Memory of Water. Emmi Itaranta

the soldiers grew invisible walls between us that we had no courage to shatter.

      In the evenings I did not go to bed until I had privately checked that the soldiers hadn’t taken their screen-devices towards the fell, and in the mornings my heart was thick and heavy in my throat when I woke up to the thought that they might have expanded their search outside the house and garden. I couldn’t eat breakfast until I was certain this wasn’t the case. In my dreams I saw the waters hidden in stone, and in the middle of the night I would wake to the strangling feeling in my chest that somehow, impossibly, the sound of the spring carried all the way from the fell to the house. I listened to the unmoving silence for a long time, until sleep sank me again.

      At first I thought my mother was faking an interest in the equipment of the water seekers to keep up appearances and to cover her nervousness. As the days passed, I came to understand that behind her behaviour there was a real interest that she had a hard time concealing. She was aching to know more about the equipment, to try it for herself, to learn the mechanisms and applications. It had been over fifteen years since she had worked as a field researcher for the University of New Piterburg, and military technology was more developed than anything civilians could access. She walked with the soldiers, asking questions about their machinery, and I could see on her face how she was making mental notes on things so she could write them down in the quiet of her study. My father noticed this, too, and his manner became curt and distant towards her. Everything that was left unsaid during those days tightened around us like a web that might suffocate and crush us, if we didn’t find a way out soon enough.

      I wanted to talk to Sanja. I wished I hadn’t left her workshop so abruptly. I had sent her three messages and asked her to come over, but she hadn’t replied. I wasn’t sure what to make of this, because she didn’t tend to reply that often anyway. While my mother walked around studying the equipment of the soldiers, and my father stood by the teahouse, apparently hoping his presence would limit the damage caused by them, I carried books into my room and set up camp by them.