The Killing Forest (8 page)

C
amilla stuffed everything down into a large IKEA sack. The blanket, the water bottle, a Ronson storm lighter she'd swiped from Frederik. The bag with sweet chocolate biscuits, rye bread, liver pâté, a half liter of cola, a large chocolate bar, and a Danish salami. She had also been in Markus's room and robbed his stash of candy, plus a warm sweater she'd found in the bottom of his closet.

A little bit of this and that, maybe not the most vital necessities for survival out in nature, Camilla thought as she entered the forest with the sack over her shoulder. It might not be the wisest thing to do, helping a runaway boy stay away from home. On the other hand, she couldn't stand the thought that sorrow had driven him from his family. He may be sick at heart, but she was determined he wouldn't starve. She couldn't get the image out of her head of the sopping-wet boy sitting on the ground, wolfing down cold leftovers.

Farther down the broad forest path, she peered around. She had no idea where to look for him, so she decided to start from where she'd seen him. By the big oak.

The evening sun sat just above the treetops; the heat of the day had disappeared. She stopped to check where to leave the path. There hadn't been another path; she'd simply run after him. Suddenly she was unsure. The shadows made it difficult to recognize anything.

Camilla lifted the IKEA sack and continued on. She thought about Louise, then realized that she'd forgotten to bring her phone along. She would have to wait to call and ask how it had gone.

The path veered off to the left. She stopped again; she was sure that she'd gone too far. Irritated at herself, she retraced her steps and left the path. Immediately the big sack caught on a limb. She jerked to free it, and the limb whipped back against her shoulder. “Damn it!” she yelled. She pushed through the trees, one arm in front of her now, and yelped in fright when she almost stumbled over someone sitting on the ground. She dropped the sack and leaned against a tree trunk for a moment.

“Sorry,” she said. “You startled me!”

The dark-haired woman below her wore a long, brown linen dress. A blue embroidered shawl hung around her shoulders and down her back, held together by a bronze clasp.

“Don't be afraid,” the woman said, her voice calm. “I should have warned you, but at first I thought you were an animal, and I didn't want to frighten it away.”

“What are you doing?” Camilla asked. A small parcel wrapped in aluminum foil and a long stick lay in front of the woman, a rolled-out sleeping bag behind. She'd brought along a thermos in a woven basket.

“I'm preparing my night sitting,” the woman said.

Camilla guessed she was in her mid-fifties. Her hair was short and her eyes sparkled. She invited Camilla to sit down with her.

“What on earth is a night sitting?” Then she understood. “Are you one of the Asatro?”

The woman nodded and reached for her thermos. “And you are the new lady at the manor, I'm guessing.”

Camilla sat down in front of her. “‘Manor' is probably an exaggeration, but yes. We've taken over Ingersminde from my husband's parents.”

For a moment the woman stared blankly out into the trees. “I've been coming out here for eighteen years now.” She looked around as if they were sitting in her living room. “I live over in the lockhouse. It's the little yellow house on the way to Roskilde. Just ask if you want to know where to pick wild strawberries or find chanterelles.”

The woman smiled. “I've been a member of the local Asatro for many years now. We meet out here twice a month. The evil has returned.”

Camilla sat quietly. She wondered if the woman might be a little bit crazy. It wasn't so much what she said as her hoarse, foggy voice, which sent chills down Camilla's spine. They weren't very far from St. Hans Psychiatric Hospital. She could have escaped.

Then the woman seemed to return to the present. “I'm sorry. I just thought I heard something.” She offered Camilla a cup of warm mead.

“So what does your group do out here in the forest?” Camilla asked. She held on to the clay mug, which had a small foot.

“We pay tribute to the forces of nature,” the woman said. She smiled again and raised her mug to the sky. “And we make sacrifices to the gods.”

She slurped a bit as she drank. Then she carefully laid the mug down in a small depression in the ground.

“What happens?” Camilla asked.

“You have to sacrifice something to the gods if you want their help. Or if you have need of strength. It can be anything. Do you never pray to God?”

Camilla shrugged. Did she? “I do,” she said, and nodded. “When there's something I really want, or if there's something I'm very upset about.” It was true—she did in fact send up a prayer once in a while.

“Then you understand,” the woman said. “The only difference is that we bring along a little gift that we set out here with our prayers.”

“What sort of gift?” Camilla was thinking about the pool of blood.

“A silver coin, for example.” She reached into her pocket and brought a few coins out. “Or home-brewed mead.”

“What about blood?”

The woman nodded seriously. “It can be blood, too,” she admitted. “The most powerful sacrifice you can make is your own blood.”

Camilla felt the silence of the forest creeping in on them. Several moments later she asked, “You said the evil had returned. What do you mean?”

The woman looked out through the trees again. Her shoulders sank. “In the old days, the priests used to drive a wagon around with a naked woman, to guarantee the fertility in the area.”

She pulled her shawl tighter and spoke in a near-whisper. “Now they bring women out here to celebrate their own fertility.”

“Who does? Surely not the priests!”

The woman shook her head. “The others.”

Camilla raised an eyebrow.

“Once, we were one large group of Asatro that met out here in the forest. But after we became an official religion, we began disagreeing about what we stood for, how we should practice our beliefs.”

Camilla nodded, urging her to go on.

“One small group in our community was expelled; their beliefs had become unhealthy.” She sounded ashamed that anyone who believed in the Nordic gods could behave in such a manner. “They worshiped Loke and glorified evil. They violated what we consider holy by taking it to extremes, using our beliefs as an excuse for their primitive and bestial behaviors.”

She shivered as if she were suddenly freezing.

“What sort of behaviors?” Camilla asked.

“They make every effort to replicate the old stories in Nordic mythology. They take the rituals very literally.”

Camilla was about to pour the warm mead out on the ground when the woman called out. “Wait!”

She jerked her hand back. “What?”

“Remember to warn the wights before you pour anything hot out onto the ground. They like a sip of beer or something to eat, but you mustn't scald them.”

“The wights?”

“The small folk. We have to take good care of them. They make sure nature flourishes. They protect it. You must also remember to ask permission before you pick a flower.” She pointed out at the forest floor.

Hello, St. Hans Hospital
, Camilla thought. She stood up, wanting to leave before she disturbed the forest. “Is that the way to the sacrificial oak?” She pointed.

The woman nodded and immediately closed her eyes. She appeared to have retreated into herself.

Twilight had deepened, shadows lengthened, and now it was impossible to make out anything in the trees.

Camilla continued toward the clearing, which lay a bit farther ahead. She didn't know what to think about the woman. Apart from nearly scaring Camilla to death, Camilla didn't think she would hurt a fly. Sitting out in the forest all night in communion with nature, to receive signs from the old Nordic gods, was hard to take seriously. But that was her business. Camilla stepped into the clearing and walked to the partly hollow tree.

She thought she heard a car, but when she stopped to listen, all she heard was the forest silence. The birds were quiet now, and the breeze had died down. She lay the blue sack on the ground. She thought about taking some things out so the boy could spot them from a distance, but the sky looked threatening. If it rained, a wet blanket would do him no good. Instead she wrapped two elastic cords around the sack to close it tightly, hoping he would be curious enough to look inside.

Maybe she should have written a note to him, she thought as she returned to the path she guessed would lead her back to the house.

Thoughts about the boy and the Asatro flitted around in her head. She came to a forest road she thought she recognized. A few meters down the road, she stopped. She heard the motor and spotted the headlights at about the same time: A car was approaching from farther in the forest. For a moment she was frightened, until she realized it had to be Frederik, out looking for her. She should have been back long ago. He teased her constantly about being the only person he knew who could get lost in a closet.

The headlights were close now, the engine growling. She waited. The car appeared from behind a rise and rolled silently down the road in neutral. She started waving.

The driver put it in gear and floored it, and a moment later Camilla was blinded by the headlights. She waved again even though it was less than fifty meters away, but instead of slowing down the car shot out, a dark shadow behind the twin lights.

“WHAT THE HELL—”

The car rammed into her and flung her off the road. Everything went black.

S
une hid behind the tree stump when the dark-haired woman with the basket and sleeping bag under her arm appeared in the clearing. For a moment he prayed that she had come to make a new moon sacrifice; his stomach began cramping up at the thought of the leftovers. But she walked by the bonfire site and back into the forest. It was twilight, so he didn't dare follow her.

He was so hungry that sometimes it felt like worms were crawling in his guts, robbing him of vitamins, minerals, all nutrition. He'd just been down to the creek to drink. He missed being able to gulp down a whole glass of water. It wasn't the same, scooping it up and drinking out of his hands. He'd tried sucking water up directly from the surface of the stream, but other stuff streamed into his mouth that he had to spit out constantly.

Just then a deer walked into the clearing, close enough for him to make out the three-pointed white markings on its chest. He loved the thought of being at one with nature; he recalled the old myths about the boy who was sent out into the forest to live with his father…

But
his
father wasn't here. He was alone.

At first he imagined the animal had smelled him when it whirled around and sprang back into the forest. Then he saw the blond woman, the one who had tried to catch him when he was eating the leftovers from the last Asatro sacrifice.

She walked over to the sacrificial oak, slipped a big sack off her shoulder, and dropped it where he'd been sitting the first time he saw her. She stood around awhile as if waiting for something. He held his breath when she appeared to be staring directly at him, but then she strode off, leaving the sack behind.

Who is she?
he wondered when his heartbeat returned to normal.

He waited until darkness fell to step out of hiding. He stood a few moments before sneaking over to the tree. He was in arm's reach of the sack when he heard the car; it was close, very close. He ducked into some bushes, and instantly his clothes were soaked from the evening dew covering the long, thin leaves. He kept his face down while the car drove slowly by on the forest road. It stopped. A car door opened.

Sune pressed himself even closer to the ground and lay perfectly still. A snail crawled up onto his hand. The door slammed again, and they took off. He got up on his elbows and crawled over to the big tree and the sack on the ground.

Suddenly they were back, their flashlights searching around and between the trees. If they walked into the clearing, they would find the sack she'd left.

They came looking for him almost every night. Never in the daytime, when someone might see them. Sune knew he couldn't keep hiding here forever, but he had nowhere else to go.

He missed his mother so badly that once in a while it overshadowed his hunger. He missed the evenings sitting with her in the living room, reading. Not saying a word. Just being together. But that was before her illness. Back then, she had taken care of the housework, reminded him of where and when he had to be somewhere, checked his homework. Everything.

It wasn't like that anymore.

He couldn't know if she still lay in bed with all the extra pillows. He wasn't even sure she was still alive. He could barely swallow the lump in his throat when he thought about it. When he curled up inside the tree and tried to fall asleep, he prayed to the gods. Prayed that she knew why he had to keep hiding. If she was aware of everything that had gone on out here, he was sure she would understand.

He wasn't afraid anymore to be confronted by what had happened. He didn't mind being held responsible, either, even though he had nothing to do with the girl's death. He knew he would have to pay; if you broke an oath, you would be held responsible. The others would turn against him. All of them.

The headlights disappeared and the darkness returned. The only thing visible was the clearing, where the silvery new moon cast a ghostly, surreal luminescence over the sacrificial oak. It looked like a giant rising up from the forest floor. Sune thought about Odin, the god who had hanged himself from Yggdrasil, the world tree, and had hung there for nine days to gather his strength.

He kept crawling toward the sack.

What was the blonde up to? He realized it could be a trap. Could she be in cahoots with them? But his stomach was screaming. He was driven by a hunger growing out of control.

He heard the car's engine again, though farther away now. It revved up, the sound split the forest silence, and he decided to go for the sack. He ran as fast as he could, grabbed the sack, and ducked back into the bushes. Then he heard tires whining and a sound like an animal crying out, followed by a thunk. He thought about the deer with the markings on its chest.

The silence returned. He held the sack close to his body, which covered up his rapid breathing.

Far off through the trees, the headlights glared and moved away from him. Soon it was dark again. He groped his way back to the tree stump and knelt in a small pool of clear moonlight.

His fingers were stiff, but he managed to tear off the paper around the roll of sweet biscuits. He stuffed them greedily in his mouth, the crumbs flying. He felt around for the blanket with his other hand, then carefully pulled it out of the sack.

After wrapping himself up in the warm wool, he leaned back against the tree stump and sorted through the rest of what was in the sack.