The Cold Song Read Online Free Page A

said, fixing his eyes on Simen. “You get that necklace!”
    The following evening they combed the woods, raced their bikes along the narrow, winding woodland tracks under the bright treetops, looking for the perfect spot in which to bury the pail. They rode past the green forest lake where, years and years ago, two little children had drowned. It was Alma from up the road at Mailund, exactly five hundred and sixty-seven steps from Simen’s house, who had told Simen about the drowning in the woods. Alma was a few years older than Simen and had occasionally been paid by his mother to look after him for an hour or two. That was years ago, though. He looked after himself now. But a long time ago, before he even knew Gunnar and Christian. When he was little. Five, six, seven, eight years old. He was eleven now. When Simen grew up and had children hewould never pay girls like Alma to look after them. Under no circumstances would he leave his future children with someone like her, not even for free. She was weird and dark-eyed and treated him like a doll and told stories, some true, some not, and he could never be sure which were which. The story about the children drowning in the green lake was probably true, he thought. Most of it anyway. The boy had drowned while the girl watched, and the mother of the two children had been so stricken with grief that she snatched the girl from her bed and drowned her as well.
    “She must have loved the son more than the daughter,” whispered Alma.
    Alma and Simen on the edge of the lake, gazing across the sun-warmed water, each clutching a slice of apple cake and a plastic cup of red lemonade. It was Alma’s mother who had packed them a lunch, but Alma didn’t like red lemonade so she tipped it all into the lake. Alma’s mother’s name was Siri. She had a habit of stroking Simen’s hair, saying, “Hi, Simen, how are you today?”
    Alma continued, in that whispering voice of hers, to tell her story. “The little boy fell in the water and drowned while his sister just stood there and watched, and when the girl came home without her little brother, her mother didn’t know what to do with herself. She cried and cried and cried, and no one could stay in the house because of all the crying. The girl put her hands over her ears and cried too. But her mother didn’t care. Or maybe she did care, but she didn’t listen. Then one night the mother went very quiet. And then the girl went very quiet too.”
    “What happened?” Simen asked. “Did the mother become happy again and stop crying?”
    Alma thought for a moment. “No, not exactly,” she said. “The mother took the girl into her big four-poster bed and read and sang to her and tickled the back of her neck and ruffled her hair and said
I love you so much, my little … little …
” Alma searched for a word.
    “Little song thrush,” suggested Simen, because that was what his mother called him.
    “Little song thrush, yes.
I love you so much, my little song thrush
, the mother told the girl. Then she got out of bed and went to the kitchen and made a big cup of hot cocoa, which was the girl’s favorite.”
    Alma turned to Simen. He had been eight years old then—that day when they sat at the edge of the green lake, eating apple cake.
    “It’s your mother, isn’t it? It’s your mother who calls you little song thrush,” Alma said.
    Simen didn’t answer.
    “Why does she call you little song thrush?” Alma asked.
    “I don’t know,” said Simen, who was wishing he had kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want to tell her anything at all about himself, and certainly not this. He didn’t want to say,
Because every night before Mama kisses me good night and leaves my room she whispers: “What would you like me to sing to you before I go?” And then I whisper back: “I want you to sing ‘Little Song Thrush.’ All the verses!” That’s why Mama calls me little song thrush
.
    Alma turned to face the water again and