“Hejdanatt,” I said, taking her by the hand, going outside, and shutting the door, “I think you’re right. I think Olle took the forest road and was caught by the monster. I have to try to find him, and I’m hoping you and the others will come with me.”
A terrified look spread over Hejdanatt’s face. “But we don’t even know that the monster got him,” she said.
“I can’t stay here and do nothing!” I told her. “The monster could be doing horrible things to him even as we speak!” I started to run. I couldn’t hold still anymore, and I suppose part of me didn’t want Hejdanatt to see the tears welling up in my eyes.
A few moments later, I was hurrying as fast as I could toward the forest, praying for Olle—my dear, naughty brother Olle. Why would you have gone in the monster’s lair? I prayed he was alive, that the monster had spared him even if he was in its clutches, and that my trembling legs would carry me to him in time.
I soon found myself near the entrance to the forest. When you had passed along the road from the village through a pleasant grove, you came suddenly to a wall of massive, dark fir trees: the Western Forest. Although it was summertime, there was no sign that animals lived here. In the trees along the way, I had heard birds singing and seen tracks left by all sorts of creatures, but the forest was dark and silent, as though it absorbed all the sound around it.
I was determined to keep going, to run straight on into the wall of trees, knowing that if I stopped or hesitated I might never get my legs moving again. I was close now, the entrance to the forest in sight, but the path ahead, beneath the overhanging limbs, was dark and obscure. Still, I had no choice but to go on.
But just as I was about to pass under the first dark boughs, an old man and woman came walking out of a thicket by the path. I had never laid eyes on either of them before.
“Young lady!” said the old man, beckoning to me. “Please stop. You must not enter the forest.”
But I couldn’t stop; I couldn’t have kept my legs from propelling me forward even if I’d tried. Then, as I ran on, another old man and woman appeared from the underbrush and called out to me as well.
“Don’t go into the forest!”
I wanted to tell them I understood, but that my brother was in there and I had to go. But I was so breathless from running that the words just wouldn’t come out.
Still a third and then a fourth old couple appeared from different spots near the forest, and all of them tried to stop me, but at last I closed my eyes and ignored them. I was nearly under the trees now. All I had to do was run straight ahead.
Perhaps because my eyes were closed, I could hear everything quite clearly—the sound of my footsteps and my breath and the voices of the old people calling to me. I knew that they were worried, but the voice I wanted to hear was Olle’s.
The heat of the sun on my back suddenly vanished, and the warm summer air turned chilly. Though my eyes were still closed, I knew I had entered the forest. And it wasn’t just the warmth that was gone—the voices of all the old people, which had been so distinct a moment before, had fallen silent now. The sounds of the outside world could not reach me here. Even the sounds of my own breath and footsteps were muffled and faint. I opened my eyes, needing to be certain I was still running, still breathing.
And indeed I was. When I turned to look back, I could see that I had barely come any distance at all from the first rank of trees. The old people were nowhere to be seen.
Then I came to an abrupt halt. Looking back, I had spotted several figures in a patch of sunlight just beyond the shadows of the trees—Nulla and Inte, if I wasn’t mistaken, and Hejdanatt, Adju, and Nej too. All of them running after me.
Though I had wanted their help when I had set out, now that I saw them here I knew it was wrong to let them come with me, wrong to lead them into the clutches of a terrible monster. I would never want any harm to come to them.
I held up my palms to stop them. “Don’t come in here!” I called as loudly as I could. But my voice seemed to die as it left my mouth, and what should have been a loud shout came out as barely more than a whisper. In the end, I wasn’t sure whether any sound had emerged at all.
I tried shouting again, but again I couldn’t even hear my own voice. It was just as I’d imagined—this strange forest was actually sucking up all the sound. The fir trees all around were enormous, and their limbs seemed to reach out for me. Their needles were dark green, shading to pitch black in the shadows below. Anything at all might have been hiding in this gloom—sinister things that would have felt right at home in such an awful spot. The thick roots of the trees made a pattern of deep furrows in the murky forest floor. It was a net cast over the ground, and it reminded me somehow of the net of golden scales I had seen just hours before, glinting on the belly of the river trout. But this
