Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 47 - Is There Anybody Out There?

He just hadn’t found anyone whom he had dared to love. He knew that he was immortal, while an ordinary girl would grow old and die before him.

But what was Tiili’s situation?

He didn’t know. All he knew was that he felt a warm sense of devotion to her.

And that made him uneasy for the future.

Tova woke him from his thoughts. She was paying close attention to something.

“Marco, listen!”

He immediately obeyed. “Yes, I hear them! They are signals coming from Nataniel!”

Ellen jumped up and came closer. The entire group concentrated on what was going on.

“Nataniel,” Ellen whispered. “He’s alive! Thank God! What kind of signals are they?”

“He needs help,” Marco answered.

“Oh no!” Ellen gasped. “We must rush over there!”

“No, no, not that kind of help. Everyone be quiet, now, so that Tova and I can receive the signals!”

It grew deadly quiet. Marco frowned. The others didn’t know that it had to do with the information about the hell hounds helping Nataniel. Then it was quiet for a moment, and Tova and Marco relaxed.

“The exchange is over,” said Marco. “Nataniel wants to get into telepathic contact with Rune.”

“Rune?” said Halkatla. “I wouldn’t mind that either!”

“Calm down, now,” said Marco, smiling. “I’m going to try to contact Rune. Nataniel sends his greetings to you all, and especially to Ellen.”

“Thank you! Oh, thank you!”

They let Marco sink into the strange world of telepathy.

After a while Tova started. “He’s sending another message.”

“Could you take it? I don’t have time.”

Tova collected herself. She looked so concentrated that Villemo had difficulty keeping a straight face.

Then Tova sighed. “The time is approaching,” she said softly, so as not to disturb Marco. “I have been given orders to prepare Shira.”

“Help!” said Gabriel tonelessly, swallowing.

Tova concentrated on contacting Shira and she quickly succeeded. It was harder for Marco to locate Rune.

But soon the mandrake man was there with his squeaky voice, and Marco asked him to seek Nataniel’s thoughts.

Everyone discovered that they had been holding their breath for quite a long time. There was an audible sigh from them all once the tense moment had passed.

“Now I’m going up to look for Nataniel,” said Ellen resolutely.

This time Marco didn’t stop her. Instead he got to his feet and the others followed suit.

“Yes, we may just as well start heading there,” he said, “because things are starting to happen there now.”

It was as though the entire group had gained new strength. They streamed up towards the highest point on the cliff overhang, from where the wide expanse of the moor stretched before them. The May night had already changed: though it was still night, the light was strong.

They were much better able to see the snowy weather from there. It lay heavily across the tops, creating grey-white curtains over the slopes. Had anyone seen them now they would have thought a handful of people were making their way towards the moor. But there were, in fact, more like a hundred of them.

There is so much an ordinary person can’t see, and that might be for the best.

Marco had to be free to concentrate, so Ian carried Tiili on his back. She sat there looking with bewilderment at the flock surrounding her. And when her gaze happened to meet Marco’s she lit up in a quick smile that made her finely chiselled features irresistible.

“You weigh nothing, my girl,” said Ian.

At which she smiled a little. Then she became serious, thoughtful. “It was precisely along this road that I walked with the ... horrible one, back then.”

“Don’t think too much about it.”

“I don’t have that many other memories to think about,” she said.

“Then try to remember the beautiful ones.”

“I will gladly do that.”

To which she added silently to herself, “But the most beautiful one is completely new!”

Out loud she said with a clear shudder, “So you think he has come back? Is he up there? Where are we going?”

“We won’t expose you to any danger, don’t be afraid of that,” said Ian, mustering up all the reassurance he could in his voice.

But she wasn’t entirely reassured.

Ellen stopped. “I’m worried.”

“Me, too,” said Marco. “Come, let’s hurry!”

“But can we enter the mountain?”

“No, but perhaps we will receive a message.”

They didn’t. But something else came instead ...

Everybody stopped abruptly. From somewhere up ahead of them came a strange roar that sounded more like a cry of fear from something that belonged to the earth itself. It didn’t derive from a human or animal or any other living organism ... It was something connected to the elements, they thought. And between two mountain peaks they saw the top of a column of mud or soil, dissolving into dirty drops that were being thrown off it.

The ground was trembling lightly underneath their feet.

Then it grew quiet.

For a long time.

“Something has happened,” said Ian dryly.

They waited.

Tova’s gaze met that of a demon. The bright, expectant look that had crossed the demon’s face at the sound they had just heard made a chill go down her spine.

Doesn’t anyone see the danger? she wondered mutely.

But I can’t say anything. All I can do is be sad, and scared!

“Let’s go on,” said Marco faintly.

They walked in silence, determinedly, obstinately, prepared to encounter problems.

“The day is dawning,” said Tamlin.

“Well, there’s still a way to go,” said Tova. “But it is going in the right direction.”

“Look!” said Gabriel, who stood bent over the unhealthy-looking brook. “Look at the water!”

Everyone went over. Without having to be told, they knew what he was referring to. They could see that the brook no longer had the sick colour it had once had. It wasn’t clean but was much better than it had been.

“Well, what do you know?” said Tova. “Dare we interpret it as a good sign?”

“I think we should,” said Marco calmly, though they could hear the hesitation in his voice.

They fought their way up the last steep hill. They were just at the periphery of the snowstorm, which seemed closer the higher up you looked.

Everyone stopped, touched and bewildered at what they saw now. The light of dawn made it easier for them to see a small bird sitting on a rock in the brook drinking the water. The banks were ruined, of course, and their colours were sick-looking, but the water was crystal clear!

Tova and Ian looked at one another, broad smiles spreading across their faces.

But Ellen knelt slowly down and touched the cold, suffering earth that Tan-ghil’s black water had so contaminated.

“Look!” she whispered. “Look!”

The others bent down. They had to lean rather far down in order to see anything.

“Grass,” Ian whispered. “Tiny shoots!”

Everyone sighed slowly. Marco put words to their thoughts. “That can mean only one thing,” he concluded. “Nataniel and Shira have survived.”

At that very moment they heard distant, shrill screams from the mountaintops.

They looked at each other for a long time.

“Only Tan-ghil screams like that,” Tova muttered.

“Come! We have to go up there,” said Marco.

“But how?”

They looked around at the crevices.

“Among the standing stones,” said Villemo.

“Yes, that’s the best solution.”

A deathly scream that resounded through the mountains made them stop for a moment. The scream vibrated in the air, spreading like ripples in water further and further and further out. Never before had they heard such a wild, powerlessly furious scream: the sound went right through them, while the memory of it lived on in them.