Someone was hiding up there in the mist and the lengthening shadows. Someone who’d just begun playing a game with them, and who knew he was perfectly safe. Hunting for him now among the mountain’s gorges and deep crevasses, just as night was about to fall, would be impossible.

And so, protected by the mountain and the darkness, he watched them both.

-19-

-19-

Snow had transformed the Sliva river valley. The gully through which the river flowed had become a kingdom of ice, its verdant fronds supplanted by a white expanse of shimmering crystal, and the lance-like forms of the fir trees transformed into downy pillows. The voice of the water had changed: the sound that rose from the riverbed was no longer a thunderous rumble, but a subdued murmur. The cold had put a brake on the rapids, while the shallower chutes and the stagnant pools had frozen over.

Even the waterfall beyond the cave, where the Sliva plunged into a deep ravine among boulders carved out by time, had been stilled; only the finest of trickles slid down its gleaming, transparent stalactites.

To Diego the frozen waterfall looked like a stairway to the sky. He wondered if his father had climbed up steps as pretty as those when he’d died. His grandmother kept saying that his father was watching over him from heaven now, but to Diego, this was hardly a reassuring prospect. His father’s eyes had never looked at him with anything other than unadulterated sternness. He had never hit Diego, and he had never raised his voice either, as far as Diego could recall. But there was no need for any of that; all his father had to do was to look at him for Diego to know what a disappointment he was. Diego knew that his father’s body currently lay in a morgue, without his eyes. But when Diego had dreamt of him the night before, his father had been whole: he had appeared dressed in nothing but a white sheet, and had simply scowled. Even now that he was dead he was displeased with Diego. And now that he was up in the sky, he was going to find out all the secrets and lies that Diego used in order to survive.

Diego reached his friends with a last leap over an old, fallen tree trunk. Mathias and Oliver were throwing stones at the frozen riverbank. When they saw him, they stiffened. Diego had witnessed the same reaction in everyone he’d come across in those last few hours, except for the police lady with the red hair. Instead of being drawn closer, people seemed to be repelled by you when you were in mourning. They recognized the smell of death, and they feared it, just as animals fear the scent of hunters.

He looked pleadingly at his friends while trying to catch his breath.