Hanna #2
I found being free a bit overwhelming. Simply being alive took all my energy.
But Euan was patient and gentle, seeming to understand I needed to go very slowly on my path back from the places I’d been.
The summer days were long, bathing us in their healing light as I reacquainted myself with the land I loved.
Yet somehow, I felt strangely removed from it all as I watched the coastline unfurl before us.
Even the mountains failed to lift my spirits in the way they once had.
I told myself it would be better once I was back in the far north, where I’d feel at home again.
When we got to Narvik, I asked Euan to stop at the edge of the town.
I felt myself beginning to tremble, flashes of memory detonating in my head.
Suddenly I was back there: running to the beach to the terrible scene of Mamma’s death; hunching over the wireless set in the basement of our apartment building; hurrying to the church to hide the radio with the priest, knowing my time was running out; then feeling the rough hands grabbing my arm as Liv and I were arrested. Waves of memory crashed over me.
I don’t know what happened. I was lost for moments or minutes, I’m not sure how long. All I knew when I could breathe again was that Euan was holding me in his arms as I cried, shaking uncontrollably.
“Hush,” he soothed me. “It’s over, Hanna. You’re all right now.” His voice helped lead me out from the darkness that had engulfed me.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped, once I could find my voice again. “I don’t know what happened.”
“It’s a reaction to all you’ve been through,” he said. “It’ll take time for your mind to recover.”
When I was calm enough to compose myself again, he suggested we walk in the forest. The act of simply putting one foot in front of the other as we made our way along the path through the trees helped the anxiety abate, and slowly the fog of whirling thoughts and images in my brain began to clear.
Finally, we reached a point where the path began to climb steeply, and I paused to look around. A sound like a bird’s creaking call made me turn, and I saw we were standing by the Grouse Tree.
I reached out a hand to touch the trunk of the older tree where it twisted around the younger one, protecting and supporting it, allowing it to grow strong and reach the light.
The feel of the birch tree’s flaking bark reassured me, and a memory of Per’s smile floated before me.
It filled me with sadness, but happiness, too.
It was a good reminder that, although I had lost so many of the people I loved, I was lucky to have had them in my life.
Somehow, they would always be with me, through my memories.
And even if the fog swirled in from time to time, hiding them from me, it would clear eventually, and I’d see them again.
Euan stood at my side in silence, giving me time. When I took my hand from the tree, I turned and embraced him, getting the same sense of reassurance from the solidity of his body.
He smiled down at me and said, “Hanna, will you marry me? I can’t bear to let anything keep us apart again.”
I dropped my gaze, feeling ashamed of my wasted body and my fragile, damaged mind. “I’m not the woman I used to be, Euan. I don’t think I know how to be her anymore.”
“This brutal war has changed so many of us, and what you’ve been through is unimaginable.
But I still know exactly who you are, Hanna.
I love the woman you used to be, the woman you are now, and the woman you will be in the future.
I want to share that future with you.” He nodded toward the two trees, their trunks entwined.
“I want us to be like that. Helping each other grow toward the light again.”
The Grouse Tree spoke once more as the wind soughed through the forest, as if giving us its blessing.
The promise of a future was something I’d stopped contemplating so long ago. But standing there in his arms, it suddenly seemed possible again. His love was the light that shone through my darkness, showing me the way home. And so I said yes.
*
From Narvik, Euan and I took a boat to the fishing hut.
I’d thought it would do me good to spend some time there again, and as we walked up from the jetty, everything looked just as it had when I left the place what felt like a lifetime ago.
But as I stepped through the door, the memories crashed over me again, like an ocean wave, swamping my mind, their powerful undertow sucking me down into the place of darkness once more.
When I was able to claw my way back from where it had taken me, Euan was holding me tightly in his arms, rocking and soothing me as I sobbed and shook uncontrollably.
“I can’t…” I gasped. My mind was screaming, I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t survive.
“It’s all right, Hanna. Come back to me. You’re safe now.”
I couldn’t stay there after all. The memories of summers spent in the hut with Mamma and Pappa and Liv would always be tainted by the presence of Captain Stolz, the image of Liv’s terrified face, the sound of the gunshot as I pulled the trigger…
“Can we go back to Shetland, please?” I asked.
I now knew my home and my country had been taken from me for good.
The only way I could have a future that wasn’t poisoned by the past was to make a new home somewhere else.
Through the fog, across the sea, Shetland was calling me back.
To a place that was familiar enough—where every summer the storm petrels would return, and the sky would be light at midnight—but the demons wouldn’t follow me.
I thought I would choose which memories I’d bring with me, and which I’d leave behind.
It was never going to be that easy, of course, but the idea helped me to take the first steps on my long, slow path to recovery.
Like a storm petrel, I would become adept at avoidance, sometimes taking the long way round to steer clear of threats.
The only thing I took from the hut was the leather-bound book of sagas.
Before we left, I opened it at the page where I’d hidden the sketch I’d taken from Captain Stolz’s pocket.
I read the words again. An axe age, a sword age, when shields are broken…
Ragnarok had shaken the tree of our lives to the very roots, but somehow we had survived.
I carefully replaced the picture Per had drawn of me and closed the book, hugging it to me as I followed Euan to the jetty and left my secret kingdom for the final time, turning my face toward the sun as it led us across the sea to Shetland.