by Matt Haig
Samuel kept shaking his arm, and threatened to hit Ibsen with the book. Then he turned to see Aunt Eda running up the hill toward him.
“NO!” screamed Samuel, the word rising with his foggy breath into the cold Norwegian air.
At that moment—the moment just before his aunt’s hand would have been able to reach him—Samuel’s jumper ripped, leaving Ibsen with a ragged patch in his mouth.
Realizing he was free of the dog’s grip, Samuel darted straight into the forest. As he ran into the darkness, he ignored Ibsen’s barked warning and the screams of his aunt. A scream so agonizing it sounded like a woman giving birth.
Or mourning the dead.
Part II
The Feather Pit
Martha walked in as straight a line as she could manage, which wasn’t very straight at all given the number of pine trees in her way.
She didn’t know where she was going.
There was no plan involved with her walking other than to head as deep into the darkness of the forest as possible. So she just kept on walking, through the green plants that brushed against her knees, toward a thin dirt path lined on both sides by little shrubs filled with berries.
And then she heard something.
A kind of squawking.
It was a horrible noise, and it was getting closer.
Squawk! Squawk! Squawk!
That was when she saw them.
Three giant birds, taller than her, running fast on thin legs. The birds had gray feathers and tall, swanlike necks. Their heads were darker gray than the rest of their bodies, with a white stripe on their foreheads and with very long (and very loud) squawking beaks.
As they kept running straight toward her she saw the front bird’s fat body and tiny, flightless wings. She kept looking for the other birds’ bodies but couldn’t see them.
And then she realized.
It wasn’t three birds at all.
It was one bird with three heads on three separate necks. A “caloosh” was one of the many creatures described in Professor Horatio Tanglewood’s book The Creatures of Shadow Forest, but Martha didn’t even know anything about this book, as neither her brother nor Aunt Eda had told her about it. (Calooshes, by the way, are as scared of leaving Shadow Forest as humans are of entering it, and never head out into the open, which is why you’ve probably never bumped into one.)
Martha stared at the caloosh running toward her. Then the bird suddenly stopped. All of its three beaks squawked at the same time as the ground opened up and the bird fell down a hole. Then the ground closed back up again, and looked exactly as it had before. Martha looked around, wondering if there were any other hidden holes in the ground.
“Martha! Martha!” It was the faint call of her brother.
He must be getting close to finding me, she thought. And she suddenly realized that wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe she had been hasty coming into the forest. Maybe she should have listened to Aunt Eda.
She decided to go to her brother, but she couldn’t work out where he was. His voice bounced off the trees, making it seem like he was everywhere. She walked a bit in one direction, then another, watching the ground for holes, but Samuel still sounded just as far away.
She kept walking, then started to run, and she sensed she was now getting closer to Samuel.
“Martha! Martha!”
Yes, he was definitely near now.
She ran faster.
One step after another after—
Her foot fell into nothing, and her body followed. The ground had opened up and now she was falling down a hole into darkness. There was a low branch of a tree hanging over the hole but she couldn’t reach it in time.
She screamed.
It was the first sound her mouth had made for over a week, and she only made the sound because she had no choice. That is simply what mouths do when they find they are falling down a black hole into apparent nothingness. They scream.
“Aaaaaaaaagh!”
Martha landed on something soft and feathery. In fact, it was so feathery that she had to conclude it was indeed feathers. She looked up at the small circle of light. A hidden trapdoor. It shut as quick as it had opened.
She rolled over and tried to stand up but she only managed to get onto all fours. She clambered over the feathers as her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. Her hand reached out and touched the dug-out earth on the side of the giant hole.
There was a soft yellow lightness, getting slowly brighter. Soon she could see the feathers—they were gray, like those of the three-headed bird that had fallen into the other hole.
She looked around her and saw the source of the light. An underground window, with metal bars. Moving closer to the window, she heard voices, and glimpsed the fire of a torch. The torch and the voices were coming closer toward her, down some kind of corridor.
Maybe they are coming to rescue me, she thought.
But even as she had the thought, she realized it wasn’t true. People don’t set traps in order to let you go again.
Martha knew that whoever or whatever was coming toward her was not wanting to make friends. So she lay down and covered feathers over herself, hoping she wouldn’t be seen.
The Scream
“MARTHA! MARTHA! MAAARTHAAAAAAA!”
Samuel kept calling his sister’s name, but only received an echo in response. He looked around, trying to locate Martha amid the trees, but he could see no sign of her.
This was odd, to say the least. After all, she couldn’t have gone that far. She only ran into the forest two minutes ago.
He kept running through the green vegetation, book in hand, and tried to ignore the pain of his shoeless feet as they cracked twigs and landed on stones.
“MAAARTHAAAAAAA!”
He stopped again. It was like she had vanished into the air. He stared up at the tall trees, as if they were strangers who might be able to help, but he was greeted with nothing but silence. He tucked his book back under his sweater, and scanned three hundred and sixty degrees.
The trunks were so close together that it was hard to see for a long way in any direction. The closeness of the trees seemed to steal the sky, or at least smash it into so many little pieces that it was only visible through the leaves like stars on a clear night.
Samuel strained his eyes around the dark and green landscape, but he still couldn’t see Martha. Nor could he see back where he came from. None of the gaps in the trees revealed a view of the distant fjord and mountains. There was no sign of Aunt Eda.
The compass of his brain no longer worked properly. He couldn’t tell which way would lead him back to the soft grass and the white wooden house, any more than he knew how to get to Martha.
It was as though the trees had somehow moved around behind him, the way clouds change position when you aren’t looking at them.
“Martha. Please. Martha.”
Samuel’s voice was quieter now. Not scared exactly, but not confident either.
“Who’s there?” he said as he stood still. He thought he had heard the cracking of a twig behind him. “Martha? Is that you?”
But she wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
He heard another twig-snap, and another. Definite footsteps, coming closer toward him.
Samuel waited to see who it was. “Hello?” he said.
There was no answer, which made him think it could still be his sister. Samuel felt sick with panic as he waited to see who it was.
“Martha?”
Samuel tried to move, but fear rooted him to the ground. In the distance he heard a sound. A faint scream and then what sounded like someone falling. Could it be Martha?
“Martha!” Samuel called as he carried on walking. But then he heard something else.
A bark.
He turned around and saw Ibsen.
The dog barked again.
“Go back!” Samuel told him. “Go to Aunt Eda!”
Ibsen seemed to be barking exactly the same thing, but neither of them listened
to the other.
“Go home!” Samuel tried again.
More barking.
“Go home, you stupid dog! Go back home!”
Ibsen stopped barking but stayed precisely where he was.
Samuel began walking deeper into the forest. Ibsen followed.
“Do what you want,” Samuel muttered, and kept on going. “But I’m not going back, so you can rip my sweater all you want.”
The dog lowered his head, as if he had understood, and Samuel kept calling his sister’s name.
“Marth-aaa! Marth-aaa!”
He headed in the direction of the scream, with a terrified Ibsen close at heel.
The Sneeze
While Samuel and Ibsen kept trying their hardest to find her, Martha herself was trying her hardest to hide. She had managed to cover herself entirely with feathers and now she lay at the bottom of the hole as still and as quiet as she could manage.
This is what she heard:
Footsteps, getting closer.
A clinking sound—keys.
Muffled voices.
A key sliding in a lock.
A door creaking open.
The voices got louder, but they spoke a language Martha had never heard before. A bit like Norwegian, but completely different at the same time.
First voice: “Enna fregg oda blenf?”
Second voice: “Ven! Froga oda klumpk!”
First voice: “Kyder fregg lossvemper.”
Second voice: “Froga oda blenf. Froga oda caloosh!”
The whispery voices hardly sounded like voices at all. They were more like a sinister wind blowing through leaves, only a wind that had shaped itself into words.
Unbeknownst to Martha, the voices belonged to huldres, and she had just fallen into one of the many traps designed to capture calooshes and stray forest wanderers. Yet, even though Martha couldn’t understand their language, she sensed correctly that she was in grave danger. She didn’t want to stay trapped in the feathers, but she thought that whatever fate awaited her beyond the door would be even worse.
So she decided to stay quiet, and wait for the two creatures to leave.
But deciding to be quiet and actually being quiet are two very separate things. Although Martha had hardly made a sound since her parents were crushed to death, she was on the verge of blowing her cover.
You see, the thing with feathers is that they tickle. And the thing with noses is that when they are tickled they have a tendency to sneeze.
Martha knew the sneeze was coming. She just hoped it would be after the two creatures shut the door and walked away.
“Froga oda blenf,” the first voice was saying, which roughly meant “I heard something,” but it has no exact translation.
He thought he had heard a caloosh, the squawking three-headed bird that huldre-folk depend on for meat and eggs and feathers, as well as for entertaining them with caloosh fights.
“Nip. Keider fregg lossvemper,” said the other huldre in a slightly less sinister voice than his fellow guard. He was convinced that there was no caloosh or anything else amid the feathers.
They were just about to shut the door when they heard:
“A-a-a-a-atchoo!”
And when Martha sneezed, the feathers that had been lying over her face shot high into the air, making it easy for the two huldre guards to spot her straightaway.
Martha saw them for the first time. Their too-far-apart eyes, their claws, their gray skin and their cow’s tails that flicked at the sight of the human girl lost in the caloosh feathers. They were two of the huldres Samuel and Aunt Eda had seen the night before, who had chased the singing creature and taken him back to the forest. They were wearing clothes made from caloosh skin, with weapons strapped to their belts. A sword, a small throwing ax, daggers, and something Martha didn’t recognize.
“Ig kippenk,” said the slightly less sinister huldre, whose far-apart eyes had a deep sadness to them.
He was called Grentul, but it wasn’t the name his mother had given him. It was a name he had given himself, a long time ago. A time when everything changed and the huldres had been forced underground.
“Ig kippook,” said the other, who was so skinny it seemed his ribs were about to burst out of his skin.
He leaned over the feather pit at Martha, tilting his head the way a cat does before pouncing on a mouse. He was called Vjpp, which is an impossible name for human tongues to pronounce.
Martha didn’t know what they were saying, but judging from their gestures, they seemed to be debating how they should get her out. At first Vjpp smiled an evil smile and beckoned her with one of his clawed fingers.
Needless to say, Martha did not do as the finger asked her and stayed exactly where she was.
The two creatures debated a little while longer, and Martha saw Vjpp point to the flaming torch Grentul was holding. This prompted the other huldre to nod reluctantly, and hand it over.
“Fugappuk ky brekk!” Vjpp shouted.
The next thing Martha knew, the flaming torch was flying through the air above her head. She turned and saw it land with a crackle, as rising sparks danced upward in the dark.
Feathers quickly turned to flames as the fire roared and spat its way toward her.
“Fugappuk!”
Vjpp was rattling his keys in excitement. This was the cruellest and most enjoyable thing he had done all day.
“Fugappuk! Fugappuk!”
Martha could feel the heat blast her cheek as the fire inched closer and knew she had no choice.
She had to get out of the feathers, or else share their fate.
So she sat up, choking on the smoke, and raced on all fours against the fire.
The huldres’ clawed hands pulled her out just in time, then shut the thick heavy door, leaving the fire to burn itself out. She was led down a dark corridor, but was too busy coughing to worry about the caged creatures on either side, their faces grotesque in the flickering light.
Prison Songs
Martha was thrown into a cell at the end of the corridor, which had metal bars instead of walls and nothing much else.
No bed. No toilet. No window.
No hope of escape.
“Ob kenk,” said Vjpp, his ribs shaking under his tight skin as he laughed.
Grentul looked at Martha with his sad wide-apart eyes as if he wanted to tell her something. An apology? An explanation? Whatever it was wouldn’t have been understood, so he walked away. Vjpp waited a moment longer and spat blue spit through the bars at Martha. Then he too turned and walked down the corridor.
When Vjpp’s cruel laughter had faded, and his flickering tail had vanished into darkness, Martha looked around at the inhabitants of the other cells.
An old woman, with long white hair down to her ankles and wearing a white tunic and shawl, stood watching her from the cell opposite.
Farther down the corridor she saw a fearsome-looking creature, with two heads and four eyeballs peering at her from behind the wooden bars. Both heads had shaggy black hair and beards, but the head on the right looked a lot grumpier than the head on the left. Martha guessed, rightly, that the creature was a troll. A two-headed troll. She had never read about trolls in The Creatures of Shadow Forest, but the sight of the creature was enough to terrify her.
Then she heard a noise, coming from the cell next to hers. The noise was singing, and not particularly good singing either:
“There’s nothing wrong
With a little song
When things aren’t going your way.
“For there’s no crime
In a silly rhyme
On the most unhappy day…”
She looked to see who would be capable of singing so happily while trapped in an underground prison. The creature she saw was a Tomtegubb (although she didn’t know that yet), the exact same Tomtegubb that Samuel and Aunt Eda had seen get caught by the huldres (although Martha didn’t know that either). He was shaped rather like a barrel, with a short roundish body and n
o neck, or none that she could see, anyway. He had golden skin, very hairy eyebrows, and a flat nose with long blond whiskers that shone from his face like rays from the sun.
His clothes were most unusual too. A tunic made of multicolored patches—bright green and bright yellow and shiny red. The tunic was short, and only covered half his body. The other half was covered by purple trousers. Indeed, his trousers—as the other prisoners would have been able to tell her—were the subject of one of the Tomtegubb’s self-written songs, called “The Purple Trouser Song.” It was a very long song, with twenty-two verses and three different choruses, and the Tomtegubb regarded it as his masterpiece.
His clothes looked quite ridiculous in the dark and dingy underground prison, but even more ridiculous was his broad smile when his circumstances should have made him very sad.
It went quiet for a moment, a moment during which the troll with two heads seemed very relieved, then the Tomtegubb launched into another song.
“There may be no window,
There may be no bed,
But at least there are no prison bars,
Inside my happy head.”
The song prompted the two-headed troll to rub both his foreheads.
“Tomtegubb, please stop, I’m begging you,” he said, out of his grumpier head, which was on his right side.
“If our shared tomorrow
Is filled with death and sorrow,
There’s only one thing to say.
“And that’s get up and dance,
Let’s sing and let’s prance,
For we’ve still got today!”
The Tomtegubb’s singing, accompanied by the troll’s moans about his double headache, kept going for quite a while.
During this time, Martha sat herself down in one of the back corners of the cell, with her legs out straight in front of her. She looked around at the other prisoners, and wondered what they would do to her if there were no bars between them. Would they kill her? She looked at the old, white-haired woman in the opposite cage, who was staring at her with kind eyes. Could that kindness be trusted?