“The colours are so bright they are burnt to the inside of my eyes…”

Ida leant her temple against the cool window, eyes closed, tasting the words, smiling. Rain hammered against the glass, so steadily it blurred into a smooth humming in her head. 

Maja, loyal and needy as a dog, burrowing her pitched question into Ida’s elsewhereness again. 

“Kalle and Lars are going fishing for pike, they surface when it’s raining, they’re huge.”

Her little cousin, expecting a no, was nervously tapping the threshold with one foot. It wasn’t this or the melodramatic gloss in her brown eyes that made Ida get up- for Maja’s neediness was insatiable- it was rather the thought of perhaps having something worthy to write back to mamma about. 

They walked through the rain, two pastel specks in raincoats, down to where the boys were sitting. 

“We want to fish too”, said Ida.

Kalle glanced over his shoulder, Lars remained static. Something hot welled up in Ida, and she swallowed it back, tasting acid and salt. Her brother’s indifference stung differently when they were around others. 

You can have the bamboo rods”, Kalle offered.

The girls sighed, but accepted this natural order of things. 

“And you can have five worms”, Kalle said, “If you use another dock.”

“What other dock?”

“Find another one, we want the pikes here to ourselves.”

  Maja growled dramatically, and grabbed the extra can of worms from her brother. 

“But if you catch one we share it”, she yelled.

“Sure, sis”, Kalle called back, his words barely detectable, any potential trace of irony washed away in the rain. 

They went into the woods that lined the curved end of the shoreline, wanting to get away from the boys. They turned on a barely-trampled path down to the water. Down a slight slope, birches framed an opening, the lake shining in the shady forest, and a splintered, rotting dock therein. They settled carefully on each side of it, to not tip it over. They tossed their lines as far as they could, only to get them caught in algae. 

“It’s too shallow”, Maja said.

She sighed and changed positions restlessly until she finally gave up. 

“Let’s go to the boys”

How free she seemed; undefined by defeat. Her brother would let her join, and they would both inhabit a still, agreeable silence, until they raced home, rods fencing. 

Ida let Maja go, feeling mighty in her chosen loneliness, alone in the rain on a sinking dock. She wanted to cry, but the scene seemed too perfect to be anything but pathetic. She sunk into her coat and tightened her grip around the bamboo. She wouldn’t move. Not until the giant elder pike, emerged from the folktails, came biting the wriggling, impaled worm, until she’d snapped back its boar-sized head, and its rigour mortis spasms had ceased, and the blood spread on the dock, dripping through the cracks, and its intestines hung out of the kitchen bin, and the butter in the cast iron pan sizzled and steamed up each window, rosing their cheeks, as they toasted to her, washing the white meat down with burning schnapps, and it would be all they ever talked talked about this summer, and this summer would forever become that summer, and she would write to… 

Suddenly, a giant splash tore through the silence. Ida stood up, gripping the rod with both hands. It trembled in her grip, determinedly outstretched. Something surfaced from the ripples made next to the dock. It wasn’t a pike, but a girl. A blonde head bobbing to the rhythm of her breast strokes. When she circled back toward the dock, she suddenly noticed Ida, and started to splash, as if drowning.

“Jävlar” the girl swore. “What are you doing here?”

She started to front crawl for the shore, and when the water reached just beneath her shoulders, she froze. Ida stared. It looked like she was naked. 

“This is MY swimming spot”, the girl yelled. “Move!”

The girl was shivering from the cold, and heaving from anger. She looked crazy. Ida grabbed her rod, hastily wrapping the line around it. She got off the dock, but turned around, and walked towards the girl in the water. She stepped in with her rubber boots. The girl looked defiantly at her.

“What’s taking you so…”

Ida had sunk her hand into the worm can, and made a fist with soil, feeling it wriggle with life. In one swift motion, she threw the dirt in the girl’s face. Then she turned and ran. Tears burned her eyes, from the rushing of her heart. When she reached the big path, she heard something behind her, a sound twisted by the rain. It was her; Cornelia, laughing.