Elsa Blomstedt

From desperation, sometimes, comes the unbelievable. Despair is not always grown from the end of the road, the bottom of the lowest. Despair can grow when your life stretches behind you with nothing at all in it. Nothing at all.

She looked at her books sitting on the shelves. She knew there was life in books. True love and far off places. Books held adventures and cliff-hangers, suspense, danger and war. Friendship, laughter and children. All the things that don’t exist in nothing at all.

She had read all these books. Some many many times. Some so often they had given her life. Made her nothing feel a bit something. As she looked her eyes fell upon a little book. Blue with beautiful silver foil pattern work. She couldn’t remember this book - had it somehow slipped her mind or was the sun catching it in a new way? Tenderly, she took it from the shelf and ran her fingers down its delicate spine. It was heavier than it looked it should be. It was quite slim, quite small, but as weighty as a much more significant tome. There was no name on the cover. No name on the spine.

Elsa gazed at the book trying to remember in her memories of not much at all. Slowly she opened it. Crisp, ivory pages with the most subtle of silver edges. Her name was written on the end paper. Elsa Blomstedt. An unusual one. With a date she couldn’t read. So it was hers! A sigh of relief or disappointment, never sure which. She turned to the title page. It was blank. She flipped through the book. All blank. A pretty notebook she’d bought on a whim and forgotten? But she was meticulous about arranging her books. She would never have put it on these shelves. She never wrote her name in books - who would take them? She looked again - it wasn’t her writing, not any variation of her writing. A gift? Not for someone without a friend. Without a family. Elsa felt cold. She closed the book and walked to the kitchen. 

She made herself a cup of tea and looked out across her garden. Quite pretty. Quite plain. A garden she’d been adamant to have for the dog she never got. Nothing much had ever happened in the garden. No parties or barbeques. No children. No dogs. Just a bit of laundry drying.

The kettle beeped and Elsa started pottering, making her tea. The way she always did. not too hot, not too sweet. The kitchen sat around her - functional and clean. Orderly, but not warm. There had never been a clatter of chaos or family mayhem in this room. Nothing dropped, spilled or broken. Just Elsa’s steady steps and her steps now took her back to the book.

She sat in her armchair and laid the book in her lap. The silver foil detail shone, making the book seem alive. It must be a sketchbook she thought. Bought once for a project she’d never begun, never had the ideas for. She opened it carefully again and glanced through some of the pages. Now there were words. There hadn’t been words, she was sure, but there must have been. She realised the faint feeling coming across her was excitement. Quite an unfamiliar feeling. Pushing the odd sensation away, she rationalised - she must have missed the words initially - they were small - small, rough handwriting. She couldn’t read any of it. It was legible, but she couldn’t understand anything. What language was it? It looked in every way like English, but her eyes couldn’t recognise the words. She tried for quite a while to decipher the words. Her head started to pound.

She lay her head back and closed her eyes. Flickering on her eyelids, she could see some of the words. Flittering in and out. She could almost read them. Like a memory that slides just out of touch. Slowly, she half-opened her eyes and looked down hazily at the pages on her lap. Half-focused she let the words play on her lashes. She gasped. She’d seen her name. She was sure of it. Totally alert, eyes wide open, she scoured the page. Nothing. Nothing at all. 

Elsa looked up, sighed, she felt tired now. Drained. It was just an old book, nothing more. No real adventure. No real life coming her way. For once she let the despair pour over her. She didn’t push it down. Didn’t pretend it was all okay. Didn’t pretend that this was enough. That nothing at all was enough. She didn’t have one memory, one accomplishment to be proud of. Not one person to call a friend. Not one person to call her own.

As the despair pulled her deeper down, she began to weep. Through her blurred eyes, the words became clear. As she read, the walls around her started to seem hazy, they started to spin. At first just softly, then gradually faster and faster. Creating a spinning spiral and the floor started to fade. Elsa, rigid with fear, broken with despair, still clutched the book in her hand. As she started to fall and spin and spin and fall, she felt it there. Pressing into her palm, melting into her palm, until it was gone.

Terrified, she tried to shake herself awake from what was now surely a nightmare. Falling into the abyss, knowing no names to call out for. From within called an ancient name. Echoing around the spinning walls. William.

Elsa fell, hurtling, not asleep, terrified, until as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. And she sat face to face. With William.

“Elsalise!” Her name! She had forgotten half of it years ago. William. Her dad! She hadn’t seen him in over forty years. Hadn’t thought of him, or anyone, in almost as long. Her dad! It came flooding back. Forty years came flooding back. How she had loved her dad. She felt her heart stir in a way it hadn’t in years, in a lifetime. Tears still streaming in her ice blue eyes. Her dad. This she fought. My dad is gone.

“Elsalise, what’s wrong with you pet? You look like you’ve seen a ghost! Eat your breakfast quick or you’ll miss your bus.”

“Oh love, what’s happened? Have you come over sick?”

He touched her brow. She felt it. His strong, rough hands - always with cuts and scrapes.

“What’s wrong love?” He was crouching now, peering anxiously into her eyes. She saw herself reflected. Her young self.

“Ah Elsalise, you’ve flipped back!” His eyes were wide, but no longer with worry. With wonder. “I’ve been wondering when you would come back. If you would. Hoping you would.” His hand was still holding her face. Warm. Real. Her tears still streaming. Hot tears that didn’t know if they were happy or sad.

William’s face broke and the tears were his as well. He pulled her up in to his arms. Safe. Home. “Don’t cry, love. You’re safe. You’re home”, he purred over and over. Gradually Elsa’s breathing calmed, her tears calmed. She felt something warm and soft against her leg. She put her hand down. “Sal!” she murmured and the tears poured again. Her beloved shepherd. He nuzzled her hand and Elsa let go of her dad and knelt down, letting the dog lick the last of her tears away. 

“I’ll put the kettle on”, William said. “There’s a lot to explain”.

*

We’ll give Elsa and her dad a bit of privacy as I can tell you what William explained that day. Because like Elsalise, I too can flip in time. It is a power given to children born on the turn of midnight on the turn of the year. Not quite one day or the other so the magic gives you both and many others. If you’re aware of this power - as it’s often passed down - then you can master it, as I have, and use it quite fluently. Without the spinning and falling. Without books.

Now Elsalise was born on the turn of midnight on the turn of the new year and her parents knew of her power. Well the potential of her power because not all of these children receive it. But Elsa’s fate was set even before she was born at a special time with a special power. Her uncle, her mother’s brother, Florian had been born with the power. But he had died as a boy from flipping back right as he crossed the road, right in the passage of a car. The initial disorientation, especially in a child so young, was hard to shake and he reacted too slowly. Elsa’s grandmother, not realising, reacted too slowly. And they both died - just walking home from school. Florian was 9. Elsa’s mother, Helena, was 12.

So Helena vowed not to tell Elsa about her power, and she made William promise, until she was much older. When she had seen enough of this life to understand the dangers and the responsibilities. But what they didn’t realise was that, without her power, or even knowledge of her power, Elsa didn’t really become herself. By protecting her with ignorance, they took away half her spirit before it could even begin to shine.

We all do things out of grief. Grief, and despair, can blind us from rationale thought. William realised first that something wasn’t right. That his daughter wasn’t totally there. It was like, by taking away her power to flip they had taken away her power to return or ever properly form in the first place. She tottered through the days not really noticing if it was sunny or wet. Not really seeing or caring who was close by. She wasn’t sad, but she wasn’t happy.

As she turned to a teenager, William approached his wife and said he felt they must tell Elsalise now who she really was. Before the power emerged on its own or never emerged at all. Helena had been praying for the latter. She had been with her mother and brother. She had seen and she couldn’t forget. Not even so many years later. She couldn’t bare it. Couldn’t bare the thought of it. So she begged William not to tell. Prayed that Elsa was just a simple child who had never had the power at all.

The years went by and Elsa eventually moved away from home. She never married, never really had any friends. She was close to her parents, she loved them as much as she could. But one day, soon after she had moved out, she had a funny turn. She found herself in the park and she didn’t know how she got there. She didn’t think too much of it and just went home. Made a cup of tea. When she washed her face that night, she thought she looked tired. Looked older. She didn’t think too much of it and just went to bed. She was thirty years older. No wiser.

On the day Elsalise flipped forward, she disappeared from her current life. Search groups were formed, transects walked, helicopters brought from the city. No trace was ever found. But William knew and beneath her wretched tears so did Helena. She could not forgive herself and for a while neither could William. But he didn’t give up, he knew that his Elsa had flipped, knew it deep in his bones. He knew that she had no knowledge of her power so no knowledge of how to return. They had fed her with ignorance so deeply that he was sure she would not even be fully aware she had flipped. Not ever really fully aware. He kept returning to her small flat, he paid the rent to keep it hers, tended her small garden, dusted her rows of books. He couldn’t know when she had flipped to, but he knew she would just go home that she wouldn’t think to do anything but.

As time went on, Helena had crumbled to nothing. She sat on the porch starring out to sea, an ancient Sal by her side. William would bring her mugs of tea and blankets as he gradually forgave her. There was no point in blaming someone so consumed by grief and guilt. While Helena watched the sea, William realised that Elsalise must have flipped too far for him to wait anymore. She had flipped beyond his grave. So he started to read, to question, to search, to find out everything he could about this power. About her power. 

To master the power you have to let it flow through your emotion. Your mind must be empty of vice - you cannot use it for hate, revenge or greed - and your emotions must be true - true grief, true joy, true despair. You let the emotion take you to the moment you need to visit. On the day Elsalise first flipped, we cannot be sure what emotion she was feeling. We can only be sure that she didn’t know she would flip and, until she returned, never realised she had. Never realised she had lost thirty years. She just thought her life was empty and for someone who had never fully awoken this possibly didn’t cause her to question. She continued for ten years in a life not fully formed. 

When you flip you are almost invisible. You blend into the time you visit, live in a home, work in a job as if you have always been there. Of course normally, you would be aware. You would have chosen to flip and for a certain reason. You would do what you needed to and then return. Elsa was unaware, but life just took her in and she carried on. She tried for a while to visit her parents, but when they were never home her memories just faded away.

As William dove deeper, questioned more, he discovered that there had been those who had flipped without knowledge before and of those there had been some who had returned. They had been reached by another with the power. A message had been left, some kind of wake up call had been given. William found someone to help him. A woman called Marie. She was as ancient as the dog and had flipped back and forth for tens of lifetimes. She came to the house and sat with William and Helena.

“I will help you, of course I will, but you must promise me, promise yourselves, that when we have Elsalise safely back that you will tell her who she is. You will let me guide her and show her safely how to be who she really is.” Marie looked sternly at Helena who, withered of tears, simply murmured “I promise”. 

Marie closed her eyes. She breathed deeply and for a second, she seemed gone. She opened her eyes slowly and turned to William. “You were right, she just went home. She’s there now, looking at her books, thirty years from now”. William covered his face with his hands, not sure if he was happy or sad, not sure whether to laugh or cry. 

“We can bring her back” Marie continued, “but it will need to be before now, before all this grief, before she totally lost herself. Do you agree to that?” She demanded. 

Of course they did. What a chance for them to give up those last years, those horrible last years. They found one of Elsa’s old sketchbooks, one Helena had given her - writing her name inside. Marie told William to write what had become of Elsa - from the beginning to the end. She had seen the sadness and despair in the older Elsa and she knew this was how to create an emotion strong enough to flip her back. So William wrote of the life that Elsa had never had, how they had stolen her power from her, had stolen her life from her. But how they loved her more than life itself, how their lives had stopped that day when they realised what they had done. How they wanted only to bring her back, to give her life, her real life and her power.

When he was finished and the tears he had dropped had dried, Marie took the book and moved towards the ancient dog. “I have a feeling” she said gently, “that you will be someone she hasn’t forgotten. Not really.” She held the book towards the dog and let him sniff it softly. A gentle wag of his tail let Marie know that he too remembered his old best friend. She went to the window, looking out to sea holding the book closely to her chest. William watched closely, but he didn’t catch the moment when the book disappeared. Marie turned, looking as if she had never left. “We can only hope she will notice it. We can only hope that she will have the strength to understand. It will break her to read her own story, but from that break should come her life.”

So now you know.

Now you know about Elsa Blomstedt. Elsalise. And as the days went by as her life rebegan, she also started to know. William and Helena trusted her. Loved her. Sal stayed by her side and Marie taught her. And her power became true. It became strong. You may have met her. She may be that lady you see walking the dog. The one you say hello to and think nothing of. But she’ll be there for a reason. For the lives she has saved are now too many to count. Not with battles, or muscles or jetpacks, but with words of hope brought from the past or from beyond. She has saved them. The forgotten ones, the invisible ones. The hopeless ones. The ones with nothing at all.