Fire (13 page)

‘But …’ Minoo says and Linnéa can almost see the cogs in her brain racing and throwing out sparks. ‘When you wrote that letter to yourself, you did remember everything, but were scared that you would forget again. Why didn’t you open the grave then?’

‘Precisely,’ Linnéa agrees. ‘It would’ve been pretty useful if you had remembered everything last autumn, when we were called.’

Nicolaus looks away.

‘I don’t know why I left the grave untouched.’

‘So you remember everything else, but not that?’ Linnéa asks.

Nicolaus meets her eyes.

‘No, I don’t remember. What matters is that now you know who I am as well as I do myself. That I’m a man who betrayed his wife and his daughter. Who murdered in cold blood and chose revenge instead of forgiveness. And I am deeply uncertain whether I can ever atone for my crimes.’

He looks unhappy and Linnéa understands why he was reluctant to open up the grave. His subconscious must have wanted to protect him from all these insights.

‘I am sorry,’ she says. ‘I am sorry it happened and sorry that you were forced to remember.’

‘Taking up the burden of these memories is hard,’ Nicolaus says. ‘That I admit. But I must choose light, not darkness, even if the light is merciless. Even if the memories are full of pain at least I recall
them
once more. My most dearly beloved. Hedvig. Matilda.’

Linnéa nods. She has to look away. She could have said this about herself, about Elias.

‘I think she has forgiven you,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘I mean Matilda. She told us we could trust you on that very first night in Kärrgruvan.’

‘I am not sure that I deserve to be forgiven,’ Nicolaus says.

His body has been sagging more and more during the telling of his story. Now he almost seems about to faint.

‘I’m afraid I must rest now,’ he says.

‘Thank you,’ Minoo says. ‘Thank you for telling us this.’

‘I perfectly understand if you feel disappointed with me,’ Nicolaus says.

Anna-Karin shakes her head.

‘It changes nothing,’ she says. ‘We know who you are. And we’ve known all the time.’

Vanessa opens her eyes and sees a bird.

At first, she thinks it is part of a dream, but it is actually there, perched on her bedside table, looking at her.

It is a blue tit, one of the few bird species she recognises. Blue skullcap and white face with a black brush stroke across it at eye level. Its chest is yellow, like a chicken’s.

Vanessa waves sleepily at the wide-open window and tries to make it understand.

‘Hey, you. Fly out,’ she whispers hoarsely.

The blue tit puts its head to the side and peers at her with beady black eyes. Vanessa sighs. Starting the day by chasing a crazy bird around her room seems like hard work, and she’d only get bird shit all over her things.

She turns over and lies on her back, staring at the ceiling. She has only had a few hours’ sleep.

When she came home, she had wanted a shower more than anything else but couldn’t risk waking everyone. Instead, she grabbed a towel and, as best she could, wiped off the mixture of sweat and soil that coated her. Apart from the fact that she still feels dirty, her nightmares won’t leave her in peace. The grave. Nicolaus’s story. Fragments of last year’s dreams, dreams that were haunted by Matilda’s memories.

Then there is the different, more ordinary kind of evil that she has not yet had a chance to digest.

I’ve been with someone else.

Vanessa sits up abruptly, nausea rising into her throat. The bird flaps its wings, takes off to the ceiling, bumps into the lampshade and bounces out through the window. It disappears into the blue sky.

I’ve been with someone else.

She waits for the tears, but they don’t come. She feels like that parched Russian lake they studied in geography. It was one of the biggest lakes in the world once, but now it has shrunk to a small puddle surrounded by desert.

A fucking useless puddle in the Russian desert. That’s what she feels like.

Vanessa opens her wardrobe. The first thing she sees is the faded yellow T-shirt she usually sleeps in. Wille’s. It has a washed-out print on the front that shows a bottle of ketchup high-fiving with a hot dog.

Vanessa stares at the T-shirt and thinks that something should happen inside her now. She should want to grab a pair of scissors and cut it into tiny, tiny pieces. Or set it on fire. Or soak it in her period blood and carry out some thoroughly wicked witch’s ritual.

It should surely be possible to put a real curse on Wille. She could go to the Crystal Cave and bribe Mona Moonbeam to tell her how. Like sticking voodoo needles into that idiotic, ugly teddy bear he gave her. Or she could make herself go invisible, sneak into Wille’s room and trash all his stuff. Or tell Nicke about Wille and Jonte dealing in …

But revenge fantasies don’t make her feel better. Instead, she starts thinking about her slippers, which have probably been kicked into the mess under Wille’s bed.

She wants them back. And, come to think of it, she left her favourite lipgloss behind as well. She’ll have to buy a new one now. Or should she ask him for it? No, better not. It isn’t
worth facing Wille just for that. She doesn’t want to see him ever again. But she isn’t sure if her special lipgloss is still in the shops. Perhaps it’s the last ever lipgloss of that type in the whole world and it’s left in that repulsive shitface Wille’s place, so she’ll never get it back.

A sob, so sudden that at first she can’t think who is crying.

‘Nessa? Would you like an omelette?’

Vanessa turns round. Mum has opened the door a little to peep into the room.

‘Oh no, darling girl …’ she says when she sees Vanessa’s face.

The puddle in the Russian desert suddenly fills and overflows. Grows into a whole sea of salty water.

Mum comes in, closes the door behind her and stops, with one hand held out, as if she wants to touch Vanessa but doesn’t quite dare.

‘Darling, what’s the matter?’

And Vanessa suddenly doesn’t give a shit for her pride, doesn’t give a shit that her mother might well say: ‘I told you so.’

She starts talking. Has to take long pauses when her voice breaks.

Mum puts her arms round Vanessa, wraps her daughter into one of those long, warm Mummy hugs. Vanessa hugs her back, tightly, and burrows her head into Mum’s dressing gown.

‘My baby,’ Mum says. ‘My sweet baby.’

‘I didn’t want to let on because I know you don’t like Wille,’ Vanessa wails.

Mum strokes her hair.

‘My lovely girl,’ she says, with such feeling she seems about to burst into tears, too. ‘Surely you know you can talk to me about everything?’

Vanessa thinks of Nicke and the woman in the car. Perhaps she ought to tell her mum now, perhaps this is the right opportunity, but then their roles would be reversed in an instant. She would have to comfort her mother.

Maybe it’s selfish, but she couldn’t cope. She feels small and vulnerable, and all she wants right now is for Mum just to be Mum.

Minoo examines her hands under the strong light of the bathroom lamp and notes that she still has soil stuck under her nails. For all her scrubbing, she can’t get her hands clean.

And, for all her trying, she can’t get her head around what happened last night.

She turns the tap on and puts more soap on the nailbrush.

All her dreams have been about Nicolaus and Matilda.

Minoo realises now, more clearly than she ever has, that the previous Chosen One was a real person and not only some mysterious being who speaks to them through Ida and visits them all in their dreams.

Above all, she realises how lonely Matilda must have been. A girl of Minoo’s own age, who carried the entire world on her shoulders. Minoo and the others at least share the task.

The word
witch-hunt
keeps coming back to Minoo’s mind. Suddenly, the witch trials have become real to her. Reality, instead of images in woodcuts remembered from history books. The trials happened. For real. Here in Engelsfors.

Minoo still remembers what it felt like to wake up with the smell of burning in her hair. She was with Matilda in the prison dungeon. She travelled in the cart with her, tied hand and foot, towards her death.

Burned alive
.

The muscles in her arms ache after a night’s digging, but she carries on scrubbing with the brush. Her fingertips go red, but the dirt is wedged deep in under her nails.

She had been given many answers last night, but also thought of new questions.

What took place the night when Matilda lost her powers?

Why seven Chosen Ones this time instead of one?

Did Matilda
know
that this would happen? Was that why she did it, whatever it was? Because the burden was too heavy to bear alone? But why have seven, when there are only six elements?

Minoo scrubs and scrubs.

Of course, Matilda died before she had time to stop the apocalypse. Why didn’t the demons take the world over there and then? Was the final battle postponed when Matilda left the game and dumped all the responsibility on the future Chosen Ones? If so, what does it mean that only five Chosen Ones are left? Do they have the slightest chance of winning?

And why can’t she shake off the feeling that Nicolaus didn’t tell them all he knows?

She walks into the passage and meets Mum. She is wrapped in the worn, red dressing gown she has used for as long as Minoo can remember.

‘Bahar will come and see us in a few weeks,’ Mum says happily. ‘Perhaps Shirin and Darya are coming along, too.’

Minoo wishes she could share her pleasure. Even though she loves her aunt and her cousins, they are seriously exhausting to be with. And she has more than enough drama in her life just now.

‘Isn’t Darya in London?’

‘No, she’s back home and working as a trainee in some
sort of advertising agency. But Bahar is positive Darya will start her law course in the spring. Or maybe she’ll do medicine. Or study for the Secretary Generalship in the United Nations.’

Mum rolls her eyes heavenwards and Minoo giggles. Bahar and her husband Reza have always had grandiose ambitions for their two daughters.

‘Hurry up or you’ll be late for school,’ Mum adds as she disappears into the bathroom.

Minoo walks downstairs and picks up her rucksack. As she steps outside, the sunlight dazzles her. She only spots Anna-Karin waiting for her after putting on her sunglasses.

‘Hi, Minoo,’ Anna-Karin says and they start walking to school together.

Anna-Karin wears a baggy black T-shirt and, despite the heat, a tracksuit top tied round her waist. As if ready for a sudden cold snap. She is wearing jogging shoes as well. Her feet must be boiling by now. Even Minoo has given in and shows off her abnormally big feet in sandals.

‘Did you sleep at all?’ Anna-Karin asks.

‘Not much.’

Anna-Karin’s face is hidden behind her mane of hair, but everything about her body language tells Minoo that she is keeping something back.

‘I’ve been thinking … this stuff about the Council. Last year, the principal said that they’d set up a group to investigate me and everything I’d done …’

She falls silent. It dawns on Minoo that Nicolaus’s story must have been especially terrifying for Anna-Karin.

Minoo is just about to say that the Council hardly goes around burning people at the stake any more, but then she remembers what they did to Adriana.

‘But that was back in the seventeenth century,’ she says,
trying to sound reassuring. ‘And we’ve not heard another thing about the investigation for almost a year.’

‘No, that’s true …’ Anna-Karin says without conviction.

‘Besides, you’re not alone,’ Minoo adds. ‘We won’t let anything happen to you.’

Once in the school, Minoo and Anna-Karin go straight to the caretaker’s office and knock.

No response. The door is locked. It makes Minoo anxious, even though it would be perfectly reasonable for Nicolaus to stay at home today. Should they actually have left him alone in his flat?

Anna-Karin must have had the same idea, because she calls his number.

‘No reply,’ she says and puts the mobile away.

‘I’m sure he’ll be all right. Just needs time to get his head around everything.’

Anna-Karin nods. They stand together for a moment or two without speaking.

‘Have you got that spare key?’ Anna-Karin asks.

‘Yes. And if he doesn’t answer this evening, we’ll go to his place.’

‘Just to check that he’s okay.’

‘That’s what I think.’

The first lesson that day is chemistry. When Minoo and Anna-Karin arrive upstairs, the class is waiting outside the locked laboratory. Anna-Karin mumbles something about going to the loo and disappears.

Minoo puts her bag down and leans against the wall.

She steals a look at Viktor, who is on his own. He is reading
a book and seems oblivious to Hanna H and Hanna A who gaze adoringly at him. Actually, they are not the only ones. Every other female coming along the corridor glances longingly at Viktor.

At Engelsfors School, a pupil from elsewhere is a rare enough specimen. A new pupil like Viktor is contrary to every law of nature. He doesn’t belong, somehow. It is as if an exotic orchid has been planted in the local fir forest. Minoo looks at Erik and Robin. And Kevin, whose braying can be heard from a bit further away. She wonders for how long the orchid will survive.

Then she looks at Viktor again. To her surprise, he smiles and ambles over to see her.

‘I must apologise,’ he says. ‘I must have sounded pretty arrogant, or worse, to you and your friend the other day. As it happened, you did turn up at a tricky time, but … it’s probably better that I don’t come up with any excuses. So, simply, please forgive me.’

Minoo can’t think what to say. She is preoccupied with her feet and hopes that he hasn’t noticed them. With any luck, the new zits on her forehead will distract him.

‘It’s all right,’ she says.

‘I don’t want to criticise your home town. I’m sure Engelsfors is a really good place to live in. But it was such a sudden decision, what with leaving Stockholm and coming here, and somehow I hadn’t taken on board what a …’