The Quarry

Öland 1956

It is spring when Henry Fors shows his daughter Vendela traces of the elves and trolls, the year before she goes to primary school.

First of all they go to the elves. Henry takes Vendela with him out into the meadow behind their little smallholding to fetch the cows in for milking.

Henry has three cows, but even Vendela can see that he doesn’t really want to be a farmer. Not in the least. He runs his little farm simply in order to survive.

‘This is where they dance,’ he says as they stand on the grass, the cows lumbering towards them with their udders full to bursting.

Vendela looks out over the meadow, which is enclosed by a high stone wall. Beyond the wall the world of the alvar begins, with its grass and juniper bushes. Nothing is moving out there.

‘Who?’ she asks.

‘The elves and their queen. You remember her, don’t you?’

Vendela nods, she remembers the story.

‘You can even see the traces they’ve left behind,’ says Henry, pointing with his right hand, dry and cracked from working with stone. ‘Look, a fairy ring.’

Vendela looks at the meadow and sees a circle of paler grass, perhaps three feet in diameter, in the midst of all the green. It looks as if someone has trodden on the blades of grass and broken them. Only the centre of the ring is fresh and green.

As Henry gathers the cows ahead of him, he takes a wide sweep around the ring in the grass. ‘You mustn’t walk across the places where the elves dance — it brings bad luck,’ he says. Then he raises his hand and gives the cows a gentle push to hurry them along.

A few days later, Henry takes his daughter down to the coast to look at the quarry. That’s where he’d really like to be.

Vendela is supposed to go and fetch the cows from the meadow, but Henry says they can stay out for a while longer today.

He sings all the way down to the sea in his deep baritone voice; he likes to sing songs about Öland.

There is both sorrow and longing in his voice, and Vendela thinks it is because her mother Kristin no longer exists.

Dead, she has been dead for several years. She became ill, and then the quiet noises in the house grew louder, the walls creaked more, there were rustling, cracking noises. And then she died, and everything fell silent once again.

‘Consumption,’ Henry said to Vendela when he came home from hospital for the last time.

It was the old name for a condition that meant a person had simply faded away, someone who had grown tired of everything and no longer had the strength to live.

Consumption. For several years Vendela wonders if it runs in the family, until her Aunt Margit tells her that Kristin died of a burst appendix.

As they reach the quarry, Henry stops singing. He halts at the edge, a few metres above the wide hollow in the ground. It is dry and cold here.

‘People have cleared away the earth and dug out stone for five hundred years. Stone for palaces and castles and churches. And for graves, of course.’

Vendela stands beside her father, gazing out over a grey landscape that has been smashed to pieces and stripped of all life.

‘What do you see?’

‘Stone and gravel,’ says Vendela.

Henry nods. ‘It’s a bit like the moon, isn’t it? I feel like an astronaut when I walk around here, all I need is a rocket...’

Her father laughs; he has always been interested in space.

But his laughter dies away when they reach the gravelled surface.

‘There were lots of people here just a few years ago,’ he says. ‘But they’ve given up and gone home, one by one...’

Vendela looks over at the other quarrymen. There are only five of them, and they are spread out along the bottom of the quarry, their backs weary, their clothes powdered with limestone dust.

Henry waves and calls out to them. ‘Hello there! Hello!’

None of the men wave back. They are holding drills and hammers, but have lowered them to stare at the visitors to the quarry.

‘Why aren’t they working?’ whispers Vendela.

Henry looks at his colleagues and shakes his head, as if he has given up on them. ‘They’re standing here wishing they were somewhere else,’ he says quietly. ‘They’re asking themselves why they never took the opportunity to travel to America.’

Then he shows her the spot where he works at the southern end of the quarry, where he has piled up reject stone to form a makeshift shelter from the wind.

‘This is the kelpie!’ he says.

He invites Vendela inside, and they sit down on two stone stools. Henry has brought a flask of coffee, and drinks two cups.

‘Look out down below!’ he says, tipping the last of the coffee out on to the stones.

Vendela knows he is warning the trolls in the underworld, giving them time to get away.

The dust from the limestone is tickling her nose. She looks around; there is so much crushed stone here. It’s everywhere, and she gazes at the piles, trying to see if anyone is hiding behind them.

‘What are you looking for?’ says Henry. ‘Trolls?’

Vendela nods, but her father laughs.

‘There’s nothing to worry about, the trolls keep away during the day. They can’t tolerate sunlight. They only come out when the sun has gone down.’

He glances around and goes on, ‘But before the people came, this was the kingdom of the trolls. They lived here by the sea. And the elves, who were their enemies, lived further inland. There was just one occasion when the elves came down to the trolls. They met here at the quarry, and the blood flowed that day. The ground was stained with red.’

He points towards the rock over in the east. ‘The blood is still there... Come and see.’

He leads Vendela down into the quarry and across to the vertical rock face. He bends down and points to a reddish layer running through the pale stone, just above the ground.

She looks more closely and sees that the layer is full of dark-red clumps.

‘The place of blood,’ says Henry, straightening up. ‘That’s all that remains of the battle between the trolls and the elves... petrified blood.’

Vendela realizes that the queen of the elves must have led the battle against the trolls, but she doesn’t want to look at the blood any more.

‘Do they still fight, Daddy?’

‘No, I think they’ve called a truce now,’ says Henry. ‘Perhaps they’ve decided that the trolls will stay underground beneath the place of blood, and the elves will stay on the alvar — that way they don’t have to meet.’

Vendela looks up at the top of the quarry and thinks they ought to build a palace up there, with tall windows and walls made of stone. She would like to live there, between the kingdoms of the trolls and the elves.

Then she looks at her father. ‘Why were they enemies, the trolls and the elves? Why did they fight?’

Henry merely shakes his head. ‘Who knows... I suppose they each thought the others were just too different.’