The Circle (Hammer)

45



NUMBER SEVENTEEN. NUMBER nineteen.

What am I doing? Minoo thinks as she walks along Uggelbovägen Street.

Number twenty-one. Twenty-three.

The sodium streetlamps cast their eerie glow over the freshly cleared road. The banks of snow are marked here and there with random squirts of dog pee. She passes numbers twenty-five, twenty-seven and twenty-nine.

This is something Vanessa might do. Or Linnéa.

Thirty-one and thirty-three.

Definitely not Minoo Falk Karimi.

She stops at number thirty-five and looks towards house number thirty-seven. The light is on in Max’s window. She can still turn around and go home. It’s still possible. She can still pull out.

But if she leaves now, she’ll never know.

She walks up to Max’s door and reaches out to ring his doorbell. She stops when she hears voices inside the house. Is the TV or radio on? Or has he got a friend with him? A woman?

It’s never occurred to her that Max might have a private life. In her mind he’s always existed in a vacuum when he hasn’t been at school.

What if he has friends with him for dinner? What will they think? That Max is some kind of semi-paedophile who takes advantage of his students? And that she’s a stupid little airhead with a penchant for older men?

Perhaps Max’s friends would think it quite normal for him to be with a girl who’s barely started year eleven, and he probably wouldn’t be embarrassed in the slightest.

‘How did you two meet?’

‘Well, Minoo is a real whiz at quadratic equations, and we took a liking to each other!’

Suddenly she can imagine how repellent it would look to other people.

Does Max have brothers and sisters, parents? What fun family gatherings they’d have. She’d have to sit at the kids’ table while the grown-ups talked. And what about her own parents? Her father would wonder if he had brought on a father fixation by working too much during her childhood. Her mother would find a less than flattering diagnosis for Max, and dispatch Minoo to a psychiatric ward for adolescents.

Even if they were to try to keep their relationship secret, it would get out. Secret love affairs never remain secret for long in Engelsfors. Then the school would report Max to the police. He’d never be able to work again as a teacher.

She lowers her hand.

Suddenly a new dimension has been added to her relationship with Max: reality. She had avoided it until now. But Max had seen it all along.

When you’re older you’ll realise how young you actually were.

She had sat on his sofa, trying to convince him of how mature she was, when all she’d really done was prove the opposite.

The voices inside are suddenly silenced and Minoo realises it must have been the TV. She hears footsteps. Max is walking about. He goes from the living room to the kitchen, fills the sink with water, starts clattering dishes.

She had come here to convince Max that they have to be together, that they shouldn’t care what other people think. But now that she can see everything so clearly, she can’t pretend not to.

There’s only one thing she can do. And one thing she has to know.

The doorbell is surprisingly soft and melodic.

The clattering in the kitchen stops. Footsteps approach. Minoo stands her ground, trying to breathe calmly even though her heart is pounding with a blistering techno beat.

The latch turns. The door opens.

Max appears, lit from behind. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and black jeans. His hair is ruffled and he is pale, with dark circles under his eyes. Somehow that makes him even better-looking. He’s like a tragic young poet – a Keats or a Byron. He’s drying his hands on a tea-towel.

‘Hi,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you like this.’

‘Minoo—’

‘Please, just listen to me. I’ve been thinking about what you said. And I know you’re right. We can’t be together.’

It’s painful for her to say it. The logical part of her brain sees things clearly but that doesn’t change the fact that she loves him. Perhaps more than ever.

‘I’m not going to come here again like this. I’m not going to tell anyone about us so you don’t need to worry. There’s just one thing I want to know …’ She falls silent. The question had seemed so simple and straightforward. Now it seems too momentous to ask. She looks at his hands, which are playing with the towel.

‘What do you want to know?’ Max asks softly. ‘If I meant what I said? Because I do. I love you, Minoo. I’ve loved you since the first day I set eyes on you.’

‘I love you, too,’ she says, and it feels so natural. ‘But I know now that it’s not possible. What I have to know is … can you bear to wait for me?’

She can’t look him in the eyes. ‘I’ll be eighteen in a little over a year. And then you won’t be my teacher.’

She looks up and can tell he’s hesitating. A year is a lot to ask. An eternity. ‘I understand if you can’t make any promises,’ she mumbles.

He’s quiet for a long moment. Then he says, ‘A year is nothing. I’ll wait for as long as it takes.’ He reaches out and strokes her cheek. A gentle caress that almost shatters her logic.

Just one night, she wants to say. Just one night together. That can’t make any difference, can it? And she sees in his eyes that he wants it as much as she does.

She pulls away from his hand. ‘I have to go,’ she says.

She turns and starts walking. Thirty-five, thirty-three, thirty-one, twenty-nine. Only now does she hear him shut his front door. She speeds up. Twenty-seven, twenty-five, twenty-three, twenty-one, nineteen, seventeen. She stops. Turns.

The street looks just as it did before. Yet everything has changed.



Anna-Karin can’t sleep. She’s lying on her side, staring into the room. The blinds aren’t pulled down and she can see the stars through the window. Tonight they seem more distant than ever.

Tomorrow it begins, she thinks. Tomorrow I have to go to school and be Anna-Karin Nieminen without magic. The girl everyone hates or, if she’s lucky, doesn’t notice.

That must be my true self, she thinks. That must be my lot in life. Why else would it have gone so wrong when I tried to change it?

Deep down she had known all along that what she was doing was wrong. It was just that she’d felt it was worth it so she had ignored the warnings, turned a blind eye to the signs. But what good had it done her? Is she happier? No.

Anna-Karin closes her eyes, but her brain keeps whirring, like a crashing computer. She opens her eyes again. There’s no point.

Anna-Karin.

She recognises the voice from the vision on Lucia night. It belongs to Rebecka and Elias’s murderer.

Life isn’t worth living. You’re going to suffer. Every day you’re going to suffer.

A great calm spreads through Anna-Karin. She feels her body go numb as it climbs out of bed. Her feet walk on to the landing. One step down the stairs, then another.

Anna-Karin allows herself to be guided into the kitchen. She doesn’t resist. What the voice is saying is true. If anyone knows that life is suffering, it’s Anna-Karin. The BO Ho. The fat kid. The peasant. The girl who had to use magic to make her own mother care about her.

She feels relieved. She doesn’t need to be afraid any more. Soon it will all be over.

The voice says no more. It knows that Anna-Karin doesn’t need convincing.

There’s a faint smell of cigarette smoke in the kitchen. The wall clock is ticking away the seconds. Her feet move across the floor to the knife stand next to the stove. Her hand reaches out and takes a firm grip on the biggest knife. It feels strange to see her hand like that, see it grab something even though she can’t feel it. As if it belongs to someone else.

Don’t worry. You won’t feel any pain.

Her hand angles, turning the blade towards her throat.

She catches sight of Grandpa’s house outside the window.

Grandpa loves her.

And if Grandpa loves her, she can’t be completely worthless. She doesn’t deserve this.

Nobody does.

Suddenly Anna-Karin is afraid. That can mean only one thing. She wants to live. She doesn’t want to die.

The edge of the blade brushes against the soft skin of her throat.

Anna-Karin starts to resist. The other tries to press the knife into her neck. She can feel her carotid artery beating against the blade. Her skin is so thin there. All it will take is a little slit and her blood will spurt all over the kitchen. It’s as if an iron hand is clenched around her wrist. Her arms are shaking from the strain as she struggles to resist. The line separating life and death is so fine.

You’re alone, Anna-Karin. Alone. Why should you go on living? You’re worth more. Maybe you’ll get another chance after death.

But she’s not listening now. She can’t leave Grandpa. And she can’t abandon the other Chosen Ones in the battle against evil.

She isn’t weak any more. She’s no victim. She controlled the entire school. This is nothing. She’s got more power than this cowardly bastard who hasn’t even the guts to show himself to the one he’s killing.

Let go!

Her power surges through her body and the knife falls to the floor. Anna-Karin slumps down and stares at it. She’s breathing heavily.

A familiar squeaking sound comes from outside.

Anna-Karin gets up, sweat pouring off her. She goes to the window. The barn door is wide open, like a gaping mouth in the red-painted wall. She has the feeling that whatever had tried to take control of her body is playing with her.

She goes out into the hall, pulls on a pair of fur-lined shoes and her thickest winter jacket, then opens the door.

It’s strangely quiet outside and there’s no wind. All the windows are dark in Grandpa’s house. She knows she should call the other Chosen Ones. She knows she shouldn’t do this alone. She knows it could be a trap – it’s likely that it is. But she’s tired of running away, tired of being afraid.

She feels as if she could face down anyone. She’ll bring the killer to his knees and force the truth out of him. And then she’ll call the others. After the threat has been neutralised. Then perhaps she’ll have atoned her crimes. Even in the eyes of the Council.

She stops at the barn door. A familiar smell wafts towards her. She can hear the cows moving in their stalls.

‘Show yourself,’ Anna-Karin says.

A cow moos softly. Another snorts. Anna-Karin takes a step inside and switches on the light.

All she sees are rows of cows looking at her with their big brown eyes. Anna-Karin walks further inside.

The crash comes so suddenly that she screams. She spins around. The barn door is closed. As if it had blown shut. On a windless night.

She goes to the door and pulls at it. It’s locked. Bolted from the outside. And that’s when she smells the smoke.

‘No!’ she shouts. ‘No! Let me out!’

The cows moo and kick in their stalls. They’ve also smelt the smoke and know what it means.

The smoke grows thicker with every second. A loud crackling rises quickly to a deafening roar.

Fire.

Anna-Karin looks for something to smash down the door. The smoke stings her eyes. She realises the fire is spreading faster than should be possible. It’s coming from every direction. It becomes unbearably hot.

‘Anna-Karin!’

Grandpa has managed to get in and is rushing forward as fast as his old legs can carry him. When he reaches her he shoves her towards the door.

‘Run!’ he shouts.

But she can’t leave him. He hurries along the row of stalls, opening them. The cows race out in a wild panic, pushing and bunching together, mooing loudly in their desperate flight. A few jostle past Anna-Karin and she falls headlong on to the concrete floor. Her ankle twists beneath her. All around her the heavy bodies gallop past in a frenzy and she shields her head with her arms.

But she doesn’t have time to call for help before Grandpa is at her side. He’s there with his rough, powerful hands and helps her up, letting her lean on him. They’re only a few metres from the door now, a few steps from safety. Anna-Karin doesn’t see the falling beam until it hits him. He crumples to the floor.

‘Grandpa!’

She doesn’t feel her own pain now. She has to get Grandpa out. She pulls and drags at him and suddenly they’re in the snow, but Anna-Karin keeps going, moving away from the barn until she can go no further.

The fire engulfs the old wooden building with a roar. She hears her mother scream inside their house. But Anna-Karin has eyes only for Grandpa. He looks at her. Grandpa, dear, sweet Grandpa.

‘Anna-Karin …’ he says faintly. ‘I should …’

And then his words give out.