Chapter Seven
It was frigid. My entire face was numb, the same type of numb you get when you drink too much, and suddenly parts of your body aren’t completely under your purview anymore (I had let loose a bit at some crazy office parties).
No light shone into the cabin; it was like the entire building was covered by a dark wool blanket, the density preventing even the hope of light.
I could have gone back to sleep, snuggled my face into the soft thing next to me, but warning sirens were going off in my head.
A deep feeling that something was wrong screamed and screamed in me.
Giving in, I sat up slowly and looked around.
The fire was dead, and I could hear the sound of multiple sets of teeth chattering together.
Ettore and Jin Woo— the soft things, I realized, were on either side of me, shivering so aggressively that they were almost jerking.
I shook Jin Woo hard, hit Ettore in the stomach, called out everyone’s names, but no one responded other than Jin Woo mumbling some words in Korean, calling out for his umma.
My breaths came hot and fast, and for a long moment, panic overwhelmed me.
I couldn’t help but wonder about what would happen if I couldn’t wake them, couldn’t warm them up.
Would I drift off to sleep and find them all dead in the morning?
I would be left alone. The rift between Oskar and me never mended, and the experiment with Ettore and Jin Woo never played out.
Me, alone, waiting to die. Alone, like I had been in Seattle, alone like I always was, and always would be until I died, most likely sooner rather than later.
I slapped my face so hard that I tasted blood, my cheek ice cold and then flaming hot, but the pain woke me up.
No, they wouldn’t die, I thought, I’d rather die. But that wasn’t going to happen because, while they were incapacitated, they were mine, mine to help, mine to be responsible over, and I was always, always responsible.
Leaping into action, I dragged all the boys into a pile in front of the dead fireplace, with Oskar in the center, as he was the coldest. His chest rose and fell, but his skin was like porcelain: cold and smooth and lifeless.
He hadn’t had the benefit of shared body heat.
As I maneuvered his not-so-inconsiderable mass, I came to the conclusion that I had probably been fine because I’d been snug between Ettore and Jin Woo.
I had stolen all of their body heat like a parasite.
I ran out into the cold to go look for fuel for the fire. I was so frantic as I searched that I almost missed the neat pile of branches and driftwood logs next to the door. One of the guys must have gathered it while I was asleep, burning calories and losing heat as he did.
After lugging as much wood as I possibly could into the cabin, I grabbed the flint striker and peeled little bits of bark and twigs off the branches.
It had been years since I had made fire from scratch. It was hard in western Norway, where the tinder was always waterlogged. Last time I tried, I had spent two hours working to get the wood alight, and I couldn’t even manage to get a small flame. This couldn’t go like that. It just couldn’t.
Using Oskar’s pocket knife, I cut a long strip of fabric from my shirt, then tore it into fluffy little pieces, and thanked god that I was wearing one of my softer cotton shirts instead of an acrylic one.
I placed the driest driftwood log in the hearth, and on top of it I put some of the only half-charred wood pieces from inside the fireplace.
On top of that, I arranged a small nest made out of the cotton.
In the nest, I dropped a couple of scraps of newspaper that had probably been brought to the island for toilet paper, and finally used Oskar’s pocket knife to shave tiny, light pieces off of a half-dry stick and placed them in the heart of the nest.
I said a little prayer to whatever god was listening, begging, pleading for them to let the fire catch, and then began striking the flint.
The first spark died.
The second fizzled out.
The tenth caught the edge of the newspaper before being snuffed when I tried to blow it to a proper flame.
It was the thirty-second spark that caught, the entire nest catching alight, then the sticks, and then the log.
“YES!” I shouted, dancing around on knees that were numb from kneeling on them for so long.
Without being judicious about how much wood I was using, I stoked the fire until it was roaring, and tending it caused my fingers to burn with the heat.
Once I was confident that the fire wouldn’t spontaneously die.
I pulled the men into a rough semi-circle around the fire.
Oskar and Bartosz were half in my lap as I roughly rubbed their limbs to warm them up.
I stripped off my pants and my shirt, pressing the four of them to me in any way that I could.
The fire would warm them, and my body heat would warm them, and they wouldn’t fucking die.
An hour or so later of furious tending of the fire and rubbing the guys’ limbs and trying to fight back panic, I figured that it might be good to have some hot water, maybe I could pour some into their mouths to warm them up from the inside.
The water was bubbling in the pan when Ettore groaned and opened his eyes.
Tears ran down my cheeks. Happy tears, relieved tears, but tears. I had been determined, but Ettore being awake hit me hard. I wouldn’t be alone. If Ettore could make it, maybe all of them would.
Ettore was lying in my lap, and he reached up and brushed the tears away from my face.
“Why are you crying, tesoro? Who has made you sad? I will fight them for you.”
I laughed through my tears.
“No one has made me sad; only, you have made me very happy. Now come drink some water and hold Jin Woo close to the fire.”
He obediently drank the hot water I offered, and then he held Jin Woo draped over him, looking like a toddler awkwardly holding their younger sibling.
Surprisingly, it was Bartosz who woke up next, looking almost angelic in his half-awake state.
After some warm water, he was up and leaning against Ettore, who was now fully awake and rubbing Jin Woo and Oskar as I tried to force warm water into their mouths without waterboarding them.
The sun was just creeping over the horizon when all four of the men were finally awake and their temperatures back to normal. Ettore gently took the pan of water out of my hands, and placed it next to the fireplace.
“Sweet, sweet salvatrice, go rest, you are shaking.”
And I was, it seemed that as the adrenaline and fear that had been coursing through my veins for the past couple of hours seeped out, so did my steadiness, and so I shook and shivered.
Ettore looked so awake, so healthy, that I let him push me down until I was gently resting my head against Bartosz’s leg and was the little spoon to Jin Woo’s big spoon.
“You’ll keep the fire going, won’t you?” I asked him, my voice plaintive as I fought against the heavy weight of my eyelids.
“Of course, piccola, rest now.”
And who was I to argue?
***
There were two Minas, at least until one of them died.
Growing up, there was American Mina, quiet, focused, driven, and then there was Norwegian Mina, loud, trilling, boisterous, and active.
In Norway, I had been free. In the U.S., I was pretty much alone, my parents barely acknowledged my existence, and the friendships I had were few and surface-level.
My father had remarried and ended up just as unhappy as he had been in his first marriage. My mother had a long-term boyfriend who hated me as much as I hated him. Both my parents had become too busy to be overly interested in their daughter.
In Norway, my godmother always asked me where I was going when I went out to play and always welcomed me back home to a warm, delicious meal.
In Norway, Oskar was mine. We would always play together, be together from sunrise to sunset.
Oskar knew what I wanted before I did and always went out of his way to make sure I was happy.
Oskar always, always got half of my lunch, 2/3rds if I thought he was looking peaky.
I would read books that I knew he would like, so I could tell their stories to him as we hiked and rambled.
To other people, he was always My Oskar, like it was a title.
My Oskar had always puffed his chest up whenever he heard me refer to him in that way.
I didn’t notice the concerned looks that we started to get from adults as we got older, adults who whispered and watched my hands on his shoulders, in his hair. I should have noticed.
***
I could feel the obsession brewing up in me the very moment I opened my eyes. It came hot, strong, causing me to salivate, to reach out for a warm body, a body that was mine, and when I grasped nothing, it forced me awake, telling me to go find what was mine and claim them.
The cabin was empty save Ettore, who, true to his word, was tending the fire.
All the scraps of blankets in the cabin were piled on me, and I was tucked right next to the hearth, a slightly warm rock under my feet.
They must have heated it in the fireplace so my toes wouldn’t get too cold without their body heat.
“Ettore, where are the others? What time is it?” I said after clearing my throat.
He smiled a beatific smile and went to come closer, his smile dimming when I flinched away. I needed my meds, and I didn’t know what I would do without them. I just needed to stay away from them all until I could get myself under control.
Ettore didn’t say anything about my flinch, just moved slowly and sat back down at the fire.
“How are you? It seems you had quite a night.”