It came to her in an instant. She saw the world for what it was: a glorious, thinly veiled illusion of suffering and hope. And there, towering over it all, a titan made out of newly erupted stone, a chained god that had wound the strings of all creation around its hands. It was growing greater, rising in splendour, a sunrise of enlightenment about to be revealed to her in merciless, unforgiving light. The titan looked down upon her.
The Stone Giant.
Then, before she could truly perceive its true nature, the entire vision vanished as quickly as it had appeared, her feet giving way as the illusion that is the world collapsed and everything cascaded down into the cold and patient abyss.
Light. Dark. Screaming. Whispering.
* * *
She was shaking when she came back to herself, soaked in sweat. Her entire body ached and her voice was gone, but she didn’t remember screaming. The concert was over and the band had vanished from the stage. The other concertgoers were as worn out as she was, completely exhausted and satisfied, a strange, communal look in their eyes. She was dying of thirst.
Everything was a haze. Every face looked like another, nameless worms that thought themselves to be sentient. Walking dreams. She searched for and found him.
Sæmundur said something and she responded. They laughed. He was changed, too. She now saw through the heavy darkness that had shrouded him. He was still there, himself, hidden behind those layers of anxiety and fear and arrogance. A small glimmer at the bottom of an ancient lake. She felt the strings of his fate beating in sync with her own rhythm and knew that he felt the same. They kissed, deeply and intimately.
They tore the clothes off each other and collapsed on her bed so it groaned, hot and sweaty, consumed with an intense desire. Garún felt him against her, hard and excited, and the eagerness built up until they merged with each other. Sounds, moans, gasps, blasphemies uttered in the dark. Flesh against flesh, warm and lush and ravenous.
* * *
She woke up in the gloom. It didn’t matter now if it was night or day. The bed sheets were soaked with sweat and she felt a dried wetness between her legs. He was lying next to her, pretending to sleep, and she thought of the last time they tried to sleep together. She thought of herself, standing in the rain, holding a cat. The darkness that surrounded him.
“Leave,” she whispered in the darkness. “Leave.”
Nítján
BEFORE
When Sæmundur was two years old his mother died in childbirth. He and his siblings were split up into foster care all around the country. Or so he was told. He couldn’t remember either his mother or his siblings. His father he’d never heard mentioned, but he spent a large part of his childhood waiting for him. The only vague memory he had of his mother was that she used to sing lullabies to him. Still today he felt a regret he could neither explain or fully understand if he heard some of the old Hrímlandic songs. Perhaps it was a false memory. Perhaps what really filled him with sadness was the thought of the childhood he could have had.
Sæmundur was eleven winters old when he put his first draugur to rest. He had been herding sheep for the farmer in Hofteigur when a great, thick fog descended upon the heath. The land faded like a photograph left too long in the sun and he felt that he faded along with it. It was the middle of the day, but the fog was so thick it was as if the sky had darkened. That was when he encountered the haugbúi.
In the fog he came upon a small mound he didn’t recognise. A young girl sat on top of it. He knew she had been waiting for him. She was beautiful, but just as grey and faded as the dead grass on top of the mound. He wasn’t surprised by this, even though everything was green all around. He knew that this was the infamous Hóla-Skotta, who had led shepherds and travellers to their deaths since the earliest times of settlement, when she had been drowned for cannibalism and buried up on the heath.
“Come here, shepherd-boy,” she called to him in a sweet voice. “Up here I can see where the flock of Hofteigur’s old farmer has gone.”
“Although lambs are easily herded for the slaughter, it takes more than that to entice me,” Sæmundur answered.
She laughed. “So you say, but still your ear is tagged with my name.”
Sæmundur felt something hot drip on his shoulder. He wanted to turn away and run as fast as he could, but before he knew it he was standing on the mound in front of Hóla-Skotta. He saw how her black pupils burned and smelled the stench coming off her, a heavy smell of earth, bone and rotten blood. He was brought into her arms and she stroked his cheek, pushed him in to her bloated bosom. She was cold and the stench of rot was overpowering, but in it was an underlying, sickening sweetness that fascinated him. He’d never been so close to a girl before. The cold fog cut to the bone and Sæmundur wanted nothing more than to vanish into the ashen mound with the draugur.
“Wait.” His mind felt heavy and groggy, making it difficult to talk. It was as if the fog had gathered in his mind. “I know of another mound, closer to the village, where people walk every week on their way to church. If I moved your bones then you could eat the fattest meat the region has to offer instead of making do with starving shepherds.”
“Why should I risk that when I’ve got you here? So tender and soft?’
He twitched away from her fingers stroking through his hair.
“Everyone
