Emmi Itäranta - Memory of Water

She reads the answer in Sanja’s expression and pulls her into her arms, and all words are lost to them.

Sanja tells her everything, later.

She tells how the village was crushed in the grip of the military, and water was taken from people, and the spring became a shared secret.

She tells how Noria wanted to search for water in the Lost Lands and how it was their plan to go together.

She tells how she saw a water patrol behind her family home the same day when they were meant to leave, how she ran for the hiding place of the helicarriage and drove the carriage into the Dead Forest where she hid for weeks. She sent Noria one message after another, but each one of them bounced back. Eventually she crept into the village in secret, only to find out that her family had been taken away by soldiers and that there was a blue circle on the door of the tea master’s house.

She tells how she decided to travel across the continent to Xinjing, because she had no other place to go.

When she has told everything, a silence falls into the room, and Lian is crushing a wet handkerchief in her hand.

‘I don’t know what you want to do, Mrs Kaitio,’ Sanja says at length. ‘But I know what I need to do.’ She goes quiet for a moment. ‘I brought you something.’ She takes a threadbare roll of fabric from her bag and places it on the desk. She unfolds the knot.

Seven silver-coloured discs are glistening on top of the worn cloth.

This morning the world is dust and ashes, but not devoid of hope.

No novel sees the light of day without an enormous amount of support and faith, and I am grateful to those who helped this one become more than just a pile of paper buried in a drawer:

Emma Coode for believing in this book.

Silja Hiidenheimo, Jussi Tiihonen and everyone else at my Finnish publisher Teos for being consistently fantastic.

My agent Elina Ahlbäck for working so hard to bring this book to audiences outside Finland.

Patricia Debney for being the first one to see a novel between the lines of those early pages and for acting as a midwife along the way.

Nancy Gaffield, Nancy Fulton, Jeremy Scott, Craig Ferguson and Mark Wilson for discussion, insight and encouragement.

Todd McEwen and Lucy Ellman for their generosity and kindness.

Marika Riikonen and Päivi Haanpää for friendship, feedback and being the official godmothers to this book.

Mari Paavola for being there when everything changed.

My parents Sirkka Vikman and Tapani Itäranta for teaching me to love reading, books and stories, and my brother Mikko Itäranta for hospitality.

José Casal-Gimenez for teamwork and everything it means.

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Memory of Water (Teemestarin Kirja)

Copyright © Emmi Itäranta 2012

Jacket layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014

Jacket photographs © Shutterstock.com

Original edition published by Teos Publishers 2012, Finland

English edition published by agreement with Emmi Itäranta and Elina Ahlback Literary Agency, Helsinki, Finland

Emmi Itäranta asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007529919

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007529933

Version: 2014-03-18

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