á mér, einhver kremja. Þeir breyttust í kremjufingur. Ég meiddi mig og mig langaði til að hefna mín, slá til baka. Ég mundi ekki einu sinni eftir litlu börnunum sem þurfa svo mikið að sofa. Mundi ekki einu sinni að Angela væri til. Guðrún hefði hjálpað mér að muna það. Líka Karen. En ég var bara ein.

Guðrún sagði svo skrýtið við mig. Við erum frjáls, sagði hún. Hafið gefur okkur börn en engar skýringar. Engar reglur. Það er óþolandi. Ólíðandi. Við neyðumst til að búa til okkar eigin reglur. En þá getum við líka valið hvaða reglur sem er. Við ákveðum hvernig heimur þetta er.

Ég þurfti að passa að fara ekki að hlæja. Ef við hefðum ákveðið þetta sjálf þá væri heimurinn ekki svona: Klettarnir, himinninn, kæfandi hafið … Hlustaðu, sagði Guðrún. Hún var orðin æst. Við getum verið hafið. Ef við ákveðum það. Út af því að enginn segir neitt annað. Ef við segjum að reglan sé sú að við séum heilög, þá erum við heilög!

Mosinn er mjúkur. Ég finn það núna hvað ég er þreytt. Ég lygni aftur augunum og halla höfðinu. Í svefnrofunum finn ég kitl í eyranu. Ég hugsa um kóngulóna með gulu rákirnar og fótinn á henni og hvernig hann hreyfðist. Og síðan sleppi ég mér inn í svefninn.

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