And then there were the rustling trees. They would hide between the conifers with their slim, silver trunks topped with garlands of green leaves – small, spiky hearts that tingled like music in the wind. I loved that sound so much that I would sit under a rustling tree and wait for the wind to blow. I remember how frightened I was when one day the leaves suddenly started falling and scattering on to the ground around me. I sat in a sea of lost hearts. I tried sticking them back on to the branches – the lower branches, because I wasn’t very tall – but however hard I tried, more and more leaves dropped. I didn’t know what to do until I managed to get Dad’s attention and he explained everything to me.
Ever since that day the forest became my favourite place because I had learned that everything comes back, that nothing ever goes away for good. That one colour replaces another, going from light green to dark green to flame red to golden brown to the darkest black before turning into mulch. That the earth had to eat in order to push new life into the light. That darkness replaced the light, and the light replaced the darkness. That the hearts would grow back.
Today I think Dad was happiest when he was surrounded by nature. He could breathe freely. We’ve never had as much fresh air and daylight as we had back then, and I’m sure that he got sunshine in his tummy just like me when we lay on our backs on the forest floor and watched the birds in the treetops. I knew every kind of birdsong before Mum taught me the alphabet song.
I wonder now if it was all that fresh air that kept Dad alive. That and all the light. Perhaps you can store it inside yourself to use later, just like you can keep memories in your head – and stacks of crispbread and crackers in the pantry, and umbrellas and hubcaps and record players in the kitchen, and hose clamps and nets and tinned food in the bathroom, and rolls of material and iron girders and fertilizer and petrol cans and newspapers and carpets in the corridor, and engine parts and sprung mattresses and bicycles and puppet theatres and violins and poultry feed in the living room, and towels and aquariums and sewing machines and wax candles and piles of books and biscuits in the bedroom, and a stuffed elk head in the room next to it, and cassette tapes and duvets and sand bags and foil trays and sacks of salt and paint pots and basins and teddies and children in a big old skip?
Even I can hear that it sounds weird when I say it like that, but that was how we lived. In time I learned we weren’t like other people.
Dad was definitely not like other people.
Mum knew it too. I’m about to start reading the letters she hid for me in a slim green file. ‘To Liv’, it says on it.
That’s my name. Liv.
I’m not going to read all of them at once. I don’t like the thought of them running out, so I’m only going to read one at a time. I have lots of time, that’s what the lady says.
Dear Liv
I’m putting this letter first. The others you can read in whatever order you please. I’m not sure there even is any order. But I want you to read this one first.
I’ve never had the courage to tell you all the things I wanted to and, as my voice disappeared, I lost the ability. I never lost the need to tell you, though. But I can write and you can read – I’ve made sure of that – and one day you might read my thoughts here. Should that day come, I hope that you will be old enough to understand.
I’ve already written some longer letters for you, and there are also shorter ones; some notes too, my thoughts. I’m not sure how many letters there will be in the end. Or what the end will be.
I don’t know whether to call our life a fairy tale or a horror story. Perhaps it’s a bit of both? I hope that you can see the fairy tale.
I’m hiding this file from your dad; it’s for the best. If I slip it in between the edge of the bed and the mattress, and cover it with a blanket, no one can see it, and in that way it will always be close when I have something to tell you.
It has become harder for me to reach. I’m so heavy now that I can barely turn over. And I hurt everywhere. But I won’t ever give up writing to you, my darling girl.
Please forgive me if the contents of my letters seem chaotic. But I suppose you’re used to navigating chaos so perhaps you’ll understand everything in that way that you have. Perhaps you’ll understand your dad too.
Perhaps you already do.
You need to know that I love him. You also need to know that he might kill me one day. If he does, I’ll understand that, Liv.
Jens Horder’s Story
ONCE UPON A time Liv’s father was known as the most handsome man on the island, but over the years it grew increasingly hard to see why. Not only because his hair and beard grew wild and straggly, but also because it eventually became difficult to see him at all – not just behind the beard, but behind all the stuff piling up around him. No one had ever thought Jens would end up wreaking such havoc.
People on the island had always known him. That is to say, they had always known who he was. They would see him when he drove through Korsted in his ancient pickup truck. People of a certain age, and that was most people on the island, knew it was the same pickup his father had once driven, usually piled high with newly restored wooden furniture or Christmas trees for sale. And with Jens. The handsome little chap would sit in the middle of it all, bobbing along happily, his face fresh and clear.
His beginning was promising. Jens Horder was a much-loved child, as was his brother, Mogens, and in many ways the two boys lived a charmed life with their parents out on the Head. They were each other’s best friends, the island was their playground, and as their father showed them how to help him in his workshop, in due course it also became their place of work.
Their father, Silas, was a man of many talents, but above all he was a skilled carpenter. Doing his best was a matter of honour for him, he regarded every tree as precious, a wonder of nature, and treated each one with the greatest respect from the moment it shot up from the ground, regardless of whether it ended its life as firewood, planks, furniture or a desiccated Christmas tree. Or outlived him. Certain chosen trees were turned into beautifully decorated coffins and would thus return to the earth from which they had once grown.
Both boys inherited their father’s talent for carpentry, but that was where the similarity between them ended.
Jens was the younger. The younger, the darker and more handsome, his mother used to think, when the boys played outside and she would watch them from the kitchen window. Mogens, however, had a much brighter mind in every way, and that reassured her. It boded well for the business when the time came for the boys to take over. Else Horder had such faith in her older son’s business acumen that she was privately convinced that Mogens would one day outshine his father.
Because Silas might be a highly respected carpenter, but when it came to financial matters his talent was limited. The money came in but was soon spent on unnecessary items rather than to purchase the essentials, which should have been the main objective of his business. He was a frequent visitor to the main island’s two second-hand shops, and he had a rare talent for coming across barns full of stuff that people were keen to get rid of. Silas would invariably return with some find or other he was delighted with.