To Love a God

by Evie Kent

  Not that I’d get that with this motley crew. Some had the nerve to talk even while our guides went over safety tips for the climb to the glacier, their instructions followed swiftly by a rough timeline for the day. We would be out there, in the raw, ancient forested mountain range, for about six hours total. Food was included in the price of the tour, and we’d stop every two hours to rest.

  Given I usually spent the better part of my days training, sequestered in the studio working on routines, perfecting posture and pointes and lifts and arms, arms, arms, two hours was nothing. I probably could have gone the full six without stopping, munching on my trail mix along the way, but everyone around me also seemed to be wearing brand-new hiking boots—which suggested we weren’t the keenest outdoorsmen in all the land.

  We set off as one, moving like a thunderous clump out of the parking lot, across a grassy field, and then into the forest at the foot of the first hill. The path underfoot was worn and obvious, free of underbrush and roots, brown and trampled while the rest of the landscape was lush and green and dangerously uneven. One guide took the lead, walking way out ahead, while the other situated himself in the middle, warning us all the second we crossed under the canopy to stick to the trail—to not wander off.

  Gripping my backpack straps with both hands, I hung back, purposefully pacing myself to create a buffer between me and the six Australians meandering along in front.

  Groups like this had always set my teeth on edge in the city—whole crowds shuffling around, blocking the sidewalk, stopping to take photos of nothing. They were a huge inconvenience, packed in tight like tinned sardines. If I spotted a cluster headed up the block, all wearing the same stupid hats and helmed by a guide with a megaphone, I would cut across ten lanes of bumper-to-bumper downtown traffic just to avoid them. No question. As I had planned my Scandinavia trip, I vowed never to be like them.

  But on the first day, here I was—one of the sheep.

  Today was an anomaly. After arriving in Oslo yesterday and taking the train up to Skog, my goal had been to rest up for the trip ahead. Only I couldn’t sit still. I needed the quiet, sure, but sitting alone in a cramped room without any of the familiar comforts of home came with new bullshit, too. Lots of thoughts and feelings that I wasn’t ready to deal with yet; enter this hiking tour, a chance to be active, to work myself bloody again so I could collapse in a dreamless sleep tonight. From tomorrow onward, I might have some touristy shit scheduled, but I would never be part of the herd again. Sure, I was a travel novice, but I had navigated Manhattan on my own since I was nine: Norway was cake by comparison.

  We were only about an hour in when the trail turned steep. My fellow hikers slowed, the group thinning to accommodate for the terrain, but that did nothing to quell the noise. Honestly, how did they expect to see any wildlife when those fucking teens kept cackling with the guide up at the front—and the gaggle of Australians, all roughly my age, stopped every two seconds to take group photos?

  I mean, the last picture had consisted of one buff guy pretending to hump a rock that looked like it had boobs, and I just…

  I couldn’t.

  We weren’t supposed to veer off the path, but as soon as an offshoot presented itself, I ran.

  Well, power walked. I mean, there were maps nailed to trees, huge metal rectangles that highlighted all the paths through the protected park, the colored lines indicating that specific trail’s difficulty. The path I’d stumbled on was marked green—beginner-level easy—and took the long way around to reach the glacier.

  Two minutes in and the noise of the herd fell away. I stopped and glanced back, the trees bowed over the trail, blocking the relentless sunshine, peace and quiet finally settling around me.

  This was what I’d wanted.

  And this was what I’d take. No people, but still plenty to look at, plenty to distract myself with. Perfect.

  I mean, I had signed away my right to sue if something happened to me out here, so the tour guides were off the hook for my decisions…

  The innate New Yorker in me knew wandering off the beaten path came with its own set of dangers, but I just couldn’t anymore. After a swig of water, my sunglasses firmly in place and my legs pulsing with the familiar energy of movement, I carried on alone. Just like I wanted.

  I walked another half hour by myself, occasionally hearing my group slightly northwest of me, all of us following the same relative route to the glacier. Every map I passed I checked, scrutinized, made sure I was still on terrain that people knew about—that was deemed safe.

  Eventually, the trees thinned and the air cooled. At this elevation, my endurance faltered, my breath came faster, my heart beat harder, and as I perched on a boulder that was somehow all angles, I finally understood the scheduled two-hour pit stops. I was in great shape and suddenly struggling; some of the herd must have been dying by now.

  Ahead of me, the landscape opened to brush and rocks and the odd wildflower, the snowcapped mountain range gorgeous and just—there. Imagine living in this much nature all the time, not a glass skyscraper in sight, the constant battle of wailing cab horns a distant memory.

  As I sipped my water and munched on trail mix, my hand eventually drifted to my fanny pack—and then to my phone inside. Old habits died hard, and before I realized it, I had tapped on the Instagram icon and then there I was, on my feed.

  No reception though.

  I pursed my lips.

  Probably for the best. My goal was to cut down on phone time over the next three months, using it only for pictures and the odd email update for the few people I had left in my life who might worry if they didn’t hear from me every now and again.

  I stared at the white screen as it tried to load, searching out a signal, and a familiar sharp and visceral panic struck out of nowhere. A cold sweat spread across my palms. My mouth went dry. My gut twisted.

  Just another reason to get off social media for a few months: no Devlin and Maeve over here in the middle of a reception-less Norwegian national park. They’d had the nerve to post a cuddly, heavily filtered photo of the two of them sharing a fucking ice cream cone literally the day after I’d moved my stuff out of me and Dev’s old place. That had been the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. Insta-block, for both of them, on every platform.

  I hadn’t done it before because… I dunno, maybe I was a masochist. But I had done it then, just a month ago, finally cutting out two of the most important people in my life in under a minute as I sobbed and demolished an entire giant Toblerone bar in a single sitting, alone on the couch in my temporary apartment, all my shit in storage, my life in shambles.

  Back then, I’d been broken.

  And now…

  Well, now I was still a little broken—and furious.

  Just the thought of it brought the heat back to my cheeks and the nape of my neck. Rage bulldozed the initial jolt of fear at the possibility of somehow seeing them; it got me moving again, same as it always did. Teeth gritted, I shoved my water and my snack mix into my backpack, then threw that on, struggling a little to get my left arm through the strap for some fucking reason, the tussle loosening my bun and forcing me to fix it.

  My feet moved of their own volition, wandering absently down the trail as I fumbled with my fanny pack’s zipper, phone in one hand, the other viciously ripping at the little metal clasp. A low whine stretched from one ear to the other as all the old emotions crept back in: outrage, indignation, hurt beyond measure.

  What they’d done to me, knowing how hard Opa’s death had hit, how it shattered my whole world—

  “Fuck them,” I grunted, finally wrenching the zipper open, glaring down at the baby blue fabric, deep in a familiar tunnel vision as I nudged bandages and alcohol wipes and my passport aside to make room for my phone.

  Not realizing I had drifted too far to the right of the path until it was too late.

  Until my foot teetered just enough over the edge that my ankle rolled, even in these stupidly expensive boot
s. I shrieked as I tipped, phone flying, hands groping at the nearby trees for something to grab hold of—to stop myself.

  And just missing.

  I went down hard, the rugged landscape harsh and unforgiving, full of jagged rocks and thorny brush, the slope of the hill so steep that I just rolled and rolled and rolled. Pain lanced my whole body, but my hips, shoulders, knees, and hands took the brunt of it, catching on rocks, slamming into merciless corners. Something slashed across my cheek, my neck. On one roll, the back of my head slammed into a sapling’s trunk; the tree just bowed to the pressure, the weight of the hit, and did nothing to stop my fall.

  But it blunted my descent enough that I crashed left instead of straight down the hill. It all happened way too fast for me to panic, for me to do anything or think anything beyond making it stop.

  And it eventually did.

  When my forehead met a boulder that, unlike the little tree, really stood its ground.

  Then everything went black.

  2

  Nora

  I came to in a world of pain on a very, very hard bed.

  At first, as I struggled to lift my eyelids, muddling through brain fog and groaning, I reasoned that because of this rock-hard mattress, I must have somehow made it back to the hotel. The bed there was basically a plank of wood with a thin strip of foam on top, and this felt much the same.

  But the smell was off.

  Musty. Earthy. Dirt. My rented room smelled pine-fresh courtesy of the rustic wood accents and whatever cleaning agent they had used on the floor, the dryer sheet for the linens…

  My eyes snapped open. Intricate interlocked stonework soared up on a wall that radiated cold about an inch from my face, the space around me dim, shadowed, but bright enough to suggest sunlight was trying to get in from somewhere.

  Everything hurt.

  Fuck.

  I sucked in a panicked breath, then shot up on my elbow—only to cry out when the aches throughout my entire body sharpened.

  “Easy, easy…”

  I whipped around on the thin mattress, on its crisp white bedding with sheets tucked so tight over me it was like I was in a fucking straitjacket. A dark figure rose from the corner, accompanied by the faint creak of—chair legs shifting over hardwood floor? The dull pain between my eyes intensified, stretching back over the crest of my skull to the base of my spine. I’d hit my head on that fall—a lot. So. Fuck.

  “Nora, is it?”

  Seconds later, curtains hissed across a metal rod and sunshine streamed into the small room. I blinked rapidly, the burst of light an affront to what was probably a mild concussion. My shoulder screamed as I raised a hand to shield my eyes, a flicker of panic tightening in my chest to find the back of my hand covered in red slashes, a cream-colored dressing wrapped around my wrist.

  “My name is Oskar.” Dragging the chair across the space, a man who appeared maybe a few years older than me, thirty at the most, settled at my bedside with a warm smile. He spoke English with a heavy Norwegian accent, but his proficiency in the language was strong, his words clear—just like everyone I’d met since I arrived, honestly. With slicked-back reddish-blond hair, he had gorgeous caramel eyes and a smattering of dark freckles on his cheeks. Lanky. Strong. Dressed in a Slayer tee with a grey sweater over it, unzipped, and a pair of dark jeans, he looked like… Well, he looked like any ordinary guy in Brooklyn.

  “W-What…?” I winced, throat like sandpaper, and accepted the cup of water he offered from the end table at the head of my bed with a weak smile. “Thanks.”

  Lukewarm was just what I needed, and I downed the whole thing.

  “I hope you don’t mind—I read your passport, just to identify you,” Oskar told me as I tapped the last dribbles of water into my mouth. “So… That’s how I know your name.”

  Fuck me, I was exhausted. Already I could have just flopped down and slept for another week, every part of me in pain. Sighing, I slumped against the stony wall instead, still struggling with the sunlight. Definitely concussed.

  “Where am I? What happened?”

  “You’re in a village called Ravndal,” Oskar said as he refilled my glass from a half-empty pitcher. “You sort of… uh, stumbled out of the woods all bloody and confused.” He chuckled softly, his gaze hovering around my forehead—like he couldn’t look me in the eye. “Gave Elmer quite a fright while he was planting his carrots, I’ll tell you that.”

  Huh. I resisted taking another sip, watching, waiting for this Oskar guy to meet my eyes, but he busied himself with the monumental task of putting the water jug back on the little wood table, then checked his phone.

  “I don’t remember any of that,” I croaked. Not a damn thing. The hairs on the back of my neck stood as if some unseen fingers brushed across my skin. “I… I fell… At the park—”

  “You kept babbling about a glacier.” Oskar locked his phone and slipped it back in his sweater pocket with an easy smile, still only looking just above my eyeline. “If you were in Fare National Park, then you walked quite a way on that ankle.”

  Annoyed, I closed my eyes and let out a huff. Of course I fucked up my ankle on that fall. Of course. The slightest rotation of my right ankle confirmed it, the pain familiar: sprained. Not the worst sprain I’d ever had after nearly twenty years of dance, but still not great either given the fact I’d been wearing boots that had cost a quarter of my monthly rent.

  Boots… Boots I clearly wasn’t wearing now. In fact, all the clothes I’d put on this morning were gone, replaced by a white gown with a scoop neckline and sleeves to my elbows. It disappeared beneath the starchy linens, but it seemed to go to my knees. Studying the nondescript fabric, my brows furrowed, and a sick twist in my belly had me swallowing down a rush of bile.

  “Uh, so—”

  “The doctor and his assistant changed you,” Oskar told me with an apologetic shrug of one shoulder. “I’m sorry, I know that must be unsettling. You were covered in blood and thorns when you were found, and getting you out to a major hospital would have taken hours, so we set you up here. The village doctor says there’s nothing fatal, but you might have a head injury.”

  “Probably.” The explanation didn’t exactly make me feel better: strangers had peeled my various layers off, seen me naked, put me in this. With no underwear. No bra. Which was just… great. I swallowed hard again, throat marginally better after the water, then walked two fingers across my scalp, twitching at the especially painful areas. “I hit it a few times… I fell down this hill while I was hiking.”

  The dead center of my forehead exploded with pain when I tentatively nudged at it, sharp enough to bring tears to my eyes. I blinked them back, chin wobbling, and sucked in a shaky breath.

  “I’m so sorry, Nora,” Oskar said softly, placing a hand on the bed—not my leg, thankfully. “I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now.”

  Panicked. Confused. Hurt. Dead tired.

  And relieved that someone had found me, that I didn’t wake up facedown in the forest with no idea of how I’d got there or where I was.

  Also relieved that this guy didn’t seem like some backwater psycho. He sounded genuine when he spoke to me, sincere, cautious and gentle like he didn’t want to startle me. Our eyes met fleetingly, but he looked away first, smoothing out the bedding like that mattered, like I wouldn’t rustle it again with my next movement.

  Maybe he was just awkward. Direct eye contact wasn’t for everyone. In fact, I made a point to avoid it in the city—if you looked at someone for too long on the subway, they either wanted to fight you or hit on you.

  “Thanks, I just…” My shoulders protested the rolling stretches I put them through. “Who are you? Not the doctor, right?”

  “No, no,” he said with another chuckle. “My family line is, er, head of the village, so to speak. I’m descended from jarls, if you’d believe it. Dad sent me to sit with you so you wouldn’t wake up alone.”

  “Oh.” I stilled, fighting back another rush of tears. “
That’s… nice of you.”

  Oskar shrugged and shifted about in his chair. “It’s no problem for me. I was worried about you… Helped Elmer drive you in from his farm.”

  “How bad do I look?” Because I felt like absolute garbage.

  “I’m sure you’ve seen better days,” he remarked distantly, coming in close for a swift assessment and pointing out my facial injuries. “Cuts here and there. Split lower lip and bruise on your cheek. Looks like you survived a bar fight, really.”

  I snorted, then winced at the sharp aching flash over the left side of my rib cage. Probably bruised a few of those guys, too, but at least they weren’t broken; I would have felt that with every breath. Six years ago, I’d broken two ribs falling down a flight of subway stairs on the way home from practice, and the pain of that was nothing to sneeze at.

  The room around us was spartan, with only the bed, the end table, and Oskar’s chair for furnishings. The curtains were a nondescript pale blue, and the window was intersected by two white lines. Wood door. Stone walls. Nothing.

  “Uh, where’s my stuff?”

  “We put it in a safe for you,” Oskar said as he stabbed a hand through his wispy strawberry blond hair, “in the, er, village town hall—just to keep it secure until you woke up again. I can take you to it. We have a satellite phone there as well if you’d like to call someone. The mobile phone reception out here is, uh, spotty, as you can imagine.”

  “Right. Sure.” If Opa had found out about this, he would have been on the next available flight to Oslo from JFK, cane and all. That great Danish bear would have done anything, gone anywhere, to fetch me if I was in trouble. But. Not anymore. And nobody else was really waiting to hear from me; all my remaining friends were at the studio every day, exhausted every night, and that meant I was the last thing on their mind. Sadness struck like a flicker of lightning, striking my head and skittering to my toes. It dragged me down, made me feel heavy and lethargic when this vacation was supposed to be an uplifting recharge. Clearing my throat, I brushed my thumbs under my eyes and shook my head. “No one to call, thanks. I just want to get back to my hotel.”