the ground was covered with fallen branches and twigs. I worried about Eulalias naked feet but she just tramped on as if she had been wearing boots. Up past the Clearing and the ruin on the other side of the road. Over the moor and into the trees again.
I was watching the landscape as if it was new to me. The darkness changed everything, and in a strange way made it clearer. Suddenly I heard the past whisper behind the bushes, suddenly I could see how the people who once lived here were moving around the corners of their houses like silent or softly rustling shadows. It was as if time shrunk so that I could see it, and I liked it. I looked at that equally sad and forward girl holding my hand and thought that she made me feel both childish and grown-up at the same time.
When Eulalia let go of my hand to climb the first fence I also got a feeling about where we were heading.
She pushed through the junipers and I pushed after her. Then we followed the ridge to the old viking grave, just like I had once done with Granny.
“I suppose you know about this place?” said Eulalia, putting herself on the ground by the big stone at one end of the ship.
“Yes”, I said and sat down next to her.
“But you were never really here, or were you?” she said.
“I’m not sure...” I said.
Eulalia crossed her legs and pulled them up like a tailor, looking around. Not that you could see much – the moon was tiny and thin and didn’t spread much light, and the sun was gone altogether. What we saw looking over the moor beneath the ridge were only vague contours of tall bushes and dry old trees. I could just barely make out were the woods ended and the sky started.
But Eulalia lifted her head and looked towards the stars who lit one by one.
“Maybe I’m wrong”, she said, “but I don’t think you have really been to a place until you’ve been there in the company of stars... Look, there they are, all those who lived here before us but who got satisfied with it in the end and took off to be stars instead!” I felt how Eulalia smiled when she let her eyes wander the sky that sparkled and gleamed more and more as we watched it.
“Did you ever try to see the whole of the sky?” she went on. “You can’t, no matter how you look you’ll never finish!”
“I haven’t thought about it”, I said.
“You should”, she said, “do it now!”
And I leaned the back of my head against the stone and let myself be blinded, let all the lights of the night sink down into my eyes.
She was right – there were too many stars, there was too much sky! You could only watch one or a couple at a time, and that was difficult enough because the eyes constantly wanted to move on. There were so many stars in the sky that night that I almost wondered if there could really have existed as many people.
“And each star has got his own garden?” I asked Eulalia.
“Yessir”, she said, “at least they all have got their own patch. It’s not guaranteed you get a very big garden when you die but you’ll always have room for one or two sunflowers and a couple of snapdragons.” Eulalia put her hand in her pocket and came up with a frog.
“Imelda absolutely wanted to come. She adores watching the stars.”
“Yes”, I said while stroking with a finger over the frogs rough moist head, “she looks as if she might.”
Then we sat silent for a while, the flying girl and the frog who liked watching stars and I.
When Eulalia finally spoke again it was with that sad yet at the same time courageous voice I had learnt to trust. She looked in her lap where the frog seemed to be enjoying the whistling of the woods and the silence of space, and then she looked at me and took my hand. Hers was cool and a bit wet after fondling the frog, but I didn’t mind.
“Look”, she said and pointed with her free hand just above the woods, “do you see that tiny little star next to the strong and shiny one by the tallest pine?”
“Yes”, I said although I wasn’t sure which one she meant.
“It’s called Jörgen and was a wind until a few days ago.”
I couldn’t help laughing because it sounded so ridiculous, but Eulalia took no offence.
“You may laugh”, she said, “but that’s how it is. I knew him, I flew with him, I gave him a name when he got jealous of mine. In return he taught me to do pirouettes in the air.”
I took my eyes off Jörgen and put them on Eulalia instead, waiting for more. And it came:
“But then two days ago when we were out whirling over the sound he said he felt a little weak and we returned to land. There he made me a last pirouette and told me it was time he found his place in the sky, and then he put himself flat on the ground and was gone.”
“But that’s sad”, I said.
“No”, said Eulalia, “it isn’t. Jörgen was old and had been all around the world and most of his buddies became stars a long time ago. And they had marked a spot for him too, with a big garden with a pear tree in it. It could be worse, couldn’t it?”
“I suppose...” I said.
“And now”, said Eulalia, “I’m gonna tell you a fairytale. Are you comfortable?”
“I’m okey”, I said.
“You can put your head on my knees if you want. You’ll see the stars better too.”
It sounded rather good so I lay down on my back, with my head against Eulalias legs, and then she started to tell.
“This isn’t something I know for sure”, she said, “it’s just a fairytale I heard a wind whisper in the woods one day when I was even littler than I am today, and that I tell myself sometimes when I feel sad. Tonight I think I’m gonna tell it to you.”
“I’m not sad”, I said.
“No, but you soon will be. You see, I’m to go away, and then we probably wont see each other again.”
“What...” I felt like a stab in my chest.
“I said I’m gonna go away from here and that we’re not likely to run in to each other again.”
“But why?” I said. “Where are you going?”
“If I knew that I wouldn’t have to go”, Eulalia said in her usual incomprehensible way. It didn’t make me feel very good that she seemed to take our friendship so lightly, but she didn’t of course and I was soon to understand. She said:
“If you would only let me tell you the story. As I said it’s not me who made it up and I don’t know if it’s true but I think it feels true. Listen and you’ll see.”
And Eulalia started to tell.
“Once upon a time there was a forest that grew on an island in the middle of a sea. It wasn’t a very big forest and it wasn’t so dark either. The island was by the way rather small too and not even the sea was all that immense. The only thing that was really limitless was the globe of the sky that arched over it all – blue or greyish in the daytime, and black as soot at night.
Inside the forest lived a strange little girl all alone in an old abandoned house. She couldn’t remember exactly how she had ended up there, but sometimes when she felt sad she would think that maybe she was something that somebody else had made up...”
“Somebody else?” I said, because I didn’t quite understand.
“Yep”, said Eulalia, “sometimes she got the idea that she was no more than a fantasy in the head of somebody else, but that she got bored and broke out so long ago that she couldn’t remember it. How else to explain that she never grew older, and that she didn’t need to eat?”
“She never got older?” I asked.
“Nope”, said Eulalia, “she was always eight years old, no matter how many summers and winters passed by.”
“And she never got hungry?”
“No. Sometimes she would eat anyway, but only because of curiousity or to occupy herself. But now I must continue.”
“Okey”, I said, “go on!”
“Of course she didn’t have any parents because then she wouldn’t have been alone. Her mom and her dad had been forced to leave her soon after she was born, and she hadn’t ever seen them since. She didn’t even remember
what they looked like, only that her father was a mighty wave that rolled around the sea and that her mother was a soft splashing of water...”
“So they weren’t a wind and a scent then?” I said.
“Noo”, said Eulalia sounding almost angry, “those are my parents!”
“Sorry”, I said.
“Is there something else you would like to ask while we’re at it, so that you don’t have to interrupt any more?”
“Yes”, I said, “is there a boy somewhere in this story?”
“For that you will have to wait and see”, said Eulalia, “now I’ll continue.”
“Do that”, I said.
“Well, she lived there and lived pretty well. Sometimes when she was out walking she would get lost and have to stay somewhere else for a while before she found her way home, but it didn’t really matter since there wasn’t anybody to worry. She would roam around the woods and over the moors and along the beaches, and she got to know everybody who lived there.”
“So then she wasn’t totally alone in the forest?” I asked.
“Of course not. There were no people but sheep and squirrels and a rabbit, there were three hedgehogs and several mosquitos and millions of ants. Along the beaches lived splashes and in the trees lived creakings, and in the attic of her house there was a scary padding sound that she could talk to at night. For example.”
“I see”, I said, “go on.”
“Anyway, one day in the summertime she met a little boy in the woods. He lived with his aunt in a house just outside the forest...”
“Granny”, I said.
“No”, said Eulalia,
Eulalia Starwind Page 6
