She immediately pulled them back down. A blinding display of wild colours roared around her, barely unseen, almost audible. She was standing in the middle of a violent storm, brimming with a malevolent joy as it acted out its purpose. As it obeyed its master.
Moving as one, Þráinn, the soldiers and the galdramaður fell to their knees and bent forward, as if in prayer, prostrating themselves before Sæmundur. They were whimpering. She could barely make out words. It sounded as if they were pleading for mercy. Þráinn forced up his head, staring at her intently, his face frozen in a wretched grimace, his eyes and mouth leaking writhing tendrils of pitch-black darkness. The handcuffs undid themselves around Sæmundur’s hands, falling to the cobblestones with a loud, jarring crash. This made Garún snap out of it, as if she herself had been entranced. She rushed towards the brick in the wall, too afraid to look back, too afraid to see what the sentient darkness was doing to these men. She pulled out the brick, turned it, and found herself back in the Forgotten Downtown as she pushed it back in. Just before she stepped through she heard sickening cracks of bones breaking and choked sounds of retching.
She let out a breath. It seemed to echo through the unnatural stillness of Rökkurvík.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Sæmundur said.
She yelled, turning to face him behind her, afraid of what she might see there in the unrelenting dark of Rökkurvík. But he was just standing there, as he had been before the shadows surrounding him became alive, gaunt and dejected.
“I’m also sorry that I led them to you. I was being reckless. But we should be fine now. I doubt they’ll bother us again.”
“How did you follow me? How did you cross over?’
They were standing behind two decrepit houses in Rökkurvík. She was yelling at him, her hands trembling.
“What the fuck was that? What did I see in the darkness with you, Sæmundur?’ she said, her voice almost cracking. “What did you do?’
He looked up and met her eyes, and the hopelessness that had come over him temporarily gave way to something else. A gleam in his eyes of something suppressed for so long, but now, at last, come to the surface. Some kind of pride. Some type of hunger.
“You don’t have to be afraid.” He smiled. She found herself unable to return it. “I’m here to help.”
Sextán
BEFORE
Garún was fifteen years old when she left home. She didn’t run, she just walked away. She had lost count of the number of times she had threatened to leave, or when she’d stormed out only to sneak back in the next day, wet and cold after sleeping in a crevice in the lava just outside the village, constantly terrified that she’d get too close to the wild seiðmagn, where the rocks would come to life and suffocate her. Or worse.
Still, this was a better fate than to be forced to spend one more minute in the presence of her grandmother. That’s how she felt at the time, at least. Her anger kept her warm during the cold night, but just as that fire was quick to flare up, it quickly faded as well. So she learned to stoke the embers of her anger, to keep it alive and burning.
It had happened late the previous summer, when the children had been out picking glowberries. In a place with so few luxuries, a few delicious berries at the end of summer were a unique treat. Garún had spent the summer working salt fish, spreading out the fish on a green field, to dry it out in the sun. Getting a day off to go berry picking and keeping an eye on the children made her feel like a kid again. As if they were back playing Fallen Stick together. Fæðey came with her, despite her being older and having got a job at the laundry. Already her hands looked redder and her attitude was more grown-up. Garún suspected she had started drinking and felt a bit hurt that she might have been left out.
The boundary of relative safety in the lava fields was fluid and constantly shifting. Through years of experimenting the villagers had learned which areas were more stable, although they remained impractical for building upon or otherwise being utilised. It was there, among the moss-grown stones, the sharp, black lava rocks, that the children picked glowberries. They tasted sweet, even better when cooked into a jam. The faint luminescence of the berries stained their lips a faint blue, which would glow in the dark for a short while. The sun had started setting late at night, as autumn was just around the corner. So the kids made a game out of sneaking a few glowberries to bed and staying up late, eating the berries and laughing at the ghostly sights of their stained faces, glowing azure.
Fæðey had always been the bravest. Ever since they were little. She stood up for herself. Fought for what was right. Spoke back to adults if she thought them unfair. Once, Garún saw a merchant slap her across the face for being rude. Her lip bled but still she didn’t cry or lose her composure. She calmly spat on his polished boots. Fæðey had always taken care of them. Garún, Styrhildur, Hraki – all of them were like family to each other.
That day, Fæðey had gone further out than the other kids. She said she wasn’t afraid of the lava. She wanted more berries. She was going to make jam lasting through the winter, so they could have sweet jam on bread, freshly baked in the hot springs. Their faces, she said, would be glowing until the sun was shining through the summer night once again.
A few days
