Chapter 34
“Look at me, please,” says the doctor as he shines a small flashlight in my eyes.
I do as he says, even though it hurts.
He has thick silvery hair and dark-brown eyes.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, and I notice a hint of an accent as he puts the flashlight in the pocket of his coat.
“Really tired. Everything hurts. Mostly in my chest and throat.”
Even talking is difficult. My body aches all over, and my rib cage feels like one big wound.
“It will pass in a few days. You swallowed a lot of seawater during the accident. It’s no wonder that you’re exhausted.”
It’s warm in here, but I’m still cold, and I can’t stop shivering. He takes yet another blanket out of a closet and places it over my shoulders.
“Thank you.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own.
“You were incredibly lucky,” says the doctor. “I want you to take it easy for the rest of the week. Eat well and get lots of sleep. I doubt you’ll feel much like running around outside anyway.”
I nod, and another shiver runs through me.
“Your mother has just arrived,” he says. “Shall I ask her to come in?”
“Mom?” My voice sounds both relieved and nervous.
He gives me an odd look but nods. Then he pats me on the shoulder and leaves the room.
I hear muttering voices from the other side of the door. I huddle under the blankets while I wait. Then the door opens and in steps Mom.
She crosses the room in two strides and wraps her arms around me, hugging me so hard that I can barely breathe. I can’t even hug her back with my arms trapped in her embrace.
Then, suddenly, she lets go and brings her hands up to my cheeks. She studies my face closely, as if searching for something.
“How’s Dad?” I whisper.
At these words, Mom sinks into the chair next to the bed, where the doctor was just sitting.
“He’s okay, given the circumstances,” she says in her nurse voice. “He has a mild concussion and a few stitches on his eyebrow.”
She still has that look in her eye.
I can’t help but ask. “What did he say to the coast guard?”
“Dad said something drove into you,” she says. “He thought it must have been a Jet Ski without navigation lights.”
“Do I have to talk to them?”
She shakes her head. “There was no one else there. It’s enough that they spoke to Dad.”
Mom is pale, with dark circles under her eyes. It makes her mouth appear larger and her nose narrower. Her whole face looks naked, as if she’s missing a protective layer of skin.
“It wasn’t a Jet Ski,” I whisper.
Mom lets out a mixture of a sigh and a sob.
“I know.”
“How can you know?”
“Dad told me what happened.”
Her impatience, her typical restlessness, is gone. She sits perfectly still, not fiddling with her wedding ring like she usually does when she’s upset.
For once, she isn’t on her way somewhere else.
“What did Dad tell you?”
“Enough.”
I don’t dare look at her.
“Last week, when Axel disappeared.” I sniff, my nose filled with snot.
“When I found Rasmus in the forest—he wasn’t sick.
There was s-something luring him into the woods,” I stutter.
“It was . . . fairies. Actual, real-life fairies. I know that fairies aren’t supposed to exist, but I saw them, and I told them to go away and they did. ”
Tears are streaming down my cheeks. I wipe them away with the back of my hand.
“Something in the water was chasing us. But I made it go away. I can’t explain, but I hurt it somehow. I made it stop, and we got away. I . . . howled at it.”
The room is silent. I don’t want to utter the words that are beginning to form in my ravaged throat. I would much rather stay quiet for the rest of my life than hear the answer to the question I am about to ask. But I have to know.
“I’m not really your daughter, am I?”
Mom’s eyes are wide.
“Or Dad’s?”
The question hangs in the air between us. My throat tightens. This time it has nothing to do with all that water I swallowed.
“Am I?”
Mom leans forward and hugs me again. Her cheek is as wet with tears as mine.
“You are my Tuva,” she whispers.
“But I’m not your child.”
“You’re not the child I gave birth to, but you are my daughter.”
“It was the boat accident, wasn’t it?”
Mom nods slowly.
“What happened to the real Tuva?”
But Mom doesn’t say these dangerous, irreversible words.
Instead, she just hugs me tighter, presses me almost desperately to her chest, and says, “You are the real Tuva. It’s you.
You’re not the child I gave birth to, but you are my Tuva and I am your mother.
You are my Tuva. Nothing will ever change that. ”
Then something snaps, and I really start to cry. I sob into her shoulder until I can hardly breathe while she strokes my tangled hair and whispers:
“Tuva, Tuva, little Tuva.”