As White as Snow (21 page)

But she knew that all anyone would want to hear about was the fire and the rescue. The entire local media had wanted to interview the “miracle girl” who had happened along and helped save people when the White Family cult was trying to commit suicide. Even though Lumikki had said as little as possible during the interviews and tried to direct the reporters to Jiři, she was the one they were interested in. All the reporters thought Lumikki was just the kind of sympathetic yet vulnerable hero the viewing audience loved. They showed clips of her on all the news reports with her soot-smeared face and blackened clothes.

Even now, she could see the man sitting on the other side of the airplane aisle reading a magazine with her picture on the cover. Her short hair was mussed, her eyes looked red and weepy because of the smoke, and on her left cheek was a scratch left by a splinter of wood from the door. Lumikki knew that, inside, there was also a picture of the chain saw
and a description of how a “brave Finnish girl raised surrounded by forests” had broken through the door.

When the businessman lifted his eyes, Lumikki turned to look out the window again. Maybe no one would recognize her with a clean face and clean clothes. Still, she didn’t want risk having to rehash everything one more time for a curious stranger.

Her mom and dad and relatives were going to interrogate her, though, no matter how much Lumikki would prefer to forget. The news coverage of the staged tragedy revolted her, even though a much greater tragedy had been averted.

So there you had it. Vera Sováková got her headlines, but smaller ones than she’d planned. Not enough death, not big enough news. Only death can make a true legend. The firemen arrived on the scene too early. A bunch of miscellaneous burns wasn’t nearly as thrilling as an entire cult dying a fiery death—one old lady with third-degree injuries was the only real victim.

They didn’t catch Adam Havel. The police issued a warrant for his arrest, but Jiři suspected no one would ever find him. Adam Smith had also been a made-up name. There was no information about his real identity. He could be anywhere in the world. Maybe gathering a new group of needy people around him.

Of course, there was no evidence of Vera Sováková’s role in events. When Jiři tried to twist her arm a little, she just observed what a long line of candidates wanted to become reporters at Super8. Jiři told Lumikki that maybe one day soon he would tell Vera to go ahead and pick someone from
that line to replace him. But not quite yet. Now he had another person to take care of, and that took money.

When you save someone, you become responsible for them. That’s what Jiři had said when he invited Lenka to live with him. At least for a while. Until she could get her life started again.

At the airport, Lenka had hugged Lumikki long and hard.

“If I did have a sister . . .” Lenka began.

Lumikki had smiled and nodded.

Now Lumikki looked at the brightness of the sun and the whiteness of the clouds and thought that even though the trip hadn’t brought an answer to the mysteries of her past, it had provided hints. Lumikki was surer than ever that Lenka had landed surprisingly close to the truth with her concocted story about them being sisters. The dreams and memories that Lenka’s lie had awoken were true. Lumikki knew that she hadn’t imagined the Snow White and Rose Red game or any of the rest of it. It all happened.

Once upon a time, she had a sister.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © 2012 Karoliina Ek

Winner of the 2013 Topelius Prize, Salla Simukka is an author of young adult fiction and a screenwriter. She has written several novels and one collection of short stories for young readers, and she has translated adult fiction, children’s books, and plays. She writes book reviews for several Finnish newspapers, and she also writes for TV. Simukka lives in Tampere, Finland.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Photo © 2012 Pekka Piri

Owen F. Witesman is a professional literary translator with a master’s in Finnish and Estonian area studies from Indiana University. He has translated over thirty Finnish books into English, including novels, children’s books, poetry, plays, graphic novels, and nonfiction. His recent translations include the novels in the Maria Kallio series,
My First Murder, Her Enemy and Copper Heart
(AmazonCrossing), the satire
The Human Part
by Kari Hotakainen (MacLehose Press), the thriller
Cold Courage
by Pekka Hiltunen (Hesperus), and the 1884 classic
The Railroad
by Juhani Aho (Norvik Press). He currently resides in Springville, Utah, with his wife and three daughters, two dogs, a cat, and twenty-nine fruit trees.