Waffle Hearts

by Maria Parr

  “So am I!”

  I was so frightened! Even though you couldn’t see it on Lena’s face, I’m sure that she was frightened too. She had to be. The thunder was so loud that the balcony shook. We were soaking wet in a few minutes, even sitting under the roof inside our sleeping bags. Now and then, forks of lightning zigzagged across the sky, lighting up everything as if it were the middle of the day. It rained and poured and thundered and boomed so much that it was really terrifying. I’d never experienced such powerful thunder. Every clap was stronger than the one before. I ended up putting my hands over my ears and closing my eyes. Lena sat next to me like a ship’s figurehead, her mouth forming a straight line. And suddenly I realized that she was probably missing her mother. I let my hands drop. Poor Lena! I was just about to say something when a bolt of lightning and a clap of thunder came almost together. The light and the noise were so strong that Lena and I squeezed ourselves together and buried our faces in our sleeping bags.

  “We’re crazy!” I shouted. “We’ve got to go indoors, Lena!”

  Lena didn’t answer. She was on her feet already.

  “Trille, the old stables are on fire!”

  I shook off my sleeping bag and pulled myself up. Fire!

  “Molly!” I shouted and began to run.

  Behind me, I heard Lena yelling into the house as only she can yell. And then she screamed at me:

  “Trille, don’t go in there!”

  But I didn’t listen. In the middle of the lightning and rain and fire, Molly was in the stables. I had to get her out. At the moment the flames were just under the roof. I tore open the door. There was smoke everywhere, but I knew exactly where she was standing.

  “There, there,” I said, grabbing hold of her mane. “Come along, girl.”

  She just stood there. Totally frozen to the spot. I stroked her and spoke to her and pulled, but Molly stood stock-still. She wouldn’t move. It was as if she wanted to be burnt in there. Didn’t she realize that she had to get out?

  I started to cry.

  “Come on!” I shouted, tugging her mane as hard as I could. The horse kicked her hooves, but stayed where she was. It was becoming difficult to breathe, and I could feel I was about to panic.

  Then Lena came. Through the smoke. She gripped me by my arm so hard that it hurt, and tried to pull me out like I was pulling Molly.

  “The horse!” I wailed, no longer able to see anything.

  “Get out, Trille! The roof’s collapsing!” Lena’s voice was angry.

  “The horse. She won’t budge,” I cried, standing just as still as Molly.

  Then Lena let go of my hand.

  “That horse is as stupid as a cow!” she shouted, and then very quietly she moved right next to Molly’s ear. There was the sound of cracking and creaking.

  “BOO!” Lena yelled suddenly.

  Molly galloped out at top speed, making me lose my balance and fall backwards. Lena was almost out of the stable when she spotted me.

  “Trille!” she shouted fearfully, turning round as quick as a flash. Suddenly a burning beam came falling down from the ceiling.

  “Trille!” Lena shouted again.

  I couldn’t answer. I felt just like Molly – scared stiff. The burning beam lay between me and the door.

  Then there she was. Lena jumped over the beam like a little kangaroo. Her thin fingers dug into my arm again. She gave an enormous pull and practically threw me towards the exit. In fact, I think she really did throw me. I dragged myself forward for the last stretch towards the open stable door. The next thing I remember is my cheek lying in wet grass, and strong hands pulling me all the way out of the stables.

  My whole family was out in the rain, and there was shouting and yelling everywhere.

  “Lena,” I whispered. I couldn’t see her anywhere. It was Mum who was holding me.

  “Lena’s in the stables!” I shouted, trying to get free. But Mum kept holding me. I kicked and shouted and cried, but I couldn’t get free. I looked at the open door helplessly. Lena was inside! Lena was inside the fire…

  Then Grandpa came staggering out of the flames with a big bundle in his hands. He sank down on his knees in exhaustion and laid Lena on the grass.

  Hospitals. I don’t like them. But they make people better. Here I was, all alone in front of a white door, on a hospital visit. I knocked. Under my arm I was carrying a box of chocolates. I’d swapped the ones that came in the box for pieces of milk chocolate.

  “Come in!” came the shout from inside, as loud as a mixed choir.

  Lena was sitting in bed reading an old Donald Duck comic. She had a white bandage on her head, and her hair had been shaved off. Some of it had burnt off in the fire, and she had inhaled a lot of smoke, too. Otherwise Lena was OK. Everything had been all right in the end, but still it was strange to see her like this.

  “Hi,” I said, giving her the box of chocolates.

  Lena wrinkled her nose. I quickly told her that there was milk chocolate inside.

  “Do you want some strawberry jam?” she asked.

  I certainly did. In her bedside drawer Lena had a whole stock of strawberry jam in small jars. She could get as many as she wanted, she explained. We ate strawberry jam and chocolate for a bit, while I asked Lena if her head hurt, and other things that you ask sick people about. Lena wasn’t really hurting. Most of all she wanted to go home. But the doctor said she had to stay there for another day or two so they could keep an eye on her.

  “Yes, that’s probably a good idea,” I said, understanding what they meant.

  Above her bed hung my picture of Jesus.

  “Lena,” I mumbled after a while.

  “Mm-hmm?”

  “Thank you for saving me.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “It was brave.”

  “Pff,” said Lena, looking to the side. “I did what I had to.”

  I thought about that. What she had to? But before I could think any more, Lena added:

  “I didn’t want my best friend to go up in smoke, did I?”

  I was speechless for a long while.

  “Am I your best friend?” I said eventually.

  Lena gave me a strange look.

  “Of course you are! Who else would it be? Kai-Tommy?”

  A big stone melted somewhere inside my stomach. I had a best friend! Lena was sitting there with her head shaved and bandaged, licking the strawberry jam out of yet another jar. She had no idea how happy I was!

  “I think my knees are going to shake a lot less from now on,” I smiled.

  Lena didn’t think so.

  “But it was brave of you to go in after that stupid horse,” she admitted. “Oh, by the way, Trille, I’ve proposed,” she added.

  “Proposed? To who?”

  And then Lena told me how, earlier that day, she’d been lying in her hospital bed, looking as if she were sleeping, while her mother and Isak sat on each side, watching over her. They were talking about love and about Lena and about Mathildewick Cove. Lena realized that Isak didn’t really have anything against living in Mathildewick Cove, if need be. He’d heard that it might be possible to tidy up the cellar, he said.

  “But they weren’t getting to the point, Trille!” said Lena. “So eventually I opened my eyes like a flash of lightning.”

  “And then what?” I asked excitedly.

  “And then I said, ‘Isak, will you marry us?’”

  “You did? What did he say?”

  Lena gave me another strange look.

  “He said yes, of course!”

  She put a piece of chocolate in her mouth and chuckled with satisfaction.

  “You’re going to have a dad, Lena!” I shouted happily.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Midsummer bride and groom

  Everything was ready when Midsummer came round again. I stood at the wide-open window in my room, looking out across our kingdom. It was hard to believe that days like this existed, with the sun and the sea and the newly
cut fields.

  “Lena! We’ve got to go out!”

  And even though it was the wedding day, with all the wedding fuss, we just slipped out into the summer, Lena and I. We were only causing havoc and getting in the way, anyway. It was better to be running races across the fields.

  “Trille, you slowcoach,” Lena huffed when we got down to the shore at exactly the same time.

  I thought I was hardly a slowcoach, but I didn’t say so. And then we went paddling and threw seaweed against the boathouse wall with a smack, because nothing makes as good a smacking noise as seaweed. Afterwards we hopped all the way across the rocks to Uncle Tor’s, where Lena snuck on board the shark boat and stuck a dandelion into the cabin keyhole. The heifers were out grazing.

  “Do you think it’s possible to ride cattle?” Lena asked.

  It is possible, we found out. Lena thought we could take bigger risks now that we had a doctor in the cove. And even though we’d promised Uncle Tor never to borrow his heifers again without asking, we did. And everything went the same way it usually does. Very wrong.

  But by the evening, Lena had been patched up and had cleaned off all the cow muck. She was even wearing a dress. It was the Midsummer festival and the wedding, so there was no limit to what she’d agree to.

  “I do,” said Isak when the church minister asked if he took Lena’s mum to be his lawful wedded wife.

  “I do,” said Lena’s mum when the minister asked her.

  As for Lena, she said a massive, loud and booming “I DO”, even though nobody asked her, because this wedding would never have taken place if it hadn’t been for all her concussions.

  The bonfire burnt serenely, the summer evening was mild and warm, and there were more people and music down on our shoreline than there had ever been before.

  “Do you think the bride is prettier this year than last?” Grandpa asked me later that evening.

  He was sitting on a rock with a cup of coffee, all dressed up smart, a short distance away from the others.

  “Maybe a little,” I confessed, because Lena’s mum was the prettiest bride I’d ever seen.

  “Hm,” said Grandpa, pretending to be offended.

  “Are you missing Auntie Granny today?” I asked.

  “Maybe a little,” Grandpa answered, turning his coffee cup around in his fingers.

  I stood there looking at him for a while, feeling as if my heart were growing inside my chest so that there wasn’t any more space. I wanted to give Grandpa all the good things in the whole world. And all at once I knew what to do. Quietly, I crept away from the shore and up to the farm.

  Grandpa’s flat was half dark and peaceful. I clambered up onto the kitchen counter and stretched as high as I could. There it was, right up on top of the kitchen cupboard: Auntie Granny’s waffle iron. I lifted it down and held it in my hands for a while. Then I went into Grandpa’s bedroom. Inside his prayer book was a crumpled, faded piece of paper. Waffle Hearts, it read at the top, in old lady handwriting. That was what Auntie Granny’s waffles were called.

  I’m not very good at baking, but I followed the recipe exactly, and soon I had a large bowl of waffle batter. Just when I was about to start cooking, the door flew wide open like a thunderclap.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” said Lena, looking at me suspiciously.

  Then she caught sight of the waffle iron.

  “Ohh…”

  “Maybe you should go back down,” I suggested, even though really I wanted Lena to stay. “Your mum’s getting married and everything.”

  Lena stared at the waffle iron.

  “Mum will be fine by herself,” she decided, leaning against the door so that it slammed shut.

  I’ll never forget the night that Lena and I made waffle hearts for Grandpa while a real Midsummer bride and groom were celebrating their wedding on the shore. We sat on the kitchen counter, on each side of the waffle iron, saying almost nothing. The music and the happy voices buzzed in the background, making enough noise as it was. I poured the mixture, and Lena took out the waffle hearts.

  “You can have your picture back now,” Lena said suddenly. I spilled some mixture outside the waffle iron out of pure astonishment.

  “Thank you,” I said happily.

  When we’d cooked almost all the mixture, Grandpa came in. He was completely flabbergasted to see us there. And even more flabbergasted when he saw what we were doing.

  “Surprise!” Lena shouted, so loudly that the wallpaper almost came off the walls.

  And then Grandpa, Lena and I ate waffle hearts for the first time since Auntie Granny had died. I’m sure that she was smiling down on us from heaven. Grandpa smiled too.

  “Trille lad and the little lass from next door,” he said softly a couple of times, shaking his head affectionately.

  After seven rounds of waffles, Grandpa fell asleep in his chair. He doesn’t usually stay up so late. Lena and I laid a blanket over him and crept out. We climbed up into the cedar tree. On the shore, the wedding party was still going on. We could just glimpse the people down there in the light summer night.

  “Now you’ve got a dad too, Lena,” I said.

  “Smoking haddocks, so I have!” She smiled cheerfully, scoffing down the last waffle heart.

  And I’ve got a best friend, I thought happily.

  Maria Parr is an outstanding Norwegian children’s author. Her debut novel, Vaffelhjarte (Waffle Hearts), has been translated into more than fifteen different languages, and won France’s Prix Sorcières in 2010, the Dutch Zilveren Griffel in 2008, and was shortlisted for Norway’s prestigious Brage Prize. It has also been made into a popular children’s television series in Norway. Her second novel, Tonje Glimmerdal, won the Brage Prize and the Norwegian Critics’ Prize in 2009. Maria has a Master’s degree in Nordic Languages and Literature and works as a primary school teacher. She lives in Norway with her family.

  Guy Puzey grew up in the Highlands of Scotland, just a short swim away from Norway. He began translating Norwegian literature in 2006, having studied the language at the University of Edinburgh. He completed his doctorate in 2011 and now works at the University as a course organizer and researcher, and has taught a number of courses, including Scandinavian linguistic history, children’s literature and literary translation.

  First published in Great Britain 2013 by Walker Books Ltd

  87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

  This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA

  Copyright © 2005 Det Norske Samlaget Oslo

  Originally published as Vaffelhjarte by Det Norske Samlaget Oslo

  Published by arrangement with Hagen Agency, Oslo

  English language translation © 2013 Guy Puzey

  Cover illustration and chapter headings © 2013 Kate Forrester

  The right of Maria Parr, Guy Puzey and Kate Forrester to be identified as author, translator and illustrator respectively of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-4063-4644-2 (ePub)

  www.walker.co.uk

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated, as they may result in injury.