Teresa peered among the tree trunks and rocks, but there was no sign of any grey shape. When she turned to Theres to ask her where they were, she saw that Theres was looking over towards the far end of the fence, where the rest of the girls were approaching in a group.
‘I thought you meant the wolves,’ said Teresa.
‘We are the wolves. That’s what you said.’
Yes. That’s what she’d said. But the pack creeping along the narrow track was no more wolf-like than she was right now. They came and sat down, shuffling close to each other on the blankets with Theres at the centre. An inaudible whimper hung in the air along with a scent indistinguishable, to Teresa, from her own. The scent of exhaustion and nagging pain.
It turned out that the others had felt much the same over the course of the week. To begin with, a joyous, crackling proximity to life that felt indestructible, as if it would last forever, then the slow change to fever and despair as the feeling dissolved.
Like Teresa, the others found consolation in the group, relief in simply being close to one another, but the voices echoing between them were weak;
‘…I thought that now, at long last…and then when it disappeared, I saw myself…I mean, you’re like,
This went on for a good five minutes, a low whimpering made verbal, until Theres yelled, ‘Quiet!’
The voices broke off abruptly. Theres was holding both hands up in front of her, the palms facing outwards as if she was stopping a runaway train, and she shouted again, ‘Quiet! Quiet!’
If they could have pricked up their ears, they would have done so now. They were sitting in a huddle around Theres, who straightened up and looked from one to the other. They were focussed on her lips, waiting for a few words that could free them. A suggestion, an order, a telling-off. Anything.
When Theres opened her mouth, they were so intently anticipating some pithy, vital truth that it took them a couple of seconds to realise that she was
I’m nothing special, in fact I’m a bit of a bore
If I tell a joke, you’ve probably heard it before
But I have a talent, a wonderful thing
’cause everyone listens when I start to sing
I’m so grateful and proud
All I want is to sing it out loud…
By the time she had got that far most of them had recognised the song, and even if they didn’t know the words to the verse, they knew the chorus. Theres’ pure, clear voice, so perfectly pitched, resonated through their bodies like a giant tuning fork, guiding them to the right note as they joined in.
So I say thank you for the music, the songs I’m singing
Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing…
Theres sang the song all the way through, the others helped out in the choruses, and the music was like morphine. The pain in their bodies eased, flowed out through the notes, and as long as the song went on there was nothing to fear. In the silence after the final words died away, they heard distant applause. People walking their dogs had stopped in various places and one of them shouted, ‘Yay! Sing Along at Skansen!’ before moving on.
Theres pointed towards Skansen and said, ‘That’s what I’m going to sing. There. The day after tomorrow. You will all come. Then it will be over. It will be good.’ She got up and went over to the fence, leaned against the wire and let out a low growl, trying to entice the wolves without success.
‘What do you mean, over?’ said Caroline. ‘What does she mean, it’ll be over? I don’t understand what she’s talking about.’
Teresa looked towards Skansen, imagining the Solliden stage somewhere far beyond the trees, just as she had seen it on TV. The crowds, the singers, the camera cranes and ‘Stockholm in My Heart’. The wall of young girls, just like them and very different from them, pressed against the barriers right at the front as they sang along. Theres standing on the stage. The rest of them in the audience. Among all those people.
‘Ronja?’ said Teresa. ‘Do you remember asking me where we were actually going, what we were going to
Ronja nodded and shrugged her shoulders. ‘We’ve done stuff.’
‘No,’ said Teresa. ‘We haven’t done anything. We have only prepared ourselves.’ She glanced at the sign on the wolf enclosure:
Hitachi DS14DFL.
Weight 1.6 kg. Total length 210mm. Ergonomic, rubber-coated handle. 13mm chuck capacity. 1,200 revolutions per minute.
Teresa had searched for over an hour to find the right tool. It had to be battery operated, and have a slender handle which would suit small hands. It mustn’t be too big or heavy, but must be able to run a reasonably thick drill bit. It had to be available to buy all over the place. And it had to look
Behind the nondescript name Hitachi DS14DFL she found the answer. A slender tool with a long-lasting heavy duty lithium-ion battery. The handle looked inviting: she longed to hold it, to extend her arm with a sharp, whirling point.
She clicked on the group containing the other girls’ email addresses and forwarded the product information along with details of a number of different shops where the machine could be bought. They could improvise when it came to other tools or weapons, but their claws would be the same.
Sunday had become Monday while she sat at the computer searching for this: for the tool that would free them, at long last, from these lives in which they had never asked to be imprisoned. The moon was high in the sky outside her window, and soon she would be gone.
The itch in her body would not let her be. She paced the strip of moonlight on the floor of her bedroom, thinking about her mother and father asleep in their beds, thinking about the drill, thinking about the axe in the cellar. The only thing that stopped her was her reluctance to start a chain of events that would prevent her from being there on Tuesday.
Her fingers were tingling, the soles of her feet were burning and she was panting like a starving animal as she forced herself to quit the pacing before she woke everybody up; a knock on the door, a curious head poked into her room, and this particular night could end in disaster.
She sat on the bed and did something she hadn’t done for several months: she took her medication. She stuffed three tablets in her mouth and swallowed them without water. Then she sat still, hands resting on her knees, breathing and waiting for something to happen.
When there was no change after half an hour and her body was still being torn apart, she sat down at the computer and wrote a letter. She used the language Theres would use, because it helped her gather and simplify her thoughts. When the letter was finished she printed out four copies and placed them in envelopes on which she wrote addresses she had looked up on the internet.
Then she stood by the window looking at the moon, hugging herself and trying to survive the night.
On Monday she caught the bus to Rimsta and bought the chosen drill with the last of her savings. On the bus back she sat there holding the box close like a lifebuoy, and when she got home she unpacked the drill and placed it in the charger.
She planned and visualised, tried to think herself into the situation. She watched clips from Sing Along at Skansen on the net to see how the audience was deployed, the big tree in the middle, where the cameras were. She was afraid.
Afraid that her courage would fail when it came to the crunch, afraid that she would miss her opportunity because of the cowardice and the human frailty that still chafed away somewhere inside her.
