The Farm by Tom Rob Smith

complete, we’d open the farm as a holiday destination, guests lured to our obscure location with the promise of freshly grown food, a picturesque landscape, and the prospect of catching some of the world’s most beautiful salmon at a bargain price compared to fishing in Scotland or Canada. Despite its importance, in those early days Chris wouldn’t spend any time down by the river. He said it was too bleak. He didn’t see how our plans were possible. No one would ever pay to come to our farm. That’s what he claimed. I admit that it wasn’t picture-postcard-pretty when we arrived. The riverbank was overgrown, the grass was knee high, and I’ve never seen slugs so big, as fat as my thumb. But the potential was there. It just needed love.
     
    At the river there was a small wooden jetty. In April it was entangled in reeds. Standing on it that evening, with a smudge of light in the sky, I felt tired and alone. After a few minutes I pulled myself together and decided it was time to swim and declare this river officially open for business! I stripped naked, dropping my clothes in a heap, and jumped into the water. The temperature was a shock. When I surfaced I gasped and started swimming frantically, trying to warm up until suddenly I stopped because on the opposite bank the low branches of a tree were moving. It can’t have been the wind because the tops of the trees were motionless. It was something else – a person watching me, clasped around the branch. Alone and naked in the water, I was vulnerable. From this distance Chris couldn’t hear me even if I screamed. Then the branches on the riverbank began to move again, breaking from the tree, sliding towards me. I should have swum away, as fast as I could, but my body wouldn’t obey and I remained where I was, treading water as the branches drew closer. Except they weren’t branches! They were the antlers of a giant elk.
     
    Never in my childhood years in Sweden had an elk been this close to me. I was careful not to splash or make a noise as the elk passed so close I could’ve reached out and hooked my arms around its thick neck, lifted myself up and mounted its back, just like in those stories I’d read to you where a forest princess rides naked on the back of an elk, her long silver hair catching the moonlight. I must have exclaimed in wonder, because the elk swung around, turning its face towards me – black eyes staring into mine, its warm breath on my face. Around my thighs I could feel the water disturbed by its powerful legs. Then it snorted and swam to our side of the river, walking out onto our farmland beside the jetty and revealing its mighty proportions, truly a king of this land. It shook the water off its coat, steam rising from its skin, before slowly heading back towards the forests.
     
    I remained in the middle of the river for several minutes, treading water, no longer cold, blessed with absolute certainty that we’d made the right decision in moving here. There was a reason we were at this farm. We belonged here. I closed my eyes, imagining thousands of brightly coloured salmon swimming around me.
    • • •

M Y MUM REACHED INTO THE SATCHEL and pulled out a knife. Instinctively I recoiled, a reaction that concerned my mum:
    ‘I startled you?’
    It was an accusation. The manner in which she’d abruptly brandished the knife, without warning, made me wonder whether she was deliberately testing me in the same way as before, when she’d left me alone, and I made a mental note to be on my guard against any future attempts to provoke me. She flipped the knife around, offering me the handle:
    ‘Hold it.’
    The entire knife was carved from wood, including the blade, painted silver to resemble metal. It was quite blunt and harmless. On the handle there were intricate engravings. On one side there was a naked woman bathing by the rocks of a lake, with large breasts and long flowing hair, her vagina marked by a single notch. On the other side