The Circle (Hammer)

30



AT NINE THIRTY they hear a car approaching, the gravel crunching under its tyres. Minoo puts away her biology book and gets up as a dark blue Mercedes pulls into the fairground.

As soon as the car stops, Anna-Karin climbs out and marches angrily towards the dance pavilion. She stands at a distance from the others, arms folded.

‘Hi,’ Minoo says, but Anna-Karin just stares at the floor.

‘Good morning,’ says the principal, who is walking towards them with Ida in tow.

Ida is clenching her teeth, so hard that Minoo wonders if she can still open her mouth at will.

‘Must have been a pleasant drive,’ Linnéa says.

Vanessa giggles, but Minoo is irritated. Can’t they take this seriously?

Adriana Lopez walks to the middle of the dance floor, her ankle-length winter coat sweeping around her feet. She’s wearing leather gloves and an elegant fur hat. Minoo thinks admiringly that she looks like a character in some nineteenth-century Russian novel. She’s holding a black leather bag that she sets down beside her.

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she says. Then she says to Ida, who has stopped on the steps leading up to the dance floor, ‘Step inside the circle.’

Minoo wonders what circle the principal is talking about. When she works it out, she’s annoyed at her own stupidity. The round dance floor is itself a circle.

Ida walks on to it with evident reluctance.

‘Let’s turn up the heat, shall we?’ the principal says. She glances at Vanessa and Linnéa. ‘I suggest you get off the stage.’

Linnéa and Vanessa get up slowly. Minoo decides they’re just as curious as she is, even if they’re trying to hide it.

The principal takes a little black cylinder, like a tube of lipstick, from her pocket and pulls off the top. When she draws a circle in the middle of the dance floor, Minoo recalls the symbols in her house. She tries to make eye contact with Vanessa, but she’s watching the principal.

Intensely focused, Adriana Lopez draws a symbol in the centre of the circle. When she straightens up she removes a few sticky white threads from the marker and puts the top back on.

‘What’s that?’ Vanessa asks.

‘Ectoplasm,’ the principal answers curtly.

Minoo wonders if that means any more to the others than it does to her.

The principal takes out a book. It has a worn black-leather cover and is the size of an ordinary paperback. She opens it and fishes out a shiny object she has hidden beneath her coat. It looks like a silver loupe and is attached to a long chain that she wears around her neck. She twists the loupe’s eyepiece, as you might adjust the focus on a pair of binoculars, and puts it to her eye.

Minoo is waiting for her to start incanting a spell, but she mumbles quietly to herself. At once a flame erupts inside the circle.

It’s no ordinary flame, shimmering in varying shades of blue from cobalt at the bottom to light sky blue. It takes Minoo a moment to grasp what makes the flame so eerie. It’s not that it’s blue, and is burning a few centimetres above the ground, but that it’s completely silent. After a few seconds she feels her face warming up.

The principal takes off her coat, hat and gloves and lays everything in a neat pile on the floor next to the railing. Underneath she has on a well-tailored dark grey suit.

Minoo also removes her outer garments and lays them on the floor. Now she notices that the air around the pavilion is glimmering. She cautiously reaches out her hand and meets a slight resistance, as if she’s touched an invisible membrane.

‘Try,’ the principal says.

Minoo turns. The principal nods at her encouragingly. Minoo reaches further – and breaks through the membrane. On the other side the air is cold.

‘An outer circle,’ the principal says, and makes a sweeping gesture around the circular dance floor, then she points towards the smaller circle where the flame is burning. ‘And an inner one. The outer circle binds. The inner circle holds the power source.’

‘What is the power source?’ Vanessa asks.

‘The symbol in the inner circle.’

‘But what kind of symbol is it?’

‘We’ll take it one step at a time. And you must trust me.’

‘Of course,’ Linnéa says ironically. ‘We’ll just get murdered in the meantime.’

‘I’ve already explained the situation to you. And there’s another issue that the Council has asked me to clarify.’

Minoo pulls out her notebook and the pen she always has with her. Yes, she’s a true nerd.

‘According to the prophecy, the Chosen One is supposed to be impossible for evil to trace, at least until the great battle is upon us. And that won’t be for several years. We thought you had some kind of magical protection, that you were immune to evil.’

‘You said the great battle won’t come for several years,’ Minoo says, taking notes. ‘How many?’

‘It’s unclear. At least two, but probably closer to ten, according to our calculations.’

‘So we could be facing Armageddon when we’re leaving school. Not much of an incentive to get good grades,’ Linnéa says.

‘This has nothing to do with the Biblical apocalypse,’ the principal says drily.

‘Can you tell us what we’re going to be fighting in this battle? Isn’t it about time we heard this prophecy?’ Vanessa urges.

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘Why did you bring us here if you’re not going to answer any questions?’ Linnéa asks.

‘That’s enough.’ The principal raises her hand. ‘Perhaps Nicolaus let you push him about, but you won’t get anywhere if you try it with me. I’m here to teach you to master and develop your powers, but you’re behaving like children. I can’t teach the fundamentals of magic to children.’

No one says anything.

‘Your powers are a wonderful gift,’ the principal continues, ‘but they can also be very dangerous to yourselves and to others. Your abilities are in their infancy, but as they develop, you’ll find it harder to control them.’

She turns to Vanessa. ‘One day you’ll make yourself invisible and discover you can’t reverse the process. You might be forced to spend the rest of your life as a shadow.’

Abruptly Vanessa stops chewing her gum.

That must be the worst nightmare for someone who’s so much in love with her own reflection, Minoo thinks.

‘The same goes for the rest of you,’ the principal says. She lets her gaze linger on Anna-Karin, before she moves on to Ida, Minoo and Linnéa. ‘Even those of you who have not yet developed any powers.’

Perhaps Minoo should feel frightened, but that ‘yet’ has made her happy. Perhaps she has a power after all. The principal seems to think so.

‘There has always been a certain amount of magic in the world. And the barriers separating our world from others has varied in strength over time.’

‘What “other worlds”?’ Vanessa interrupts.

‘Our world isn’t the only one. There are countless others. Don’t interrupt me again,’ the principal says sternly. ‘During the last few centuries we’ve lived through a magical drought with occasional local flare-ups. One such flare-up took place here about three hundred years ago. Your dreams might be channelling what happened then.’

‘How do you know what we’ve been dreaming?’ Vanessa asks.

‘My raven saw and heard everything that was said on the night of your awakening. It’s the opinion of the Council and myself that the one who spoke through Ida that night was the Chosen One from the 1600s.’

‘Who was she?’ Minoo asks. ‘And what happened to her?’

‘We don’t know. The church and vicarage burned down in 1675, and a great many important documents were lost.’ The principal regards them gravely. ‘If I compared the last two thousand years to a magical drought, then what’s coming is more like a flood. Individuals with powers like yours have been incredibly rare, but now they’re appearing in a number of places across the world. The battle that is coming may affect our entire reality.’

‘That’s why Nicolaus spoke of our destiny,’ Anna-Karin says.

Adriana purses her lips. ‘I’d prefer to call it your task,’ she says.

‘So you mean that the fate of the world will be decided in Engelsfors?’ Vanessa asks.

‘I know it’s hard to imagine,’ the principal says, with a hint of a smile, ‘but that may well be so. This place has a high level of magical activity, which will continue to grow.’

Minoo listens, fascinated. ‘So magic doesn’t exist everywhere?’

‘No.’ The principal looks at Minoo approvingly, as if she thought it was a good question. ‘We believe that the energy will eventually spread over ever larger areas, but just now we’re looking at local phenomena.’

Vanessa says thoughtfully. ‘Does that mean our powers won’t work everywhere? For instance, if I went to Ibiza on holiday, could I become invisible there?’

‘Ibiza, as it happens, has a very high level of magical activity,’ the principal answers, ‘but you’ve understood correctly. The power doesn’t just come from within you. You have to be hooked up, as it were, to a power source. And that’s here. You need Engelsfors, just as you need each other, and Engelsfors needs you. We still don’t know why there were … seven of you. But together you form a circle. Witches have worked in circles throughout the ages. You won’t get anything important done if you don’t learn to work together.’

She’s wrong to reduce it to a ‘task’, Minoo thinks. ‘Destiny’ is a much better word.

Rebecka had understood that. This is much bigger than they are and they are destined to carry it out. But in any case they are tied to Engelsfors. And to each other.

‘Any more questions?’ the principal asks.

Everyone remains quiet.

She smiles, satisfied. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Let’s talk about magic. Theory and practice.’