My Grandmother
I myself had two separate encounters with witches before I was eight years old. From the first
I escaped unharmed, but on the second occasion I was not so lucky. Things happened to me that will
probably make you scream when you read about them. That can't be helped. The truth must be told.
The fact that I am still here and able to speak to you (however peculiar¹ I may look) is due entirely² to
my wonderful grandmother.
My grandmother was Norwegian. The Norwegians know all about witches, for Norway, with
its black forests and icy mountains, is where the first witches came from. My father and my mother
were also Norwegian, but because my father had a business in England, I had been born there and
had lived there and had started going to an English school. Twice a year, at Christmas and in the
summer, we went back to Norway to visit my grandmother. This old lady, as far as I could gather,
was just about the only surviving relative we had on either side of our family. She was my mother's
mother and I absolutely adored her. When she and I were together we spoke⁴ in either Norwegian or
in English. It didn't matter which. We were equally fluent in both languages, and I have to admit that
I felt closer to her than to my mother.
Soon after my seventh birthday, my parents took me as usual to spend Christmas with my
grandmother in Norway. And it was over there, while my father and mother and I were driving in icy
weather just north of Oslo, that our car skidded⁵ off the road and went tumbling down into a rocky
ravine. My parents were killed. I was firmly strapped⁶ into the back seat and received only a cut on the
forehead.
I won't go into the horrors of that terrible afternoon. I still get the shivers when I think about
it. I finished up, of course, back in my grandmother's house with her arms around me tight and both
of us crying the whole night long.
"What are we going to do now?" I asked her through the tears.
"You will stay here with me," she said, "and I will look after you."
"Aren't I going back to England?"
"No," she said. "I could never do that. Heaven shall take my soul, but Norway shall keep my

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