by M J Porter
Like all steadings, the entrance to Erann’s was through a small tunnel. In the Long Night it had an outer door at the entrance to the tunnel. Now that door was hinged back so they only had to walk through the inner doors.
Inside it was exactly as she remembered it from her childhood. The floor was raised boards, apart from around the hearth, which was placed on a number of huge flat rocks to keep the constant damp from touching the most vital piece of equipment in the entire steading. The room though, looked tired, and quite frankly, dirty and Sereh could see how it had suffered from privation just like the rest of the Olafssons. The place looked haggard, just like Sereh and Erann both did. She couldn’t help wondering, and worrying about what Erann’s mother looked like.
Erann had walked into his home and was busy stuffing something into another backpack. Idly, she wondered over to him to see what he was doing. His face was like stone as he pushed tightly curled manuscript after manuscript into his backpack. She wondered if he had also put the journal in there.
“This is our families’ history and there’s no way that Rankil’s going to get hold of it and manipulate it to his own ends”.
His voice sounded flat and dead and Sereh understood his grief. What do you do when everything you ever held dear falls downs all around you? What makes you get up every new sunrise and go to sleep at sunset? She knew she didn’t have the answers and also knew that she did not analyse her own actions too much for if she did she knew she would be horrified by what she found. Routine was all that had been left to her after her parent’s death and now she didn’t even have that any more. What was she going to do with herself? She had managed to evade Rankil but she had only survived a week alone with the aid of Erann’s backpack. What would she do now? Who could she turn to?
It was almost as if Erann could hear her thoughts because at that moment, with despair about to settle on her like a black fur cloak, he looked at her and said,
“Will you help me?” his voice was quiet but determined.
She just managed to stop herself saying yes immediately because she realised he had more to say,
“Will you help me take these to the Librarian? He’ll know what to do with them and will ensure that the truth can always be found no matter what lies Rankil perpetuates about my family”. His voice turned deeply bitter as he spoke.
She answered, “Yes”, albeit in a hushed whisper. Somehow she felt she was agreeing to something more than just a trip to the Librarian, almost as if she had pledged her life to him. She shook the thought away. It was such a bizarre thought.
She collected the backpack she had been using from near the table where she had dumped it and began sliding the scripts inside it. Arrow came to sniff around to see what was happening and at that moment her stomach gave an almighty rumble. Arrow looked at Sereh apologetically and Erann’s face grew even more serious.
“Of course, we will need provisions if we are going to journey to the Librarian, I had completely forgotten. Thanks for reminding me girl.”
Arrow walked up to Erann and wagged her tail hopefully. A small smile lit his otherwise bleak face and he reached down to pat her on the back.
“Come on girl, there must be something in the cold store. There always has been before”, he whispered quietly, which Sereh thought a little odd.
Without so much as a backward glance at Sereh, Arrow followed Erann back to the cold store set deeply into the ground in the annexe. Sereh smiled to herself. As loyal as Arrow was, if food was involved she would be off with Rankil. She continued to pack her backpack with care. She had a reverence for these old scripts and did not want to damage them when they had survived for so long. As she worked busily she was vaguely aware of Erann returning to his task and of Arrow happily wolfing down some sort of meat. At this time of the rotation it was better to ask few questions about what you were eating and as Arrow looked content, she decided that she did not really need to know what it was.
From Erann’s actions, Sereh assumed that he was not planning on staying long here and silently steeled herself for another trip in the still frozen and ice locked landscape. She was busy thinking her own thoughts and generally enjoying the comfortable silence between the three of them, not that Arrow was actually chewing that quietly, when she heard voices coming from outside. Erann looked towards the door in alarm and Arrow abandoned her meal in favour of standing poised for a fight, with a low growl escaping her mostly closed mouth, only her canines showing. Erann ran to the entrance tunnel and looked outside.
“Whoever it is isn’t here just yet. It’s a very still day and I think the voices are carrying a long way. Quick, we must get out of here”.
Sereh grabbed both backpacks and started towards the tunnel. Erann ran back and snatched up the last handful of scripts. He was leaving nothing for them to find.
* * *
Arrow loped along happily behind Erann. Sereh couldn’t quite bring herself to pick up enough speed to walk by his side. His strange behaviour of moments ago was making her feel a little unnerved and she didn’t want to attempt to make small talk with him when her mind was as pre-occupied as his. She supposed he had been through a traumatic time and that he may be feeling a little strange but his standing completely still and staring at nothing had been eerie, as had his heated questions about being able to see ‘something’ which she could not see. Shaking her head to herself she decided to think nothing more of it. In their current predicament it would not do if they did not trust each other.
She didn’t run to catch him up immediately finding herself caught up in just watching him walk. For all the tragedies that had befallen him he walked with an easy confidence and she found herself fascinated by the view of his back as he strode off in front. She was so engrossed in the view before her she only just managed to avert her eyes when he turned to look at her quizzically,
“Are you walking with me or behind me?” he asked conversationally. She could feel herself starting to blush but mustered a reply to cover her embarrassment,
“Well if you’d slow down a bit I could catch you up” she countered, a little aggressively. Erann stopped walking all together at that and stood waiting for her to catch up. She felt flustered at being caught in the act and then even more flustered because then she felt her eyes drawn to his face and his expression was speculative. She looked away, trying to cover her embarrassment and heard a muffled thud. Turning back she found Erann sprawled on his front in an undignified heap. She couldn’t help herself, after the extreme tensions of the day, she just burst out laughing. Erann was plainly not hurt because she could hear him muttering about the Gods under his breath. Still laughing she went to him and offered him her hand. He gratefully took it as he struggled to his feet.
Cursing aloud this time he walked back a few steps and bent down. Sereh was intrigued and walked closer to him. He cleared some snow off something in front of him to reveal what looked like a lumpy stone.
“Is that a marker?” Sereh asked, her curiosity making her voice a little high.
“Well it certainly looks like it? But who had land out here? It’s the start of Vatna Jokull. Nobody can farm out here and as far as I know no-one ever has.”
As Erann talked he was busily uncovering as much of the marker as he could, all the way down to the layer of permafrost. It shone inky in the pale sunlight. Sereh knew she had seen something like this before, on the first day of her freedom. The stone looked to be the same impenetrable black that absorbed the light instead of reflecting it. Erann’s voice broke into her reverie, and it was filled with awe,
“I’ve never seen anything like it. This script is intriguing, for all that I hated to study, this looks nothing like anything I’ve ever seen. Have you?”
Sereh had a split second to decide and in that moment she warred with herself. It seemed as though they had mutually decided to trust each other – he had not told Rankil she was still alive after all. All the same she felt a little apprehensive around him. She couldn’t put her fi
nger on what it was that made her feel this way. However she had no one else to trust and nowhere else to go if she kept secrets from him. With her mind made up, she turned to him and began to speak only to notice that he was staring off at nothing again with a perplexed expression on his face and one hand resting on top of the marker. Feeling aggrieved she bent down to further examine the stone.
It was cut to a size of about six hands high and four across, or at least, that was what was visible of it now. It would certainly extend further beneath the permafrost. Just to be sure she laid her hand on the stone and counted across. As she did so she became aware of the depth of the inscription. She stopped counting hands, removed her gloves and instead prodded the inscription with her little finger. It did not feel cold to the touch and she was amazed to discover that she could put her entire nail inside the pattern. It didn’t look that deep when she just looked at it. She laid her finger back on the stone and began tracing the curling image with her finger. Again she was confounded. She had never seen carvings so intricate amongst her people. She had seen many, many examples of scripts and carvings but nothing like this before. Her father had taught her well before his untimely death and had even hinted that her future lay with the Librarian as his apprentice, as he had done before.
Abruptly Erann again gasped and Sereh knew that he was back with her. She was almost desperate to ask him questions and to find out what he saw when his eyes wondered. Feigning disinterest instead she decided to ignore his strange outburst – that would be the third today – and to draw his attention back to the stone.
“Yes, I have seen this pattern before,” she stated matter of factly.
Erann looked at her with his unfathomable penetrating green eyes,
“Where, where have you seen this script?” he said with a strange urgency to his voice.
“It was on the walls of the cave I stopped in on the night of the storm, it kept me alive that night. I think it’s probably made from the same stone. Have you seen how it doesn’t seem to reflect the light?”
Erann hadn’t taken his eyes off the stone as Sereh talked. He now raised his head to look at her face.
“That’s a strange observation to make”.
Again she felt aggravation towards him. Who was he to talk about strange with his little outbursts? He was now tracing his own fingers through the swirls of the inscription with a distracted expression on his face. It was quiet for a few moments apart from Arrow’s rather loud breathing. Sereh noticed with amusement that she was practically salivating in Erann’s face. She wouldn’t imagine that the smell was particularly pleasant. Erann didn’t seem to notice. A large piece of slobber slipped from Arrow’s mouth and landed on Erann’s hand and Sereh grinned to herself. Erann distractedly whipped his hand in the snow his focus totally on the marker stone in front.
Sereh herself became distracted by the astounding view in front of her. The snow capped mountains of Snaefell were amazing. The scope of their soaring majesty was hard to comprehend. She imagined what it would be like to climb those huge mountains, and to see her land stretched before her, like a giant tapestry. She was snapped from her reverie by Erann’s low voice,
“I think we should go to your cave. I think we need to look at these inscriptions more carefully. Would you be able to take me back there?”
Sereh was unnerved. The cave was dangerously close to Rankil’s home and with the weather improving, all be it extremely slowly, there would be more people around and about. The intensity in Erann’s eyes seemed to burn through her own. She knew she would take him without thinking about it. She just wished she wouldn’t.
* * *
For once, the sunlight came early the following day, and they were packed up and on their way in little time. Sereh and Erann made good progress as they journeyed back to the cave that had proved her salvation. Arrow was loping along untroubled by anything and Sereh had to smile, despite her dread of what was to come. She hadn’t been able to shake a feeling of imminent disaster all morning and knew that Erann had picked up on her bad mood and was blaming himself. His strange behaviour yesterday was still rankling her and she couldn’t bring herself to tell him that she was not angry with him because she thought that maybe she was. After all it was his fault they were coming so close to Rankil’s and it would be his fault if she was caught and had to return to him.
They walked in a reasonably companionable silence broken only by their heavy breathing and Arrow’s occasional yelps and barks as she frightened some small creature from its hibernation home. She never gave chase happy to stay by Sereh’s side. Sereh was pleased that there were now a few small animals waking from hibernation. She wondered what they were eating though. There was no hint of a green shoot anywhere and what few trees and bushes there were, were stunted and hugged low to the ground, with no new growth to speak off. She told herself it had only been seven days since sunrise, but in her heart she knew that it did not bode well for the season ahead.
The weather was still too raw for the thaw to have started in earnest around Snaefell and the going was easy over the hard packed snow. She realised she should be worried about the crops not growing and the ground still being frozen. Instead she was pleased as it made the trek, which she did not want to make, so much easier. As much as she would have liked to drag her feet and extend the inevitable, she was equally desperate to get it over and done with.
They were currently walking below one of the largest mountains of Snaefell. She couldn’t remember its name and was loath to ask Erann as she did not want to be the first to break the silence between them. She was busy making up names for the mountain in the hope that one of them would feel ‘right’ and she would know that she had somehow stumbled upon the correct name. It was a stupid game but it was something to do as she plodded through the path that Erann had made for her in the crisp snow. She also found herself admiring his easy walking action. She liked the sure way he stepped out in his snow shoes, and the way he occasionally tossed his head to clear a stray piece of hair which fell every now and then in front of his eyes.
Suddenly the earth shook under her feet to be followed instantaneously by a loud boom sounding above her head. She looked at Erann in shock. They both knew what it signalled. Somewhere up above a field of snow had ripped itself apart from the mountain and was now hurtling towards them. She looked around frantically in the hope that she would see the avalanche on one of the other mountains, but she was not in luck. Almost fearing to look up, she glanced as high up the mountain as she could see. There right near the edge of her vision she could see where the snow had been shaken lose from its precarious hold on the giant mountain.
Sereh looked frenziedly around. There was nowhere to go – nothing but steep sided mountains and the seemingly endless scope of snow surrounded her. Regardless she started to run and Arrow loped along beside her. She could hear Erann’s heavy breathing and knew that he was behind her. She dared not glance up fearing that what she would see would paralyse her with fear. Arrow took off at a faster pace in front and Sereh hoped that it meant she had found another cave for them to hide in. She speeded up a little as she felt a flutter of hope. Around her, chunks of dirty snow and ice encrusted rock were already raining down all around them, and she had to swerve to avoid large pieces which attempted to block her path.
The flood of snow must nearly be upon her. Her legs seemed to be acting of their own will as she was running faster than she had ever done before. Ahead, she could thankfully, see the yawning mouth of a black cave and she headed frantically towards it. Better to be snowed in than buried. Hopefully they would be able to dig themselves out with Arrow’s help, provided they reached the cave in time.
So intent was she on the sanctuary in front of her, she forgot to look where she was going. With a cry of pain that ripped from her mouth, her foot caught on something and she went down in an untidy heap. Unable to move she lay there panting with exertion knowing that her death was imminent.
Suddenly hands grabbed
her, picked her up and threw her towards the caves entrance. She felt Arrow’s mouth around her arm and knew that she was helping to pull her in. As she entered the cave more crawling than running she turned to look for Erann, her saviour and saw him as he was quickly, but in her minds eye, slowly buried under an avalanche of snow, ice and rocks. She screamed his name and he looked at her with anguish in his jade eyes, and something else that she couldn’t quite place. His own agonised cry rang out. Then he was gone and she was left with a ringing silence apart from Arrow’s panting, her own heavy breathing and the thud of snow settling all around her refuge. The light was abruptly cut off and she fought back the urge to scream knowing that it was pointless.
* * *
She was trying to act calmly, trying to behave rationally. She was failing magnificently. Only the steady and comforting presence of Arrow beneath her hand was allowing her to retain any sense of coherence and composure. The blackness was complete. Not even Arrow’s glowing yellow eyes could dispel the impenetrable gloom of the cave. It felt like she had stepped into the darkest day of the Long Night. Her every sense other than sight was straining. Still she could smell and hear nothing and the only thing she could feel was Arrow’s fur beneath her fingers and the rocky surface she was sitting on. She could taste stale air and that worried her. She dared not move in case she fell and hurt herself stumbling on an upturned rock. She wanted to scream in fear, grief and sheer frustration. She was trapped and she had no idea how large or small the cave was. Her breathing was ragged and she knew she needed to calm down or she would use up what precious air there was. She needed to focus. She needed to rescue Erann. She needed help.
She whispered Erann’s name over and over again as she relived the moment when he had been covered. She could hear his cry in her mind and it seemed to be on endless repeat. She needed to not think about that. She needed to think about getting out of the cave. She felt Arrow begin to walk away from under her hand and she made to grab for her fur but Arrow was too fast and she was left clutching nothing. Her scream of terror escaped. She was alone and she was terrified.