Free Nothing by Janne Teller Page A

he’d used his finger to do. But now I knew who had separated poor Cinderella’s head from her body.
    Sofie was a sly one.
    I didn’t tell anyone what I was thinking. Firstly, because I wasn’t sure the finger didn’t match up rather well with what Sofie had been made to deliver. And secondly, because I wasn’t comfortable anymore with the thought of what else Sofie might be capable of.
    ————
    I wasn’t alone in feeling relieved that the heap of meaning was almost done.
    Jon-Johan couldn’t care less. For all he cared, it could have been the beginning or the end ofthe heap; there was no way he was giving up his index finger.
    If Jon-Johan hadn’t been the last of us, we might have let him off. For who could know what might be next? Or perhaps that isn’t quite true. The truth is more likely that if Jon-Johan hadn’t been the class leader, who decided everything and played guitar and sang Beatles songs whenever he felt like it, we would have let him off. As it was, there was no way out.
    It would happen Saturday afternoon.
    First Sofie would cut off the finger, then we’d quickly apply a makeshift bandage, and then Holy Karl would run Jon-Johan home to Jon-Johan’s parents in his trailer so they could get him to the emergency room, where he could be bandaged up properly.
    ————
    On Sunday we were going to go fetch Pierre Anthon.

XVII
    We spent Friday afternoon getting the sawmill straightened up.
    It was December 14. There weren’t many days until Christmas, but we weren’t thinking about it. We had more important things to do.
    We’d been hanging out at the old sawmill for more than four months, and it showed. The sawdust was trodden up with dirt, candy wrappers, and other garbage, and was no longer spread evenly over the concrete floor, but formed hills and peaks between pieces of lumber we’d dumped around the place for playing off-groundtag and sitting on. The spiders didn’t seem to have reduced their activity on account of our presence. Rather, it was as if we’d increased their chances of a haul, and there were cobwebs in every nook and cranny. The windows, those that were still intact, were if possible even grimier than when we’d started.
    After some arguing about who was to do what, we finally got going.
    Frederik and Holy Karl picked up candy wrappers. Sebastian, Otto, and Huge Hans gathered all the lumber at the back of the mill. And Maiken, Elise, and Gerda clambered around, brushing away cobwebs. Lady William, Laura, Anna-Li, and Henrik Butter-up washed as much dirt off the windows as would come away, while Dennis knocked out the remainder of the broken windowpanes so there no longer were any jagged fragments to spoil the view out. Ursula-Marie and I took turns raking the sawdust out neatly, using a rake we’d borrowed from Sofie. Theold sawmill ended up looking almost decent.
    One thing, though, we could do nothing about: The heap of meaning had started to smell less than pleasant.
    Less than pleasant. Unpleasant. Sickening.
    Part of it was down to Cinderella’s etceteras on and around Jesus on the Rosewood Cross, and part of it was down to the flies that were now swarming around Cinderella’s head and carcass. An extremely unpleasant odor issued too from the coffin with little Emil inside.
    It made me think of something Pierre Anthon had said some days before.
    “A bad smell is as good as a good smell!” He hadn’t any plums to throw at us, and instead he slapped the palm of his hand against the branch he was sitting on, like he was accompanying his words. “What smells is decay. But when something starts decaying, it’s on its way to becoming a part of something new. And the new that’s created smells good. So it makes no difference whethersomething smells good or bad, it’s all just a part of life’s eternal round dance.”
    I hadn’t answered him, and neither had Ursula-Marie or Maiken, who I was walking with. We just ducked our heads ever so slightly and