A Faraway Island Read Online Free PDF Page A

Nellie.”
    Stephie’s spoon clatters into her bowl. Has something happened to Nellie? Is she sick? Has she had an accident? Stammering, she tries to ask what’s wrong. But Aunt Märta doesn’t understand. She follows Stephie out the door and points to her bicycle.
    Maybe it isn’t so hard to ride a bike after all. Stephie wheels the bike out to the road and puts a foot down on one of the pedals. But as soon as she lifts her other foot, she loses her balance and has to put it right back onto the ground. She tries several times. On the fourth try she manages to push the pedals around once before falling over. The bicycle comes down on top of her and one of her knees is scraped so badly it’s bleeding. She gives up and leans the bicycle back against the house.
    She runs up the hill, along the rocky path, and through the little thicket. It’s much farther than it seemed yesterday, when she was sitting on Aunt Märta’s carrier. Breathless, a pain piercing her side, she reaches the yellow frame house and pounds on the door.
    Auntie Alma opens, takes her by the hand, and draws her inside. Nellie, still in her nightgown, eyes red from crying, is at the kitchen table. The moment she catches sight of Stephie she throws herself into her arms.
    “Stephie, Stephie,” she sobs, “I want to go home! I want my mamma!”
    “What on earth is wrong?” Stephie asks sharply.
    Nellie just cries harder.
    “Take care of Nellie,” her mother had said when they were leaving. “Comfort her when she is unhappy and frightened. You’re the big one.”
    “Did something happen?” Stephie asks her, forcing a kindly tone into her voice.
    Nellie nods mutely.
    “What?”
    “I couldn’t help it,” Nellie whispers.
    “Tell me.”
    “I wet my bed.”
    “What?” Stephie says again in alarm. Nellie stopped wetting her bed five years back.
    “I just couldn’t hold it. I tried but I had to pee so badly.”
    “In your sleep?”
    Nellie shakes her head.
    “You were awake? So why didn’t you go to the toilet?”
    “There is no toilet,” Nellie explains. “You have to go outside, to a special place in the backyard. A smelly little building.”
    “Was that what stopped you from going?”
    Nellie shakes her head again. “No, it wasn’t that,” she mumbles.
    “What was it, then?”
    “I didn’t dare. It was so dark out, and I was scared they would come and take me away.”
    “Who?” Stephie asks, although she already knows.
    “The police,” Nellie whispers even more softly. “The Nazis.”
    “Nellie, we’re in Sweden now,” Stephie assures her. “There are no Nazis here. The police in this country don’t come and take people away during the night. Don’t you understand? That’s why Mamma and Papa sent us here.”
    “I know that,” says Nellie. “But in the dark, I forgot.”
    It takes a long time for Stephie to make it clear to Auntie Alma that Nellie is afraid to go to the outhouse in the dark. Eventually, though, she succeeds, and Auntie Alma puts a china chamber pot under Nellie’s bed. Then she cleans Stephie’s scraped knee with something that stings, and puts a bandage on it.
    In the meantime Nellie has put her clothes on and clasped the coral necklace around her neck. Auntie Alma shakes her head, unclasps the necklace, and puts it in Nellie’s dresser drawer. Nellie looks as if she’s going to burst into tears again, until Auntie Alma pulls out her nicest dress, showing her that the necklace and the dress go together. Nellie should wear her necklace only when she’s dressed up.

    The sky is blue now, the weather pleasant. Stephie and Nellie go out into the yard with Auntie Alma’s children. Elsa and Nellie start playing with a baby doll at a table. They bathe her and dress and undress her, over and over again. John has a ball, and he motions to Stephie to throw it to him. He never manages to catch it on the fly.
    A group of girls Stephie’s age bike past, bathing suits flapping from their handlebars,