Penelope cuts across the slope at an angle. She slips on the loose stones, slides; her hand shoots out to balance her and it gets cut. She cries out; pain shoots from her wrist. Her shoulders and back burn too. She can’t stop coughing. She forces herself to look behind, into the forest, between the tree trunks; she dreads catching sight of their pursuer again.
Björn helps her up, muttering something as he does. His eyes are bloodshot and haunted.
“We can’t stay still,” he’s whispering.
Where is the pursuer? Is he close by? Has he lost them? Not that many hours ago, they were lying on a kitchen floor while he was looking in the window. Now they’re running up through a spruce thicket. They can smell the warm scent of the pine needles and they keep going, hand in hand.
There’s a rustling and, crying out in fear, Björn takes a sudden step to the side and gets a branch in the face.
“I don’t know how much longer I can take this,” he says, panting.
“Don’t think about it.”
They slow to a walk. It is hard to ignore the pain in their knees and feet. Through brushwood and rotting piles of leaves, they keep going, down into a ditch, up through weeds, and finally they find themselves on a dirt track. Björn looks around and whispers to her to follow. He starts running south, towards the more inhabited area of Skinnardal. It can’t be far. She limps a few steps and then begins to run after him. The track curves around a grove of birches and, once past the white trunks, they suddenly see two people. There’s a woman barely out of her teens, dressed in a short tennis dress, talking to a man standing by a red motorcycle.
Penelope zips up her hoodie and sucks in air through her nose to steady her breath.
“Hi,” she says.
They’re staring at her. It’s easy to see why: she and Björn are bloody and dirty.
“We’ve had an accident,” she says. “We need to borrow a phone.”
Tortoiseshell butterflies flutter over the goosefoot and horsetail growing in the ditch.
The man nods and hands his phone to Penelope.
“Thanks,” Björn says, although he keeps his eyes glued on the road and into the forest.
“What happened?” the man asks.
Penelope doesn’t know what to say. Tears begin to stream down her cheeks.
“An accident,” Björn says.
“Oh my God,” the woman in the tennis dress hisses to her boyfriend. “She’s that bitch.”
“Who?”
“The bitch on TV the other day who was criticising our Swedish exports.”
Penelope doesn’t hear. She tries to smile engagingly at the young woman as she taps out Claudia’s number. But her hands are shaking too hard and she hits the wrong number. She has to stop and try again. Her hands shake so fiercely she’s afraid she’ll drop the phone. The young woman is whispering into her boyfriend’s ear.
She plants herself in front of Penelope. “Tell me something. Do you think that hardworking people, people working sixty hours a week, are supposed to pay for people like you to just say whatever the hell you want on some television programme?”
Penelope can’t comprehend why the young woman is so angry. She’s unable to concentrate on her question. Her thoughts whirl as she anxiously scans the area between the trees while she hears the signal go through. The ringing crackles. It sounds far away.
“So real work’s not good enough for you?” The woman is really working herself up.
Penelope pleads with Björn with her eyes to help her out here and calm the woman down. She sighs as she hears her mother’s voice on the answering machine.
“This is Claudia Fernandez. I can’t answer the phone right now, but please leave a message and I’ll call back as soon as I can.”
Tears run down her cheeks and her knees are about to buckle. She’s so tired. She holds up her hand towards the woman in a plea.
“We paid for our phones with our own money we earned ourselves,” the young woman says. “You do the same. Pay for your own damn phone …”
The line is breaking up. Penelope moves away in search of a better signal but it only gets worse. It cuts out and she’s not sure she’s even got through as she starts to speak.
“Mamma, I need help. People are after us—”
The woman yanks the phone from Penelope’s hand and tosses it back to the young man.
“Get a job!” he yells.
Penelope sways in shock. She watches the woman climb onto the motorcycle behind the man and wrap her arms around his waist.
“Please!” Penelope calls after them. “Please—”
Her voice is lost in the roar of the motorcycle as it speeds away, spitting gravel. Björn and Penelope start to run after them, but the motorcycle disappears down the track to Skinnardal.
“Björn,” Penelope says as she stops running.
“Keep running,” he yells.
She’s out of breath. This is a mistake, she thinks. He stops and looks at her. Then he starts walking away.
“Wait! He understands how we think!” she yells after him. “We have to outwit him!”
Björn walks more slowly and then turns to look at her. He keeps on walking backwards.
“We’ve got to get help,” he pleads.
“Not yet.”
Björn slowly comes to a stop and then returns. He takes her by the shoulders.
“Penny, I’m sure that it’s only ten minutes or so to the first house. You can do it. I’ll help—”
“We have to get back in the woods,” Penelope says. “I know that I’m right.”
She pulls off her hair band and throws it on the road in front of them and heads back into the woods, away from habitation.
Björn looks behind him down the road, then reluctantly follows Penelope. Penelope hears him behind her. He catches up and takes her hand. They’re now running side by side but not all that fast. A small inlet of water bars their way. They wade across for approximately forty metres, the water coming up to their thighs. Out of the water, they start to jog again in shoes that are completely soaked.
Ten minutes later, Penelope slows down. She stops, takes a deep breath, lifts her gaze, and looks around. Somehow she no longer senses the cold presence of their pursuer. Björn asks, “When we were in the house, why’d you yell for him to come in?”
“He’d have just come inside anyway—but he didn’t expect a voice.”
“Still—”
“Up to now, he’s been one step ahead of us,” she continues. “We’ve been scared and he knows how fear makes people stupid.”
“Still, even stupid people don’t say, ‘Come on in,’?” Björn says, and a tired smile crosses his face.
“That’s why we can’t head towards Skinnardal. We have to zigzag, change our direction all the time, keep deep in the forest, and head towards nothing at all.”
“Right.”
She observes his exhausted face and his white, dry lips.
“I think we have to think it out now. Try new ideas. I believe that we have to … instead of heading for the mainland … we have to keep going further out into the archipelago and away from the mainland.”
“No one in their right mind would do that.”
“Can you keep going?” she asks softly.
He nods and they begin to move again, further into the forest, further away from roads, from houses and people.