Chapter Text
Prologue: Monday 21.21
The garden was a vast, empty place but Bolla never felt lonely. The little boy lorded over the greenery like an all-powerful king, controlling its inhabitants―his subjects―with the singular focus of his mind. The sun shone all day long because he told it to. The wind blew at his command. Down at the bottom of the long stone steps to the sea, the waves curled at the direction of his fingers, and when he took his shortcut home through the hedges and thought the word “rabbit,” a rabbit would appear, nose twitching in his direction.
There was no one to contradict his worldview, no one to teach him otherwise. With Father having a new family and Mother long given to her ailments, there were no minders to scold him. Or playmates to fight with. Bolla’s rowdy younger half-siblings lived in a big house on Tromsøya with their nannies and his father’s new wife. Upstairs, his mother cried in her room. At least they couldn’t claim her too. Unlike his father, she was almost only his.
Bolla could be himself always, unchallenged and undisturbed. Like today, alone and happy, crouched in the soil, peering at the captive in his cupped hands: a snail extending its curious antennae. He placed it on a slate paving stone and lifted his foot over its moving form, enjoying the shadow hovering over the creature as it slowly made its way back into the foliage. The specter of death didn’t make it move any faster. But still it went, leaving a slimy trail of itself.
Ladybugs were all over their house that June, flying around and landing on a leaf or an arm. Bolla’s grandmother had once said that the number of dots on their red wings told you how old they were. At first, the insects had been too fast―their red capelet wings would lift, revealing their real wings underneath and they would take off before Bolla ever got the opportunity to count.
Stomping up the stairs to his room, Bolla opened his bedside drawer with a foot and deposited his latest thralls. He’d learned by now how to prevent them from leaving. You had to rip out their primary wings before they could fly away. No wings, no flight. It was beautiful to look at―all those shades of red, orange, and yellow piled up into the corners. All those little dots, ready to be counted.
His alarm went off. It was almost time to say good night to Mamma.
Their housekeeper and cook, Várvá, left Bolla’s dinner plate on the kitchen table but didn’t call the boy down. Eventually, dinner was covered with a plate.
At 21.00, she gathered her things and prepared to go. Várvá had a long bus ride back to her little house. Truth be told, she couldn’t wait to leave this place. She didn’t like this house, with its impossible corners, nor the child. Every day she practiced the art of invisible service. If she wasn’t seen, she wouldn’t be acknowledged, and that meant she could work undisturbed. Like none of them were there at all.
On her way out, the fog rolled in and Várvá passed through the garden, nearly tripping when she stepped on something that caused her to slip. A broken snail shell. She took a twig and scraped it off her shoe. Her back was to the house, so she didn’t see the figure at the second-story window watching her.
After the fire, Várvá told the police what she thought was the truth: there was nothing out of the ordinary about that day. She couldn't remember when she’d last spoken to the lady of the house, whether she’d even seen the boy before he’d gone upstairs, or if she'd noticed if the long matches that were usually kept in the drawer next to the stove were missing. Várvá had only cleaned, cooked, and left, like she always did. It wasn’t her job to see too much.
Sometime later Várvá would remember the mess on the sole of her shoe and how that―along with the night’s fog blotting out the sun so that it appeared small and too-distant―had left her uneasy on the bus ride back to Tromsøya. She’d put her brand new yellow Sports Walkman on her lap, placed the headphones over her ears, but didn’t press play, listening to the hissing sound of the brakes at every stop instead.
Even in 1993, Várvá questioned this memory: if it was real at all, or if it was something she’d invented after the fact to make sense of the horror. By 2021, the particulars of the house she had cleaned from 9.00 to 21.00 every day for nearly a year were gone. Time eventually blurred the boy’s face and his mother’s too. But not that dim midsummer sun; its corpse-pale image remained.