“Happy Easter, darling!” said Mikael Månstrand, handing over a big gold-colored package to his wife, Celine Månstrand. “I know you’re going to love it, because I, the world’s only and greatest husband, am a master at finding the world’s best Easter presents!”
Mikael thumped his chest like a gorilla, just to show how mighty he was.
Celine opened the Easter package and, to her great joy, discovered that it contained sixteen copies of Anders Sparring’s children’s book series The Knyckertz Family.
“Ohhh, you’re so sweet, darling, thank you sooo much!” exclaimed Celine, kissing her husband three times on the mouth. “But how on earth did you know I wanted this for my Easter present?”
“You just know what you know,” replied Mikael, thinking about his wife’s bedroom where she kept at least a thousand copies of The Knyckertz Family. “I knew you’d be over the moon about my Easter present. You could say I’m the best in the whole family at finding perfect Easter gifts. Haven’t I told you about the time I gave my dad such a beautiful Easter present that he cried with joy? Did I ever tell you about…”
Daddy Mikael’s long monologue was cut short by the eager voice of his son, Elton.
“Open my Easter present, Mom!” said Elton Månstrand, chewing eagerly on his long hair. “You’re going to love it, Mom!”
“Of course, but please, Elton, stop chewing your hair,” replied Celine, reaching for Elton’s Easter present.
Celine opened his gift. Inside the package were ten yellow cloth berets. She hugged her youngest son and kissed him on the cheek.
“Thank you, thank you so much, sweetheart!” exclaimed Mom Celine, overjoyed. “Now I’ll look just like Fia Knyckertz every time I put one on, and that feels absolutely wonderful! Fia Knyckertz is my favorite character—I’ve always been able to identify with her!”
Mom Celine put on one of the cloth berets. Now she looked exactly like Fia Knyckertz from the Christmas calendar An Honest Christmas with the Knyckertz Family—a Fia Knyckertz with copper-red hair, a yellow beret, and cherry-red lipstick.
“All right then,” said Mikael, adjusting his red-and-white polka-dot bow tie. “Time to give my beloved sons their Easter presents. I promise you’re going to love them, because there’s no dad in all of Lundby who’s as good at giving Easter presents as I am! By the way, did I ever tell you about the time I gave my mom a Christmas present so wonderful that she said I was the best in the world at finding amazing gifts? It all started when I…”
“Darling, please spare us all your bragging monologues,” said Mom Celine.
“I’m not bragging, I never brag!” replied Dad Mikael. “All I’m doing is telling you that I’m the best in the world at finding fantastic gifts for people. There’s no man anywhere better than me, good old Mikael Månstrand, at finding fantastic presents!”
“Sure!” replied Celine with a smirk. “Probably no dad in the world is as humble as you, darling.”
“That’s right—there’s no dad in the world as humble as I am!” replied Mikael, thumping his chest again.
“Can I get my Easter present now?” said Herman Månstrand, who had grown tired of his father’s boasting and bragging.
“Of course, but have I told you about the time I…”
“Just give me my Easter present!” sighed Herman.
Dad Mikael reached for Herman’s gift, and at that very moment he spotted a big, plaid package lying behind Herman’s Easter present. Strangely enough, no one in the Månstrand family had noticed it before.
Herman reached for the big Easter package. It looked like it came straight from a circus—it even had the same kind of candy-stripe colors as a circus tent: red and white.
“Who’s that package from?” asked Celine, Herman, and Elton in unison.
“No idea,” answered Mikael. “But there’s an envelope on top, and maybe it says who it’s from.”
Mikael opened the envelope and began to read the red-and-white letter inside.
“Good morning, Månstrand family—or should I perhaps say, good morning Knyckertz family, considering how much Celine loves that children’s book series. Inside this package you will all find something very special—a card game. But not just any card game! This is a card game I once got from a man when I was watching the Great Wall of China being built for the very first time. The man told me that this very card game would change my life, and when I played it with my friends for the first time, I found out that what the Chinese man had said was completely true. I hope you will find just as much joy playing this game as I did when I played it. With kind regards, from a very, very good friend of yours!”
After Mikael had read the letter, he and the whole Månstrand family fell completely silent. After a long minute, Elton was the first to say something.
“COOOOOL!!!” exclaimed Elton. “Have we been visited by the real Santa Claus?!”
“Don’t be silly, Elton. Santa only comes at Christmas, and now it’s Easter,” said Herman. “It must have been the Easter Bunny who came to visit us.”
“The Easter Bunny doesn’t exist—and neither does Santa, for that matter,” said Dad Mikael. “But if it wasn’t the Easter Bunny or Santa, then who on earth could have given us this Easter present?”
“I don’t care who it is—let’s just open it!” said Celine, grabbing the package. “I hope the card game has a Knyckertz theme!”
“I hope it has a Jönssonligan theme!” said Mikael, who was just as obsessed with the Jönssonligan movies as Celine was with The Knyckertz Family.
Celine opened the Easter present—and found that the card game inside contained a huge deck of cards. But instead of hearts, spades, clubs, and other symbols, the colorful cards had pictures of beautiful fairies in different Easter settings. The rules worked exactly like Go Fish, except instead of saying “Go Fish” you had to say, loud and clear, “Found in the Easter Meadow!”
Mikael sighed in disappointment.
“Typical! I was really hoping for a Jönssonligan-themed card game!”
“And I was hoping for a Knyckertz card game,” sighed Mom Celine, equally disappointed.
“I think the game looks super cool!” said Elton. “What do you say—should we play it?!”
“Sounds like fun—I love Go Fish!” replied Herman, thinking about all the times he had played it at the youth center Chillzone.
Celine and Mikael looked at each other, then shrugged.
“Well, why not? But prepare to lose big time! I was once the best in all of Sweden at card games—have I told you about the time I studied at Chalmers and won a gold medal because I was so good at them? It all started on a cloudy day when I went to school and…”
“Please, spare us your bragging monologues!” said Celine, now annoyed. She’d had enough of her husband boasting about absolutely everything day in and day out.
“I agree with Mom—let’s just play!” said Herman.
“Should we play inside or outside?” wondered Elton.
“Inside, of course—have you seen the weather outside?” replied Herman, pointing out the window.
Outside, it was pouring rain. In fact, it was raining so much this Easter that all of Gothenburg looked like it might flood. Everyone living on Yggmoragatan 12, Hisingen, stayed indoors today, and since the Månstrand family lived there too, Herman thought they should also stay inside to avoid the downpour.
“Let’s play at the kitchen table,” suggested Elton.
The rest of the family thought that was a very good idea.
All four of them went into the kitchen and sat down at the table. But Mom Celine was walking a bit strangely on the way there—she walked with her legs crossed and had a funny look on her face.
“Can you wait to play for a moment? I need to visit a certain secret room,” she said, making a grimace.
“Why?” asked the others.
“Because I’m about to pee my pants! If I don’t get to the toilet in two seconds, the whole kitchen will be wet!” replied Celine quickly, then rushed down to the basement bathroom. After five minutes, they could all hear a new heavy downpour—but not an ordinary one. This was Mom Celine’s pee-downpour.
“Good heavens, I really had to go!” Herman could hear his mom saying loudly to herself. “I think I’m about to pee a new Pacific Ocean at this rate!”
After a quarter of an hour of the pee-downpour, Mom Celine came back upstairs, wearing the cloth beret she had gotten as her Easter present.
“Seriously, Mom, did you keep your beret on when you went to pee?” said Herman.
“Yes, I did! And I’m never taking it off because I love it just as much as I love The Knyckertz Family,” replied Celine, sitting down at the kitchen table. Finally, the game could begin.
Herman dealt seven cards to each family member.
“All right—prepare to lose, suckas!!!” said Dad Mikael, thumping his chest again. “You might as well give up right now, because I’m going to crush you all!”
“We’ll see about that, darling,” said Mom Celine with a mysterious grin. “We’ll see.”
“Herman, do you have any sevens?” asked Mikael.
“Found in the Easter Meadow, Dad,” replied Herman calmly.
Mikael drew a card showing a playful fairy dancing in the morning mist. The card had the number seven on it.
At that very moment, the whole Månstrand family saw that the downpour outside had suddenly stopped, and the sun began peeking out from behind the gray clouds.
“Feels nice to get a bit of sunshine,” said Herman. “I’m sick of all that rain.”
Now it was Herman’s turn to ask.
“Mom, do you have any eights?”
“Found in the Easter Meadow, darling,” replied Mom Celine.
Herman drew a card showing a group of fairies dancing on a school roof. The whole card looked like an illustration from one of Elsa Beskow’s children’s books.
Herman picked it up, and at that very moment, he and the rest of the family heard something heavy land on their roof.
“What on earth was that?!” exclaimed Herman in surprise.
“A bird, I suppose,” replied Mikael.
“There’s no bird in all of Sweden that can make that much noise when it lands,” said Herman. “It must have been something else.”
“Should I go outside and check?” asked Celine, getting up from her chair.
“Afraid to lose, are we?” teased Mikael. “Are you afraid to lose, sucka?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, darling. I’m not afraid to lose at all!” snorted Celine. “I just want to know what—or who—it was that landed on our roof. But I can wait to find out until after we’ve finished the game.”
Now it was Celine’s turn to ask.
“Elton, do you have any…”
She stopped mid-sentence.
“I have to go pee again! I’ll be back in exactly two minutes!” said Celine, rushing downstairs to the basement bathroom.
“Why is Mom so terribly pee-needy all the time? It’s like some mischievous fairy has put a curse on her to make her go every three minutes,” said Herman.
“She’s probably just afraid to lose—to me,” replied Mikael with an arrogant grin. “And you boys should be afraid too.”
“I think we should keep playing without Mom. We can’t wait for her to go to the bathroom every three seconds,” said Herman, and the others around the table agreed.
“Dad, do you have any… nines?” asked Herman.
“I do—here you go!” replied Mikael, handing over a card with the number nine to his son. “Elton, do you have any sevens?”
“Found in the Easter bank, Dad,” replied Elton, chewing on his hair again.
“You mean Easter meadow,” said Herman. “And stop chewing your hair—it’s gross!”
“It tastes so good—it tastes like licorice laces!” replied Elton, continuing to chew his long hair.
“Ewwwww! Stop it already!” said Herman, wrinkling his nose.
“I could stop—but I don’t want to,” said Elton teasingly.
“Let’s keep playing, boys—unless you’re planning to chicken out?” teased Dad Mikael.
“As if!” replied Herman and Elton in unison.
“Elton, did you have any sevens?”
“Found in the Easter Meadow, Dad,” replied Elton.
Dad Mikael drew a card from the deck—it showed an Easter witch fairy knocking on the door of a house inhabited by colorful rabbits.
Knock, knock, knock!
Someone was knocking on the Månstrand family’s front door!
“Darling, can you get that?!” called Celine from the bathroom. “I think I’ll be stuck here for a while—maybe even a couple of years!”
Dad Mikael went to open the door. Herman and Elton followed.
“Hey, don’t you think it’s a little strange?” said Herman thoughtfully.
“What’s strange—that I’m going to win and you’re all going to lose?” teased Mikael.
“Cut it out, Dad!” snapped Herman. “Don’t you think it’s odd that everything happening in the card game seems to happen to us in real life? First the sun, then the bang on the roof, and now this.”
Mikael and Elton had to agree—completely.
Mikael pressed down the door handle and opened the door. What he and the boys saw made all three of their jaws drop.
Outside stood a very beautiful fairy with long, curly, Lucia-blond hair and sparkling ice-blue eyes. She wore a white silk dress with a purple silk sash tied around her waist, and in one hand she held a glittering magic wand. She looked like a Lucia bride—but without the crown of candles, and with a purple sash instead of a red one. Beside the Lucia fairy stood two hares dressed in top hats and suits.
The hares bowed politely to the trio in the doorway.
None of them—Mikael, Herman, or Elton—knew what to say.
“Happy Easter!” said the fairy and the two hares in unison.
“Wh-who are you?” stammered Mikael.
“My name is Isobella, and I’m the Easter Fairy,” replied the fairy, giving a polite curtsy. “And these are my friends, Thomasia and Malvasia Hare. It is our duty to bring Easter joy to the families with children who live here in Sweden. So it is with great joy that we give you these gift baskets—here you go!”
Isobella and the two hares handed a gift basket each to Mikael, Herman, and Elton. They saw that each basket contained lots of Easter eggs and daffodils.
“Th-th-th-thank you,” stammered Mikael, Herman, and Elton.
“Happy Easter!” said Isobella, then waved her wand. From the wand came a golden stream of smoke, and when the smoke cleared, both the fairy and the two hares were gone.
“Magic—magic is real,” stammered Elton in shock.
“And it decided to knock on our very own door,” stammered Herman, just as amazed as Elton.
“I highly doubt Celine is going to believe us when we tell her what just happened,” said Mikael.
“Did someone say my name?” came a woman’s voice behind them.
All three turned around and saw Mom Celine standing right behind them—with two long, dark-brown toilet papers trailing out from her black, see-through tights.
Mikael, Herman, and Elton wrinkled their noses at the gross sight.
“Why are you all holding gift baskets?” asked Celine curiously. “Did you go buy them at ICA Kvantum while I was having my long pee concert?”
“Mom, Mom! A fairy came to visit us!” said Elton, chewing on his long hair again.
“And she had two hares with her!” added Herman.
“What are you talking about? I don’t understand,” said Celine in surprise. “A magical fairy came to visit you—and she had two hares with her?”
“Come with us into the kitchen, darling,” said Dad Mikael. “Come into the kitchen and we’ll explain what happened—but first maybe you should get rid of those… um… soiled toilet papers. It’s not exactly nice to walk around with dirty toilet paper hanging out in public.”
Celine jumped in surprise.
She turned as red as a drop of blood in her normally rosy face.
“Noooo, how embarrassing!!!” shouted Mom Celine when she noticed the soiled toilet papers sticking out from her tights. “I’ll go fix myself right away!”
Celine disappeared downstairs to the bathroom once again. Left in the hallway, Mikael, Herman, and Elton prepared to tell a very special story to their female family member.
“Dad, I think the card game had something to do with this—or what do you think?” said Herman, looking at Mikael.
Dad Mikael nodded.
He nodded very slowly.
“Without a doubt,” replied Mikael. “The card game is behind this whole spectacle—there’s no doubt about it.292Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZiqPAP5bzW
and then Add to home screen.