Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 33 - Demon of the Night

“Good heavens,” she muttered. “It reaches right down to his knees! It must be an awful nuisance, having it dangling!”

Now the little creature smiled.

Vanja said: “Are you a devil?”

He made a face as if he didn’t like the thought.

Vanja had lifted the doll out of the bed and straightened out the bed linen. “A demon then? Yes, that’s probably what you are. We’re used to demons in our family, you know. There was someone by the name of Tula who disappeared with four of your kind. I wouldn’t dream of doing that. It’s just stupid. But you’re awfully small! What’s your name?”

Now the demon seemed irritated. Perhaps he didn’t understand the question.

“Are you hungry? I see, you don’t understand that either? You look a bit skinny to me. Here’s an apple: do you want it?”

She held it out, but he kicked it so that Vanja dropped it.

“Now you’re just being bad,” she said. “You don’t seem to eat. Anyway, not like the rest of us do. Well, are you coming down to try out your bed?”

She stepped forward, patting the bed encouragingly. She folded back the sheet with the lace border, which her mother had sewn. The little devil looked doubtful.

“I can see that you can’t talk,” she burbled. “Why should you? Even so, I think you can understand me. You seem sweet and helpless, so you shouldn’t be completely alone ...”

Sweet? Helpless? Well, Vanja was only eleven years old and a strange girl. Very naive, open and childish, but surprisingly wise from time to time.

She burbled on. “What should I call you? Sorrow-child? Like the boy in Viktor Rydberg’s Singoalla? No, that doesn’t suit you. I’ll come up with a name for you, if you stay here. Because it’s all right with me.”

Vanja had always loved birds and other animals and defenceless creatures. She herself was surrounded by the love of her whole family: her father, Henning’s parents Viljar and Belinda, Malin and Per Volden, her big sister Benedikte, and her “big brother” Christoffer Volden, who wasn’t her real brother. Vanja had always been the littlest one in the family. But now Benedikte had a son of her own, André, so he was the youngest and the most spoilt. Vanja was too old to be jealous; she liked to nurse the three-year-old André. But now her heart was suddenly filled with a kind of happy feeling. Here she was with a small child to take care of! It didn’t really matter that he was ugly as sin and wasn’t even human. She had heard so much about demons and had read quite a lot about the history of the Ice People; she had often thought that it would be exciting to have the chance to meet such a demon. But as she was neither stricken nor chosen, this was something she hadn’t reckoned with.

Suddenly, she felt possessive. Nobody was to take this little creep away from her! He was hers and only hers. Nobody was to know anything about him!

She whispered this to the little one, who didn’t seem the least bit impressed. He just smiled, showing his sharp tusks and forked tongue.

“Now and then, you look really wicked,” she told him reproachfully. “You’re certainly not particularly sweet.”

The youngster had clearly been considering her offer of a bed, because suddenly he swung over the edge of the shelf he had been sitting on and scuttled like lightning down the wall. The very next moment, he jumped into the doll’s bed, and Vanja lifted the blanket hurriedly so that he could creep down under it.

“You can’t run about with that thing dangling! You’ll get cold, and it might get hurt. Surely you can understand that? Here! Here’s a clean handkerchief. We can use that as a nappy. Oh dear!”

The little devil watched her with a smile as she tried to put the nappy under him. As she struggled, his member rose to an incredible length and hardness. Vanja gave up immediately, hurriedly spreading the blanket over him.

“Good heavens,” she whispered, and sat down on her own bed. She was familiar with the sight of little André and the farm animals ... but this beat everything. That little mite, the size of a squirrel – and yet so well endowed. She was shocked and didn’t know what to do. Anyway, he was certainly not human.

But he was clearly a child. A demon child. Would she be able to keep him? Might it be dangerous? After all, you never knew with a demon. Even those demons that had sided with the Ice People weren’t nice. You probably couldn’t count on them, and they were unlikely to do anything for others if they weren’t to get anything out of it as well. And for ordinary people they could spell disaster.

Vanja looked at him again. Now he was lying innocently with his head on the pillow, his yellow eyes were closed and he was smiling childishly, as gentle as a shadow.

“No,” she said resolutely. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, little one. You’re my responsibility. You can stay with me and I’ll take care of you as best I can ...”

She tucked the blanket around him and went back to her own bed. The demon of the night opened his yellow eyes slightly, twisting his mouth into a small but unbelievably devilish smile.

Chapter 2

Now Vanja had something to devote herself to. She spent more time in her room because she felt that the tiny demon cub needed company. This wasn’t actually the case, but she never knew where he would be when she woke up in the morning or entered her room. He suffered from an insatiable curiosity. Once, she found him in the wardrobe, where he had turned all her underwear out of its boxes. Another time, he had emptied her water glass onto the bed – and he enjoyed rearranging the dolls in the most perverted manner.

Vanja insisted that he wore a pair of doll’s trousers. At first, he had given her a glum smile and snapped at her, but when he tried on a pair of short black trousers with a silver edge, he accepted the humiliation of wearing clothes. Vanja felt that he couldn’t walk about without covering his private parts.

He wasn’t at all nice. She attempted to teach him some manners, but it was impossible. It was a different matter when she tried to teach him to speak, because then he would listen attentively.

It worried her to see how fast he was growing.

One day, he gave Vanja another shock. She was burbling away to him as usual, when she suddenly heard a hoarse, guttural sound. She stared at him.

“You talk a hell of a lot, you silly cow. It hurts my ears! They’re very sensitive, see?”

He could speak! But ... had she really taught him those bad words? Vanja pondered. Come to think of it, she had probably called a neighbour’s wife, who was visiting her parents, a silly cow, but the little demon wasn’t supposed to hear that, was he? She might also have used the expression on one or two other occasions, but “hell”? Oh, perhaps she had sworn when he poured the water into her bed. She had better be more careful in future. The little demon was bright and quick to learn.

She called him Tamlin, after a figure of Scottish legend. Perhaps that wasn’t the best name she could have chosen. Because the Scottish Tamlin was an elf who took the virginity of all the young girls who strayed into his forest. But Vanya thought the name fitted her little demon perfectly.

He was awfully keen to see the rest of the house, but Vanja wouldn’t allow it because something might happen to him. He would hide when her mother Agnete or anyone else entered the room. But, of course, he managed to slip through the door a few times when she opened it to go out. Then Vanja would search for him and get very worried until somebody asked if she had lost something.

The honest answer would be, yes, my little demon, but she couldn’t very well say that, could she?

Each time she would return to her room in despair, then she would see a swift movement across the floor and before she had time to close the door, he would be sitting in his favourite place on her little desk, laughing.