Eulalia Starwind

another open stove and when you had been through both rooms you would hurry out again, closing the door behind you. Then you would rather not go there again.

  This time I just strolled by at a distance, thinking I would go and sit next to the gate pole out on the old highway, wondering about how came people disappeared when they got old, and if it maybe was possible to do something about it after all. But suddenly I spotted a girl standing by the apple tree, looking down into the old overgrown well.

  It was rather far away and she stood in the shadow behind the house so it was hard to see, but it was definitely a girl. I took a few steps backwards on the road in order to make her out better. She was still standing without a movement, staring down into the well. She had on a pair of brown shorts that were way to big, with a leather belt around the waist and a sky-blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and bare feet and her long blond hair swung a little in the hot breeze.

  Who was she? Maybe I seem very nosy to you, but then you don’t understand how rare it was meeting people in those woods. It actually never happened at all and that’s why I slowly cruised nearer between the junipers to have a closer look. Finally I was only some five metres away and could tell she probably wasn’t much older than I was, some eight years or so. The toes of her dirty bare feet were pointing in all directions, and still without a movement she suddenly said out loud:

  “Boy, it’s hard not to turn around when you know someone’s sneaking up behind you. You really have to concentrate!”

  “Hello”, I said and felt a bit stupid. She still had her back towards me.

  “Wanna guess what I look like from the front?” she teased, and: “Hey, get over here and greet me properly.”

  I hesitantly went to look over her shoulder down into the black water. She had a smell of wet dirt and soap.

  “Hello there”, I said stretching my hand towards her like a little old man, “I’m Niklas”. She turned her head and studied my hand for a while before suddenly burping at it.

  “No offence”, she said, “it’s the way I am. I think I like you.”

  And then we just stood there. She had a little speck of dirt on the chin and some of her hair curled down over her eye and she had red cheeks and big greenish eyes with something orange in them and I totally forgot what my parents had taught me about not staring at people.

  “That’s right”, she said smiling, “that’s what I look like.”

  I tore my gaze from her face and put it on the ground instead. Then I thought of it:

  “And what about you”, I said, “what’s your name?”

  Suddenly her face changed and she looked sad, her eyes roaming the dry grass around us. She coughed and took a step away from me, then lifted her head, looking out across the moor with its junipers and sheep and beautiful low stone walls with yellow moss on them running around it all. I said:

  “Not that it’s any of my business...I just wondered.” She turned around again and looked at me:

  “You see, I don’t really know my name.”

  “Sure you do...”

  “Nope, nobody ever asked me before.”

  “But, what does people say when they’re shouting for you? Your mom and dad must call you something.”

  “My mom and dad don’t talk that much. When I think about it they don’t talk at all, and if they did I doubt they would bother much with names.”

  “I don’t think I understand...”

  “No, you probably don’t. But never mind, come along inside instead – I wanna show you something!”

  She seemed happier now that she didn’t have to talk about not having a name, and she marched around the corner of the house and disappeared inside. I stayed for a few seconds, wondering what she might have to show me inside that old abandoned house with wooden boards over the windows and I guess I was pretty confused. But then I decided to follow her.

  She had removed one of the boards over the back-side window and was waiting for me in the sunshine that fell in on the dirty worn floor.

  “Come”, she said going into the kitchen, “I made you a cake.”

  I went around the open stove where ashes of wood and ancient newspapers still remained in black mounds. When I looked into the kitchen she was kneeling by the other oven and lifted out a baking plate with something round and burnt on it. She looked sort of surprised and confused for a short moment but then she put the plate down on the bench and grinned at me:

  “It’s probably not very tasty but if you like we can at least watch it for a while?”

  I don’t know why but I stepped into the kitchen and parked next to her, and together we looked at the burnt cake for several minutes. A whole lot of different thoughts went through my head and I wasn’t sure which one of them to catch and hold but eventually I said:

  “You...whatever your name is...how did you know I was coming?”

  I saw how she smiled with the whole of her face so that even her ears moved a little under the curls. Then she said, slowly and somewhat cunning:

  “For a little girl with no shoes and no name I do know a lot...”

  After this she walked in her somewhat cow-legged manner to sit on the porch-stone outside the door and I followed and stood next to her like a fool. I noticed she had broken the nail on one of her big toes.

  She stared into the pine forest and chewed a little on her lower lip and said:

  “You know what, I think I’m gonna tell you all sorts of things. But not until tomorrow so you must return then. But now you will go home.”

  “Yes...”, I said. And then:

  “And what about you, where do you live?”

  “But I live here!”

  “How can you live here? In an old abandoned house?

  “It isn’t older than the one that you and your granny stays in, and since I live here it’s not abandoned either.”

  I felt like a kind of vertigo when she said that – as a matter of fact I tottered and fell off the porch and found myself sitting in the grass:

  “But”, I said, “how do you know...”

  “Tomorrow”, she said, smiling and waving goodbye as if to tease me. And although she was only a little girl with bare feet I did what she told me to do. I went home.

  In the evening when Granny and I had finished our tea and eaten our sandwiches with cheese or dark English orange marmalade we sat in the room downstairs playing cards, as usual. Normally it would have been difficult for me not to tell her about the girl who had moved in at the old abandoned house in The Clearing, but for some reason I didn’t feel like it. I couldn’t be sure that the girl wanted me to, and furthermore I was almost certain that Granny would start to worry about her. Old people sometimes think children are completely helpless.

  As the evening went by I also started wondering if it wasn’t maybe something I’d made up by myself, it all seemed so strange.

  “What are you thinking about?” Granny asked when for the fourth time I dealt her too many cards.

  “Nothing”, I said, “only it’s very dark outside tonight. I wonder if it will rain.”

  “Probably not but I almost hope so. It’s so nice going to bed when it rains, with all the blankets and the fire kicking in the stove. It’s your turn, on hearts.”

  And maybe I just felt bad about leaving her alone out there in the woods, but when I went outside to pee in the shrub of lilacs before going to bed I was almost certain that she didn’t exist. I stood there and heard the wind whistling through the trees and the hedgehogs blowing their noses deep inside of the hedges, it was all overcast and dark and I said to myself:

  “A girl who doesn’t know what she’s called but a whole bunch of other stuff she shouldn’t have a clue about – try to get a grip on your imagination!”

 

  All the same I headed straight for the Clearing in the morning, without even eating. I had woken already when the sun went up and for a long while I tried to remember my dream. Suddenly I realized that it wasn’t a dream, and I was sure that it wasn’t in
my imagination either. I had actually met that weird girl, and she was waiting for me to return. When I did she would tell me her secrets.

  It was the first time I could remember that I had risen before Granny and I tip-toed between the beds, getting dressed as silently as I could. In the north chamber where the sun didn’t reach the window until about lunchtime the windowpanes were moist and semitransparent because of the mist, and in the steep stairway I made sure I avoided the noisier steps. Outside the grass was also wet and cold and up by the barn I sat down on a stone, putting on the shoes I’d brought in my hand because of the hurry I felt. Then I calmed down.

  Relaxed and with a smile that got broader by the minute I strolled along through the meadows and the woods towards the Clearing. The sun began to heat my back and I thought:

  “Eulalia! Maybe I’ll ask her if I can call her Eulalia. She seems a little sulky and could do with a cheerful and beautiful name.”

  Already at a distance I could tell the door was open, but since nobody was around I first went to knock on it. And heard my knocks echo inside, but nothing else.

  “Hello”, I said in the gap, and then:

  “Are you awake?”

  But she didn’t answer and I thought that maybe I was too early, maybe she wanted to sleep longer. Or if she already had left to go somewhere. I ventured to open the door a little more so that I could look inside, but then it was as if the darkness of night fell over me again. The birds went silent and it got cold and I felt terribly lonely. Where I stood