The air tastes of summer. Warm, sweet, steeped in herbs and smoke.
I sit quietly in my chair, back straight, hands folded in my lap.
The voices of the others reach me as if from far away, like through a thin veil where the world shimmers.
The evening lies heavy and soft across my shoulders, like a forgotten shawl.
Words scatter across the table like beads on stone.
Between the scents of rosemary and warm bread, gravel crunches suddenly.
I hear Marit’s slightly breathless voice.
“I hope the coals are already glowing!”
She’s back. Her dress flutters around her legs, the woven basket dangling by a thin wire from the handle of that strange metal horse with two wheels, something moved by the feet, yet no beast pulls it.
She brakes with a flourish, sets the basket on the table, throws a dish towel over it.
“I got everything. Steaks, sausages, pork belly, skewers. We’re ready.”
Katja nods, but her eyes drift to me.
“What did you say earlier, in that old tongue … when you held the letter? Can you translate it for us?”
I do not answer.
The voices blur, the light grows suddenly too bright.
The sounds too loud and yet too distant.
A fine film of sweat cools the back of my neck.
A prickling like needles runs down my spine.
It feels as though something inside me tries to draw away, retreating from the shell in which it is trapped.
This is not my home.
No root.
No echo that belongs to me.
Slowly I lower my gaze.
These legs, too long.
These hands, not mine.
This face, too smooth, too pale, too yellow, too young.
“This is not my body,” I whisper, steady but quiet.
“Not my legs. Not my hands. Not my face.”
Marit, just unwrapping the meat, freezes. The knife hangs suspended in air.
“I meant to tell you in the clinic,” she says softly. “The doctor said her condition was unusual. Blood values, cell structure, they don’t match. One of them said it was like looking into a false mirror. The reflection does not match what lies behind.”
Konrad sets down his wineglass, brows furrowed.
“What does that mean?”
Marit hesitates.
“It means that this body you see here should not be alive. It is dying. And yet something keeps it standing. Something unknown. Something medicine cannot explain.”
Katja lays down her spoon, startled. Silence spreads.
“It means,” I say, brushing hair from my forehead, “that this is not my body. I have felt it since my first breath. And I knew it the moment I looked in the mirror. A stranger’s face. At first I thought someone stood behind me. But there was no one. Only me, or rather, her.”
I gesture helplessly at myself.
“This flesh … it is not mine.”
Katja and Sven share a glance, one that says more than words.
“It’s Sina,” Katja says quietly at last, almost as if to convince herself. “In Elin’s body.”
I bow my head. The silence presses down.
Their stares cut through me like they once did on the cart to Bergen, between heaven and death.
Then they thought me a child-murderess.
Now they think me mad.
The look is the same, only the words are different.
I lift my chin, but my shoulders remain bowed.
The pain inside me is no cry. It is a fine fissure through everything I am.
An invisible lash across the flesh of memory.
I did not scream then.
Not from the blows.
Not from the ropes around my wrists.
But because Matthes never came.
And Alina was gone.
I meet Marit’s eyes. She does not look away.
“This body …” I whisper, laying my hand against my chest, “… it is dying. Isn’t it?”
Marit squeezes my hand, nods.
“Autoimmune hepatitis. End stage. It is a miracle you are sitting here.”
“I am a miracle …”
I look out across the cobbled street, across the fields into the golden light over the rapeseed.
A miracle. Or only a reprieve.
These people here—Katja, Sven, Konrad, Henning—are good people. They want to understand.
And I know I am back not to complain, but to help.
“So long as love remains to me, and breath until the night,” I say softly, “I will help. As far as my hands will carry me. God bless me.”
They do not understand the old words, so I repeat them in plain speech.
“As long as love remains and breath until nightfall, I will help. As far as my hands will carry me. With God’s blessing.”
The scent of meat rises from the grill.
No one reaches for it.
I sigh, take the tongs, and place each piece upon their plates.
“Meat is precious,” I tell them, handing Sven the largest steak. “In my time, such a thing did not exist. So much at once … this is a gift of God Himself.”
I take the last steak, force myself to bite.
“We eat. And we speak of all that was, and all that is.”
I know time is running out.
This body is a vessel, cracked, fragile, weak.
But my soul is awake.
Perhaps the reason for my return lies within these papers.
Perhaps in the death of my daughter.
Soon this body will fail, but as long as I breathe, I will help.
For truth.
For Alina.
For what is right.
At the edge of the garden, I see him. Matthes, as before.
His hood in the wind, Alina’s hand in his.
Alive. Proud.
My heart stumbles.
I know there is no one there.
It is only memory. Yet it is stronger than the light. And then I whisper, barely audible: “Ordo Silentii.”