by Otaro Maijo
Today again, our mothers left breakfast for us, and we brought what they had made and gathered to eat it at one table. But today was just slightly different. Usually, we eat at Nulla and Inte’s house, since they have the biggest family and the biggest table. But today the sky was so very blue, and the clouds were racing across it in such wonderful shapes, that it was hard to stay indoors. Someone suggested we have a picnic, so we carried the table out to the garden and had our breakfast in the open air.
And what a lovely breakfast it was! So lovely I found myself wondering why we didn’t do this every day. The sausages and milk and eggs were even more delicious than usual—perhaps they were delighted to be set outdoors too. The goat cheese dissolved softly on my tongue, the wonderful flavor rippling through my mouth. Cheese this fresh and soft is better eaten just as it is, rather than spread on bread. Everyone seemed to be enjoying it. Nulla had piled a ridiculous mound on a slice of toast, more than he could possibly fit in his mouth, and when he tried, he planted the end of his nose in the pile. As I watched, quite appalled, his little brother Inte reached out for the cheese to repeat the trick. So I slapped his hand. I shudder to think how our meals would deteriorate if I weren’t here to counter the bad influence of Nulla and Inte. But I suppose all boys have their naughty side. Which is why we girls have to keep an eye on them. When I told them they mustn’t play with their food, Hejdanatt chimed in to say that it was a waste of perfectly good cheese. And Adju and Nej had to add their own two cents after her.
Today was a wonderful, wonderful day—the first day of summer vacation. As soon as we had finished our breakfast, Nulla and Inte began looking around for something to do. It was, they said, much too much trouble to go all the way to school to play soccer. How about swimming in the river? Or having an adventure in the forest? Perhaps we should go tease Lorna’s dog. Or go hunting for insects. The boys tossed out ideas one after another.
Now that we had finished our meal, we girls needed to decide what we wanted to do as well. Adju and Hejdanatt and Nej all looked at me. Since the weather was so fine, I was in favor of going to the river or the woods to play with the boys. Still, I knew that Adju didn’t like to join in their games since she thought they could get too rough. Her older sister, Hejdanatt, on the other hand, was as rough and competitive as they come.
I told the boys that they mustn’t go into the Western Forest.
Of course they wanted to know why.
Because, I explained, a terrifying monster had recently made its home there.
As I might have foreseen, this news only excited their curiosity. “What kind of monster?” Nulla wanted to know.
“The kind that snatches children and cuts them up into little pieces,” I told them.
Inte was properly frightened now, but Nulla’s eyes sparkled. “And then eats them?” he wanted to know.
“Apparently not,” I told him. “The monster takes them deep into the forest, all in pieces, and leaves them alone to die ever so slowly.”
At this last bit of information I finally detected a look of fear in Nulla’s eyes.
A moment later, however, the boys were busy with their silly games. They pinched each other’s arms and cheeks, apparently conducting experiments to see how much it might hurt to be cut up by the monster.
First Nulla took the skin near Inte’s elbow between his thumb and forefinger and gave it a hard squeeze.
Ouch, ouch!
Inte conceded immediately, apparently in real pain.
Then it was Nulla’s turn.
Inte chose a particularly soft spot on his upper arm and squeezed as hard as he could. Nulla clenched his teeth. “Give up?” Inte asked. Nulla shook his head. He’s a very competitive boy, and he wasn’t likely to surrender that easily.
So Inte found a spot on the white skin of his thigh, protruding from his little shorts, and pinched there with his other hand. The expression on Nulla’s face was almost relaxed now. “Is that the best you can do?” he asked. To look at them, you might have thought Inte was the one being pinched. He closed his eyes and squeezed with all his might. Nulla tensed and his mouth came open in a great circle, as though a cry were about to emerge, but he remained silent. He merely stood there, eyes closed and mouth open, and forced himself to bear up under the pain. It was an impressive feat to behold.
Next Nulla found a fork that was lying on the table and handed it to Inte. “Try using this,” he told his brother, laughing merrily. But Inte looked shocked, and we girls, watching nearby, were horrified.
“Stop, Nulla,” I told him. But he just laughed again and said that such a little fork would never pierce the skin, that it would do nothing more than make a slight impression.
“Have a go,” he told Inte.
Inte held the fork in his hand, but he looked completely lost.
“Stop,” I said again. “You’ll get hurt.”
“Don’t worry,” Nulla said. “I’m sure he’ll be gentle.”
“But why do you want him to?” I asked.
“Because I want to know how the children feel when the monster cuts them,” he said.
This was hardly an explanation. Why would anyone intentionally ask you to hurt him? But as I stood puzzling over his answer, he urged his brother again.
“Just a little stab, Inte,” he said. Inte closed his eyes and, gripping the fork in his hands, he planted it in Nulla’s abdomen. “Doesn’t hurt a bit,” said Nulla. “Look,” he added, rolling up his shirt to expose the soft white skin of his belly. “Do it again,” he said.
Inte was clearly upset, but what could he do, with Nulla egging him on like that? He closed his eyes, clutched the fork tighter, and slowly pushed it into Nulla’s stomach.
“Harder,” said Nulla.
Inte pushed the fork and at last the tip buried itself in Nulla’s skin.
“Still nothing,” Nulla said, so Inte planted it deeper. By now the tines of the fork had vanished into Nulla—though he showed no signs of distress.
“Harder, harder,” he ordered.
I wondered how he could be standing the pain, but judging from the smile on his face he was much less uncomfortable than when his brother had pinched him a moment ago.
The top of the fork’s handle had disappeared into Nulla’s belly.
“Nope, nothing,” he said. “A fork doesn’t hurt at all.” Looking terribly relieved, Inte immediately pulled it out. A line of four red dots appeared on Nulla’s skin.
Then, in the blink of an eye, Nulla had taken the fork from Inte’s hand and replaced it with a knife that had been left on the table.
“Try this instead,” he told his brother. The blood seemed to drain from Inte’s face.
“Stop it!” I cried.
Nulla laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It can’t be any worse than the fork. Give it a try, Inte. Just like before.”
Then he grabbed Inte’s hand and pulled the knife straight toward his gut. The flat, silver tip of the blade entered near the marks left by the fork and disappeared slowly under the skin. Nulla’s belly must have been very soft, because the blade slid in quite easily as we stood there and watched. I was hypnotized now, unable to look away. The other girls were staring too. Very slowly, Nulla pulled his brother’s hand toward him, drawing the blade into his body.
“I can’t feel a thing,” he said, letting go of Inte’s hand at last. “Try pushing it a little deeper.”
Inte did as he was told, and the knife disappeared bit by bit into Nulla’s belly.
Then, all at once, Nulla, who had maintained an icy calm up to this point, suddenly let out a terrible scream and collapsed into a chair.
Inte, his face instantly gone white, pulled back on the knife, and as he did, Nulla slipped from the chair and onto the floor. Inte tossed the knife aside and bent over his brother. “Nulla!” he cried, and the rest of us rushed over to them. “Null
a! Nulla! Are you all right?” we called, but he just lay there with his eyes closed, his clenched teeth visible between his lips.
Foolish Nulla!
That’s what comes of playing with knives!
Nulla! we called again.
But then from somewhere we could suddenly hear an eerie laugh, and when we looked more closely, it was clear that Nulla’s shoulders were shaking in time with the sound.
He’d fooled us completely!
I hit him on the back, and his eyes opened in a bright smile. “Gotcha!” he giggled.
We felt relieved and exhausted and crestfallen somehow all at once, and the whole group collapsed in a circle on the ground. Nulla looked around at us, smiling his inimitable smile, but Inte, perhaps still not understanding that his brother had been playing a trick on us, stood over him with a flabbergasted look on his face.
Nulla stood at last. “Gotcha, gotcha,” he said and danced away as if to mock us. It was only then that Inte seemed to realize what had happened—but the realization made him suddenly very mad.
“Nulla!” he screamed, chasing after his brother. Nulla just laughed and ran away, followed by the furious Inte; and since it appeared the chase was on, we girls joined in, crying out wildly as we, too, ran after Nulla. Thus it was that the first day of our summer holidays began with an impromptu game of tag.
When we had finished with tag and then hide-and-seek, we returned the plates and bowls we had brought from our kitchens, tidied up the table, and sat down to discuss how to spend the day. In the end, we decided to go down to the river.
The river was full of fish and freshwater crabs, and Nulla and Inte were always anxious to try to catch them—though we girls much preferred to simply look at these creatures as we paddled about in the clear water.
A large trout came swimming up from the bottom and passed right near where I was floating, its body slowly undulating, as though it were showing off its handsome scales. Golden sunlight filtered down, glinting brightly off the fish’s belly. It was so pretty that I decided not to tell the boys. The trout sank again below me, swimming majestically away upstream. It occurred to me that the fish must be some powerful being that inhabited the river, and it made me happy to think that I was the only one who had caught a glimpse of it.
I climbed up on the bank and let the bright sun warm my chilled body for a few minutes, and then we all headed off on a walk downstream. Branches had fallen from the trees and were floating in the river. The boys fished out two that had been smoothed in the water and used them for a swordfight. The girls wandered slowly along the bank, searching for oddly shaped rocks and pretty pebbles. Adju found one that was snow white. It was so pure it seemed almost translucent, like a piece of smoky glass. “Maybe it’s a gemstone,” she said, and I thought she might be right. Hejdanatt and I were a bit jealous of her discovery and began searching more carefully among the stones on the shore, but neither of us could find anything like the white jewel.
Before long we realized it was lunchtime, so we climbed up from the river and walked back to the village. My mother and father had returned from work for lunch, and the smell of grilling fish wafted from the house. After promising to continue our adventures in the afternoon, we went our separate ways.
My mother was in the kitchen stirring a pot of soup, while my father sat on the sofa in the living room finishing the newspaper he had started this morning. I decided to interrupt his reading by climbing onto his lap.
Then we waited a long while, stomachs growling with hunger, for Olle to come home from soccer. I suggested we eat without him, but my father said we must wait, so I was forced to simply imagine how delicious the fish and soup and all the rest would taste.
But at last it became apparent that Olle was really much later than usual. What could have happened to him? I would have liked to go look for him at school, but the walk there took more than an hour, which was beyond my strength, especially since I had eaten nothing since morning. I was so weak I doubted I could rise from my chair.
I caught sight of Nulla and the others outside our window. Hejdanatt came to the door and called for me. I barely managed to drag myself over to meet her.
“Let’s go,” she said. I just shook my head, unable to speak. “Haven’t you eaten yet?” she asked.
“No,” I told her. “We haven’t even started. Olle’s not back from school and we have to wait for him.”
“He must have stopped off somewhere on the way home,” Hejdanatt said.
“I suppose so,” I said. But I doubted he’d have lingered long if he were as hungry as I was. He was usually so prompt when it came to meals.
“You should go ahead without me,” I told Hejdanatt. “I’ll come along once I’ve eaten. Where do you think you’ll be?”
“You know,” said Hejdanatt, ignoring my question, “for some reason I think Olle may have gone to the Western Forest. It’s right on the way home from school, almost like a shortcut. Maybe he tried to go through.”
This thought took my breath away. The Western Forest? Hejdanatt was right that it stood between our village and the school. Our normal route went far out of the way to steer clear of the forest. But there was a path—a narrow and dark one—that went straight through. The grown-ups sometimes took it, and the boys too, as a test of courage if there were several in a group, but we girls never went that way.
Had Olle, in his hurry to get home, gone that way alone? If he had, perhaps the monster we’d heard about had got him! I stood there in the doorway, terrified, even forgetting how hungry I was.
Hejdanatt tried to reassure me, insisting he would be home soon, but I could only shake my head. “If he were coming home, he’d be here by now,” I told her. I knew he would never skip a meal if he had a choice. I turned to see my father get up from the kitchen table and go into the living room to telephone the school.
“Is Olle still there?” he asked. Hejdanatt and I watched for any change in his expression. He listened for a moment, gripping the phone tightly. “I see,” he said. “Thank you.” Then he put down the receiver.
“Is he still playing soccer?” I asked him, but he just shook his head.
“They said practice ended quite some time ago and everyone has gone home.” Before these words were out of his mouth, a shiver went through my body. I was sure now that he had taken the road through the forest and that the monster had caught him.
But I wasn’t about to tell my mother and father what I was thinking. I knew how much they loved Olle, and if they thought he’d been captured by a monster, cut into pieces, and carried away to some secret spot in the forest, they would have gone mad with grief. I didn’t want to cause them such terrible pain.
But what was I to do? The rumors said that the monster cut up the children but didn’t kill them right away. Instead he took them deep into the forest to suffer a slow and painful death. Then perhaps Olle was still alive. Perhaps he was hurt but had managed to survive and was hidden away somewhere. If that were so, then I would go to his rescue. He was my big brother after all, and that’s what any good sister would do.
“Hejdanatt,” I said, taking her by the hand, going outside, and shutting the door, “I think you’re right. I think Olle took the forest road and was caught by the monster. I have to try to find him, and I’m hoping you and the others will come with me.”
A terrified look spread over Hejdanatt’s face. “But we don’t even know that the monster got him,” she said.
“I can’t stay here and do nothing!” I told her. “The monster could be doing horrible things to him even as we speak!” I started to run. I couldn’t hold still anymore, and I suppose part of me didn’t want Hejdanatt to see the tears welling up in my eyes.
A few moments later, I was hurrying as fast as I could toward the forest, praying for Olle—my dear, naughty brother Olle. Why would you have gone in the monster’s lair? I prayed he was alive, t
hat the monster had spared him even if he was in its clutches, and that my trembling legs would carry me to him in time.
I soon found myself near the entrance to the forest. When you had passed along the road from the village through a pleasant grove, you came suddenly to a wall of massive, dark fir trees: the Western Forest. Although it was summertime, there was no sign that animals lived here. In the trees along the way, I had heard birds singing and seen tracks left by all sorts of creatures, but the forest was dark and silent, as though it absorbed all the sound around it.
I was determined to keep going, to run straight on into the wall of trees, knowing that if I stopped or hesitated I might never get my legs moving again. I was close now, the entrance to the forest in sight, but the path ahead, beneath the overhanging limbs, was dark and obscure. Still, I had no choice but to go on.
But just as I was about to pass under the first dark boughs, an old man and woman came walking out of a thicket by the path. I had never laid eyes on either of them before.
“Young lady!” said the old man, beckoning to me. “Please stop. You must not enter the forest.”
But I couldn’t stop; I couldn’t have kept my legs from propelling me forward even if I’d tried. Then, as I ran on, another old man and woman appeared from the underbrush and called out to me as well.
“Don’t go into the forest!”
I wanted to tell them I understood, but that my brother was in there and I had to go. But I was so breathless from running that the words just wouldn’t come out.
Still a third and then a fourth old couple appeared from different spots near the forest, and all of them tried to stop me, but at last I closed my eyes and ignored them. I was nearly under the trees now. All I had to do was run straight ahead.
Perhaps because my eyes were closed, I could hear everything quite clearly—the sound of my footsteps and my breath and the voices of the old people calling to me. I knew that they were worried, but the voice I wanted to hear was Olle’s.
