Shadows of the Short Days

by Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson

  “You’re like me!’ the girl suddenly realised.

  As soon as the girl said it Garún couldn’t understand how she could have missed it. Those unique features, those eyes from another reality which looked ever so alluring, but still so humanly crude, the human and hulda merged together in a being that was both familiar and alien. But more than anything else, the presence, the feeling which surrounded her, the disturbance that follows two dimensional realities intertwining. To Garún the child looked overwhelmingly comforting. Like home – a form of home, at least. Garún wanted to take hold of the girl and never let go.

  The farmer gave the girl a frustrated look, and she slowly sank back down. When he felt sure that she’d stay out of sight he turned back to Garún.

  “What’s your name, girl?’ he asked.

  “Garún,” she managed to get out.

  “Well, Garún, you say you desire independence and I can tell you that you will not find it in there, where men eke out a living like rats and mice in one, great throng, stuck in a trap they do not understand nor perceive, but call it home nonetheless. I am, however, willing to offer you a different option than a life spent under the heels of other men and that is true freedom and true independence, as unquestionable as the sun and the sky, the mountains and the stubbornness of the Hrímlandic sheep. The best part is that you won’t have to pay a single króna for it.”

  “What do you mean?’

  “I own a fur farm and I need workers. It’s not big but I own it myself, absolutely free of debt. I can offer you food and a place to live, along with a salary. No vistarband, even though you are homeless and a godforsaken blendingur. Our arrangement would not be the government’s concern. You wouldn’t have to handle the beasts yourself, hateful bastards that they are, at least not while they live and bite and fight. But you’d have to clean the cages, feed them, work the skins and flay the carcasses. It would still remain primarily my responsibility, after all, I’d leave you the housework. What do you say?’

  The thought of a job, of money, gave her such a quick and overwhelming sense of hope that she almost jumped into the wagon, accepting immediately. But something held her back. This wasn’t part of her plan. He’d also mentioned the vistarband, something she was only vaguely aware of. Out in the country, people had to register with the state for work at a recognised workplace. People could be bound to employers for years, indentured to them and completely dependent on being held in good standing. If the farmer was abusive, or stole from you, or something else – who would people believe? An impoverished farm labourer, new in the county? Or a land-owning farmer with a fine reputation? She didn’t know if being inside or outside the vistarband would be better for her situation. She was willing to risk being illegal in the city, less so out in the isolated countryside.

  “What’s the name of your farm? And what kind of animals do you breed?’

  “I breed skuggabaldur, a beast almost as unfriendly and hostile as the Hrímlandic weather, but all the more controllable as long as you keep them in their cages. The furs get more valuable as the years go by, it seems that the mesdames can’t get enough of fur coats in their bottomless wardrobes. But the farm, you would likely not have heard of it, being a runaway from Huldufjörður. It had such an ominous name, like everything else on this godforsaken island, because of some nonsense or other about ghosts or some similar inane superstition, so I renamed the farm as Ægisá and that name suits it much better than the one it had before.”

  She hadn’t told him anything of being from Huldufjörður and she minded that he was right about her without asking, no matter how easy it was to figure out.

  “If it’s all the same to you I’d prefer getting to Reykjavík, but I thank you for your offer.”

  “So you’d rather chose fetters than freedom, no matter what I have to say. A sheep’s stubbornness is as nothing compared with a—”

  “Compared with what?’ she yelled at him, accidentally losing control of herself for a moment.

  She’d just about had enough of this man. Her fists were clenched. She didn’t care, she saw nothing but red. No one, let alone some hillbilly peasant, was going to stand in her way or talk down to her like that.

  He stared. Tried to break her, force her to look away. She gave no quarter. He was a mountain, single-minded and unyielding, but she was the wind, a light breeze that could turn to a storm in an instant, that slowly but surely eroded everything to nothing.

  “Compared to nothing, I suppose,” the farmer finally said. He considered for a while. “Very well. You’ll lie under the furs and not move a muscle. But I won’t take a króna from you for what I only do for love of my Sóla, who suffered the same cursed misfortune as you to be born deformed.”

  Garún gritted her teeth in an effort to hold her tongue. She’d heard worse. She could suffer through this. This was the chance she had been waiting for. The money would be useful in Reykjavík.

  A brown waxed tarp covered the wagon. Underneath were stacks of black pelts. The girl was lying in a small gap between two stacks.

  “Come! You can lie down here.”

  She lifted up the tarp and Garún lay down in the crevice.

  “Lie down as flat as you can.” The farmer started to move heavy piles of furs over her feet. “I’ll even it out so nothing looks amiss.”

  He covered her up to her chest, and she felt as if she was being buried alive. The coarse furs were filthy, and stank.

  “Turn your head to the side, like that, so you can breathe. And not a single sound, or you’ll end up on the gallows. Do you hear me?’

  She nodded. Then he placed a reeking pile of fur over her and everything turned black.

  The wagon shook forward in the dark. All sounds were muted and distant. Garún lay there awkwardly under the weight and couldn’t move at all. Her joints ached. She felt like a corpse buried under a hill, disturbed by children playing after years and years.

  The smell of the furs filled her senses, mixed with the stench of dried blood and old meat. She didn’t believe that this man could sell these wretched tatters, which were hardly better than any carcass you could find up on the heath, dead since last winter.

  The shaking stopped as the wagon halted. Were they inside the walls? Or had the guards stopped him to search the wagon?

  Someone stepped up on to the back of the wagon and tore off the tarp. Before she had time to react the skins were yanked off and she was blinded by light.

  The farmer stood over her and she sat up. The girl peeked, smiling, from the gap she’d been hiding in. At first Garún thought it was the city wall towering over her, somehow all around, but then she realised they were houses. Buildings larger than she’d ever seen, solidly and beautifully built, with many floors. They were in a small alley, which was not a trampled muddy path but paved with stones. She jumped down from the wagon.

  “Thanks.” She didn’t know what else to say. The farmer rumbled something in return. “Do you know how to get to Starholt?’

  “Down here to the right, then onwards until you get to Hverfisgata. There right again and onwards east towards the apartment buildings. Hverfisgata leads all around the city, heavy with traffic, but if I were you I’d lie low. People are not as friendly as I am towards the likes of you.”

  It can’t be worse than in Huldufjörður, she thought to herself, but kept quiet.

  “Goodbye. Thanks again.”

  She turned around and started to walk away, but the girl chased after her and ran in front of her.

  “Come live with us at Bægi— I mean Ægisá. I’m lonely.”

  “Sóllilja!’ the farmer shouted. “Not this cursed damn nonsense and hysteria!’

  “I can’t. I’m sorry, but I’m going to live in Reykjavík now.”

  The little girl nodded, her face downcast. Then she added, “Are you my sister?’

  The girl’s words wounded her deeper than she knew was possible. She swallowed the lump in her throat, forced her eyes not to well up with tear
s. Were they sisters? Why not? How could she be sure? She knew nothing of her father, except that he’d called himself Liljurós. It could just as well be that man. Sóllilja. Liljurós. It would at least explain where her stubbornness came from.

  “I’m not your sister. But I’ll tell you something. Let’s swear ourselves into blood sisterhood with each other and we’ll never stand alone. No matter what happens, we’ll always have each other. Deal?’

  The girl nodded in triumph as she took Garún’s outstretched hand.

  “Deal,” she said, smiling from ear to ear.

  She never saw the farmer from Ægisá or his daughter again.

  Sautján

  Garún had contacted Diljá a few days earlier. She had trained a select number of people in using extremely diluted delýsíð spray and had to talk to the others about it. Their efforts had already made their mark on the city. She met Diljá late in the night, at an illegal bar in a cellar in the Hlíðar neighbourhood. She had to bribe the thuggish bouncer to get in, and the landi for sale was seriously overpriced – for her, that is. Diljá and, to her surprise, Katrín were waiting for her. Katrín looked pale and tired, with dark circles under her eyes. It wasn’t like her to venture outside her comfort zone, let alone take any real risks. She must be really pissed off to interject herself into this. Or afraid of what Garún might do on her own.

  The bar was dimly lit with flickering tallow candles, dripping off counters and tabletops in cascades of wax, forming over the years like glacial icicles. Garún and Diljá were the only non-humans in there. It made her uncomfortable. Depressing and dangerous as the Forgotten Downtown might be, at least it was a safe place to talk.

  “They’ve shut down Thorvaldsen’s,” Diljá said as Garún sat down with her expensive tumbler of landi. The moonshine was clear, obviously quality stuff, but still smelled almost like terpentine. “A group of huldufólk were refused entry, and the human clients apparently took their side. The heated argument exploded and they just started looting the place. Police shut it down yesterday.”

  Garún couldn’t help but grin. The graffiti was working.

  “Unfortunate. But now you see it works.”

  “Perhaps,” Katrín said in a low voice, “but you’re not going to start an uprising by hypnotising people.”

  Garún scowled. “It doesn’t hypnotise them, Katrín. It only pulls away their blinkers to the injustice all around them and helps them find the courage to do something about it. People need to know they can make a difference.”

  “I’m not interested in a few riots. I’m interested in making a real change.” She placed a folded up newspaper on the table. “Have you seen this?’

  She picked up the paper. It was Ísafold, a known mouthpiece for the Citizens’ Party, of which Katrín’s father, Valtýr Melsteð, was an affluent member. Ísafold was conservative, human-centric and known for avoiding controversy. The Citizens’ Party was slightly opposed to Kalmar, wanting more autonomy, the same as the other big four parties, except the royalists. It still played by the rules, which were stacked in Count Trampe’s favour, making for a fairly toothless political force against the stiftamtmaður, the Crown’s royal authority manifest in Hrímland.

  The front page featured a big picture of the City Hall protest showing people running, and others on the ground bleeding out, being dragged by their comrades. Garún recognised herself in the image. She was dragging a wounded man, a malevolent growth sprouting clearly from his body. A flower made from flesh and bone. The headline read in large, bold letters:

  TRAMPE’S EXECUTION OF KALMAR’S CITIZENS

  She turned the page to the main article. Another picture of the protest, showing the seiðskratti. And a portrait of Jón. It stung to see that.

  “There are goðar in Lögrétta who have been pushing against the Crown for decades,” Katrín said in an excited, hushed voice. “But the parliament can only do so much. They see what’s going on, and they don’t like it. The Crown has betrayed them every step of the way. Kalmar built Perlan to harvest the seiðmagn in Öskjuhlíð, which they said was to power the city and improve our lives. Then they build this godforsaken death fortress and drain Perlan of its power to make it fly. Did you know that the forest in Öskjuhlíð is dying?’ She shook her head. “We have to stop them. Lögrétta has passed bill after bill to get more autonomy, to get local control over Perlan, which is blocked by Trampe before it even reaches the king. Lögrétta wants autonomy from the Commonwealth, from the stiftamtmaður. Home rule. One day, independence. Some of the goðar have seen what we’re doing, and they’re on our side.”

  Garún glanced over the article. It painted, in no uncertain terms, Trampe as the perpetrator of outright murder of his own citizens and Kalmar as an oppressive force on the country. It was also partly a eulogy for Jón and his life as a poet and political ideologist fighting for a better world. She turned the page. Next up was a large double-page article about Perlan and the flying fortress. It was vehemently anti-war and anti-Kalmar.

  “It’s almost as if this is ripped straight out of Black Wings,” Garún said. “Ísafold has never printed anything like this.”

  Katrín smirked. “That’s because it is. Most of this is from the piece I wrote after the protest. We spread it all over Reykjavík. With Kryik’traak’s help we also got it to Huldufjörður and the marbendlar’s coral cities in the great lakes. Someone at the newspaper got hold of it, I think. The thing is that they’re taking a stand with us.”

  Garún shook her head. “They’ll go to the Nine for this. The person who wrote this, their editor. They’ll shut down the newspaper.”

  “Maybe if it was regular people doing the publishing. But these are powerful people, Garún. They’re close to people in power, real power. The journalist who wrote this, he’s married to Sheriff Skúli’s cousin. Trampe can’t just arrest them like that.”

  “Right.”

  She got the gist, clear enough. They’re people like me, not people like you.

  “And you think this will actually do anything?’ Garún asked. “Besides get people arrested?’

  “It will get the humans talking,” Diljá said. “We need to reach the regular people. The people who think everything’s fine just as it is. This is how we get them listening.”

  Garún gave her a careful look. It sounded as if she believed it.

  This should have been something that made Garún ecstatic. Powerful forces were aligning with their cause. The people were waking up to the everyday injustice all around them. And part of her wanted to rejoice, to celebrate. But she took in Katrín’s elegant dress – its expensive fabric, the brooch pinned to her chest, the dainty jewelled necklace around her neck – and understood what they meant: I am above you. I am wealthy. I am one of them. And we will now change things.

  Garún thought of her mother. Of the years she’d spent pushing for change. How step by step she’d changed their small village, broken the taboos of the past. This was what she’d been fighting for. Then why did she feel so hollow?

  “That’s great to hear.” Garún forced a smile. “Skál.”

  “Skál!’

  They all toasted and downed their drinks. The moonshine was awful. Diljá didn’t bat an eyelid, but Katrín turned so pale she almost seemed translucent.

  “So, all right. What now?’

  “Well,” Diljá said, “what have you been working on in Rökkurvík? Have you been tagging more?’

  She sounded concerned. Katrín maintained a neutral façade, but Garún knew she must be seething. To her, the delýsíð was taking civil unrest too far. People didn’t trust illegal seiður, let alone galdur. Wealthy people, that is. But those with less often had to make things work using whatever methods they had. No matter how dangerous. Garún felt a painful pang as she thought of her mother.

  Garún hesitated. She thought of the protest. Of how upset Katrín and the others had been. Of Jón lying in his blood, his body transformed by a violent death. She steeled herself. Thorval
dsen’s was shut down. That might not be much, but it was something.

  “I’ve got a small group of people in the Forgotten Downtown,” she said carefully, gauging their reactions. “Styrhildur’s mostly leading them. I’ve taught them how to make a few basic delýsíð symbols. Graffiti that empowers dissent, empathy and courage. Similar to the symbol I made at Thorvaldsen’s store.”

  Garún had showed the group a few well-placed portals in and out of Reykjavík. The would-be insurgents were long-time dwellers in Rökkurvík, by the Forgotten Downtown’s standards at least. A few of them had been there for a couple of years. Each was there escaping something; each had given up in some manner. But now they burned with drive and urgency.

  Katrín was shaking her head in disbelief, but Diljá’s interest was piqued.

  “How do you have enough delýsíð? What places are they targeting?’

  “It’s extremely diluted. Not nearly as potent as what I’m using. So only a few milligrams go a really long way. There’s a handful of them, so they can watch out for each other. They’ve been hitting heavy concentrations of traffic. Large road intersections, train stations. Stuff like that.”

  Katrín huffed. “This will only lead to the Crown mobilising more seiðskrattar in the city. Seiðskrattar which will get these people killed!’ She got up. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

  They watched her walk away towards the bathrooms.

  “How?’ Diljá asked. “How are you mobilising out of Rökkurvík?’

  Garún reached into her coat for her pouch of tobacco.

  “I can find new portals. Cracks in reality.”

  She rooted around in her coat for the cigarette papers.

  “How?’

  There was something about the gleam in her eye that made Garún uncomfortable. Why was she so interested? Diljá had known everything about her movements the night that Viður betrayed her. Had that been her doing? She felt Diljá reach out for her, looking for some clarity as to her suddenly hesitant manner. Garún acted nonchalant as she rolled a cigarette, keeping her defences up. Diljá tried to hide the slight hurt in her eyes at the rejection.