Chapter 1Thirty years ago
I was ten years old the first time I picked flowers to put underneath my pillow on the night of Midsummer Eve.
It all started at the traditional Midsummer’s Eve party at my parents’ house. I was hanging out with my older sister Fia and her girlfriends underneath the apple tree in the corner of our huge garden, away from the talking and laughing grownups gathered around the long table set up on our lawn just for this occasion. It was an unusually warm day, for June, at least. The sun was beating down on our heads, only the occasional cloud floated past us high in the sky, and the leaves on the trees were barely rustling. Mom had worried it was going to rain—it always rains, at least a little, on Midsummer—and that they’d have to set up the party tent to keep dry,
