Chapter 4

One Green One Hazel

NO Audiobook this time - it turned out boring and flat, so I will record it myself. Just give me a minute

“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. Protruding from one of the mountains surrounding the small town stood what the people of Hesteyri unanimously referred to as ‘the store’. Its dark grey walls almost melted into the slope of the mountain and in the summer the greenery would swallow it down to the small door all the way at the bottom, making it almost invisible.

“I mean…not quite, but it’s the closest thing to a store that exists here,” Kaisa explained.

“But I have no money.”

“No need.”

She smiled, carrying Archie on her hip. He held onto her black turtleneck and a couple of strands of her hair which she tried very hard to ignore. The store’s many aisles were filled with food and utterly random bits of trinkets and tchotchkes. Almost every item was pre-owned, and most people figured they had probably been misplaced at some point, because that’s really the only way something could end up in a place like the Spillage. If you were lucky, you even found something new that, so people assumed, had been bought and immediately discarded. Thrown ‘away’. But of course, ‘away’ was not a real place. Hesteyri was. 

“Okay, so, for some reason random stuff, including food, just shows up on these shelves. It sounds great, which it is, but it’s a bit tricky. You have to watch what you take and how much of it. If two people want the same thing, you have to share. That’s the rules,” Rita explained, skipping ahead. Kaisa walked after her and let Archie have a look around.

“Why do you not just take everything? I would.”

Kaisa laughed gently.

“We’ve tried. And boy, do you pay the price. Ingi Olafsson once took three screwdrivers, because he claimed they kept breaking and he wanted to spare himself the extra trip to the store each time. The screwdrivers would end up misplacing themselves and somehow always showed up right underneath his coffee table, making him stub his toe about a million times. Man, he was so angry. We all kind of avoided him for at least two weeks. So if you are being greedy, you do end up paying for it.”

What Kaisa thought to leave out of her little story was what happened if you tried to cheat. Taking more of what you needed was one thing, but taking something out of sheer desire to have it was another. That had only happened once, and the entire town was smart enough not to let it happen again.

“So, little guy, what would you like? We’re very international here, and I remember being incredibly picky when I was your age.” 

Archie looked up at Kaisa and that’s all he did for a little while. 

“Your eyes don’t match.”

“They don’t, that’s true.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yes, it’s horrible.”

“Really?”

“No, not really. It just looks funny.”

He thought for a while, blinked, then looked ahead. 

“I like it.”

Kaisa wasn’t sure if he was talking about her eyes or the store, nor did she think it mattered. 

“Cereal!” Archie shouted as Rita returned, holding two big boxes.

“Man, I can never decide. I just wanna have it all,” she said, holding up a box of Catalina Crunch in her left hand and Captain Crunch in her right. 

“Just risk it! Take both,” Kaisa said, and wiggled her eyebrows, which earned her a baffled look.

“So you’re trying to get me killed?”

“Yes, and…CHEERIOS!”

Kaisa skipped ahead, causing Archie to lose his balance. He caught himself just in time, but it cost Kaisa a strand of her hair. 

“Gross, those are the normal ones,” Archie said, and his voice sounded just a little bit steadier. 

“What do you mean ‘gross’?”

“He means they are a disgrace to the proud milky-crunchy-spooney food family, Kaisa.”

“Damn, Rita, ‘disgrace’ is a bold word, considering you’re holding onto those Captain Crunch like your life depends on them.”

“Cheerios taste like cardboard paper,” Archie said, chuckling a little.

“Precisely! Let me eat my cardboard in peace.” 

They decided that, since Archie was having such a rough day, he could pick a toy from the toy-aisle. It wasn’t as big, but it fit its fair share of stuffed animals, flashing robots, cars, some more cars, dolls that looked like babies, dolls that looked like slender blonde women and a variety of toy balls. 

Archie pulled Kaisa over to the stuffed animals, refusing to let go of her hand. It took him quite a while, but neither Kaisa nor Rita intended to pretend they were in some kind of hurry. Then, finally, he stuck his hand deep into a basket full of stuffed things you couldn’t quite call ‘animals’. There was a stuffed moon, a stuffed coffee bean, a stuffed pencil and various other random plushies. He eventually pulled out something round, green and somewhat pointy. 

“Is that a lettuce?” Kaisa asked, squinting at it.

“No,” yelled Archie. “It’s an Artichoke.” 

“How on earth do you know that word? That’s kind of a strange word to know,” Rita said, sounding awfully chipper.

“My mom says it sounds like Archie. She calls them Archie-Choke sometimes. It’s funny.”

Kaisa took the stuffed Artichoke and turned it in her one free hand. 

“Doesn’t look too shabby, it even has a face. Do you have a name? Artie the Artichoke?”

She gave it back to Archie and he shook his head. 

“No, that’s too silly. His name is Steve.” 

“Steve, huh? Well, not all that Icelandic, but we’re quite international here, as I said. Steve it is.”

She gave his tiny hand a squeeze and said: “Well, welcome to the group, Steve.”

“I’m hungry.”

Archie shot Rita a curious look. She was trying to open a pack of Peanut Butter Cups, but got hung up on reading the fine print on the back of the package. 

“These have expired. About 5 years ago.” 

“My mom says when it’s in plastic, it never dies.”

“Your mother sounds like a wise woman.”

They left the store, Archie holding Steve the Artichoke tightly pressed to his body. It was cold out and if Kaisa was being honest with herself, she didn’t exactly know what to do next. She suggested they go to her house, get Archie situated, eat something that isn’t entirely made of sugar and warm up. As they made their way down, Kaisa took one last look over her shoulder and up the barren grey walls of the store, hiding within the mountain as if trying to pretend it belonged here, in the middle of nowhere. A true blessing, the people here called it. If someone were to ask her, she’d call it something else. But nobody ever asked.

When they arrived at Kaisa’s house, Nonni was sitting on the couch, the black cat from Olli’s workshop curled up next to her. The lightness with which the three had left the store started to slowly evaporate as Kaisa stepped over the threshold to her living room.

“Ah, look who it is! NOT Little Bean, apparently,” Kaisa yelled, and the cat shot her a nasty look.

“I see you’ve been having fun. Good to see you aren’t taking this seriously at all. The cats are worried, Kaisa.”

Kaisa ushered Archie and Rita away, suggesting Rita to get her room ready for her and Archie to sleep over. Rita didn’t protest, because Kaisa was well aware that she would be listening in on them anyway. 

“Your Nonni and I have been talking,” the cat finally said.

“Must’ve been a very one-sided conversation.”

“You know, humans and animals alike communicate with much more than just words. Just because your mother is mute doesn’t mean I don’t know what she’s trying to say.”

Kaisa shrugged. She was in no mood to be belittled. All she wanted to do was retreat into her bedroom and be left alone, but all that was waiting for her now was an uncomfortable conversation, which was usually something that cat tended to bring along.

“So…do you know anything? Why you can’t get him home?”

“He isn’t there! I’ve searched my memory all day and been talking to the others. Nobody knows him, and that is serious, child. Don’t roll your eyes at me, we need to do something. Look outside!”

“No, thank you, I just came from there.”

The fur along the cat’s back stood up, its eyes fixing her with a look of utter distaste, but before a fight could erupt Nonni got up and held out her hand. The look on her face made Kaisa avert her eyes for a moment, though she knew there was no point. She sighed before she took her mother’s hand and together they walked up to the living room window. It was pitch black outside, and for a while Kaisa just stared at her own reflection, thinking about how small she suddenly felt, standing there, hand in hand with her mother. When the cat brushed up against her leg she jumped and squeezed Nonni’s hand.

“For crying out loud, how dense can you be…the moon! Look at the moon!” The cat yelled.

“What about the…oh.”

Kaisa squinted her eyes, trying hard to look beyond her own reflection when she eventually saw it. There. There it was. One standing still and the other one. Flickering, twitching, like it was unsure whether it wanted to be there or not. 

Nonni grabbed her shoulder and gently turned her around. She raised a hand and pointed at her own eyes, then at Kaisa. 

“She wants you to look. What do you see?”

“What? Nothing…”

“Come on, girl. Why do you refuse to use this gift…”

“Because I don’t even know what I see, okay? Also, calling it a gift feels like a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?”

But the cat didn’t yield. 

“I don’t understand, aren’t you curious?”

“No.”

“But what if you could see something. And what if that something could help little Archie go back to his family? What if this could make the difference between him returning, and him staying here forever. Most people don’t have that choice. He might. How small of a sacrifice, don’t you think? How can you disagree with that?”

Kaisa’s fingernails pinched the skin on the inside of her palms as she clenched her fists tighter and tighter with each second she had to listen to the cat’s speech. She knew it wasn’t being unreasonable; she even agreed with it. If this could help Archie leave, then it was worth it a million times. But didn’t it understand how it terrified her? Terrified not of what she was about to see, but what was going to see her. She hated it. This was no ‘gift’, it was a curse. Nonni and the cat both stared at her, both with expectations she wasn’t going to disappoint. Maybe it was pride, maybe it was shame, but she knew that there was only one acceptable thing for her to do. So she lowered her head and closed her eyes.