“Come in!”
The words were so faint that it took Emil a few moments to convince himself that Father’s voice was real, and not imagined. Childhood instinct prompted him to obey, giving the door an experimental push.
It opened, though with a rusty, neglected creak. Well, that was strange. Father was not one to keep his front door unlocked; he was far too attached to his many ‘treasures’.
“Hurry up, then! You’ll let all the heat out.”
The voice was a little clearer now, though still oddly muffled. And remote. Where was Father, in the bedroom? Emil stepped in, let the door fall shut, and glanced around, letting his eyes adjust to the money-saving near-darkness.
He was used, by now, to the strangeness of returning from the world of his adulthood, and seeing so many semi-forgotten bits of childhood memory collected together and rearranged. Here, a half-burned chair; on it, a cracked soup tureen, still glittering gold at the edges; above them, a painting of a man–an ancestor, Mother had said–with weird sideburns that had always puzzled him, but now reminded him faintly of Mikkel.
He had been shocked by the messiness of all the piles, once, when returning from the Cleansers’ military barracks. But he was used to that now, too. Still, there was a new feeling, a new weirdness, some new realization he could not quite name.
“Well?” The voice was definitely coming from the bedroom. “Aren’t you going to announce yourself?”
Announce himself? Hadn’t Father been expecting him? Had Emil’s letter gone astray, or–
But then a memory hit him. A lesson: All visitors must be announced. He’d had that drilled into him once, together with A gentleman does not answer his own door. Well, that explained the shouting, didn’t it? The last time he’d visited, he’d been let in by a cleaner, a woman from the village; judging by the dust upon the ‘treasures’, she had not been in for a while.
“Emil,” said Emil. He cleared his throat to repeat, “Emil Västerström. Son of the house.”
Then, he made his way in. He decided to keep his boots on, for protection: broken glass gleamed along the path to the bedroom door. A bottle? No, something more like a mirror. As he stepped over the shards, the new, weird feeling resolved itself.
He no longer felt as if he were walking through his childhood memories. No, this time, being in Father’s house felt like being in the Silent World. In an explored ruin, a silent witness of humanity's fall.
Emil shuddered.
It was an unfair comparison, he told himself: there would be no trolls here. Not inside a cleared area. But then, there wouldn’t be healthy animals, either. Or plants. He’d found he quite liked seeing what plants did to the old structures. He glanced around again, imagining vines creeping in among the broken furniture. Flowers blooming in the broken vases.
Maybe he should have brought Lalli with him, after all, he thought. Irrelevantly.
“What’s wrong?” Father’s voice was reedy with annoyance. “Why are you dawdling? Are you too fat to make it across the room?”
Emil sighed. No, he could never bring anyone here. What if they learned to see him through Father’s eyes?
Glass crunched under his feet as he approached the bedroom.
