LITMIR.BIZ

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see an enormous cake, the biggest one I’ve ever seen in my life. The cake is shaped like a big church with red spires and golden cupolas in the form of onions. It’s decorated with candied fruits, marzipan, and icing, but it doesn’t look like the churches here at home. In front, in an elaborate courtyard, rest snowbanks made of whipped cream and macaroons. Little marzipan soldiers are lined up next to opulent sleighs.

      The door shuts behind me, but I hardly hear it. I keep staring at the huge monstrosity of a cake. It’s not yet finished, but the monster is taller than I am. Looking closer, I see that it has been adorned with all the details: gables, archways, and gilding. Even the doors look real, down to the last door handle, hinge, and doorframe.

      At that moment Callenberg appears with some of the courtiers. They offer no greeting, just look me over with an expression of curiosity. I put my hands on my hips and stare them down, like the milksops they are.

      “Put the dwarf inside the cake,” says Callenberg.

      Before I manage to say a single word, a servant lifts me up. I try to scratch his face, but the servant is too strong. He laughs and drops me into a big hole. I land on my feet and can just barely see over the edge.

      The men laugh like idiots. I stare back at them and try to climb out of the hole, but the servant pushes me back inside.

      “Careful!” says the pastry chef. He’s a thin man with a battlefield of warts on his face. The cake smells like glue, and I wonder how much is decoration and how much is actually edible.

      “Tell the dwarf to crawl down inside the cake.”

      The footman turns to me and repeats the command, but I don’t care for his tone of voice. At that instant Callenberg nods. The footman shoves my head down. I try to resist, but it’s pointless.

      Now the hole is covered with a lid. The world disappears, and I find myself in the heart of the world’s most ridiculous cake, inside a hole big enough to hold only a dwarf. I gasp for breath and pound on the cake. There’s no air. I feel nauseated. I’m going to die. And as if that weren’t bad enough, I’m going to die inside a cake!

      In a sense it would be appropriate to be buried under candied fruits, to be weighted down by God’s marzipan-infested hand. My life is worth nothing. I’m a parrot without plumage. No one will remember me the day after I’m dead. At most they’ll remember my body. They’ll remember my height, my back, and the ape-like appearance of my hands. But they won’t remember me.

      Because there is no me. I am my body—I have no soul. There is no place for me in God’s kingdom. But there is a place for me in the void. In the void I’m allowed to take my place.

      “Can it breathe?”

      “Jump up!” a second voice commands.

      I crouch down as I wait for the moment when there will be nothing more to wait for. Then the lid is torn off. The world is back—the world and the Lord Steward.

      Slowly I stand up. My body is still asleep. It feels good to breathe the air again; it’s something to which I’ve grown accustomed. I peer over the edge of the cake. To my surprise more courtiers have arrived and more footmen. Some of them are snickering loudly, others are staring arrogantly, as if confronting a phenomenon of nature that they cannot comprehend.

      “Get up on the roof, poppet.”

      I gape at the Lord Steward.

      “Crawl up between the towers. Do you hear me?”

      I sigh. I’m just about to explain to him that not even a dwarf can fly, that I can only get up there if he brings me a stairway, but I decide not to say a word. I just look at the Lord Steward, at his fat body and double chins that quiver with every consonant he speaks. And suddenly I know that something has gone wrong. I’m important to the Lord Steward. I’m his last hope.

      The royal house has use for a dwarf.

      The royal house has use for me.

      I cast another glance at the high-born people. Utter silence. But the silence of the fine folk is always too good to be true.

      “ We’ll have to make a staircase,” sighs the pastry chef.

      A moment later a footman lifts me up and carries me down to the cellar. On the way he makes sure that I hit my head against the doorframe. When he tosses me into a cell, I’m no longer conscious.

6.

      WHEN A DWARF IS BORN, IT WOULDN’T DREAM OF REVEALING its secret. The dwarf infant wails like a human being. It breathes with the same tenacity. It suckles milk and sleeps the slumber of the innocent, its cheeks flushed pink. There is nothing demonic about a dwarf baby. It doesn’t have the number nine imprinted on its scalp, it doesn’t howl at the full moon. And many years pass before the human being discovers that she has suckled a snake at her breast.

      I’m quite certain that my father had a serious conversation with Our Lord when he realized that I was deformed. It happened when I was six years old—when my body stopped growing. My father felt that I was God’s punishment for the sins of his youth. Before I was born he had written a wish list for Our Lord—a list of demands, everything that he wished from his firstborn. The first item was the most important: The child had to be a boy. Next came a list of talents, none of which I possessed. But the list had no significance as soon as my father discovered that I was deformed. From that moment on, he dropped all his demands and lapsed into a divine despondency.

      I can see him before my eyes, the way he looked back then: young and blustering, a ruddy barrel of a man, filled with anger at the Creator, talking to himself and the marsh. There’s no doubt that he felt himself persecuted and that he was keeping accounts which would be presented to God on Judgment Day.

      I don’t know when my father found himself again. Whether months or years passed, or how long it was that he suffered under his defeat, but at some point he decided that I should be hidden away and protected from the world, since I was too little to manage on my own. I was wrinkled and hideous—a little but old person, the size of a skilling coin. Not a child that could be presented after a church service, unless the purpose was to terrify the congregation.

      Of course I was the only dwarf for miles around. I found my playmates not in the parish but in nature, at the marsh—and in the darkness, which became my best friend. Because it was there that I found protection. It was in the dark that I could feel safe and loved, while the light deceived the eye.

      The light exposed every abnormality of my physiognomy. The light was merciless and unrelenting.

      AFTER A WHILE the door opens. At first I’m unsure what door it could be, but then I remember where I am. A big rectangle of light floods the cell, and a man is standing in the doorway holding a tallow candle in his hand. I don’t recall having seen him before. He is dressed as a cavalier, wearing the obligatory powdered wig, an elegant silk coat, and elegant shoes that gleam in the dim light.

      “Sørine?” he calls.

      I glare at the rogue without answering. As far as I know, there’s no one else in the cell but me. It’s clear that his eyes have not yet adjusted to the dark, but that doesn’t matter, because I haven’t yet adjusted to the light.

      “Are you there, Sørine Bentsdatter?” The man clears his throat. “My name is Rasmus Æreboe. I am His Majesty’s notarius publicus.”

      The cavalier’s voice is soft and pleasant. He has a bit of a lilt. He must be from the islands of Fyn or Falster. Yet there is something finicky about him that I find irritating, something that invites a good slap.

      A cautious little smile appears on his face.

      “Oh, there you are, my dear. I have to talk to you about something important.” He smiles again. “But you haven’t put on the dress.”

      I notice a dress lying on the floor of the cell. The footman must

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