Read The Rabbit Back Literature Society for Free Online Page A

dogs, fields, horses and trees—oak, maple, lime and birch.
    Halfway to the school the road plunged into a grove of spruce trees where it was always nearly dark. In the summer the air was thick with hungry gnats and she pedalled as fast as she could.
    Then the road merged with a paved road and that’s when she had to start pedalling just to keep moving. The road passed more houses, a headstone carver’s, and two workshops—one of which made wooden statues of Laura White characters that were sold all over the world.
    The road was as hilly as a child’s drawing; first down, then up, phew! then down, and up again to the highest point, fromwhich she could see the roofs of central Rabbit Back and all the surrounding areas, and even farther on a clear day, all the way to the shimmering horizon. After a few of these hills and valleys she had to slow down, because there was a path between two spruces and a large stone that she always took as a shortcut. It took her straight to the school yard, provided the ground wasn’t too swampy.
    Halfway down the path there was a pond that looked like a puddle but was said to be bottomlessly deep. Henrik, the Johansson’s boy, had once pushed a long pole into the pond without touching bottom, and then it felt like something tugged on the pole and the boys all ran away.
    Ella had never taken that story seriously, but she passed the pond as fast as she could. She’d had foreboding dreams about the place. She heard strange noises and saw weird reflections on the surface of the pond.
    She had walked this same route thousands of times, the first time when she was six years old, when she first started going to the library. When she returned to Rabbit Back to be a substitute teacher, she had ridden her bike to the school one Monday morning and before she knew it the breeze had wiped away thirteen years of her life.
    She felt herself worrying whether she’d got her mathematics homework done and whether Johanna Rantakumpu would like her today and wondering if they would have P.E. inside and she would have to listen to Salli Mäkinen’s taunts about her too small breasts and too fat thighs, and wondered whether she and the other girls would go after school to walk up and down in front of Laura White’s house again, hoping that the miracle would happen and the authoress would see them andopen her office window and invite them in for juice like she’d done with Aliisan Niemennokka two years ago, and maybe she would read to them like she had to her, from the Creatureville book she was writing, and who knows, maybe she would invite one of them to be the tenth member of the Society.
    Then the uphill climb had eaten up her speed and the passing years had returned and she remembered that she was just a dreamy substitute teacher with defective ovaries and gracefully curved lips.
    For a few seconds she was deeply sad. Then she felt relieved, and laughed so hard that she ran into the ditch.

    Ella stopped the Triumph in front of the pharmacy. Her mother got out of the car and ran to fetch her father’s prescription. Ella glanced at his profile.
    He was still quiet. The day was bleak and rainy, the bank and the shops were looming grey bulks in the drizzling wet. Umbrellas glided back and forth.
    Ella looked at her father, who seemed to be waking from a dream. She noticed a figure opening a jammed umbrella in front of the car.
    The woman in the rain looked small and slim, which slightly surprised Ella—she had imagined Laura White to be bigger, more imposing somehow.
    The raindrops dampened and darkened White’s pale summer dress, but she finally got the umbrella open and walked away.
    It crossed Ella’s mind that she could have offered the greatest children’s author she would ever know a ride. But the moment passed and White disappeared into the rain.
    Her father breathed heavily.
    Her mother appeared in the rearview mirror and dived into the car. “Well, how is everything?” she said.
    Then Paavo