trees. She is close to her hiding place now. So very close.
She slows down. Stops.
Her eyes search for the end of the path. A sudden creak in the forest.
Her heart jumps into her throat; her muscles lock in panic.
He emerges from between the trees and stops not far away from her. She doesn’t have a chance; there is nowhere to run. The terrain is rough, either side of the path overgrown.
Her disappointment is overwhelming. Her insides tighten into one big, hard knot.
It is impossible.
And still, it has happened.
And still, he is standing there.
Somewhere, a dog barks.
The alarm sounds.
The last thing she thinks of is a voice. A faded memory returning to her.
You will never, ever get out of here. Just so you know.
The blood pounds at her temples.
Flickering sparks shower onto the curtains of her eyelids.
Then come the violent waves of dizziness and everything begins to go black.
I let the bumblebee fly around in the small aquarium for a while. It tries to get out, buzzing angrily, but all it can do is bounce off the walls.
Then it gives up for a moment and lands on the cork mat at the bottom.
I lift the glass lid off, slowly and cautiously. I hold my breath as I lower my hand, which holds a pin. It only takes a millisecond, and then the bumblebee is stuck to the mat. It hums furiously, spinning on the pin in a crazy, futile dance. Its wings work frantically, but it goes nowhere. Then I lift the cork mat out of the aquarium, place it before me, and pick up the tweezers.
Lily looks at me, her mouth agape. She runs her tongue over her lower lip. I search for something in her eyes, fear or hatred, but all I find is a great emptiness, a dark abyss that sucks me in.
But first, the bumblebee.
I pull off the wings first, then the legs. Taking my time, lining them up on the table in front of her. The stupid bumblebee never stops buzzing, moving around on the pin, just a body now, as if it ever had a chance.
‘Why are you doing that?’ she asks.
‘Because it’s amusing,’ I say.
‘What? To watch it suffer?’
‘No, your face when you watch.’
I almost can’t breathe when I realize she’s trembling a bit.
That’s how it all begins. With a tiny bumblebee.
The small ferry bobbed in the swells on the dark water. They were close now, but couldn’t see the island; the morning fog was a heavy blanket on the sea. The horizon was invisible.
Sofia felt relief as the mainland, on the other side, vanished behind the curtain of fog. She was putting distance between herself and Ellis. It was nice to get away from him, if only for a while.
There had always been something hectic and wild about her relationship with Ellis, an intensity that could lead to nothing but disaster. His terrible temper should have set off warning bells, but at first she just thought it made him exciting. They had argued about absolutely everything and it ended with him getting his revenge online. She had been so distracted that she almost bombed her last exam at college. She passed in the end, but just barely.
It was in the midst of this catastrophe that the invitation to the lecture by Franz Oswald popped up in her email. And it was because of that lecture that she was sitting here on a ferry, on her way to a strange island way out in the archipelago.
Wilma, Sofia’s best friend, was there too, staring into the fog. There was a hint of excitement between them. A vague sense of apprehension about what awaited them on the island.
*
On the morning she received the lecture invitation, Sofia had been on the computer, Googling phrases like ‘planning for the future’ and ‘career choices,’ realizing in the end that her search was not at all helpful. When she read the email, her first thought was to wonder why it hadn’t ended up in the spam folder.
A lecture on ViaTerra by Franz Oswald. For those who wish to walk the way of the earth, it read.
How the heck did a person do that? She thought it sounded strange, but she had heard of Franz Oswald before. There was some chatter about him around the university. He’d showed up out of the blue, giving talks about his philosophies of clean living, which he called ViaTerra. Among the young women, the talk about Oswald mostly revolved around the fact that he was attractive and a little mysterious.
She read the email again. Made sure that the event was free of charge. She figured it couldn’t hurt to listen to what this Oswald had to say, so she sent a text to Wilma, who didn’t take much convincing. They did nearly everything together by that time.
They had arrived late to the talk and sat in the front row of a full lecture hall. A big banner was hung above the stage; it said ‘ViaTerra: We Walk the Way of the Earth!’ in huge, green letters. The lecture hall was otherwise bare and sterile and had a strong smell of cleaning agents.
A buzz of surprise ran through the audience when Oswald walked onstage with a wheelbarrow full to the brim with something white. Flour or sugar. She couldn’t tell what it was, because the lights were focused on the podium; the spot where he was standing was much dimmer. The woman sitting next to Sofia groaned. Someone behind her whispered, ‘What on earth?’
He set down the wheelbarrow and stood still for a moment before coming forward and gripping the edges of the podium.
‘Sugar,’ he said. ‘This is what the average family goes through in three months.’
Sofia suddenly regretted coming, and she felt the urge to get up and leave. The feeling was so strong that her legs twitched. She really should have been looking for a job, not listening to a lecture. And Oswald made her nervous.
He was tall and well-built, wearing a grey blazer over a black T-shirt. His dark hair was combed back into a ponytail. The tan couldn’t be real, but it suited him. He gave the impression of being trim and sophisticated while also radiating something primitive, almost animalistic. But above all, it was his strong stage presence that made the air tremble with anticipation.
He stood in silence for a moment. A calmer, more expectant mood spread through the audience. Then he launched into a dizzying tempo that only increased throughout the lecture. His voice went on like a machine gun. He showed the crowd a PowerPoint full of brains, nervous systems, lungs, and flabby bodies that had fallen victim to toxins and stress.
Sofia began to catch on to what he believed in. A sort
