Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 19 - Dragon´s Teeth

The bread plate ... hadn’t it moved? Moved slightly closer?

No, that was impossible. It was ridiculous even to imagine such a thing!

Sölve sat hunched by the table with all eight fingers crammed into his mouth at once, biting his fingernails and trembling. He actually looked terribly childish, like the caricature of a naughty child, but he wasn’t aware of it himself because he was so absorbed in what might happen.

He ought to have said the wish aloud once more, but just at that moment he was unable to do anything at all.

My God, he thought. My God, something happened, but it couldn’t have been the bread plate. I have surely lost my mind!

After he had sat down for ten minutes and gained control of the excitement he was feeling in his body and soul, he managed to calm down so much that he actually began to feel hungry again.

Should I? Dare I?

In a trembling voice he mumbled the words as he focused intently on his wish:

“I ... want that bread. Now. Immediately.”

Swoosh! Suddenly the bread plate shot over at a tremendous speed, knocking against his arms. Sölve was thrown backwards and landed on the floor. For a moment he lay there flailing his arms and trying to get up, in such a state of fear that he almost wet himself. He crawled back to his bed and climbed clumsily into it.

He did not dare to look at the table.

Not for a long time.

Then he looked, cautiously, between his fingers.

All the breath left him. Yes, the bread plate was on his side of the table.

Sölve forgot about his hunger and shrank down under the covers, lying there in steaming, throbbing fear.

He dared not look up. But after a while his brain began to function again.

It is true, he thought, breathless. I am the missing cursed one! So my generation was not spared!

For another long period he lay completely motionless, until he started having difficulty breathing under all the covers. He had to get up and breathe some air.

A rooster crowed: it was a small indicator of life to him and made him feel less lonely. He was no longer alone in the silence of the daybreak.

He even dared to look at the table again.

Sölve was calm now. A smile slowly started to spread across his face, tentatively at first, then gradually more broadly.

The truth was finally dawning on him. The possibilities! My God, they were endless!

Again, he took some time to consider them carefully. What couldn’t he accomplish? As one of the cursed of the Ice People!

And he was in a better position than everyone else.

Because no one else knew what he was capable of. No one had the least suspicion that he was cursed.

Then Sölve did something rather strange. He could have decided that it was not certain that he was cursed because he had none of the outer, grotesque features typical of the cursed ones.

But no! Sölve was immediately aware that he was one of the cursed and not one of the chosen. And therefore he had chosen sides.

He wanted to be one of the cursed. It was a dangerous decision. It did not bode well.

That night many things began to change within him. He became a new person. Not all at once, not in a flash of magic.

No, the change came slowly. Over the course of months and years. But this was the turning point.

And as he lay exhausted in his bed that sunny morning, another realization came to him, exceedingly intense and equally dangerous.

No one was to know that he was one of the cursed ones.

Because that would give him endless possibilities.

Chapter 2

Johan Gabriel Oxenstierna’s worldly love for “Themir” had a miserable ending. Her father, Kinvall, ruthlessly married her off to the estate bookkeeper, whom she did not like in the least. It seemed that she really had reciprocated Johan Gabriel’s love for her, even though he was so much younger than she was.

Although Johan Gabriel suffered for a long time after the heartless marriage took place, it was a beautiful sort of suffering! His poetic love for her persisted: in fact, it grew increasingly sublime, and for the rest of his life he kept his dream of Themir alive. He transmuted both her and the love they shared into something that was endlessly beautiful and divinely chaste, and the many beautiful poems he wrote were chiefly inspired by her. In this way a minor servant girl came to have a place in Swedish literary history as the source of inspiration for a great bard.

In the meantime Johan Gabriel soon had other things to think about. He was sent to Uppsala to study at the university there.

Sölve Lind of the Ice People, who had always regarded Johan Gabriel as a little brother (though a brother of nobler lineage, of course) asked his father’s permission to follow in his friend’s footsteps and to study.

This was something Daniel had to think about. The boy was certainly bright, but could they really afford it?

Finally he gave in. Both Daniel himself and his father had studied at Uppsala. He felt that he could not deny his son the opportunity, even though the family was by no means wealthy.

But in fact the Oxenstierna family wasn’t wealthy either. So both boys had to tighten their belts while in Uppsala. They travelled back home as often as they could in order to get decent food for a few days and to recuperate before continuing their studies.

They did not live together in the university town because it would not do for a count to live with someone who was not of noble descent. They saw each other often, however, as they were studying the same subjects in the humanities and they needed one another. Johan Gabriel needed the pragmatic sense of Sölve, who was older than him and could protect him against rougher groups of boys who found the young poet much too soft and ridiculous. And Sölve needed Johan Gabriel’s friendship. For no matter how outgoing Sölve was, there were few people who could actually follow his flights of ideas and his split existence – partially in the real world and partially in a fairy-tale world of imagination.

But Johan Gabriel was able to keep up with Sölve. This young, sensitive, gallant man, who was well received in the literary world because of his pleasant nature, his romantic melancholy and his poetic art, had the ability to see the as yet undiscovered possibilities of Sölve’s intellect.

But he would never have been able to imagine what actually lay hidden in the depths of Sölve’s mind!

Sölve had another reason for wanting to go to Uppsala. He had grown tired of Stina, who embarrassed him with her intimate glances, her whispering and giggling in the presence of the other servants, at home or in the larger house at Skenäs.

The years passed in Uppsala. They were exciting times for Sölve in more than one sense, because no one knew of his incredible double life. Though it was true that mysterious occurrences took place at the university – such as, for example, important books disappearing from the professors’ rooms, only to reappear again later, and the fact that Sölve received surprisingly good marks from time to time – no one would ever have dreamed of accusing him of cheating, because it could always be proven that he had either been in his own room or in the company of friends the whole time.

There had also been some more serious occurrences. Unpleasant students had been struck by misfortunes of various kinds, and the girls of the town would tearfully ask themselves what on earth had made them go along with the things the young dark-haired student demanded of them.

Only once did Sölve get a small shock, which made him realize that he would have to be more careful in future.

It had happened when he and Johan Gabriel were sitting at an outdoor tavern in the beautiful park by the Fyris River. It was a lovely day and the sun, which was strong, was shining in Sölve’s eyes.