This is a series of studies for my long-time-in-the-writings book about the magic in the Nordic countries. We are in the 70es on Unicorn Island, an island off the coast of southern Zealand. A handful of teachers have gathered the broken threads of magic once again, trying to revive the magic in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Faroes and partially Greenland.
Our main protagonist is Susan (me) from Elsinore and her three co-apprentices and friends Heidi, Tage and Lis living at Unicorn Island.
I grasped the chance to write a little bit about some of the lesser known apprentices in this A-Z challenge.
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Vestegnen - meaning "the western parts" - is the build up areas west of Copenhagen, characterised by apartment blocks, concrete and steel, and modern architecture. It was not a nice life for many of the children in this modern desert. In some areas almost half of the grown-ups were unemployed, the number of immigrants and families having trouble with the police or social authorities were the highest in al of Denmark. From kindergarten up many children were latch key children, older children vere often sent to the pub to get father home, and many younger were sent shopping for alcohol and cigarettes before school. Many were the children who swore never to touch these things, but as they grew into adulthood and unemployment, the numbing effect of beer became alluring and former promises forgotten.
Despite all this it was in many ways a safe place to be a small child. You could always find someone to play with, always some one to go shopping together with and if your parents were too drunk or away, some other family always took care of you.
In one of the many apartment blocks lived a girl, Sarah, with her parents and two sisters, one older and one younger. Her mother worked as a cleaning woman at a nearby school, working early hours and only returning home after the three sisters had already left for school. Father had been laid off as a caroenter some years ago, he had hurt his back in an accident, and could not find a new job. His bach and his inability to fend for his family hurt him and drove him to drinking. The oldest sister Lone, cared for her smaller sisters, Sarah and Hanne. And this worked fine until one day Lone found a sweetheart at a local pub. Then she too started drinking and dancing with him in the evenings. Sarah felt betrayed by Lone and began getting behind in school. She also felt excluded in school. She loved reading, she actually liked doing her homework and doing it properly. Sarah got into the habit of staying at the local library every day after school. It was a nice place, and the librarians knew the background of the children, so they were loving, but strict. A mixture that fit Sarah perfectly. One of the first days in the summer holiday Sarah met a strange man at the library. She was fascinated by him and his beard when she noticed him. But he just sat there, reading, same as her, and when she left for the cafeteria, to drink a coke and eat a sandwich - empty bottles earned her quite a nice sum - he did the same. That is, he drank a beer with his sandwich.
When they were all alone in the cafeteria, the tall, bearded man asked Sarah if she would like to help him. Sarah had heard enough of dangerous men to flatly say no to his request. But when she left the library a good deal later than she had planned, he stood outside. "Can I walk you home?" he asked.
Sarah could see nothing wrong in this, she counted on being able to outrun and out escape him if he was up to tricks, and as a gang of older boys had recently begun harassing whomever they found all alone on the walkways, taking their money or slicing them if no money were to be had, she accepted.
On the way home he kept quiet until they were more than halfway. Then he asked how she liked school here. This was what grown-ups always asked for starters, and Sarah answered truthfully that she liked school, that she loved reading, maths, languages ... in short all subjects, only not sewing and P.E.
"What would you like to study if you could choose anything at all?" he asked. Sarah thought for a while, then answered: "I'd like to invent a society where nobody needed to drink, where no pubs and no gangs are allowed. But to do this, I suppose I'd have to do magic."
"Do you think magic would solve all problems?" The man asked
"That's not how I meant it, and you know it," Sarah said. "But to do magic .. that would b nice. Just swish your wand and say a word, and bam, job's done, or mix up a potion to cure someone. Wow, that would be nice. Then I could cure my dad's back, mothers knees, and sister's stomach and ... oh everything. But magic is not real. It's only something you read about in books." Sarah sounded bitter.
"Would you like to learn magic?" the stranger said. "I, or rather we, as I'm not in this alone, can teach you. And we, that's I, have been studying you for some time. I'm sure you can do magic. same as us. Would you like to study real magic?"
"Would I?" Sarah said. "Of course I would. But how can I be sure it is real magic, not just rabbits out of hats?"
"Watch me," Torben answered - this is who it was - and pulled his wand out. He found a wizened bush, broke off a branch and swished his wand over it. Slowly the branch changed shape, turned into a wooden spoon and then into a drumstick.
Then he handed it to Sara. "Hold it," he said, "that way you can be sure, I'm not cheating." While Sarah held onto the branch, Torben turned it into a miniature flagpole and back into a spoon, this time with holes in it. Then he stopped doing anything, and the branch slowly turned back into a branch.
Sarah was convinced. "What do I have to do to learn this?" she asked.
"Follow me to school tomorrow morning, and after this every morning in the summer holidays. Study diligently and do your best. And do not tell anybody where you're going."
"Will do," Sarah said. "Where do we meet tomorrow?"
"What about right here? Then we walk to my portal that will take us to the magic school."
"That's a deal," Sarah said. "See you tomorrow!"
At the Unicorn Farm Sarah is a mediocre apprentice, but thoroughly enjoying her time there. She always had a remark that she herself called realistic, but others described as embittered, to people's motives and behaviour.
Sarah was 13 when she arrived at Unicorn Farm, and we first meet her when wands are sung for everybody. She joined the potions team, with a propensity for everyday magic; her wand was made of oak emitting yellow-greenish sparks.
She survived losing her magic, but turned into an old, embittered and mean drunkard. She is the only original apprentice never to have her magic back after Birch Manor was founded.
Read more here if you like to: Sarah and Her Children.
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Tomorrow W for Hilde Westvold
Using the word Summer from the Words for Wednesday.
