Samurai Summer (16 page)

Then it occurred to me that I didn’t have anything to carry all the stuff in. I tried one of the cupboards; there was a pile of sheets inside just like in our dorm. I took one of them, put Kerstin’s things on it, tied it into a bundle, and was just about to slip out through the door when I heard a voice I didn’t want to hear.

“Didn’t you find her?”

I stayed in the girls’ dormitory. Somebody muttered something a ways off, and I realized that Matron was talking through the mess hall window.

“She’s got to be close by,” I heard Matron say.

Somebody mumbled something again.

“She can’t have gotten
that
far,” said Matron. “She’s got to be close by.”

More mumbling.

“How should I know?”

Mumbling again. I thought it sounded like one of the counselors.

“Let’s just deal with one thing at a time,” said Matron. “We can take care of them later.”

Them
. Take care of
them
. I guessed that she was talking about us. Me.

I didn’t know if somebody had stumbled across the castle while they were out searching, or if they would have cared even if they had found it. They wouldn’t have known what it was anyway.

I looked around the dorm. The window farthest away from me was half open. I could see the courtyard, the playground, the merry-go-round, and beyond that, the lake.

I tiptoed across the floor, unhooked the window, and opened it slowly so that it didn’t squeak like the merry-go-round usually did. I couldn’t see anyone when I leaned out to take a look.

It was only about six feet down to the ground, so I dropped the bundle of clothes. It landed on the grass with a slight thud that nobody could have heard. I jumped out, landed next to the bundle, and ran toward the trees without looking around.

The path became dark when we moved in among the biggest fir trees. It was a roundabout route we were forced to take so as not to bump into all the people out searching. But they wouldn’t keep going for much longer.

“Pretty soon they’ll call the police,” said Sausage.

“I don’t think they will,” I said. “Not tonight, at least.”

“Why not?”

I didn’t answer and neither did Kerstin. She was in front of me and behind Janne. After me came the archer followed by the one with the hat. They had pulled the canoe in among the trees and camouflaged it with twigs and branches. It was impossible to see it if you didn’t know it was there.

“Maybe we can be of some use,” the archer had said when they came along with us.

They were tough explorers who always had to be ready for anything. Maybe they could smell the scent of an approaching battle.

Kerstin had gone behind the canoe to get changed. When she came back, her face wasn’t quite as white as it had been, and her lips were not so blue.

She still hadn’t said what had happened.

It was quiet in the woods as we approached the castle from the north.

It struck me that I hadn’t seen Micke at all.

“Where’s Micke?”

“He’s gone over to the other side,” said Sausage.

“The other side of the lake?” I asked.

“To Weine’s troop,” said Lennart, who had overheard us.

“I never thought he’d…” I said mainly to myself.

I was surprised that Micke had changed sides. Why did he want to be on the wrong side? He wasn’t stupid.

“Maybe they’ve taken over the castle,” said Sausage.

“Then we’ll take it back again,” I said.

But I didn’t think they had. Not yet. Not Weine’s troop.

A
s we walked along the path, it struck me that the castle was the only thing I had left that I could still call mine. It seemed that everything had been taken away from me this summer bit by bit. It started with the bag of Twist. It could have all been planned from the start by the grown-ups. They wanted to show us who was in charge. As if we didn’t already know.

But they didn’t just want to be in charge. They wanted to own us. You can do whatever you want with something you own. You can even smash it to pieces.

That’s the way it was. That’s why they’d ordered all the children to go searching through the forest for Kerstin, and why they hadn’t called the police. The police might ask the children questions. And we might say things the grown-ups didn’t want anybody to know.

Would any of us ever get away from here? I could see the back of Kerstin’s neck in front of me. It was thin and white. The sun had disappeared and the colors had crept back underneath the moss and into the trees. Everything in the forest was becoming black and white. Then I saw the outline of the castle. We were home.

“It looks deserted,” said Janne.

“Good.” I went to the moat. There was mud at the bottom but no water. “Maybe they’ve been here and gone.”

“What should we do now?” asked Sausage.

“Let’s make a fire,” said the boy with the hat. “It’ll be hard, but we can do it.”

The explorers had brought the perch with them. I lifted one of them. It must have weighed more than half a pound and was nice and solid.

Lennart and Sausage went to gather some twigs and branches. I flattened out the ash in the campfire. Everything inside the ring of stones was cold now. I wondered again who had been there earlier and made a fire. Maybe Micke with Weine’s troop. I still couldn’t understand how he could change sides. Was it because I hadn’t been a good enough leader? Had I left them too much on their own? Been too unyielding with Matron and the grown-ups? Maybe I should have been smarter from the start. Been more laid back. Said nothing
about the Twist bag. Eaten everything that crawled around on my plate in the mess hall.

A quarter of an hour later we had a good fire burning. We sat around it in a circle and watched the flames. Kerstin was sitting next to me. I had been waiting for the right moment to ask her what had happened, but that moment hadn’t come yet.

“Won’t they see the fire?” asked the archer.

“No,” said Janne. “We’re too far away. And the wind’s blowing in the other direction.”

The archer looked around.

“This is a nice place you’ve built.”

Nobody answered, but it was nice to hear.

“We’ve got a reserve castle,” said Janne. “We can go there later. They’ll never find that place.” He looked around. “The walls are higher than they are here.”

“Do you have a place of your own?” asked Sausage. “An encampment or something like that?”

“Only the canoe,” said the one with the hat. “That’s our encampment.”

“Explorers are nomads,” said the archer. “We move around all the time.”

“Samurai are nomads too,” said Sausage. “We keep moving like the waves of the sea. That’s why we’re also called ‘wave men.’”

Sausage looked at me. I nodded. Maybe it sounded a bit strange right now, but it was true.

“You build pretty well for being nomads,” said the archer with a laugh. “But there’s not much in the way of waves in that moat.”

“We need some place to keep coming back to,” I said. “You have your canoe. We’ve got our castle.”

The one with the hat nodded and started counting heads sitting around the fire.

“There are five of you here from the summer camp,” he said when he’d finished counting. “They must have finished eating supper by now. And you’re not there.”

“That’s true,” said Sausage cheerfully.

“So what’ll they do? Send out a search party? Or phone the cops?” said the one with the hat.

I looked at Kerstin again. As long as she was here, they would wait as long as possible before calling the cops. I think Matron and Christian realized that she was with us. Pretty soon they’d come back here to look for us but not until it had gotten darker.

For now Kerstin was safe, but that wouldn’t last forever. We weren’t safe ourselves. They were crazy and it wasn’t just because they were grown-ups.

“Aren’t you missing too?” asked Janne.

“Mom and Dad won’t mind as long as I make it back
before school starts,” said the archer.

“Wow,” said Sausage.

“For me, it’s enough if I’m home the day before my confirmation,” said the one with the hat.

“You’re gonna get confirmed?” asked Sausage.

“No,” he replied and burst out laughing.

“Then you’ll never get home,” said Sausage.

“I’ve got the canoe. I can paddle wherever I want. Have you seen what the world looks like? There’s water everywhere.” He looked at me. “I can paddle to Japan. You can come with me if you want.”

“But we were going to go to Missouri,” said the archer. “Follow the Missouri River all the way.”

“That’s on the way to Japan.”

“No it isn’t.”

It depends on which way you go,” said the one with the hat. “On second thought, no it doesn’t. The world is round. You always get to where you’re going if you keep at it long enough.”

“He’s always like this,” said the archer looking at me. “Should we grill the fish now?”

I can’t say that everybody got full, but we all had some and it was the best thing I’d tasted all summer—along with the
hot dogs the lady at the stand had given us. We didn’t have any salt but I doubt anyone cared. I asked Kerstin what she thought and she said it tasted great. She didn’t say anything apart from that. She started shivering again but only for a few seconds.

Sausage ate some of the skin as well—those pieces that were crisp enough.

“This only made me even more hungry,” he complained.

“We’ve got dessert,” I said. “The bag of Twist.”

“Do we dare open it?” asked Sausage.

“Why shouldn’t we?” I said. “It’s mine, isn’t it?”

“Twist,” said the archer. “I haven’t had Twist since we found a bag at the supermarket a few weeks ago.”

“Those weren’t Twists,” said the one with the hat. “They were some other kind of chocolates. And we didn’t exactly find them.”

“Same difference.”

“I’ll go get it,” I said. I stood up and walked over to the hiding place.

It was empty.

The glow from the embers was like a red eye staring up at the dark blue sky. Everybody sat there thinking about chocolate. You couldn’t start talking about chocolate and
then expect everybody to stop thinking about it.

I had been robbed of my bag of Twist twice. I don’t know which time was worse.

“Weine,” said Sausage. “Or Micke.”

“Probably both of them,” said Janne. “I’ll have their heads for this.”

“No,” I said, “they’re mine.”

“Did you know that it was the white man who started taking scalps?” said the one with the hat. “At least in the American Northeast. The state of Minnesota. Cheyenne country.”

“Swedes,” I said.

“Huh?”

“I’m talking about the whites. It was mainly Swedes who emigrated to America, wasn’t it? To Minnesota.”

“You may be right.”

“So it was Swedes who taught the Indians to take scalps.”

“I don’t know if they
taught
them exactly,” said the one with the hat. “It must have been a pretty painful thing to learn!”

Somebody burst out laughing.

Kerstin started crying.

“He… chased me in there.”

She had started talking at last. I knew she would. At first her teeth were chattering like castanets.

“He told me to go in… in… to… the room.”

“What for?” asked Sausage.

“Shut up, Sausage,” I said.

“Which room?” asked Janne.

“That… office. The one that Matron has.”

“Were you alone?” I asked.

“Yes… by then. Ann was outside but he said he wanted to talk to me about something.”

“Was he alone?”

“Uh… yes.”

“Where was Matron?”

“She was in the hall.”

“So she knew that Christian wanted to talk to you in the office?”

“Yes, she saw us.”

“She saw Christian and you going into her office?”

Kerstin nodded.

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t say anything. She… started walking away. I just caught sight of her turning her back on me… on us… and heading outside.”

“Then what happened?”

Kerstin’s teeth started chattering again.

“I jump… jumped out of the window,” she said.

She didn’t want to say what had happened in the office, but she had told us the important part—that she’d escaped. That was starting to look like the only way out of this place.