Chapter Three
I could smell him. Oskar. The scent was familiar as the back of my teeth or the freckle on my right index finger.
It was the same smell as it had been twelve years ago: the lanolin-y musk of the sweaters his grandmother had knit him, the spiciness of the pepperkaker, Norwegian Christmas cookies, that he ate all year because his father always bought way too many. I knew I was dreaming.
In my dream or memory, he was twelve and running around the small forest behind my grandmother’s house as I read.
He always had this boundless energy that I couldn’t help but adore.
I was calmer than he was, so he would run and jump and play and then come back and sit at my feet, his cheek pressed to my thigh, and all would be right with the world.
In the dream-memory, he had come to sit beside me again, quieter than he usually was, until he finally spoke.
“Ginne, I think we should run away,” Oskar always called me Ginne, which rhymed with Mina, because it is the shortened version of duchess, hertuginne in Norwegian.
I always asked him, ‘Why not princess if you were going to give me a royal nickname, or no nickname at all?’, and he had always given me a smug smile and said, ‘Well prinsesse wouldn’t rhyme,’ and that was that.
This time, he looked up from where he was leaning on me with a desperate look on his face.
“Why? The island is lovely, and we still have two months before I have to go back to the U.S. Running away doesn’t make sense.”
Oskar screwed up his face, like he was fighting to keep something in, before he relaxed into me with a sigh.
“They won’t let me marry you,” he said despondently.
I laughed at him.
“Of course they won’t. We’re twelve.”
He looked up at me sorrowfully, like I was missing something important.
“No, they will never allow us to get married. Ever. And I think that would kill me.”
***
Low rumbling voices woke me up, but I rested for a moment before I opened my eyes. I was used to falling asleep on buses, trains, and airplanes; I always savored the moments when sleepiness fended off the unpleasantness of the world.
I wondered, enjoying the dark behind my eyes, why I had dreamed of that scene. It had occurred at the beginning of my last summer trip to my godmother's, before everything had fallen apart. I had almost forgotten about that conversation. It had to be because of Not-Oskar, I concluded.
Not-Oskar. The capsize. Jin Woo. The island.
I sat straight up. My eyes flew open.
Firelight flickered off the worn wooden planks that made up the walls, the fire weakly but contentedly crackling away in a stone hearth of what seemed to be a single room.
A small window set high up on the wall allowed a little grey light to shine in from the outside.
The rest of the cabin was mostly bare, with only a faded plastic bucket, fire implements, and several bundles on the ground filling the space.
“Good morning.”
I almost swallowed my tongue with my hard inhale. My heart was pounding so hard on the inside of my ribs that I was worried that it would break them. I slowly turned towards the voice.
There are people who look like they are meant to be from a different era.
A woman with the little rosebud lips and big, round blue eyes of the Victorian age, or a man who you swore you’d seen on some Soviet propaganda with his wide, strong jaw.
This man looked like he had fallen out of some Renaissance painting.
His tousled hair was a mess of brown waves, and his eyes were the brightest hazel I had seen, mostly green with a bit of brown thrown in as if whoever made him had wanted to dull the effect, but the brown just highlighted the bright gleam of him.
Under his eyes, he had dark circles that were complemented by pale olive skin and cheekbones that could cut.
A few moles were scattered over his face as if they were an afterthought, and his lips were so soft-looking that it took me a second to realize that he was waiting for a reply.
“Good morning?” I said shakily.
“I know,” the beautiful man threw a hand over his forehead, “no Moka, so no coffee, no biscotti, so maybe not a good morning, but, hmm,” he rolled his shoulders, and winced, “could be much worse, I was dead yesterday.”
The pieces came together. I hadn’t seen him properly on the ferry; he’d had his hood pulled all the way up, but he had been sitting next to Jin Woo. This was the man in the ocean, this was—
“Jin Woo’s fiancé!” I exclaimed.
He smirked and sketched a little bow.
“Yes, but I also do have another name, as much as my future mother-in-law hates to use it. Ettore Da Lodi. And you, Signorina? What should I call my savior?”
Ah, Italian, I thought, when I finally placed his accent. His voice was almost musical, and he spoke as if we were sharing some delicious inside joke. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.
“M-mina, Wilhelmina Wright, nice to meet you, Ettore.” I managed to stammer out, sure that I was blushing tomato red despite the brown of my skin.
Ettore leaned forward and, in a swift, smooth motion, kissed both of my cheeks, leaving them practically steaming.
“I must say that we are past that, my dear. I believe we got quite up close and personal yesterday. Thanks for that, by the way,” he said almost jauntily.
The CPR!
“Oh goodness! How are you? You must be aching. Could I see? I hope I didn’t break your ribs?”
As I spoke, I reached forward, hooking my fingers in the gaps between the buttons on his shirt to pull it off, before I froze.
“Sorry, so sorry! I didn’t mean to overstep!” I recoiled and stared at him as he laughed.
“No worries, my little savior,” his mouth twisted up mirthfully, “you are always welcome to tear off my clothes, I know Jin Woo wouldn’t mind if it was you, here,” he grasped one of my hands in his and went to work on his buttons with the other, “see, just some bruising.”
All I could think was, good glorious fuck!
His chest was lightly muscled, lean but not bulky, a glorious pale olive expanse.
There were some bruises, they were the size of both of my hands spread, but they looked like they were already healing.
His skin was more yellow and light green than the deep purple and red of a fresh bruise.
“How-how are you fine?” This man seemed to prevent me from smoothly voicing comprehensible thoughts.
He shrugged his shirt back on, grimacing as he did up the last two buttons.
“We Da Lodi’s are tough.”
“Yeah, but I did CPR, CPR breaks ribs and stuff, are you sure you don’t need to go…”
Go where? Where were we? Had we somehow made it to civilization? I doubted it, because honestly, with the amount of trauma and cold both of us had experienced yesterday, we should be in a hospital, not in a freaking ski cabin.
“Where are we?”
Ettore winced at me.
“I hope you are asking about where specifically, and not generally, because if you don’t remember that we’re on the west coast of Norway, we have much bigger issues than my-uh, almost floral bruises.”
“No, yes, I know we are in Norway, I know that our ferry capsized, I know that we were in the water, and I did CPR, but what happened next? How did I get in here? Where is here?”
I could hear my voice creeping upwards, potential hysteria beginning to ooze in. It seemed that Ettore noticed too. In a smooth movement, he scooted closer until we were pressed together.
“Hey, hey, hey, rilassati, everything is okay or will be.” He looped an arm around me just like I had held Jin Woo yesterday.
“We are on some land, an island of some sort, the big, hairy redhead says it’s a sheep island, where a farmer would put his sheep so as not to have to worry about putting up fences or predators.
We’re in the shepherd's cabin, and the redheaded one and Jin Woo have gone to set some fires to see if they can attract any attention from rescuers.”
I winced. My analytical brain was whirring, tearing apart all hope. I gnawed on the inside of my lips for a moment.
Ettore shrugged sheepishly.
“I believe they are purposely ignoring the facts. Neither of them seems particularly good at being patient. I figured it was for the best for them to burn some of the energy off. I, on the other hand, was more than happy to rest.”
Trapped on an island for lord knows how long. Great.
That prick of obsession raised its head in me.
“A red-headed guy? The same one from the ferry?”
Ettore nodded obligingly, tucking me in further.
“Yes, do you know him? He hasn’t been especially talkative. All, ‘I’m a gruff Scandi man who thinks even a little polite small talk is worse than death,’” Ettore dipped his voice and raised his shoulders, supposedly imitating Not-Oskar.
“No, not really, he just reminds me of someone I used to know. Did he wash ashore, too?”
Ettore shrugged, loosely, indolently, like a prince or courtier of some fancy European court.
“Yes, but not where we came ashore. He scooped you up, quite frantically, and brought all three of us here. He apparently had come ashore earlier and found the cabin as he was looking for help.”
“Oh, okay. Is it just us? Are we the only survivors?”
“I don’t know about the captain and the older woman and the assistant, but we have this lump here too.” Ettore lightly kicked a person, which I only just noticed. He was camped out right in front of the fire, and every so often, a little grumble of a snore would make its way out of him.
“Apparently, he had followed the redhead to the island, whinging the entire time he swam. Honestly, you’re lucky that he’s asleep.
The rest of us woke up in the middle of the night and spoke a bit, but you slept through his whining,” he paused and looked at me with a look that was so, so sweet that I couldn’t bear it.
I stared down at the blanket. In a moment, he had my face, my chin between his pointer finger and his thumb.