The last thing they did was to take the notes from the cash box. Then they walked back to Theres’ apartment at normal speed. They didn’t meet a single person on the way.
That night Teresa dreamed about wolves.
First of all she was a human child, a helpless little creature cast out into the forest. Out of the darkness the pale eyes approached, creeping towards her between the trunks of the fir trees. Paws moving silently across the carpet of needles. The circle closing in. She wanted to run, but had not yet learned to walk.
Then rough tongues were licking her body all over. They were in the lair, and the wolves licked and licked her skin. As the tongues rasped over her stomach, it hurt so much that she cried out. Layer after layer of skin was peeled away, and the pain was unbearable. Then the fur began to appear beneath the skin. The pain diminished and the wolves left her.
A small amount of moonlight shone in through the opening of the lair, and she saw herself from the outside. She was lying on the earth floor, wet from the wolves’ saliva, trembling with cold because the sparse fur was not yet able to protect her.
The scene changed, and from the all-seeing perspective of the moon she saw a wolf running through the forest. A crippled or sick wolf with its fur in clumps, a pitiful creature terrified of the least sound. She was in the moon and in the wolf at the same time, she was drifting in the sky and crawling over the ground through the same pair of eyes.
Then time must have passed, because the ground was covered in snow. She was racing through the forest, and every leap was an expression of joy. There was strength in her muscles, and she saw that her front legs were covered in thick, smooth fur. She was following a trail of blood. Dark patches were visible in the snow at irregular intervals, and she was hunting a quarry that was already injured.
She dashed up a hill, the snow whirling up around her paws. When she reached the top she stopped and stood, her tongue hanging out. She was panting and her breath turned to smoke in the cold air. In front of her the pack was gathered around the injured deer whose hooves still moved beneath the mass of grey fur.
The leader of the pack turned to her. The deer stopped moving, a blown eye reflecting the sky. As the whole pack turned like one single creature, focusing their attention on the lone wolf, she showed her submissiveness. She exposed her throat and lay down on her back, waving her paws; she was a wolf cub, lowest in rank of them all.
They moved closer. She whimpered like the cub she now was, displaying her helplessness, not knowing if they were coming to accept her into the pack or to rip her to shreds.
‘Theres? When you dream-what do you dream about?’
‘I don’t know how to do that.’
‘Don’t you dream?’
‘No. How do you do it?’
Teresa was lying on the mattress next to Theres’ bed, watching the dust bunnies quiver as she breathed out. She rolled onto her back. The T-shirt she had borrowed from Theres was so small that it stopped just above the wound on her stomach. She ran her hand over the scab that was beginning to form, and it hurt. She stroked it again. If it hadn’t been for the cut, she would have been able to fly. Tell herself she hadn’t done what she had done.
But the cut was there. Inflicted with a Stanley knife, the kind used to open boxes. By someone who worked in a shop. Who was now dead, beaten to death with a hammer. By Teresa. She stroked the cut and tried to make the act real. She had done it, she would never be able to get away from the fact that she had done it. So it might as well be real. Otherwise everything would be wasted.
‘How do you do it?’ Theres asked.
‘It just happens,’ said Teresa. ‘You can’t make it happen. It’s not something you can learn. I don’t think so, anyway.’
‘Tell me how you do it.’
‘You sleep. And pictures come into your head. You don’t have any control over it, it just comes. Last night I dreamed I was a wolf.’
‘That’s not possible.’
‘In a dream it is.’ Teresa propped herself up on her elbow so that she could see Theres, who was staring up at the ceiling. ‘Theres? Do you ever imagine stuff? I mean, do you have, like pictures and actions in your head that you think about?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No, I didn’t think you would.’ Teresa blew out a puff of air and the dust bunnies danced away under the bed. ‘That thing we did yesterday. To the man in the shop. Do you think about that?’
‘No. It’s over. You’re happy now.’
Teresa curled up as best she could in Theres’ clothes, which were much too tight. They had shoved her own blood-soaked clothes into two plastic bags and thrown them down the rubbish chute the previous evening.
Happy? No, she wasn’t happy. She was a stranger to herself, she was presumably still in shock. But alive. She could feel that she was alive. Perhaps that was the same thing as being happy, according to Theres’ way of looking at things.
Teresa opened and closed her hands. There was a little bit of coagulated blood underneath the nail of one of her little fingers. She stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked and licked until the blood was gone. Her hands felt bigger, stronger than the previous day. Capable hands. Terrible hands. Her hands.
It was just after eleven, and her train was due to leave at two-thirty. Every normal activity, such as getting on a train and showing her ticket, seemed absurd. She felt so light, as if she would have floated away like a helium balloon if her heavy hands had not been keeping her on the ground.
She looked at herself. Theres’ clothes made her look like a sausage stuffed into a skin that was too small. This was a minor problem under the circumstances, but she couldn’t go home looking like a clown. There would be questions if nothing else.
‘Theres,’ she said. ‘I think we’re going to have to go into town.’
In H &M on Drottninggatan Teresa grabbed the first suitable pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a sweater in her size, then went to the changing room and put them on. When she came out she saw that two girls aged about twelve were edging towards Theres.
‘Excuse me,’ said one of them. ‘You’re Tesla, aren’t you?’
Theres pointed at Teresa, who had come over and was standing next to her. ‘We,’ she said. ‘I sing. Teresa writes the words.’
‘Right,’ said the girl. ‘Well, anyway, I think “Fly” is absolutely brilliant.’ She chewed her lip, trying to think of something else to say, but seemed unable to come up with anything. Instead she offered Theres a notebook and pen. Theres took them. Then nothing happened. The girls looked anxiously at one another.
‘She wants your autograph,’ said Teresa.
‘And yours, I suppose,’ said the girl.
Teresa opened the book at a blank page and wrote her name. Then she gave the pen to Theres, who shook her head. ‘What am I supposed to write?’
‘Just put Tesla.’
Theres did as she was told, then handed the book back to the girl, who pressed it to her chest and turned to her friend, who hadn’t said a word from start to finish; she had just gazed at Theres with big eyes. She had nothing to add. Then the girl who had done the talking did something totally unexpected. She gave a little bow. The other girl did the same. The gesture seemed so out of place that Teresa laughed out loud.
Then Theres laughed too. Her laughter sounded unnatural and barely human, more like something you might hear from a laugh bag in a joke shop. The girls stiffened and scurried off towards the accessories department with their heads close together, whispering.
‘Theres,’ said Teresa. ‘I think you should give up laughing.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it sounds weird.’