The Last Boat Home by Dea Brovig Read Free Book Online Page A

still straining to separate the whine of his engine from the soft stir of the land. Across the fjord, the sun had dipped behind the chimney stacks of the shipyard. Else rubbed the cold from her arms and hurried over the garden.
    No lights were on in the farmhouse. She stepped inside and flipped a switch in the hallway. She pulled off her shoes and tiptoed to the dining room, where the fire in the oven was burning low. Else stopped beside it and held her palms to its embers, listening for her father through the floorboards above. The stillness weighed on the house. It smothered the relief she felt at finding no one home.
    She did not need to look to guess where her father was, but still crept to the window for a view of the boathouse. Its walls were ragged against the dusking sky. At the top of its stairs,the door was ajar. Else moved away from the glass. She stood in the centre of the floor, unsure of what to do, before she turned the radio on.
    The whispers started some weeks later, a shared breath of disbelief at what Tenvik had done that passed from person to person like an infection. Rumours of a travelling show that had stopped along the coast at towns no bigger than their own were exchanged at the butcher’s and bakery and carried home with cuts of pork and raisin buns. The mood in the Gymnasium shifted to one of celebration. Else stepped into the schoolyard on a Monday morning to find clowns’ noses strung to the branches of its trees. The corridors and classrooms buzzed with invention as students described what they hoped to see, whipping up a giddy sense of camaraderie that felt precious and fleeting.
    Else was standing between Lars and Rune by the caretaker’s shed when Petter came charging through the school gate. By then, the weather had turned; the sun had gone into hibernation and, in its absence, a damp wind hacked down from the north. As he rushed towards them, she freed her hand from Lars’s grip. She yanked up the zipper of her jacket and buried her chin behind her collar.
    ‘Hey,’ Petter said.
    ‘Why the hurry?’ said Lars. ‘Spit it out.’
    ‘You know how everyone’s been talking about the circus?’
    Petter placed his satchel on the ground and, after tossing back its flap, pulled a crumpled piece of paper from inside. His fingers trembled as he flattened it out. He presented it to Else, whose eyes grew wide when she realised what it was.
    ‘It was pasted up outside of Arnholm’s kiosk,’ he said. ‘I just tore it off.’
    In the middle of the poster, a cartoon clown bared his teeth in an open-mouthed grin. His gloved hands pointed to a title in thetop left corner: ‘Circus Leona Is Coming!’ A camel’s neck popped up between splashes of purple and red. Four poodles stood on their hind legs in a row at the bottom of the sheet. To the right of the clown, there was a drawing of a man in a loincloth lifting a horse above his head. His arms bulged as round as the letters that proclaimed ‘Circus Leona Is Coming!’
    Lars let out a low whistle. He grabbed the poster from Else. ‘What did I tell you?’ he said. ‘The fucking circus is coming.’
    Three dates had been scrawled in black ink under the dogs’ paws: 3rd October, 4th October, 5th October.
    ‘Next Thursday,’ said Lars. ‘We’ll sneak in next Thursday after school. It’ll be busy on the first night, so it’ll be easier to hide.’
    ‘Won’t you be going with your family?’ asked Petter.
    ‘So what?’ said Lars. ‘I can go twice.’
    Else could not take her eyes from the poster that Lars had spread over his lap. The clown beamed at her beside the strong man’s swollen torso.
    ‘I’ll come,’ she said.
    ‘Of course you’re coming,’ said Lars. ‘None of us are missing this.’
    During the next week Else’s thoughts returned often to the poster, lifting off from familiar tasks and settling on a scene of poodles prancing on two legs. She would be doing her homework in the dining room and discover that minutes