Giants of the Frost Page 32

  I wasn’t sure what to do, so I remained silent.

  Hel raised her head and met my eyes sadly. “I loved once,” she said, “and what is left of the lover in me wants to grant your wish. My beloved promised to come for me, here to Niflheim, after my exile.” Her eyes dropped, and she whispered, “He never did.”

  I waited.

  “The woman in me who was betrayed wishes you to be as unhappy as I am.”

  This last declaration galvanized my tongue. “Please, Hel. I am sorry that you were let down—”

  “Why her, Vidar? Why is she so special, and why was I so . . . disposable?” Her eyes began to glitter and I feared she would transform again.

  “You are not, Hel,” I said quickly. “He was simply not capable of estimating your worth.”

  “Rubbish. You don’t believe that. I’m a fat old cow with the legs of a corpse.”

  “No, no, you—”

  “Enough!” she shouted, flinging out her right hand. “Don’t insult me with your false flattery. What was your woman’s name?”

  “Halldisa,” I said, my breath caught in my throat. “Halldisa Ketil’s-daughter.”

  Hel paced the room three times in the firelight, her shadow growing and shrinking on the walls.

  “Vidar, I want to reward you for your own true heart, but I must punish you for his false heart. I know this isn’t fair, but I feel too. I hurt too.” She paused and sucked her lips together, holding back tears. “Halldisa will come back,” she continued, “but not now. She will enter Midgard sometime in the far future. I’d like to see if you will remain faithful to her memory once time wears you down.”

  “I will remain true forever,” I said, my heart heavy. “Please, let me have her now. Let me take her back with me.”

  Hel shook her head. “No. I will let you have warm clothes, new shoes and food for your journey, but you won’t have your beloved, not yet.”

  “How will I know when she is reborn?”

  “If your love was true, then your souls have touched and saved the imprint of one another. They will always be drawn to each other—across miles, across centuries. When it’s time, you’ll know.” She held up a warning finger. “She won’t remember you. You have to woo her all over again before you remind her. That will also test her love. If she doesn’t respond to you, then perhaps you overestimated the depth of her feeling.”

  “I can’t bear the years without her!” I cried, despair flooding into my throat. “Please, Hel.”

  “Be glad for what I’ve granted you. It’s much more than most people take from this place,” she said. Her voice grew gentle and kind once more. “Rest here a night or two, regain your strength, set your mind. She will come again; your heart must ache until then.”

  This is nearly all I have to tell you, Victoria. I returned from Niflheim and took my mother’s advice to exile myself from my family, and I have been true to you for a thousand years. Our story, my story, ends here. You’ve asked me for it many times: what will you do with it, Victoria? What will you do with me now you know the truth? Everything depends on your answer.

  Twenty-Six

  [Midgard]

  The silence that followed Vidar’s voice rushed upon my ears and grew heavy between us. I opened my eyes. The forest had grown dark and gloomy shadows had gathered. Vidar waited. He had waited a thousand years.

  It seemed I had lost the ability to speak. Formless thoughts clustered and shifted in my mind. Logic had completely disintegrated. During Vidar’s rehearsal of his tale, I’d recognized every word as a faithful account of my own memories—but memories that weren’t my own. Looking at him, his sad eyes black in the firelight, I knew that he was a supernatural creature utterly alien to me, but I had never felt closer to anyone in my life. My body had responded to his story with rush after rush of adrenaline, like riding on a fairground ride for so long that standing on solid ground seems all wrong and flat. Here I was, Queen of the Skeptics, dethroned by my own history. Irony or destiny?

  Vidar still waited.

  I sat up and he moved to sit beside me, our arms touching. “I don’t know who I am,” I said. “Or, at least, I don’t know whom you love.”

  “I love you.”

  “Halla? Or Victoria?”

  “You’re the same person.”

  “I’m not. I’m Victoria.” As I said this, the echo of my previous existence resonated on top of me and I had to catch my breath.

  “It’s only a name. It’s your soul, your spirit—”

  “I don’t even believe in souls. Or at least, I didn’t.”

  “You believe in me, don’t you?”

  “With all my heart.”

  “I need to speak to you seriously,” he said, his eyebrows drawing down. An image of him overlaid it and I knew it was one of Halla’s memories: he had spoken seriously to me long ago. “If my father finds out, he will kill you. You have to leave the island, go as far away as you can, far enough that he will not bother to follow you.”

  “And you’ll come with me?”

  He shook his head. “I cannot.”

  The earth seemed to shudder. “What do you mean?”

  “Because he would bother to follow me. To the very edges of civilization. Victoria, I have come here to save you, not to be with you. We can’t be together.”

  “No,” I said, as my already overtired brain tried to process this new flood of feeling. “We’re meant to be together. We’ve waited forever.” I could feel the years that had passed, century on top of century like layers of thick cold soil, heavy on my chest. I forced a breath.

  “My father—”

  “Save it, Vidar,” I said, resting my finger on his lips. “Tell me tomorrow. Be with me tonight.”

  His eyelids fluttered closed and I could feel the shuddering breath he drew.

  “Vidar?”

  Vidar opened his eyes and held my gaze and my body swirled with warm shivers. He turned and pulled me close against him, and I could hear his heart pounding and feel the heat of desire rising from his skin. He drew me into his lap and pushed my hair off my face and we froze there a moment, watching each other, and it seemed that the sun rose and set for an age; each cloud and shower of rain, each glimmer and beam of the daylight, counting all the days between us, between this love and the last. I felt something eternal and something sacred, and I recognized everything I had felt before as a mere shadow of real love. The ocean I had plunged into with Vidar was deep and thrilling, and the bottom was so far beneath me that I was terrified. To lose him again? To go back to my ordinary, flat world of shallow concerns? I would sooner die.

  I touched his face. He made a rumbling sound deep in his throat: half a growl, half a groan. His hands still in my hair, he pulled me forward and kissed me violently. His beard was rough, his lips were hot and laden with frantic passion. He pressed my body against his as though he wanted to crush me to pieces, dissolve into me. When I drew a sharp breath of pain, he released me and proceeded more gently. Tiny kisses on my chin and ears, down my neck. I was unfastening our clothes as quickly as I could, shedding mine awkwardly, having no idea how to get him out of his. He helped me and we ended up on the forest floor among the animal skins he slept on. Warm blood, hard kisses, and smooth hot flesh over his ribs under my fingers. He covered my body with his and slowed: his breathing, his heart, his mouth. I looked up at the dark branches above us, the scudding clouds. Vidar warmed my skin with his touch and trembles started deep inside me.

  “Remember to breathe,” he said.

  Centuries of desire weighed down his fingertips, the yearning of ages about to be dispersed. His body moved into my body. Intense feelings threatened to break each of us out of our skins, to achieve the impossible and melt us together.

  One of us cried out. The dark forest did not respond. Far away the clouds parted on distant stars and Vidar’s hot skin soaked up the light and transferred it to me. It seemed to last forever and yet be captured in a moment. I sobbed and clung to him and he held me
and drew up a blanket to cover us. I came all the way back to my own body and Vidar was kissing my shoulder tenderly.

  “I love you,” I said, but it seemed impossibly inadequate to say, I love you. Drunkards and novelists had been using those words for too long. What I felt was so much more than that random collection of blank syllables. The meaning spilled over the edges and disappeared, unvoiced, into the forest.

  “And I love you,” Vidar said. “Forever.”

  “Stay with me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I’m not afraid to die,” I said, and in that instant it was true, though it would not always be so.

  “I’m afraid of you dying.”

  “More afraid of that than of us being apart?”

  He bent his head and pressed his lips into the hollow of my throat. “It’s impossible.” He sighed, his breath warm on my skin. “It’s all impossible, Victoria.” He raised his head. “If I must lose you, then I would rather you were alive, here, with some hope of happiness for—”

  “There’s no hope of happiness without you,” I said, sitting up and turning on him. “Now I know, I can’t go back to what I used to be.” I realized that I had shouted, that my voice had sounded shrill and desperate. I shook my head and laughed. “Look what you’ve done to me. You’ve turned me into a crazy person.”

  “Victoria—”

  “No, no,” I said. “Not now. I can’t bear to hear it. Stay just until tomorrow night. Just one day, Vidar. Please.” I secretly hoped that if I could make him stay until then, we could conjure a way to be together. I had transformed from the girl who believed in nothing to the girl who believed in miracles.

  Vidar had his lips pressed together in consideration. His eyes undid me, so deep and sad and full of passion.

  “Vidar, please?” I whispered. “Just one day.”

  “Victoria, it cannot be,” he said quickly, as though he wanted to have it out before he changed his mind. “I must go tonight, and you must leave tomorrow.”

  The real world swerved in on me. My job, my future. “I can’t leave until Wednesday when the boat comes,” I said.

  “And what day is it now?”

  “Thursday . . . nearly Friday.”

  He sat up next to me and looked bewildered, afraid. “Then I will stay with you until Wednesday, and keep you safe from him.”

  “But you don’t know for sure that he’ll come?”

  Vidar shook his head. “No. I hope he will never find out. However, now we have been together, he could sense you, and he has scrying water he could use to find you . . .”

  The first cold tendril of fear touched my heart then, mortal fear. I remembered the dreams I’d had of the dogs chasing me, the man-monster with the cruel axe. Now those fragmented dreams had a deeper texture, fleshed out by Halla’s memories.

  “I will keep you safe until then,” he said firmly. His right fist was clenched.

  “I trust you,” I said, touching his hand.

  He looked at me, slowly releasing his fingers. “I won’t let it happen again,” he said.

  I folded him into my arms and pulled him down so we lay among the furs and blankets. “Vidar, imagine if we could stay together.”

  “I dare not.”

  “Please, just for tonight. Let’s imagine what it would be like. Perhaps we’ll discover we’re completely incompatible, then you’ll be happy to go home without me.”

  “Don’t joke about it, Victoria.”

  “Lighten up,” I said, snuggling against his chest. “Go on. If you could, what would you do with me?”

  His skin was very warm and his voice vibrated in his chest. “I’d build you a little house here in the forest.” His tone was so sad that I regretted asking him. “I’d gaze at you every moment and cover you in kisses, and every night we would sit by the fire and tell stories, and every day we’d walk along the beach or in the forests and nobody would ever disturb us.”

  “It sounds wonderful. But couldn’t we leave the island? I’d miss my mum. Imagine, we could get a little flat together. You could bring me a cup of tea in bed every morning. We could have a little family.”

  His body tensed. “No, Victoria, your blood and mine can’t mix. There could be no children from our union.”

  I was surprised by how sad that made me. “Oh well . . . Dogs, then. Spoiled yappy ones.”

  “We would have so much love, the two of us,” he said, stroking my hair. “Enough to make the universe spin and all the stars glow until Ragnarok . . . but it’s dangerous to say such things.”

  “They’re only words,” I muttered, as sleep slipped over me. But they were more than words. They were compelling fantasies, persuasive enough to lead lovers into foolish decisions.

  Dawn crept under my eyelids a few hours later and I woke with a horrid churning in my guts. Lack of sleep, lack of food, the shock, who knows? I sat up, felt my whole stomach start to rise, and dashed into the woods with a blanket around me to hurl it all out.

  Vidar was behind me a second later. “Victoria? You’re unwell?”

  “I’ll be all right,” I said, waving him away. “I’ve got a weak stomach.”

  “A weak . . . ?”

  “I get sick easily. I’ll be all right. I just need to eat something, probably. Please, let me upchuck in peace. It’s not how I want you to remember me.”

  He quietly took himself back to the campsite and I threw up a few more times, nothing but bile, and felt a little better and joined him. He offered me some water, which I gulped down, and a piece of hard dark bread. I chewed on it dutifully, but was longing for a hot cup of tea and some toast with marmalade. I lay down and groaned, my hands over my aching stomach.

  “I don’t understand, Victoria. Hunger makes you ill?”

  “It’s probably a combination of things,” I said. “I’m tired and maybe a bit shaken up still. Shock can do strange things to your body.” I smiled. “Well, my body at least. I’m sure yours is built to withstand more than mine. Look what you did to me last night.” I slid the blanket off my shoulder to reveal a purplish bruise.

  “I did this to you?” he said, his eyes round with bewilderment.

  “Don’t feel bad,” I said quickly. “If I’d wanted you to stop, I would have said.”

  He frowned. “I forget how mortal you are,” he said. “Your spirit is so strong, but your body . . .”

  “I’m all right, really,” I said, patting his hand. “Thanks for being concerned.” I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again a few minutes later he was still looking at me, worried.

  “Vidar?” I said, sitting up.

  “You’re so vulnerable,” he whispered. “I should never have come near you. I should have let you live your life in peace.”

  “I would have lived my life in sadness had you not come,” I said, putting my arms around him. “Peace is well and good, but I’d give it away to be with you.” I sat back. “Now, we have to make plans. I’m expected at work today, but I won’t go. I’ll say I’m sick. You can come back to my cabin. I’ll get us some food and see if I can steal some of Gunnar’s clothes from the laundry.”

  “You are still a sensible girl, I see,” he said. “Making plans.”

  “I just want to be with you,” I said, my lips finding the tender skin at his earlobes. “If fate has decided that we only have until Wednesday, that means we have to fit two lifetimes of love in.”

  “That’s a lot to ask.”

  “It’s all I’ll ever ask for.” I paused, an idea glimmering in a far corner of my brain. “Vidar, is it possible for you to change your fate? Then your father would have nothing to hold you by.”

  Vidar looked perplexed. “One can bargain with the Norns,” he said, “but I don’t know where they live.”

  He paused and I opened my mouth to say something, when he continued: “At present,” he said. “I don’t know at present where they live.”

  “But you could find them? Hypothetically speaking?”

  “Many me
n have wandered for years and grown old in the roots of the World Tree, looking for the spinners of destiny,” he said. “I fear we don’t have that much time on our side.”

  I stood gingerly and stretched my legs. My stomach was beginning to settle again, but I wanted to be inside. The forest had its charm; the cabin had central heating and a shower.

  “Come with me,” I said. “Be careful. Don’t speak and if you hear somebody approaching, you have to be really quiet.”

  “Wasn’t it me who taught you to be quiet?” he said, laughing. “Let’s see who makes the least noise on our way.”

  “It’s a bet.”

  He won, of course, because I broke a twig within forty seconds of leaving the campsite behind. As we walked beside each other in the forest, with the warm sunbeams bouncing between the new leaves and my hand enclosed in his, I felt a shudder of such exquisite happiness that I wanted to sob. At last, life made sense. At last, there was a meaning, a shape to my existence. Although I accepted that I might lose him, that I could die if I wasn’t prepared to let him go, the fear seemed distant in the morning sunshine, a cold thing to be considered only at night.

  I could almost feel the cogs and gears of my brain whirling over, processing the problem. There must be a way around it, there must be a way we could be together. Vidar was a supernatural being, there must be supernatural logic somewhere in there, and why couldn’t it work in our favor instead of just against it?

  We drew near the hem of the forest and, remembering Magnus spying me there, I slowed.

  “We have to be careful now,” I said.

  “I’ll follow you.”

  I took his hand and we crept to the edge of the slab. I peered left and right. Nobody in sight. Squeezing his hand, I led him quickly to the back door of my cabin, fumbled the key, pushed the door open, then slammed out the outside world.

  “Home safe,” I said.

  He hesitated in the hallway. “Make yourself comfortable,” I said. “I’m going to sort out a few things.”

  “Don’t be long,” he said, reluctantly letting my fingers go. “Every moment is precious.”

  I hurried over to the admin building, first stop the laundry. Gunnar always left his clothes in the dryer for days after he’d washed them. I found a shirt and a pair of checked pajama pants which I thought might fit Vidar, and stuffed them into a laundry bag. With that under my arm, I went to the galley. Empty, but not for long. I could hear Frida and Carsten talking in the rec hall. I threw open the doors to the pantry and grabbed four cans of soup and a leftover half loaf of bread, a bag of chocolate cookies and a packet of Weetabix. I was in the cold room stashing a carton of milk in the laundry bag when I heard someone in the kitchen.