Chapter 5

The changes to her body were so gradual that she barely noticed them.

First came the painkillers.

During her second week in Urvik, she realized that she hadn’t opened the bottle in several days.

It wasn't that she was enduring the pain. Rather, she didn’t feel any pain when she woke up. The bone in her back had stopped screaming. The cotton in her lungs seemed to be being pulled out bit by bit.

Then came running.

She progressed from running one kilometer to running two, and from taking two breaks to running nonstop. She went from huffing and puffing her way along to actually running. The rhythm of her feet hitting the ground was steady, and her breathing was deep. After running, she didn’t cough.

Then came her appetite.

Back in the south, she ate because it was mealtime, because she had to, and because the doctor said she needed to maintain her weight—the taste didn't matter.

But here, she began to look forward to brunost for breakfast, dark bread for lunch, and fish soup for dinner. The fish was caught in the fjord and had firm flesh. The soup was made with cream and some kind of herb. When she drank it, her whole stomach felt warm.

She gained weight. Not much, but her collarbone no longer caved in like two frightening bowls.

She dared not think too much about it. She was afraid that if she dwelled on it, her good fortune would disappear.

One evening, she and Erik sat on a rocky outcropping by the fjord. Their feet dangled above the deep green water. The setting sun bathed the snow-capped mountains across the water in pink, and the glaciers on the peaks reflected a golden glow.

"Do you think people can get better?" she asked.

He looked at the water. “What do you mean?”

"I mean, when someone's been sick for a long time and their body has changed. Can it come back?”

He didn’t answer right away. A breeze blew in from across the fjord, ruffling the strands of hair at her temples and sweeping them across her face. She didn’t brush them away.

“Yes,” he finally said.

“How do you know?”

He turned to look at her. The setting sun shone in his eyes, turning the color of the glacier amber.

“Because I’ve seen it.”

She waited for him to continue, but he didn't.

She dangled her feet in the air, the tips of her shoes nearly touching the water. “What have you seen?”

“A tree struck by lightning and split in half. It sprouted again the following year.”

“Trees aren’t like people.”

"They aren't," he said. “A tree doesn’t ask itself if it can get better. It just lives. It just keeps living, and that’s enough.”

She looked at the snow-capped mountains across the river. The sunlight was retreating from the peaks—pink turning to purple, purple turning to gray.

"Since I've been here, I feel like my body has been getting better," she said slowly. “Not cured. It just doesn't hurt anymore. I can run. I can eat. I can sleep.”

She pulled her gaze away from the snow-capped mountains and looked at his face.

"I don't know why."

His expression didn’t change. His glacier-blue eyes looked at her calmly. But she noticed that the fingers on his knee had tightened slightly.

"Maybe it's the mountain air," he said.

"Maybe."

She turned her head back to the fjord. The evening breeze rippled the water’s surface, shattering the reflection of the snow-capped mountains across the bay into countless fragments that shimmered and shifted but never quite reassembled into their original form.

She didn’t press him for an answer.

But the seed had already been planted in her heart.

Life went on.

One day, they ventured deeper into the mountains to a place he called “the reindeer pasture.”

There were no reindeer, only vast stretches of tundra with low-growing willows hugging the ground. Their leaves were beginning to turn red at the edge of autumn.

A kind of orange-red berry grew on the ground. He called it a cloudberry. She picked one and put it in her mouth. It was sour at first, then sweet, followed by an indescribable fragrance like honey, sunlight, and moss all mixed together.

"This is good," she said.

"People up north call it 'the gold of the marsh.'"

"Why the marsh?"

"Because it grows in the marsh. You’re standing in one right now.”

She looked down. She couldn’t tell the difference from an ordinary meadow.

“Don’t worry. It’s not deep,” he said. "Ankle-deep at most."

No sooner had he spoken than her left foot sank in.

Cold water poured into her shoe. She yelped and tried to pull her foot out, but her right foot sank in, too. Eric reached out and pulled her out with such force that she slammed into his chest. He took a step back but didn’t let go. Neither did she.

Her shoes and socks were soaked through. The water in the marsh was bone-chillingly cold. His hand was on her arm, though, and the warmth from it spread down her shoulder, chest, and stomach to the soles of her feet.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

"Yes."

He let go.

She took a step. Her soaked shoes squelched against the moss. She took a second step, then a third. Her feet were cold. But his warmth still lingered on her.

She stopped suddenly and turned around. He was standing a few paces away, watching her.

"Erik."

"Mm."

"Why do you keep bringing me to these places?"

The wind swept across the tundra, rustling the leaves of the dwarf willows. Cloudberries glowed orange-red at her feet. In the distance, snow-capped mountains stood in a row, gazing silently at them.

“Because you asked.”

“What did I ask?”

"You said the doctor said there was no need for further treatment." He paused. "I said we should at least look at the good parts first. You agreed.”

“So you’ve been bringing me here all this time.”

“We haven’t seen it all yet.”

She stood there, her feet numb from the cold water, her heart beating steadily in her chest. The sky stretched out overhead, a vivid blue that seemed almost unreal. That’s how the northern sky is—so blue that you feel as though you could see right through the atmosphere and into the universe beyond.

“What if we never finish looking?” she said.

He didn’t answer, but she saw his eyes change. Deep within their glacial depths, something stirred.

Later, when Maya recalled this moment, she reflected that one must never dwell on "what if," because no one knows whether tomorrow or an unexpected event will come first.