The Twisted Tree

by Rachel Burge

  Suddenly, blackened fingers appear.

  I clamp my hand to my mouth and fight a scream.

  Click. Click. Click.

  Curved black claws tap the wood as fingers scrabble at the floor. Scraps of flesh hang from them, the bone white in the moonlight. Stig grabs me tight, as if he sees it too.

  The bubble of light around us shimmers and expands. I can no longer see the women, just a swirling vortex of light. The air turns into a transparent metallic liquid that reaches out, filling the room.

  The creature’s fingers touch it and hold still. Slowly the claws retreat, scraping the floor with a sickening screech.

  Please don’t come back. Please don’t come back. Please don’t come back.

  I stare at the door, too afraid to move.

  My pulse races as I count the seconds. There is no noise. Just the cry of the wind.

  ‘Has it gone?’ whispers Stig.

  Karina reappears and takes her finger from her lips, then nods.

  A shudder runs through me. ‘Yes, it’s gone.’

  A moment later the bubble retracts. The shadows become denser and the women reappear. More faces emerge, all with glowing black eyes. Most are old and wrinkled, but some are about my age. Each one smiles, as if they’ve been waiting to say hello. The apparitions begin to flicker and fade, like they no longer have the strength to form. I search the crowd, desperately hoping to see Mormor, but she isn’t among them. If there was any way she could come back to see me, I know she would.

  Karina must be telling the truth: Mormor is trapped at the tree. The thought of going outside makes me feel sick, but I can’t leave her out there alone, knowing she needs me. I have to help her.

  18

  Stig strikes a match, then returns the box to his pocket. The flickering light makes him look older, gaunt almost.

  ‘Is it safe to light a candle?’ he whispers.

  Gandalf jumps down from the sofa. A moment later, I hear him lapping at his water bowl. He seems at ease, so perhaps the creature is no longer close.

  ‘I think so. Wait, I’ll get one.’

  I crawl across the floor and reach for a tall pillar candle.

  ‘Quick.’ Stig grimaces as the flame touches his fingers.

  I hand him the candle and climb back on the sofa. He lights the wick and places it on the floor. Shadows swarm about the room: faces of men, women and children appear and disappear. A little boy wearing striped pyjamas tiptoes a few steps and then vanishes. Seeing them makes me uneasy, but it’s not like they want to do us any harm. They don’t seem aware of us – or even of each other for that matter.

  I wish I could see Mormor. I can’t bear to think of her suffering.

  Yesterday, when the water went cold and the bathroom lights flickered, I think it was Karina, trying to appear to me. She wouldn’t tell me to go out there unless Mormor needed me, and not unless it was safe.

  I take a deep breath, my decision made. ‘I’m going to the tree.’

  Stig’s head snaps up. ‘What?’

  ‘Karina said Mormor is trapped there, tormented by her regret. I’m the only one who can save her.’ I stand up and reach for my boots. ‘I have to speak to the Norns. They will tell me what to do.’

  ‘No way! After what just happened?’ Stig snatches my arm and tugs me back down. ‘You’re staying here with me!’

  I glare at him. ‘I can’t leave Mormor out there! The creature has gone now. I can take the torch, and Karina protected me once, she can –’

  ‘No!’

  I thump the sofa. ‘You would go, if it were your dad!’

  Stig’s eyes flash with anger. ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘But it’s the truth! If you thought you could save him, you would try!’

  ‘How do you know for sure Karina can protect you? Maybe she can only keep you safe if you stay in the cabin. Maybe the draugr is stronger than she realises. Look what it did to Olav and Yrsa!’

  He mutters something in Norwegian and I hang my head and sigh. He’s right, I don’t know – and there’s no safe way to find out.

  Stig gazes at the candle on the floor. Eventually he speaks without looking up. ‘I really thought we were going to die.’

  ‘I know. So did I. But we didn’t.’

  ‘At least wait until the morning. Please.’

  I take my phone from my pocket: 6.15 a.m. Another four hours. ‘OK,’ I sigh. ‘I’ll go when it gets light.’

  Stig challenges me with a stare. ‘Wait until your mother arrives. Maybe she can help. You said she was meant to water the tree too.’

  I look away, promising nothing. I can’t see Mum helping me with this. The old Mum maybe, but since my accident she’s been so overprotective, watching me all the time and worrying. No, if anything, she’ll fall to pieces and try to stop me doing it.

  Silence hangs heavy over the room.

  I touch Stig’s arm. His jumper is filled with such fear and sadness; I know he wants to cry. ‘I’m sorry for what I said about your dad.’

  Stig sniffs and says begrudgingly, ‘No, you’re right. If it was Dad, I would want to help him.’ He lifts the candle from the floor and hovers his fingers over the flame, dangerously close. He whispers like a child at a confessional: innocent and sinner, both at the same time. ‘I would give anything to see him again.’

  He glances at me, his eyes as hard as polished gems, and gives a bitter laugh.

  ‘“Life goes on, Stig.”’ That’s what Mum said. The day of the funeral she told me she was going to make a fresh start with Erik. I could stay with them, but not if I carried on like I was, drinking at night and sleeping all day.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  He passes his palm over the candle. ‘I did what everyone wanted. I went back to school. I helped Nina train and forced myself to smile.’ I pull his arm away from the flame and his jumper offers a fleeting memory of Nina. She was completely devoted to Stig, there was never anyone else for her – but for some reason he doesn’t like to admit that.

  He tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. ‘I remember walking home from school one night and looking in at the houses. I stopped at a window and saw a little boy doing a jigsaw puzzle with his father. The house had this orange glow; it was like looking at a Christmas card. I stood there, watching them. They seemed so happy, while I … I …’

  I finish the sentence for him. ‘Felt like a house with the windows blown out?’

  Stig nods and picks wax from the candle.

  ‘Every night I drank to forget. Every day I woke up wishing I were dead. When I looked in the mirror, it was like looking at a stranger’s face, like I was putting eyeliner on another person. But as long as I acted OK, people were happy.’

  A shadowy girl about my age with short dark hair stands by the door. She wears a simple shift dress and has bare feet. She doesn’t seem like the others, just passing through. She glares at me accusingly, and I shift in my seat, feeling uncomfortable.

  Stig sniffs and I turn my attention back to him. ‘I know how it feels to see a stranger in the mirror. After the accident everyone wanted me to be the Martha I was before, but I couldn’t.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. I just hid in my room.’

  Stig sighs. ‘I wish I was like you.’

  A huff of disbelief escapes me. ‘Why?’

  His breath is so soft the candle barely flickers. ‘Because at least you were honest. I’m always lying and pretending to be something I’m not. I’ve been doing it so long I can’t stop. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to be myself, and I hate it.’

  I sit back in my seat, surprised by the anger in his voice.

  We say nothing for a while, and for some reason my thoughts turn to the day they removed my bandages in hospital. I cried with joy when I saw Mum’s face, but she wasn’t smiling. A nurse put a mirror in my hand and I saw why. The left side of my head was bruised and swollen, the flesh a nasty shade of blue and yellow, like some kind of mouldy, squashed fruit.
My left eye was cloudy white and stared upward in a weird direction, as if transfixed by something only it could see. A gash on my left cheek held together with black stitches completed my new look.

  Mum cried whenever she could bring herself to look at me. No matter how often she asked me how I was feeling, I knew I mustn’t make things any harder for her. I couldn’t hide my face, but I could at least hide my feelings. I could at least pretend to be OK.

  I glance at Stig. ‘I don’t know about that. We all lie sometimes, especially if it’s to protect the people we care about. Anyway, you’re not pretending with me now, are you?’

  Stig smiles and the crease in his bottom lip deepens. ‘No, I feel different when I’m with you.’

  My heart pirouettes and does a tiny somersault. ‘Different how?’

  ‘Well, yesterday when I woke up I didn’t want to die. I wanted to make you pancakes.’

  I laugh softly. ‘They were pretty good pancakes.’

  Stig grins. ‘I’m glad I was here to make them for you.’

  He licks his lips and I realise I’ve been gazing at his mouth. Our heads are so close they’re almost touching.

  ‘Martha, do you think some things are meant to be?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He looks at me intently. ‘It has to mean something, us finding each other, doesn’t it?’

  I try to think of something to say, but I can’t. A movement at the corner of my eye makes me glance at the door. The shadows there are empty, but I can sense the girl still in the room. I can feel her drawing closer, listening.

  Stig picks wax from his fingers. ‘I don’t know if I believe in God, but I have thought a lot about fate. If I hadn’t phoned Dad that night, he would still be alive. Or do you think it was his time?’

  I sigh, wishing I had the answers. Although I can’t know for sure, instinct tells me that the pattern of our lives is laid down before we are even born. I think back to something Mormor told me once. We were in the shed, setting up her old loom. She pointed to the vertical lines of yarn fixed to the wooden frame. ‘There are circumstances in our life that cannot be changed: when and where we are born, who our parents are.’ She tugged hard at the yarn. ‘This is the warp. It’s fixed, see?’ I nodded, and she placed my hand on the lines running across the frame from side to side. ‘This is the weft – the yarn that goes over and under the warp. This part we can change.’ I looked at her, confused, and she hugged me close. ‘A person who has a poor start in life can still weave a good tapestry, if they make the right choices.’ She whispered, ‘Strengthen what’s there, my child, and no one will notice the holes.’

  I hadn’t thought about it properly before, but now I realise she was talking about fate. Half of who we are is given to us and can’t be changed, but the rest depends on our actions. Something tells me Stig had nothing to do with his dad’s death – he died because of the choices he made.

  ‘It was just his time,’ I say, even though I don’t really believe that. It wasn’t fate that made his dad crash his car, but if the idea offers Stig some comfort …

  He glances at me hopefully. There is pain and longing in his eyes, as if he desperately wants to believe me. He drops his gaze and picks at the candle, and I rest my hand on his arm. Something deep inside the material assures me I am right. It’s not the usual fleeting image or feeling I get; it’s like a truth dyed into the fibres of the wool that’s always been there but I’ve never noticed before.

  I open my mouth and a cage of conviction closes around my heart, the truth inescapable inside. The Norns may have cut the cord, but his dad died because he’d been drinking. It was nothing to do with Stig. ‘I know you feel guilty, but it wasn’t your fault.’

  Stig bites his lip and looks away.

  I squeeze his arm and then tug at his jumper. ‘I can feel it, here.’

  Stig lets out a shaky breath as if he finally believes me. ‘I’m glad I met you,’ he whispers. He shifts forward on the sofa and lowers his face towards me, and I can smell the alcohol on his breath. My pulse quickens as I close my eyes, waiting for his lips to touch mine. Instead he kisses the top of my head.

  He rests back on the sofa, seemingly exhausted, while I sit in a daze, waiting for a moment that doesn’t come. I was sure he was going to kiss me. You kiss a child on the head; is that how he sees me? I don’t understand. We seem to connect in every way. My thoughts become hard-edged. It’s because of my face. It has to be.

  ‘I’m going to the bathroom,’ I mutter.

  I stand and light an oil lamp, then carry it to the bathroom and place it on the sink. After I use the toilet, I wash my hands and splash freezing water on my face. The flickering light of the lamp makes me look different, harsher somehow – but not different enough.

  I cover the left side of my face with my hand. The mirror shows a girl with high cheekbones and a small nose covered with freckles. Her eye is green-blue like the sea, her eyebrow and eyelashes so pale they’re almost white. Her lips are small but perfectly formed. I raise the corners of my mouth and a pretty girl smiles back.

  And then I take my hand away.

  The pretty girl is replaced by a monster. Its eyeball is permanently rotated in the socket, so that it stares upward to the left, making it seem deranged. The lid droops slightly and the whole eye is milky white, clouding the black of the pupil. A jagged scar runs from above the eyebrow to an inch below the eye, like someone attacked it with a knife.

  Resentment curls my fingers into a fist.

  Dad arranged for a private surgeon to see me at the hospital in Oslo. He was meant to replace my eye with a false one. I would still be blind on that side, but at least the eye could be fixed to look straight ahead. The surgeon took scans of my brain, but the news wasn’t good. ‘No one will operate, at least not yet, I’m afraid. The risk of further damage is too great.’ My hopes splintered under the weight of his words.

  I lean in towards the mirror and stare at my good eye. Stupid, stupid, stupid. When will you learn? Don’t hope and no one can hurt you: not the doctors, not Stig. Not anyone.

  When I go back to the lounge, Stig is snoring softly. I gaze at him while he sleeps, my heart full of longing. I know it’s silly, but I don’t want to die without kissing him. If the draugr comes back, I want to feel that I have lived. That I’ve had a perfect moment with someone I really care about. Someone who cares about me.

  The shadowy dead flit about the room and I catch a glimpse of the girl. Her eyes are as hard as flint. She seems familiar, as if I’ve seen her face somewhere. The journals maybe …

  I sit on the sofa and brush my hand over Stig’s jumper, but it only speaks of his dad. I thump a cushion, then rest my head on it. As soon as I close my eyes, sleep wraps its arms around me – pulling me head first into a nightmare.

  19

  A figure stands by the well: a woman in a cloak, her shoulders hunched with age and her face shaded by a hood. A flurry of snow drifts down but not a single flake settles on her. There is something eerie about the stillness, as if she’s always been here in the gloom, waiting.

  Her voice is harsh and cracked. ‘Come.’

  Something tugs at me, deep inside, and I stare at my boots as my feet move of their own accord. I shuffle through the snow, my legs trembling, then stop before her.

  ‘Closer,’ she rasps.

  I take another step forward. I’m close enough to touch her cloak if I dared. I raise my eyes and see the wizened face of an old lady. Her skin is wrinkled and her cheeks are sunken red.

  She dips her gnarled hand in the well. ‘Look deeply.’

  I peer into inky blackness. Pinpoints of light flicker in the water as a constellation of stars explodes under her fingertips. Shapes swirl up from the depths. The ripples subside and a face looms under the water: the doctor from the hospital. The image changes and I see myself bumping into a woman at the airport. The water darkens, and a face as white and smooth as a pebble floats to the surface: Brian from the plane. Questions bubble in my min
d, so many I don’t know which to ask first.

  The old woman glances over her shoulder, and when she turns back to me, two other women step out from her shadow. I stumble away and nearly fall to the ground. The first wears her hood down, revealing a beautiful heart-shaped face and long black hair. She has the same high cheekbones and pointed chin as the old lady, and the same fierce dark eyes. The second seems younger, a girl around my age, her face partly obscured by her hood. They look like the three women carved into the chest: the Norns.

  I clutch my head. How long have the Norns been watching me? I would never have lost my footing and fallen from the tree if I hadn’t seen that face in the bark. Confusion hardens to anger. ‘You made me fall, didn’t you?’

  They fix me with a sharp gaze. ‘This is the destiny you chose before birth, but there is always another path.’

  My fists clench. I point at my blind eye. ‘I didn’t choose this!’

  The girl grips my wrist and her fingers burn like ice. ‘Because your mother did not water the tree, the dead escaped. It is now your destiny to return them. To do that, you must be able to see them – and such power calls for sacrifice.’

  I glare at her and she yanks me towards the well. ‘Odin gouged out his eye for one sip of wisdom. He hanged himself until nearly dead in order to discover the runes!’ She dips a hand in the water and I see my reflection – only it’s not me. Both my eyes and mouth are sewn shut. ‘This is what will happen if you don’t see clearly.’

  I cry out and pull free from her grasp.

  The beautiful Norn touches my shoulder. ‘You have much to learn. Come.’

  I stand outside the circle as the Norns take each other’s hands and begin to chant. The sound is like nothing I’ve heard before. At first a sighed whisper, wind stirring the treetops, and then growing and becoming louder, like the thrum of rain on a roof. The chant ebbs and flows, the voices merging to weave a pattern of sound.