C2 Chapter 2

Divorce ...

To Saga, this word meant defeat. Nevertheless, she saw no other solution. There was no other way. It hurt terribly. It wasn’t so much the thought of leaving the man who had never appreciated her, but returning to her mother to tell her that she – her only child – had been considered useless. Unwanted.

Father was dead now. It was only to be expected, since he had already been an old man when Saga was born. Yet she grieved deeply. The sorrow would remain with her for a long time. And her mother, Anna Maria, was no longer the woman she had once been. She was feeling her age, and looked increasingly frail every time Saga saw her. Kol’s death seemed to have robbed her of her zest for life. She, who had been so happy because Saga had made such a good marriage!

The wedding had been only two years ago ... Saga was twenty-two then, and she heard repeatedly how friends and acquaintances congratulated her parents on her beauty and told them how fortunate Lennart was to have such a bride!

Lennart had been a good match – a pleasant, young politician and career diplomat. Friends of the family had brought them together, and Lennart had fallen immediately for Saga’s exquisite, cool beauty. He called her his Ice Queen, and Saga would smile absentmindedly, thinking that what she felt for him was undoubtedly love. Afterwards she had realized that she had confused her emotions with gratitude. A stupid and humble gratitude that a man like him wanted her! She had thought that they were happy because she knew no better. She did all the things a good housewife ought to do in her home; she was loyal and always there when he needed her.

At first, he had laughed in amusement at her connection with the Ice People. Never for a moment had he believed the fantastic stories that she had told him about them one night early in their marriage. She had been stupid enough to confide in him that she was one of the chosen and would have a task to carry out – something he would have to understand when it eventually happened.

The change in him came about gradually. He began to mock her for this “task” she had spoken of. He criticized her more and more. Her aloofness, which he had initially found so fascinating, now bored him, and he reproached her for it constantly. He told her that he had thought he could make her loosen up a bit, and had regarded it as a challenge. But there was nothing behind the façade! This was the way she was: cold and aloof through and through. There was no glow, no fire, in the farthest corner of her soul, as he had thought there must be.

These remarks had had a deep impact on Saga, and she had tried to improve. However, she soon realized that all his criticisms had an underlying reason. He stayed out more and more often at night. Saga would stay at home and be sad, and this was when she began to lie to her mother. Kol was already dead by then. Saga assured her mother that the marriage was certainly happy, she was just tired after the long winter ...

Anna Maria became ill and Saga believed that it was serious. She didn’t live very far away from her old home so she was able to visit her mother from time to time – which Lennart probably didn’t mind. So she went to her mother’s house, planning to stay for a few days, but when she arrived she realized that she had forgotten the medicine she had prepared for her mother. She therefore turned the carriage round and drove home again.

She ought to have known. She ought to have seen it coming, but she hadn’t. The shock was terrible. When she reached the house, she went straight up to the second floor to fetch the medicine. She heard voices from the bedroom and went in to see who was there. She caught them in the act: Lennart and one of her girlfriends – their mutual friend, in fact.

Saga closed her eyes to their staring, horrified looks. Then she turned on her heel and left, as the small amount of love she had felt died irrevocably.

She tried to avoid a furious confrontation because somehow that wasn’t her style. She drove over to her mother’s house and, white as a sheet, explained to her mother that she had a bad cold coming so she could only stay one night.

The following day, she went “home” again. Lennart had had time to collect himself. The woman had left and he had clearly made up his mind that attack was the best defence. He began by hurling insults at Saga and blaming her for everything. What had he got out of their marriage? He’d been living in an icebox, he who had such a passionate emotional life!

Saga hadn’t seen much of that: their sex had always been very proper, and it hadn’t been very frequent either. She merely bent her head and said quietly that she knew that she wasn’t very passionate but that she had tried to be kind and see to it that his everyday life was pleasant.

“And you think that’s enough?” Lennart had said in a hostile tone. “Well, yes, you’re sweet, but if that was the only thing I wanted, I could just have employed a housekeeper.”

Now Lennart was being unreasonable, but Saga had had time to collect her thoughts during her long, sleepless night.

“What do you want now, Lennart? Because we can’t go on like this, can we?”

He gave her a swift, frightened look, which she could read like an open book: The money! Saga’s big inheritance! I’ll lose it!

“Well, er ...” was his vague reply. “What do you want yourself?”

Saga straightened her back. “My mother is seriously ill. I don’t want her to experience the grief of seeing her daughter divorced. If we can maintain the façade for as long as she lives, that is all I ask.”

Lennart panicked. “Divorce! That’s impossible. My career will be over, surely you can understand that? Can’t we ...?”

Thank God we never had children, Saga thought. “Can’t we what?”

Lennart stretched out his arms. “Let bygones be bygones and begin afresh?”

“I don’t think that would be fair on you.”

“On me?” said Lennart. “What on earth do you mean?”

“I don’t love you,” she replied. “As a matter of fact, I doubt whether I’ve ever loved you. Quite frankly, I can’t stand you.”

Lennart was deeply offended. Having been the dominant one, he was now most certainly at a disadvantage. Saga detected something new and frightening in his eyes, something sly and swift. He had never been able to conceal his innermost thoughts. Right now, his eyes were saying: There’s only one way out of this – if she dies, the scandal will be averted, and I’ll inherit all the money!

The very next moment, that look in Lennart’s eyes had vanished, and now he felt openly ashamed. But Saga lied from a sheer instinct of self-preservation: “On the way home, I called on my lawyer. I gave him a letter that is to be opened after my death. He’s been fully informed about what has happened.”

“You shouldn’t have ...” he began indignantly but then fell silent. “Saga ... one single, slight faux pas! Surely you could be magnanimous enough to ...”

“I’ve had enough,” Saga said curtly, turning her back on him.

“Right, well leave then,” he shouted after her. “You and your ‘task’! Just leave and carry it out! But don’t come back again! I’ll just say you’ve contracted a serious illness or something. Then we’ll have a decent divorce, which everybody will understand.”

Saga turned around and looked at him with a glance that made him look down.

“This woman ... do you want her?” she asked quietly.

Lennart shrugged his shoulders undecidedly. “If the way is open ...”

“It’ll be as I’ve just said,” she said decidedly. “We’ll continue like this for as long as my mother lives. She is not to suffer from other people’s follies. Afterwards we’ll see.”

Lennart would have to make do with that. He went over to take her in his arms and appease her. But she broke free immediately. “The door to the bedroom is closed. You’ll have to sleep in another room.”

“You want revenge!” he shouted.

“No, it’s aversion!” she replied and walked away.

No one was to be allowed to see the bitterness in her. Outwardly, everything remained idyllic.

However, something was broken inside Saga. The feeling of having failed was crushing. She, who could have done with all the self-confidence she could muster prior to the task that awaited her, was now unsure, fumbling and subdued. If only she had been given time to collect herself again. Now she would have to face the man she had married, day in and day out, which was a test in itself. For the first time in her life, she sensed what fear meant. The fear of not being sufficiently strong when the moment finally arrived.

Saga was allowed to keep her mother until she herself turned twenty-four. That was when Anna Maria died peacefully, confidently assured that her only child was well. Even on one of her last days, Saga had lied to her. She knew how much Anna Maria was looking forward to becoming a grandmother. When Saga saw what was in store for her mother, she told her that she was pregnant. This was a downright lie, but her mother brightened up and said: “I’m looking forward to that!”

Two days later, she passed away.

Saga left her husband straight away and moved back to her now empty childhood home. Her lawyer had been working – quietly, so that no rumours trickled out – on the divorce all the time. All he needed was to put the finishing touches to it. Saga let him take care of everything; she withdrew completely from the outside world and didn’t want to speak to anybody, least of all her husband.

Lennart tried desperately to save what remained of his marriage, horrified at what the divorce might mean for his political career.

Saga couldn’t care less. All she wanted was to have no more to do with him: she could no longer bear the thought of being married to that man for perhaps another year. She asked her lawyer to arrange everything as quickly as possible.

Saga was paralysed in her soul as she walked around her old home, trying to recover from all the evil and tragedy that had happened. Right now, she could have done with a sympathetic husband by her side, but the thought of Lennart disgusted her. She realized how little he had actually meant to her. She had an idealized view of marriage, which she had regarded as a deeply emotional friendship. She admitted that was not how it had turned out, for which she was very much to blame. She just hadn’t been ready for marriage. Obviously, she had not known the essence of love, merely accepting unresistingly and following suit when everyone said what an ideal couple she and Lennart would make. She had let him down just as much as he had betrayed her confidence in him.

But Lennart was a pathetic chapter of her life, to which she was indifferent. The loss of her parents was a thousand times worse. She didn’t know how she would recover from her immense grief. But of course, it pales once the soul has had time to accept that the worst is over.

One spring morning shortly after Anna Maria’s funeral, Saga woke and sat up in bed. Her heart was pounding and she hardly dared to breathe. For a long time, all she did was stare into the darkness.

“Someone is calling,” she whispered to herself. “They’ve waited ... waited with consideration while my parents were alive. Now they’re calling. Now my time has come!”

By “they”, she meant her ancestors among the Ice People. The good guardians.

This was the first time that her instinct had told her that she was truly chosen. Was this how it felt? She had always wondered what it would be like. Saga listened to the low call in her soul. Long, searching, until it turned into an unshakable conviction. That was exactly what it was: a conviction that wouldn’t be shaken by criticism. This was how simple everything had suddenly turned out to be for her! Now there was no longer any doubt. “I’ll go to Graastensholm Parish,” she said aloud. “To Linden Avenue. Yes, I’ll go to Norway. That is where I’m needed. That is my calling.”

The year was 1860. Twelve years had passed since Viljar of the Ice People had been forced to give up Graastensholm and move to Linden Avenue. Saga didn’t know very much about what had happened in recent years. She was in regular touch with Malin, Christer’s daughter, who was six years younger than her. Just as Anna Maria’s family followed the Oxenstiernas and now were close to Axel Oxenstierna, who was equerry to the crown prince, Christer’s family were loyal to the Posses. Arvid Mauritz Posse’s daughter had married Adam Reuterskiöld, equerry to the crown princess, who was now queen of Sweden. In this way, Anna Maria’s and Christer’s families had grown close and saw a lot of each other. However, they knew very little about the third branch of the family – the Norwegian side. They had heard that Viljar and Belinda had a son, who was ten years old. His name was Henning, after the legendary Heike. Both Solveig and Eskil had died quite recently, so Viljar’s family now lived on their own at Linden Avenue.

That was all that Saga knew.

Now she must be on her way to them. It was absolutely necessary. They needed her. But she didn’t know why.

When she thought about it, she found that she didn’t mind leaving her childhood home because it had become so unbearably empty. She considered it for a day or two and then decided to sell the house. That was easy. She would move all her furniture over to Christer’s: they could keep it, or do as they wanted with it. They accepted that she had to leave, because everybody had known for a long time now that she was one of the chosen. Of course, Christer was extremely curious to know what was going to happen. He asked her to write them long letters. Nevertheless, he was slightly puzzled: it didn’t seem as if she was planning to return to Sweden. Well, anyway, she probably had her plans and just wanted to get away from all the painful memories.

Saga travelled up to Värnberg to say goodbye to the old and young Countesses Oxenstierna, who had sided with her in her divorce. “Do you really have to leave us?” they asked her. “It means breaking a very long tradition! You will come back, won’t you?”

They looked with concern at the tall young woman with the cool, green eyes. She possessed an indescribable and indefinable beauty, as if she came from distant skies or somewhere quite other. She seemed so remote. So coolly reserved, as if the world wasn’t something that concerned her. Although she resembled both the gentle Anna Maria and the dark Kol, she had none of their impulsive warmth. Saga was quite out of the ordinary, and they felt they didn’t know her.

“I won’t be coming back,” said Saga emphatically. The thought didn’t seem to worry her. “However, if I have children one day, I’ll tell them about our long friendship and how my family has served the Oxenstiernas. If it seems relevant, I’ll ask them to get in touch with you.” Both the young and the old countess appreciated this thought, and they wished Saga good luck and a safe journey to Norway. As she left the house, Saga felt sure that she would undoubtedly need this blessing.

Saga wrote to Viljar and Belinda to tell them that she had been summoned to carry out her task and was on her way. Since her branch of the family had always been the wealthiest, she could afford to make it a pleasant journey. It was true that the first railway had already opened in Sweden, but it did not go in the direction she would have to travel. For some time she considered buying a good coach and hiring a reliable driver, but there was the problem of getting horse and carriage and driver back to Sweden again. It would be a completely unnecessary expense. She was shocked when it dawned on her just how definitely her mind was made up: this was a journey without the possibility of return, and she felt satisfied with that. Surely one could also live in Norway? However, the big enigma that occupied her mind constantly was, of course, the task she was faced with. What was she actually supposed to do? What would happen to her? She would probably get to know, in time.

So she decided to use what was still the most common form of transport – the stagecoach – travelling from inn to inn. Such a journey could offer various surprises, but it was a fairly safe way to travel. You could let others take the responsibility.

One day in early summer, Saga was ready to begin her long journey to Norway ...

On the last night before her departure, she had a strange dream – the type you force yourself to wake up from, because it becomes too much of a strain. That was why she remembered it so vividly after she woke up. She lay for a long time, shaken and scared, trying to recall all the details, because she realized that this dream was important.

Her strongest impression was the wind. It was as if she stood in a huge mountain pass, filled with raging wind. She heard voices calling softly from far, far away, and when she strained her eyes, she could see a small group of people that the storm was tearing at. Although she couldn’t see their faces at that distance, she knew in her dream that they were her ancestors, the good guardians of the Ice People.

She was the one they were calling.

The soft voices sounded like an echo from far away: “Saga! Saga!” The strong wind blew between her and them. The wind formed a border, a wall.

“Saga! We can’t reach you!”

Saga knew this. In her dream, she knew that the guardian spirits were never able to get in touch with the chosen ones. Not until the chosen had died and could join their group. It was true that they had helped Shira, albeit from a distance. But they could never do so directly, as they could help the poor stricken members of the Ice People. Tarjei had been another chosen one, and he hadn’t received any help at all, so he had succumbed and died before he had had time to begin his task.

It was a burden to think about this now. Having to manage all by yourself when you had no idea what you were supposed to do!

Villemo, Dominic and Niklas had all been chosen, but their task had been simpler. They were assigned to transform the beast Ulvhedin into a human being. That had nothing to do with spirits. Would this be the case with Saga’s task? She was yet to find out.

“Saga! Saga!” came the echoing moan. “Be careful with ...”

“What are you saying?” she shouted back, but the wind took her voice. “I can’t hear you.”

That was how it was. You can see things and people quite clearly in a dream but their voices are always indistinct! Always! When they were so far away and there was a howling storm between them and her, it was quite impossible to catch their words properly.

They shouted again: “Something unexpected has happened. You are in danger and we cannot help you!”

“What are you saying?” Saga shouted back. “What’s happened?”

It was impossible to hear the answer, but then the wind carried a few words with it: “We are sending someone to you. An ordinary human being who can help you. Stick to him!”

“Who is it? And what is it I must be careful of?”

But then the storm grew to a roaring hurricane and the group of ancestors faded and vanished. The link to the other world was severed. Finally, Saga, who had been tossing and turning in her sleep, woke up, still shouting. She gasped and trembled as she lay in her bed, trying to understand the dream. How much credence could you give to a dream? In her innermost heart and soul, she felt that she had to take this dream very seriously indeed.

If only she had found out a little more!

What was absolutely certain was that she had to be cautious. But it isn’t easy to be careful when you don’t know where the danger lurks, let alone its nature.