Chapter 44
“I’m a mara,” Ms. Granberg repeats.
She is clearly expecting a reaction, but I don’t know what this word means. She tuts when she realizes that I don’t understand.
“A mara! When I’m asleep, I can take the form of a shadow and sneak into people’s houses and bedrooms. I give them bad dreams. I control their nights.” She sounds proud of her powers.
“How?” I say.
“My mom grew up on a farm and knew a lot about magic. When she was pregnant with me, she put a foal’s caul on her head to ensure a straightforward birth. It’s an old farmers’ superstition. It worked—she had an easy birth, but I became a mara.”
She makes it sound obvious, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Those sorts of tricks always come with a cost. Don’t get involved with magic spells; they usually end badly in one way or another.”
“Okay,” I say, staring at the coffee cups as if my life depended on it.
Maybe this is a nightmare too. I have no idea what’s going on.
“But why were you in my room?” I say after a few moments.
It seems like a necessary question, but Ms. Granberg looks at me as though I’m an idiot.
“To give you nightmares, of course.”
As if that were a given.
“But why did you want to give me nightmares?”
“To remind you.”
Ms. Granberg’s eyes are no longer bright and shiny like usual. They are cold and calculating. I cower under her gaze. I can feel her judging me. Evaluating.
“Remind me of what?” I ask, though I already have my suspicions.
“Who you are. Where you come from.” Her expression is pensive, almost pitying. “You had no idea, did you?”
I can only shake my head. “No,” I say. “I didn’t know anything.”
“Who told you?”
“My mom. And grandma.”
“That makes sense.”
“How did you know?” I have to ask.
“Are you kidding? It’s obvious. I’d never met any merfolk before, but my mom told me all about you. The gills were the clincher.” She smiles wryly. “I don’t know how your parents managed to convince you they were scars.”
I can’t believe how cool her tone of voice is. As if it were no big deal, nothing to get worked up over.
“But why did you want to remind me? What’s it got to do with you?” I’m shouting now.
For the first time, I notice Ms. Granberg react.
She’s frightened too, I realize suddenly. She is just as anxious as me.
“I think you know.”
I wait in suspense.
“You’ve sensed it as well, haven’t you?” Ms. Granberg rubs her forehead.
I’m not afraid of her anymore. But her fear is contagious.
“All the people lost at sea lately. And poor . . . poor Axel.” Her voice trembles when she says his name.
“The accident you had the other day,” she continues.
“You know as well as I do that your dad didn’t crash into a Jet Ski.
” Her expression suddenly hardens. “But you’ve got it all wrong!
You ran around telling the police that I hurt Axel.
Are you completely out of your mind?” Her cheeks have turned red, and a tiny muscle trembles at her jaw.
“I really believed that you were the one that took him!” I defend myself. “I saw you sitting there, all black with long claws digging into my chest. What was I supposed to think?” I glare at her. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”
“As if you would have believed me,” she scoffs and brushes a stray strand of hair out of her face. A slight tension around her mouth is the only hint of how uncomfortable she’s feeling.
Ms. Granberg gets up and starts pulling her hair into a ponytail again with jerky movements.
“I didn’t think you would listen,” she says in a more composed tone.
“And then . . . I got frustrated. You didn’t understand!
I just wanted to push you a little, show you what’s happening.
We don’t have much time. You don’t have much time.
” She smiles tiredly, pulls open the top drawer, and takes out a chocolate bar.
She breaks off a piece and offers it to me.
Hazelnut. I take it and inhale the mild cocoa aroma.
“I just don’t understand how you could be so slow on the uptake,” she mumbles with a mouth full of chocolate. “One dream should have been enough, maybe two. I made them from your own memories.”
“My memories?” I say in a small voice.
“Yes,” she says. “It all came from you. It works better that way.”
The movements in the water, the impending danger, the faces slipping away before I could make out their features.
“Was that my real parents I saw?” Something wells up in my chest. “Are they the ones in my dreams?”
I’ve been trying to suppress this pain for a long time. It can’t be contained forever.
“Do you know why they gave me away?”
“Oh, Tuva.”
A cold shiver runs along my spine.
“The Ancient Ones haven’t died out. They’re still around,” she says in a softer voice than I’ve ever heard from her.
“They rarely show themselves, but I’ve seen the odd gnome and house elf here and there.
Even a rock troll once. Fairies still dance sometimes.
” She sighs to herself. “But the merfolk, they’re nowhere to be seen.
There are no signs, no traces of them. I’ve looked, used all my resources. ”
“You don’t think there are any left,” I whisper.
Ms. Granberg purses her lips. “There has been so much rapid destruction over the last fifteen, twenty years. The underwater dead zones are growing. All life is dying off.”
She takes another piece of chocolate, trying to buy time. “The Baltic Sea is one of the most polluted in the world.”
“You think chemicals in the water killed them?” I don’t know how I manage to say these words aloud, but I do, and the answer is plain to see in Ms. Granberg’s eyes.
“There are fewer and fewer Ancient Ones,” she says. “There’s hardly any untouched wilderness left, where they can live away from human eyes. The forests are being cut down, the seas are being poisoned . . . the rivers are being dammed up, one by one.”
“My grandma,” I say, but have to start over. “My grandma Gerd thinks I’m here to protect people from evil. And that’s why they gave me away.”
“Or maybe they did it to protect you,” says Ms. Granberg.
I blink.
That’s a novel thought. A happier one.
“Or both,” she continues. “I don’t know, Tuva. But this custom, giving away one of their own—it has been around for a long time.”
Outside, the shadows have grown long. An icy draft blows in through the window. Soon the storm will be upon us.
“What was it?” I ask her. “The thing that chased me. The thing that took Axel.”
“Not only Axel,” Ms. Granberg says quietly.
The ceiling light is grayish, and she looks pale and worn out in its dull glow.
I hear footsteps in the hallway. Lunch was over long ago, and I’m already late for my next class. Though my education has never been less of a priority than it is right now.
“I’ve never seen them,” Ms. Granberg says slowly.
I try to wrap my head around what she’s saying.
Them?
I think of the shape in the darkness. The splashing down by the dock, the hard knocks against the boat, Axel’s disappearance.
Them?
I have to know.
“Tell me everything,” I say through clenched teeth.