Time passes. When Jan-Erik doesn’t arrive at the station for his journey to the mental hospital, the police are informed, but a retarded teenager on the run isn’t a major issue. The police have other priorities, and he is never found. It is as if Vendela’s older brother has been swallowed up by the ground.
Time passes, and the little farm belonging to the Fors family is sold that summer.
Time passes, and Vendela does not visit her father in prison, not once.
When he finally comes out he is a much subdued man. Late in the autumn he returns to Oland and settles in Borgholm, where he is less well known than in his home village. Henry becomes a labourer, lives in one room with no cooking facilities, and muddles along somehow.
By this stage Vendela is settled in Kalmar and doesn’t want to go back to Oland. She has a whole new life with Margit and Sven. Soon the children in her class at school forget that she comes from the island, and stop teasing her. Her aunt and uncle have no children of their own, and they are very fond of Vendela.
Everything works out for the best.
She is given new clothes, a red bicycle and a record player.
She is given almost everything she asks for, and no longer has to wish for things.
She grows up, passes her exams and meets a nice man who owns a restaurant. They have a daughter.
The memories of Oland slowly fade away, and Vendela hardly ever takes the ferry across the sound to see her father. His little room is always littered with empty spirit bottles, and they have nothing to say to each other when she does visit.
After Henry’s death at the end of the sixties, she has no reason to go back. She no longer has any family left on the island – just a collection of graves in the churchyard. In her room she has a few objects made from beautifully polished limestone which she inherited from her father, along with an empty jewellery box.
It is not until she is in her forties, when her marriage to Martin is over and she has married Max Larsson, that Vendela begins to think about her childhood on Oland, and to feel a desire to return there.
And a growing urge to follow her brother to the elves.
60
Gerlof had reached the last entries in his wife’s diaries from the fifties. Only four and half pages left to read now.
The book ended in the spring of 1958, and the final pages were filled with closely written text. Ella’s handwriting had become anxious and untidy, and Gerlof hesitated before putting on his glasses. But eventually he began to read:
Today is 21st April 1958, but I hardly know how to begin writing. Something awful has happened, and Gerlof isn’t here. He set off north towards Stockholm on his cargo boat the day before yesterday, and he was supposed to be back today. But last night he rang and said that he and John couldn’t get away from the capital because of the wind, and were moored at the quay down below City Hall. There’s a gale blowing up the Swedish coast, almost storm force, but it hasn’t reached the island. It’s just cloudy and cold here; the electric heaters are on all day.
The girls went off on their bikes late yesterday afternoon to go to the cinema in the community hall. So I was left alone in the cottage. The whole village felt deserted.
The sun had started to go down and I was sitting sewing when I heard a faint noise from the veranda. It wasn’t a knock, like when the neighbours come to call, just a kind of scraping against the door, so I put down my sewing and went to have a look. There was no sign of anyone, but when I looked more closely I noticed a piece of jewellery lying on one of the steps.
It was a gold heart on a silver chain, and I picked it up … but it didn’t make me the least bit happy, because I knew where it had come from. And I was tired of it, tired of these gifts I hadn’t asked for.
‘I don’t want any more jewellery!’ I yelled out across the pasture. ‘You can come and take it all back!’
There was no reply, but after a while there was a movement behind the juniper bushes beyond our land. And then the changeling stepped out in the tall grass and simply stood there, and I hardly recognized him, because his face was clean and his hair had been combed, and he looked really neat and tidy. He was smiling and giggling, and we looked at one another.
I held out the necklace, not really knowing what else to say. I just didn’t want it. So I opened my mouth, but the changeling suddenly turned and hurried away into the darkness between the bushes.
I put my shoes on, and hurried after him.
Did the changeling know he was being followed? I didn’t call out, but he seemed to be waiting for me to catch him up. He wasn’t exactly running, more like lumbering along, and I caught glimpses of his pale shirt and red skin among the bushes. He crossed the road quickly, like a cat, and moved into the shadows by the stone wall; it was obvious he was used to keeping out of sight. He was heading northwards as quickly as he could. But the grass hadn’t yet grown long and lush in the pasture, and I was almost able to keep up with him.
It took a while for me to work out that he was on his way to the quarry. Why would he want to go there? But he increased his speed, and we emerged on the gravel up above the rock face.
I could hear singing from over by the shore, and I recognized the words; a man was singing an Oland sea shanty for all he was worth among the piles of stone.
The changeling slowed down, then turned and looked at me. I held the silver chain high above my head and showed it to him, but he ignored it. He listened to the song coming from over by the sea, then he set off again at full speed.
The quarry was almost empty, apart from one solitary man way up high. He was the one who was singing – a quarryman who had built himself a little shelter from the wind, or a semicircular wall up by the northern rock face. Only his head and shoulders were visible above the stones.
The changeling ran straight towards the man, and I saw that it was Henry Fors. I was surprised, I had heard about his troubles and thought he didn’t want to work any more. But there he stood, sheltered from the wind as he polished away at some kind of sculpture, just as if nothing had happened.
Then everything happened so quickly I couldn’t keep up. The changeling ran along the top of the quarry, and when Henry saw him he stopped singing. He yelled something, but I didn’t hear what it was.
The changeling held out his arms and kept on running at full speed towards Henry’s little wall. He ran straight into it and knocked it down. The stones rattled and clattered around his legs.
Henry yelled again: ‘No!’ And then a name, Hans-Erik or Jan-Erik. The changeling was yelling too, but it was more like shouts of joy.
I stopped and lowered my eyes. Henry carried on yelling, and still the falling stones rattled and crashed.
I think they had a fight, the man and the boy. And I think the last thing that happened was that one of them was thrown or fell down into the quarry, but I didn’t want to see any more.
I turned around and ran.
All I could think of as I ran along the village road was that Henry knew what the changeling was called. They knew one another.
He had come from the north. Had he come from Henry’s farm? Henry had a retarded son who had burnt down his barn – that was the gossip I’d heard recently.
When I got back home I sat down on the steps with the necklace in my hand, weeping because I had been too afraid and too much of a coward to help the boy in some way.
Then I dried my tears and went inside to wait for my girls and Gerlof to come home.
I wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened. It was Henry’s burden, and his son’s. I had been stupid enough already, accepting and keeping all the changeling’s gifts, jewellery that was not mine and never would be.
Ella’s diary ended there, with just a few blank lines left on the very last page. Gerlof lowered the book, ashamed that he had ever opened it.
