Vendela paused. She heard a dull roar, and looked out of the window. A car was coming slowly up the gravel track, and Vendela recognized it immediately.
It was the Saab from the car park.
The car passed their house on its way to the old cottage by the north-eastern end of the quarry. Behind the wheel sat the fair-haired man who had flattened Max. His teenage son was sitting next to him.
When Vendela saw the man in profile, she realized who he reminded her of: Martin. He bore a slight resemblance to her first husband.
Perhaps that was why Max had been so angry with him. Vendela had bumped into Martin by chance one day five years ago and had lunch with him, and she had been stupid enough to tell Max about it. He still brought the matter up from time to time.
So she had already met a couple of the neighbours, in fact. But did she really want to invite these people to a party? She was going to have to discuss it with Max.
She bent over her book and wrote a final paragraph, the end of the story:
‘That was a story about the elves,’ her father had said, getting up from the edge of the bed. ‘Time to go to sleep now, Vendela.’
Henry had told her stories about the elves on several occasions after that. He never mentioned his late wife, but the queen seemed to fascinate him. And the story of the elves had remained in Vendela’s thoughts. It made her begin to dream of doing as the hunter had done, setting off for the place where she could meet them.
Oland 1956
It is spring when Henry Fors shows his daughter Vendela traces of the elves and trolls, the year before she goes to primary school.
First of all they go to the elves. Henry takes Vendela with him out into the meadow behind their little smallholding to fetch the cows in for milking.
Henry has three cows, but even Vendela can see that he doesn’t really want to be a farmer. Not in the least. He runs his little farm simply in order to survive.
‘This is where they dance,’ he says as they stand on the grass, the cows lumbering towards them with their udders full to bursting.
Vendela looks out over the meadow, which is enclosed by a high stone wall. Beyond the wall the world of the alvar begins, with its grass and juniper bushes. Nothing is moving out there.
‘Who?’ she asks.
‘The elves and their queen. You remember her, don’t you?’
Vendela nods, she remembers the story.
‘You can even see the traces they’ve left behind,’ says Henry, pointing with his right hand, dry and cracked from working with stone. ‘Look, a fairy ring.’
Vendela looks at the meadow and sees a circle of paler grass, perhaps three feet in diameter, in the midst of all the green. It looks as if someone has trodden on the blades of grass and broken them. Only the centre of the ring is fresh and green.
As Henry gathers the cows ahead of him, he takes a wide sweep around the ring in the grass. ‘You mustn’t walk across the places where the elves dance – it brings bad luck,’ he says. Then he raises his hand and gives the cows a gentle push to hurry them along.
A few days later, Henry takes his daughter down to the coast to look at the quarry. That’s where he’d really like to be.
Vendela is supposed to go and fetch the cows from the meadow, but Henry says they can stay out for a while longer today.
He sings all the way down to the sea in his deep baritone voice; he likes to sing songs about Oland.
There is both sorrow and longing in his voice, and Vendela thinks it is because her mother Kristin no longer exists.
Dead, she has been dead for several years. She became ill, and then the quiet noises in the house grew louder, the walls creaked more, there were rustling, cracking noises. And then she died, and everything fell silent once again.
‘Consumption,’ Henry said to Vendela when he came home from hospital for the last time.
It was the old name for a condition that meant a person had simply faded away, someone who had grown tired of everything and no longer had the strength to live.
As they reach the quarry, Henry stops singing. He halts at the edge, a few metres above the wide hollow in the ground. It is dry and cold here.
‘People have cleared away the earth and dug out stone for five hundred years. Stone for palaces and castles and churches. And for graves, of course.’
Vendela stands beside her father, gazing out over a grey landscape that has been smashed to pieces and stripped of all life.
‘What do you see?’
‘Stone and gravel,’ says Vendela.
Henry nods. ‘It’s a bit like the moon, isn’t it? I feel like an astronaut when I walk around here, all I need is a rocket …’
Her father laughs; he has always been interested in space.
But his laughter dies away when they reach the gravelled surface.
‘There were lots of people here just a few years ago,’ he says. ‘But they’ve given up and gone home, one by one …’
Vendela looks over at the other quarrymen. There are only five of them, and they are spread out along the bottom of the quarry, their backs weary, their clothes powdered with limestone dust.
Henry waves and calls out to them. ‘Hello there! Hello!’
None of the men wave back. They are holding drills and hammers, but have lowered them to stare at the visitors to the quarry.
‘Why aren’t they working?’ whispers Vendela.
Henry looks at his colleagues and shakes his head, as if he has given up on them. ‘They’re standing here wishing they were somewhere else,’ he says quietly. ‘They’re asking themselves why they never took the opportunity to travel to America.’
Then he shows her the spot where he works at the southern end of the quarry, where he has piled up reject stone to form a makeshift shelter from the wind.
‘This is the kelpie!’ he says.
He invites Vendela inside, and they sit down on two stone stools. Henry has brought a flask of coffee, and drinks two cups.
‘Look out down below!’ he says, tipping the last of the coffee out on to the stones.
Vendela knows he is warning the trolls in the underworld, giving them time to get away.
The dust from the limestone is tickling her nose. She looks around; there is so much crushed stone here. It’s everywhere, and she gazes at the piles, trying to see if anyone is hiding behind them.
