Ane Riel - Resin

The dog was lying on its side, and the howling had become long and high-pitched, as if it were about to run out. But it was there. Like an ice pick in my ear.

Horrified, I stared at its hind leg, which lay twisted on the grass. The lower part was trapped in a metal monster, which seemed to be fixed with a chain somewhere in the ground under the grass and the twigs. Although the grass was taller here, there was a natural passage between the juniper bush and some trees. This was a place I wasn’t allowed to go. One of them. The metal monster looked like a giant set of teeth which had snapped around the dog’s hind leg. The dog had made some attempts to free its leg, but every time the big teeth seemed to sink deeper into its flesh. Its blood was very red in the daylight. There was way too much light. And way too much blood. I’d never seen anything as red as that blood.

I tried. I really tried my best to pull the metal teeth apart, but I couldn’t. I also tried twisting them apart with a branch, but it snapped. The metal was super-strong.

I started crying again. And I looked at the dog lying on its side, watching me. I looked at its teeth, which were disappearing in white foam. Its tongue hung limply down on the grass. This dog wasn’t going to bite me, no matter how scared it was. It was desperate for help.

Its chest was heaving and sinking in front of me. It was almost as if the howling was coming from in there. I took a step back, got ready and aimed. It was my best arrow.

I’m sure I shot it straight through the heart. I looked into its eyes and, for a brief moment, the dog and I were as one.

Then it was dead.

I hadn’t decided what I was going to do next. Nor did I have time because, as soon as the howling stopped, I heard shouting.

‘Ida!’ someone called out in the distance. A man. ‘Iiiida!’

I ran faster than I’ve ever done. Although I wanted to run straight back to the container more than anything, I didn’t dare because the man might spot me crossing the open area, and I didn’t know how much time I had. So instead I decided to run the shorter distance to the edge of the forest. I could hide between the tall trees and, if he decided to follow me, I could lose him in the forest. Whoever he was, he wouldn’t know the forest as well as I did.

I found the spot where I would be completely hidden by pine branches but still have a good view down towards the juniper bush. I could see him now. He wore a big, green coat – and he had something around his neck. I think it was a lead. It was probably his dog.

I was sure that I had seen him before, but I couldn’t remember where. I had never seen the dog. I hoped that he had been good to his dog, but people down on the main island probably weren’t as kind to animals as we were. Seeing as they weren’t particularly kind to people.

I tried not to think that it was my dad who had made that metal trap and set it. But I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

What if the man was a doctor? But surely Dad wouldn’t have…? And who was Ida? Was that the dog? I hadn’t even noticed if it was female. But it had a beard, a grey beard. White almost. I hoped that it was an old dog.

The man was kneeling by it now. He was saying something to it, I could see. He stroked it. And wiped its mouth. And tried to prise the metal teeth apart with his hands. And he gently pulled out the arrow. And he pressed his face to the dog’s chest. And he sat up again and looked at it. And he spotted the long end of the branch I had used and tried separating the metal teeth from one another with the branch. Until it snapped. Again. And he shook his head.

I think he was crying.

I saw him get up. He dried his eyes on his sleeve and stared at the dog for ages. Then he bent down, picked up my arrow and spent a long time staring at it. It looked as if he was examining it, and I hoped that he would think that it was a really fine arrow. I had worked very hard on it.

Then he turned and looked up towards our house. From where he was standing, he could see the container and, behind it, the wooden building with the workshop and the white room. There was a single small window into the white room, but I knew it was impossible to see anything through it. To the left of the workshop the man would probably see the roof of the house. There was a cluster of spruces and birches that gave some privacy. The gravel road ran alongside them and disappeared into the corner between the house and the workshop before the yard began. The yard where, it has to be said, there was very little free space these days.

I wondered why he hadn’t just walked up the gravel road. He should have reached the barrier and either turned around there when he saw our sign or followed the path around the barrier in order to walk on up to the house. Then he would have come into contact with the tripwire and there would have been a noise… And that was when it dawned on me that he had followed the sound, the howling. The dog must have run in an arc away from the barrier and the gravel road, and up towards the Christmas trees and the north forest. It might have been chasing a wild rabbit; I knew there was a rabbit warren near the place where I was hiding.

I also wondered what would have happened if it hadn’t been the dog but the man who had stepped on the metal trap and been doing the screaming. And if I would have shot him in the heart until he stopped.

And if Dad had made any more of those traps.

I hoped the man would go back. I hoped with all my heart that he would leave and take the dog with him, although I couldn’t see how, because it was trapped and the trap was fixed to the ground. And I hoped that he would leave my arrow behind.

He left the dog and took my arrow and walked up towards the container.

I held back for a while. Then I followed him, hidden by the trees.

Liv, the noise has stopped. It’s so very quiet.

It is making my mind loud.

I hurt all over. It’s the sores, they are on fire. And my hands, mostly the right one.

Difficult to write now.

Perhaps I’ve started to believe in God. I would like to believe in something. In someone. I believe in you.

Is that a voice?

Roald had once seen a fox trap. It was a fiendish contraption, but this one… it was far worse. Someone had taken a fox trap and refined it in an effort to turn it into the worst imaginable instrument of torture. The metal teeth had practically severed the dog’s lower leg. Just imagine the damage such a trap could have done to a human being. It was big enough to snap a grown man’s leg, not to mention a child’s. What if the boy he had seen run north in the darkness had stepped in it?

Roald shuddered at the thought and tried to swallow. The lump he had felt in his throat when he heard Ida howl was choking him now. The poor, poor animal.

And poor Short Fuse’s Lars. What was he going to tell him?

He couldn’t even take Ida back until he had found something with which to cut the chain; it seemed to be fastened around an underground root. Who the hell would deliberately do something so cruel? It might be kinder to Short Fuse’s Lars to cut off the dog’s leg, so that he would never have to see the trap and the injuries it had caused.

But there was more than that. It wasn’t just the trap.

There was also the arrow.

How come the dog had an arrow through its heart? An arrow which had evidently been made lovingly by hand, right down to the smallest detail.

He had to find Horder to get an explanation. Could Jens Horder have set the trap himself? He undoubtedly had the skill to make it, but did he also have the heart not only to make it but also to use it? Anyone who set a device like that must have a heart of stone.