Chapter 24
Away, Sander thought again that Sunday. That’s the word for all this, simple as that.
In fact, maybe it had been there inside him for a long time.
When he was little, he often liked to go outside and pretend that, just as all grown-ups feared, war had come.
One day he made his way out of Skavboke on the narrow forest paths, headed down to ?rnilt, crossed the bridge into Oskarstrom.
It was summer, hot outside, and the sun was high in the sky when he finally dared to emerge from the forest and approach the road.
No soldiers here. The coast was clear. He looked up at the sky: no mushroom clouds either. There was still time.
And suddenly, someone was looking at Sander from across the road, a boy with a big shock of blond hair that moved gently in the breeze. He was wearing filthy clothes, with holes in the knees of his pants, and when Sander walked toward him he could tell the boy smelled a little funny.
“What are you doing?” the boy wondered, gazing uncertainly at Sander’s rifle, a smooth branch he held in both hands.
“There’s a war,” Sander said. “Didn’t you know?”
The boy’s eyes grew wide. “No. There is? Here?”
“How old are you?”
“Seven.”
Hard to believe. The boy in front of Sander was already a head taller than him, and he was as wide as a whole motorcycle. But he looked strong too. Probably good to have around in a war, no matter how old he was.
“What’s your name?”
“Killian.”
“What?”
“Killian.”
Sander had never heard a name like that before, but then again, no one else shared his name either.
“Do you want to join? We need more valiant soldiers.”
“What does ‘valiant’ mean?”
Sander had to think about it. “That you’re brave, sort of. All heroes are valiant.” He crouched down and peered around, like a soldier would do. “We just need to find you a gun.”
Killian turned his head to look at a large bush nearby. From it he snapped off his own branch, and once he pinched off the little twigs, it looked almost exactly like Sander’s, just a little flimsier.
“Will this work?”
“It can be a Kalashnikov.”
“What’s a—”
“Look out, they’re coming!”
After a moment, the bus to Halmstad arrived, chugging and sighing. When Sander saw it, there was a tingle in his belly and he turned to his brother-in-arms. “Do you have any money?”
Killian’s eyes were huge as he gazed at Sander. “No.”
“You need money so you can pay.”
Sander dug deep in his pocket and took out two ten-kronor bills.
“Here.”
The bus driver took their money and they sat in the way back.
While the world was going by outside, Killian worried about what he would say if his mother boarded the bus, what would happen if the driver threw them off, if they would be able to find their way home again, if some grown-up would help them, if there were strangers on the bus or in town who wanted to hurt them, if—
“Killian.” Sander touched his arm. “Relax. It’s fine. We’re just riding the bus.”
“But I’m worried, though. How will we get home again?”
“You can ride back on the same ticket, of course. And no one will notice that we’re gone.”
With every intersection, red light, and curve they passed, Killian’s concerns were drowned out by curiosity. Soon they both had their faces pressed to the window, as though neither of them had ever seen the city before. It seemed brand-new.
They got off at Stora Torg, which was bustling with movement and energy.
People walked by with grocery bags or briefcases or suitcases in hand; buses drove by and birds flocked around the big fountain.
They saw different cars from the ones at home, smelled different smells and heard different voices.
When they passed cafés, they overheard what people were talking about, how they laughed.
Sander saw bus stops for lines with destinations he’d never heard of, and he wondered where they were.
He observed the city people, how they were dressed and how they behaved, where they looked when they walked.
He tried to move like them, because if he could do that, he thought, he would be one of them.
Killian stopped at each shop window, had a look, and moved to the next. He said things like “Hey, those shoes are super nice, I want ones like that” and “Weird how they’re selling winter clothes right now, it’s summer” and “Wow, princess cake!”
Sander secretly watched him, this new comrade, and tried to figure out who he was. He was big and friendly, but sometimes he almost seemed a little dumb, as though the world were a question and he had no answer.
“How many pieces of princess cake can you eat?” Sander asked.
“I don’t know. Two, maybe.”
“I once ate almost one and a half, all but the marzipan. I bet you could eat three, if you really wanted to. At least three, because you’re so big.”
“Yeah, I probably could,” Killian said, “but I’ve never had more than one piece.”
They passed a shop that sold women’s underwear and stopped in front of it. For a long time afterward, they didn’t say anything.
“That was weird,” said Killian.
“Yeah,” Sander agreed.
Soon they took the bus back up to Oskarstrom. They went their separate ways in Skavboke, at the fork in the road.
Sander suspected that his new friend didn’t have an easy life. Maybe that was why he was so big, Killian, so he could protect himself. The same way lizards grow a protective layer of scales against the world, Killian had grown husky and tall.
Sander walked home, and soon he was sitting at the table with Mom and Dad, eating spaghetti and meat sauce, the same dish he had read on the menu outside one of the restaurants in town just a few hours ago.
He and Killian, the two valiant soldiers, had been there.
They had visited the toy store Lekcenter, had stood outside the department store ?hléns, had gone to the shoe store and the bakery. And Mom and Dad had no idea.
It was almost scary, how crafty he was.
That evening, he lay in bed and closed his eyes, tried to stitch the many images in his memory into a whole, like a movie he could watch over and over.
He couldn’t quite put it into words at the time, but a sort of undercurrent had formed, a promise and a question: How could he leave this life behind for something greater?