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

by Amy B. Nixon

  “Don’t you dare kill a Nøkken!” Aurora cut me off.

  “Monika, I’m begging you, snap out of it!”

  “They are peaceful creatures! I forbid you from killing them!”

  Peaceful? Was she fucking kidding?

  Irritation spun through me so brutally, it numbed down my pain. I quickly got back up and limped over to Aurora. Her strained blue-eyed grimace was fixed somewhere above my head. The moment I grabbed her wrists, her convulsions took over my body as well, threatening to throw me off balance.

  “Aurora, look! Do you see them now? Do they look fucking peaceful to you? Your spell isn’t doing jack shit anymore! You might be turning into a Livløs! Monika is in shock! Get us out of here!”

  Instead of falling into a shock similar to my roommate, Aurora clenched her jaw. She threw glowers with such ravaging determination, it almost made me step away from her. The pale blue of her eyes was now replaced by vivid green, burning as vigorously as the emerald carved in her skin.

  My heartbeat sped up to an impossible rhythm.

  I wasn’t sure which was more terrifying – whatever Aurora was transforming into, or the rabid monsters trying to reach us. I had no clue if she was becoming a Livløs or some other atrocious being, but becoming a Livløs was irreversible, which meant one thing – necromancers or not, we couldn’t save Aurora if she kept going like this. On the other hand, if she transformed into an immortal, soulless creature, no one would be able to save us from the Nøkk.

  Still keeping one hand on her wrist, I reached for my neck with the other, pulled the Eitrhals over my head, then shoved it under her nose.

  “Take my necklace and put it on!” I screamed over the Nøkk’s gurgling cries and my own pulse’s throbbing. Both sounds bashed on my eardrums mercilessly, while the pain in my leg kept creeping up.

  She didn’t even look at me.

  “Aurora!”

  Still no answer.

  “AURORA!”

  A voice in the wilderness.

  “You’ll turn into a Livløs, and then we’ll all die!”

  “I don’t want your ugly jewelry or whatever it is you’re holding!”

  “Aurora, if I die out here, I’ll return as a fucking apparition and haunt your ass till the rest of time! If you thought I was a nuisance before, wait until you see me as Casper!”

  She kept glaring at the horrors above my head, not bothering to give me an answer, let alone take the Eitrhals.

  Fuck it! I yanked her by the wrist and stuck her hand through the chain, just as she fought back and pushed me aside.

  Tripping on the rocky ground, I was overtaken by a new rush of blazing fire. The agony reached my torn leg’s base. It felt like someone had replaced my hipbone with a heated metal rod, and said someone was twisting it inside my body, burning me from the inside out. The pain grew more unbearable by the second. I couldn’t even rely on my adrenaline to fight it anymore. All I could do was squeeze my eyes shut to stop the tears.

  When the flames reached my waist, I couldn’t contain myself any longer, and so I screamed, giving voice to the fervent agony. Pitch darkness settled under my eyelids.

  I was dying, and this time no one was around to save me.

  Aurora had finally gotten her wish.

  A Change Of Heart

  I woke up to muted light coming from a nightstand, but I wasn’t in my room. This one had extremely high ceilings with some strange wooden arches I couldn’t quite make out. My vision couldn’t focus that far, but at least it gave me confirmation I wasn’t near any Nøkk, which was all I could have hoped for.

  When I tried to turn my head to the side, I nearly lost consciousness.

  Blinking slowly and applying the good old Pilates breathing techniques, I managed to gain control of my body. My eyes made out a human silhouette sitting nearby. The nightstand lamp’s light reflected off his golden hair, but the rest was a black blur.

  I closed my eyes, inhaled, then opened them again. One by one, all smudges and shadows scattered, revealing what was probably the last person I expected to see.

  Dann Nordstrøm.

  “Hey, troublemaker.”

  He spoke with a grim tone, perfectly matching the look on his face. I tried to sit up, but my limbs had other plans. Heavy and leaden, they refused to obey.

  “Be careful. Your body’s been in a vegetative state for eighteen hours. You were scratched by a Nøkken, and her paralytic poison hasn’t fully left your system.”

  “If you…” My voice came out surprisingly wheezy. I breathed in and swallowed. “If you’ve come here to… personally scold me… for endangering your precious sister’s life… You should know it wasn’t my idea… to go spying on… Ariel and her fucking kin.”

  His mouth curved to the side in a woeful smile.

  “You’re on a deathbed and still making jokes. No, I’ve come here to thank you for saving my sister’s life. Frankly, I can’t imagine if she had died and we couldn’t…” He paused and inhaled deeply. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I lost her.”

  My familiar sibling jealousy returned, but a moment later Aurora’s friend rushed into my mind.

  “Dann… the other girl–”

  “Is lost,” he interrupted me before I could explain.

  He didn’t say dead. He said lost. I remembered the inscription in the stone. En mann er ikke død med mindre hans sjel går tapt. A man is not dead unless his soul is lost.

  “Forsand is built over an area with intersecting ley lines. By the time we reached the site, her spirit had left Midgard along with her soul. We couldn’t do much for her, except restore her body to one piece and send it home to her parents.”

  I tried to imagine Gabriella being actually soulless, not just acting like a soulless drama queen. Then I heard Aurora’s voice.

  Do it now! Pull the waters away from the shore, and we can save her! You’re an Elemental, for fuck’s sake! Do it now!

  “Aurora… she said we could save her,” I mumbled, guiltily looking at my fingers. “She told me… as an Elemental, I could–”

  “You couldn’t have done anything.”

  His gratitude over me saving Aurora’s life obviously blinded him to a point where he thought I was innocent. For some reason, realizing this only made me feel guiltier.

  “It was my fault,” I muttered under my nose. “Gabriella… She wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t… It was like… I was mesmerized. Spellbound… I walked to the edge. She followed me.”

  “Learyn, necromancers can’t be mesmerized. Our magical core thrives on the most poisonous substance known in all Nine Realms. Eitr prevents us from being mesmerized by Nøkk, dragons and other creatures; and I assure you, your soul has plenty of eitr. Nøkken beauty can be mesmerizing to us, but in other ways. I believe you were simply taken aback because you hadn’t seen a Nøkken before.”

  “No… I was drawn to them. Like, enough to… enough to go near the edge. Why?”

  His head dropped to the side. “Unhealthy curiosity, remember?”

  I bit my lip, remembering my infamous unhealthy curiosity about the Warded Sections’ books. Knowing what this curiosity led to now, I was glad my access to those library sections was cut off by magical barriers.

  “Nobody blames you for what happened at Forsand, and you shouldn’t punish yourself for it.”

  He reached out and caught my hand.

  My limbs felt numb, almost jelly-like, but the sympathetic gesture evoked a wave of soft warmth. It started from my fingertips, moved over to my wrist and kept spreading through my body. It was a pleasant sensation. The kindness of his caress caught me so off guard, I forgot about the rest.

  So, when the door on my right opened with a startling sound, bringing back my full awareness, I nearly jumped. Aurora marched in with a fierce stride, but came to a halt when her gaze landed on her brother’s hand.

  “We were just talking about you,” he said, pulling away.

  “I want to speak to one Dustrikke
,” she emphasized my last name through gritted teeth, “alone!”

  Dann stood up promptly. In the blink of an eye he was already gone, Aperturing out of the room without uttering a single word.

  Wow! First, she had hit him in the face with a snowball for talking to me. Now, she almost growled at him with a nagging tone. The first time, he had basically sent me away, and now, he had literally vanished. Blondie hated me, so it made sense she didn’t like me getting friendly with her brother, but I had no idea why he indulged her like that.

  Sighing and looking around, I finally took in my surroundings.

  Sets of grey curtains graced the wall across me, probably hiding windows. The room held no more than a dozen single beds, with wooden nightstands nestled in between. Strange. They seemed impractically insufficient when the island had so many residents. I wondered if the doors on my right side led to nurses’ offices and storage rooms, or to more patient rooms.

  Slowly reaching for the nightstand with a shaky hand, I managed to clasp my fingers around a tall glass. Fortunately, someone had already poured water from a nearby jug. As I carefully sipped from the glass, trying not to spill its contents, my eyes settled on a metal pole. There, a translucent bag, filled with some pinkish liquid, was feeding a hose, which was attached to a cannula protruding from my vein.

  Once again, I tried to sit up. Once again, my body failed me.

  “Lie down,” Aurora ordered. “You won’t recover from the poison until tomorrow.”

  “Don’t say it like it’s my fault!” I snapped back hoarsely as a whirlwind of irritation spurred through my very core. I didn’t have control over my limbs, but my mouth was in a somewhat good enough condition to shower her with the profanities she deserved. “If it wasn’t for you–”

  “If it wasn’t for me, all three of us would be on the bottom of the ocean right now. But if it wasn’t for your Eitrhals, I wouldn’t have been able to prevent our deaths.”

  “Don’t you mean my ugly jewelry? By the way, that was a great thank-you speech! And where’s Monika?”

  “Fine. I’m sorry for not accepting the necklace sooner. Point is, we’re all alive. My wounds were sealed, Monika didn’t get a single scratch, and you’ll be back on your feet soon.”

  But point was, not all of us were alive. A girl was dead.

  “Here,” she muttered, thrust her hand in her pocket, took out the Eitrhals, and put it on the nightstand.

  “Geez, Aurora, don’t beat yourself over your unbearable amount of guilt!” I nagged sarcastically, but she was already walking away.

  Why did she hate me so much, that she couldn’t act normal after we literally shared a near-death experience? Saving someone’s life surely had to count for something. At least it always did in movies. Yet, she hadn’t even thanked me.

  A step away from the door, Aurora turned and snarled with a bestial grimace. “Stay away from Dann!”

  There was something eerie in her tone, a sinister note that sounded almost like she’d just made a deadly threat on my life, although she hadn’t. And the way she spoke her brother’s name... It was possessive, like she had spoken of an item instead of another being.

  I recalled the fury in her eyes when she’d seen his hand over mine. Then I recalled how she spoke my name, emphasizing the word, and how he stormed off, as though he’d been reprimanded for something. Finally, I remembered seeing them with entwined fingers, while embracing and being weirdly physical in the middle of the Dining Hall one day.

  “He’s had his fun with you; it’s time to throw you away with the rest of his insipid playthings!”

  Wow. She definitely sounded possessive.

  “Is this some sort of a creepy Game of Thrones incest thing you two have going on?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Ew! He’s my brother, idiot!”

  “My point exactly,” I nodded towards her disgusted expression before she walked away.

  As if it wasn’t enough how this place was getting freakier by the second, now it seemed like I had a brand-new problem on my hands. Aurora had outspokenly hated me from day one for unknown reasons. But if she thought I was fooling around with her brother, she probably intended on being a bigger bitch than ever.

  ***

  I signed out of the infirmary on Sunday morning.

  Once I pulled out my charger and switched my phone back to life, I dialed Monika’s number. She didn’t pick up, so I tried my aunt a couple of times to no avail. Her phone was either turned off or she was outside network coverage, and all I got was her voicemail. Again.

  It was the first day of December, a month since I’d last seen her, but it was also the first time I actually wanted to speak to her. Scratch that, I needed to speak to her. Not because of some American tradition, but because she was my family. So much had happened in a month. Back in November, I had been a total bitch to her. The memories made my residue anger tone down, my guilt turn more severe, and the need to hear her voice – grow that much stronger.

  They also made me wonder if Nordstrøm Island was supposed to protect me from the Nøkk. But that thought quickly fled my mind. After all, Monika had said the Norwegian Sea was full of Nøkk. If I was supposed to be running from them, there’d be no point for my aunt to send me on an island nestled in their abodes.

  My roommate turned up long after dark, prompting me to lift my nose from books filled with spells. In view of my brush with death by monsters, I couldn’t think about sleep.

  “Learyn, I’m so sorry,” she mumbled, chewing her lower lip.

  Fortunately, just as Aurora had pointed out yesterday, Monika didn’t have a scratch.

  “Sorry about what?

  “Everything. I never meant for someone to die or for you to get hurt.”

  Swallowing loudly, I was overtaken by guilt again.

  It hadn’t been my idea to sneak out. Moreover, as Dann had mentioned, what happened wasn’t really my fault. Still, I couldn’t forget how Aurora thought I could have helped save her friend.

  “Learyn, the Nøkk are peaceful, and if I knew they’d go bloodthirsty on us, I never would have–”

  “Please stop. I don’t blame you for asking me to come, but I really don’t wanna bust my head asking myself why some peaceful magical creatures wanted us dead. I prefer spending my time learning ways to use my magic, so I can be more useful next time.”

  “But I never should have taken you with us in the first place! It’s against protocol. I should have known better. My mother was right not to trust me.”

  Protocol? Her mother?

  “What do you mean against protocol? Am I not allowed to leave the island? I know there are protections and wards, but not leaving would be ridiculous. What am I, stuck here until Christmas?” I frowned at the idea of having to spend the most family-friendly holiday locked up in this place. “I can’t bear the thought of playing Secret Santa with Aurora without giving her something other than a box full of fresh Nøkken shit.”

  She shook her locks of purple hair. “No, you were never supposed to leave. Not until your aunt came here, anyway.”

  “Do I look like an underage witch to you?”

  She scratched her knee, avoiding my eyes.

  “Well, um… You’re a Class Five necromancer. They couldn’t let you go out in the world without at least some basic training because… Umm, people get hurt.”

  People like Aurora’s friend. Like the boy who tried to drag me away from my swallow. Like the island’s guards.

  I was once again involved in an accident because of which the Council's asses were going to be lit on fire. How long was Aurora’s uncle going to put up with my crap before he kicked me out?

  “What does protocol mean?”

  She broke into tears.

  I jumped on my feet and hugged her, guiding her to sit on her bed. A cold lump settled in my throat while she shook and trembled, hiding her face from me.

  “Monika, what is it?”

  “I-I’m…” She pushed me away. The lump grew ev
en colder. Maybe Monika was one of those people who hated physical comfort when they were upset, and my attempts to make it better had made it worse for her. “I-I’m… I’m…”

  “Okay, you don’t have to say it if you don’t want to,” I tried to reassure her, even though my uneasy voice probably didn’t do the trick.

  “No, I’m a-a Sentinel, like-like my brother. W-we…We… Oh, I’m sorry, I’m s-so sorry, it sh-shouldn’t have h-happened, any of it… It… all… my… f-fault.”

  Her sobs drowned out the rest of her words, and she became inconsolable.

  With yet another unsuccessful attempt to hug her, I gave up and let her cry it out, watching with a sinking heart. Aurora didn’t look guilty over what had happened with her friend. My guilt wasn’t overwhelming enough to prevent me from reading. So, that left Monika, who was obviously carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

  After what seemed like forever, her trembling convulsions eased to a point where she was able to lift her head. Her face was glistening, her clothes were dripping wet. Some hair strands were also soaked, and it took me all I had not to try hugging her again.

  I wished I could swap my Elemental powers with her Sentinel ones because she was a heartbreaking sight. Monika had been there for me from the very beginning, never backing away. Despite my attitude, despite the troubles I caused, and despite the reasons why half of the island saw me as a laughing-stock while the rest thought I’d become a monster.

  “Wanna talk about something else?” I broke the awkward silence. “How about your mundane studies in Oslo? Maksim said something about you wanting to join the government.”

  Her nails dug into her hips. “No, I want to tell you the truth. About the guardians and everything.”

  Guardians. Aurora had used that word. And Maksim had said it, but hadn’t explained what it meant, because we had moved on to practicing my evocation.

  “What truth, Monika?”

  Her shoulders slouched forward. For a second, her watery eyes appeared on the verge of another breakdown.