by Maria Parr
I started to cry.
“Come on!” I shouted, tugging her mane as hard as I could. The horse kicked her hooves but stayed where she was. It was becoming difficult to breathe, and I could feel I was about to panic.
Then Lena came. Through the smoke. She gripped me by my arm so hard that it hurt and tried to pull me out like I was pulling Molly.
“The horse!” I wailed, no longer able to see anything.
“Get out, Trille! The roof’s collapsing!” Lena’s voice was angry.
“The horse. She won’t budge,” I cried, standing just as still as Molly.
Then Lena let go of my hand.
“That horse is as stupid as a cow!” she shouted, and then very quietly she moved right next to Molly’s ear. There was the sound of cracking and creaking.
“BOO!” Lena yelled suddenly.
Molly galloped out at top speed, making me lose my balance and fall backward. Lena was almost out of the stable when she spotted me.
“Trille!” she shouted fearfully, turning around as quick as a flash. Suddenly a burning beam fell down from the ceiling.
“Trille!” Lena shouted again.
I couldn’t answer. I felt just like Molly—scared stiff. The burning beam lay between me and the door.
Then there she was. Lena jumped over the beam like a kangaroo. Her thin fingers dug into my arm again. She gave an enormous pull and practically threw me toward the exit. In fact, I think she really did throw me. I dragged myself forward for the last stretch toward the open stable door. The next thing I remember is my cheek lying in wet grass and strong hands pulling me all the way out of the stables.
My whole family was out in the rain, and there was shouting and yelling everywhere.
“Lena,” I whispered. I couldn’t see her anywhere. It was Mom who was holding me.
“Lena’s in the stables!” I shouted, trying to get free. But Mom kept holding me. I kicked and shouted and cried, but I couldn’t get free. I looked at the open door helplessly. Lena was inside! Lena was inside the fire. . . .
Then Grandpa came staggering out of the flames with a big bundle in his arms. He sank onto his knees in exhaustion and laid Lena on the grass.
Hospitals. I don’t like them. But they make people better. Here I was, all alone in front of a white door, on a hospital visit. I knocked. Under my arm, I was carrying a box of chocolates. I’d swapped the ones that came in the box for pieces of milk chocolate.
“Come in!” came the shout from inside, as loud as a mixed choir.
Lena was sitting in bed reading an old Donald Duck comic. She had a white bandage on her head, and her hair had been shaved off. Some of it had burned off in the fire, and she had inhaled a lot of smoke too. Otherwise Lena was OK. Everything had been all right in the end, but still it was strange to see her like this.
“Hi,” I said, giving her the box of chocolates.
Lena wrinkled her nose. I quickly told her that there was milk chocolate inside.
“Do you want some strawberry jam?” she asked.
I certainly did. In her bedside drawer, Lena had a whole stock of strawberry jam in small jars. She could get as many as she wanted, she explained. We ate strawberry jam and chocolate for a bit, while I asked Lena if her head hurt and other things that you ask sick people about. Lena wasn’t really hurting. Most of all she wanted to go home. But the doctor said she had to stay there for another day or two so they could keep an eye on her.
“Yes, that’s probably a good idea,” I said, understanding what they meant.
Above her bed hung my picture of Jesus.
“Lena,” I mumbled after a while.
“Mm-hmm?”
“Thank you for saving me.”
She didn’t answer.
“It was brave.”
“Pff,” said Lena, looking to the side. “I did what I had to.”
I thought about that. What she had to? But before I could think any more, Lena added, “I didn’t want my best friend to go up in smoke, did I?”
I was speechless for a long while.
“Am I your best friend?” I said eventually.
Lena gave me a strange look.
“Of course you are! Who else would it be? Kai-Tommy?”
A big stone melted somewhere inside my stomach. I had a best friend! Lena was sitting there with her head shaved and bandaged, licking the strawberry jam out of yet another jar. She had no idea how happy I was!
“I think my knees are going to shake a lot less from now on,” I said, and smiled.
Lena didn’t think so.
“But it was brave of you to go in after that stupid horse,” she admitted. “Oh, by the way, Trille, I’ve proposed,” she added.
“Proposed? To who?”
And then Lena told me how, earlier that day, she’d been lying in her hospital bed, looking as if she were sleeping, while her mother and Isak sat on each side, watching over her. They were talking about love and about Lena and about Mathildewick Cove. Lena realized that Isak didn’t really have anything against living in Mathildewick Cove, if need be. He’d heard that it might be possible to tidy up the cellar, he said.
“But they weren’t getting to the point, Trille!” said Lena. “So eventually I opened my eyes like a flash of lightning.”
“And then what?” I asked excitedly.
“And then I said, ‘Isak, will you marry us?’”
“You did? What did he say?”
Lena gave me another strange look.
“He said yes, of course!”
She put a piece of chocolate in her mouth and chuckled with satisfaction.
“You’re going to have a dad, Lena!” I shouted happily.
Everything was ready when Midsummer came around again. I stood at the wide-open window in my room, looking out across our kingdom. It was hard to believe that days like this existed, with the sun and the sea and the newly cut fields.
“Lena! We’ve got to go out!”
And even though it was the wedding day, with all the wedding fuss, we just slipped out into the summer, Lena and I. We were only causing havoc and getting in the way, anyway. It was better to be running races across the fields.
“Trille, you slowpoke,” Lena huffed when we got down to the shore at exactly the same time.
I thought I was hardly a slowpoke, but I didn’t say so. And then we went paddling and threw seaweed against the boathouse wall with a smack, because nothing makes as good a smacking noise as seaweed. Afterward we hopped all the way across the rocks to Uncle Tor’s, where Lena sneaked on board the shark boat and stuck a dandelion into the cabin keyhole. The heifers were out grazing.
“Do you think it’s possible to ride cattle?” Lena asked.
It is possible, we found out. Lena thought we could take bigger risks now that we had a doctor in the cove. And even though we’d promised Uncle Tor never to borrow his heifers again without asking, we did. And everything went the same way it usually does. Very wrong.
But by the evening, Lena had been patched up and had cleaned off all the cow muck. She was even wearing a dress. It was the Midsummer festival and the wedding, so there was no limit to what she’d agree to.
“I do,” said Isak when the church minister asked if he took Lena’s mom to be his lawful wedded wife.
“I do,” said Lena’s mom when the minister asked her.
As for Lena, she said a massive, loud, and booming “I DO,” even though nobody asked her, because this wedding would never have taken place if it hadn’t been for all of her concussions.
The bonfire burned serenely, the summer evening was mild and warm, and there were more people and music down on our shoreline than there had ever been before.
“Do you think the bride is prettier this year than last?” Grandpa asked me later that evening.
He was sitting on a rock with a cup of coffee, all dressed up, a short distance away from the others.
“Maybe a little,” I confessed, because Lena’s mom was the prettiest bride I
’d ever seen.
“Hm,” said Grandpa, pretending to be offended.
“Are you missing Auntie Granny today?” I asked.
“Maybe a little,” Grandpa answered, turning his coffee cup around in his fingers.
I stood there looking at him for a while, feeling as if my heart were growing inside my chest so that there wasn’t any more space. I wanted to give Grandpa all the good things in the whole world. And all at once I knew what to do. Quietly, I crept away from the shore and up to the farm.
Grandpa’s apartment was half dark and peaceful. I clambered up onto the kitchen counter and stretched as high as I could. There it was, right up on top of the cupboard: Auntie Granny’s waffle iron. I lifted it down and held it in my hands for a while. Then I went into Grandpa’s bedroom. Inside his prayer book was a crumpled, faded piece of paper. Waffle Hearts, it read at the top in old-lady handwriting. That was what Auntie Granny’s waffles were called.
I’m not very good at baking, but I followed the recipe exactly, and soon I had a large bowl of waffle batter. Just when I was about to start cooking, the door banged wide open like a thunderclap.
“What on earth are you doing here?” said Lena, looking at me suspiciously.
Then she caught sight of the waffle iron.
“Ohh . . .”
“Maybe you should go back down,” I suggested, even though I really wanted Lena to stay. “Your mom’s getting married and everything.”
Lena stared at the waffle iron.
“Mom will be fine,” she decided, leaning against the door so that it slammed shut.
I’ll never forget the night that Lena and I made waffle hearts for Grandpa while a real Midsummer bride and groom were celebrating their wedding on the shore. We sat on the kitchen counter, on each side of the waffle iron, saying almost nothing. The music and the happy voices buzzed in the background, making enough noise as it was. I poured the mixture, and Lena took out the waffle hearts.
“You can have your picture back now,” Lena said suddenly. I spilled some mixture outside the waffle iron out of pure astonishment.
“Thank you,” I said happily.
When we’d cooked almost all the mixture, Grandpa came in. He was completely flabbergasted to see us there. And even more flabbergasted when he saw what we were doing.
“Surprise!” Lena shouted, so loudly that the wallpaper almost came off the walls.
And then Grandpa, Lena, and I ate waffle hearts for the first time since Auntie Granny had died. I’m sure that she was smiling down on us from heaven. Grandpa smiled too.
“Good old Trille and the girl from next door,” he said softly a couple of times, shaking his head affectionately.
After seven rounds of waffles, Grandpa fell asleep in his chair. He doesn’t usually stay up so late. Lena and I laid a blanket over him and crept out. We climbed up into the cedar tree. On the shore, the wedding party was still going on. We could just glimpse the people down there in the light summer night.
“Now you’ve got a dad too, Lena,” I said.
“Smoking haddocks, so I have!” She smiled cheerfully, scoffing down the last waffle heart.
And I’ve got a best friend, I thought happily.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2005 Det Norske Samlaget Oslo
Originally published as Vaffelhjarte by Maria Parr with
Det Norske Samlaget Oslo
Published by arrangement with Hagen Agency, Oslo
English-language translation © 2013 by Guy Puzey
Illustrations © 2013 by Kate Forrester
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First U.S. electronic edition 2015
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2014939361
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