Free Nothing by Janne Teller

her brother’s coffin being dug up. Holy Karl had found two sacrifices with one prayer.
    ————
    Jon-Johan’s father was a butcher and had a shop out front of the house where they lived. One early morning, after a couple of aborted attempts, Jon-Johan succeeded in sneaking away a long, newly sharpened carving knife, which he took with him out to the sawmill and thrust into a wooden post, where it remained glinting and waiting for Pretty Rosa to pull herself together.
    Which turned out to be sooner rather than later.
    When we got to the sawmill on a cold and stormy afternoon in the late fall, Cinderella was no more; her head lay gaping resentfully at us on top of the heap, while her carcass lay draped across little Emil’s coffin, that was now more red than crackled white.
    White. Pink. Red is dead.
    Pretty Rosa had looked oddly unmoved all day at school. Later she kept claiming she’d almost fainted and that it had been worse than horrifyingand that she’d turned off the lights in the sawmill so as not to see the blood.
    The thing about the lights had doubtless been for the better, because seeing the coffin now with all the blood and Cinderella’s head without its body, Pretty Rosa passed out without a hint of warning. Huge Hans and Otto carried her over to the other end of the sawmill and piled up some boards to block the sight of both the coffin and Cinderella. Taking her outside was out of the question, in case anyone happened by.
    Jon-Johan examined the knife, which had been stuck back into the post, now all begrimed with dried blood.
    “Who would have thought Pretty Rosa had a butcher inside her!” he exclaimed, and laughed loudly.
    Maybe he wouldn’t have laughed so much had he known what more Pretty Rosa could bring to pass.

XVI
    There was something devious about it.
    Not the matter of Pretty Rosa being able to cut Cinderella’s throat without flinching and then pass out at the mere sight of blood on the coffin, even if that was pretty odd in itself.
    No, the deviousness became apparent when Pretty Rosa demanded the index finger of Jon-Johan’s right hand.
    ————
    It was a Tuesday afternoon shortly after we’d all arrived at the sawmill, drenched to the bone by an incessant, pouring rain that also found its way through the holes in the sawmill roof and made pools in the sawdust that we still weren’t too old to paddle in.
    Ursula-Marie said that was something that couldn’t be asked for, especially not when it was Jon-Johan who played guitar and sang Beatles songs so it sounded almost like them, and he wouldn’t be able to anymore without his finger and so Pretty Rosa couldn’t ask for it.
    “Yes, I can,” said Pretty Rosa, without explaining why.
    “No, you can’t,” said Ursula-Marie, and the rest of us backed her up; a line had to be drawn somewhere.
    “Yes, I can,” said Pretty Rosa.
    “No, you can’t,” we all said again.
    And then, when it had all gone on long enough, it was like there was no strength left in Pretty Rosa, and our refusal was met by a weary silence that made us think we’d won.
    At least until Sofie chipped in, “What? Like Jon-Johan’s finger doesn’t matter?”
    On that point we obviously couldn’t disagree with her, but a finger was still something you couldn’t just ask someone to hand over. But Sofie persisted and couldn’t see why there should be any discussion.
    “Everyone else has gotten what they wanted. And if Pretty Rosa wants Jon-Johan’s finger, then she should have Jon-Johan’s finger.”
    Eventually we agreed, since no one was going to be able to bring themselves to cut off Jon-Johan’s finger anyway.
    “I will,” said Sofie matter-of-factly.

    We stared at her, mute, every one of us.

    Something cold had come over Sofie ever since the thing about the innocence.
    Cold. Colder. Frost, ice, and snow.
    All of a sudden I remembered that Jon-Johan had been there that evening at the sawmill, and I didn’t want to start imagining what