“Archie, come here for a second, please. Quickly!” Kaisa said, stretching out her arm while Archie was desperately holding on to Nonni’s pant leg. 

When Kaisa opened her eyes, Rita and Archie were still fast asleep. She turned her head and stared out onto the empty street through her bedroom window for a while.

Sometimes one’s got to just wonder. Wonder about those things we leave behind.

“We should let Archie sleep, but maybe it’s time to stop pretending Rita isn’t already listening from the very small gap you left in the door that I most definitely didn’t notice as soon as I entered this house.”

Three knocks were usually nothing to worry about, but three knocks at almost 1:00am was a bit odd. Nonni got up and reached into the little gap between the kitchen counter and the wall. She fumbled and dug around for a while, then withdrew her arm, looking rather confused.

Kaisa rubbed her eyes, trying to extend the comfort of her false solitude. She knew that as soon as she opened them again, she’d have to answer to the cat and her mother and the mere thought of it made her press her hands against her face even harder.

“It’s a store!” Archie chimed, bending his neck all the way back to look up at the gigantic rows of shelves lining the big hall. It always looked bigger on the inside than it did on the outside, and Kaisa figured this probably wasn’t a coincidence.

Orla sat quietly, one leg folded on top of the other. The cup of tea she had just poured for herself sat steaming in her hands. Her thick black curly hair was tied up into a high bun, but a single strand tickled her forehead. That one would always refuse to stay in, and she’d long since accepted defeat.

Five knocks.

Five knocks usually meant for whomever was on the receiving end to get up from their seat, jump up from the bathtub butt naked, wake up from their deepest sleep, drop whatever they held in their hands unless it was a baby or a cat or a precious family heirloom, and storm to the door with a well-prepared look of shock on their face. Something very unusual had happened. And in Hesteyri, where everything was unusual, that meant a great deal. 

There had always been something extraordinarily odd about Kaisa. Or at least that was how she’d always felt, and the people around her did little to nothing to convince her otherwise. She tried to make it easy on herself at first, tried to blame it on her appearance. Her glistening white hair she always claimed was just a very light blonde, which it very clearly wasn’t.

They were just on their way home from the farmhouse and stopped their old, rusty-red Jeep at the exact same spot they used to for years, five miles from the farm, two miles from home. As always, they left the driver's door open and would do the rest of the way on foot. Every single time. The car would be gone by the next morning anyway. It always was.