The Key (12 page)

Ehrenskiöld grabs her shoulder with one hand. He holds a sharply honed knife in his other hand.

‘Start immediately!’ the Master orders from the other side of the room. ‘One more trial and then we will be ready to decide!’

He looks quite merry. The audience has grown. Twenty or more men have crowded in around Matilda.

Nicolaus is standing just outside the group. He looks pleadingly at Ehrenskiöld.

‘Master.’ Ehrenskiöld turns to the fat man. ‘We have already seen that she can control five elements. Surely we might now agree that she is the Chosen One?’

Fatso’s smile fades as he looks from Baron Ehrenskiöld to Nicolaus.

‘If the minister cannot stand the strain, he had better leave now!’

Nicolaus mumbles an apology and lowers his head.

‘Set to, now,’ the Master says.

Ehrenskiöld draws breath and then he plunges the knife straight into Matilda’s hand where it lies on the armrest of the chair. Matilda’s scream blends with Ida’s as Ehrenskiöld pulls the knife out and the blood spatters all over the floor. Matilda is suddenly very silent. She has fainted.

Ida turns to look at Nicolaus. At his rigid face. His withdrawn gaze.

‘Why don’t you do anything?’ she shouts. ‘She’s your daughter!’

Ehrenskiöld bends to scrutinise Matilda’s hand. Straightens up.

‘She has stopped bleeding.’ He puts the knife down on the table. ‘The wound is healing already. She is also mistress of the wood element.’

‘Gentlemen.’ The Master turns on the other men. He sounds thrilled. ‘You are in the presence of the Chosen One!’

The mist sweeps past so quickly that Ida hardly notices.

She is back in the forest. Sunlight is filtering down between the trees. Matilda crouches on the bank of the stream and hugs her familiar.

‘You must forgive me,’ she murmurs, stroking the feathers of her bird. ‘I have to, or the ritual would not work. This is for the sake of the world.’

She closes her eyes and pushes the bird into the stream. Its wings flap and scatter water over her face and arms. Ida sees two black feathers float away in the current.

The mist flows in over her and then Ida is back, for the third time, in the white-limed room. Cold daylight streams in through the windows. Matilda is seated in the same chair. She is staring at the tools lined up on the table in front of her. Ida recognises one of them and instantly feels sick. So this is why Nicolaus recognised the torture instrument that Adriana kept in her office. It was another one of these.

Nicolaus stands by the open fireplace with Ehrenskiöld by his side. The so-called Master and the two grey-clad men from Dammsjön Lake loom over Matilda. The Master doesn’t look in the slightest bit merry now.

‘Observe these!’ the Master says, pointing at the tools. ‘The Council has not always been as civilised as it is today. Yet we will not hesitate if using such instruments on you is what is required to make you talk.’

Christ, how Ida hates that fat monster. He is so absolutely fucking
evil
.

Matilda seems about to pass out at any moment from sheer terror. But she looks the Master in the eye.

‘A new Chosen One will come,’ she tells him. ‘Someone who is stronger than I am.’

The Master slams his fist against the table so hard that his torture toolkit rattles and Matilda shudders in her chair.

‘Dear Matilda.’ Ehrenskiöld comes closer to her. ‘Answer the Master. Why did you give up your powers? Is there any way in which you can get them back?’

‘I did so for all your sakes,’ Matilda says between clenched teeth. ‘For the sake of the world.’

‘You outrageous little slut,’ Fatso roars. His face has gone bright red.

Matilda flinches where she sits but still looks straight at him.

‘What you do to me is no great matter,’ she says. ‘I will not tell you more than I have. I am sworn to silence.’

‘Is that so?
Sworn
, have you?’ the Master shouts at top volume.

‘Yes.’

‘And who has induced you to do so?’

‘Go ahead and tell him!’ Ida says.

She wants Matilda to speak out, wants her to save herself. But Matilda only shakes her head. And, of course, Ida knows how all this will end. In her dreams, she was there in the prison wagon with Matilda when she was transported to her place of execution. And she woke with the smell of smoke from the pyre still in her hair.

‘The time was so very close,’ Fatso says. ‘Our names would have gone down in history, become immortal! The final portal!’

His face turns from red to purple and he is breathing heavily through the nose. Ida thinks he might have a heart attack. Hopefully.

‘Master,’ Ehrenskiöld intervenes. ‘This girl has clearly lost her mind—’

‘Already, there are rumours doing the rounds in the village!’ the Master interrupts. ‘Well, let her be tried for practising witchcraft. It would be a suitable punishment.’

Nicolaus draws breath. But he still does not speak. Just stares at the floor.

‘With respect, Master,’ Ehrenskiöld says, ‘this is surely too harsh?’

‘What? There’s room for two on the fire!’

Ehrenskiöld looks down. Says nothing more.

‘We will stay in this godforsaken hole until justice is done. Arrest her,’ the Master commands.

His grey henchmen pull Matilda from the chair.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she cries.

She twists and struggles but she hasn’t got a chance. They are laughing as they drag her from the room. The Master follows them. Ida knows that none of them will survive their stay in Engelsfors. Nicolaus will lock the church door while they are inside and set it on fire. Good.

Fatso will end up as roast pork.

Nicolaus crosses the floor to the chair where Matilda had been sitting just moments earlier. He touches the back of the chair. Then slumps slowly down until he crouches on the floor.

‘I have sent her to her death,’ he whispers. ‘I have murdered my own child.’

Ehrenskiöld is by his side now and pulls him upright. ‘You must stay calm.’

‘Henrik, what shall I do? Dear friend … help me.’

Henrik Ehrenskiöld glances quickly over his shoulder, then leans over to whisper in Nicolaus’s ear. Ida has to get closer to hear him.

‘I’ll help you. I’ll see to it that the judge in Matilda’s trial is me. And I’ll think of a way to soothe the Master’s ire.’

Nicolaus tries to respond but is choking with grief. Henrik Ehrenskiöld hugs him.

Ida stares at the two men. It is so confusing. Henrik’s compassion seems utterly genuine. And yet, it must be
him
… the man who was Nicolaus’s old friend. Who told Nicolaus that he could save Matilda, only to let her be burnt alive.

‘He’ll deceive you, Nicolaus!’ she says. ‘You must act now! Save her!’

But she realises that, if Nicolaus
does
act now, all of history will change.

Suddenly, she feels completely terrified. True, she doesn’t seem able to get through to others, but what if she has and just doesn’t know it?

Like in the story she read in school once about a man who time-travelled back to the dinosaur era and just happened to stand on an insect. When he returns, he finds the whole world has changed.

It is a relief to be enclosed in the fog again.

Once more, she starts running in the Borderland, as quickly as she can. She sees another light, flaring and intensely yellow, smells the smoke from over there, hears the roaring of the fire. She knows that Matilda is dying in that fire, together with her mother who has thrown herself on the pyre.

Ida doesn’t run towards that light. Then it fades and everything is grey again.

I’m tired of this shit, she whispers to herself.

But she keeps running. What else can she do?

In the school library, the windows are open. Outside in the yard, the voices are loud, fired up with the two-weeks-to-end-of-term feeling. The library is quiet and filled with artwork. All the students taking Fine Arts are exhibiting their favourite work from the past year. The only people up to have a look are the artists themselves.

A faint draught from the windows makes a collage rustle. Linnéa stops in front of one of the framed drawings hanging nearby. The art teacher, Petter Backman, picked it because it is one of the few pieces of Olivia’s work that remained after she left school just after the Christmas holidays. This is one of her many self-portraits: a girl with blue hair and black tears running down her cheeks.

Linnéa remembers the last time she saw Olivia. Her thin hair. The dark gaps where she had once had teeth.

You’ve ruined everything! Elias will never come back now! He’ll never come back!

The last words Olivia said to her.

And Linnéa remembers her own final words to Olivia, whispered as she bent down to take the amulet from her.

She wonders if Olivia heard her. And if Olivia is still alive. If she is, does she still believe that she is the Chosen One? Does she truly think that Linnéa sabotaged Elias’s resurrection?

‘It feels so strange that she’s gone.’

Linnéa turns and meets Tindra’s eyes. Her black and purple dreadlocks dangle well down her back and she has shaved off her eyebrows.

There was a time when they both used to hang out in Jonte’s house. Tindra was one of the ones who stopped calling after Linnéa gave up partying. They ended up in different worlds, despite being in the same class and still sometimes sitting at the same table in the dining area.

‘I hope Olivia got way out of town and has been having loads of adventures,’ Tindra smiles. ‘Like she always kept saying she would.’

Her smile can’t hide the fact that she clearly thinks it’s very unlikely. In her view, Olivia wouldn’t be capable of ‘adventures’.

Tindra has no idea what Olivia was capable of doing.

He told me to take revenge for his death! Every time I kill someone who has hurt him, my powers grow stronger!

Linnéa thinks back on the people Olivia murdered. Regina, the psychologist – the one Elias was so fond of; Leila, a primary school teacher with two young children of her own. And a harmless old man called Svensson, who was the retired head of the senior school. And Jonte. Jonte, who had himself messed up other people’s lives, but in no way deserved to die like that.

‘Do you know that people are laying bets on what happened to her? Like, did she get out because she wanted to? Or was something done to her?’ Tindra clicks the pin in her pierced tongue against her teeth.

Linnéa can visualise the moment Alexander walked away, carrying Olivia’s frail, emaciated body. Tears of blood were trickling down her pale cheeks.

Then it strikes Linnéa that now, when she is gone, Olivia has finally achieved what she always wanted: everyone is talking about her and wants to know more about her. Everyone is fascinated by her.

‘Holy shit!’ Tindra points to another drawing. ‘Did you do that one? I
love
it!’

‘Thank you.’

‘I understand exactly what you felt like when you made it,’ Tindra says.

Linnéa looks hard at her own work, tries to see it with the eyes of another. Asks herself what it reveals, if anything.

She had hesitated for a long time over her portfolio before deciding on an ink drawing of a heart-shaped flower arrangement around a heart, anatomically correct and bleeding.

Linnéa wonders if Vanessa had understood that the image was all about her. And that it is still true.

She had never thought that Vanessa would want her. It had made her very happy to realise that she was wrong. Happy, and then, just a little later, utterly terrified. To have Vanessa and then lose her would be unbearably painful. And she knows it will happen. That loss is certain. When she finds out just how fucked up Linnéa actually is, Vanessa will grow tired with her.

Whatever it is we have together now, I should get out of it, Linnéa thinks. It will never work out. Better end it myself, here and now. Make a clean cut, then the wound will heal faster.

Panic wells up, and with it comes a prickly chill that makes her whole body break into a sweat.

‘Are you OK?’ Tindra asks.

‘No. Panic attack.’

‘Can I get you something?’ Tindra rummages in her bag. ‘Look, I think I’ve …’

‘No, thanks,’ Linnéa says quickly. ‘See you later.’

She hurries out of the library. Hears voices around her on the stairs as she keeps her eyes fixed on the stone steps and counts the fossils to get a grip on her mind.

She can’t think how she’ll endure the funeral this afternoon. But she must do it somehow, for Anna-Karin’s sake.

When Linnéa steps into the entrance hall, someone walks straight into her so she falls over backwards and drops her bag.

‘Fuck’s sake …!’ she says furiously. She looks up.

It’s Erik Forslund. Grinning at her.

‘Gosh, I am
sorry
,’ he smirks. ‘So
very
sorry.’

That grin. The same expression as the time he forced her to jump off Canal Bridge.

Panic is hammering in her head.

‘I do hope I didn’t hurt you. Last thing in the world I’d want,’ Erik says.

Robin is near him, just a step away. Linnéa remembers the scene on the bridge, how Robin hung back but still did what Erik told him to do.

As she grabs her bag, she sees Robin’s hand suddenly reaching out for her. Their eyes meet and she can just pick up his thought: his strong feeling of guilt, but also something else that is close to fear.

‘Oh, piss off,’ Linnéa tells him.

Robin’s hand drops to his side.

She stands on shaky legs, then walks away. Her heart is thumping.

‘Wow, Robin. Such a gentleman,’ Erik says behind her back. ‘Are you in love?’

Anna-Karin slices through the layers of the savoury gateau with the edge of the server. The swampy bread alternates with gluey mayonnaise, glistening slivers of gravadlax and dull roast beef, segments of egg so hard boiled that there’s a green ring around the yolk. The sight is disgusting but, at the same time, she feels ready to eat the whole gateau. She carefully lifts her portion onto a plate.

She is so very tired, as if she isn’t properly awake. She could lie down and go to sleep right here, on the plastic flooring of the parish hall. Sleep and eat are what she wants to do these days, nothing else.