Part 6 (2/2)

Mum was scrubbing potatoes in the kitchen when Cilla came downstairs.

”Who's getting the dress, Mum? Because Sara wants to dye it black.”

”Oh ho?” said Mum. ”Probably not, because it's not hers.”

”Can I have it?” Cilla s.h.i.+fted her weight from foot to foot. ”I wouldn't do anything to it.”

”No, love. It belongs to Hedvig.”

”But she's old. She won't use it.”

Mum turned and gave Cilla a long look, eyebrows low. ”It belonged to her mother, Cilla. How would you feel if you found my wedding dress, and someone gave it away to some relative instead?”

”She has everything else,” Cilla said. ”I don't have anything from great-gran.”

”I'm sure we can find something from the house,” said Mum. ”But not the dress. It means a lot to Hedvig. Think of someone else's feelings for a change.”

Sara came down a little later with the same request. Mum yelled at her.

Maybe it was because of Mum's outburst, but Sara became twitchier as the evening pa.s.sed on. Finally she muttered something about going for a walk and shrugged into her jacket. Cilla hesitated a moment and then followed.

”f.u.c.k off,” Sara muttered without turning her head when Cilla came running after her.

”No way,” said Cilla.

Sara sighed and rolled her eyes. She increased her pace until Cilla had to half-jog to keep up. They said nothing until they came down to the lake's sh.o.r.e, a stretch of rounded river stones that made satisfying billiard-ball noises under Cilla's feet.

Sara sat down on one of the larger rocks and dug out a soft ten-pack of cigarettes. She shook one out and lit it. ”Tell Mum and I'll kill you.”

”I know.” Cilla sat down next to her. ”Why are you being so weird? Ever since you talked to Johann.”

Sara took a drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke out through her nose. She shrugged. Her eyes looked wet. ”He made me understand some things, is all.”

”Like what?”

”Like I'm not crazy. Like none of us are.” She looked out over the lake. ”We should stay here. Maybe we'd survive.” Her eyes really were wet now. She wiped at them with her free hand.

Cilla felt cold trickle down her back. ”What are you on about?”

Sara rubbed her forehead. ”You have to promise not to tell anyone, because if you tell anyone bad stuff will happen, okay? s.h.i.+t is going to happen just because I'm telling you. But I'll tell you because you're my little sis.” She slapped a quick rhythm on her thigh. ”Okay. So it's like this-the world is going to end soon. It's going to end in ninety-six.”

Cilla blinked. ”How would you know?”

”It's in the newspapers, if you look. The Gulf War, yeah? That's when it started. Saddam Hussein is going to take revenge and send nukes, and then the U.S. will nuke back, and then Russia jumps in. And then there'll be nukes everywhere, and we're dead. Or we'll die in the nuclear winter, 'cause they might not nuke Sweden, but there'll be nothing left for us.” Sara's eyes were a little too wide.

”Okay,” Cilla said, slowly. ”But how do you know all this is going to happen?”

”I can see the signs. In the papers. And I just ... know. Like someone told me. The twenty-third of February in ninety-six, that's when the world ends. I mean, haven't you noticed that something's really really wrong?”

Cilla dug her toe into the stones. ”It's the opposite.”

”What?” There was no question mark to Sara's tone.

”Something wonderful,” Cilla said. Her cheeks were hot. She focused her eyes on her toe.

”You're a f.u.c.king idiot.” Sara turned her back, demonstratively, and lit a new cigarette.

Cilla never could wait her out. She walked back home alone.

On midsummer's eve, they had a small feast. There was pickled herring and new potatoes, smoked salmon, fresh strawberries and cream, spiced schnapps for Mum and Hedvig. It was past ten when Cilla pulled on Sara's sleeve.

”We have to go pick seven kinds of flowers,” she said.

Sara rolled her eyes. ”That's kid stuff. I have a headache,” she said, standing up. ”I'm going to bed.”

Cilla remained at the table with her mother and great-aunt, biting her lip.

Mum slipped an arm around her shoulder. ”Picking seven flowers is an old, old tradition,” she said. ”There's nothing silly about it.”

”I don't feel like it anymore,” Cilla mumbled.

Mum chuckled gently. ”Well, if you change your mind, tonight is when you can stay up for as long as you like.”

”Just be careful,” said Hedvig. ”The vittra might be out and about.” She winked conspiratorially at Cilla.

At Hedvig's dry joke, Cilla suddenly knew with absolute certainty what she had been pining for, that wonderful something waiting out there. She remained at the table, barely able to contain her impatience until Mum and Hedvig jointly decided to go to bed.

Mum kissed Cilla's forehead. ”Have a nice little midsummer's eve, love. I'll leave the cookies out.”

Cilla made herself smile at her mother's patronizing remark, and waited for the house to go to sleep.

She had put the dress on right this time, as well as she could, and clutched seven kinds of flowers in her left hand - b.u.t.tercup, clover, geranium, catchfly, bluebells, chickweed, and daisies. She stood at the back of the house, on the slope facing the mountain. It was just past midnight, the sky a rich blue tinged with green and gold. The air had a sharp and herbal scent. It was very quiet.

Cilla raised her arms. ”I'm ready,” she whispered. In the silence that followed, she thought she could hear s.n.a.t.c.hes of music. She closed her eyes and waited. When she opened them again, the vittra had arrived.

They came out from between the pine trees, walking in pairs, all dressed in red and white: the women wore red skirts and shawls and the men long red coats. Two of them were playing the fiddle, a slow and eerie melody in a minor key.

A tall man walked at the head of the train, dressed entirely in white. His hair was long and dark and very fine. There was something familiar about the shape of his face and the translucent blue of his eyes. For a moment, those eyes stared straight into Cilla's. It was like receiving an electric shock; it reverberated down into her stomach. Then he s.h.i.+fted his gaze and looked beyond her to where Sara was standing wide-eyed by the corner of the house in her oversized sleeping t-s.h.i.+rt. He walked past Cilla without sparing her another glance.

The beautiful man from the mountain approached Sara where she stood clutching the edge of the rain barrel. He put a hand on her arm and said something to her that Cilla couldn't hear. Whatever it was, it made Sara's face flood with relief. She took his hand, and they walked past Cilla to the rest of the group. The fiddle players started up their slow wedding march, and the procession returned to the mountain. Sara never looked back.

Cilla told them that Sara must have taken the dress, that she herself had gone to bed not long after the others. She did tell them of Sara's doomsday vision and her belief that she could tell the future by decoding secret messages in the newspaper. When the search was finally abandoned, the general opinion was that Sara had had a bout of psychotic depression and gone into the wild, where she had either fallen into a body of water or died of exposure somewhere she couldn't be found. Up there, you can die of hypothermia even in summer. Cilla said nothing of the procession, or of the plastic bag in her suitcase where Maret's dress lay cut into tiny strips.

She kept the bag for a long time.

<script>