Giants of the Frost (30 page)

I sat back on the mossy ground, completely disoriented by the searing moment of terror. "What are you saying?" I spluttered.

"Girls like you don't get far," he said.

"Girls like me? I don't know what you're talking about."

"You think they heard you screaming back at the station? Is that it?"

"No, I screamed because I thought I saw—" A noise in the forest behind me made me whip my head around and shriek. A petrel took to the sky.

"Victoria?" Magnus said, his voice growing concerned. My terrified face finally broke through his self-justifying rhetoric. "Are you sick?" He reached out to touch my shoulder and I flinched away, scrambled back against the rock.

"I have to go back to the station," I gasped, hurrying to my feet. "I can't stay out here."

"Wait, wait," Magnus said, and this time he grabbed my arm firmly and held me still. "Is this the first time you've been out here since you fell in the lake?"

I nodded.

"I think you're having a panic attack, Victoria. I want you to breathe very deeply into your hands. Five times."

"I need to get—"

"Breathe!" he ordered. "Come on… one… two…"

I did as I was told. I focused on Magnus's eyes and breathed into my hands. The dizziness receded. Magnus was right—it was the first time I'd been out here since the incident. I'd been flat on my back in bed for a long time, too. Perhaps it was just a garden-variety panic attack.

"I had a hallucination," I said through my hands. "It terrified me."

"Hallucinations can sometimes happen if you're sleep-deprived. Have you been sleeping properly?"

"No, I haven't," I said..

"I think you'd better have the rest of the weekend off, start work again on Monday." He released me and I dropped my hands. "You shouldn't have come out if you weren't feeling right."

"I was feeling right. Until I came out."

"I want you to tell Carsten what happened, get him to check you over again." Then he added grudgingly,

"We can always send you home if you think you need some time off." That sounded like the best sense I had ever heard. Home. London. Mum. My own bed. No more twig-men and haunted forests.

"I'm sorry if I've upset your plans," I said.

He waved away my apology, and produced no apology of his own for accusing me of a false sexual harassment claim. "I'll walk you to the station. We can finish in here another time." The thought of returning to the site filled me with horror, but I told myself to be calm and that things might be very different after the weekend.

I was right.

It rained all weekend and I stayed in my cabin. Gunnar brought me food and five-years-out-of-date trashy magazines from the rec hall and offered to keep me company. I told him I needed some time alone to think. I turned Magnus's idea of going home over and over in my mind until I became obsessive about it. This meant I slept incredibly poorly on Sunday night, waking and dozing, never sure where I was or what time it was, plagued by awful dreams about dogs pursuing me, about the forest reaching out to grasp me, about bright-hot blades and big hairy men. When I opened my eyes in the grey dawn, they felt gritty and sore.

I dressed and slipped outside to head to the galley for breakfast. Before I had placed even one foot on the cement slab, I saw it perched on my doorstep.

A wooden carving of a wolf.

And scratched into its jaw was his name.
Vidar
.

I was heading for the trees, my dread of the forest suddenly vaporized, when Magnus rounded the corner and saw me. "Victoria? You're well then?"

"I'm…" For a moment I was completely bewildered. I had come to associate Vidar with being alone on the island. Magnus's presence seemed like a mundane aberration; the moment in the cinema when somebody accidentally switches on the houselights. "I'm much better, thanks," I managed.

"Obviously. Off for a walk in the forest?"

"Um. No," I said. Then added, "I thought I saw a cat."

"I'm sure you didn't. There are no cats on Othinsey." I laughed nervously, wondering how I was going to escape from Magnus to find Vidar. "Trick of the light," I said. "Just as long as you don't have another hallucination like Thursday's," he said, without a trace of pity. "I'll walk you to the galley. I need to talk to you about today's tasks."

"Today?" I said, following him. How could it be possible that today I had to do anything other than look for Vidar?

"The boreal research unit at Oslo University have asked us for preliminary transpiration and flux figures from our instrument field. I thought you could do the calculations and submit them." At another time, that task would have been a dream: all day tucked away in a quiet corner with tables and figures and formulae. Today, it seemed like a form of torture.

Magnus walked ahead of me. I lagged back, glanced longingly over my shoulder.

"Are you coming, Victoria?" he called.

"Yes, yes, coining," I said absently. I figured if I could rush through the job, Magnus might let me wander off at lunchtime.

My mind was everywhere but on the task. Magnus explained the process in excruciating detail, then left me alone for a few hours to do the sums and fill out the online forms. By lunchtime I still hadn't finished. Magnus brought a sandwich to my desk, looked over my shoulder at the form I was about to submit and shrieked in horror.

"What's wrong?" I said, nearly knocking the plate off the desk.

"What formula did you use for these?" he asked.

I showed him, he went pale. "Please tell me you haven't sent these."

"I've sent about three-quarters of them," I said.

"Victoria, it's the wrong formula. What were you thinking? That's not even the right table." I looked at where he was indicating on my calculation sheet, and felt myself grow warm and squirmy with embarrassment. I had been so unfocused, I had made the kind of error a slow-witted undergraduate makes in a first-year exam. "Magnus, I'm so sorry. I mustn't have been concentrating."

"I'll phone them," he said, his voice brusque. "I'll tell them our
trainee
is having a few problems with her math today." He turned to pick up the phone. The conversation that ensued was in Norwegian, but I was in no doubt from the tone of his voice that I was being described in the toadiest of terms to a very eminent climatology professor. I started recalculating, wondering when I was going to be able to get away from all this petty rubbish and out into the forest to find Vidar.

Time crawled. The drizzly afternoon darkened. I fixed the calculations, found myself caught up with Carsten going down the stairs, was dragged to the rec hall by Gunnar for dinner, then finally… finally…

I got away.

I slipped into my cabin to tidy my hair, grabbed some blankets, then headed off quietly into the forest. Smells enveloped me: pine needles, damp earth, sea salt, rotting foliage. I can't explain it, but the horror of the forest had dwindled to nothing, as though Vidar's presence neutralized all fear, all danger. I followed the path to his old campsite and was dismayed to find it empty.

I stopped, turned a full circle. Branches dripped, the drizzle intensified, emptiness tapped a finger on my heart.

Then I smelled smoke.

"Vidar?" I called, following the scent. "It's me, Victoria." I hurried through the trees, soon seeing the glow of a fire through shadowy branches.

Vidar was sitting on a log next to the fire, his head bent so that his long hair fell forward to hide his face. Two large animal skins had been strung above him to protect his camp from the rain. He looked up, pushing his hair behind his ear, and gave me a guarded smile. My heart filled with air.
I know him, I
know him
. The feeling was so intense that it hurt me.

"Hello, Victoria."

"Hello, Vidar." I moved nearer. He was wearing the strange clothes again. "That's a weird outfit."

"Not where I come from."

I sat next to him, dropping the blankets at our feet. "Where
do
you come from?" He lifted his eyebrows. "Asking questions already?"

A loud noise from the trees made me jump to my feet, my hand over my heart. "What's that?" He took my wrist and pulled me gently to my seat. "Don't be afraid. It's only Arvak."

"Arvak?"

"My horse."

"You have a horse in here? How did you… ?"

He touched a gentle finger to my lips, then withdrew it reluctantly. "Once more, I can only say that I
will
explain everything to you, but not now."

A horse. Then it was obvious that he had never left, that he must have been on the island all along, living in the forest unnoticed. "When will you explain?" I asked.

He tilted his head as though considering. His black eyes gleamed in the firelight. "That depends on what happens next."

I laughed. "This is crazy. You say crazy things but I keep letting you get away with it. Why do I feel that way? Why do I feel like I know you?"

"You do know me. We met last month."

"No, no. Like I know you from
before
!"

"How long before?" he asked, turning to the fire.

"Before… I don't know." I watched his profile. "Before everything," I whispered, feeling myself falling out of time again. It didn't matter that the bright lights and humming instruments of Kirkja Station were just twenty minutes away. With Vidar, I felt as though I were somewhere dark and silent and lush; in a place that had long been banished from the busy, chattering world. Anxieties and questions and calculations melted away, became profoundly insignificant.

He didn't answer. Instead, he knelt before the fire and added another log. I could see the muscles in his shoulders through the red-brown cloth of his tunic. Desire caught my breath on a hook, yanked it out of my lungs.

"Did you bring the blankets for me?" he asked, without facing me.

"Yes, I thought you might be cold. Or wet." I looked up at the roof of skins above us. "But I hadn't reckoned with your Boy Scout skills."

He gave me a bemused look. "What's Boy Scout?"

"I'm sorry, you speak such good English that I assume you know everything." Vidar settled in front of the fire and pulled one of my blankets over his knees. "Will you stay for a while, Victoria?" he asked.

"Oh yes," I replied, and spread out the spare blanket next to him. I lay on my side and gazed at the fire.

"But it's going to be a long evening if you don't tell me anything about yourself." He nodded slowly. "I can tell you some things," he said. "But there are important things that I—"

"Can you tell me about where you live?" I asked. "When you're not here in the forest, that is."

"I live at a place called Gammaldal."

Finally, something to hang on to. Something to know him by. "Go on. What does it look like?" He closed his eyes to conjure it in his imagination. "It's a tiny farm two miles from a calm bay. A colony of gulls lives amongst the rocky cliffs which lead to the headland. Some mornings it's very misty, as though the clouds have grown weary of staying in the sky and have descended to sleep on the land. My home is behind a deep slope. The grass is lush and green, and in the warmer months wildflowers spring up all over it. On summer days, the sun spends a long time on that slope, and the shadows of clouds race over it, and the birds come from inland, and bees hum and catch the light on their wings. Over the other side is a still fjord. Trees grow all around it, so it's often in shadows. There is a shallow shelf if you enter the water from the east, but it's deceptive. For when you step off the shelf the ground slopes away to a terrifying depth. The water is very dark, still but not serene. I sense there are things moving many fathoms below the surface. It's a mysterious place."

"And what kind of house do you live in?"

"It's just a small house, made of wood. I built it myself."

"You built your own house? Wow. I couldn't even knit myself a pullover."

"I like to be busy. I like to work with my hands and body. Otherwise, I think too much." He sighed. "My mind betrays me."

Moment by moment, he was becoming a person. As he opened up, I felt myself opening up to him.

"What do you do all day?"

"There are many tasks to be seen to. Mending the fences, milking cows, sowing in spring and reaping in autumn, fishing and hunting."

"Do you live alone?"

"I have no neighbors for many miles. But I have a… friend living with me. Her name is Aud." I held my breath. He had hesitated over the word "friend." Was she an ex-lover, an ex-wife? "Tell me about her," I said.

"Aud is very beautiful, and very accomplished, but she is very sad. She's a long way from her home and family, and she has come to rely on me very heavily. I think she has feelings for me that I can't return…" He leaned forward to poke the fire and I sensed that he was embarrassed. "I can't bear her sadness sometimes, and I try not to see it. Instead I try to be kind to her, but sometimes my kindness hurts her."

"Because she wants more?"

"I think that if she were back home with the people that she loves, she would soon forget about me. She's young."

"So why doesn't she just go home?"

Vidar shook his head and dusted his hands off. "It's too complicated to explain." He nodded toward me.

"What about you? Where do you live when you're not on Othinsey?"

I talked a lot. Maybe I talked too much. I told him about the upstairs flat at Mrs. Armitage's, with its peeling floral wallpaper and noisy pipes; I told him about my best friend Samantha and about the mad holiday we'd taken once to Paris; I told him about my years of hard labor toadying to rude tourists at London Bridge Cafe. I even told him about Patrick and Adam and how I'd agreed to marry each of them simply because everyone around me expected it.

"But you didn't love either of them?" he asked.

We were on dangerous ground, and I chose my answer carefully. "Perhaps I did. But… not enough."

"How much is enough?" he asked, his dark eyes holding mine steadily. The rain intensified overhead, dripped mournfully off the sides of the skins.

"I never felt lifted out of my life with either of them," I said. "I never felt as though I were anything more than a collection of flesh and bones named Victoria, wandering about the planet like everyone else. It wasn't enough."