Giants of the Frost Page 15

  Thirteen

  I predicted I wouldn’t sleep, so I set myself up on the sofa with a book and a cup of instant cocoa. I turned the pages and scanned the words, but none of them made it from my eyes to my brain. I was very drunk and Vidar consumed my thoughts—memories of Vidar, fantasies of Vidar. The melancholy saturated me.

  I was nodding off when a tap on the window jolted me awake.

  Vidar! It had to be.

  I went to the window and lifted the sash, peered into the dark. I could see nothing, but I could hear footsteps retreating into the forest.

  I hesitated. What if it wasn’t Vidar? What if it was . . . ?

  What, Vicky? One of the monsters you swear you don’t believe in?

  It must have been Vidar, on the island still, letting me know to follow him into the forest. I checked my watch—3:00 A.M. He wouldn’t risk waking one of the others, hanging around near their cabins. I grabbed my anorak, threw open the cabin door, took two steps out, then my courage ran through my fingers like fine sand.

  I didn’t want to go out there into the forest.

  “Damn you, Victoria Scott,” I muttered. “You won’t be intimidated by imagined bogeys.”

  Despite the lingering fear that curled in my stomach, I strode off the slab and into the forest, listening for footsteps. Branches and twigs swayed and bent around me, their ancient shapes made grotesque by the dappled light from the station behind me. I waited until I was far enough away from the cabins to call out, “Vidar? Where are you?”

  Footsteps to my left. I turned, poised and listening.

  “Vidar?”

  I knew he could be perfectly silent if he wanted to be, so I scanned in a circle. My field of vision kept moving when I had stopped and I steadied myself against a tree. The weary fug of alcohol and sleep was hard to shake.

  “Vidar?” I said again. If Vidar wasn’t answering, perhaps it wasn’t Vidar at all. I hunched inside my anorak and shuddered. Time to head back to the cabin. This had been a bad idea.

  I turned. And shrieked.

  Skripi stood there, his oily eyes blinking at me in the gloom, his spiky hair and fingers made grey by starlight.

  “Vidar is gone,” he said.

  It must be a dream. “Wake up, wake up,” I said to myself, pinching the skin on my wrist hard. It hurt. I didn’t wake up.

  “You are awake,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “Wake up!” I screamed, backing away.

  “Listen to me, I want to help.”

  I remembered my mother’s letter, something about a good spirit. If this was a dream, I should probably listen. I swayed uncertainly. The dark forest was surreal, my ears were ringing.

  “You lost the ward. You have to get it back. I can’t get another one. I found it in the draugr’s lair. He saw me, he tried to kill me. You have to get eolh back. I can’t make another, the draugr is watching me.”

  “I am going insane,” I said.

  “Vidar is gone. He can’t protect you.”

  “Where has he gone?”

  Skripi pointed to the sky. “On his horse.”

  “Oh . . . that’s reassuring. Because I know that horses can’t fly, so you must be talking nonsense, which would mean that I’m dreaming.”

  “You must find the ward. It’s yours and you might need it.” He backed away from me with his hands in front of him, the long spiky fingers stretched out. “I’ll go. I don’t mean to frighten you.”

  He disappeared into the shadows and I stood, rooted to the spot, waiting to wake up.

  “I’m drunk. I’m dreaming. I’m going insane,” I said. I couldn’t move my feet, a whirlwind of panic was eddying up my rib cage, my breath was trapped in my lungs, and then . . .

  A hazy cloud descended and I lost track of sights and sounds and time . . .

  And I woke up in my bed.

  “Oh, thank God,” I gasped. The dawnlight glowed behind my curtain. “Thank God, thank God.” I leaned my head in my hands and sobbed with relief. I wasn’t going mad after all, it was just a peculiarly vivid dream fueled by too much scotch and too many wild emotions. The fact that I didn’t remember putting myself to bed was a little creepy, but not anything to fret over . . . memories were soft, and hard spirits often obliterated them.

  My wrist hurt from my fall in the rec hall and I noticed for the first time a gash across my palm. I must have cut it on the back of the chair I pulled over with me. I rose and washed it, smoothed a bandage over it, then went to the window to draw the curtain. The forest looked back. Fear stole over me; if I didn’t know better, I would have declared it haunted and never set foot in it again. I touched the cold glass of the window and sighed, wishing very deeply that I hadn’t let Gunnar take my good luck charm. Skripi was right: it was mine and I might need it.

  At 9:00 A.M. I was amazed to find Magnus at my door with Matthias and Nina.

  “Um, hi,” I said, squirming inside with the uncomfortable memories of the previous night.

  Without even a blink that would acknowledge he felt the same way, Magnus smiled, and said, “Good morning, Victoria. Matthias and Nina insisted that I bring them over to see you this morning.”

  I glanced at the twins. Nina screwed up her face at me. “Did they?” I said.

  “They’ve grown very fond of you, and I can see you feel the same way. Perhaps you’d spend a little time with them this morning, and—”

  “Magnus, if I’m going to look after your kids, I at least want time off in lieu,” I said.

  “Done,” he said, clearly relieved he didn’t have to lie, charm and wheedle anymore. “I promised you four days off in a row, you can have five after the weekend.”

  “It’s a deal. Come on, you two. I’ll teach you how to play poker.” I ushered them inside.

  Magnus caught my arm and drew me conspiratorially close. I tensed, thinking he might repeat his offer of a date, but instead he whispered, “I’m paying you now, so don’t let them out of your sight.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Last night while we were in our meeting, Matthias made a climbing rope out of my ties. A number of them are ruined.”

  I hid a smirk. “I see. I’ll watch them closely.”

  Nina grew bored with card games very quickly and spent her time playing in my makeup case and wardrobe. Matthias was a born cardsharper and cleaned me out of matchsticks before lunch.

  “Come on,” I said, packing up my deck. “I’ll take you over to the rec hall for lunch.”

  “I’m hungry,” Nina declared, rubbing her eyes and smearing mascara down her cheeks.

  “I’m not hungry at all,” Matthias said. “I don’t want to go to the rack hall.”

  “It’s the rec hall,” I said. “Short for recreation. And you have to have lunch, so come on.”

  “I want to play cards some more!” he shouted.

  I handed them their coats. “Well, I want to eat, and we’re all stuck together.” I gestured them out the door. “Come on.”

  Nina proudly strutted ahead of me with her unevenly made-up face. Matthias slouched out the door and whined something to Nina in Norwegian. She shook her head.

  “Do you want a sandwich or one of Maryanne’s vegetable pies?” I asked.

  “I said I’m not hungry!” Matthias turned and ran, astonishingly fast, into the forest.

  “Damn it!”

  “Is that swearing?” Nina asked. “I want to learn English swearing.”

  “Nina, can you go to the rec hall and wait for me? Tell Maryanne we’re having pies for lunch.”

  “I don’t want pies. Teach me a swear word.”

  “No. Now go to the rec hall and wait for me.” I dashed into the forest after Matthias. I’d already lost sight of him, but could hear his footsteps ahead of me. Then they slowed, slid about and stopped. I panicked. What if he’d fallen and knocked himself out?

  “Matthias? Matthias, are you all right?”

  I slipped through the trees as quickly as I could, then stopped, pant
ing, looking around. “Matthias?”

  No answer. I was certain his footsteps had stopped nearby. I peered closely between the trees and a wash of sensation overwhelmed me . . .

  Last night you were here. Running panicked through the trees, away from Skripi . . .

  But that had been a dream. I’d woken up in bed . . .

  No, you were here.

  I spotted a narrow branch, broken, and a memory crushed down on me. Running in the dark, putting out my hand to stop the branch hitting my face, the flash of pain across my palm as it cut me.

  I looked at the bandage on my hand, frozen with fear.

  “HA!” Matthias jumped out from behind a tree, scaring the wits out of me.

  I shrieked, then when I saw it was just a rotten kid, I pressed my hand over my heart and taught him every English swear word I knew. He ran away from me again, this time in the direction of the station, but I was through with running. I headed out of the forest at my own pace. I felt helpless and afraid, but mostly I felt angry. I’d thought all this nonsense was over, that I’d managed to make it all rational. I didn’t want to feel helpless and afraid, but how could I feel otherwise when I could no longer reliably distinguish dreams from reality?

  Magnus took the kids over to the beach to collect seashells that afternoon, and I decided to abandon my pride and ask Gunnar for my protection ward. This plan was foiled in the first twenty seconds when Gunnar opened the door, grinned at me, and said, “Let me guess. You’ve finally abdicated as Queen of the Skeptics and you want your lucky charm back.”

  “Of course not. What makes you say that?”

  “I heard you scream in the forest.”

  My heart jolted. “Last night?”

  “No, today. Around lunchtime.”

  “Oh. Yes. Matthias gave me a fright.”

  “Hm. I think it’s just a ward against evil spirits, not small naughty boys.” He ushered me in.

  “If only,” I said, sitting at his kitchen table. “Make me coffee?”

  “Of course. You look tired.”

  I dropped my forehead on the table. “Those kids are driving me nuts.”

  “Then tell Magnus you won’t look after them.”

  “He’s paying me in days off.” I lifted my head to watch him make coffee.

  “Don’t tell Maryanne. She always does it as a favor.”

  “Why would anybody want children? They’re hideous beasts.”

  “Matthias and Nina are. Yours wouldn’t be,” he said, pointing a spoon at me emphatically.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because your kids won’t have a psychotic shrew for a mother and Magnus for a father.”

  I laughed. “Don’t speak too soon. I’m already psychotic, and Magnus has already asked me for a date.”

  Gunnar dropped into the chair opposite me in shock. “He didn’t!”

  I waved my hand. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “What did you say?”

  “No, of course!” I exclaimed quickly. “I was drunk. He was drunk. And this morning he’s acting like nothing happened.”

  “Maybe he’s forgotten. If he was drunk—”

  “I hope so. But Magnus is so shameless it wouldn’t surprise me if he remembered everything and just intended to carry on as usual.”

  “So did you scream when he asked you?”

  “Sorry?”

  “When I said I’d heard you scream, you thought I meant last night.”

  “Oh, that. No, I didn’t scream at Magnus. I had a nightmare around three. I dreamed I was in the forest and when you said you’d heard a scream from out there, I thought . . .”

  He was smiling at me again. “You thought? What?”

  “Nothing.” I slapped the table. “Where’s my bloody coffee?”

  Gunnar laughed. “I think I have some information that might interest you.”

  “If it’s about ghosts—”

  “No,” he said, returning to the bench to pour the coffee, “it’s about the weather.”

  “Go on.”

  A coffee cup in each hand, he shrugged a shoulder toward his computer desk. “Come over here. I’ll show you.”

  He booted up his computer as I slipped into the chair beside his and sipped my coffee.

  “I’ve been entering all the old paper records into the database,” he explained as the soft blue glow of the screen lit his face. “Magnus wanted me to pay particular attention to unusual weather events, for his research work. So I’ve been scanning the records for storm reports, heavy snow, long rain periods . . . and I got all the way back to day one.” He punched a few keys, and the screen filled with text. He tapped the screen. “Here, seventeenth of June 1964. The grand opening of Kirkja Station, attended by all of eight people, the first staff members. Temperature at 11:00 A.M. was twenty-two degrees. Sky was cloudless, humidity low. And here . . .” He clicked and the next screen came up. “Same date, 3:00 P.M. They report a snowstorm.”

  “Yes, but it’s obviously a mistake,” I said. “You double-checked?”

  “I did.”

  “Their mistake then. They wrote it on the wrong day.”

  He clicked an icon in the corner and a box appeared. “In some instances I added comments from the journals. ‘We were outside enjoying a few celebratory drinks at lunchtime when the temperature began to drop and clouds blew in. Soon after, snow began to fall and by afternoon it was heavy, accompanied by thunder and lightning. We’re all baffled.’”

  “Interesting,” I said. “Did they manage to explain it?”

  “I don’t know. There’s nothing else about it in the record books.”

  “The weather does odd things,” I said. “Raining frogs—”

  “There are two instances of raining frogs in here,” he said, “but I’m not interested in that. I don’t even think the snowstorm was particularly odd in itself. It’s the other stuff I’ve read that makes it intriguing.”

  “What other stuff?”

  He reached across his desk and began plowing through an overflowing in-tray. Something clunked out of a pile of papers. He scooped it up and handed it to me. “Oh, did I show you this? Magnus found it in the forest.”

  It was the shard of metal that I’d thought was part of an axe blade. It was cold in my palm. I felt no conviction about what it was this time. It was just an unidentifiable piece of anything.

  Gunnar had seized a set of photocopies and shook them in front of me. “Remember I told you about the first settlement here? In the eleventh century? It was a Christian settlement and the Christians loved to keep records. There were a few records left behind on Kirkja, and they’re now in a museum in Bergen. This is a copy of a modern translation of the Latin. It’s very boring, mostly. But look at this . . .” He pointed to a sentence.

  “I can’t read Norwegian,” I reminded him dryly.

  “It says: ‘On the day the foundation stone was laid for our new church, the warm summer morning gave way to a mighty storm and deep snowfall.’”

  “Wow,” I said. “Amazing coincidence.”

  “Just a coincidence?”

  “What else would it be?”

  “I don’t know,” Gunnar said. “I like not knowing. I like to wonder. Don’t you?”

  I shook my head.

  “There’s more,” he said.

  “Go on.”

  He shuffled the pages. “Here, at the end. The last entry. Before the . . . before whatever happened to them. ‘This morning is cool and clear, the first signs of winter.’” Gunnar’s finger scanned down the page. “This is all boring nonsense about the Bible. And then, here: ‘The late morning grows hot. The children paddle naked in the water. I have never experienced such a heat, even in the middle of summer. The fires of hell itself could not be warmer.’” He flipped the page over. “And here: ‘The peculiar weather continues and many of our number grow superstitious. At dusk, the heat drained suddenly and sharply, and across the whole island stole a great frost. The trees are white
, the lake has frozen over and the ground is covered in crystals. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would never believe it. It is now dark and there are fearsome sounds in the forest. A cruel wind gathers force and we all huddle inside by the fire in fear of what may happen next.’”

  As Gunnar read aloud I found myself holding my breath. There was something so familiar about the tale. Imagined impressions flashed across my mind: desperate faces in the firelight, the weight of their fear. The piece of metal in my palm was growing warm. I dropped it on Gunnar’s desk, finding that it repelled me. “What happened next?” I said.

  “Don’t know. That was the last entry. It’s great, isn’t it? A real mystery. And all that stuff about the weather, it makes you think.”

  I gathered my wits. “You said it was written hundreds of years ago. It would be impossible to confirm if it were authentic or not. Or perhaps one of the translators has played with the language to make it more dramatic. You know, in light of the history of the island.”

  “I suppose so,” Gunnar said, putting the pages aside. “Is it not possible for a frost to come on the afternoon of a very hot day?”

  I shook my head. “Not here in the midlatitudes. In the Arctic, a change in air mass can mean katabatic winds and a sharp temperature drop. But certainly not how it’s described there.”

  Gunnar smiled. “Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gunnar waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go over to the rec hall. I promised Maryanne I’d help her with sandwiches for tomorrow’s picnic.”

  Gunnar reached over to turn off his computer and I saw the ward on a chain around his neck, under his shirt. If I caved in and asked for it, he would think he had won. He was obviously goading me, telling me mysterious stories. I preferred to be the old Vicky, who was scared of nothing.

  As Gunnar locked the cabin door behind us, I glanced up toward the trees. For a second, another image laid itself over the forest in my mind’s eye: ice hanging from branches, hoarfrost all over the ground, a strange creaking almost silence. The image troubled me. As though I had really seen it, once, somewhere.

  As though it might have really happened.

  Despite drizzle the evening before, Kirkja predicted a mild, clear day for our picnic and we were right. Shortly after the morning balloon launch, we all traipsed into the forest carrying blankets and baskets of food. Matthias and Nina ran ahead and ran back, calling in excited voices. The forest didn’t feel strange and haunted under these circumstances. I was looking forward to our day out. Night and solitude brought the yearning back. Being around other people helped me forget about Vidar for a few relaxed hours.