Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 27 - The Scandal

Magdalena had stopped on the bottom step and she stared at the boy. His hair was fair and tangled and unruly. His eyes were the most joyful and vivacious Magdalena had ever seen.

He can’t be ill, she thought.

And he wasn’t. A man came up behind him, walking on crutches.

“Goodness, Christer!” he said, horrified, though Magdalena could hear the suppressed laughter in his voice. She herself was having such a hard time keeping a straight face that she had to purse her lips.

But her eyes betrayed her. Christer, the boy, had noticed her and shared in her amusement. He let the ladies cackle on as he eyed her dreamily.

“Oh, Father, look! Isn’t she the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen? I think I love her!”

“Honestly, Christer!” his father said, and she had the impression that that had been the father’s standard comment throughout the boy’s childhood. “Dearest Christer, you can’t say that sort of thing to a young lady. Please forgive my son, Miss, he tends to be a little impulsive, but he doesn’t mean any harm by it.”

Magdalena had lost her ability to both move and speak. She was completely spellbound by the newcomers. The father’s friendly eyes. And the boy ... imagine being allowed to talk like that to one’s father! Magdalena would never have got away with that at home.

Meanwhile, for quite some time she had been vaguely aware of a furious voice shouting: “Magdalena! Magdalena! Are you bringing the major’s wife’s parasol or not?”

But she had deliberately ignored Uncle Julius. She wanted to have this moment to herself. She’d just have to deal with the punishment afterwards.

But now she couldn’t stay there any longer. She gave young Christer one last shy glance before running off to her own private doomsday.

“I’m sorry, Father, but I just couldn’t resist that wheelchair,” she heard Christer saying behind her.

As predicted, she was grounded. Uncle Julius took her by the ear in the most humiliating way and dragged her past all the gawking, gleeful resort visitors and into the house. As she passed Christer and his father – the only two faces that expressed any kind of sympathy – the boy hastily whispered, “Don’t worry! I’ll help you, because I can do magic!”

Confused and uncomprehending, yet still grateful, Magdalena was conducted to her room by the iron hand of her uncle who subsequently, with fury and self-righteousness, locked her in.

Christer was helping his father move into Ramlösa Sanatorium.

Christer had always had an extremely good relationship with his parents: the quiet, disabled Tomas and Tula, the wild – yet temporarily tame – Tula of the Ice People. She had been behaving in an exemplary way for the sixteen years that she and Tomas had been married. It was only when she was with Christer that she revealed a little of her hidden thoughts and feelings.

She and Christer were the best of friends. Tomas did not know that she was giving the boy some strange ideas during their private chats, and that was probably a good thing. She had disclosed to her son that she could do magic. She could tell him the most amazing things about the Ice People, and every so often she had showed him some simple spells that left him lost for words. She quickly discovered that he was a bit too fascinated by occult magic, so she stopped “boasting” about it and asked him to forget what she had said. But, of course, Christer could not forget it.

He didn’t ask any more questions about the magical secrets. He stopped talking about them. But he was convinced that he was the only one in the family who would continue the legacy.

When he was six years old he tried to get the dog to lift itself up from the ground and fly with its ears revolving. He didn’t succeed, of course, but Christer could have sworn that the dog had raised itself on its toes, and hadn’t it also waggled its ears?

Christer had a vivid imagination.

When he was seven years old he shocked the cook by going into the kitchen and mumbling something threatening over her consommé. That was, of course, on Count Posse’s estate, Bergqvara – where any ordinary soup was called a consommé – and the boy would run in and out of the kitchen as if he was one of the staff, because Tula often helped out on busy festive occasions and had to take her son along with her. This time he believed that if he recited all the magic spells he knew over the soup, everyone at the banquet would change their hair colour. He just wanted to see what it would look like – he hadn’t thought much further than that. Nothing happened to their hair, of course, but that was only, he believed, because the chiming of the clock had interrupted him as he was reciting the most important of the spells.

These spells and incantations were mainly of his own invention, for Tula had been smart enough not to reveal the most secret of them to her son.

His attempts at hypnosis were numerous and each just as futile as the last. But that didn’t bother him in the least. Christer had an unwavering belief in himself. Like the time the farm manager had scolded him for plaiting the horse’s tail into “troll braids” which, of course, had had no effect. Then Christer had turned on him, his brows knitted in a threatening expression as he pointed an imaginary pistol at him. “Bang, bang, you’re dead!” the boy roared, self-assuredly. The manager had a sense of humour and decided to join in the game. He dropped theatrically to the stable floor. Christer froze in horror, and was about to rush out of the stable but then he decided to acknowledge his responsibility. He recited a few well-chosen spells over the unfortunate man, who immediately woke up again. To Christer’s great relief.

But Christer was shaken. I’ve inherited some dangerous skills, he thought, breathless with excitement. I’d better be careful how I use them!

So after that he didn’t cast so many spells. But the fact that Grandmother Gunilla’s vegetables were unusually sumptuous the following year, was, of course, down to his magical skill and not because they had been given a pile of first-class horse manure from the stable. And it was also Christer’s doing that Grandfather Erland’s shoulder got better, was it not? Because hadn’t he smeared a healing ointment of his own concoction on a stick and recited a few magical words?

But he didn’t tell anyone about it, of course. It was his big secret. That he was the next chosen one of the Ice People. Because he was chosen and not stricken – that was clear from all the gifts with which he had been endowed. His mother was stricken, she herself had told him so and he had seen numerous instances that showed it was true. She had changed over the years, as both Christer and his father had noticed. She might not have been as attractive as when she was younger, but she was much more fascinating. Her eyes gleamed magically at times, almost as though they were made of gold, and there was something devilishly attractive about her that made people turn their heads when they passed her in the street. Her hair was much darker now. Christer remembered a time when it was almost golden. Now it was very dark blonde. But it didn’t matter, because she was his mother, the most understanding person in the world.

And she was so sweet to his father! It was always so wonderful to watch them together and to see the love between them. His mother, who was really a restless, impatient type of person, fussed over his father even more now that rheumatism had seriously spread throughout his body. It was a direct result of the many injuries he had received as a child while pushing himself around on his little cart, and the exposure to wind and cold he had had to endure. His mother gave his father ointments to rub on his aching joints, but she didn’t have that much and Christer had once heard her cursing Heike because he wouldn’t give her the Ice People’s treasure. He had also heard her whispering strange incantations over Tomas’s body, which seemed to help a little but not much.