The Lost Village by Camilla Sten (best fiction novels TXT) 📗

Elsa promises herself that she will come back, one day. She and Staffan and Aina, together. Her family will return to this house with its green door. Once all of this is over.

They might even bring Kristina with them, too.

Elsa sets off toward the church. She must keep up appearances, look like everything is normal. Everything could depend on it. She has always been proud of her ability to keep a cool head and take control of situations, but now, when it really matters, she’s trembling like a leaf.

The day that is breaking is beautiful, warm and bright. But despite the light sky stretching out over the village, the church looms ominously. The doors are wide open, as they always are nowadays. The pastor often sermonizes about having no secrets before God or the congregation.

The thought of him and his cold, gray eyes in that young, strangely sexless face sends cold shivers running down Elsa’s spine.

She must be strong.

She walks briskly up the steps and into the church, striding like someone who has nothing to hide or no reason for shame. But the scene before her makes her stop short.

They are lying in circles around each other, curled up like children on their sides, on top of thin blankets that can only offer scant protection from the cold floor. The pale sunlight streaming in through the tall windows washes out their colors, giving them the look of stone angels. Cold, eternal, and perfect.

Elsa freezes on the threshold. There must be over a hundred people on the floor: old and young, men and women. She can see children among them, curled up with their mothers. She knows them all.

Maj-Lis with her bad knees. Karolin, whose oldest was born at almost the same time as Margareta. Back then they had knitted together as their due dates approached, chattering and gossiping about nothing and everything, giddy with nervousness and joy.

Göran, who had been on the same team as Staffan at the mine. He would always stutter when he was nervous, and had tended to blush whenever Elsa was in the room. She had always suspected he had a liking for her when they were younger, but then he had met his Pernilla and stopped stuttering when they talked.

Pernilla. She’s three rows away.

And two steps from her lies Staffan.

Staffan. Her beloved husband.

Elsa has lived with him so long now that she hardly sees him anymore; he’s as familiar to her as the back of her own hand. Elsa was scarce more than a child when they married, younger than Margareta is now.

Elsa has seen him sick as a dog, and so drunk that he can only mumble. She knows that his eyes tear up when talking about his dad, and that his big, heavy face softens when he looks at their girls. She has seen him as a beardless nineteen-year-old, a new father at twenty-two, and bereft as a fatherless thirty-two-year-old. It was Elsa who had found the first gray hairs on his temples, who had held him when the mine shut down, promising him that they would get through it together.

He has been her entire adult life. He is the father of her daughters. And now he’s lying there among them, a frozen angel, and she realizes that she has lost him.

Elsa has never hated anyone—has never understood how one human could hurt another—but in that instant she wishes she could kill Pastor Mattias with her own bare hands. She would like to press the life out of him, see the fear in his eyes.

One of them stirs slightly in their sleep, and Elsa tries to pull herself together. She can grieve later. She has to find Aina, that’s all that matters now.

But, try as she might, she can’t see her.

If Aina isn’t here then where could she be? Could she have come to her senses?

Elsa doesn’t let herself hope. She knows that can’t be.

Then her eyes land on the door on the other side of the church. The door to the chapel.

It’s closed.

Elsa creeps along the wall so as not to wake any of them. A few of them stir or sigh in their sleep, but they must have grown used to the sounds of people creeping around, after days or weeks of sleeping next to each other, breathing each other’s breaths.

Elsa reaches the chapel door and puts her hand on the handle. The metal feels cold against her palm.

She prays a silent prayer not to find what she fears most of all.

But Elsa is no longer convinced anyone is listening.

She opens the door. It swings in without a sound.

The first thing she sees is Aina.

Her thick, dark hair hangs like a veil across her face. She is lying curled up on the floor, in front of the little sofa. Elsa doesn’t recognize the dress she is wearing: white and shift-like, like an old-fashioned nightdress, with neither embellishment nor embroidery. It makes Elsa contract.

Pastor Mattias is sitting on the sofa.

His beautiful gray eyes are fixed on Elsa, and he looks completely relaxed. As though he’s been expecting her.

“Good morning,” he says.

Elsa stands completely still. For a long time she doesn’t know what to say.

“Good morning,” she eventually replies.

The pastor’s eyes move to her bag and then back to her face. Elsa sees there’s no point in trying to lie.

“So the day has come,” he says calmly.

Aina stirs slightly. The sight of her there, asleep at his feet, fills Elsa with a fury she hadn’t known herself capable of.

“Aina’s coming with me,” she says, her voice like ice and steel in her throat. “Aina’s coming with me, and you can’t stop me.”

“Aina is a grown woman,” says the pastor, while Aina rubs her eyes and props herself up on her elbows. “She can do as she chooses.”

Aina sits up and stares at Elsa, as though she has seen a ghost.

“Mother?” she says, confused.

“Aina,” says Elsa, her eyes still glued to the pastor. “We’re going to Stockholm. To Margareta.”

Aina’s eyes flit from Elsa