Ashes to Dust

First
published in Great Britain in 2010 by Hodder & Stoughton An

Hachette
UK company

Copyright
© Yrsa Sigurdardottir 2010

English
translation © Philip Roughton 2.010

The
right of Yrsa Sigurdardottir to be identified as the author of the Work has
been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.

All
rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior
written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All
characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real
persons, living or
dead,
is purely coincidental.

A CIP
catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 I
444 70006 O

I wish to thank all the residents of the
Westmann Islands, who assisted me as I wrote this book. Foremost among them is
Kristin Johannsdottir, who could not have been more helpful. Sigmundur Gisli
Einarsson, Olafur M. Kristinsson and Arni Johnsen also receive thanks for their
helpfulness, as well as the expatriate Westmann Islander Gisli Baldvinsson.
None of these individuals is a model for any character in the book.

I dedicate this book to my publisher, Petur
Mar Olafsson, with heartfelt appreciation for his outstanding cooperation and
boundless patience.

                                            
                                                                                                                                                                    
-Yrsa

She had often considered death to be a
desirable option. Today, however, she hadn’t been feeling that way, which
was rather unfortunate in light of the circumstances. When her father had died
after a difficult struggle with cancer, she’d wondered what the point of
everything was. How short and insignificant a life is when all is said and
done, she had thought. Her father had been the lynchpin of their little family,
but months later she had trouble recalling how he looked without the aid of a
photograph. And she had supposedly been one of the closest to him - how quickly
were others forgetting him? Once her mother had passed away, as well as herself
and her sister, no one would remember him, and it would be as if he had never
set foot on this earth. The thought filled her with despair. Now, as she stared
her own fate in the face, she realized that her story would never be told. She
would never be able to make a clean breast of it as she had intended. No one
else could make sense of all this, much less explain the events that had
recently overtaken her. Everything was going black, but she managed to snap
herself out of it. She knew that when it happened next she might not be able to
resist.

If she weren’t so weak and confused,
she could at least try to defend herself instead of lying here, letting it
happen. She must have been given drugs of some sort; this kind of drowsiness
didn’t occur naturally. On the bedside table stood a bottle of pills that
she didn’t recall placing there, but by squinting she could see that it
contained the powerful painkillers she’d come home with after her last
operation. The bottle had sat untouched in her medicine cabinet for months and
it was unthinkable that she’d fetched it herself, let alone taken the
pills in any large dosage. She had no memory of swallowing them, so it seemed
highly likely that they’d been put in her food earlier. She remembered
the taste of the pills only too well, and there was no way the wine she’d
drunk would have masked it. The foul taste of the vomit in her mouth was not
from the pills - but that in
itself
meant nothing. She
retched again and closed her eyes, even though she was afraid she
wouldn’t be able to open them again. This fear proved unfounded, because
they flew open reflexively when a heavy weight descended on her, expelling the
breath from her lungs. Her eyes were covered by an ice- cold hand, shutting out
the light.

Her racing heart beat faster still when
another hand prised open her mouth and groping fingers pushed their way in. Her
feet kicked in impotent protest. Her tongue was yanked out of her mouth and
after a moment she felt an agonizing sting. A painful heat spread slowly from
the puncture wound, over and through her tongue, and she realized that
something was being injected into the soft tissue. When her tongue was
released, the hand gripped her nose.

Her thoughts became less distinct, foggier.
Was she maybe in hospital, under the hands of a doctor? She couldn’t open
her eyes and could smell nothing through her nose, which was held shut, but she
hoped that this was the case. A low whisper in her ear: It’s almost over
—
relax
. Was this a doctor or a nurse? She tried
unsuccessfully to recall who had been with her before she became dizzy and
started vomiting. She was sure she knew, but found it impossible to recall her
visitor’s name or face. Abruptly, the thought came to her that she still
had to buy a birthday present for her sister. What should she give her?
A jumper maybe?
There were so many beautiful jumpers to
choose from. But then she realized that this was neither the time nor the place
to think about such a thing. Which reminded her, she not only didn’t know
where she was, but also what time it was. Was it night or day? How long had it
been since the injection in her tongue - if that had even happened? The hold on
her nose was released, her mouth was re-opened and the fingers crept back in.
She recognized them by their soapy taste. They prodded her tongue, and she
could feel that something was wrong. She tried to move her tongue, without
success. Maybe she was having a stroke? A stroke could actually manifest such
symptoms. What else could it be? She couldn’t think. Suddenly the fingers
were pressed firmly against her tongue, rolling it and forcing it back into her
throat. It made no difference how she fought to free her tongue from this
deadly grip - it wouldn’t let up. The knees of the person sitting on top
of her had trapped her hands at her sides. In despair she tried to remember
everything that she knew about strokes, but she could not recall whether
paralysis of the tongue was a symptom.

Garbled curses, sounding like they came from
inside a barrel or the end of a long tunnel, echoed in her mind. She
couldn’t tell if she was imagining them, or if they came from whoever was
so mistreating her mouth. She tried to say something, expecting her voice
to sound the way it did when she attempted to speak at the dentist’s -
which reminded her, she needed to make an appointment - but all that came out
was a moan that seemed to originate in her abdomen. Her tongue still would not
move despite repeated messages from her brain, making it impossible for her to
change sounds into words. Suddenly the fingers were pressing even harder
against it. She could feel her tongue perfectly even though she couldn’t
move it, and she gagged as it was pushed back into her throat. Her eyes opened
wide and she stared at the familiar ceiling panels.

The fingers released her tongue and the
weight was lifted from her stomach and hands, but this did not relieve her at
all. She tried desperately to catch her breath. Mad with fear, she attempted to
think clearly, but could not. Her tongue was stuck fast in her gullet. Her feet
kicked, drumming on the mattress in furious convulsions. Her hands clawed at
the soft skin of her neck and jaw — maybe she could make a hole for air
to come in?

Then everything went black and she was gone,
like her father. He had been happy to say farewell to his life, unlike her. The
terrible sounds that had emerged from her as she fought for breath had ceased.
Her head sunk slowly to one side and she lay in a pool of blood, her eyes full
of anguish. Everything was quiet for a moment, then a CD player on the other
bedside table was switched on and music started to play.