Walking the Ruins

Water below us, and from above

I pack our things. Since the knife is already in my pocket, that just involves picking up the bottle and the kettle, both still holding some water. Traveling light does have its advantages.

"Let's go," I say to Anna. "If we leave now, we might be able to make it home before nightfall." Mentioning home brings up the image of our house at the lake, accompanied by a warm feeling in my stomach. I realize that I'm smiling.

Anna does not return that smile, her face is tense. She gets up, slowly, steadying herself against the wall. Since my hands are full, I offer her my shoulder for support. We leave the villa and cross the bushes in front of it to get to the boathouse. I sit her down on a rock at the water and place our stuff on the ground.

"Wait here," I say, "I'll get the boat."

Some minutes later, the canoe is moored to a shrub. It is gently rocking in the waves, waiting for Anna to board it.

The surface of the water is still being pockmarked by the drops of the steady rain.

Anna sits on her rock, stares at the bobbing vessel, and hugs herself tightly. "I can't," she repeats, for something like the hundredth time. "It's not safe."

My suspicions that Anna is not a swimmer have turned out to be correct. Even worse, water seems to scare the hell out of her. She stubbornly refuses to step into the boat.

I make a move to look at my wristwatch, only to remember that I don't have one. It stopped working some months ago, its battery exhausted. But time is still running, its insidious progress even more threatening without a means to weigh its passing. I know it's getting late. We have to leave. We need to get Anna home. She needs care. And if we don't leave now, we won't make it today.

We need to move, and she is just sitting there.

She hangs her head and curls up, shivering.

I approach her, placing a hand on her shoulders, feeling the clammy fabric. Then I take a breath and put one arm below her legs and the other behind her back. Without waiting for her reaction, I lift her up, thanking the spirits for her slight frame and weakened state. She shrieks, looking at me with a mixture of horror and exasperation, but I am already stepping into the water and, moments later, I dump her into the boat, close to the prow. It rocks violently, nearly capsizing. Anna makes a move to flee back to dry land, but she freezes when she sees the water surrounding her now. She clasps the forward bench and gives me an angry stare.

I wade back to the shore, get the kettle and the bottle, and place both of them into the canoe. Boarding the boat, I feel her stare on me, but I don't return it, taking up the paddle instead.

The sky is still gray as we cruise the lake's surface half an hour later. The monotone drizzle has drenched me to my bones. Still, I'm hot from propelling the boat. I have been paddling for maybe an hour. The repetitive motion has become part of me, like a prayer, as if in a trance.

My eyes are on the shore, some hundred meters away. The trees and the occasional ruin stand in silence, dispassionate, the weather and human worries of no concern to them.

But I am eager, knowing that home is within reach and each stroke of my paddle brings us closer. On our way out, all those weeks ago, Steve, Jenny and I had to spend one night at the castle, but that was because we had a late start in the morning. Today we left much earlier thanks to my shanghaiing Anna.

She hasn't spoken a single word since her embarkment.

I look at her slumped back in front of me, her lank, dark hair falling tiredly over the stained, grayish-white pyjamas-thing she's wearing. Like a déja-vu, I remember a similar scene, on our trip outwards, when I was looking at Jenny's back. Her hair was a golden waterfall falling elegantly over her darkish attire—a stark contrast to Anna's forlorn, sunken form in front of me. And she is sitting there because of me, because she has helped me. That's why she got torn from her home, that's why she is hurt now.