With the idea of being an actress in my head, I focused solely on that. I mentioned it once to my parents and ended up getting a belt across my thigh. It didn’t hurt. I was too angry for it to hurt. I was angry at my father for being so close-minded about his daughter’s dreams (for what were we without dreams) and at my mother for never sticking up for me. Ever since the lake incident, when she stopped with her stories, she stopped being my friend as well. It hurt more than anything, more than all the belts, more than the feeling of drowning in that ice cold lake.
So I never mentioned it to my parents again but that did me no good. I should have known they’d investigate where the sinful idea came from and when they found out I’d be listening to the radio I was banned from going to Stäva’s. They didn’t care enough to ban me from seeing him in particular, just that I couldn’t listen to the radio. My ears couldn’t be polluted by foreign ideas. They even had a talk with his parents and to keep peace as neighbors, they agreed. What was it to Stäva’s parents anyway? They didn’t care if I couldn’t listen to the radio. One less child crowding their house.
It didn’t break me, however. I merely became more resolved in my determination that I would be an actress one day. I’d find a way, somehow.
But since I wasn’t allowed to spend too much time in Stäva’s home anymore, we were left to our own devices in the great outdoors. Playing in the hay and harassing goats became tiresome by the time I was nine, so we started going on after school jaunts into the woods.
There was a part of me that was a little chicken over the tall trees and dark paths and I was forever on the lookout for a man with no face. He didn’t show up. But something else did. Something much more horrific.
It was a cool, grey day in early fall. The leaves had just gone from crisp red to the color of soggy wood as they clung helplessly to the branches.
Stäva was walking ahead of me as he did, leaves crunching beneath him. He was two years older and only lately did he start to grow into his age. He often walked ahead, pretending he was a woodland hunter, or perhaps a wily prince, and kept me behind him. I didn’t mind the protection, even if it was from an 11-year old.
I also didn’t mind when he stopped on our walk at one point and took my hand in his. It was the first time I remember feeling the difference between us. He was a boy and I was a girl and that little thrill shot up my arm, the same feelings I imagined when I had listened to the more romantic parts of the radio shows.
I suppose I was so awed by the simple gesture of hand holding that I didn’t hear the howl first. Suddenly Stäva’s grasp tightened on mine and his bright eyes searched the greying woods.
“What is it?” I asked, not used to seeing panic on his face.
“Did you hear that?”
I tensed up and listened.
I heard it. A howl, like a wolf or a wild dog. It came from our left and seemed to fill the trees like a blanket.
I looked back at him with frightened eyes.
“We should head back,” he said.
I nodded but just as we turned on the path I heard a child’s cry mixed in with the canine’s.
I stopped and pulled hard on Stäva’s hand as he tried to keep walking.
“Listen!” I whispered hoarsely.
“We can’t be out here with wolves!” he yelled back, struggling to keep his voice down. All Swedish children were likely to have been told tales of vicious wolves in the wild woods. I had heard mine from my mother. But the human sounds made this story different.
“There’s a girl out there!” I told him as I heard another whimper coming from the same direction. I wasn’t actually sure if it was a girl or not, but they were young like us and needed our help.
“I don’t hear anything, come on,” Stäva said pulling at me again.
“No!” I yelled and ripped my hand out of his sweaty grip. “Listen again, you can hear it.”
The wolf howled first. Then fierce, drooling growls swarmed us. And finally, the child’s cry.
“Daddy” I could hear the child yell.
But Stäva was immune.
“I don’t hear anyone but wolves. We have to get out of here.”
“You go!” I said and then I turned around and took off at a gallop into the darkening trees, toward the horrendous sound of snapping jaws.
I was aware of Stäva yelling behind me and perhaps for a bit he may have given chase. I certainly don’t blame him for letting me go, or if it was a case of him not being able to catch up. He was older but I was the same height as him and my legs were born to run. Within a few minutes of tireless scampering through the birch trees and overgrown roots and berry patches, I was alone.
Alone and cursing myself with the only bad words I knew.
I waited with my hands on my knees, my socks splattered with mud, breathing heavily. I had lost the path at some point, so it didn’t help that I was lost along with being completely alone.
Another howl and another human cry.
Of course I wasn’t completely alone.
“You’re an idiot, Pippa,” I said aloud, hoping maybe Stäva would hear me. Hoping the wolves wouldn’t. Just what was I thinking? I was tall but I was still nine and my survival skills consisted of picking berries and throwing stones. I was hardly a candidate for a rescue mission. And Stäva had never heard the child crying. Perhaps it was all in my head.
But now. There it was again.
“Someone help me!” the child cried and now I was certain it was a girl younger than me.
My fingers and toes ached with the cold that was steadily encroaching. Autumn in Sweden wasn’t very kind. It would be blissfully warm one day and then a frozen wasteland the next. Being in the dark woods overnight could possibly kill me. Yet the fact remained that I had chosen to come out here and with that lay my fate. Knowing was better than not knowing, even if I wound up dead.
I know such thoughts don’t make a lot of sense when you take into account how young I was. But there was a part of me that didn’t fear things the way I should have. Though I was still afraid, the concept of death was one that never had much weight with me. It had nothing to do with my father and his religious ways, instead it was a matter of having experienced death before. I knew I died in some way when I found the girl in the lake. I don’t know how I came back to life but I know that even though she was dead she still protected me. I felt safe knowing I could walk away from such a thing.