I make some toast and coffee and Stig holds out his hands. Instinctively I flinch away in case his clothes touch me, then place the plate and cup on the kitchen table – managing to misjudge the distance and spilling coffee on his lap. He smiles forgivingly and I sit across from him, my face burning. I take a bite and chew quietly, feeling awkward.
Finally he breaks the silence. ‘So your mother, she’s coming out tomorrow?’
‘I only told Yrsa that. Mum has no intention of coming.’ I don’t even try to hide the bitterness in my voice. He looks at me for an explanation, but how can I explain when I don’t understand myself. Mum never exactly got on with Mormor, but after the accident her moods became so erratic. One minute she’d be worried and fussing over me, the next she’d be cross with me for even mentioning Mormor’s name.
‘It’s tricky.’ I shrug. ‘What about you? Can you get your mum to send you some money for the ferry?’
Stig gives a hollow laugh. ‘No. I’d rather sleep in the woodshed than go back.’
I bite my thumbnail, knowing how that feels. ‘It’s complicated,’ says Stig. Then under his breath, ‘Complicated like a labyrinth.’
I think about all the hours I’ve spent reading Mum’s clothing, testing the different types of material and trying to understand her. Once when she went out, I even climbed the loft ladder and went through an old chest of her clothes. I know she loves me, but there’s so much she keeps hidden.
‘Try a labyrinth in the dark,’ I sigh.
‘Blindfolded,’ says Stig.
‘With a big hairy Minotaur,’ I add.
‘So, you’ve met my mother?’ Stig gives a wry smile and I start to laugh, then stop. It feels wrong without Mormor here to share the joke.
‘What about you? Are you going to go home?’ asks Stig.
I glance at the door. ‘I’d rather sleep in the shed with you.’ He raises an eyebrow and I feel myself blushing. ‘Not with you. I meant …’
‘I know, don’t worry.’ He inspects his nail, then says in a quiet voice, ‘Maybe we can both stay here for a while?’
I shift in my seat. ‘I guess. For a few days anyway.’
He looks relieved, but my chest is tight with anxiety. I can’t throw him out with nowhere to go, especially now I’ve lied to Yrsa, but I’m not exactly comfortable with him being here. Better to let him think he can only stay for a couple of nights.
I sigh, feeling trapped inside. My body feels heavy, like when I’ve taken out the bathplug but stayed in the water. For months the cabin is the only place I’ve wanted to be, but now Mormor has gone, I don’t know what to do. I can’t face going home and seeing Mum. Right now I never want to see her again.
Stig looks in the wicker basket and throws the last remaining log on the fire. ‘Is there some way I can help? Anything at all? I could take you to the graveyard in the village perhaps?’ There is kindness in his eyes, as if he really cares. I give a half-smile, touched by his concern. A part of me would like to see where Mormor is buried, but I don’t know if I’m ready. If I stay here, surrounded by her things, then it’s like she hasn’t really gone. Going to her grave would mean having to say goodbye. I shake my head.
‘Well, just say if you change your mind.’
I look out of the window, feeling uncomfortable under Stig’s scrutiny. ‘Anyway, aren’t we meant to stay inside in case there’s a wolf or something?’
Stig snorts. ‘It will just be a stray dog. I’m sure Olav will shoot it soon.’
I pull my heavy woollen cardigan a little tighter, then glance around the cabin. Stig’s gaze meets mine and we smile at each other shyly. Although he’s a complete stranger, there’s something about him that seems vaguely familiar. ‘A spark of connection’, is what Kelly calls it, when you meet someone and feel like you know them already.
My phone buzzes. Then buzzes again. And again.
‘Reception comes and goes,’ explains Stig. ‘You get nothing, then everything at once.’
Several texts from Mum and one from Kelly: How’s it going hun? Missed you last night x. I clasp the charm around my neck and start to type: Mormor is d—, then delete it. I can’t bring myself to say it. Instead I send: Busy but talk soon. Luv u x
I watch Stig leave the cabin, then look back at my phone. Mum will be expecting me to text – if I don’t contact her, she might phone Dad. At least she won’t call his house, not when there’s a chance Chantelle might answer. Chantelle was Dad’s secretary before he gave her the job of mistress and then promoted her to wife. She’s fifteen years younger than Mum, has fake boobs, fake eyelashes and a fake tan. To make it worse, she’s totally genuine in every other way and couldn’t be lovelier if she tried. It doesn’t bother me he’s got someone new – Dad checked out of our lives years ago; I just wish Mum could move on.
In the end I message: Am fine, having a good time at Dad’s. I don’t put a kiss.
According to my phone it’s 10.45 a.m., yet it’s only just properly light. I look out the window to see the sky swollen with rain clouds. Stig emerges from the woodshed clutching an axe. He props it next to the porch, then takes off his coat and rolls up his sleeves. I watch his body twist and turn as he chops, the rhythmic swing of his arm hypnotising. The blade hits the wood with a satisfying thump and scrape. He throws the split logs aside and reaches for another. With his spiked boots and slashed jeans he should look out of place, yet he doesn’t. He looks at ease, like this is his home.
Stig glances at the window and I duck away. A few minutes later I watch as he strips off his waistcoat and rolls up his shirtsleeves. His body is lean and wiry with well-defined arms, as if he’s used to physical work. Kelly would say he’s hot, but then she says that about every boy she meets.
The pile of wood is dwindling. Soon there will be nothing left to split and he’ll come back indoors. Anxiety flutters inside me. I know so little about him, yet we’re going to be living together, at least for a while. Seeing him wield a weapon like a professional axe murderer isn’t exactly reassuring.
I drop the curtain and turn to the room. The cabin feels so empty without Mormor. Memories cluster like spiderwebs in every corner: the shells we collected from the beach; the rag rug we made together; the feathers we found on a walk.
Pocketing my phone, something occurs to me. Even if Mum burned her letters, Mormor would have received the ones I sent. I wrote half a dozen times. She would have known about my ability to read clothes and how desperate I’ve been to understand it. If Mormor asked Yrsa to keep the cupboards stocked, maybe she left a message for me. I jump to my feet with excitement. Yrsa said she’d known I would come.
Hoping to find an envelope with my name on it, I go to the shelf of photographs above the stove and lift a frame. My face from two years ago beams out at me. I recognise the long blonde hair, skinny arms and freckles, but it’s like looking at a stranger – and not just because of the matching pair of eyes. In the picture I’m wearing a white bikini and shading my face from the sun: a tanned and happy fifteen-year-old on holiday, without a care in the world. I check behind the frame – no hidden letter – then put the past back where it belongs.
Next to my picture is a photo of Mormor, laughing at something off-camera. She looks flushed, as if she’s been dancing. Her long blonde hair hangs in plaits and she’s wearing her bunad, a traditional Norwegian costume, embroidered with flowers. I lift the frame and run my finger across her face. You can tell from her cheekbones that she must have been stunning in her youth. Even in her seventies she radiated beauty and warmth.
As I put the picture back, three old photos drop out. Black and white, each one shows a different woman, all with long blonde hair. One is posed stiffly at a spinning wheel, scowling. Her wavy hair is parted in the centre, there are dark circles under her eyes and her childlike mouth is pursed. Despite the scowl, you can see the family resemblance to Mormor. Another shows a tiny old woman wearing a cloak of dark feathers. She sits in the branches of a tree, her eyes as black and shiny as a bird’s. In the third, a woman hunches over a steaming cauldron, bundles of wool on the ground.
I’m sure I’ve seen these women before, and then I realise. The photos show the women from Mormor’s tales: my great-grandmother Karina who muttered spells at the spinning wheel, Gerd who stitched a cloak of feathers so that she could fly, and vain Trine with her cauldron of dyed wool. But they were just fairy tales. They can’t be true.
Mormor would never tell me what the women in my family had really been like. When I asked, she would laugh and say I already knew their stories. Once I asked her about her life as a child. I could sense her excitement as she described how her mother, my great-grandmother Karina, had taught her to stitch as soon as she was old enough to hold a needle. Mormor handed me a half-done embroidery and several lengths of thread, but then Mum came in and the air turned to ice.
I examine the painting above the stove. There are so many shades of light and dark in the sky, Mum has captured the bay perfectly. She hasn’t painted anything for so long, I’d forgotten how talented she is.
Looking at the painting makes me think about all the summers we’ve spent playing and walking on the beach here. The last few holidays started off sunny, but within days I would sense an argument brewing between Mum and Mormor, hanging over us like an impending storm. After Mum and Dad got divorced, Mormor wanted Mum and me to move to Skjebne permanently. She asked so many times, and it always ended in a row.
I know Mormor and Mum kept secrets from me. They passed them back and forth to one another, like a stitch made over and over, until they became fastened into the fabric of our lives. I turn my back to the painting and sigh, annoyed at myself for not making them tell me. But I loved coming to the island, and the more questions I asked, the angrier Mum got. It became easier not to ask.
Mormor’s cashmere shawl is folded on the side of the armchair. Perhaps it’s not too late to unpick the truth.
I step towards it and reach out my hand. Taking a deep breath, I clear my mind, ready for whatever emotions come. My fingers graze the soft material and my heart races. Despair, guilt, fear. Mormor grabbing Yrsa’s hand, begging and pleading.
I cry out and pull away. Yrsa lied to me! Mormor didn’t die peacefully. She died in anguish.
I rush to the door and snatch it open, desperate for air.
‘Hey, look at this!’ Stig points towards the sea, but he doesn’t have to – I see it: a massive wall of fog as high as a cliff. I watch, unable to believe my eyes, as streams of mist cascade down like a waterfall.
When the fog rises, run for home, Marta, my child. Dead men rise with the mist!
I shiver at the memory of Mormor’s words. I know her stories were harmless – a way to ensure a little girl who liked to roam didn’t get lost in the fog, but I was always afraid, as if she could make the impossible happen just by saying it.
I close my eyes, wishing I had never touched her shawl. What could have made her so upset? Maybe she was begging Yrsa to get Mum, only she wouldn’t come.
I grab my coat and go out. The fog must be at least a mile away, but I can feel its clammy chill on my face. The axe drops from Stig’s hand and lands with a dull thump. ‘Å faen … It’s getting closer!’
We stand side by side and watch the tsunami of cloud move insidiously towards us. We could be the only two people left on Earth, waiting for the apocalypse to come. ‘Stig, maybe we should get inside.’ I scan the horizon. ‘Where’s Gandalf?’
Stig picks up his clothes and shrugs back into them. ‘He was here just now, sniffing that old tree.’
While Stig watches the fog, I walk around the cabin to the garden. Not that you can call it a garden – more a few acres of grass less tall than the surrounding heath. I often saw Mormor scrubbing dirt from her nails at the kitchen sink, yet there are no flower beds or vegetable patches. Once when I woke early, she was on her knees weeding around the roots of the twisted tree.
I pause before it now, my heart pounding. It stands on its own grassy mound, like it was planted there deliberately. Three times the height of the cabin, its enormous grey trunk is a mass of bulges and knots, and so big it would take seven of me with arms outstretched to encircle it. Thick green moss coats the base of its trunk: a plush velvet skirt covering the rough, scaly bark. The wind has died to nothing and for once its mighty branches barely stir.
It looks so different to when I came in summer. Menacing almost. Keeping my distance, I walk around it, stepping over knobbly roots that protrude from the earth like the veins on a hand. One of the huge roots contains a deep pool of water. Mormor said it holds a natural spring, and that’s why it never dries up.
Where is that dog? ‘Gandalf!’ I scan the dark edge of the forest. The fir trees crowd together like soldiers in battle formation, their trunks forming a hard drawn line. We should have kept Gandalf on a long rope. What if he’s wandered off and there really is a wolf?
I trudge through orange spiky bracken, shouting now.
‘Hey, wait!’ Stig yells behind me.
I turn to see a looming mountain of fog. It smothers the light, giving the world an eerie feel. Water glistens in Stig’s hair, like dew on a spiderweb.
‘Gandalf – where exactly did you see him last?’ I call, my voice breathless.
Stig points. ‘He was digging there, by the tree.’
I clamber back over the bracken. ‘And you didn’t call him back?’
Stig’s eyes are wide with worry.
‘Gandalf!’ we shout together.
‘Is that him?’ I point at the twisted tree. ‘There! I thought I saw something move.’
We jog to the tree then stop, both at the same time, as if we’ve hit an invisible wall.
Inside its huge gnarled trunk are several hollow chambers, formed by the weird way the tree has grown. As a child I used to love playing in the dark spaces, but I would often have bad dreams about them too. Sometimes I think the tree has always been on the edge of my nightmares, waiting to trip my feet and snatch at my hair.
When I was younger I could easily stand up in the largest chamber, but now I have to bend almost double. I peer inside and the back of my neck prickles. There’s a black hole three times the size of a rabbit hole, the wood around it scored as if someone has cut it with a knife. I blink against the gloom, unable to believe what I’m seeing. Blackness emanates from it, growing bigger and then smaller. A dark, pulsating heart.
Buzzing fills the air, like a swarm of flies or the rush of water but higher pitched – the sound of an electrical current almost. A stench of decay sends a wave of revulsion through my stomach. It feels like we’ve stumbled across a decomposing body covered in rotten leaves. We shouldn’t be here. I want to move, but I can’t.
A loud bark breaks the spell. Gandalf is on the porch, growling ferociously as if we are the ones who need saving. He jumps in circles, barking madly. Warning us to run.