The Ice People 12 - Yearning. Margit Sandemo

rightly or wrongly, she attributed to him. When, at long last, she dared to look up, she could see that she had definitely come closer to land.

      “Thank you, Dominic, thank you,” she whispered, swallowing yet another mouthful.

      But it didn’t matter. For the first time during this nightmarish swim, she felt that she was getting somewhere, which made her use the rest of her physical resources, with an almost superhuman capacity.

      Admittedly, the water was getting so cold that it paralysed her arms and legs and her heart was beating violently. She persisted to struggle through the sea without glancing at the coast at all, only – hopefully – to be pleasantly surprised next time she raised her head. Now she was deep in the water, barely able to keep her nose above the surface of it.

      ‘Dominic,’ she said in her thoughts. ‘Now you know that I’m on my way to you and you’re helping me by holding me up. I know it and I can feel it.’

      It had been a while since she had looked towards the coast. She had been swimming with her face turned towards the spit, which was now practically behind her. Suddenly, her knee knocked against something.

      ‘Oh, God, a sea serpent, a whale or another terrible monster’, she thought.

      She looked straight ahead. Goodness, is the coast that close! No further away than the distance from the lake up to Elistrand.

      Now both her knees hit something. It had to be ... She felt her way carefully with her hands, afraid that she would feel a slimy monster that moved. But that wasn’t what it was. It was the bottom of the sea. The water was certainly shallow here. How long had it been like that?

      Despite her fatigue, her cheerfulness didn’t fail her. She couldn’t help being amused at the thought that she had been swimming, in all earnestness, in one foot of water. But it was certainly also due to her joy at coming up to the surface.

      Villemo crouched and put her feet down. She straightened her back, and she felt that her legs were trembling. She was standing! She was standing on a smooth and fine surface of sand.

      Her relief and her exhaustion was so overwhelming that she immediately sat down. There she sat, breathing and gasping heavily until the worst tiredness had worn off. Then she got up and staggered toward land.

      ‘Thank you, Dominic, my dear. It’s only thanks to you that I’m still alive!’

      The sun had risen. The beach was infinite. Not a human being in sight anywhere.

      Villemo walked up the beach then bent down, patting the Scanian ground. She walked on until she reached the dunes. There she undressed, spreading out all her clothes, both her own and the boy’s, which she had borrowed.

      Then she lay down naked next to her clothes to rest in the life-giving rays of the sun. Her last thought before falling asleep was Dominic.

      ‘Now we’re together in the same country. I just want to get a little sleep because it’s been a tough night without being able to close my eyes. Then I’ll track you down and nothing will prevent us from loving one another.’

      The first step to seeing Dominic again had been accomplished.