The Storyteller

The darkness only lasted for seconds, maybe not even that long. She opened her eyes, and, up there on the landing, he wasn’t standing anymore. She looked down the stairs and saw that Linda had buried her face in her hands. She saw that Bertil wanted to come up the stairs, saw Magnus grab his arm and hold him back, his grip as firm as steel. None of the policemen moved. She thought she should have run. But she didn’t.

It was Micha who ran.

She freed herself from A

Just a tiny little pain

,

Three days of heavy rain

,

Three days of sunlight

,

Everything will be all right

.

Just a tiny little pain …

And A

The storyteller didn’t exist anymore.

They buried him a week after the thirteenth of March. After his eighteenth birthday. A

Micha’s uncle didn’t care where she lived. He signed all the necessary papers with a resigned shrug. So she would be adopted. Micha Ta

And still, A

Abel’s picture was on the wall above the chimney now, the one good photo Micha had found of him. She’d insisted they have it framed and hang it there, so Abel could see what she was doing all day long. So he would stay with them. And every time A

A

Bertil called for a while, but A

Leonard Cohen sang from one of the scratched LPs,

Baby I’ve been here before

,

I know this room, I’ve walked this floor

I used to live alone before I knew you

I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch

But love is not some kind of victory march

No it’s a cold and a very broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah …

Somewhere in a parallel world, things were different.

Somewhere in a parallel world, Abel hadn’t fired that last shot. Possibly, he hadn’t fired the one before it either, the one that killed Sören Marinke. And Knaake had never fallen through the ice over the shipping cha

She was waiting for him when he took his first step back into the normal world. She watched him walk toward her, a smile in his winter-ice eyes. She had long since grown up. They married on a February morning as clear as crystal. Micha was their only witness. They sent her postcards from their journey around the world … from the desert and several remote islands. Later, Micha often visited them, an adult Micha with a husband and two children. And in the house where A

She told him about the garden when she visited his grave. He lay there, in the slowly stirring March earth, a piece of dead matter. But in their parallel world, they lived on, side by side. She developed each part of their parallel world in meticulous detail … the sunflowers in a vase, the late afternoon light coming in through a window, glasses he wore when he was older, a shelf full of books, a faded leather armchair.

Nothing was perfect, but everything was all right. The light was never just blue.

And the snow that fell onto the roof in winter … it fell softly … softly … and it covered the house, the armchair, the books, the children’s voices. It covered A

ANTONIA MICHAELIS is the author of Tiger Moon, which was the wi

This book was designed by Maria T. Middleton. The text is set in 11-point Adobe Jenson, an oldstyle typeface designed by the fifteenth-century French printer Nicolas Jenson. Redrawn in the 1990s by type designer Robert Slimbach, Adobe Jenson remains a highly legible face with a distinct calligraphic character. The display typeface is Celestia Antique.

This book was printed and bound by R.R. Do

Table of Contents

At First

Chapter 1:  A

Chapter 2:  Abel

Chapter 3:  Micha

Chapter 4:  In Between