Chapter 1

One

There’s only wind. Then nothing. Not even me. Only the Chinook winds slashing across the jagged ridges like the howling of a pack of wolves.

For a moment, I look around confused. Disoriented, like I’ve lost all my memories, I’m standing in the middle of frozen-over Quiet Lake.

That’s been happening quite often lately. I keep forgetting what I was going to do, sometimes even losing my train of thought. Maybe I’ve been alone for too long, too in tune with the wild so that all my thoughts fade. Images of the steel-blue sky, conifers, cold, and the wind are all that’s left.

My gaze wanders over the edge of the snow-covered spruce trees along the shore. Gusts bend their tops and handfuls of snow trickle from their branches and atomize into millions of crystals in the air. Still, this pure white beauty leaves me untouched.

For a moment, I tread in place. The snow-covered ice crunches under my feet as if it might crack open at any second. What would it be like, breaking through the ice at six degrees? How long before I’d freeze to death? Or would I drown?

Was that what was going through my mind before I drew a blank? I open and close my cold fingers in my lined gloves before I pull my wool hat lower over my face.

Less than thirty feet from me is the hole I had hacked in the ice so I can easily scoop water in wintertime. Next to it are two buckets with my ax in between.

Suddenly, my thoughts become clearer again and I remember all the things I meant to do today. I must make a list of supplies since I opened the last can of carrots yesterday. I also wanted to crank up the chainsaw and cut up the felled spruce tree behind the cabin into logs so I’d have enough firewood in case I get sick. I also planned to fix the leaky roof and just now I was about to break open the hole in Quiet Lake again so I can get to the water, since closer to shore the lake is frozen solid to the bottom.

I glance over my shoulder at the log cabin above the low embankment. My tasks seem insurmountable, akin to ascending Mount McKinley. Doing things for tomorrow, even thinking about tomorrow, crushes me. Tomorrow will be like today. Empty and lonely. There is no escaping my life. Never has been.

Colder than the sub-zero temperatures, a darker shudder grips me, whispers of mute horror and never-forgotten fear. Sometimes, I think things get particularly bad in winter. Not only the shadowy sense of dread but also the loneliness. When the cold silently covers the land like a cloak of ice, I think of Christmas and New Year’s Eve, of happily reunited families in festive living rooms, turkey with chestnuts, sweet potato casserole, and about all the moms and dads who shower their kids with mountains of gifts as if there’s no tomorrow.

I keep walking away from the cabin, away from the hole in the ice, further out onto the lake. Last week’s harsh temperature fluctuations caused the ice in the back to break. The sheets are close together and look like a white mosaic.

Maybe it would be best if the ice beneath me broke. Nature would swallow me. Nobody would miss me and I wouldn’t miss anything. And I wouldn’t have to think about Jordan, the monster, or happy families.

I’ve been here since November, in the middle of the great solitude of the Yukon. I haven’t seen a soul, not even during the summer. When was the last time I saw a human? Eight months ago? Nine?

The ice beneath my black boots creaks like a row of decaying floorboards. It’s still firm, apart from the southern part of the lake where water oozes over the mosaic sheets like lymph from a wound. Shivering, I wrap my arms around myself and run.

The hard resistance under my feet gives way to the feeling of swaying wooden boards. It occurs to me that I now have a good reason to stop. Unlike before. Then again, the danger is like an undertow and my inner self seems to be one with nature. The rift in my soul is as great as the fracture between ice and water.

Images well up inside of me. Images of the gray lake that draw me into their depths as if they had a will of their own.

So dark… I can’t hear anything anymore. Can’t see anything… Breathe, breathe. Mom, it’s so dark…

I don’t know where this childish voice came from, but it haunts me like an echo. When I give in to this voice, I slip into the abyss, into the unknown, which robs me of all memories every time without ever truly letting me forget.

I jump from one ice floe to the next, the gullies in between are wider than they first looked. The snow covering the frozen lake is being carried away by the water here and I can catch a glance at the bubbles in the ice below the gray-green water. I close my eyes.

So dark… Mom…where are you?

A soft cracking sound pulls me back to the present. I stop dead in my tracks and peer down at my feet. There is a fine crack in the transparent ice floe between my boots. I wait for it to rupture with fascination and horror. My breath paints itself as a white cloud in the air. Nothing happens except for the floe drifting away from the others like a raft. I would now have to jump far to find my footing again.

Should I stay put?Everything goes away then. The emptiness, the darkness. The loneliness.

The ground beneath me begins to sway from right to left and back. I instinctively stretch my arms out to the side for balance, but I’m too heavy and my weight pushes the plate down. Ice water floods my boots, but it doesn’t matter. My boots disappear under the opaque surface of the water. A few bubbles rise to the top. I’m not doing anything, just looking down. The gray water stares back like a dead man’s eye. So dark…so deep beneath the earth…

Suddenly, there is only panic. Without thinking, I prepare to jump onto the neighboring ice floe, praying the thin ice will withstand the force of the jump. Then it cracks again. The ice breaks.

Something heavy is pulling me down. It’s so cold I can’t breathe. My arms flail in the air. Everything happens way too fast. Reflexively, I thrust my torso forward, toward the saving slab of ice while pressing my foot against a portion of the sinking floe. I catch the edge of the thick neighboring slab, grab hold of it, and hoist myself onto my forearms. My legs burn from the cold, but I manage to lift one knee onto the firm layer of ice. Panting, I push myself forward, inch by inch until I’m lying flat on the ice. Exhausted, I roll onto my back. The blue sky turns red and seems to come toward me like a scarf flapping in the wind.

I can’t feel anything anymore, only my racing heart pounding in my ears.

For a few seconds, I don’t dare move. I fixate on the unsettling groans of the ice, waiting for the inevitable rupture beneath me, but there is no other sound to break the silence except for the Chinook.

Eventually, I slowly raise my head and examine the sheet I saved myself on. It is thick and strong. I’m not going to drown, nor freeze to death, if I get up now and start moving.

After a few deep breaths, I carefully heave myself to my feet. My clothes are soaked through and already freezing in the air, and I’m not just shivering from the cold. I’m dizzy from what I had just attempted. With trembling hands, I shade my eyes and gaze out across the white landscape toward the mountains, the crests of which stand out distinctly against the blue sky.

Nothing has changed. The air is fresh and pure like nowhere else in the world, yet I don’t care. I feel nothing.

I shake my head as if to banish the gloomy thoughts and walk back.

During the next few minutes, I hack open the water hole, mechanically fill the buckets with water, and carry them toward the cabin. My lungs ache as I breathe, my clothes are frozen stiff, reminding me with every step how close I am to losing my mind.

How could I have ventured so far out onto the lake?

Something must happen, I just don’t know what. Only one thing is clear to me: If I don’t get a hold of myself, I won’t survive the winter.

Inside the cabin, I set the filled water buckets on the plywood floor and stand in the low room. The sun is low over the mountain range and colors the peaks in glowing reds. I glance at the clock. Four p.m. How much time have I actually spent out there on the lake?

I can’t start the chainsaw at dusk, let alone climb onto the roof to patch the leak with new slats but I could check my supplies. Still undecided, I look at the door that leads to the annex and sink to the floor. It’s cold and damp and a glance at the thermometer shows me a room temperature of fifty-three degrees. I should throw some logs in the wood-burning stove, but I can’t even bring myself to do that. Taking off my shoes and frozen pants wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. Or the hat and gloves.

Still, I just sit there with my back against the logs and stare out the glass front. The sun sinks lower and lower and the sky turns into a gray sea with wisps of orange and pink clouds.

Maybe it would have been better if I had never discovered this cabin. The people who leased the property before me and built the cabin must have been a couple. Everything comes in pairs of two. The only room on the lower floor has two handmade wooden chairs and a simple table. The patchwork sofa with two sagging seats is placed behind a trunk with a smoothly sanded surface that serves as a coffee table. When I first found the cabin, there were even two plates on it. The rung ladder next to the couch leads to a bunk lined with two animal pelts. It’s so big that I feel lost in it, so I crash on the couch.

Tired, I put my head in my hands, smell my wet gloves, and think of the work I didn’t get done. Life would definitely be more comfortable in a residential area. And easier. I’ve spent the last two winters in Faro, a town with no more than five hundred inhabitants. After the summer months in the RV, being close to others almost felt like relief. I only had to go to the supermarket to reassure myself that I wasn’t the only person in the world. But even that didn’t go down well.

I push the budding memory away. I don’t want to think about my flashbacks.

With difficulty, I heave myself up and force my body to be active. I mentally tell myself what to do, like I’ve done on so many nights. First, I change my clothes and hang the wet items on a hook at the entrance. Then, I heat the water in the kettle, make tea from peppermint leaves and throw a few spruce logs on the paltry fire.

After the sun has set, I light the three oil lamps that hang from the ceiling like hanging baskets. For a moment, I consider drawing but can’t find energy left even for this.

Everything seems pointless. During the first few weeks, I got the cabin in shape, which I was able to do even in the twilight, but that work is now finished.

Far too early in the evening, I go to the pantry to choose my dinner. I really should make a new inventory list or I might end up eating elk goulash and rice for a month. Right now, I can’t even bring myself to care about that.

I grab a can of venison goulash and a can of peas at random and heat both up on the gas stove. I eat but hardly taste anything. I keep looking outside. By now, millions and millions of stars blanket the sky—they glitter and twinkle like winner-confetti made of gold and silver. I’ve never seen as many stars in Los Angeles as in the Yukon. I think Canada’s sky would make any girl’s heart beat faster.

Girls’ hearts…the words sound strange. Kind of foreign, maybe even extraterrestrial. Girls’ hearts. It sounds so absurd I shake my head at myself. I’ve truly been alone for too long to think about stuff like that.

While doing the dishes, I catch myself thinking about that expression over and over again. Perhaps I’m truly going insane now.

A solid three hours of staring outside go by before I finally give in to my urge and grab the old laptop from out of the top kitchen cupboard.

Maybe I should just check out some girls. Maybe this will help me feel better. Last winter in Faro, I did that to distract myself from my miserable life, even if it didn’t change anything. Maybe some pretty girls will cheer me up a little tonight.

With that thought in mind, I carry the generator outside and pull the starter cord. Luckily, it doesn’t give me a hard time and starts revving right away. The intense smell of gasoline in the night air is disgusting. Covering my nose with my forearm, I roll out the extension cord back to the cabin and squeeze it through the gap in the door. What else needs to be recharged besides the satellite modem and laptop? I think of the battery charger—my flashlight hasn’t worked in two days, and the battery-powered ceiling light needs to be tested.

Annoyed that I didn’t bring along a multi-outlet, I recharge the devices and batteries one after the other. Afterward, I go outside, switch off the generator, and let it cool down before I store it back in the pantry.

I sit on the floor between the couch and the window, the only spot with a rusty red carpet. Although I have the laptop on my lap, the cold doesn’t seem to do its inner workings any good. After the fifth boot crash, I’m tempted to slam the wretched thing against the logs. I resist the urge only because I’m thinking hard about the words girls’ hearts.

It takes another hour before I’m sitting in front of the white screen with its colorful logo: Google.

I feel like an intruder who is trying to get a forbidden glimpse into a strange world. Funny, so far nothing has drawn me back to other people or their world.

For a few seconds, I consider typing girls’ hearts, but then I type blondes. I don’t know why, but I prefer blonde hair to brunette hair. Maybe because the blonde appears so innocent, pure. Everything I’m not. I click on Google Images and a bunch of photos of good-looking women line up.

Wow—none of them look innocent. Half-open lids, lashes a mile long, the bedroom look. Red lacy bras that reveal more than they cover.

“It seems I have unlimited choices,” I whisper to myself. The harsh sound of my voice startles me. When was the last time I spoke, really spoke, not simply in my head? Maybe that’s why I feel so shitty because I haven’t even heard a real voice.

Again, I look at the blonde women in their skimpy lingerie. Did I accidentally type the word sex? Blondes and sex?

I stare at the photos, strangely unimpressed. Nothing stirs. What is wrong with me? I no longer even feel anything when I look at hot women? Maybe they’re simply not my type. I open a new page. The same flood of cheap Barbie copies smile at me, showing me their breasts.

I feel overwhelmed. They remind me of too many Sandys, Mandys, and Candys from back in the day. Groupies who always spoiled the winners after the underground fights. No request was too crazy—the main thing was that they were part of the show and received some of the fame. Even then I didn’t know what to talk to them about afterward. You have met my needs and I may have met yours. No idea. A kind of sex to go.

How long has it been now? Two and a half years? Longer? In the middle of the pristine wilderness, the life I’ve led in the slums seems like a surreal dream. Looking back, I don’t even know if it was a good one or a bad one.

I sit back and reach for my cigarettes. As I light one up, I finally register what all these women on the screen are lacking: the truth. They look like mindless dolls. They have no authenticity. They are imitations of something of which they do not even know how it feels.

But how does life feel?

I inhale the smoke. The nicotine clears my brain. I end up typing girls’ hearts, feeling dirtier than if I had put my hands on the voluptuous blondes.

I click on images.

A couple of wacky manga characters stare at me with bulging eyes. Next to them, a group of pubescent teens grins at the camera. On the far left is a picture of the pale, young, vampire movie star. I can’t remember his name anymore. I keep clicking more and, at some point, I come across a brown-haired girl—the first one who doesn’t immediately put me off because she appears so harmless. Preppy ponytail, round face, blue polo shirt. I log on to Facebook and check out her profile. Emma Miller, age sixteen. God, so young. I’ll be twenty-two in January. But who cares?

Out of curiosity, I study the information she gave about herself. She likes to read, preferably vampire novels. Her preference makes me snort and wince. That young vampire star probably makes her little girl’s heart beat faster. I don’t know why this suddenly makes me so angry.

I stub out the cigarette, still staring at the screen.

All of a sudden, my head is empty. All thoughts are blown away but this time it doesn’t feel unhealthy, rather serene. A bit like floating. After a while, I realize that my eyes are fixed on Emma Miller’s Facebook header. Not on Emma, though, but on the girl next to her. She has a small oval face, a soft chin, and a sweet mouth. Everything about her is kind of cute, but the most striking feature is her huge, deep blue eyes. Never in my life have I seen such innocent eyes. Bright as the Alaskan sky.

The edges of my field of vision start to blur. Like tunnel vision, I stare at the screen and only see her.

Her blonde hair reaches all the way to her elbows and shines like a shawl of perfectly smooth silk. She holds Emma in her arms.

There is something about her that I can’t quite grasp but something about her touches me. I can’t say what it is or why it’s having such an effect on me. Maybe because she looks like she has nothing to hide from the world. A real sunshine.

A hot, cold shiver crawls down my spine. Brought on by fear or joy? Why should I be afraid? Since when do I even feel such emotions?

I close my eyes for a moment, this girl must be a fantasy. She cannot be real because the emotion I’m experiencing cannot be real.

I blink and she looks at me. My mouth feels bone dry.

“Who are you?” I hear myself whisper, and this time, I’m not startled.

Gradually, I memorize all the details of the photo. The two friends are standing in a dried-up meadow with a simple wooden house on pillars surrounded by endless desert sagebrush in the background. The girl with the blue eyes is wearing an apricot-colored blouse that somewhat clashes with her apple-red cheeks. She’s got to be fifteen at most. I try to swallow with my throat still dry and click through Emma’s friend list. It’s short, so I find the girl quickly:

Louisa Scriver.

Click.

The header is the same as Emma’s. I stare at her profile picture. Again, her blue eyes are looking at me, though this time her raspberry lips are tightly closed.

She challenges me, I just don’t know how or why. I wipe my face with damp hands. There’s that strange feeling again that I can’t name. Hot and cold. My stomach tightens.

From one second to the next, I feel sick. The air seems too thin to breathe. I have to get out of here. Immediately! Somehow, I manage to put the laptop down next to me and get to my feet but it’s already too late. The logs flicker. Black and white stripes rush by like a scrambled TV program. Everything inside me tightens. I fall, feeling a dull ache in my kneecaps.

No, not now…please, not now… I blink to try and get my bearings, but I’m blind. I feel on the floor with my hands until I eventually encounter resistance. A wall, a lid. Everything collapses onto me. I’m trapped

Panicking, my heart races.

One, two, three, four… I’m not really here anymore. It is so dark…

My ears are buzzing, and somewhere near me, I can hear an agonized whistling like someone squeezing bellows in rapid succession.

Calm down now, breathe! One, two…

But I can no longer breathe. The ground beneath me opens up like a trapdoor and I fall deeper and deeper into a hole with no light and no end. Everything shatters. The environment, time, myself.

The boy knows the basement corridor, every bump on the cold concrete, every stain on the gray walls. Another twenty steps to the door.

“Did I tell you to stop?”

The blow hits him on the back so unprepared that he staggers to the side, scraping his bare shoulder along the rough wall. His skin is torn open, but he hardly feels it.

“No, sir.” With an unbearable degree of effort, he forces one foot in front of the other while keeping his eyes fixed on the lightbulb at the end of the corridor. The smell of mold and mildew burns his lungs.

He knows what to expect. He’s been through it so many times, and yet, his anxiety still grows each time.

Inconspicuously, he rubs his sweaty hands on his torn pants, feels the crusts of dirt on the thinned fabric: fermented milk from last week, a dried varnish stain from the week before last, wood oil. How long has he been wearing these pants for? He’s trying to remember, trying to think of something other than what’s behind the door. He doesn’t want to reach the end of the hallway. Ever.

Again, the fist hits him in the back to propel him forward.

“I’ll teach you what it means to defy me!”

The triangular bump on the concrete floor. Ten more steps.

“Yes, sir.” His voice is shaking and he hates himself for it. He doesn’t even know what he had done wrong.

He stops in front of the wooden door because the man wants it that way. The man, the monster. The boy feels his damp breath on the back of his neck, he can even smell the whiskey in it—the cheap brand from Walmart. Nausea rises in his throat.

“Look, little shit, what I’ve got for you!” Reaching over his shoulder, the door is opened.

A moment later, the boy has forgotten all about the stinking breath. He looks silently at the coffin in the middle of the sparsely lit room. The black wooden box stands on a pedestal, perfectly staged to fuel the horror in him. Today, however, it’s not only the coffin that makes him shudder but also the hole dug up in the floor next to it.

“Handy, isn’t it?” The monster’s hand grabs his neck and drags him like a rag doll toward the pit.

He doesn’t want to look, but he does it anyway. The hole in the ground is deep and dark and just big enough for the box.

“Convenient, right?” the man behind him yells, and the pressure on the boy’s neck is so great that he gets dizzy.

“Yes, sir.” A whisper is all he can utter.

The man releases him abruptly but stays close behind him.

The boy looks up. He spots ropes hanging from the ceiling and a winch. Plastic bags are stacked in the corner with the words “potting soil” written on the sides. Bursting burlap sacks are lined up next to each other, a few brown crumbs lying in front of them. All his muscles spasm at the same time as his bladder tries to give way.

Since when has he been storing dirt down here? And when did he dig the pit?

Suddenly, it seems to the boy that there is nothing left in the world but him, this coffin, and the dark hole in the ground. Everything within him grows numb. He hardly notices how he is grabbed again and pushed in front of the coffin. He doesn’t know what’s happening, this can’t be life.

“Open the lid, you piece of shit. Go ahead! Every second you hesitate, I’ll make you stay longer, I promise you.”

The words are not a threat. The man stands close behind him; his fat belly pushes the boy forward. With trembling hands, he opens the six metal clasps on the side with thick hinges that make it impossible to pry the lid open from the inside.

“Your mother did this quicker than you.”

The words are like electric shocks to the heart. With all his strength, the boy pushes open the wooden lid. His eyes are glued to the ornate embellishments on the front. Rose tendrils on ebony. Just don’t look inside.

“That’s enough.”

The coffin is only half open, but it’s enough to climb inside. The smell of cold sweat, urine, and feces wafts toward him.

“If I hear even just a peep from you, I’m going to push the coffin into the pit and dump dirt on it. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you’ll die like your miserable mutt.”

He clamps his hand over his mouth and tries not to think about Blacky’s whimpering when the monster tied his paws together and crammed him into the tiny box. He must not cry. Absolutely not!

The fist hits him again. “Do you want me to give you a beating first?”

“No, sir.” He tries desperately to think of something nice. Of his Little Miss Sunshine, of the blonde girl. There was something bright and happy about her that made his heart light. But Little Miss Sunshine is so infinitely far away. He doesn’t even know where he saw her. Knees trembling, he climbs into the coffin and lies outstretched, arms pressed to his sides. His big toes touch the wood. He must have grown in the last three weeks. The skin where his sock is ripped immediately gets cold.

“Look at me!”

The boy obeys.

The iron face above him is serious. The man doesn’t grin. That scares him. Even more than usual.

“I swear to God, I’ll teach you obedience, you little bastard.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” he hears himself whimper. Momentarily, he really does.

Now the monster is grinning. “You’re a pathetic weakling. Your father must have been a total loser!”

The boy clenches his hands. He would like to beat the man, but that would only prolong his punishment.

As the man lowers the lid, he narrows his eyes because he doesn’t want to see it getting dark. All he hears is the rubbing of the wood…the clicking of the metal clasps. Click-click-click. Three. Click-click-click. Six.

Then, all is quiet. So quiet. The only thing he hears is his breathing. His chest tightens as if he is crying, but he remains silent and his eyes dry. He blinks. There’s nothing but darkness and a putrid stench. He has to think of Blacky. Of his soft fur, his damp muzzle, his warm body. The only warmth he remembers. Blacky made it, he’s done with it—all the torment the man put him through for his sake. As if from a great distance, he hears him howling. He swallows. Blinks. If he cries, the man will kill him. Are his eyes wet?

He tries to think about nothing, but it’s pointless. His fear rears up like a spooked horse. How long is he going to stay locked up in here this time? A day? Three? One week? Will he be let out in between?

He can hear his hectic breathing, but eventually, his senses switch off. He no longer smells anything, no longer hears anything. Only darkness remains.

It is so vast that there is nothing left of him.

Why did you go away, Mom? Do you hear me? Why did you leave me?

The darkness is everywhere. Also within him.

Maybe that’s why his mom ran away. He’s a bad person. A bastard. A child whose father didn’t want him. Whose mother didn’t want him. The blackness is growing thicker. He can’t breathe anymore. He shouldn’t be breathing anymore. He cannot be loved. Who could ever love him if his mom and dad couldn’t? He is nothing. Ashes and dust.

The boy chokes back his tears. It takes all his strength, whatever little strength he has left. Suddenly, there is red fog everywhere, behind his closed eyes, in his head, in his ears and in his fists. Everything is red like blood. Something is happening to him, but he can’t say what.

“Step aside,” says a strange voice in the red haze, pushing him away. At that moment, everything around him explodes. The darkness, the coffin, his consciousness…

It’s like waking up without having slept. The high-pitched whistle I heard earlier fades. After a while, I recognize it as my breath. For a couple of seconds, I just sit there and try to capture some of the images, but it’s the same after each flashback. The memories fade before I can look at them. As if they weren’t part of me, but part of someone who’s gone now. Only vaguely I remember the boy as if I’d seen him in a movie—but I don’t recall a single emotion. There’s a wall separating us.

Dazed, I wipe my eyes and glance around. I lean against the wall, legs bent. A broken oil lamp lies at my feet. The kerosene has settled in puddles around the shards and next to it I find books scattered across the floor. It looks like a lunatic had pulled them off the shelf and stomped on them.

Before me lies the reason for my self-chosen loneliness. I destroy everything and, afterward, remember nothing. There seems to be an evil inside of me that I can’t grasp.

Move aside…

I heard it, didn’t I? Frantically, I search for more images, thinking hard about the boy, but he is deaf, blind, and mute. I can’t connect with him.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

I bang the back of my head against the wall to use the pain to distract myself from the fear of going insane. The fact that I had another flashback hits me harder than a slap on the neck. I thought that by living in the wild, I would finally get rid of these attacks. No triggers. No flashes. Damn! I haul myself upright, relieved that nothing but my head hurts.

Inspecting the cabin, I assess the severity of my blackout. The door to the pantry is still intact—I didn’t kick it in. Good! The front door is also fine. Even better! A few pots lie on the floor in front of the tiny countertop. The blue and green plate I ate canned venison off of today broke. At least I can see colors again. The attack is over and there is no longer any danger that I could lose it again at any moment.

I wipe my forehead with a groan. It is soaked with sweat and swollen in the middle.

Why did it hit me again? And why the hell do I never remember what happened?

I glance around a second time, helpless. I have to clean up the kerosene. Hastily, I throw a kitchen towel on it, my eyes falling on the laptop. The screensaver’s bubbles float over the image of the blonde girl who captivated me so earlier.

She still looks at me with her huge blue eyes as if she wants to whisper a secret into my ears.

Little Miss Sunshine. Louisa Scriver.

Sunshine. Sun girl. Alaskan sky.

Did she trigger the flash? And if so, why?

As if in a trance, I approach the computer, overjoyed that I didn’t demolish it in my madness. Fuck the oil lamp! I kneel in front of the laptop and pull it closer to me. With a click on the enter key, the dancing soap bubbles disappear.

There’s that hot and cold chill inside me again and I still don’t know why or what it means.

“Louisa,” I say softly. A lovely name for my pretty Little Miss Sunshine. Everything about her is sweet and light.

Something changes inside me but I don’t know what it is. It’s definitely not another attack because it feels too good for that. Warm and new. Suddenly, I smell the smoke from the stove and the chemical petroleum intensely. The spicy smell of deer meat hangs in between… A few feet away, the burning wood crackles and pops and the Chinook howls over the wooden slats on the roof.

With a strange feeling in my stomach, I look around. The glass of the oil lamp reflects the light of the other lamps. A bright flash fills the room again and again. It looks mysterious, like a magical sign from another world. Why have I never noticed this before?

I get up and take a few steps toward the oil lamp hanging from the ceiling in front of the window. At the same time, my gaze falls outside. A silver, oversized moon bathes the frozen lake and snow-covered trees in crystal clear light. In the middle, almost next to the water hole, I discover a pack of wolves. I can see at least fifteen of them with black and gray fur.

My heart beats faster. I would love to go outside for a walk across the lake with them. Run. Just run. A few of them stay on the ice while the others move on. Movement on the east bank distracts me from the wolves.

Along the bare aspen, where the embankment is steeper, a beaver darts into its escape tunnel. Another follows. A few partridges flutter up and disappear again into a leafless clump of brush. Two wolves change course.

Nature suddenly appears full of life as if it had awakened early from hibernation.

I look once more at the radiant blonde girl on my laptop, and my stomach clenches with a wondrous feeling.

Maybe it’s not nature coming to life, maybe I finally realized that I’m not dead yet!

Without thinking, without wasting a thought about the danger of the wolf pack, I put on my jacket and shoes and go outside.

And then I’m really running. Just like that in the dark.