The Girl without Skin by Mads Peder Nordbo

Author:Mads Peder Nordbo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2018-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

37

Jakob flicked through his book on rocks and fossils. He had decided that Paneeraq might like a bedtime story, and now she was snuggled up under the big, airy quilt in his bed, while he perched on the edge with his book.

The idea of reading aloud to her was a good one, but he had forgotten that his library contained mostly non-fiction and police magazines—and while educating the young about the value of police work mattered greatly to him, it probably didn’t appeal to an eleven-year-old girl. He had finally settled on his geology book, but was only halfway through Igaliku sandstone in the sedimentary rock chapter when he was forced to concede that it might not be of interest to the little girl either.

He slammed shut the book. ‘This is really boring, ilaa?’

She nodded and smiled feebly.

‘I don’t mind you saying so,’ he said. ‘In this house you can say whatever you like, and even I have to admit that rocks can be a bit dull.’

Her smile widened. She had pulled up the big, white quilt so far that her face was only visible above her nose.

‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll just get something from the living room.’

He returned with a fossilised sea urchin and the shell of a more recent sea urchin. He placed them both on the mattress next to her pillow so she could see them.

‘These are both sea urchins,’ he said, giving each of them a little push. ‘One became fossilised, while the other is like a seashell. The sea urchin itself was probably eaten by a seagull or a raven in the summer.’

Paneeraq looked curiously at the two objects on the mattress. The shell was lying on its back, so it was easy to see that the two objects were very similar. The furrow on her brow reappeared, and she looked up at Jakob.

‘You’re allowed to touch them,’ he said, nodding towards the fossil and the shell.

Her small fingers closed around first the fossil, and then more delicately around the shell. She turned them over and studied their backs and their stomachs. The fossil was solid, the shell hollow and delicate. ‘How did it turn into a stone?’

‘It was probably buried in the mud of a big ocean more than three hundred million years ago, and it was slowly fossilised and turned into flint stone. Its shell has long since disappeared, so what you’re looking at is the soft animal inside the shell.’

She didn’t say anything, but clutched the fossilised sea urchin.

‘It’s incredible, don’t you think, that these little creatures crawled around in the sea all those millions of years ago? And that they look and function in exactly the same way today as they did thirty or a hundred million years ago. On the beaches back home in Denmark, where I come from, you can bend down and pick up a living sea urchin with one hand and a fossilised one with the other.’

Her hand enclosed the fossil. ‘Can I turn into a stone?’

He rubbed one eye.

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