Chapter 18
I put the phone down and lie on the bed with my cheek against the pillow. The pillowcase smells of the sea. Mom always hangs the laundry out to dry, even in the middle of winter. Normally I like the fresh, salty scent, but today I turn onto my back to avoid it.
Rasmus and I made a plan to meet at school tomorrow morning. It’s Saturday, so there shouldn’t be anyone else around. I’ll ask Dad if I can borrow the boat.
I don’t know if I’ll be okay on my own—all alone on the water—but I try to push the thought from my mind. The quickest route is across Kanholmsfj?rden Bay, but that’s as close to open sea as it gets.
I wonder what Rasmus is thinking right now. About everything I told him. He sounded like he actually believed me. I wasn’t being entirely honest, though. I made it sound like hazy memories. But really, I remember it all like it was yesterday.
The first time it happened, I was sitting outside the house.
Our old house, when we lived closer to Grandma Gerd.
I was building with toy bricks and was annoyed because the bricks had sand in them and wouldn’t click together.
Suddenly, a little old man came scampering through the woods.
He was short and gnarled, with skin like the bark of a tree, and he was much smaller than me.
It seemed perfectly normal at the time. When I spotted him, he stopped and doffed his cap. I forgot about the bricks and waved back.
I must have been three or four at the time.
I didn’t see gnomes like him very often, and they didn’t frighten me when I did. They were just there; they weren’t being threatening in any way. I thought they were friendly.
The forest troll was much more elusive. He looked like a boulder and rarely showed himself. I’d probably seen him only two or three times before the Taube incident.
After that, I stopped talking about the gnomes.
If I saw one, I would shut my eyes and shout that they weren’t real and should go away.
I stopped seeing them after a while, and as the years passed, I learned to put them out of my mind.
It was only when the nightmares began that it all started coming back to me.
That was when I started to wonder if I was going crazy. Or if I always had been.
But Rasmus saw the fairies too, I remind myself. We both saw them.
So if I’ve lost my mind, then at least I’m not the only one.