Wild Song (10 page)

I saw a tear roll down Hannu’s cheek and glisten in the pale morning half-light. I sat up, feeling really relieved he was there, standing in front of me in this creepy hut.

‘I swam all the way,’ I blurted out. I felt myself huge with pride. This was the first person I’d told. This great achievement had been locked inside me and now it came bursting out. ‘It took me all day. I must have swum fifty kilometres. Or twenty, anyway. I swam the whole day and I wasn’t scared.’ I suddenly felt really happy. I wanted to talk and talk. I wanted to boast. I wanted to tell Hannu how I had made fire, and gutted fish, caught one even, and how I was brave enough to sleep in a creepy hut. I wanted to tell him everything.

Hannu was shaking his head and staring at me. More tears were rolling down his cheeks. He didn’t seem to notice that he was crying, or care. And he was soaked. ‘They said you were dead.’ He squatted down, took my hand and squeezed it. Water ran off him. ‘They said they
searched this island three days ago and the other islands around. But they didn’t find you.’

Suddenly I remembered that dream soon after I’d arrived, when I was hidden under the bush. Men shouting, and a loud buzzing. So it hadn’t been a dream. They really had come looking for me.

‘Niilo, they said you had drowned. They found your shoes washed up.’

‘I’m not,’ I said, which was obvious, but words just kept spilling out. ‘I’m alive. I grilled fish and made fire and found berries. I like fish. I like the black charred bits. And I ate dandelion leaves. They got my trainers?’

Hannu nodded. ‘They sure did, both of them.’ He laughed then, but it sounded like he might cry. ‘Oh, Niilo, you have no idea how relieved I feel. I knew it. You’re a survivor. Thank God you’re okay. I haven’t slept, Niilo. I’ve looked everywhere. I took a boat, said I’d find you if it was the last thing I ever did.’

‘You found me.’ Again, that was obvious, but it was still a miracle. There are thousands of islands in Finland. Thousands of rocks jutting up in the Baltic Sea. And Hannu came to this one. ‘I was waiting for the search party,’ I said.

‘Believe me, Niilo,’ he said, placing his strong hands on my shoulders and staring at me, like he still couldn’t believe this was real, ‘there was a search party. There still is. They sent out the coastguards. They flew a plane. You’ve been on the television. Your mother blames herself. Your brother
has made a missing-person poster. They lit a special candle for you at the Wild School. And Riku is always down at the shore, looking for you.’

‘Really?’

He nodded his head and wiped his tears with his sleeve, then sniffed and nodded again. ‘We’ve all missed you, Niilo.’ Then he squeezed my hand and laughed. ‘Thank God you’re safe. You’re alive!’

I sat there on the floor of that hut, with Hannu laughing and crying in front of me, and I thought about Scarface staring out at the sea, looking for me. And I imagined the other boys huddled round a special candle, all saying prayers for me. I couldn’t believe my Converse trainers came back. I wondered what kind of poster Tuomas made. We were quiet for a while, me and Hannu. Maybe he was also saying a prayer. Then I heard him sniff and laugh softly. ‘Nice place you got here.’

‘I got women’s magazines for a pillow,’ I said, then I laughed too. ‘There’s some great knitting patterns in there.’ I laughed so much I cried, and we were both crying and laughing. I don’t know the last time I’d laughed like that. Maybe that was the first time in years? All my muscles ached in a good way. Then, between laughing, I said, ‘And I made a friend.’

Hannu lifted his eyebrows and looked over his shoulder. ‘Where is he?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t think my friend likes it in here.’

‘Can’t see why not,’ Hannu said, switching the torch on
and flicking it around the gloomy hut. He fixed the beam on a mangled bird skeleton. ‘Why would anybody not like it? It’s a palace.’ Then Hannu switched off the torch and grew more serious. ‘So, who is your friend?’

Now it was my turn to be serious. I wiped my wet face with the blanket. ‘Well, I know it sounds incredible, but … my friend is a seal. A huge black seal. It’s been watching over me. It gave me fish.’

Hannu shook his head slowly. ‘A seal?’

‘Yeah, I was scared at first, but …’ Hannu was still shaking his head. ‘You don’t believe me? What about all the stories you told me? I’m serious – there was a black seal, and it was looking out for me.’

‘Niilo, you swam a long way. Maybe fifteen kilometres.’

‘So? You saying I’m making this up?’

‘No. I don’t know. I mean, you might be … I don’t know … delirious. But what do you mean? It gave you fish?’

‘It fished them out of the water and threw them to me. Honestly.’ I felt angry now. I knew the seal was real. And Hannu was the one who was supposed to believe in these things. ‘I’m not lying! I’m not del—’

‘… irious,’ Hannu finished the word when I let it hang in the air. He  looked at me like he was making sure. ‘I believe you,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry, Niilo. I’ve been so worried. I haven’t slept. I kept thinking I had found you, under trees, on beaches, in old huts a bit like this one, but then it was a log, or the wrong boy, or my imagination.’
He nodded his head slowly and looked at me. ‘I believe you.’

We didn’t speak for a while, just both sat there on the floor of that spooky hut, which wasn’t spooky now he was there. Then in a quiet voice he said, ‘I know this sounds weird, but that huge black seal, I think he guided me here. I’ve been on twenty-six islands. I thought you had drowned. Or somehow boarded a ship and gone to Sweden like you said you wanted to. I was close to giving up, especially when the wind got up and it started raining. Then I saw this shining black head loom out of the water. He looked at me too, Niilo. It was like he could see right into me. Then he turned round and swam off. I was exhausted. I watched the seal go. My arms were aching – I had been rowing for hours – and the engine was out of petrol. The wind was against me, the rain was lashing down. But the seal stopped, and turned his head to look back at me. It was as if he was waiting for me to follow him. As though he was saying,
Come on. This way!
Suddenly I felt this excitement zip through me. I dipped the oars into the water. “I’m coming, buddy,” I said, and pulled back hard on the oars, and followed him, even though the weather was wild.’ Hannu smiled. He was still dripping wet but it was like he was shining. ‘I followed the seal. I got the feeling he wanted me to stop at this island.’

‘Yeah, that’s my seal. That’s my friend.’ Again I felt this huge happy feeling glow inside me. ‘It understands me.’

‘So do I, Niilo.’ Hannu looked at me. It felt the same
as when the seal had looked at me, when I had imagined trees and snow and stars and bears and this mighty great feeling pulse away inside me. I felt this huge smile break open my face, like time stopped. But as the pale dawn light trickled down through the hole in the roof, I saw Hannu’s face, saw how worried he looked. I saw the way he frowned and bit his lip. ‘So trust me when I say this – but I need to take you back to the Wild School. They are dredging up the sands around the island, Niilo. The marine rescue is still out. Divers are looking for your body. Your family are worried sick. We have to go back, Niilo.’

I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. How could he do this? ‘What about my freedom?’ My voice came out all choked up. ‘I know how to survive. This is my island. I made fire.’ I felt my eyes well up. ‘I want to stay here. I know how to look after myself.’

‘I know you do, Niilo. You’ve been away four days. That’s already a great achievement. Believe me, Niilo, you can feel proud of that. But you can’t stay here. And … they’re blaming me.’

‘So you want to take me back there so you’ll feel better. So they’ll stop blaming you?’

‘That isn’t the only reason, Niilo. You can’t stay here. You know that. And your family are really anxious. Believe it or not, they really do care about you. And they want you to be happy.’

I couldn’t believe that. What about what
I
wanted? I wanted to be that mime artist on the Helsinki esplanade,
with a hatful of coins to spend. Or the dark-eyed accordion player, spilling out sad and wild tunes. Suddenly it was like I could hear those tunes.

‘Like I said, Niilo, real freedom is in here.’ Hannu tapped his chest. The accordion music stopped.

I wanted to live my way. I didn’t want people telling me what to do. I wanted to go where I wanted. I felt all that pounding away inside me like a drum, but I stared at him and nodded. ‘Of course I know that.’ I could hear the cold edge creeping back into my voice. ‘Do you think I
don’t
know that?’

So we left the hut, and I wasn’t sorry to leave that gloomy place. The sun was already rising, the rain had stopped, but there was a chill in the air and clouds around. I didn’t say much, didn’t know what to say. I was leaving my island. I had been the king of this place. But I was hungry. I had been hungry for days. And I had a sore stomach. Maybe it was that tomato soup?

I looked over my shoulder for the seal but I couldn’t see it as Hannu and I tramped over the springy heather and the ferns. We skirted the circle of birch and pine trees and came down to the beach and to the sea. Darts of red light bled over the sea’s horizon and I saw Hannu’s small boat, bobbing a few metres out. He had secured it with a rope looped around a stone. It wasn’t much of a boat. It had a tiny outboard motor, but it didn’t have a sail.

‘Is that it?’ I said, and couldn’t hide the disappointment from my voice. ‘You mean,
that’s
my rescue mission?’

‘No,’ Hannu said. He sounded tired now. I heard him take a deep breath. ‘No, Niilo. Your rescue mission is vast. Planes. Coastguard boats. Divers. Police. It’s quite elaborate, to be honest. But I was the one who found you. Me and my small boat.’ Then he gestured towards it. ‘Let’s go.’ He waded out into the sea and pulled at the rope. His boat jerked and floated towards us. ‘Hop in, Niilo,’ he said. He tried to smile at me, but could hardly manage it and I didn’t smile back.

I knew I couldn’t stay on this island, eating fish and berries and sleeping in a horror hut, and I knew I was thirteen, and when you’re thirteen you don’t have much choice about what you do and where you go, but I had plans inside me. Big plans. For now, though, I stepped forward, waded through the shallow water and clambered into Hannu’s boat. It rocked wildly.

‘Sit down,’ he said, pointing to a bench. He fished out a thick blanket from under a tarpaulin and handed it to me. I sat down and wrapped myself in the blanket. Then Hannu uncoiled the rope and the boat glided away from the island. ‘This doesn’t exactly fill me with joy,’ he said as the boat pushed out to the open sea. ‘I mean, taking you back to the place you escaped from.’ I looked at him but didn’t speak. I could feel the cold hard mask sitting over my face again. ‘But I don’t know what else to do,’ he said. ‘Trust me, Niilo, this feels like the right thing. It’ll all work out for the best.’

‘Oh yeah?’ I was enjoying his discomfort. It must be a real pain to be an adult, and have to do the right thing all the time. I ignored Hannu, turned my head and looked back at the shrinking shape of my island. For a while we didn’t speak. He rowed and I watched my island get smaller and smaller. ‘Niilo’s Island.’ Then I changed my mind. ‘Seal Island.’ I thought I had said it inside, but I must have muttered.

‘What’s that?’ Hannu said, leaning towards me. He lifted the oars and looked at me and everything paused. Water dripped off the wooden oars, back into the sea. Hannu tilted his head to the side. ‘What did you say, Niilo?’

So I said it, louder, almost defiant. ‘Seal Island. That’s what I’m calling it.’ I would come back one day. I could still see the silhouette of the island and felt a pang inside me. I’d only been there three or four days, but it felt like weeks. So much had happened there that I felt like I was leaving a part of myself behind. Or, maybe, I had
found
a part of myself. Then I swung round to face Hannu and said it again. Except I didn’t say it, I shouted it. ‘Seal Island!’

And that’s when something hit the boat. We both screamed as the boat pitched, lurched forward, and capsized.

I plunged into the water. Sea was over my head. I shot up, gasping, and I saw the bow of the boat lift into the sky. Then the sea fell over us again.

Hannu was in the water, his hand reaching towards me as I sank. The weight of the blanket around me was pulling me under and I was thrashing through the water, screaming. My mother screaming. Father screaming. The other boy screaming, then gone. The dream rushed into me. The other boy had been beside me. He had always been beside me. Then he was gone. The sea took him away. Sea water crashed over me and I wanted to give up …

I sank and let the water swirl over me. Hannu yelled. He thrashed madly in the water and grabbed me, but I pushed him away. The other boy was gone. What was the point? What was the point of anything? I kicked.

So many people.

Drowning.

The seal.

The black seal was here, in the water. It looked at me – we were both under the water – and memory slammed through me. The seal’s face was so close, and everything was suddenly clear.

I could swim. I knew how to swim. I pushed back the sea and swam. I had to find the boy, the other boy. I dived down into the swirling ocean, but Hannu caught me and pulled me up.

‘I have to save him,’ I gasped, breaking the surface and spluttering, my voice a heave of water and agony.

‘I’ve got you,’ Hannu cried, panting. ‘It’s okay, Niilo. I’ve got you.’

‘But I have to save him,’ I cried.

Hannu was strong. He steadied the rocking boat and lifted me half out  of the sea. ‘Save … who?’

‘My brother.’

Hannu cried out suddenly as the black seal loomed out of the water. It was so close I could have touched it. ‘It’s crazy,’ Hannu yelled. ‘That seal, my God, he’s trying to attack us.’ Hannu had a hold of my arm. With his other arm he reached for the rocking boat and pulled the lip of it down hard. ‘Get in!’ he shouted, hoisting me up from the water and pushing me into the boat.

I fell forward into the boat, rolled over and stared up at the pink sky as the boat rocked wildly. The seal dived under the water again. My heart raced. What had I just said? I felt stunned as the image of my brother flashed into my head.

Not Tuomas. This was
another
brother. This brother
looked exactly like me. This brother was part of me. And the sea took him. I stretched my arms out, as though I could catch him and hold him tight, but the image vanished. He had gone, like he had before.

‘What … what happened?’ Hannu gasped. He heaved himself from the water and clambered into the boat. He fell down beside me. ‘Jesus, I don’t know what happened.’

I lay on the deck, still in a dream, still thinking about my brother. I was only vaguely aware of Hannu beside me, panicking and panting, and freaking out as he tried to stop the boat from rocking. He held the sides of the boat and peered over the side. ‘God. What … did we hit a rock? Jesus, where’s that mad seal? Did you see him, Niilo? I thought you said he was your friend? My God, he almost killed us. He’s mad.’

But the seal wasn’t mad. It wasn’t mad at all.

Hannu swung round and looked at me. I was still lying on the bottom of the boat, like I’d been struck by lightning. ‘Jesus, are you okay? Are you, Niilo?’ The boat was still rocking like a demented cradle and Hannu patted the boards of the hull. ‘No leak? Amazing. God, Niilo’ – he looked round at me, his face bewildered – ‘that seal capsized the boat. I think. Or maybe it was a rock? Or something else? I mean, seals don’t do that. Jesus …’

But I felt calm. Underneath the racing pulse and near-death experience, I felt strangely peaceful. It was like a film suddenly came on in my head. Or scenes from a film. And it had a title, that film:
Niilo’s life!

‘A family in a boat,’ I mumbled, dazed. ‘A small boat. A storm at sea. There was somebody like me in that boat. The wave snatched him. And there was a man. He had black hair. He tried to save the one like me. My brother. My brother drowned. They
both
drowned. And I was left in the boat with a woman screaming.’ I was muttering this. I couldn’t help it.

‘Oh God,’ Hannu cried. ‘Look!’ The oars were floating away from us, like twigs. ‘We need the oars,’ he shouted, staring at the floating-away oars. ‘There’s no petrol left in the engine.’ I could see his mind race. What if the seal was crazy? Or what if it had been a shark? Should he dive overboard and fetch the oars?

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘It was my seal. It won’t hurt you.’

‘He tried to drown us, Niilo. What do you mean, he won’t hurt me?’

Then I slipped overboard before Hannu could stop me. The water felt cool as I swam after the oars. I glanced back and gave Hannu the thumbs up. But he wasn’t looking at me. I followed his gaze and there it was again: the seal. It glided through the water and swam next to me. I’ve heard of people swimming with dolphins, well, I swam with a seal. I saw how it tucked its flippers into its body then, to slow down, how it spread them out and made slow circles. We reached the oars and the seal opened its jaw and carried one in its mouth. I tried to swim back using one hand, and dragging the second oar with the other. That was hard. The seal swam ahead and reached
the boat in seconds. I saw Hannu bend over and scoop up the oar. He didn’t seem so terrified now, just stunned. Then the seal swam back to me and bit into the other oar to carry it in its mouth over to the boat.

When I clambered back in, Hannu looked like he had been struck dumb.  With shaking hands I saw him secure the oars into the oar-locks, but he didn’t start rowing. The seal circled the boat three times. I knew it was getting ready to leave and I felt something like a stone crack in my heart. It looked straight at me, that seal did, then turned around and swam away.

‘It knows.’ My voice had fallen into a hushed whisper. ‘It’s like the seals in your story. It knows me, Hannu, better than I know myself. It’s given me the story I lost …’

Hannu dipped the oars into the water and nodded his head. He rowed slowly as the sun came up in the east. ‘The seal that watched over you – I’m sure it was the same seal that guided me here. But why? Why did it tip us over? Why, Niilo?’ The sea flashed pink and red.

I took one of the oars. ‘Remember how you said your dad gave you your past? Remember he sat by your bed and told you who you were?’ Hannu nodded. ‘Well, I think it’s like that.’ I smiled at him. I felt like a wise man suddenly, all peaceful. ‘The seal knew we wouldn’t really drown. It pushed a forgotten memory open, like a door that was locked – I don’t totally understand it. You’re the one always going on about magic, and mystery. Well, it’s a kind of magic.’ My voice came out calm and strong. It was like
after four days on my island I had a glimmer of how animal magic worked. I felt magical myself.

Hannu seemed to relax then. We were both still wet and I had lost his blanket in the sea. But the sun was getting warmer and drying us and I felt warm, and strong. Hannu dipped his one oar deep, then pulled back. I copied him. I would row with Hannu. The two of us sat side by side on the wooden bench in the middle of the small boat and we rowed. I didn’t even think about where we were going. We were just rowing over the sea in the early morning. We were quiet, concentrating on rowing. Sometimes we lifted the oars and took rests. As we journeyed over the sea the story that the seal had given me came clearer. It felt like a jigsaw, fitting piece by piece. It was the story of my life and it wasn’t a pretty story.

Maybe Hannu saw the way I was feeling, the way I’d fallen silent. Pulling the oar through the water and looking ahead he said, ‘Want to tell me the story?’

I tried to get words to come out, but my throat wouldn’t work. By tipping our boat the seal had broken open my lost story, but it wasn’t a happy story. Why did I need to know a story that was so terrible? ‘It was a long time ago,’ I started, my voice like a dry whisper. Hannu leant closer and we stopped rowing. ‘I nearly drowned,’ I whispered. ‘I didn’t, but two people did.’

‘Who were they, Niilo?’

I answered without thinking. How did I know? Where does buried memory come from? ‘My dad and my twin
brother.’ That’s what I said. My head reeled, as if I was in a trance. I imagined the yellow eyes of the seal, like two suns rising over the sea.  ‘At least, that’s what I think. I don’t know.’

My hands slumped down and the oar dropped from my hand. Hannu reached over to take it.