The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,139
try.’
‘Okay … It’s about … this thing. I can’t explain it. This thing, whatever it is, is meant for one person. If it’s shared, it won’t work properly.’
Minoo feels the tingling she experiences when she’s close to solving a difficult maths problem. What Linnéa is saying sounds familiar.
‘Go on,’ she says, as she opens the drawer of her bedside table and takes out her notebook.
Linnéa sighs. ‘The problem is that one person will always end up outside this thing. And if that person dies, another person ends up outside it. And then the next. And the next …’
‘Wait,’ Minoo says. She fumbles as she flips back and forth through her notebook.
‘What is it?’ Linnéa asks.
‘Ida talked about the same thing when she discovered she could read the Book of Patterns,’ she says, and finally finds the right page. ‘This is what she said: “That it’s, like, built for one. Then it works just great. But if more people try to get in there, someone always gets left out. And if the one who’s outside disappears, then the next ends up outside. And then the next. And the next. And the next. Until everyone’s gone.” She said it was like some kind of atmosphere.’
All the pieces fall into place. There’s the answer. Beautiful. Crystal clear. Minoo doesn’t need the answer to know it’s correct. ‘I know what the book is trying to tell us,’ she says. ‘It’s about the magic protection. What Adriana was talking about in the beginning. The thing that she and the Council thought was protecting us. Now you know that, try looking in the book again. Maybe it’ll change what you see in the patterns.’
‘Hang on,’ Linnéa says.
She’s silent for a long moment. Meanwhile Minoo hears her mother come up the steps and go into the bathroom. She must just have come home from the hospital. Water starts gushing from a tap.
‘Okay,’ Linnéa says. ‘It’s definitely talking about the protective magic. It was created for a single Chosen One. The book is trying to explain what the side effects are when it’s been expanded to cover seven people. It can’t protect everyone at once. One of us will always be left out. It’s like a kind of safety valve. This magic can’t contain multiple psyches, emotions, wills and thoughts. Like, it would implode if it tried to keep a tight defence around all of us.’
‘So someone always ends up outside its protection,’ Minoo says. ‘And as long as that person is alive, the rest of us are hidden. But if that person dies …’
‘… then someone else becomes exposed,’ Linnéa concludes.
Minoo gropes for the next logical link in her chain of thought.
‘Elias must have been the first who was unprotected,’ she says, ‘and when he died, it was Rebecka’s turn. Then mine. I’m the one who’s unprotected now.’
They fall silent.
‘But why did the attack on you fail?’ Linnéa asks eventually. ‘We don’t know what powers Elias may have had, but Rebecka could throw heavy shit around just using her mind. Is there something you can do that they couldn’t?’
‘I don’t know,’ Minoo says.
But she thinks about the black smoke. How she was able to make it disperse, at least for a moment. She wishes she could tell Linnéa about it, but she still feels ashamed to talk about it.
‘I suppose we’ll get all the answers tomorrow,’ Linnéa says, ‘when you speak to Gustaf.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
‘Are you scared?’
Linnéa is probably the only person in the world who would have to ask that.
‘Oh, no, I’m really looking forward to it,’ Minoo answers.
Linnéa laughs. Then she says gravely. ‘Good luck.’
They hang up and Minoo lies down on the bed. She shuts her eyes. Her thoughts hurtle through her mind until she feels as if she’ll suffocate under their weight.
Why did Elias and Rebecka die while she got to live?
Elias died at school. So did Rebecka.
The school is a place of evil.
Is the evil that’s after them weak outside the school?
She thinks about the crack in the playground.
She thinks about the blood-red moon that hung heavily over Engelsfors’s whispering forests.
She thinks about Cat, about the letter Nicolaus wrote to himself. The last words. Memento mori.
Remember that you are going to die.
She thinks about the list of questions she prepared for Gustaf this evening. She thinks about Gustaf outside the library and Gustaf in the darkness by the viaduct. Gustaf who was loved by Rebecka. Gustaf who may have killed her.