A rat comes from inside the cellar, drawn by her sound and smell, and she screams when she feels its nose at the tips of her fingers. Her yell is enough to scare it off, but she knows that the respite is temporary. She is warm and fresh, quite different from the salt, hard meat, and rotten turnips in the cellar barrels. Soon the rat will return, at first alone in its greed but soon enough with others that have sniffed out its secret. The hands she has stretched out in the hole are her only defense: if she lets even a single one of them get past, her face will be at the mercy of teeth and claws.
Outside, time may pass, but under the earth, it stands frozen. All she can do is to try to control her breathing. Her skin goes numb where the stone holds its grip and where the ground is sharp. Now the rat is heading back on soft paws that nonetheless echo in the black silence of the tunnel. Closer and closer. She hits at it with her hand and scares it off again, alone once more.
Crying hurts too much. Each time her body shakes in a sob she awakens pain all around her, edges and protrusions finding new purchase on her body. She lies still, awaiting the end that appears as distant as it does inevitable. She wonders how long death intends to wait before it shows her clemency. Perhaps she can help it on its way, let a rat find its way in, squeeze its hairy body between jaw and shoulder and keep it there until its teeth finds her throat.
Paws in the distance, scrabbling and turning.
Reality is not what it was. Everything is black and devoid of meaning; if she lies still enough she no longer perceives any limits at all, no sense of where her flesh ends and the stone begins. She blinks to see if her eyes are open or closed. Colors emerge out of the darkness. She sees green, like the leaves in summer, silver gray, like a winding stream over shiny stones, and brown, like the forest floor through which it has carved its path.
Maja has a little boat made of bark. She leans over a bubbling brook with a body that no longer belongs to a child but a young girl. Her legs have grown long, her knees stick out all the way to her ears when she crouches. Karl stands behind her, waiting, a little shorter and with doubt in his eyes. “Mother has told us to stay away from the water.” Maja snorts at him over her shoulder, shrugging a plait out of her face in order to better launch her vessel with the current. “Don’t be a baby. If we’re to drown here we’d have to lie down on our faces.” She resembles her grandmother. Karl’s blue eyes have the same hue as her own. Then Maja lets go of the boat. It rocks from side to side before it balances, the twig keel setting it straight as the current takes hold. Laughing, they both set off barefoot across roots and stones to follow it downstream, Maja first and Karl at her heels. When Anna Stina hurries to follow them, she wonders if this is the same future that Lisa Forlorn saw in her tea leaves.
The sight is snatched away as a finger suddenly burns. The rat has drawn blood, and where the lower teeth have slipped on the nail, the sharp upper teeth have cut into the top of the finger. She screams and jerks her hand, managing to clench her fist around the front feet of the rat. It gives a piercing shriek and wriggles free, away now, but with the memory of her taste on its tongue.
Anna Stina tries to conjure up the images again, but in vain. All she sees are two defenseless infants left with one who is barely able to care for them for a single day. What she left for them to eat is likely gone already. Far away, her children are crying. A sob she can’t contain causes the stone to bite her sides.
Something is happening, something strange. Suddenly she is warm, and when she feels the walls again their grip is not the same. Rivulets of liquid are spilling over her. She doesn’t understand, but her heels dig deep and she gropes along the rough walls for purchase, empties her lungs of air, and presses forward. She suddenly inches forward, which allows her to take a deeper breath. Then another, and another, and when she picks up the smell she knows what it is that has saved her. Mother’s milk has started streaming out of the neglected bosom pressed against the rock, and this is what has allowed her to escape its jaws.