My cheeks and nose tingle from the warmth of the cabin as I collect the journals, then drop them on the table. I’m glad we went for a walk together first; it makes it easier to ask Stig for a favour.
‘So this is what you found in the chest last night?’ Stig nudges one of the books with his finger, as if afraid to touch it.
‘Uh-huh.’ I stand over him and arrange them in the order I want them to be translated: Mormor’s journal first, then Karina’s and the books of sketches.
He picks up a random roll of paper and pulls at the ribbon. ‘What are these? Legal documents or something?’
‘No, journals and drawings. Things passed down in the family.’
Stig unrolls the paper and flattens it out, ignoring the books, and I sigh with annoyance. The picture is the one of the tree with the man hanging upside down. Beneath his head is a pool of water, with lots of symbols drawn inside.
‘Hmm. Looks like Odin,’ says Stig.
‘Who?’
‘The All-Father, the highest of the gods. The one the Vikings believed in. They believed in Odin, and Thor and Loki, and other gods. In the Norse myth, Odin hung himself from the world tree in search of knowledge, and the runes appeared in the well.’
I bend over the picture. ‘Do you know what the symbols mean?’
Stig turns to me in surprise. ‘You don’t know? You’re wearing one of them.’
I grasp the silver charm around my neck and my breath catches. I don’t know why I fashioned the three interlocking triangles. The design just came to me.
‘That’s the valknut, Odin’s symbol,’ says Stig. My fingers squeeze the charm as Stig points at the other shapes on the drawing. ‘You use the runes to tell someone’s fate and for doing magic.’
Leaning over him, I grab another roll of paper and open it out. ‘What about this?’ It shows a giant figure wearing a hooded robe, seated on a throne.
‘Hel, maybe – ruler of the underworld.’ Stig sees my confused expression. ‘The Christians stole her name and gave it to their idea of ‘hell’. The Norse didn’t believe in the devil; there’s no fire or burning people.’
He frowns, then adds, ‘The dark mother goddess, to whose cold embrace we must all return. It’s said that when you die, Hel forces you to look at yourself.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She makes you see the good and bad in yourself. I guess so that you can learn from your mistakes.’
He flicks through the sketches, seemingly puzzled. ‘Did your grandmother do these drawings? Didn’t she show them to you before?’
Ignoring the question, I sit opposite him and scrabble through sheets of paper. ‘What about this one?’ I ask, holding up a drawing of the tree with three women sitting at the base of its trunk. Like in the image carved on the chest, they’re passing a cord between their hands and one holds a pair of shears. I tug anxiously at the charm around my neck as Stig studies the picture.
‘The Norns,’ he says.
My stomach does a tiny somersault. ‘Are you sure?’ The charm comes away in my hand with a snap. ‘Damn.’
‘It’s OK. We can fix it.’ Stig takes the necklace from my hand before I can stop him. ‘We just need to –’
I snatch it back, annoyed. ‘I know what I need to do. I made the thing!’
Stig sits back in his chair. He looks as if he’s invited a stray cat into his house, only to discover it has fleas. I pick at the chain with my nail.
Stig points. ‘It’s that link there, see –’
‘I’m not totally blind!’ I snap. Feeling guilty, I mutter, ‘It would help if I had some tools.’
Stig leans over and opens a drawer of the dresser, then hands me a little pair of pliers. For once, the fact he knows where everything is makes me smile. ‘Thanks. I’m sorry. It’s just – all this, it’s a bit weird.’
Stig shrugs like it’s no big deal and watches as I attack the chain. I’ve always had a steady hand, but not today, it seems.
‘Can I?’ He gestures for me to give him the pliers and the necklace.
I hand them to him reluctantly, and then peer over as he carefully opens the clasp. ‘So, the Norns, are they gods too?’ I ask.
Stig tucks a wayward strand of hair behind his ear, then deftly closes the silver link. ‘No. They’re older than the gods. They’re the women who weave fate – they decide what kind of life we have and when we die.’
That must be what Mormor meant when she said the gift of reading clothing lies dormant until the Norns appear to you. She was talking figuratively about fate. A tiny laugh escapes me. How could I have thought otherwise? ‘So the Norns aren’t real women?’
He gives me a quizzical look. ‘Depends. Some people believe the Norns and the old gods are real. There’s a name for their religion, but I don’t remember what it’s called.’
He drops the chain on the table and takes his phone from his pocket. ‘I keep forgetting there’s no Internet. I could have looked it up for you.’
I try to put on the necklace, but I can’t quite open the clasp.
‘Here, let me.’
Stig stands up and walks around the table. I lift up my hair, feeling self-conscious, and he carefully lays the chain around my neck. His fingers lightly brush my skin and I tingle at his touch. He closes the clasp, but doesn’t move. ‘So you’ve inherited all this?’ he asks.
‘I’ve inherited more than that,’ I sigh.
Stig sits opposite me and waits for me to explain.
‘Mormor tended to the tree every morning and she wants me to do the same.’
‘Tend?’
‘It means to look after.’
‘I know what it means. But how do you look after a tree? Doesn’t it look after itself?’
I pick up Karina’s journal and flick through it until I come to a sketch of a woman kneeling inside the tree. There’s a wooden pail on the ground next to her. ‘I need to take water from the well every morning and put it on the roots inside the biggest chamber of the tree.’
Stig takes the journal from me and scans the page. ‘But your grandmother didn’t really believe what it says here, did she?’
I tut, unable to hide my irritation. ‘I don’t know what it says!’
‘Of course, sorry.’ He drops the book on the table, as if something bad has just crawled from its pages, then glances at the window and back to me. ‘According to whoever wrote that, the tree out there is Yggdrasil – the world tree.’
‘The one you said Odin hung from?’
Stig pulls the band from his hair and it tumbles over his shoulders in a great black mane. ‘Yes, the tree at the centre of the cosmos. It connects the worlds: its branches hold the realm of the gods, and beneath its roots is the underworld. It’s where the Norns live.’
My head throbs. Believing in destiny is one thing, but surely Mormor didn’t actually think there are women who weave fate living in the tree outside? Stig flicks through the book and reads, ‘Each day, Odin’s ravens Huginn and Muninn fly through the nine worlds, then perch on his shoulders and whisper their findings to him. Such was his thirst for knowledge, Odin plucked out his eye to be granted a drink from the well of wisdom.’
The pit of my stomach turns cold. ‘Wait. Odin only had one eye?’
Stig nods and carries on. ‘When the Norns would not tell him the secrets of fate, he hung himself from the tree. At last he spied the runes in the well, and in them found the answers he sought.’ I nod for him to continue. ‘Listen to this … The sagas speak the truth when they tell how Odin hung for nine days and nights. And it is true that neither food nor water would he take. But what they do not tell is how a young weaver woman watched over him. After he cut himself down from the tree with a cry, she took him to her cabin and gave him mead and the comforts of her bed. From Aslaug did spring a line of earthly daughters –’
‘Hang on. Mormor said I had to water the tree because someone called Aslaug made a sacred vow more than a thousand years ago.’
Stig glances at me quizzically, then back at the book. ‘It says here that because Odin hung from the tree, it caused its decay to quicken – so he tasked Aslaug and her descendants to water it from the well to preserve its life.’
I stand and go to the window. The branches of the tree shiver violently in the wind; it seems more alive than ever. Surely it’s nonsense; some kind of hoax. I can’t really be descended from an ancient Norse god.
I stare at the tree, trying to untangle the knot of thoughts in my head. A black shape flies at me. I jump as it crashes into the window then disappears, leaving a smudge on the glass. I grip the counter with both hands, my knuckles white.
‘Fy faen!’
Stig grabs his coat. For a moment my legs forget how to move. Then I push my feet into my boots and rush after him, my feet slipping on the cabin steps.
Breathing hard, I trudge to the garden and see a black shape in the snow. A raven.
‘Is it …?’
Stig shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’
It’s the same bird as before, I know it is. A beady black eye blinks and stares, closes and blinks again. Crouching next to it, I reach out my hand. I don’t know what to do, but I have to do something.
It gets to its feet, flaps awkwardly a little way, then lands on the snow. Perhaps it’s injured. I give chase and it takes to the air, then lands and does the same thing again. Finally it settles on a low branch of the twisted tree. It caws and caws, its eyes burning into me with murderous intensity – and this time I know what I have to do.