by Kim Wilkins
“Can we do it this weekend?” I said. “I want to be out of here on Wednesday.”
Gunnar shook his head. “Sorry, Vicky, no matter how well prepared you are, you’re not going anywhere on Wednesday.”
“What do you mean?”
“Magnus is scared that Maryanne will leave because of the haunted forest. He’s canceled the Jonsok for this week.”
An electric shock to my heart. “He’s what?”
“He has canceled our supply boat so he can be certain of Maryanne’s continued sexual favors. That’s just one of the good reasons you can give for your resignation.”
“How are we supposed to eat?”
“He’s crafty. He ordered a double supply as soon as Maryanne started getting ghost-shy. Blamed it on an administrative error and canceled the next delivery to rebalance the budget.”
I let all this sink in, trying to calm myself. Just because the Jonsok wasn’t coming didn’t mean that Odin was necessarily going to discover Vidar and me. We’d probably be perfectly safe for another week.
But if Odin did sense us, if he felt that prickle that Vidar had spoken of . . .
Then we were trapped there, miles from anywhere. At his mercy on an island in a freezing sea.
At the fund-raising table tennis match on the weekend, I sat in a corner of the rec hall nursing a plastic cup of rum, glowering at Magnus. He glanced once or twice out of the corner of his eye, but continued chatting with Frida and Carsten, his arm around Maryanne’s waist. He was pretending he couldn’t see me. That idiot was going to ruin everything, thinking with the tiny brain in his tiny penis.
I had been knocked out of the match in round one, trounced by a frighteningly overcompetitive Frida, who had been trounced in turn by a frighteningly overcompetitive Josef. Now it was just Josef and Alex left, lovers in life, bitter rivals on the table-tennis court. Since my disqualification, I had been drinking steadily. The rain hammered on the tin roof of the rec hall, drowning out Gunnar’s U2 album. The more I drank, the more anxious and irritated I grew.
“Match point!” called Gordon, who was umpiring. “Come on, Alex, you can beat him.”
“I need another drink,” I said to nobody, and tottered to the galley, where Carsten had hidden the alcohol in a vain attempt to slow me down. I was sloshing some rum into my plastic cup when I heard somebody enter the room behind me.
“Victoria,” Magnus said.
I turned and felt my hands automatically ball up. “What?” I asked.
“You’ve been glaring at me all afternoon. You insist you aren’t jealous of my relationship with Maryanne and yet—”
“I’m not jealous,” I shouted, and felt the world shift a little to the left. I steadied myself on the bench and advised myself not to act like a drunken fool.
“Then what’s all this about?”
“I’m angry at you for being a small-minded control freak.”
Magnus blinked at me in shock. Though why he should be shocked was beyond me. Surely I couldn’t be the first person to point out this indisputable fact.
“I will let that pass, Victoria, as I can see you’ve drunk too much—”
“Why did you cancel the Jonsok?”
“An administrative error occurred which extended our budget. I merely addressed that error. I’m the station commander, the buck stops with me.”
“Are you really thinking about bucks, Magnus? Or fucks?”
“I’m warning you—”
“Warning me? You think I’m afraid of you? I’ve got plenty of other things to be afraid of.”
“This is your final warning. I can dismiss you for insubordination.”
“Go ahead and dismiss me, then.”
A silence ensued while Magnus fought with the redness in his face and I wondered why I hadn’t heeded my own advice about being a drunken fool.
“Victoria, we’ll discuss this on Monday morning, both sober, in a work setting.” He turned to go. I felt like I would burst.
“Please, Magnus,” I said. “Make the Jonsok come on Wednesday. I have to get off this island.”
He stopped, turned to face me. “Victoria? You’re not succumbing to the same superstitions as Maryanne, are you?”
“I want to go home,” I said, and my voice shook.
“You’re drunk,” he said impatiently. “We’ll talk on Monday.”
“Please, Magnus.”
Magnus left without another word and I sagged against the bench with my rum, light-headed and dissociated, wondering what Vidar was doing now. A loud cry of triumph from the rec hall alerted me to the fact that the table-tennis champion had been crowned. Gunnar poked his head into the galley.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“I fought with Magnus,” I said miserably.
He approached and put an arm around my shoulders. “You stink of rum.”
“I spilled some on my top.”
“Vicky Scott, no matter how posh you sound, no matter how many degrees you accumulate, you will always be a scrubber from South London.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Don’t worry. Nobody knows it except me,” he said, stroking my hair.
I leaned into him, woozy with alcohol and irrationally teary as only drunks can be. “It’s true,” I said, “there’s nothing special about me.” Then why did Vidar love me? Why had he waited a thousand years to spend a bare half century with me?
“You don’t even know, do you, Vicky?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“You are so beautiful,” he said. “You’re funny and complicated and warm and beautiful.”
I pulled away. “Don’t, Gunnar. You make me feel so sad.”
Josef and Alex came in. I sat on the kitchen floor and slurped my rum. Voices whirled around me. I was starting to feel like I could lie down on the cold tiles and lapse into sweet unconsciousness for a few hours.
Josef crouched in front of me. “Vicky? Are you all right?”
“She’s just drunk,” Gunnar said from far away.
“I’m sad,” I said.
“I’ve got to tell you something. It’s going to sound crazy.” Josef’s smooth white skin and rosy cheeks made him look like a painting to my drunken eyes.
“Go on.”
“I dreamed of the hag on last night’s shift.”
I felt an itch of unease. “And?”
“And before I woke up, she said something to me . . .” He trailed off, as though embarrassed.
I leaned forward, my skin hot with fear. “Go on,” I said.
“She said to tell you something . . . She said, ‘Tell Victoria that I’m going to tell his father.’”
My heart picked up its pace. I tried to stand but couldn’t make my feet work.
“I know it’s just a dream,” Josef was saying, “but I had such an important sense that I should tell you.” He shrugged. “Alex would think it was nonsense.”
“I’m glad you told me,” I managed, pulling myself up on the bench. “I have to go.”
“Vicky, you should lie down.” This was Gunnar. The room was full of people, pink faces leaning toward me.
“I’m fine,” I said, brushing off their concerned hands and hurrying away. “I’m going for a walk to clear my head.”
I burst from the galley into the rainy afternoon, stopped and let the cold water drench me. “Oh, Vidar,” I whispered. “Please hurry, please hurry.”
The possibility of my ever sleeping again was so remote that I didn’t even try. I may have dozed a little in the early hours of Sunday morning, then again for a few hours late on Sunday night. My body was tense the whole time. Was the continuing rain the start of something more sinister? Were the sounds I heard forest animals? Or Vidar returning? Or something far worse, something brutal and hulking and hypermasculine with a gleaming axe and an empty eye socket?
At three o’clock on Monday morning, my light doze lifted and I found myself once again staring at the perfectly regular ceiling of my bedroom. I
sighed and threw back the covers, went to the window and gazed out into the forest. The rain had cleared and I could see stars above the trees. It was very still outside, as though poised and waiting for something. Deep shadows sat motionless in the grey gloom. The eerie outline of a bony twig jolted my brain and a very obvious solution occurred to me. Skripi. The hag was his sister. I pulled on my anorak and boots and headed outside.
The ground was sodden, the branches damp and the leaves dripped on me, but I made my way into the forest until I was certain I was out of earshot of Magnus’s cabin with nervous Maryanne inside.
“Skripi?” I called, and my voice echoed lonely in the stillness.
Nothing happened for long seconds. I called again. I heard a rustling in the distance and became terrified. “Skripi, is that you?” I said, every muscle in my body poised to flee.
“It is me,” he said, ambling out of the shadows to stand ten feet away. “Hello, Victoria.”
“I need your help,” I said.
His face broke into a smile, his shiny black eyes crinkled and his sharp little teeth were exposed. “I’d love to help you,” he said.
I shuddered. It wasn’t that he was hideously ugly; it was simply that he was so impossible, a bizarre puppet brought to life. Such things shouldn’t be real, and yet they were.
“It’s about your sister. The hag.”
The smile was withdrawn. “Why do you make me sad by mentioning her?”
“She told one of the others that she’s going to report back to Odin about Vidar being here. Odin can’t find out. He’d come here and kill me. Maybe kill everybody.”
“No, no!” Skripi said, clasping his hands together.
“Can she do that? Can she tell Odin? I thought you were all in exile?”
“She’ll use it to get his favor. She’ll call up to him.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, exasperated by all this supernatural logic, which was not logical at all. “How can she call up to him?”
“We’re all his children. He can—”
“Sense you . . . yes, I see. Like a prickle.”
“If she concentrates hard enough, she can get his attention.”
“She could have done this already?”
“She hasn’t. I would sense it too.”
“Then how do I stop her from doing it?”
Skripi looked at me, silently, for nearly a full minute. His eyes were round and his brows turned up.
“Skripi?”
He sat down and crossed his legs. “I’m thinking.”
I let him think. A breeze licked through the trees and I wished I was inside where it was warm. I sat down with him, immediately regretting it as the damp seeped into my pajamas. I shrugged out of my anorak and tucked it underneath me.
“You see,” said Skripi, “I know the answer, but I don’t want to say it.”
“Why don’t you want to say it?”
“It will frighten you.”
“I’m used to being frightened.”
He nodded. “Then I’ll say that the only way to stop the hag is to kill her.”
I felt a wave of profound tiredness shudder over me. “I have to kill the hag?”
“It’s the only way. She can’t be reasoned with.”
I wrapped my arms around my knees and leaned my head on them. “How do I kill her?”
“The same way she tries to kill you. Steal her breath.”
I glanced up over my folded arms. “You’ll have to explain.”
“When she puts her lips over yours, inhale very slowly.”
“If it’s that simple—”
“Nobody ever thinks of it,” he said. “They panic and hold their breath, making it a parcel for her to yank out easily.”
I sighed and leaned my head down again. I heard a rustle, then felt his cool hand on my hair. I flinched.
“Do not be afraid, Victoria.”
“I just want Vidar to come back,” I said. “We have to get away from here.”
He sat in the mud next to me, and said mournfully, “Oh, yes. How I would love to get away from here too, but I can’t leave until Odin says so. Or until my siblings are dead, because it is only their guilt that keeps me in exile.”
I felt a pang of sympathy for him. I made room on my anorak for him and he moved onto it gratefully. I inspected him closely, pity displacing my fear. Perhaps he wasn’t so bizarre after all. Just because I hadn’t known such things existed, it didn’t mean that they couldn’t.
“How come you can speak my language?” I said.
“I had a friend here. Many years past. He was a scientist like you, and he taught me his tongue. Your tongue. I tried to warn him about the hag, I tried to find him a ward—”
“He was the man that died?” I shivered.
“Since then that room is her hunting ground. If you are afraid, it will be so much harder.” He stood and offered me his hand.
I let him help me up and shook out my anorak. “I am afraid,” I said. “I can’t help it.”
“The hag is not as frightening as Odin,” he said, his face serious. “Remind yourself of that, and breathe slowly. You have eolh. Eolh will help to keep you safe.”
I nodded. “Yes,” I said, “I’ll breathe slowly.”
But first I had to deal with Magnus.
I dressed soberly and tried to look contrite when I appeared at his office door at 8:00 A.M. Somehow, I had to take the night shift that night, and getting myself fired would be counterproductive. Magnus glanced up from his desk, asked Carsten if we could have some privacy, and closed the office door.
“I’m sorry, Magnus,” I said immediately. “I regret very much what I said and—”
“Then why did you say it?” he asked coldly, standing directly in front of me, glaring down.
“Because I was drunk,” I said.
“That’s not an excuse. Alcohol loosens people’s tongues, but it can’t make them say something they don’t believe.”
I looked up at him and said the only thing I could think of. “Magnus, you were right. I am jealous of Maryanne.”
Underneath the frown there was now the hint of a smile. “I see.”
“Try to understand. It’s not easy seeing you two together. Then when I found out that you canceled the boat to keep her here . . .” I dropped my gaze. “I’m not proud of myself.” My face was flushed with humiliation and anger, but I hoped he would interpret that as girly shyness.
His voice was soft in response. “Victoria, didn’t you know I’d understand if you just told me the truth?”
“But I’d turned you down before.”
“The heart is fickle. Who knows how much longer Maryanne and I will last? And then, perhaps, there will be a time for you and me.”
I suppressed a full-body shudder. “Can I go now?” I said.
“I’m glad we sorted this out, Victoria,” he said, returning to his desk and making a pretence of businesslike behavior. “Don’t let it happen again.”
“I won’t. Oh, Magnus. Is it all right with you if Josef and I swap a shift?”
“Which one?”
“Tonight’s night shift.”
“If Josef agrees.”
“He has. Thanks.”
I closed the door behind me and hurried up the stairs to the control room. Gunnar was upstairs with Josef.
“Is Magnus still mad?” Gunnar asked.
“No. It’s sorted,” I said.
Josef spun his chair around. “I’m glad you told him off,” he said. “He had it coming.”
“Josef, can I do your night shift tonight?” I said. “I’m having better luck sleeping during the day at the moment.”
“Which shift am I swapping into?” he said.
“Swing,” I replied.
“I don’t know—”
“Please,” I said. “It’s important.”
Josef met my eyes and I think he knew I was concerned about the message from the hag. He shrugged. “If you like.” He turned back to the rada
r display. “She’s mysterious, isn’t she, Gunnar?”
“I’m still trying to figure her out,” Gunnar replied.
“Thank you. I’m going to bed,” I said.
Of course I didn’t go to bed. Far from it. I did everything within my power to make myself sleepy but not actually go to sleep. I had to be able to sleep in the control room that night to make the hag come. Luckily for me I could have written a book about insomnia cures. I drank herbal tea; I went for a long walk along the beach; I turned off every thought that came screaming into my head; I breathed slowly all day. When it came time to start work, I made myself hot milk with honey and set about turning off every instrument in the control room that could possibly make a sound that would wake me.
It was eerily silent and dark as I lay on the sofa and closed my eyes.
I couldn’t sleep. I had the equivalent of a loaded gun pointed at my head. The hag or Odin. Which one would get me first?
But I had to do it, so I lay very still and counted backward from ten thousand.
Ten thousand, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven . . .
What was Vidar doing? Was he saddling up Arvak, ready to come back for me? I thought about his serious face, felt a flutter of longing. How gently he spoke, how violently he loved me.
. . . nine thousand nine hundred and sixty-four, nine thousand nine hundred and sixty-three . . .
How had my life taken such a sudden curve? How was it that I was preparing to do psychic battle with a nightmare hag, on the advice of a wood wight, to keep secret my reincarnated love for a Scandinavian deity? Under other circumstances I could have laughed. Perhaps one day I would laugh, but now it was almost too overwhelming to bear. I cleared my head and thought about Vidar again. Reliving that last day together, wrapped around each other, warm skin and soft voices.
. . . eight thousand five hundred and twelve, eight thousand five hundred and eleven . . .
I had always known that love was meant to feel that way. Sunshine seemed to drift into my mind’s eye, numbers stopped making sense, a warm shiver of memory from the forest, mine or Halla’s, I didn’t know. The image dissolved, a cool darkness waited beneath it.
A sigh.
I was asleep.
Breathe slowly, breathe slowly.