Read Online A Newfound Land by Anna Belfrage - Free Book Online Page B

London and Isaac away for the weekend with some of his friends. Even more abandoned after his late afternoon appointment with his doctor, but that was his own fault – he hadn’t told either of them about his resurfacing headaches.
    “It’s back,” his doctor had told him straight on. He liked that about her: she never prevaricated. He’d nodded, not at all surprised. Almost five years since last time, a long period of grace for a man diagnosed with brain cancer.
    “So what do we do?”
    “Three this time,” the doctor informed him. “At least one of them sits so deeply imbedded it will be impossible to operate. So we’ll start you on chemo next week.”
    Magnus hadn’t said anything then, but now in his garden he made up his mind. No chemo, no radiation, no months of constant nausea, of seeing his hair fall out...This time he was going to refuse all that – he had another plan. He bit into the bun, but it grew in his mouth, swelling into something that threatened to choke him, so he spat it out, drawing a shaking hand across his mouth. His little idea obviously scared the shit out of him, he thought sarcastically.
    A few minutes later, he was standing in the studio at the top of the house. Once a place full of Spanish music, cigarette smoke and his mysterious Spanish wife, nowadays this was the territory of his grandson, seemingly as talented as Mercedes. On a nail hung the cardigan Mercedes would wear when she was cold, a paint-spattered black wool that smelled of her, even now, seventeen years since she’d last used it.
    Magnus did what he always did when he entered the studio: he prowled through cupboards and the stacked canvases, ensuring there were none of Mercedes’ magical pictures lying about. More out of rote than necessity, because by now he’d gone through the room so often he knew there weren’t any postcard-size canvases heaving in greens and blues, horrible little maelstroms of paint that swallowed you and spat you out elsewhere.
    “ Vilken djävla underlig familj ,” he said, once he was done. What a strange family! Understatement really; his family was more than strange, it was bloody weird. His wife some sort of repetitive time traveller, born into a family of magically gifted painters in medieval Seville. His daughter yanked through a time funnel, and his grandson... Magnus grimaced, looking over to where he kept the special picture Isaac had painted for him last time he was ill.
    “A return ticket,” Isaac had said at the time, holding up two small canvases. “One to go and see her; one to come back to me.” Except that now there was only a single, seeing as John, Isaac’s dad, had since then destroyed one of them.
    It frightened the daylights out of Magnus to realise that Isaac had inherited Mercedes’ magical gifts. People shouldn’t be able to paint holes through time! Thankfully, it scared Isaac as well, the boy going pale around the gills whenever they discussed it – well, he would. Isaac had twice experienced what it was like to be sucked through one of Mercedes’ time portals, and had no wish whatsoever to repeat the experience.
    Magnus looked about the room. Everywhere were Isaac’s paintings, fantastic paintings, but all of them normal. Normal? Magnus swelled with pride. These were the works of a budding genius, canvas after canvas of non-figurative art. Whatever; the important thing was that there was no magic in them, no sensation of vertigo if one got too close, which was not the case with the miniature painting that Magnus now extracted from its hiding place. He peeked at it. The picture hummed, vibrating in his hands. Hastily, he stuffed it back out of sight. Not yet; he had things to do first.

    “But you can’t do something like that! It’s suicide!” Eva looked at him with an expression of absolute shock.
    “No, it isn’t, I’m going to hang on for as long as I can, but not with all of me disintegrating.” Magnus wasn’t quite sure how to tell her