Lost Girls (15 page)

Somewhere along
the way they would return to Coober Pedy and return the rightful
share of the old miner, it was his just desert and they would do
nothing to cheat fate.

They had now
made an unspoken pact to join their lives together in a more formal
manner, perhaps not marriage but being together for as far as the
future would take them with whatever followed, perhaps children of
their own. They had touched at the edges of this idea, walking
around it on tiptoes, but had never gone to its core.

But first they
must leave this place of good fortune in a way that kept its
contents safe. They decided to leave the side shaft alone but to
fill the vertical shaft back to something like the way they had
found it. They created a big pile of rocks, stones and rubbish,
pieces of tin, broken timber and other debris just next to the
lower side of the shaft. Their final act before leaving would be to
pile it in on top of the dirt and other fill they had already
returned to the shaft.

Mark was poring
over his maps in the car, working out the detailed way to go from
here when they drove away. He heard a little truncated cry. He
looked around.

No further
sound came and there was no sign of his Elfin queen. He heard a
little sound like a mewing kitten coming from over where the shaft
was. He stood up and ran towards it.

As he came
close he saw that lower side of the shaft had crumbled away, the
side of the rubbish, perhaps the side where Elin had been standing.
The noises, like a kitten crying, seemed to be coming from
somewhere down the shaft¸ under the rubbish.

He realised she
was down there. It had all come down on top of her. He called to
her. “Hang on Ellie; I am coming to get you, my Elfin Queen.”

He worked
furiously, clawing and tearing stuff aside as he fought his way
down through the debris. Her voice seemed faint and sometimes it
did not answer. An hour passed and then another. Her voice had
gone.

Finally he saw
her, golden hair in the pale light. She was lying with her body
mostly buried under rubbish, just her face, shrouded by hair, and
one arm showing. She seemed barely alive, breathing still, but
without awareness of what was happening to her.

With all his
remaining strength he pulled the pieces of debris from her. Finally
he had her uncovered except for a heavy stone, perhaps twice his
weight which pinned her lower body to the ground. He stroked her
face and said. “Hold on Ellie, one more thing to go until I get you
out.”

With a last
huge effort he rolled the stone to the side and lifted the broken
body in his arms. He carried her, as gently as he could, to the
top.

The late
afternoon light was fading as he laid her on his bedding mat. He
stroked her hair and face. He did not really believe in God, but
yet he prayed, nonetheless, that she would open her eyes one more
time so he could tell her of his love for her.

He turned away
to look for some water to clean and wash the dirt from her face. As
he turned, he heard her call faintly. “Mark, don’t leave me. I know
my body is broken. I will not be here when the light is gone.
Already my vision is fading. But I can see you and feel your touch
and love. That is all I want to know and remember. Stay with me and
hold me. When it is over place my body in the boat, the one we made
together. Bury it and me under the ground down by the billabong.
Then I can make my journey as your Viking Queen to another shore.
Perhaps one day we can sail again in it, together.

So he returned
to her and held her. She smiled a faint smile and touched his hand
with hers. She told him, in a whispered breath, that something had
made her climb to the bottom of the shaft, perhaps her soul knew it
was her time. She thanked him for the happiest days of her life,
the place where she had found peace and contentment with him. Then
she said no more, her spirit light was fading away.

He whispered in
her ear that he loved her and she whispered back that she knew and
loved him too. Then they spoke no more, the effort was beyond her
and she just wanted to be held. He put his fingers in her hair and
she rested her hand on his face.

They sat like
this for a few minutes until Mark realised she was not breathing
anymore and her blue eyes now were opened so wide that she could
only see the sky in another place.

He stayed with
her in the night holding her cold and stiffening body to his and
feeling the tears he had never cried for anyone before stealing
down his cheeks.

In the morning
he carried her to the side of the billabong where they had hunted
to ducks in the reeds in their small tin and timber boat. He dug a
big hole into the soft earth just back from the bank. He placed the
boat at the bottom of the hole.

He took the two
blankets from his bedding roll and wrapped her body into them. He
laid her pack and her other things alongside her in the boat, that
she may have her possessions for her trip.

He took out
only her passport, it was the only photo he had to remember her by,
and she would not need that in the place she was travelling. Then
he opened his box of stones and found the two pieces she had broken
apart when they first made their discovery. He placed one inside
each cold hand, to give her a fare to pay the ferryman. Then he
covered it all in, making a cairn of stones in the shape of a boat
to mark the place where she lay. It was late in the day when he
drove away, feeling as if his heart would break inside.

Anne had
travelled to Stockholm yesterday. With the jetlag she had spent
last night in a hotel near the airport. She had kept herself awake
for the long flight west from Australia but, with the extra seven
hours added to the day, she was really tired by the time the taxi
had brought her to her hotel. It was ten pm local time; the sun was
low but still not set in this mid-summer time. The light had that
peculiar softness that she associated with the northern latitudes,
similar to the couple times she had gone with Susan to her aunt’s
home in Scotland.

It brought a
wave of nostalgia for those lost childhood years which she realised
they could never recapture. Life had been simple and joyful then.
She found herself longing to see her own family again. They had
visited a couple months ago in Australia, but now she had that
desire for familiar comfort, the bedroom of her childhood, her
mother’s cooking. Well she would be there inside a week, after she
left Sweden and before she went up to Scotland then on to France to
meet other families and get to know about their daughters. She felt
very privileged to be given this intensely private access to these
girls’ lives.

Tomorrow she
was meeting Mr Axel Torborg, father of Elin, whose passport they
had found in the box and who it was thought was the Elfin of Mark’s
diary. She would also meet his second daughter, Freya, who she
hoped might also shed some light on the more personal aspects of
her sister’s life, things like men friends which her father may not
know.

Axel Torberg
collected her from her hotel in the mid-morning. He was someone she
had met on his trip to Sydney for the appeal; he was a tall
powerfully built, but slightly stooped, man. He was in his
mid-fifties, but seemed to have aged prematurely and now walked
with a slightly shuffling gait. He brought Anne to the family home,
where Freya was also waiting, offering Pankaka, with whipped cream,
blackberry jam and coffee.

Axel’s English
was limited but Freya’s was good so she did most of the talking. It
seemed that with Elin’s prolonged absence from the family Freya had
taken the older daughter role. After making polite conversation for
a few minutes Freya began to tell the story of their family.

They lived
their early life in a village in the far north of the country,
until their mother had been struck down by breast cancer. At that
time Freya had been only five so her memories of her mother and
before were not very good, but both her father and Elin had been
very devastated at their mother, Elle’s, early death. Elin had been
very close to both parents and had taken the loss hard. She had
become quite wild after that. Here Axel came in, with Freya helping
with the translation

“She always was
wild; I filled head with stories of Viking ancestors, the heroes
who sailed the world’s seas. They were also a great love of my
Elle. In the Arctic winters, way up there, for more than a month
the sun never rises. On those days, when there was not a blizzard,
I would take Eli out in the lunchtime half-light. We would tell of
and imagine our brave ancestors venturing out from the Norse Coast
to the furthest regions of the world. I would call her my Viking
Princess, daughter of my Viking Queen Elle. We would imagine that
one day she would be a queen herself and sail out to unknown places
like her ancestors had done.

“I do not think
those dreams ever left Eli, she lived a life where most of the
world was a place she created in her imagination. As she became an
adult she tried to live that life too.

Axel then
handed Anne two photos. The first was a family photo of a time long
ago. To the side stood a boy next to his father, similar but
unremarkable. A proud young Axel, hair dark without grey, stood
with his arm around a truly beautiful golden haired woman. In her
arms was a small child, clearly grown into Freya, hair dark like
her father’s, with her mother’s face of beauty. Between her parents
stood a child of perhaps eight, flaxen golden hair the image of her
mother’s though her face was sharper and more Elfin, perhaps from
her father or an earlier generation. She was striking if not with
the classical beauty of her mother. And already she had the most
penetrating eyes, eyes that seemed to be looking beyond somewhere
that others could see, to a place in another world.

Anne realised
that Freya was talking to her, telling her who was who: she already
knew. Then Freya passed her another photo, this was a recent one
taking of an adult Elin and her father on the deck of a small
yacht, arms around each others shoulders.

Freya said,
“That is the last picture we have of Eli, she was home for a
holiday from Greenpeace about a year before she vanished. She and
my father, who both loved to sail, spent two days sailing out
around the Stockholm Archipelago, one of the world’s beautiful
places which they both loved. That was their shared passion.
Unfortunately I have never liked sailing so now my father sails
alone.”

Anne looked at
the woman in the photo. No child now, she was truly striking, there
was a resemblance to some movie character that Anne tried to place.
It came to her, she was the Elf Queen of the Lord of the Rings
movie, the role played by Cate Blanchet. Anne had seen and loved
all these movies; she tried to think of the name, was it Arwen? No
that was the dark haired one, a Freya look alike. She had it now,
it was Galadriel, only Eli face was, if anything, more pointed and
pixie like. But that golden cascade of hair which framed her face
gave her the look; she really was the Elf Queen.

Now Anne felt
almost sure she had found the Elfin of Mark’s diary. Small wonder
he had given the name Elfin. She realised that both Freya and Axel
were looking at her strangely as she gazed rapt at the picture. She
turned to them and said. “I think I have read about her and what
happened to her in this man, Mark’s diary, she is the one he calls
his Elfin Queen. Perhaps I could give you both that part of the
story to read and when you have done so you can tell me if you
agree it is her. It will be a hard story for you to read but it is
also a beautiful love story which I think you will be happier for
knowing.”

They both
nodded.

She said, “It
is in my bag, a photocopy. I am not really supposed to show it to
you. But if I was you I would want to know. I have decided that I
must give it to you. Perhaps I should leave it here now. Tomorrow
after you have read it I will visit again and you can tell me what
you think.”

Freya took the
sheets of paper, about ten in all, with a mix of tightly spaced
writing and occasional other scribbles. She said, “I will need to
help my father, his English is not that good, but it will be good
for us to read and remember together, even to cry if we must.”

Anne said, “I
think it was written about a year after he met her, it is better if
I tell you no more and let you discover it for yourself.”

She said her
goodbyes; she arranged to return for morning coffee at the same
time the next day. In the afternoon she bought a ticket to the port
and took a sail cruise out amongst the islands of the archipelago.
It was, as Freya had said, one of the world’s beautiful places.

She found the
trip bittersweet, the beauty breathtaking, the image of the girl
and her father sailing together poignant, then of her no more and
him sailing only alone. Why had Elin not stayed here and instead
gone to the furthest reaches of the world, the vast Antarctic Ice
sheets, always putting herself in danger’s way. And then her final
almost sailing trip across the empty bed of the world’s largest
salt lake, followed a few days later in a home-made boat along an
ephemeral river which almost never flowed, now she was the Elf
Queen of a Desert Kingdom.

When she
returned to her hotel in the late evening the concierge passed her
a telephone message. It was from Freya Tolgron. It asked that she
ring Freya and left a short message that she and her father would
like Anne to come to their home village by train. The return
journey would take three days.

She rang
immediately and Freya explained that she and her father would like
her to join them tomorrow morning for a train trip to Sweden’s far
north, a trip which left tomorrow evening and ran through the night
arriving at the town of Gällivare the following morning. From there
it was a half hour by car to the town where the family had first
lived. Freya said simply, “We would like you to visit our home
village. There is something to see which will help you to
understand.”