by Maria Parr
Then I felt it too. I was overcome with cold and fear, and my whole body was shivering.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to explain what it was like to take that steaming-hot cup of warm squash in my hands. The wind was roaring against the walls outside, but Lena and I were sitting close together on an old sofa, propped up with cushions and wrapped in blankets. Our wet clothes were hanging over by the stove, making the windows steam up. The lovely squash sent waves of warmth through my body.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, which was the first word I had been able to say. “We need to phone home,” I added.
“The signal’s down,” said Axel.
Oh no! Dad was going to be worried to death! And Mom! This was the last thing she needed.
“I just managed to send a message before the network blacked out,” said Ellisiv when she saw how panicked I was. “They know you’re safe.”
I’ve been through stormy nights before. Not every year, but often enough to know what it’s like at home. Dad paces anxiously, wondering if the barn, the boats, and everything else are all right, while Mom keeps on saying that there’s nothing they can do but wait. As a rule, when the wind’s really strong — when the storms are big enough to have names — then we’re ordered to go down to Grandpa’s apartment in the basement. That’s where it’s safest. It’s not like my bedroom in the attic, where you can hear the roof tiles rattling above your head. Were my family down in Grandpa’s apartment now? Were they able to relax now they knew Lena and I were here? Were they really, really angry?
Axel put more wood on the fire. He clearly knew what he was doing with that massive stove. More gusts of wind shook and tore at the house. Lena had been blue with cold when we arrived there, but the warm squash put life back in her. Now her cheeks were as red as Santa’s. She looked at Ellisiv, then at Axel, and then back at Ellisiv again.
“So, Axel. Haven’t you got a girlfriend in town?” she asked eventually.
I’d forgotten to tell her! Ellisiv went bright red, and Axel cleared his throat.
“She dumped him,” I whispered to Lena, hoping that she might start talking about the weather instead. That would give her plenty to talk about today of all days. But no.
“So are you two boyfriend and girlfriend now?”
I looked down at my squash in embarrassment.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Ellisiv mumbled.
Axel stopped poking the fire. “What?” he said. “Aren’t we boyfriend and girlfriend? What are we, then?”
“Well . . .” said Ellisiv, her face turning redder than that time when we were nine and Lena had punched Kai-Tommy in the middle of the classroom.
A very awkward silence spread through the room. Luckily the wind was really raging outside.
Lena took a swig of her squash.
“You two would make a good couple, anyway,” she said eventually, just to settle the matter. “Can we offer you a few pounds of chocolate?”
We swept up our haul from the hallway floor and laid it out on the table. While we were doing that, Axel spotted Lena’s soggy plaster cast.
“I think it might be best if we took that cast off,” he said.
“Yes.” Lena nodded. “It was supposed to be coming off on the third of January, anyway.”
Ellisiv fetched some scissors and a knife. Soon Lena was stretching out her fingers in a way she hadn’t been able to for some time.
“Now you’re ready to stand in goal again,” said Axel, giving her a pat on the back.
That was enough to make Lena fall silent. She closed her lips tightly, as if she hadn’t heard what he’d said.
“It’s mainly Halvor who stands in goal now,” I said.
Axel looked at Lena, confused. “Aren’t you the goalie anymore?”
Lena took one of the chocolate bars that Thunderclap Kåre had given us and broke it up into pieces with short, sharp snaps.
“Lena?” Axel wasn’t giving up.
“You bet your cod liver oil I’m a goalie. I just don’t have a goal to stand in,” she said.
Lena had been grumbling and moaning about soccer practice to everybody back in Mathildewick Cove, and we’d all listened with half an ear, waiting for it to blow over. Now I saw two grown adults get almost as worked up about the situation as Lena herself. Axel leaned over the table and asked her all about the practices with Ivar and the boys, and Lena reluctantly told him how life had been on the field over the last few months.
“But that’s not fair, Lena,” said Ellisiv. “Even I know you’re a good goalie.”
Axel nodded. “It’s not right, Lena.”
He seemed genuinely angry about how Lena had been treated. I felt a pang of guilt. Why hadn’t I been angry?
“What would you think about starting to play in town?” Axel asked.
“Huh?” said Lena.
“I know Lash, the man who trains the girls two years older than you. They’ve been struggling to find a decent goalie this season. Would you like to try out with them?”
“On a girls’ team?” said Lena, as if he’d suggested that she should play with a team of camels.
“Well, you are a girl, Lena,” Ellisiv said dryly. “If you’re going to carry on playing soccer, sooner or later you’ll have to join a girls’ team.”
I was sure Lena would say no. No way would she dare to change teams! Deep in thought, she wolfed down five pieces of chocolate.
“Which days do they practice on?” she asked eventually.
I glanced at her sideways, surprised. Was she really that brave? I wasn’t sure if it was a pang of envy I was feeling, or something else.
As the night wore on, the weather worsened. There was no longer any doubt that this was a hurricane. Axel paced around the small living room nervously, and at one point he went out onto the doorstep, but he quickly came back indoors.
“This house has stood here since the eighteen hundreds,” said Ellisiv, “so I’m sure it’ll last tonight too.”
She drew Lena close in the crook of her arm, in the way only Ellisiv can, and they fell asleep there on the sofa.
The wind dropped early the next morning. At daybreak, we went outside and stood on the doorstep, speechless. It was as if the world had been through the fight of its life and was now gasping for breath. Ellisiv’s plum tree had snapped right in two, leaving sharp white splinters. Farther toward Mathildewick Cove, fallen spruce trees littered the road, and in some spots, pieces of the asphalt surface had been washed away. One of the lampposts down below the house was clumsily curtsying to us. Behind all of this was the ocean, a gray, seasick mass.
The thought of Lena and me having been out in all this made me feel very queasy. Down at the shore, big, restless breakers rolled onto the land, throwing up branches and debris between the rocks.
“I wonder what it was like on Kobbholmen last night,” Lena said, full of thought. “Do you think the house is still standing?”
Before I could answer, we heard the sound of a tractor. It stopped a bit up the road, unable to get any farther. Somebody leaped out and started scrambling over the fallen spruce trees. It was Dad.
“Trille!”
When he finally reached the house I was captured in a bear hug. After a moment, he swept Lena into the same hug. Wasn’t he angry?
“Is it safe to be out in the tractor before they’ve cleared the road?” Lena asked.
Dad let go of her. “Safe?” he shouted. “You’ve got some nerve asking that, after you went strolling around caroling in the middle of Armageddon!”
He was angry. Extremely angry.
“Where’s Isak?” Lena asked meekly.
I could hear in her voice that she would have liked him to be the one to come along in the tractor and give us a bear hug.
“Isak?” Dad clasped his hands together. “Isak’s with Kari, Lena! Trille became a big brother again overnight!”
My brother had chosen the stormiest night in living memory to be born. A night when huge trees had blocked the road so no amb
ulance could get through. A night when the ferry couldn’t sail. And a night when the phones and emergency networks were down, so nobody could call anyone.
While the hurricane winds blasted our cove again and again, Mom had given birth to a whole new person down in Grandpa’s apartment. The storm had made Isak the midwife and Ylva the nurse. Minda and Magnus had run around the apartment like mad, fetching towels and water, stoking the fires and keeping an eye on the candles. And Grandpa, who rarely got worked up about anything, had been wandering around like a nervous wreck, ranting and raving, puzzling over who on earth had the great idea that women should go through so much pain when they were having children. Krølla was the only one who’d slept through the whole drama.
“And it wasn’t a brother after all, Trille,” said Dad, his voice all puffed up, when we’d clambered carefully over the fallen trees and gotten into the tractor.
He turned the key very energetically. “It’s a sister, folks! A big, strong, round bundle of a sister!”
Grandpa had weighed her at once on his fishing scale: 4,790 grams — more than ten and a half pounds!
“Do you realize what a mother you’ve got?” Dad shouted wildly, pinching my cheek so hard it hurt. “Do you realize?”
Did I realize what a mother I’d got? I stood there, peeping around the corner of the bedroom door. She was as peaceful as Dad was half-mad. Her gray bangs curled delicately over her forehead. She looked like she was resting after some kind of hurricane too. Krølla was sitting next to the bed, sparkling like the sun. You could see from her glow that she was now a big sister.
“Trille dear,” Mom said softly when I went in, stroking my cheek. “What on earth were you thinking?”
I was about to answer, but she clearly wasn’t that upset.
“Look,” she just said, nodding toward the cradle. “Feel free to pick her up.”
“She hardly weighs anything,” Krølla said from the other side of the cradle.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Mom mumbled, clearly worn out, laying her head back on the pillow.
I carefully picked up this little person. I was a fair bit younger when Krølla was born, and I don’t remember all that much about it, so I was quite unprepared for what it would feel like to hold my new little sister in my arms. She more or less just crawled into my heart and made herself comfortable. If she’d ordered me to do a book presentation, I would’ve done it. That’s how it felt. Outside, the wind had turned everything upside down, but here she lay, peaceful and safe, and new to the world. It was incredible!
I’ll always look after you, I thought, looking at her round, red face and half-open mouth.
Lena came in silently behind me. She looked at the little girl with a serious expression and shook her head slightly when I asked if she wanted to hold her. Instead she gently stroked one of her strong, stringy fingers over the top of the baby’s nose. Then she sighed and left.
It was strange having no electricity or Internet connection, but quite good too. Later in the day, Ylva and Dad warmed up some Christmas leftovers on the living-room stove and managed to throw together a meal for everybody. Magnus was the only one who interrogated Lena and me about our caroling expedition. I was pleased it was lost in all the fuss, although we’d probably hear more about it when things calmed down.
“Has she got a name?” I asked when we were all gathered around the table, and Mom was feeding my little sister in the armchair by the stove.
I’d been a little worried about this aspect. Neither Krølla nor I think we’ve been especially lucky with our names. There’s a reason we’re known by our nicknames, put it that way. Mom and Dad exchanged looks.
“We’re thinking about calling her something to do with wind and hurricanes,” said Mom.
“Such as?” Magnus asked skeptically.
“Stormetta,” said Dad. “Do you like it?”
Minda stopped chewing and looked at Magnus. He coughed slightly. Stormetta. It was certainly unusual, but we could probably get used to it. In a way, it’s a good thing to have a name that not so many people have. We nodded and shrugged. Stormetta. It would do.
“If I were you, I’d call her something else,” said Lena from the other end of the table.
“Lena!” said Ylva angrily.
Sometimes I think Lena forgets that she’s not one of my siblings too.
Mom chuckled quietly over in her chair. “What do you think she should be called, then?”
Lena swallowed what she was eating and looked at Grandpa.
“I think Inger would be better.”
Hurricanes like the one we’d just had don’t only wash up plastic drums and those scoops you use for bailing out boats. After a quick search down by the water, we’d found an escaped part of a pier, Thunderclap Kåre’s plastic-hulled boat, half a playhouse, and a dead deer. The storm surge had also made a mess of the rocks from the breakwater and smashed the door of our boat shed to smithereens. Luckily, Troll only had some minor hull damage. All in all, it wasn’t that bad in Mathildewick Cove. It was worse elsewhere.
When the electricity came back on and we were connected to the rest of the world again, messages started to stream in about all the destruction. Forests had been flattened like freshly mown grass on several mountainsides, boats and boat sheds had been battered all along the coast, and some people’s houses had even been destroyed.
“When you think about it, the most incredible thing isn’t that our sister arrived last night,” said Magnus when we were down having a look at the breakwater. “The most epic event of the whole hurricane has to be you and Lena going out caroling. It’s so insanely typical of you two.”
“Pssshh,” I said.
As usual after a storm, we trawled the beaches for storm treasure. We could’ve built an entire armada with all the driftwood. Lena was well on the way to designing a new, improved raft.
“The one we made last time was a piece of junk. This time we can pick the proper materials,” she said, examining the rubbish on the shoreline with a critical eye.
I nodded. I could feel in my chest my enthusiasm starting to grow a tiny bit. We might actually make something incredibly good out of all this. Lena hopped happily from stone to stone.
“Huh? Trille, look!” she suddenly shouted, picking up something shiny from an enormous tangle of seaweed.
But I was no longer looking or listening, as a sight had appeared back up by our houses that made my heart skip a beat. Birgit and Haas. They came strolling down the track under the rowan trees. The sun shot orange wintry rays across the fields, making everything glitter around them. She was back!
“Happy New Year.”
Birgit looked warmly at me and at the chaos on the beach. I just smiled. How good it was to see her, and how much I had to tell her! Haas bounded headlong into my stomach, and then he ran down to Lena, who was still standing by the clump of seaweed and didn’t look like she was planning to move from there anytime soon.
“Lena thinks we should build another raft,” I said, shrugging in exasperation.
Birgit laughed and said that she’d prefer not to.
“Me neither, really,” I said, glancing down at Lena, who had just heaved half a boat-shed door up onto the grass, dropping it with a soggy smack.
Haas barked as he leaped around her.
“He’s pleased to be back,” said Birgit. “Mathildewick Cove is better than Amsterdam for a dog.”
I wanted to ask her whether she was also pleased to be back, but I couldn’t. Instead, we set off together and ambled on down to Lena.
“What was it you found?” I asked, remembering that she’d shouted something to me.
“Oh, nothing special,” she grumbled without looking at me.
Then she carried on searching. I could see that she’d hidden something under her jacket, but I thought no more of it.
Wh-why weren’t you at practice yesterday?”
We were back at school again. It was almost time for PE and we were sitting
outside the changing rooms, freezing cold. Andreas was looking at Lena with questioning eyes.
“I’m transferring,” she said curtly.
All the boys stopped talking.
“Transferring? Where are you going to play, then?” Halvor asked in surprise.
“With some girls in town.”
“Oh,” said Andreas. “That’s a sh-shame.”
“Sh-sh-shame,” said Kai-Tommy, imitating him. He and Halvor snickered.
Lena put her feet up on her gym bag and gave them a scowl of contempt.
“I’m not going to waste my life sitting on the bench,” she muttered.
Kai-Tommy smiled. “Good idea to join the girls’ team, in that case,” he said. “It’s more at your level.”
That was it. Finally the old Lena awoke.
“There’s no problem with the level, you circus llama!”
“What did you say?” Kai-Tommy leaned forward.
“I said: there’s no problem with the level, you circus llama!”
Birgit looked at them in astonishment. Was she finally going to see how things worked in our class?
“What is the problem, then?” Kai-Tommy asked.
Lena didn’t answer. Kai-Tommy repeated the question. He was determined to have an answer.
“The coach,” said Lena eventually, looking straight at him.
Kai-Tommy started laughing. “The coach? You really don’t get it, Lena!”
“What is there to get, you amoeba? I’m just as good as Halvor, and yet that father of yours has kept me on the bench the whole season. It’s not fair.”
“You’re not as good as you think,” Kai-Tommy said in mock despair. “You haven’t got a chance of keeping up anymore.”
“That’s a load of rubbish!” Lena shouted, rising to her feet.
“A load of rubbish?”
Kai-Tommy was on his feet too. I remembered the time Lena punched him. They had been more or less the same size then. Now Kai-Tommy was much bigger.
“We’re building up the team,” he said. “Halvor’s in goal because he’s got a future as a goalie. We can’t bring you on just to be nice to girls.”
