She went up the stairs and out into the backyard – the same way she’d came, but she didn’t quite remember what she was going to do next. It took her a while to recall how to get back. She checked Viður’s instructions on the crumpled note, just to be sure. She found herself staring at the rusty tricycle covered in wild grass and scattered sticks. Fallen branches from the dead trees littered the ground. It reminded her of something, but she didn’t know what.
Garún put on the headphones and started walking. She just wanted to get the hell away from that place. The music calmed something inside her and she walked aimlessly through the streets of the Forgotten Downtown, not caring what the tiny demon trapped in the skull was trying to tell her, just glad that someone was looking out for her, telling her to take care. It made her feel as if she wasn’t completely alone.
She was walking in circles. No, that couldn’t be. Garún stopped, looked around. She was at the same spot, almost in front of Feigur’s house again. She’d gone too far, crossed the boundaries in her thoughtlessness. Near the borders of Rökkurvík the streets circled in on themselves, deceiving and turning careless walkers around endlessly. No matter how far you walked you would never get anywhere. There was nothing outside of the Forgotten Downtown.
Garún felt sick and claustrophobic, as though she were a prisoner in a maze. She wanted out.
A blue hrævareldur floated nearby. Before she could stop herself she looked right into it. Her feet led her towards its warm and inviting flame. It floated further away and she followed. It knew where she was going. The fire would lead her home to safety.
Garún managed to stop herself with her toes just off the edge. Below her, black waves beat against the concrete harbour. The hrævareldur floated above the water, just out of reach. The sea was deathly cold. From the faint light cast by the hrævareldur something could be seen moving in the deep – something pale and massive under the surface. Tremors shook her body. This had been too close.
It was an arduous task to find the place described in Viður’s instructions. The house was weathered, even though there was no weather or sunlight in the Forgotten Downtown. There was no floor inside, wooden scraps and rusted debris covered the earthen foundation. The doorways were empty. Scraps of wallpaper hung on the walls. A rough, concrete staircase led to the upper floor.
Upstairs was bare concrete, open doorways, windows boarded shut. It was even colder here than downstairs. Only one room set itself apart. Iron pipes jutted out from the floor, thick and solid, in place for a bathroom, most likely. Someone had sprayed a galdrastafur on the middle of the wall. Garún sensed it before she saw it and realised she’d been heading towards it subconsciously from the moment she stepped inside the ruined building.
The sigil was an arcane shape, an esoteric form that spoke directly to the subconscious. The spray shimmered wetly, as if it had only been painted an hour ago. Its shape was of long arms stretching out in a curved, overlapping circle from the centre of the stave. A vortex, a black hole that devoured everything. Garún placed her palm on the centre of the galdrastafur.
The world crashed into her, and Garún felt as if her breath had been punched out of her lungs. Immediately the music exploded in her years.
The police.
* * *
She found herself inside a bathroom stall. Her hand rested on cold tiles, scribbled with illegible tags and lewd messages. The guiding symbol was not there. Loud dance music overwhelmed the deafening warning from her headphones. The noisefiend was going berserk. The police were close, accompanied by something worse. There was danger everywhere.
Garún barged out of the booth, still wobbly from the physical trauma that came with the shift in reality. The cramped bathroom was filled with men, reeking of alcohol, cigarettes and sweat. They laughed and cheered when she limped out of the stall, obviously thinking that she was with someone in there, and wasted by the look of it.
“Well, well, a blendingur! You’ve still to do one of those, Jói,” said a man dressed in a suit, pissing into a urinal.
“Jemmgh,” Jói slurred, and tried not to piss too much on the floor.
“How much do you charge, love? Or do you come free?’
“Where – am I?’ Garún finally managed to grunt. It was hard to breathe.
“Haha! The whore doesn’t even know where she is!’
A middle-aged man came up next to Garún and leaned in. He stank of cigars and brennivín.
“What’s a half-breed like you doing here? Go and whore yourself somewhere else!’
He tried to grab her, but Garún pushed him back as hard as he could. She spat in his face as he stumbled backwards and fell.
“Go fuck yourself, you fucking pig!’
She shoved her way past the men and out.
The club was packed to the doors. Modern spotlights cast multicoloured light over the crowd and tried its hardest to turn a regular living room floor into a dance floor. Garún looked around, bewildered. She didn’t recognise this place. Downtown clubs didn’t usually let huldufólk in, much less blendingar. She still knew that this wasn’t the same house she’d come from in the Forgotten Downtown. She’d shifted somewhere else. She made her way to a window and looked outside. She wasn’t on Hverfisgata, she was on Laugavegur. She wanted to vomit. This felt wrong. She didn’t know you could leap this far between places.
The noisefiend screamed in her headphones. People stared at her and even though she couldn’t hear what they were shouting she knew it wasn’t good. She had to get out before things got worse.
Then she saw them. They were not in uniform and almost indistinguishable from the rest of the
