As White as Snow by Salla Simukka Page A

temperature had already risen uncomfortably. A light breeze blew over the hillside, wafting through the funicular’s open windows. For a moment, Lumikki felt like she was doing what she originally came to Prague to do. She was just another solo tourist who no one knew and who knew no one. Free to do and think as she pleased. She wished she could forget she was on her way to meet Lenka.
    Opposite her in the car sat a father with two little girls. The girls were about three and five, and clearly sisters. Both wore braids. The younger had them wrapped in two donut shapes around her ears, and the older wore hers in a crown. Just like Lenka. The girls sat side by side with their knees touching. The younger girl had a Hello Kitty Band-Aid on her knee.
    Suddenly, Lumikki remembered clumsy but gentle hands putting a Band-Aid with a picture of Mickey Mouse on her own knee.
    A voice that whispered, “Big sister will blow the owie away.”
    And then a strong blowing that left a couple of drops of saliva on her skin. Little Lumikki had laughed.
    The memory couldn’t be right. Someone might have put a Band-Aid on her knee. Some older friend or cousin. But not a big sister. Lumikki and Lenka had never met before. Seeing the little girls had probably just activated some forgotten childhood memory and Lumikki’s mind was mixing in elements from the present. The human brain worked like that. That’s how people could be manipulated into creating fake memories, like violence and abuse in their childhoods, even when nothing of the sort had happened.
    An even more disturbing vision reared up in Lumikki’s mind. A nightmare she didn’t want to see. She was trying to put on a Band-Aid, but there was so much blood that the Band-Aid got soaked right through and turned red. There was too much blood. She watched herself start to cry. She didn’t understand. Why didn’t the Band-Aid make the owie go away?
    The funicular jerked to a stop. The jolt was just enough to dislodge the strange images from Lumikki’s mind. But at the same time, it brought back a memory too vivid to be an illusion.
    Silhouettes of her father and mother hovering somewhere above, presumably above her bed. She was lying down, feelinglike an elephant squeezed into a ball. That’s what she remembered thinking. Like a heavy ball that couldn’t sense its own outlines. Mom and Dad’s faces were gray, tired, and sad.
    “Your big sister . . . ,” they said.
    Each separately and both together. For some reason, they couldn’t get any further than that word.
    People shoved their way past Lumikki to exit the car. She got her feet moving too, even though the memory weighed them down. The situation in her memory was real. She was sure of it.
    She had a big sister.
    The family tree she’d been tracing in her mind had been pruned a little too enthusiastically.
    “You really don’t know any more than that?” Lumikki asked. Lenka shook her head.
    Her family was made up of Lenka, her mother Hana Havlová, her mother’s parents Maria Havlová and Franz Havel, Franz’s brother Klaus Havel, and Klaus’s son Adam Havel.
    “And Adam is the head of your family now?” Lumikki double-checked.
    She avoided the word “cult” for obvious reasons.
    “Adam is . . . ,” Lenka thought for a moment. “Adam is Father. We all call him Father, even people older than him, because he takes care of us like a father. And for me especially he’s like the father I never had.”
    “How old is he?”
    “I’m not sure exactly. I’d guess about sixty. Why?” Lenka asked.
    Lumikki shrugged and avoided the question. She wanted to know more about Adam, but she sensed from Lenka’s twitching and the tension in her voice that the conversation was already on thin ice and more questions might scare Lenka off.
    They were sitting on top of Petřín Hill watching the hordes of tourists wandering by and marveling at the iron lookout tower. It looked deceptively similar to its more famous cousin,