Page 120 of What Blooms in Barren Lands

I chatted with the girls for a while, until they released me from their friendly clutches at last, and I was free to return to my gardening. Carving out little holes in soft earth, I planted squash, pumpkins, radishes, and turnips. My elbows were covered in dirt, and my nostrils full of the lovely, sharp tang of freshly dug soil. The sun was high up in the sky by the time I straightened up and felt my back pop, reassuming its preferred position. However, there was nothing for it but to ignore the protests of my spine as I was by no means done.

Next up was my share of work on the large plot of communal garden that we had set up by the building where Lucas had died, replacing the large patches of useless lawn.

We each had a plot that we were to take care of. Whatever we managed to grow there served not for our own private meals but as a contribution to dinners, the only meal we still ate together as a community in the dining hall of the red-shuttered, erstwhile hotel.

Coming from a small, conflict-fraught family, I used to love the companionable feeling of these shared meals. But I had recently started feeling like an outsider in the colony I hadhelped build. Not because of the apparent distinction between myself and most of the other young women. That no longer brought me the same kind of anguished grief it used to back when I suffered a similar fate in my suburban home in Prague. What I felt now was a serenely peaceful variety of sadness. Almost an acceptance. Almost. But not quite.

I felt like I no longer belonged because I knew what most of the others didn’t: that Einar and I would likely depart soon, leaving them to Santini, knowing their best interests were not remotely on his mind. I could not help but think of that as a betrayal, even if Einar refused to see it that way.

I reached the desolate four-story ruin with its cracked pink facade, gaping window frames, and the double stone outside perron that was all that remained of the building’s bygone grandeur. It was busy at its front, with most of Vizzavona’s residents having decided to benefit from what was likely one of the last truly warm days of the year.

Anna, one of my first and finest trainees, toiled on a plot close to mine. Her formerly short hazelnut hair was growing out. I waved to her, and she waved back while handing a shovel to her boyfriend.

Monika was there too, her second pregnancy clearly visible as she knelt by her cabbage patch. Ella tottered around her with a trowel. Monika wore a sweater despite the heatwave, no doubt to hide fresh bruises on her arms. Her new beau was one of Santini’s soldiers. I may have gotten over her fraternising with an enemy whose sole purpose in Vizzavona was to spy on Einar, but it was her ceaseless justification of his abuse that finally drove us apart. She never learnt the truth about Albert’s death, and so she could not understand why her new choice of a lover was so impossible for me to tolerate. She couldn’t have known that a part of my soul had been the ransom for the freedom shehad so readily given up all anew. I didn’t blame her, but neither could I help her anymore.

I saw Helga approach out of the corner of my eye with the cheerful bobbing of her pigtails, adorned with brightly pink ribbons. She was undoubtedly on her way over to tell me about her most recent lover, probably a young man half her age. So that she could then assure me that no matter how pleasant a night she had with him, it certainly couldn’t compare to the fun I had with my ‘hot damn heartthrob’ of a husband. Then she would make an eerily convincing meowing noise, and I would laugh, not contradicting her.

Smiling, I started to air and freshen up the earth of my garden plot with a shovel just as she reached me.

“Well, hello there, darling,” she said in a distinctly American twang, only to follow it with an inquiry about my well-being that instantly revealed an accent that did not sound American at all.

Her speech was a mesmerising jumble of all the places she had lived during her colourful life, her country of birth untraceable in it, whatever it was. I debated asking her where she was actually from on multiple occasions but was always deterred by a vague feeling that she would not care for being asked.

“Like a new epidemic, no?” She gestured towards Monika’s pregnant belly, echoing my previous thoughts.

I only grunted in reply as I squatted with my trowel, digging row after row of small holes to place the broccoli seeds in. I had never discussed my reproductive predicament with her, though I was sure that it was something of a public secret by then.

“Well, whoop-de-doo,” she chirped, laying her bejewelled hand with stubby fingers on my shoulder. “And just think where they all would be without you, hey? You made all this possible, doll.”

She departed with a pat on my back, startling young Mickey with a lewd, catcalling whistle as she passed him.

Laughter bubbled out of my mouth. Praise be to the universe for all the Helgas of the world.

By the late afternoon, I found myself at long last at the training range, going through a series of exercises to help me improve my strength, control, and purpose, the three pillars of archery. A part of the training range was on a plain in front of the forest surrounding Vizzavona, but a decent part of it was in the woods, the burlap sack, human-shaped targets fastened to trees. This section was incomparably more challenging, and it served much better to prepare us for what it would be like in the real world: shooting furies from odd angles, through a series of obstacles in the way. Not that there was much real-world, field action these days anymore. And except for weekly refresher sessions that I held in several locations across the mountains, I trained alone.

That afternoon I rushed between the targets, aiming at them from varying angles and distances and I went through a series of exercises: click and pull, pyramid ends, north-south-east-west and the blank bale. As I often did, I lost track of time until a mild, Nordic voice interrupted my concentration.

“Behind you, trouble. Leave those poor burlap sacks alone and come give us a kiss.”

Startled, I fired an arrow too soon, and the target that I had been aiming at was spared for once.

“Einar!”

Dropping my bow as well as my quiver to the ground, I covered the few spaces between us in a heartbeat and lunged at him. He picked me up easily as I wrapped my hands above the vast bulk of his shoulders and my legs around his no less solid hips.

“I missed you too, my girl.” He kissed me, squeezing me tight.

“What’s new?” I asked as we walked hand-in-hand back to the cottage.

“Undo this first.” He evaded my question, already tugging at the bands that held my precarious, messy bun together. “I want to see your hair in full, it always looks so lovely in this light.”

I did as he asked me, more than a little proud of the flaming chestnut waves and curls that fell heavily down my back, reaching almost to my waist. Einar reverently wound his hand in the locks with a low rumble in his chest.

“Well then?” I nudged him.

“Oh, where do I start ...” he pondered with a sigh.

Well, that was certainly disconcerting, as Einar almost always knew how to start saying whatever it was he wanted to say.