that bleak wilderness. And the only thing I knew for certain was that in two weeks I had to be on a ship out of here, and that meant by then the girl would be dead and her body rotting somewhere in this purgatory. All I had to work out now was how to get Isabela away from the others. If I could just find a way to get her alone, then killing her would surely be easy.
Eydis
Birds of the train – any captive bird used to train hunting hawks. Birds of the train might include pigeons, herons and kites. The birds were kept tied to a long line when they flew so that inexperienced falcons could learn to chase them.
She has come. I hear her first footfall on the land reverberating through my bones, as if a herd of wild horses is thundering over my head. She steps from the cold, wild sea to the fiery earth, pulled by my cord. But she is not helpless, not my captive. It is her will that drives her on as fiercely as my will calls her to me. And the dead follow her, restless shadows slipping through the dark waves behind her. They come because of her. They come because they must, drawn to her as she is drawn to me. She can sense them like whispers at her back, but she has not yet found the courage to turn and face them. I knot another finger-length of cord on my lucet. Slowly, gently, she will be guided to us.
Ari comes slithering down into the cave. I know his footsteps well now, that careless bounding down over the rocks and boulders, as if he is invincible, as is always the way with the young, then the pause, the nervous hesitation, as he braces himself to come around the rocky outcrop, fearful of what he might see.
He slings the sack from his shoulder and pulls out the contents – wind-dried stockfish, a few strips of smoked mutton and a good measure of peas shrivelled until they are hard as stones.
‘Fannar sent this,’ he says, as if I need to be told.
We read the seasons by the gifts they bring us. The weeks of eggs and fresh lake fish have gone. Berries and herbs have been eaten and grow no more. Now we enter winter, when everything will taste of smoke. There will be weeks when no one comes to us at all, because the snow lies too deep, endless days when the wind howls across the mouth of the cave and time is measureless. Often in the past, through those long winds of solitude, Valdis and I used to wonder if every man and beast had perished up there in the frozen world, and we were the only two who remained alive.
Finally, when we fear the snows will last for eternity, they begin to drip, and the drips become streams, and streams become raging torrents powerful enough to drag great boulders as easily as grains of sand. Then come the hungry weeks of spring, when store cupboards empty, the animals bellow in vain for hay in the byres and fishing boats cannot put to sea. The people come, but they bring nothing but apologetic shuffles. They are ashamed to come empty-handed, but we can see the misery in their hollow cheeks and protruding bones. They swear they will bring us gifts when the first birds nest again. They keep their word, and so begins the time of eggs once more. Thus it has been since the day our mother brought us to this cave. But this year will be different – my sister is gone and I am alone with the nightstalker.
The boy’s eyes dart sideways to the corner where the man lies. He knows it is dangerous to look, but he cannot help himself.
‘I know why you fear him, Ari.’
‘I don’t fear any man,’ he says, his chin jerking up like a child’s.
‘You should fear him. He is a draugr, a nightstalker.’
He flinches at the words, and hangs his head, but I can see he already knows this.
‘It is what you feared he was. Who is he, Ari? What name was he known by in life?’
He does not answer, nor will he look at me. I wait. He will tell me in his own time. The young, like the old, cannot be hurried. Finally Ari raises his head. His face is as pale as ashes in the torchlight.
‘I cannot be certain,’