Today, the premiere of the book “Heir of the Lake”!

Prolog

Say it. Beginning and ending at the same time. Lying on my stomach, close to death in the back of a pickup truck. I would like to pray, but I have never been able to ask for help. So maybe singing? There are no songs for this occasion. The only thing that comes to mind is a quote from some book: “Everything will be good. Everything will turn out for good ” [1] .

I have a bag on my head, and yet I can see the faces of dead soldiers. I watch the war in slow motion, and I have a row of comrades in front of my eyes, a line of blood, staring eyes… We’ve been abandoned. We were sent to the wrong country, and everyone else is dead but me. Now I think any country would be wrong and that I am here two minutes after I died.

My boys are ghosts now, and so are my girls. My friend Renee died a week ago. She slipped, and in the commotion of the jerky movements she was hit by bullets, swift as wasps. I held her in my arms as she died. Three days ago, I was driving with Lynn Graven from the port and he told me that the Mississippi River is forming its own channels, changing course as it pleases, engulfing the tracts of land it wishes to reclaim. Lynn said there is a river in this desert too – we should dip in it and see if it engulfs us. He jumped out of the truck we were driving at one hundred and thirty kilometers an hour, convinced it was going to fall into the water. Raul Honrez grew up in Idaho, his parents made a living picking fruit. He was halfway through his medical studies when planes flew into the towers, and then he joined the army. I watched his body tear to shreds, and moments later someone grabbed me and threw me on that truck.

Two months ago I was on vacation, away from it all.

– Listen! A voice came from below and I felt a hand on my ankle. She was sitting on the sidewalk. She had a sign on it that read, Yes. I was abandoned. I will accept any help. ” She came from the same war as me. There was a tin change can in front of her.

– Listen. I’ll tell you what awaits you, she exclaimed. – Five bucks.

“Take it all,” I said, pouring the contents of my wallet into her can.

“Then I’ll tell you everything I know,” she said.

– No thanks. – I turned around.

– You’ll live forever! She shouted after me. – You’re the one that gets away! But you will lose something anyway, so you better watch out.

“I have nothing to lose,” I replied stoutly, for some reason.

You go to war knowing you will lose something. Living alive is pure luck, not something special. You have no magic in you, you are just lucky.

I figured I knew what awaited me. I’ve been in fights before. I signed up right after the volunteers ran out in a war that went on forever. I believed it was about something big, about heroism. That’s how they put it to you when you are seventeen. You think you will save the hungry, the suffering from wars, children, women. Meanwhile, you get stuck in mud, slide down slopes, close your eyes and shoot. We are starving on skimpy rations, terrified, close to insanity. We shoot blindly, without thinking, seeing a foreign uniform, a different color of skin or points in night vision goggles showing warm bodies. Bright points on the map, beating hearts.

I figured I had been lucky so far. I figured if I died, I would die.

I got on the plane and returned to the desert.

Now I am shaking on bumps and have no goal ahead of me. Since they are taking me, I am going to prison or to the hospital. All kinds of thoughts rattle in my brain, memories of those moments that I should have paid attention to.

– Listen! An old woman spoke to me ten years ago in a long-distance bus. – I will tell you a story!

I couldn’t quite pull away so I listened. Landscapes shifted past the windows. Night and road, green and red lights, people in cars heading towards their goals, and next to me this woman tells me her version of the history of the world, everything that has happened since the dawn of time, and what will happen until the end. Thirty hours.

“It’s like that with history,” she said. – People lie about what they missed. They say they know what was going on, the world exploded and they saw it, but in reality they only heard a sound so loud it shook the ground. It is impossible to understand the whole story unless you live it through to the end. Whoever is last on the battlefield sings songs at all funerals. At least he has a chance to tell about it. He tells all of us about those events.

I looked at the woman sitting next to me, at her trembling hands and modest hat. She looked so old that she might have been born at the beginning of the century.

I thought I knew everything.

I thought I knew what the earth hides. I thought I knew what awaited me. Now I know that it was all ahead of me: this desert, this sack, this shaking as they pull me from the crate of the car.

I hear the sound of a knife sharpening.

I don’t know who they are, who caught me, but I am one of the “others” to them, just like they are to me. We are nightmares for each other. They throw me on my knees in the sand. They show me the text and I read it and they record it.

“My name is Dana Mills,” I say. – America, it’s your work.

I feel the whistle of the blade behind my head and suddenly I’m in a thousand places at once, everything will be good, and in a thousand countries, and on a ship crossing the ocean, and everything will be good, I’m an old woman dying deep in the mountain, the last of my family, the last of my kind, and everything will turn out for good, and there is darkness all around, and in this darkness shines a bright star that is getting bigger, bigger …

“Listen,” someone whispers in my ear. – Listen carefully.

Am i dead?

“Listen,” that voice whispers. – In some countries, a monster is killed right after it is born. In other places, he is only killed when he kills someone. In still others, he is released into the forest or into the sea, where he lives his days by calling upon his fellows. Listen to me, he calls. Maybe there is only one.

I wake up, gasping for air, buried in the sand. Grains of sand stick to my fingers. There is some space around the face, but nowhere else. But I can feel my heart pounding, and that says something.

The sand is heavy and hot. The sun shines through the lids. I move my fingers, then my whole body, until I manage to pull my hand out of the sand. I dig myself up, get up on shaky legs. I feel an unfamiliar weight and look down at my stomach.

I am a tent in the middle of the desert that hides someone inside, someone who neither speaks nor walks, but only sleeps. I almost laugh. I almost cry. I don’t know who the father is.

I am a mother.

This is how I come back from the underworld. In the sixth month of pregnancy. I have that much. So much for mine.

I look over the desert into the distance and see movement, vibrations of hot air, wobbly human figures. I move on.

After a few hours, something explodes two meters from me. A splinter in my eye, blood on my cheek, that’s it. I wrap my head in my shirt and keep walking.

Finally, I reach the Americans. I look so terrible that no one knows which side of the conflict I am on. They are afraid to come near me. They read my patches.

Hell, this is Dana Mills. Get somebody over here!

I wake up later, the lamp shines in my eyes, I am shaved all over my body: no hair on my head, no pubic hair, no hair on my legs, no armpits, as if they were about to roast me on a spit. There are bars on the windows. I’m wearing a blindfold, I’m intoxicated with something.

– Bad luck! – says the girl on the bed next to him. There are no legs. – It’s probably too late now. For all of us.

– I think so.

“I broke out of where I came from and will never come back,” he says. – I don’t have anyone in the world.

“Me too,” I interrupt. – My mother is dead. I’m alone.

We both look at my stomach.

“You are not alone,” the girl notes. – You got that someone. Whoever it is.

I look at her freckles and upturned nose, crooked lips painted in black lipstick, as if she’s going to the club to go crazy until she falls. She may be seventeen, the age I was when I signed up. Her nails are longer than allowed by the regulations and smoothly polished. I don’t ask what she did. She doesn’t ask me that either.

– So you are crazy? – he throws unannounced. – I do. I see different things. Mainly your legs. Anyway, what am I still alive for? You probably think so. I think so.

I’m about to reply when I see something shining in the center of her chest. Some flash. Flame?

– What is there? – I ask, but she’s gone.

There are five men in her place. They feel at ease with their feet resting on the bed frame, one or two leaning over me and looking at my graphs. They let me know that I am the only person in this room who cannot escape. Bare feet, once you’ve been at war, are terrifying.

– What happened to you, soldier? Who kidnapped you?

“I don’t know,” I say. I look for a girl, but she’s nowhere to be found.

One of them is squatting in front of me and looking at me with such a dose of sincerity in his eyes that I would have no doubts that he is a good person.

“We saw you on TV,” he says. – You were lucky. Even after all this, you were eligible to be shown on the screen. The rest of your squad has died.

I think about happiness.

– We saw your death. It was convincing.

– I live – I say. I feel a shiver all over my body.

– Fake execution. He points to my stomach. – Whose child is this?

“Mine,” I reply faster than I would like.

– Rape or mutual consent?

One means I’m a victim, the other means I’m a collaborator and I don’t know the answer, so I’m silent. I hear one of them say something about a DNA test. My brain is jamming like a broken record. They hypnotize me, persuade me to tell me everything. Nothing to say, except that I am back from where I was, that I am alive and that I am pregnant.

I stay in this non-hospital hospital for six weeks and then I feel the baby kicking hard under my heart.

There are other soldiers working in the prison. I meet a guy who was stationed where I was. He walks me out in the middle of the night. I find the key in the food, the map under the plate, and run away. When I can’t find the train, I hide in horse trailers. I hide under the pickup truck tarpaulin. I wake up in a parking lot where someone is staring at me, hit them on the head and run into the dark.

I meet the girl from the hospital again, this time in the bathroom in the truck parking lot. Without using her legs, she comes out of the booth and says “Hi” and I say “Hi” to her, as if I’m not worried about my state of mind. Her fingers are all skin and bones. Smokes a cigarette.

She has an open wound in the center of her chest through which I can see her ribs, her lungs, a lit candle on her solar plexus, surrounded by gilding.

– God got to you? He was asking for something? – he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. – Something happened to me. I do not know what. I also don’t know what’s happening to me now.

– Something happened to me too. I started spitting fire and then I froze and melted, and everyone around me said I was a martyr. All painters painted me. You’ve seen me on the walls and in the candles. Get yourself one if you want. She points to the votive in her chest. – He can help you.

The girl takes a drag on her cigarette and her cheeks sink so deeply that I can see the shape of her skull.

“It still hurts,” she says. – You don’t want to go this way, even if it leads to fame. Your face appears on the toast, and you always feel like you can’t breathe deeply. But it’s still better than the second option.

– What’s the second option? – I ask.

– Oh, you know. Eternal fire.

He comes out of the bathroom, legless, leaving footprints in the form of lightning bolts behind him, which are about to go out. I stand there for a moment with my hand wrapped in paper.

The baby kicks me, the cars pull into the parking lot and out, the trucks make that despairing groan of too much weight and worn brakes. I can see a group of these huge cars leaving the highway and gliding with difficulty uphill, because for a giant the only obstacle is gravity.

I’m going further. Why am I going home anyway? Suddenly I realize that they will find out where I am from and wait for me there. But they are not waiting. Nobody is here.

Probably because my family place has disappeared.

I feel the contractions so strong that I start to fear. In the place where I once lived, all that remains is a bright white light, a fence around new buildings, and a mountain.

Every life begins the same and ends the same. The rest is a story, even if you don’t understand it, even if you are not sure what is true and what is the mind’s attempt to make sense out of the fog. I grew up in a house overlooking this mountain. I left this place forever, but that “forever” is gone. Now I’m coming home.

I climb, stumble on the steep slope, break through the trees towards the cave.

Listen, I’m talking in my head. Listen up.

[1]    Quote from the book Revelations of God’s Love by Julian of Norwich.

Part 1

Mountain

Listen up. Long after the expected end of everything, long after the days of foretold apocalypses calculated by various cults and determined on computer calendars, long after the world had ceased to believe in miracles, a child was born inside a certain mountain.

Earth is a plundered land. Everything that is alive needs space.

There is a howl, then a whistle, then a roar. The wind blows in the treetops, the sun melts the ice on the tops of the mountains. Even the star sings. Stones roll down, snow rolls in a blizzard, ice groans.

Nobody needs to see us in order to exist. Nobody has to love us for us to exist. The sun is full of light.

The world is full of miracles.

We are wildness, hidden river and stone caves. We are snakes, birds, downpour, brightness under the darkest waters. We are an old being made of everything and have been waiting here for a long time.

We arose from the continental sea, and now, partly below the mountain, partly beyond it, there is the last part of that sea, the lake. There are petrified trees in our soil, the remains of a forest from when the world was green. They used to create a green roof, now they stretch their stone fingers underground. Deep under the mountain is a cave full of old bones. Once a giant skeleton lay there, the chest curved the walls, the tail curled on the ground.

Later, the cave was widened and enlarged, tiles and rails were laid, lighting was added to house a train station. The bones were excavated and taken to the museum, where they were put together and hung from the ceiling.

In the beginning, the station was exemplary. The train ran to and from the city, it had bar compartments, leather seats. Now the cave walls are crumbling, the tiles are cracked, but the station is still there: the ticket office, wooden benches, newspaper stands, coffee counter, mugs, stained glass windows with earthworms crawling behind them, crystal chandeliers wrapped in cobwebs. There are also drinking water intakes from the source that feeds the mountain and a dust-covered wishing fountain.

No train has passed through our territory for almost a hundred years. The tunnel on both sides is closed with metal doors and is covered with earth, but the chamber remains solid, although the tracks are flooded with water. Fish swim in the river between the rails, and various creatures jump on ceramic mosaics and information boards.

We wait, and one day our waiting is over.

A panel in the ceiling shifts and a woman emerges from the opening, slowly lowers herself and finally, panting heavily, jumps to the floor.

She is very skinny, only her belly is sticking out. He drags awkwardly, leans against our wall, and looks up at our ceiling, breathing heavily.

A hazy streak of light shines through the old skylight, a portal to the outside world. The world inside is just this woman, wearing a stained uniform, a tank top, cargo pants tied with a string, and military boots, one eye patch, and her hair tied at the back of her head. There is an uneven scar on her face. He has two rifles on his back and a backpack with provisions.

It slides down the wall onto floor tiles. He screams, calls for some god, all gods.

He’s calling us.

Tree roots pierce through the ceramic tiles on the ceiling. A migratory bird flies in from the outside, flies under the arch and sits in a hidden nest in which brass earrings, candy wraps, pieces of ribbons glisten.

The woman screams, her voice carries through the station, but no train is coming, no help is coming. There is no one here but us and this woman, lonely underground. He grits his teeth and shuffles.

We observe. We are waiting.

Childbirth lasts day and night. The sun moves across the firmament and moonlight shines through the skylight.

The baby clings to the woman’s ribs with his fingers, digs his feet into her pelvis, and presses his back against something that will not yield until it finally gives way.

The woman screams again and her son is born, wet, small, bloody. He takes his first gulp of air. He chokes, spreads his fingers.

A fire is burning in her mother’s eyes, her hands are shining as if a bomb exploded somewhere in the distance, not outside but inside.

The woman is breathing. He clenches his fists and pulls a knife out of the backpack. She cuts the umbilical cord and wraps the stump with a piece of cotton torn from the shirt. He looks at his baby, lifting him to a narrow streak of light.

The baby opens his eyes, golden eyes, and then his mouth. You can see teeth in them. The mother looks at the boy, her face showing uncertainty. She holds it carefully in shaking hands.

Miracles have already begun. Sometimes they were worshiped. They were always new, hitherto unknown creatures. Some of them fell groaning to the ground, others learned to fly.

They do not mind loneliness on Earth. It will come later.

The woman is touching the baby’s face. He washes them in our water, wraps them in a shirt and ties them tightly to himself.

“Gren,” he whispers.

In our history, in the history of this mountain, of this land that emerged from the darkness at the bottom of the sea, this is only a short while, after which it will darken again.

“Listen,” the woman whispers to the baby.

All the other creatures born here emerge silently from the lake water to listen with it – armed with teeth, claws, each with a gleaming crest on its back.

The inhabitants of the mountain gaze at the newborn baby for a moment and listen to its mother, then head back into the depths.

He was born.