The Twisted Tree

by Rachel Burge

  ‘No!’

  I snatch it from her and clutch it to my chest. The material speaks only of sorrow: every regret of Stig’s life distilled into a single bitter drop. Remorse writhes under my fingertips; strands of self-accusation twist and turn, tying themselves into a knot of grief. Stig’s guilt for calling his father that night. He should never have walked out on his mum. Shame, guilt, self-loathing. The cloth races through each misgiving of his life.

  It starts to show me Nina but I pull away, not wanting to see. And then it shows the two of us together and I can barely breathe. Stig regretted not kissing me.

  The cloth shows me an image of myself laughing and playing in the snow. I see myself as Stig saw me, and a rush of warmth spreads through my chest. My face is disfigured – it’s not like he didn’t notice – but Stig saw beauty in me too.

  I feel the yearning he felt – he wanted to kiss me, but he was afraid he wasn’t good enough for me. Worried that he was too damaged inside to make anyone happy.

  I glance up to see the draugr battling the dead, fighting its way towards me.

  The material tugs at my mind and a different thread of memory catches. I see myself shivering on the sofa. Stig is pulling off my boots. He wanted to tell me how he felt, but the time wasn’t right; I was too upset. And then I see him kissing me on the head. He wanted me so much, but he was overwhelmed by emotion. He had finally started to accept he wasn’t responsible for his dad’s death – but his blame and anger had been holding him together. Letting go of them made him feel vulnerable, and he needed space to process his feelings. How could I have been so selfish?

  The draugr is getting close. I need to run but the cloth won’t let me. Another memory demands to be seen: me standing at the front door, determined to leave the cabin. Stig gazes into my eyes. The strength of his emotion makes my heart beat fast. He felt so at home with me; he felt he could be himself and tell me anything. He was fascinated by my gift, by everything about me. He couldn’t bear the idea of losing me. When I kissed him, he pulled away because it felt as if I was kissing him goodbye.

  And now it’s too late.

  I wipe my eyes and see the draugr nearly upon me.

  Clenching my fists, I turn on the Norns. ‘You control fate. You can change this!’

  The old woman ignores me and walks towards the tree.

  ‘Please! There has to be something you can do!’

  The Norns step close together, ready to merge back into one. Dread creeps through me. The draugr is moments away. They’re going to leave me to die.

  I grab the charm around my neck, then take a deep breath and find the power inside me. My words are a savage, primal scream, ‘I am a daughter of Odin! I command you to help me!’ I stamp on a root and the ground trembles as branches shudder above. If it would bring Stig back, I would take an axe to the trunk. I would set it on fire and watch it burn.

  The youngest Norn regards me coolly, a trace of admiration in her gaze. ‘Only Hel, Queen of the Underworld, can give back a life.’

  ‘Then take me to Hel!’

  The beautiful Norn tilts her head. ‘Few have made the journey, and fewer still have returned. You understand what you are asking?’

  I nod, afraid but determined not to show it. The two other Norns step into her shadow and they become one.

  ‘Very well.’ She grabs my wrist and ice shoots into my veins. I stare at my arm as the coldness creeps into me. I try to pull away, but I can’t. I drop to my knees, and a tree root slithers over my calf and tightens around my thigh. I watch it like it’s happening to someone else. Twisting my body, I try to sit up, strain to pull free. The root drags me across the snowy ground and I wince as the back of my head bumps and grazes over gnarled roots.

  And then I’m lying among rotting leaves in the dank, stinking chamber of the tree. I’ve been here before, in another dream. I need to wake up. I need to wake …

  Dirt patters onto my face and into my mouth. Earth covers my eyes. I spit out soil and scream, but it’s too late. I’m being swallowed into the black hole of my nightmares.

  22

  My hands grasp empty air as I fall into darkness. Roots prod at my stomach, yank at my hair. They scratch at my face and tear at my clothes. Forcing me down, swallowing me whole. Above me, gnarled arms twist and turn, until the world becomes a tiny circle of light.

  Thud.

  I land heavily and pain shoots through my hands and knees. Panting hard, I reach out to feel a wall of compressed soil. I grope in front of me, to the sides, behind, then look upwards. The walls are smooth: no roots to haul myself up, no foothold to climb.

  I stand and search for some weakness in the earth: a door, a tunnel, something. There’s barely enough room to lie down; I can’t stay in here! There has to be a way out, has to be. But there isn’t. With dirt-thick fingers I smear away a tear. I thought I would give anything for Stig to live, but I can’t stay trapped in this dark hole.

  Long minutes pass. I stamp my feet to try and stay warm. Someone will come soon, something will happen. My breath hangs on the air as the cold gnaws at my thoughts. Maybe I’ve been left here to die.

  I scream so hard my throat hurts.

  The light dims and I look up and see the silhouette of a head and shoulders. At last! Someone must have heard me. Maybe it’s Mum. I wave my arms. ‘Hey, I’m down here! Please hel—’

  Clawed fingers curl over the edge of the hole and a fresh wave of panic hits me.

  Scrabbling sounds. Soil rains down, covering my hair and face.

  The draugr – it’s trying to get in!

  I stumble back and fall to the ground. The creature grunts and bellows, and I bury my face in my hands, my stomach roiling at its smell. More soil patters down on me, on and on, until my hair is thick with dirt.

  An enraged howl, and then everything stops. The only sound is the thud of my heart.

  I blink and shield my eyes against a shaft of brilliant sunlight. Perhaps the light made it go away? Weak with relief, I drop onto my side and curl into a ball. The sun’s warmth is only faint, but it’s wonderful to feel it on my skin. I rock myself gently for the longest time. I yearn to sleep, to escape, but I keep my eyes open, afraid to close them in case I never wake.

  I don’t know how long I lie there, staring at the earth. Overcome with tiredness, my eyes eventually close. The sound of my own ragged breathing fills my ears, and then my breath slows and I am slipping away, spinning into darkness, speeding through a tunnel, twisting and …

  I jolt awake.

  Someone is stroking my hair, just like Mum did when I woke up in hospital. A cold, bony finger traces the scar on my cheek. It doesn’t feel … I swallow hard, afraid to even think the words.

  Something shifts beside me, a cold looming presence.

  Every muscle in my body freezes. I don’t dare breathe.

  A strange low voice. ‘You do not belong here.’

  Whatever is whispering, it isn’t human.

  A hand tugs my shoulder.

  I turn and see a huge figure and gasp in fright. Twice the size of a normal human being, it sits hunched over me, wearing a tattered robe, its face shadowed by a hood. It looks just like the drawing in the journal: the dark mother, Hel. She stands up, impossibly tall in the tiny space, and a flutter of wings fills the air. I cough and blink against the dust as a cloud of moths flies out from her cloak and spirals up through the tunnel. Hel throws back her hood. The right side of her face is beautiful, with flawless white skin and long black hair. The left side is a bald skull. I recoil and twist my head away.

  Hel squats, so that my face is level with her waist. Coldness emanates from her, and I shiver as she leans close. As she peers at me, I see her hair is crawling with bugs.

  She lifts my chin with a skeletal finger and I look at the living part of her face. Her eye holds an ocean of emotion, as if every drop of human sorrow has washed upon her shores. Afraid to look into the empty socket of her other eye, I stare at the ground.

 
Hel rests a heavy, living hand on my shoulder. ‘You are weary, I know, but it is not your time. Why are you here?’

  Sadness wells inside me as I search for words big enough to hold my pain, words I can pour my sorrow into: the ache of losing Mormor, my anger that Stig is dead. But no words come, only a memory: Stig and I staring at each other before I marched stubbornly off into the snow. There were so many things we wanted to say, but our feelings were new and fragile – a fledgling thing. Like a bird pushed from the nest before it had a chance to fly, my hopes lie bloodied and battered. How can I tell Hel that I want what was never mine? I want back what I almost had. I want the chance to be loved. I want …

  Hel wipes a tear from my cheek, and my words rush out. ‘Stig thought I was beautiful, he really cared. I’ve only just met him. Please, I can’t lose him!’ I glance at the living side of her face, hoping to find some tenderness that suggests she’ll let him live, but the horror of her skeletal teeth and jaw is too strong and I look away.

  ‘Please can I see him?’

  ‘Stig is not here.’

  Dismay tugs at the deepest part of me. ‘Then where is he?’

  ‘His spirit still resides in his body. I have not called him to me yet.’

  ‘Does that mean –’

  Her voice is hard-edged. ‘It means what I said.’

  I study my boots, not daring to meet her gaze. ‘And Mormor?’

  Hel stands and stares down at me. ‘She should be here, but she is trapped in the world of the living, tormented by her regrets, along with all the other restless dead.’

  Guilt wraps around my heart. Mormor is out there. She needs me. I should be helping her. Somehow I have to make all of this right.

  ‘Please, will you hel—’

  Hel strides away, the space around her expanding with each step she takes. At first there is only a subtle change in light, as if my sight is adjusting to the dark, and then the image changes and she’s seated on a throne and I am standing before her.

  ‘Look at me,’ she commands.

  I swallow hard and try to focus just on the beautiful part of her face, but the deathly side is too awful and I turn away.

  ‘Look at me,’ she repeats.

  This time I let my gaze rest on all of her. I look into her living eye, and see my own face reflected there. Like her, I am made up of two sides, half of me damaged and scarred. I stare into her empty eye socket and see myself reflected there too. Self-pity, insecurity, self-loathing, they bubble up inside me like tar. All the things I don’t want to feel. The person I don’t want to be. A sob catches in my throat as I see myself laid bare.

  A caw of a raven breaks the spell. It flies over my head, then lands on top of Hel’s throne and puffs out its grey-feathered chest. Another raven, smaller than the first, flaps down to stand on the opposite side.

  ‘Muninn here is fond of stories, aren’t you now?’ Hel raises her right arm and the smaller of the two birds hops onto her hand. ‘Would you care to tell Marta here how I came to be Queen of the Underworld?’

  The raven dips its body and, to my amazement, a rich, sonorous voice replies, ‘No, mistress, for it is your story to tell.’

  He flutters back to his perch, and Hel turns to me. ‘No one can tell the story of you, but you. Some people are gifted with a gilded tongue. They will tell you who you are with such conviction that you may actually believe them, but this is a reflection, not the truth, for the story of you is not yet written.’

  She leans back. ‘You will find these voices in your head also. You will tell yourself how you are a poor victim. Pay no heed and instead look to your soul, for that is where you originate. You write the story of you every day with your thoughts, words and deeds. You create yourself. You get to decide your story. No one else. You.’

  A tiny flame of understanding catches inside me.

  The edges of the room turn dark, and suddenly Hel is standing before a roaring hearth. The human side of her face is beautiful in the firelight but the deathly side is full of shadows; they flicker in her hollow eye socket and curl around her empty jaw. She stares into the flames as she speaks: ‘The gods found me so loathsome to look upon, they cast me down here.’

  ‘But I thought … So who made you queen?’

  My eyes jolt open and I’m back in the hole, my knees to my chest. Alone. I was dreaming or having some kind of vision … Something crawls over my leg and I flick away a beetle. The ground is writhing with insects. Panting hard, I grip my valknut charm to stop my panic. I have to get back there.

  Drumming pounds in my ears. I listen to the steady beat, close my eyes and let myself be taken.

  This time I see Hel wearing a glorious gown of shining dark feathers, a gleaming black crown on her head. At last I understand: Hel wrote her own story.

  ‘No one made you queen. You made yourself queen.’

  She smiles and pulls an axe from the folds of her cloak. ‘To kill the draugr, you must sever its head from its body with a single, clean blow.’

  I crane my neck upward, my legs weak beneath me. How am I meant to kill that thing? Everyone who’s taken a stand against it has died – it killed Yrsa and Olav, and they had a gun. I only escaped before because my ancestors protected me.

  Hel holds the axe out to me, and a deep sound – ‘Nau-dizzz’ – reverberates in my head as a rune symbol draws itself onto the blade: a vertical line, crossed by a diagonal one. Hel runs the edge of the weapon across her fleshy palm, and I wince at the ooze of red. She makes a fist above the blade, and blood drips onto the markings. The symbol absorbs the blood and glows white, pulsating with energy. I want to ask what the rune means, but I push the question away, afraid to ask in case I wake to find myself back in the hole.

  Hel notices me staring at the axe and smiles knowingly. ‘Day and night, life and death, joy and pain … there cannot be one without the other. Where there is thread, there is a blade. The knife cuts the umbilical cord; without it there is no life. At the end, the Norn’s shears cut the silver cord.’

  She removes a rope from her waist. ‘With this you can save your grandmother and the rest of the dead.’ She wraps the rope around my middle and raw elemental energy surges through me, making my body tremble. I gasp as the cord tightens itself around my waist and slithers into my coat pocket. ‘Place one end in the hole of the tree and hold the other until the dead have returned.’

  Hel bends close so that her face is centimetres from mine. A spider crawls out from her empty eye socket, then scuttles across her cheek and disappears into her jaw. She lifts the charm from my neck and whispers, ‘Payment.’

  I bite my lip and resist the urge to grab it back. I need it. It helps me find the ancient force inside me. But if I give it willingly, perhaps she will look kindly on me.

  ‘And Stig?’ I ask hopefully.

  Hel spins around, her feathered cloak a tornado of destruction, and I glimpse the terrible power inside her: the power to strip flesh from bone and turn the living to dust.

  She strides into the darkness. ‘Return the dead and kill the draugr. A single, clean blow.’

  23

  I wake inside the chamber of the tree, under a blanket of moss and leaves. A grey-chested raven pecks and pulls at my wrist, and I blink in wonder as a root unwinds from my arm and slides across the ground, back into the hole behind me. The bird releases my other arm and flaps away with a caw. I sit up and groan. Everything hurts: my arms, my legs, my head.

  Images flutter up from the back of my mind. A tattered cloak, an axe dripping with blood, a hollow eye socket … memories of a dream I can’t stitch together.

  Something jumps in my pocket and I feel a jolt of energy. The cord – I’m meant to use it to return Mormor and the rest of the dead. And then I have to … I rub my temples and try to remember. The axe … If I stop the creature, then maybe …

  Stig.

  My breath catches just to think his name. Hel said she hasn’t called him to her yet. If I return the dead and kill the draugr, perhap
s she will let him live. I push myself to my feet and step outside. As long as there is a shred of hope, I have to try.

  The blizzard has stopped and snow sparkles in the sunshine. I wince against the glare, then hold my arm before me and search in every direction. I used to love the way snow makes everything new, but now the sweep of white seems sinister, as if deliberately hiding what went before.

  My teeth won’t stop chattering. I need to get indoors, and quickly. The cabin looks small and lonely on the other side of the garden; covered in snow, the plants on the roof take on strange shapes like weird topiary animals. I trudge towards it, straining for the slightest sound. I tell myself the creature won’t come back, not when the sun is shining. It only appeared before when the light was low: twilight, fog, a blizzard. But that doesn’t stop my body from tensing with dread.

  As I walk, I scan the ground for Stig. I desperately want to see his face, but I couldn’t bear it if … I push the thought of Yrsa and Olav away and force myself to move faster.

  The cabin door is open. I pause, my heart pounding. Maybe Stig managed to crawl back. He might be inside, waiting for me.

  I hurry up the path, then stop.

  The door is wedged open with snow. Stig must have left it unlatched when he chased after me. The crust of ice is untouched: no footprints, no blood.

  The axe is propped against the porch, where Stig left it. I grab it and march up the steps. Inside, the room is cold and grey. I kick out the worst of the snow, then close and bolt the door. Everything is just as before: the kitchen chair lying on the floor, the journals scattered on the rug. My gaze falls on Gandalf’s empty bed and something inside me breaks.

  He was so brave, he gave his life to save me. I wish he was here so I could hold him; so I could tell him he’s a good boy. I wish he was here to lick my face.

  The axe drops from my hand and my body heaves with sobs. All of me is shaking. I can’t … can’t stop. I wipe away my tears and tell myself to breathe. I have to survive to free Mormor and save Stig. I need to think straight. I need to get warm.