The Quarry

Öland 1957

Vendela sees the elf stone once again when she has left the village school and started at the bigger high school in Marnäs on the other side of the island, almost four kilometres away.

It’s a long way to walk six days a week, at least for a nine-year-old, but Henry never goes with her, not once.

All he does is take his daughter to the edge of the meadow, where the cows are chewing the cud beneath the open sky. Then he points east, towards the treeless horizon.

‘Head for the elf stone, and when you get there you’ll be able to see the church tower in Marnäs,’ he says. ‘The school is just past the church. That’s the shortest route... but if we get a lot of snow in winter, you’ll have to go along the main road.’

He hands over a packet of sandwiches for break time. Then he sets off for the quarry, humming some melody.

Vendela heads off in the opposite direction, straight across the burnt brown grass. Summer is over but its dryness remains, and dead flowers and leaves crunch beneath her shoes as she walks towards the church tower. She is terrified of adders, but on all those walks to and from school she encounters only nice animals: hares, foxes and deer.

She sees the elf stone again that very first day. It is still there in the grass, isolated and immovable. Vendela walks past it and continues on her way to Marnäs church tower.

School begins at eight thirty, and the children are met by Eriksson, the headmaster, who stands in front of the blackboard looking strict, and fru Jansson, whose hair is in a bun; she looks even stricter. She calls the register, reading each name in a loud, harsh voice. Then she sits down at the pedal organ to lead morning worship with a hymn, and lessons begin after that.

At half past one the first school day is over. Vendela thinks it has gone well. She felt lonely and a little bit scared of fru Jansson at first, but then she thought that the class was just like a herd of cows, and everybody else was afraid too; that made her feel better. Besides which, they had needlework after break, and music and movement at their desks every hour. If she can just make some friends, she will be happy at the high school.

On the way home she passes the big, flat elf stone once again, and stops. Then she walks over to it.

When she stands on tiptoe she can see that there are little hollows in the top of the stone, at least a dozen of them. They look as if they have been made deliberately then polished, like little round stone bowls.

She looks around, but there is no one in sight. She remembers what Henry told her about gifts to the elves and she wants to linger here, but in the end she leaves the stone and sets off home, back to the cows.

From then on hardly a day passes when Vendela does not stop on her way home from school to see if people have left any gifts on the elf stone. She never sees anyone else visiting the stone, but sometimes there are small gifts in the hollows, coins or pins or pieces of jewellery.

There is a strange atmosphere around the stone; everything is so quiet. But when Vendela closes her eyes, thinks of nothing and screws her eyes up so tightly that the light coming through her eyelids turns dark blue, she gets pictures inside her head. She sees a group of pale, slender people standing on the far side of the stone, looking at her. They become clearer and clearer the longer she keeps her eyes closed, and the clearest of all is a tall, beautiful woman with dark eyes. Vendela knows that she is the queen of the elves, who once upon a time fell in love with a huntsman.

The queen does not speak, she merely stares at Vendela. She looks sorrowful, as if she were missing her beloved. Vendela keeps her eyes closed, but thinks she can hear the sound of jingling bells in the distance; the grass beneath her feet seems to disappear, and the ground becomes hard and smooth. Fresh water is splashing from cool fountains.

The kingdom of the elves.

But when she opens her eyes, everything has vanished.

She goes home to the farm and looks up at the middle window upstairs, in spite of the fact that she doesn’t really want to.

The Invalid’s room. As usual the window is dark and empty.

Vendela goes into the porch and continues straight through the kitchen into Henry’s bedroom, where unwashed clothes, invoices from wholesalers and letters from the authorities are lying all over the place. She has no money to offer the elves, but in a dark-brown cupboard next to her father’s bed is her mother’s jewellery box.

Henry won’t be home from the quarry for several hours, and of course the Invalid can’t disturb her either, so she kneels down in front of the cupboard and opens it.

The white jewellery box is on the bottom shelf. It is lined with green fabric, and contains brooches, necklaces, earrings and tiepins — perhaps twenty or thirty pieces in total, both old, inherited items and things that were bought after the war, everything that her mother and her family gathered over the years and left behind.

With her thumb and forefinger, Vendela carefully picks up a silver brooch with a polished red stone. Even here in the darkness the stone has a glow about it, almost like a ruby.

A ruby in Paris, Vendela thinks.

She listens, but the house is silent. She takes the brooch and tucks it down her dress.

On her way home from school the next day, Vendela takes the brooch out of the inside pocket of her coat when she reaches the elf stone. She looks at the brooch, then at the empty hollows.

It’s funny, but she can’t think of anything to ask for. Not today. She is almost ten years old and there ought to be lots of things to wish for, but her head is completely empty.

A trip to Paris?

She mustn’t be greedy. In the end she just wishes for a trip to the mainland — to Kalmar. She hasn’t been there for almost two years.

She places the brooch in one of the hollows and runs home.

It is Saturday. For once the school is closed, because new stoves are being installed in the classrooms.

‘Hurry up with the cows this morning,’ her father says at breakfast. ‘And get changed when you come home.’

‘What for?’

‘We’re going to Kalmar on the train, and we’re going to stay overnight with your aunt.’

A coincidence? No, it was the elves.

But Vendela should have stopped wishing for things at that point.