Nordstrom Necromancer: A New Adult Dark Fantasy Inspired By Norse Mythology

by Amy B. Nixon

I opened my mouth to protest, but he pointed at the nearest desk. There was no point in telling him how much I needed him to teach me about shields, because it was his boss’ niece who had made the threats. If I opened up about the truth, he’d probably laugh. Or worse – agree with Aurora that she was in her right to do whatever she wanted because her family owned the place.

  Brühl grabbed an empty chair, dragged it across me, and straddled the back post, resting his arms on it. Oh, well, at least he was sitting on a chair this time.

  He pulled out something from his pocket, then placed it on the desk between us. A short, wide candle.

  “Since your fire element broke out, as did your air, you’ll practice with this candle.” Before finishing the sentence, he had already lit up the wick. “Extinguish it.”

  I sucked in a deep breath of air. Brühl raised a hand.

  “Without blowing on it!”

  I wasn’t going to do that, but I couldn’t really blame him for thinking I would. After all, he wasn’t some bored, shriveled professor who didn’t care for anything but rattling off his lesson. He was first and foremost a guard. Being suspicious was probably in the job description. That, on top of the fact I had already tried to cheat last time.

  I spread my palms over the desk, positioning them on both sides of the candle, and focused my eyes on the trembling air above the flame. I imagined it trembling further down, swishing sideways, becoming stronger, blowing the flame away.

  Nothing happened.

  I imagined the air in the entire room being sucked in to one side, then swishing to the other, and extinguishing the flame on its way.

  Still nothing.

  I imagined the windows opening to blow in an air current; a windy breeze that would put out the fire.

  Nada.

  “Wanna talk shit to me and get me angry?” I asked after my third fruitless attempt. “It worked last time.”

  “You’re here to learn how to control your magic; not to experiment with emotions.”

  “Tap into my magical core, right?” I repeated the sentence he had said over and over again during our previous sessions.

  “Yes, tap into core, focus, and try not to vandalize the room again.”

  I eyed the ceiling, inhaled and glanced back down.

  This time, I tried something completely different. When my air element had broken out, I’d felt like my lungs were being ripped open. As if the tornado trashing the room had come from my own body. So, instead of thinking about the oxygen in the room, my thoughts swerved to the one inside me. Focusing on it – not just on my magical core, but on all of me – I imagined it flowing out of my chest and speeding towards the candle.

  A split of a second passed before a blast of air stormed out of my chest, hitting the small candle so hard, it flew straight for Brühl’s torso.

  But before it could hit him, the candle clashed with an incorporeal wall. The melted wax splattered all over it and the blobs remained motionless, hanging freely in the air. It was as though someone had pressed the pause button. A moment later, that someone pressed the reverse motion button, and everything returned neatly in its place, except for the flame. Brühl had left that part out.

  I had forgotten how to breathe.

  “Dude, that was freaking fantastic!”

  “Light it up using your fire element.”

  “What, don’t I get praise for a job well done?”

  The acidulous look etched on his face was anything but impressed.

  “You’re expected to do magic, and I’m not expected to clap when you do. Moreover, that was not a job well done. I told you to extinguish the flame, not to dramatize with hot candle wax.”

  “Hey, do you think we might be related? You’re always snapping at me and acting way too cynical.”

  “Do you think I’m enjoying these sessions? If I wanted to spend my days teaching clueless children, I would have joined the teaching staff at a supernatural school!”

  “Said the guy spending his days guarding these clueless children.”

  “What I’m guarding is a divine legacy and the survival of my kind. Now light up the candle!”

  I rolled my eyes and bit back a swear word, which was the Norwegian equivalent of his Scheisse. Why couldn’t they appoint me someone like Marcus Dahl? He wasn’t chatty during Aperture exercises, but he still seemed like a better fit for a mentor.

  I tried to push Brühl’s irritating behavior out of my system and get back to the task at hand.

  Following the same technique I had used earlier, I imagined the fire seeping through every fiber in my body and shooting itself at the candle’s wick. After a few attempts, I had to admit defeat. Even though it had been a winning formula with the air element, the same couldn’t be said for fire.

  I spent the next few hours practicing only with the air.

  With each new attempt, the candle’s trajectory became shorter and shorter. It was no longer flying across the desk, but simply gliding over it, as if someone was dragging it towards Brühl. He finally gave up on making me do it again and again. It became crystal clear I wouldn’t be able to extinguish the wick without moving the entire candle.

  ***

  When I first came to the island, the weather had seemed too nice for a November in the north. But as the days rolled by, the temperatures outside rapidly dropped. Ironically, a similar sequence unraveled within me. Whenever I thought of my aunt, icy disdain settled in my entire being.

  There were moments when I regretted my outburst. Each time I was on the brink of dialing her number to apologize and ask when she would come here, I remembered Dann’s words. She had spoken with the Council and made decisions on my behalf without bothering to inform me of said decisions. Although I acted childish, I was well over eighteen. I had the legal right to decide how to live my life.

  On Friday night, shit hit the fan once again, and fortunately, my aunt wasn’t there to see it.

  Patricia Svensson had finally gathered her audience of non-believers in Dann’s auditorium, and even the huge room couldn’t seat everyone. It was literally full of people. Seriously, how could I have screwed up to such an extent?

  Pretending I was blind and deaf to everyone’s startled, scared and scandalized expressions and whispers, I remained on my feet, glued to a wall near the exit. Just in case the audience decided to show me the Norwegian version of the Salem witch trials.

  My gruesome train of thought quickly derailed when a white haze materialized out of nowhere next to Svensson, who was standing on the podium. It slowly took the form of a humanoid figure, until it became the embodiment of the word scribbled on the whiteboard – apparition. A female ghost. An actual ghost.

  How was it even possible, when spirits couldn’t enter the castle outside a Spirit Trap? Had the Council removed some of their special wards and protections just for this show?

  “This is the spirit of Agnes Brekke.”

  The apparition gestured to us with her translucent hand, and a weary smile curved on her transparent face. Was she related to Geira Brekke? The latter one had a calming presence, whereas the spirit made my skin crawl in a ghastly way. The only ghost I had ever seen was my Gjenferdet swallow spirit, which had ended catastrophically.

  “Seeing as some of you had issues with this particular postmortem stage,” Svensson continued, “I believe she can share some of her wisdom with you.”

  The apparition swayed sideways, then stepped towards the aisle between the rows with tables. Only, it wasn’t stepping. It was flowing over the ground, gliding through the air. She came to a halt at the top row on the end of the aisle and remained there.

  “The fallacious notion that evoking one’s spirit represents disturbance of one’s afterlife is a fond delusion, an invention of humans and magic practitioners, aimed at spreading fear of necromancy.”

  I had no idea why the ghost of this woman hinted we’re not disturbing dead people by evoking their spirits. But I was sure of one thing – seeing this, hearing her, learning how t
o evoke a spirit, all of it was utterly disturbing on its own.

  Biting back the eerie feeling that there were dozens of spiders creeping up and down my spine, I tried to steady my tremulous body.

  “We rest through other means,” she added as her form swayed down the aisle. “Our corporeal remains soil the earths. Our spirits dwell in Midgard or transcend onto another plane, until they are called upon by those who seek our wisdom and guidance. Only our soul rests in peace, if welcomed through the gates of Valhalla’s noble glory or in the meadow of Folkvang’s adorning light.”

  “Thank you, Agnes.” Svensson nodded, and the apparition dispersed into a translucent fog, quickly disappearing from sight. “Now that the subject of disturbing the dead has been covered and dealt with, you can rid yourselves of such foolish prejudices.”

  “But, Patricia–”

  “I will not hear more of this grave robbing nonsense!”

  She interrupted an elderly man who had spoken from the front rows. As if this gathering wasn’t creepy enough, Svensson gestured to me.

  “Maybe Miss Dustrikke’s presence will give you peace of mind.”

  There it was again. The frostbite. It nailed me to my spot, trapping every inch of my body under glaciers.

  Don’t open your mouth. Don’t tell them to go collectively fuck themselves. Don’t stir up another shitstorm.

  “Miss Dustrikke?” Svensson approached me, and the only sounds in the entire auditorium came from the tapping of her shoes and the rustling of her guard’s uniform. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Was she for real? Asking me to stand up and talk, when she had explicitly told me I wouldn’t have to?

  “I believe we’ve seen enough, Patricia,” some woman’s voice flew to my ears. “The girl is clearly against the practices of evocation. Thank you for proving what we’ve always known. Such practices should be eradicated. Young Miss Dustrikke’s face–”

  “Don’t!” I interrupted her, barely withholding the urge to scream the words at the top of my lungs. “Don’t speak on my behalf! Don’t use me as a means to influence people! Don’t attribute me your beliefs! And don’t expect me to sit through your issues and pick sides! If you treated my family with the same expectations, they were in their right to avoid your communities! Use your fucking heads and leave me out of it!”

  I bolted for the exit under the cacophony of at least a hundred voices, but for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like I was running away from my problems. I felt like I had just solved one, which others had tried to throw in my face.

  Unfortunately, all I really sensed was more of the same old frostbite, gnawing, munching, eating through my heart.

  ***

  On Saturday morning, the ice shattered for a little while during my group exercise with Marcus Dahl.

  Muttering the Helbrede incantation under my nose and gawking at the twigs in front of me, I was making progress. The healing process was happening with the speed of a dying snail, but hey, at least it was happening.

  “Vee!” Marcus’ yell yanked me out of the trance-like wide-eyed focus on my twigs, and I glanced around.

  Locating the big elephant in the room wasn’t hard.

  Vee’s side of our table was taken over by its own biosphere. Instead of a handful of dead twigs, the entire corner was covered by the trunks of ebony black plants. Thorns and branches spanned from them, curling upwards to the ceiling, where they spread to all sides, forming a messy bundle. It defied the laws of gravity. Eerily resembling an upside-down cable salad, the creepy branches extended into leafless sprigs. Pointy, ferric-colored flowers blossomed here and there, adding to the pile of abnormalities.

  I was no florist, but these things looked like they didn’t belong on our planet.

  Looking back down at the trunks, I noticed they didn’t just emerge from the table’s end. Chipped and uneven roots supported the trunks, wrapped around the table’s leg, shrouding the silvery steel with their blackness.

  Vee sat statuesquely on her futon, staring at Marcus with the expression of a scared child who knew something bad was about to happen.

  “Oh, don’t be mad, Mr. Dahl,” an irritatingly familiar voice came from my left. “The mutt must be missing her homeland.”

  I turned to meet Heimir Aagard’s cocky smirk. I wanted to grab all of my branches and stick them into his face until he resembled Hellraiser’s Pinhead.

  “Silence!” The guard’s order didn’t erase that dick’s smile. “Vee, reverse them to their original form.”

  “I’m sorry,” Vee whispered, “I didn’t mean to, it just happened.”

  I remembered reading about the Dökkálfar and how they came to be in some of my books for the Magiessence book club. The first Dökkálfar were hybrids between humans and the elves residing in Svartalfheim. They inherited the Svartálfar elves’ physical appearances and some of their magical abilities. Dann still hadn’t started lecturing us about Svartalfheim, but judging by Aagard’s words, the plants Vee had created from her dead branches grew in Svartalfheim.

  Vee closed her eyes. The air around her trembled as the winding and climbing plants shrunk down. The roots, flowers and branches retracted. In a few short moments, all traces of the unnatural flora had vanished, leaving nothing but a pile of ordinary dry twigs.

  At the end of our exercise, I ran to Vee and nudged a piece of paper in her hand. I wanted to tell her how her accident wasn’t a big deal and she shouldn’t let racists like Aagard bring her down. But she had reacted badly the last time I tried to talk to her, so a short note was a better option than a verbal pep-talk.

  Don’t worry about it. I accidentally trashed an entire room during my Elemental one-on-one sessions. Growing a bunch of plants is better than vandalizing the castle.

  I hoped it would ease her embarrassment about being mocked and bullied. If I was to die from Aurora’s wrath soon, I could at least do something nice before heading straight for that black void, right?

  Once I shoved the note in Vee’s hand, I hurried after Heimir. Maybe I had a death wish. Or maybe I already had one foot in the grave, courtesy of Aurora’s hatred for me. And maybe those were simply my excuses for acting stupid.

  “Heimir!” I growled, running around him and barring his way once we descended the tower.

  He waved off his pals, caught my elbow, and dragged me to the side. I tried to free my hand, but his grip was too tight.

  “Let me go and listen, shitface! If you keep messing with Vee or others, you’ll be my next Draug’s target!”

  He chuckled. “Do you think I’m scared of Draugar? I’ve been around them since before you could speak. My childhood nanny was a Draug, and I assure you, I know how to neutralize one.”

  What the hell? Had his parents made him practice neutralizing magic on the nanny? Did they make him kill her and bring her to life, so he could kill her again? My imagination almost made me shudder, but I managed to recover on time.

  “Aww, what happened? No one wanted to deal with the little brat, so your folks had to zombify the nanny?”

  “Yeah, something like that.” He frowned, but didn’t let go. “Don’t mix with the mutt.”

  “Stop calling her a mutt! She has a name!”

  He pulled me closer, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Yeah, and you have a name too, Dustrikke. Whose do you care to preserve? Hers or yours?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Heimir!” Someone shouted his name from behind me. “What’s taking so long?”

  I studied his glower as neither of us spoke for a few seconds. He seemed thirty-ish, which didn’t explain why he was acting like he hadn’t grown a brain yet.

  “Mark my words, Dustrikke,” he hissed the same thing he’d told me the first time we spoke. “Don’t mix with her or other Dökkálfar.”

  “Blow me!” I hissed back.

  The asshole opened his mouth, closed it, and growled out an inarticulate sound. Just as I pondered over the idea of trying to use my air elemen
t offensively, he released my arm and walked away with the same furrowing glare.

  ***

  I went to the library in the afternoon in hopes of finding a book that would teach me how to cast a shield against Aurora’s possible attacks.

  Much to my surprise, I found a total of three volumes containing information on magical shields. I was about to take them to my room when I noticed there was something off with the light coming from the nine gigantic windows.

  It was a bright day outside, but there was a strange sort of softness to the light. It wasn’t golden like always before, but rather white-ish, like it came from LED lights instead of sunlight.

  I stared at the stained glass for a while before it finally dawned on me.

  Back in San Francisco, I had never seen such light come from our windows. Not because they weren’t made of stained glass, but because San Francisco was in coastal California. And for my twenty years on this planet, I had never seen a snowfall in coastal California.

  Quickly returning the books to their cases and exiting the library, I ran off to one of the inner courtyards.

  The grassy terrain was completely covered by a thick layer of snow. My ankles sank in it, as if it was made of cotton. For as far as my eyes could see, everything was white and reflective, glistening under the soft sunlight. Millions of snowflakes flew around me, pale and twinkling, landing on the ground, the naked trees, the barely visible benches and gazebos.

  I was so stunned, I couldn’t even feel the cold temperatures.

  Some people were taking a stroll in the courtyard, while others were engaged in a snowball fight. Despite them, everything felt so calm, serene and silent, as if we were on a virgin island, untouched by mankind.

  I lifted my palms up, facing the sky, and tilted my head back. While the floating islands were supposed to provide some sort of cover and prevent the snow from falling all over the place, they didn’t. The cotton blanket wasn’t patchy. Still, I moved over to a spot where I wouldn’t be under a floating parcel of land, and closed my eyes.

  The snowflakes fell directly onto my skin, covering my nose, my cheeks, my forehead, my parted lips and my closed eyelids. Each snowflake stung for a fragment of a second before it melted on me, only to be replaced by another one. Every drop of snow, every nanosecond, every stinging pinch was so divine, it felt like each snowflake was a piece of heaven. And heaven was slowly falling from the sky, bit by tiny bit.