Giants of the Frost (4 page)

"My ex-wife, yes," he replied.

"One of his ex-wives," Carsten added with a grin. "All the men here have at least one ex-wife. That's why they've all run away to a deserted island."

"Except Gunnar," Frida said quickly.

"Of course. Gunnar's single." Magnus gave me a knowing smile, and I realized that everyone had picked Gunnar and me as a potential couple.

"I've run away, too," I said. "I've given up on love."

"People say that but they never mean it," Carsten said, taking off his glasses and rubbing them on his sleeve. Frida patted his hand affectionately.

"I mean it. This past weekend, if I hadn't wised up sooner, I would have become Mrs. Adam Butler." I sounded bitter, damn me.

"A broken engagement? That's what you're running away from?" Frida asked with a curl of her eel-like lips. I swear she looked delighted to hear of my misfortune.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry," said Magnus.

"It's the second one," I confessed, wondering why I was confessing it. "It was my second broken engagement."

"Really?" Carsten said. "So either you're very clever because you break up with them before it goes too far, or…"

"Or she picks the wrong men to start with," Frida said helpfully. I wished it were that simple. I honestly loved Adam, just as I loved my childhood sweetheart, Patrick, before him. I simply didn't love them enough. If I told you that I split with Adam because he knocked up another girl, that's only half the story. It doesn't account for how unloved by me he felt, how cold I was with him, how endlessly disappointed I was in his imperfections and how obvious that disappointment was to him.

"I just can't do it," I said, emphasizing each word with my glass, nearly spilling my wine. "I can't do love." The conversation went elsewhere, fortunately. I already felt sobriety edging into the haze and waving a finger because I'd flashed my emotional underwear. But if I'd kept talking, I would have said something like, "There is something missing from love. There is something empty about love. Love should be stellar and lunar and pull your breath from your body and make your teeth ache and your nerves sing, but I have not felt that. I have only felt disappointment. And I am absolutely certain there should be more." I was off duty the next afternoon, and remained in the rec hall after lunch. I had a sheaf of papers, which represented what I had written so far of my thesis, and I spread them out on one of the big wooden tables, preparing to organize them into chapters. I was deeply involved in this task when I heard pots and pans banging in the adjoining galley. I ignored the noise for a few minutes, but it grew louder and more violent.

I left my papers and peered around the doorway.

"Maryanne?"

She was crouching at a cupboard, pulling out pots and throwing them toward the sink with a crash. She looked up with an irritated expression, but when she saw me her eyebrows shot up, and she said, "Oh, Vicky. You're not going to let him do it, are you?"

"What are you doing? What are you talking about?"

She stood up. Her frizzy blond hair was yanked high into a ponytail tied with a pale pink ribbon. "I'm cleaning out the cupboards. I always do in the first week of the month." She looked at the frying pan in her hand, then flung it into the sink.

"Why are you doing it so… vigorously?"

"I've just had an argument with Magnus. He wants to leave us alone here for a week! Just two defenseless women!"

"Defenseless against what?"

"There are dangers, Vicky. I suppose he didn't tell you that."

"What dangers?" Gunnar had spoken about thieves coming onto the island. I hadn't believed it, but Maryanne was round-eyed and trembling at the idea of being left alone.

Maryanne's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "Haven't you heard the noises?"

"No."

"You must have. In the night. When you can't sleep."

"No."

"From the forest." She turned her eyes meaningfully in that direction, then met my gaze again. "There are noises in the forest."

"Sure. Birds, animals—"

"No, no. Vicky, this island is haunted."

I was so relieved I almost laughed. She hadn't been imagining hooded intruders with glinting knives; she had been imagining spectres with rattling chains.

"Oh. I see," I said.

"You have to tell Magnus you won't do it. He doesn't have to go to the conference. He's duty bound to stay here. It's the award—he wants to get up there on the podium and accept it." I guessed how fervently Magnus was playing that fantasy out in his head, and I smiled. Perhaps I could get this entire island to myself after all. "Maryanne, I'm sure if there's only a skeleton staff we don't need a cook."

"Pardon?"

"Instead of making Magnus stay, why don't
you
go? I'll be fine by myself."

"But Vicky, this island is not safe for—"

"I'm not afraid of ghosts," I said. "Look, I'll talk to Magnus. I'll get you the week off. You can go home to Manchester, or you can go shopping in Oslo. I'll offer to stay here alone." Maryanne shook her head sadly. "You think I'm mad, don't you? You think you know for certain that there are no ghosts on this island."

"I don't think you're mad. But I do know for certain that there are no ghosts on this island."

"For certain? Some people are so bloody arrogant." She turned abruptly and went back to clearing out the cupboards.
Crash, bang
.

By dusk, I had convinced Magnus to let Maryanne have the week off. It was almost too easy. He had grown blustery and said that, no, he would stay, it was his duty as station commander and he couldn't leave a trainee to run the station. I reminded him that I wasn't just a trainee, I was highly qualified, levelheaded, nearly thirty years old. I reassured him that I had memorized the lockdown procedure, our last line of defense on an island hours from police assistance. "And Magnus," I said, "who will accept your award if you're not there? Alex?" Alex was the second-most-senior meteorologist, a newly minted American with a loud voice and big white teeth. Magnus clearly despised him.

"I'll consider it," he had said. Twenty minutes later he was at my cabin door. "I think it would be a good opportunity for you, Victoria. There are more remote postings than Othinsey out there, and my brief was to expose you to a range of experiences you can bring to bear in your future, career." His justifications were unnecessary. I was delighted beyond description. In three weeks, I'd have the whole island to myself.

That afternoon the weather turned foul.

The wind changed direction and howled harsh and flat from the northeast through the forest and over the station. I'd heard of pines "whispering" in the wind, but the ones outside my cabin were screeching. It was a cruel sound, reminding me that Mother Nature had teeth and claws.

The wild weather continued day after day. The others at the station weren't bothered by it, they were used to the extremes the Norwegian Sea had to offer. But my nerves were jangled by the relentless howling and the way the wind jumped down my throat every time I ventured outside. I slept poorly. By the fifth day, I was so tired that I dozed off around 8:00 P.M., then continued falling deeper and deeper under the soft dark layers until I was in that subterranean pocket of slumber from which the old and the sick never return.

Then I woke suddenly. A noise had roused me. A cold finger of air in the room. I peered into the darkness, could see the window frame standing ajar. I rose. My senses were addled. The floorboards were cold under my feet. My eyes were heavy. I reached for the window to close it, when a hiss sounded from close outside. I paused. Listened again.

"Psssst." Like someone trying to get my attention, just below the windowsill. Outside, the world was night grey. My vision tunneled; murky shadows formed at the periphery. I leaned out. The wind whipped at my face, brought tears to my eyes. I thought I could see, about four feet away on the ground, a pale grey shape made of slender birch twigs. I focused on it, my eyes trying to make sense of it. Had a branch blown off a tree in the same gust that had pushed my window open? I stepped back to close the window, when the shape moved. At first it seemed it was shifting under the wind's momentum, but then it kept moving, pulling itself up to its feet. Quick shivers of horror ran over my skin; it was the feeling of spotting a stick insect where you thought there was only a stick, magnified a thousandfold. Black, shiny eyes stared at me under a wild thatch of spiky hair. I screamed once and slammed the window shut, but not before I had heard the thing say, "Don't swim in the lake. The draugr will get you."

I collected myself quickly. I was dreaming, I was muddled. I had imagined it. I pressed my nose against the glass, looking for the pale grey shape so that I could reorganize it in my head, make it look like the broken branch it really was. There was no pale grey shape, there was no spiky-haired creature, there were just the trees moving in the wind, outside, in the gloom.

I pressed my hand against my heart and laughed. I climbed back into bed but didn't return to my deep sleep. I amused myself by imagining what Maryanne would make of my story, and vowed to be more careful about closing the latch on the window properly.

But, in my mind, deep and locked away, I knew I
had
closed it properly.

Every Wednesday, the supply boat brought mail. Magnus delivered to my cabin an envelope with my mother's handwriting on it, and a postcard from my friend Samantha, who was on holiday in Italy. I read the postcard and stuck it in the corner of my mirror, then picked open the letter from Mum. I was curious. I had telephoned her twice already, and she wasn't the kind of woman who ordinarily sat down and wrote letters.

Dear Vicky,

I'm writing this down because I know if I tried to tell you on the phone you wouldn't listen. I went to see my new psychic, Bathsheba, this morning. She told me something very disturbing. Right in the middle of the reading, she closed her eyes and gasped, then she said, "Whose name starts with V?" Of course, I said, "That's my daughter, Victoria." Then she said, "There are dark psychic forces gathering around Victoria."

Vicky, I know what you're thinking, and I know you want to throw this letter in the rubbish, but consider it, darling. How did she know about somebody whose name starts with V? There are twenty-six letters, and V is not that common. I asked her a lot more questions that she couldn't answer, but she did say I should tell you to come home. I trust Bathsheba, she's very good at what she does. Please come home. I'm so worried about you.

Love, Mum

I didn't know whether I was more amused or annoyed that my mother trusted somebody named Bathsheba. What Mum had failed to clarify was whether or not she was wearing the little enamel "V" around her neck that Aunty Clementine had bought her when I was born. I put the letter aside, wondering if Bathsheba had given her another useless batch of lottery numbers or advised her that she would meet the love of her life in June. I'm sure that at least two of my mother's failed marriages were encouraged by psychics.

I loved my mum, of course, but she had made such a mess of her life. She was bom into disadvantage and stayed there. I had watched her ramble unsuspectingly from failure to failure—men, jobs, diets—always complaining about a lack of money, brains or luck, but never realizing that what she really lacked was the ability to manage her own life. I was different. I wanted to escape where I came from, from the welfare rolls, from the overcrowded schools, from having the phone cut off every second month. When I took the job at Kirkja, I was running from it so hard that the momentum kept me awake at night. I didn't want to be swallowed alive by circumstance. I didn't want to be like Mum, spending so much time predicting what fate had in store for her that it hadn't occurred to her that her future was for herself to make.

There are dark psychic forces gathering around Victoria.

Mum wanted me home, and she would say anything to get me there. I didn't know if it was because she missed me or because she felt that my successes proved her choices in life wrong, but she had elected to use precisely the worst method of persuasion. As I had told Gunnar, I didn't scare easy. Not back then, anyway. That was all still ahead of me.

I showed up at the control room for my first solo shift that evening. The late shift was eight until four, hours that I was already intimately acquainted with from my sleepless nights. Alex handed over to me, and I spent the first few hours going through my list of tasks, launching the balloon, filling the blanks in the database. After 1:00 a.m., I had less to occupy me. I turned off the bright fluorescent lights so that the space was only lit by the glow of three computer screens. The room was punctuated all around with floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside the sky was cloudy, stained by the inky black of treetops. I had a training manual to read, but I put it aside to sit on the long couch near the staircase, lying back and enjoying the solitude. I lay there a long time, letting my mind drift. Every ten seconds, the transmitter sounded a gentle beep. The heating whirred softly. The printer hummed. Dark and still. I didn't notice that my eyelids had fallen closed.

The sound of my breathing. The door from the observation deck opening wide. A cool breeze on my skin. Struggling to sit up, to look around. Paralyzed in my own body. A hot rush of fear. There was someone in the room.

Brrring.

I sat up with a start. The phone. I reached for it, glancing around. No, the door was closed. I was still alone.

"Hello?"

"Vicky? It's Gunnar."

I checked the clock above me. "Gunnar, it's two in the morning."

"It's three in Amsterdam," he said cheerily. "I just got back to the hotel. I remembered you were working your first night shift tonight, so I thought I'd call and see how it's going." I could hear other male voices in the background, calling out to Gunnar in Norwegian. I didn't know what they were saying, but their voices betrayed that juvenile tone peculiar to men in small groups who suspect one of their number is trying to score. That and the fact that Gunnar had bothered to remember my first night shift told me that he was still sweet on me.