The Key (24 page)

In the changing room, Anna-Karin sits down on a bench and looks at her hands. They look perfectly ordinary. She feels the same as ever. It would be easy to tell herself that the bar really was about to break, but she knows it is not so.

‘What actually happened?’ Minoo asks.

Earth is associated with strength
. That was what Adriana had said when she explained to them about the elements for the first time.
Physical as well as mental
.

‘The bar was in bad shape,’ Anna-Karin says.

She is ashamed. Ashamed because now she will cause a new problem for the others. She won’t manage to control this new power. She will become a threat to herself and everyone else. Again.

The ceiling lights flicker, go dark and then come on again. Anna-Karin walks to the lockers and turns the key gently so she doesn’t break it. She gets her clothes out.

‘It was quite a shock, though. I think I’d better go home,’ she says.

‘OK,’ Minoo says. Her eyes have an inward look.

If she was her usual self, she would have seen straight through me, Anna-Karin thinks.

When she walks upstairs to the entrance lobby, habit makes her reach for the handrail. She remembers just in time and pulls her hand back.

* * *

Rain is hammering against the windowpanes. Minoo leans her head in her hands and stares at the lab bench. The cow’s eye lies in its dish and looks back at her. The others are already busy separating the iris from the cornea. Minoo hasn’t been able to bring herself even to lift her scalpel.

She didn’t lie when she told Lollo that she felt unwell. Whenever she thinks about yesterday, which she does incessantly, it feels as if she has a red-hot iron ball in her stomach. She can hardly sit upright.

She wishes that she dared go home and lose herself in the black smoke. But her experience yesterday frightened her. The depths she had disappeared into made her fearful because, next time, maybe not even a slap would bring her back.

There’s a knock on the door. Ove Post, who has been dozing at his desk, wakes with a jerk.

‘Come in,’ he says.

He straightens up when the principal, Tommy Ekberg, steps into the classroom. Tommy’s flushed face matches the colour of his shirt and he can’t quite hide his breathlessness.

‘Minoo?’ he asks while his eyes scan the room.

The ball catches fire. Something has happened.

It mustn’t be Dad, not Dad, not Dad
.

‘You have a visitor,’ Tommy says once he has spotted her. ‘A relative. Your uncle, I believe. Apparently he has come about quite an urgent matter.’

Minoo has no uncle. It must be a misunderstanding. Could it be her titular uncle, Bahar’s husband? But why would Reza turn up in Engelsfors? And why come and see her at school?

All eyes are on Minoo as she gets up and leaves the classroom.

‘What’s happened?’ she asks as they step into the stairwell.

‘He wants to speak to you face-to-face,’ Tommy says in a gentle voice.

Minoo follows him downstairs. Her eyes fix on the large keyring in his back pocket. The keys rattle with every step he takes. Her brain is churning with nightmare scenarios, one hooking onto the next. Mum and Bahar might have been involved in a terrible accident in Stockholm and Reza came all the way here to break the news. Maybe he spoke to Dad first and Dad had a heart attack because it hasn’t been at all good for him to start exercising so suddenly and now he’s in hospital and no one knows if he is going to pull through. Maybe he is dead already. Mum and Bahar might be dead, too.

She tries to block these thoughts. Tries to persuade herself that all this is completely unrealistic, but her dread is too tangible, feels too real for reasoning to be effective.

Tommy escorts her into his office.

‘You can talk in peace and quiet in here,’ he says pleasantly and leaves.

A man in his fifties is standing in front of the desk. His greying hair is slightly ruffled and his eyes are keen. He examines Minoo intently. He wears a navy-blue suit and the top buttons of his light blue shirt are casually undone.

She has definitely never seen him before.

‘I apologise for the theatricals,’ he says. ‘But I thought you might prefer that we meet here. On neutral ground, as it were.’

He smiles boyishly.

‘My name is Walter Hjorth,’ he says. ‘I’m chairman of the Council.’

Walter Hjorth holds out his hand and Minoo forces herself to take it and squeeze it with a decent amount of pressure, while not allowing herself to faint from utter terror.

Gustaf and Rickard. The Council has found out that she has told them everything.

‘Shall we sit down so we can relax while we chat?’ Walter says.

He settles on the sofa and Minoo sinks down on the armchair. Her pulse is beating so hard that her field of vision vibrates.

‘Just to let you know, I told Tommy that I’m here because of a family crisis,’ Walter explains. ‘I do hope it won’t cause you any trouble.’

Minoo is aware of how close she is to babbling hysterically, to going on about how it wasn’t Gustaf and Rickard’s fault and that she will do everything to put it right and of course she will take her punishment for revealing things to the people from the non-magic world but they must leave Gustaf and Rickard alone. But she manages to keep her urge under control. Better let Walter do the talking.

‘Relax,’ Walter says and smiles boyishly again. ‘I’ve come to sort out this mess.’

What mess? Minoo wonders. The Gustaf-and-Rickard mess? Or some other mess?

‘I’ve led the Swedish section of the Council for almost twenty years,’ Walter says. ‘But I must admit I’ve never experienced anything like this. Everything has gone completely out of control. And, as my father used to say, when things get out of hand, your first job must be to find out
why
. So that’s what I’m trying to do. I want to get a grip on what actually went wrong here. It’s far from easy, I assure you.’

He is still smiling but a little sadly now. What
is
all this about?

‘I don’t do conflict if I can avoid it,’ he continues. ‘Frankly, it’s not how I operate. But now, well, it is as if we were at war. It is a bloody miserable situation, in my view. Bloody unnecessary, for all involved. And it is entirely my fault.’

He places his hand on his chest and looks at Minoo with a frank expression on his face. She understands less and less by the minute.

‘I ought to have come here at a much earlier stage,’ he says. ‘But I believed Alexander when he assured me that he had control of the situation.’

Minoo notes that it has stopped raining.

The clock on the wall is ticking loudly.

‘The court case was a disaster,’ Walter says. ‘A colossal mistake. Alexander shouldn’t have started the process, but he’s so obsessed with following all the rules he never takes the consequences into account. You have surely heard the tragic story about Adriana as a young woman?’

Minoo wonders if this is a trap, if he is trying to make her admit that Adriana has told them too much about her past. But Walter talks on, apparently untroubled.

‘It happened just after I had taken on the chairmanship. Adriana had a love affair with a bloody talented natural witch, guy called Simon Takahashi. They planned to leave the Council and escape together. Alexander turned them in.’

Minoo only knew that Alexander carried out the torture-style punishment that bound Adriana to the Council forever. She hadn’t thought it would be possible to dislike him even more, but it’s clear that isn’t the case.

‘He believed he did the right thing back then as well,’ Walter says. ‘And I knew no better. As I’ve mentioned, I was new to the job at the time and really feeling the pressure. I was trying to live up to what I construed as the expectations of the world. I have bosses, too, the members of the joint board of the European Councils in Paris. But I’m not trying to blame anyone else. We punished Adriana and Simon far too harshly. If only I could turn back time …’

He seems to withdraw into himself and sits in silence for a while. Minoo has seen through Adriana’s eyes how Simon died and she has experienced Adriana’s suffering. Even so, she finds it difficult to link these events to the man sitting opposite her. It seems unreal.

Her pulse is beating more slowly now. There is nothing threatening about Walter’s manner. Besides, being frightened is so exhausting.

‘My belief is that this tragic incident has hung over us ever since,’ he says in the end. ‘It certainly influenced what went on here. One error led to another. Now I hope we’ll be able to put all that behind us. Start afresh. We agree about what we want, after all.’

‘And what is that?’ Minoo asks nervously.

Walter looks at her, pins her down with his intense gaze. She notices that his eyes are grey.

‘We want to stop the apocalypse.’

Minoo tries to understand.

Adriana has told them that most of the Council members believe neither in the apocalypse nor in the Chosen Ones. That they regard the whole narrative as some sort of myth or fairy tale. The Council’s own court announced that the Chosen Ones in Engelsfors were nothing but a bluff invented by Adriana.

‘But, the court—’ Minoo begins.

‘Ah, the court,’ Walter interrupts contemptuously. ‘Those dinosaurs are precisely the kind of ancient Council members that make my job so bloody difficult. You mustn’t see me in the same light. They belong to the old generation who refuse to take on board where the world is going now. Though, in this case, that’s just as well. If the rumour that the end of the world is near started doing the rounds … well, you can imagine what would follow.’

Minoo hasn’t thought a lot about that angle. She has mostly focused on the end of the world itself.

‘Of course, many would choose not to believe it,’ Walter says thoughtfully. ‘Others would go out to spread the news of impending doom around the world. And some would kill their families and then themselves. But the majority would simply decide that nothing mattered any more. And these people would become the real threat, Minoo. Because, for them, there would be no limits. Everything would be allowed. Vandalism. Theft. Rape. Murder.’

He looks at her again and his expression is sad.

‘When you think about it, it’s a good thing that the court insisted that the apocalypse isn’t real. Don’t you agree?’

Minoo finds herself nodding in agreement.

‘Which is the reason I try to keep this operation secret,’ Walter continues. ‘I have not informed my superiors in Europe and elsewhere. It would just lead to a lot of internal chatter. They might even set out to stop us, which would mean we wouldn’t be able to help anyone. We must be left alone to carry out our task. You and I.’

‘What do you mean?’ Minoo asks.

It feels as if it should be obvious but she cannot make the connection.

‘I thought the guardians had given you a heads-up,’ Walter says.

The burning pain that she has endured all day ceases immediately.

She is icy cold now.

A stranger will make you an offer
.

No, not that. Not the Council. Minoo presses herself against the back of the chair until it feels as if she is practically disappearing inside it.

‘Now I understand how unexpected this must be for you,’ Walter says. ‘Not that the situation was expected by any of us. Especially not by me.’

He looks calmly at her and leans forward.

‘A while ago, I found I could study the
Book of Patterns
in a way that was entirely new. The book spoke to me. It told me the history of the world. How the demons came and how some of them stayed, were influenced by our world and decided to become our guardians instead. The book spoke of the portals. About the Chosen Ones. And about the origin of the Council. An origin which, very regrettably, we had forgotten all about.’

‘So you know …
everything
?’ Minoo says.

‘That’s what the guardians claim, anyway,’ he says and smiles.

Minoo doesn’t know what to make of this. All the time, Matilda and the guardians have urged the Chosen Ones to stay clear of the Council. And now she is faced with the Council’s leader sitting here and saying the
Book of Patterns
has insisted that they must collaborate.

‘What do you want from us?’ Minoo asks.

‘This is hard for you to accept, I know Minoo, but the fact is that your group will not be able to close the portal.’

‘We might … there’s a chance at least,’ she says, and hears how feeble she sounds.

Walter shakes his head.

‘Not a hope, I’m sorry to say. Ask the
Book of Patterns
if you don’t believe me. All the elements are required to close the portal. And though it should be the Chosen Ones, now that three of you are dead …’ He pauses.

‘I wish I could make you believe how terrible I’ve felt about that. If we hadn’t been entangled in all that bureaucracy … in my world, there are no excuses for what has happened.’

‘Nor in mine,’ Minoo says.

‘I realise that.’

‘But, as I asked earlier,’ Minoo says, ‘what do you want from me?’

Walter sits back in the sofa again and watches her. She forces herself not to look away.

‘I am trying to form a circle that will include some of the most powerful natural witches I can find,’ Walter says. ‘One representing each element. Together, we can close the portal.’

‘The Chosen Ones cannot be replaced. You said so yourself just a moment ago.’

‘Another circle can take the place of the Chosen Ones,’ Walter says. ‘If you are part of it.’

Minoo feels the chill spreading throughout her body.

‘No.’

‘I thought that it would be your first reaction,’ Walter says. ‘But you really do not have a choice.’

You must accept it. And you must do what is demanded of you and do it wholeheartedly
.

‘If what you say is true, then why not invite other witches into
our
circle instead?’ Minoo has difficulty keeping her voice under control. ‘We only need three more.’

‘The guardians considered that alternative as well, of course,’ Walter says. ‘But when they look at all the different ways the future can go, whichever way the guardians twist and turn, the alternatives … everything always ends in doom, Minoo. For some reason, your circle cannot be completed by adding new witches. Our only hope,
the world
’s only hope, is that you join us.’