The Girl Who Died

by Ragnar Jónasson

  Finally, there was Edda – or rather, Salka. Wouldn’t she have to tell Salka the truth about Edda’s death? Even if it meant destroying the solidarity of the village? For good or ill, Salka had to know. Maybe not immediately, but sooner or later.

  Neither Hjördís nor Thór said a word. Feeling it would be better to leave them in peace to let what they had done sink in, Una quietly slipped outside, without saying goodbye, into the darkness, and walked down the track, her shoulders bowed as though she were weighed down with all the world’s secrets.

  PART THREE

  FOUR WEEKS LATER

  I

  There hadn’t been any sight or sound of Thrá for a whole month now.

  Una had almost succeeded in convincing herself that she had imagined the whole thing and that the alcohol had been to blame. She couldn’t actually remember if she’d been drinking every time she had been aware of Thrá, but perhaps it was no coincidence that she’d been sober for four weeks now, ever since that fateful evening in the farmhouse kitchen with Hjördís and Thór.

  She had come to two momentous decisions. The first was to try to make a go of things with Thór. The second was to give up drinking, temporarily at least. Their relationship had got off to a promising start. It was still early days. They were taking their time and avoiding talking too much about the future and all the practical problems that would eventually rear their heads if she were to move in with or even marry a ‘dead man’ … But they would solve those when they came to them. He couldn’t stay in hiding for ever.

  Una was still living in the attic flat but hadn’t yet found the right moment to tell Salka the truth about Edda’s death. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. But she had every intention of doing so, sooner or later.

  Una hadn’t exposed Thór’s secret either. She had promised to keep quiet about it and had no intention of breaking her word. Nevertheless, she had the odd bad night when she was tormented by images of the innocent people languishing behind bars for his sake. But the village had got a hold on her: she was trusted now, and it was a good feeling. They had accepted her. And it wasn’t as if she bore the responsibility alone: they were all complicit in hiding the truth. Her teaching was going well too, but then a single pupil hardly presented much of a challenge. It was more like a private tutoring job. And Kolbrún seemed to be coming out of her shell and even thriving, now that she was the centre of attention, without Edda there to steal the limelight. There had even been talk of Una carrying on for another winter. It wasn’t such an unwelcome prospect.

  In spite of Thrá’s continued absence from her dreams, Una often found herself thinking about the little girl who had died in such a horrific manner that her spirit might never have been able to find peace. She was glad she had finally got to hear her story.

  Yet although Una had tried to convince herself that the haunting had all been in her mind, she couldn’t shake off the lullaby. The fact was that she hadn’t recognized Thrá’s song, and this troubled her. She could hardly have started composing songs in her sleep. There could only be one logical explanation: that she had heard the lullaby as a child and later forgotten it.

  That had to be the answer.

  II

  The verse was the key to the mystery.

  Una rang her mother for the first time in ages.

  ‘Una, darling, how are you?’

  ‘Oh, fine, Mum. How are you both?’

  ‘We’re both very well. But we miss you. We’ll come and see you as soon as spring arrives.’

  ‘Please do, Mum. I might pop down to Reykjavík too, when I get a chance.’

  ‘That would be lovely.’

  ‘Mum …’

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘There’s something I wanted to ask you. It’s about a little rhyme I heard, a lullaby. Can I sing it to you?’

  ‘Of course, darling,’ said her mother, though she sounded a little doubtful, as if she wasn’t sure why Una was asking this.

  The words of the lullaby were etched in Una’s memory. She couldn’t forget them, however much she wanted to.

  Lullaby, my little Thrá,

  may you sweetly sleep,

  dreaming of the sunny lands

  beyond the ocean deep.

  ‘Oh yes, I remember that,’ her mother said.

  Una gasped. She had never been so relieved in all her life. ‘Really, Mum? You remember it? Did I know it when I was small?’

  ‘Yes, I should think so. I often used to sing it to you. It was one of my favourites.’

  ‘It’s a pretty verse,’ Una said.

  ‘Very pretty. By Davíd Stefánsson, if I remember right.’

  III

  Later that evening the phone rang.

  Salka answered it, then called up to Una: ‘It’s your mother.’

  Una was a little taken aback, since she hadn’t expected to hear from her again so soon.

  ‘Hello, Una, you weren’t asleep, were you?’

  ‘No, Mum. I haven’t started going to bed early just because I’ve moved to the countryside,’ Una joked. She was in a good mood; it had made such a difference to have it confirmed that the haunting had all been in her imagination, as if a weight had been lifted off her chest.

  ‘Una, about that lullaby …’

  ‘Yes …’ Her heart began to thud ominously.

  ‘It was by Davíd Stefánsson, as I thought,’ her mother said. ‘I remember I always used to read his poems to you. But you didn’t get it quite right.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘No, I looked it up. The poem I used to read to you is different.’

  Her mother read, and as the words flew from one end of the country to the other over the crackly phone line, they struck an icy chill through Una’s flesh.

  Lullaby, lullaby baby,

  may you sweetly sleep,

  shutting those pretty blue eyes,

  with never a single peep …

  Una interrupted: ‘Mum, that’s a completely different verse.’

  ‘Yes, it is actually, but it sounded familiar. That’s why I got muddled.’

  ‘What about the other lullaby, Mum? Don’t you remember that? Don’t you remember it at all?’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. It was the poem by Davíd Stefánsson I was thinking of. Does it matter?’

  After a brief pause, Una answered: ‘No, Mum, it doesn’t matter. Thanks for checking for me.’

  ‘My pleasure, darling.’

  Una said goodbye and hung up. As she did so, she had a sudden, overwhelming sense of Thrá’s presence. The feeling was so strong that she was almost afraid. As if in a daze, she went into the sitting room. There was no sign of Salka; she must have gone to her room. Una walked over to the bookcase. She wanted to find the photo of Thrá. She had to find the picture.

  It didn’t take her long to locate the book and take it down from the shelf. She had never touched it herself, only seen the photo briefly when Salka had shown it to her. She sat down at the dining table with the old volume in front of her and opened it carefully. The picture was in its place. Thrá stared out at her, and Una felt the hairs rising on the back of her neck, as if the girl were standing right behind her. She didn’t dare look round.

  Then her eye happened to fall on the text of the page where the photo was kept. It was a poem, a familiar poem.

  Lullaby, my little Thrá,

  may you sweetly sleep,

  dreaming of the sunny lands

  beyond the ocean deep.

  A lullaby by Thorsteinn Th. Thorsteinsson.

  Above the title, someone had written in elegant pencil, the lettering a little faded:

  The favourite poem of my little girl Thrá.

  IV

  Somehow Una made her way into the hall and to the foot of the stairs, hardly knowing what she was doing, so great was her shock. Thrá’s favourite poem had come to her in a dream. It was a poem she hadn’t heard before, as far as she knew. She couldn’t see any natural or logical explanation for that …


  Darkness had fallen outside and the staircase lay in shadow.

  She mounted the first step and reached for the light switch as she did so. There was a deathly hush in the old house, not even broken by the usual moaning of the wind or creaking of the timbers.

  As Una pressed the light switch, they appeared at the top of the stairs: the figures of two little girls, Edda and Thrá, standing side by side.

  Both dressed in white, their faces blank, their eyes boring into her.

  Once again Una felt the chill spreading through her nerves and flesh.

  She stood frozen to the spot, her gaze fixed on theirs, until gradually it came home to her that she was no longer afraid.

  Neither figure spoke, they just went on staring at her in the weak glow of the low-watt light bulb, only now she knew exactly what their silence was meant to convey:

  Welcome to the village, Una.

  Read on for a sneak peek at Ragnar Jónasson’s next novel, Outside, coming soon in hardcover from Minotaur Books

  The snow,

  mother soft,

  enfolds me,

  for a moment

  I am saved.

  I hear

  a loud whisper

  —are you here?

  It’s so cold,

  hold me tight.

  Fill,

  fair snowdrift,

  so gentle,

  the emptiness

  inside me,

  but not quite yet …

  … let me live

  just a little while longer—

  It was mind-numbingly cold.

  Although Daníel was well wrapped up in layer upon layer of wool, with a thick down jacket over the top, it didn’t help: the cold still found its way inside, piercing him to the bone.

  He wondered if his travelling companions were suffering similar torments but didn’t dare ask, just kept his head down and ploughed on, buffeted by the wind and driving snow. He couldn’t see the surrounding landscape, couldn’t tell what kind of terrain they were crossing; his whole world was reduced to a swirling whiteness and the vague shapes of figures moving ahead.

  No one had said anything for a while now. They were all doing their best to keep going, trying to stick close together and follow Ármann’s lead. Since he knew the area better than any of them, all they could do was trust him when he said there was an old hut ‘not too far away’.

  The way he put it didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

  Although Daníel had grown up in Iceland, he’d been living in Britain for a number of years, first as a student at drama school, then trying to make a living from the stage.

  This reunion trip with his old friends had been on the cards for a while. Ármann had offered to organize it, then, at the last minute, suggested they swap their planned visit to a summer house for a ptarmigan hunt on the moors instead. He was from the east of Iceland and assured them that he’d been on countless hunting trips in the highlands there and that there could be few better ways of cementing their friendship. When the message arrived, Daníel had been extremely busy with rehearsals in London and simply hadn’t had time to raise any objections. He didn’t have a gun licence, but Ármann had offered to teach him to shoot. ‘There’ll be no one there to see us, so you’ll get a chance to bag a few birds, don’t worry.’

  Then everything had gone wrong.

  They didn’t even have all their luggage with them, only provisions for that day, though they had their shotguns, of course, since that was the whole point of the exercise. Daníel had suggested leaving the guns somewhere and coming back for them later, but this had not gone down well.

  He tried to soldier on, reminding himself that he must on no account lose his concentration. There was a tacit agreement among them to put their faith in Ármann and trust that he would get them to shelter.

  Sure, Daníel was freezing, but hopefully the worst of the chill would be banished once he was safely indoors, out of the elements. He tried not to dwell on the thought that they didn’t even have their sleeping bags with them, and that the wretched hut they were trying to find apparently didn’t have any form of heating. No electricity; no way of getting warm.

  As if the cold wasn’t bad enough, deep down the fear was growing that they were lost; that Ármann’s sense of direction wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. If this turned out to be true, Daníel wouldn’t just be worried, he’d be literally scared to death. There was no chance of their finding their way back. If the storm continued with the same violence, they would have no choice but to stop somewhere and wait it out.

  He couldn’t see a bloody thing.

  Of course, Daníel remembered storms from his youth, but nothing like this, and his years in Britain’s gentler climate had softened the memories, making him forget what the cold was really like. The blizzard they were experiencing now was more brutal than he would have believed possible. And that it could be pitch black in the midst of all this whirling white snow was incomprehensible.

  He was terrified he would lose sight of the person immediately in front of him. They were walking in more or less single file, with him bringing up the rear, and it was taking all his strength to keep up. He could tell that the others were more experienced at coping with conditions like these, or at least Ármann and Helena were. They had been eager for the hunt, not just eager but excited. Daníel had never shot a ptarmigan before and now it didn’t look as if the weather gods were going to give him the chance to do so; not today, anyway. He wasn’t even sure he’d ever tasted ptarmigan. When he was younger, perhaps.

  All of a sudden, he noticed that Helena, who was second to last in the line, had stopped just in front of him. Then Daníel saw through the thickly falling flakes that the whole group had come to a halt. Had something happened?

  Ármann called back to them, but Daníel couldn’t catch a word through his woollen hat and the thick hood of his down jacket.

  Helena turned to him and said something, but he still couldn’t make out a word. He loosened the knot on his hood and pushed it back from his face.

  ‘What did you say?’ he shouted.

  ‘Ármann says it’s here, just round the corner. At least, he’s pretty sure,’ she said. Pretty sure was not what Daníel wanted to hear right now and for the first time it came home to him that they could die of exposure out here. He could quite simply die, tonight, in this snowy waste. His thoughts flew to his girlfriend in London. For all she knew he was on a harmless adventure tour with his Icelandic friends. To be fair, she had warned him against it, asking whether it wouldn’t be more sensible to go on a trip like that in summer rather than in the depths of winter. She’d had a better instinct for the potential hazards in his native country than he had.

  No, he mustn’t think like that. He was with a good group of people and together they’d find a solution. He had to keep these negative thoughts at bay. They never did any good, as he knew from bitter experience.

  He had been staring into the void, into the falling snow, but now he glanced back at Helena. She smiled at him and seemed to be waiting for him to start moving again.

  ‘Ready?’ she called.

  He nodded and put his hood back up.

  The group set off again and Daníel waded through the drifts, thankful that he was wearing a good pair of boots.

  If anything happened, if anyone got ill, they would be completely helpless. No one in the group had any medical experience.

  They had each trodden their own path in life. Helena was an engineer and worked for some startup that was making waves—according to her, anyway. Gunnlaugur was a lawyer and Ármann a guide. Well, he didn’t actually want to call himself a guide any more, not since he’d set up his tour company. These days he was probably richer than all of them put together. There seemed to be no letup in the growth in tourism, and, if you believed Ármann’s tall stories, he was making money off every single visitor who came to Iceland.

  Daníel liked them all well enough, that wasn’t the issue. He was even fond
of them, in spite of their flaws. The problem was simply that whenever they met up it was generally to celebrate something—a birthday, a wedding—and on those occasions the booze always flowed freely. But he hadn’t been sure he’d be able to cope with spending a whole weekend with them, especially with no alcohol to smooth things over. He was certainly stone-cold sober now. Which was just as well, of course. But he remembered that Helena had stuck a bottle of whisky in her backpack, so at least they’d have something to warm themselves with and help calm their shattered nerves once they’d finally made it to the hut.

  If they made it …

  At that moment he saw a dim shape ahead.

  Had they arrived?

  His friends seemed to be slowing down and he felt briefly relieved.

  Yes, it looked as if they’d found some sort of hut, however inadequate, out here in the wilderness.

  Ármann had kept his word.

  Daníel felt a rush of relief, as though he’d been saved from certain death. He pushed back his hood again to try to hear what the others were saying.

  They each had a torch and the beams darted here and there, competing to light up the hut through the driving snow. It looked to Daníel as if it was painted red, but it was hard to be sure in these conditions. Anyway, it was at least shelter from the wind and weather, which was all that mattered now.

  Gunnlaugur was standing by the door and appeared to be trying to open it, but it was taking its time and Daníel could feel the cold biting harder with every second that passed.