The apocalypse shut almost every single portal into the huldufólk’s dimension. There was no going back. But what remained were ruins like the church in Hamar and abnormal oddities like the Forgotten Downtown. When an entire reality collapses, others feel its aftershock. Cracks start to appear, which widen into gaps with time and erosion.
To Garún, the church in Hamar was like a god lording it over the town, a protective vættur of the land that was only challenged by the city walls in the distance. After all, the huldufólk were Hrímlanders, and just like all Hrímlanders they had to live by a mountain. The church was their mountain. Huldufjörður’s people streamed into the rock on every Seiðday. The lava rock was tall and angular, jagged and coarse, almost like a stalagmite. To all appearances it seemed like a regular part of the volcanic landscape, barring its unusual size. But as you walked inside another world came into view.
Glory was the word that came to her mind every time she entered. Divine glory. The ceiling was high, much higher than the rock’s height indicated. Tall windows reached up, many of them broken but some still intact, their stained glass covered in fine cracks. Broken statues lined the walls, one between every pair of windows. No matter what the weather was outside, golden light and a warm summer breeze always came through the windows. The stone pews were made of lustrous marble. They were carved from the same stone as the floor and the entire inside of the church. It was all one seamless marble stone, which looked as if it had been shaped with seiður or galdur, not carved. The stained glass and statues depicted events and creatures that had been forgotten hundreds of years ago. But it didn’t matter. They were all masks of the one god.
The altarpiece itself depicted Adralíen-toll in all its glory. The one god was made from countless hands, each of them holding a mask of a vættur, a god, a demon, a monster. In the centre was a white, expressionless mask. Disconcerting light shone through its eyes. This mask was the only consistent one among the countless others, which were never the same any two Masses in a row. Sometimes it swapped out the mask in the centre during Mass, but no one ever saw it moving. At one moment the blank mask would be there, but then something realigned itself in the blink of an eye and Adralíen-toll would be holding up the mask of Drókumljár, the god of galdur and disease. In a moment the altarpiece could change again, so the hand would now be holding the mask of Týrrkt, the three-tongued betrayer. Neither the priest nor anyone else had the explanation or the knowledge of how the altarpiece worked. It was an ancient piece of art, one of the few intact remains of the world that had been.
Garún usually spent her time at Mass gazing out of the window. She sat by herself at the back as soon as she was old enough. Her mother sat with Fjóla and the other children. With time they had been given the privilege of sitting down, not that she considered this to be anything resembling a kindness. It simply made them easier to ignore if they weren’t standing. Garún had seen through the priest’s façade. He too was just a mask, hiding his true face.
The church was enormous and as a result, even when everyone in the village was in attendance, was only half full at best. The priest’s voice sounded clearly through the church, reverberating in the nearly empty chamber. The acoustics carried his voice so he always sounded as if he was standing right behind Garún. Every Mass the reverend talked about the sins of the huldufólk and their fall from grace, their arrogance and unnatural greed that caused Adralíen-toll’s heart to be filled with contempt, making him place the mask of the Destroyer Who Creates the Vortex upon his face, shaking the foundations of the world until they collapsed. He spoke of how they had to repent for the sins of their past, for the millennia of lust and cruelty, and only then could each and every one of them earn their place in the embrace of the one god, becoming a mask in his hand that the god might one day place upon his face and thus grant them eternal life. Everyone could hope. But it was a hope tainted with self-reproach.
Garún learned to ignore the reverend’s preachings, let the vile hate disappear into the background so he was nothing more than the ocean roaring in the distance. So she spent her trips to church mostly doing what she did at home: looking out into a distant world and daydreaming.
Behind the cracked glass she simultaneously saw the weathered hovels of Huldufjörður, and something else. If she let her mind wander she sometimes saw very clearly into the world that had been, which still let its sun shine into the church. Every time
