Shadows of the Short Days

by Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson

  Backstage he greeted the other members of the band. They hadn’t seen each other for a very long time. They looked at him as if he was a wreck living on the streets. Which, he supposed, he kind of was. He couldn’t go back to his apartment, that much was certain. They didn’t have much to talk about. They had nothing in common outside of the music, which Sæmundur had ignored since being kicked out of Svartiskóli. He was waiting for them to kick him out of the band, since he didn’t show up for rehearsals. But these were his old friends from the Learned School and it seemed that they didn’t have it in them to kick him out of the band, just as he hadn’t had it in himself to leave. It had been dangerous for them to get in and out of the Forgotten Downtown, especially when carrying instruments and other equipment. But it was exciting. A band that had the guts to play in the Forgotten Downtown was worth something. It was unheard of on this scale.

  The room buzzed with excitement as Sæmundur and his band set up the stage. He was worried about his shaking hands. He felt light-headed, as if he could pass out. He mumbled an incantation and felt himself stabilise – his shadow solidify. Sæmundur had sometimes experimented with mixing some galdur into the music, before. That’s why he had joined the band. He had wanted to better understand how the two were connected, but he’d never managed it well enough without risking absolutely losing control. At best he’d managed to make the audience feel slightly intoxicated. His experiments had helped him develop the musically infused galdur ritual of raising the cloth-golem. But before Kölski, Sæmundur hadn’t realised how to properly summon the galdur that was inherently a part of music. The untamed, raw and elusive power hidden behind the notes, making up the foundation of a traditional ritual of galdur. Galdur demanded a disciplined control, a clearly designated space, a purposeful ceremony. There was no room for improvisation, unlike in music.

  But that was before his eyes had been opened. He saw things for what they were now. Or close enough, at least. Sæmundur had seen the smoke machines and false floors. A small gap had opened in his mind and through it something leaked that transformed everything it touched.

  Guitar feedback cut its way through the crowd. The others finished setting up and looked at Sæmundur. He nodded. With a heavy tone he let go and started to play.

  * * *

  Garún had never particularly liked the music they played, but she understood why they had their regular crowd. You could forget yourself in their music. She took a sip of her beer, started to rock from side to side. Everything seemed clearer than before. Simpler. More distant.

  The crowd cheered as they started playing. It looked as if they were familiar with it. It was their most well-known song. A slow, murky riff that started out calm, but became steadily heavier until the song completely lost it at the very end. She liked it. Not something she’d listen to by herself, but a good song nonetheless.

  The intro was slow and heavy, the drums like the heartbeat of a dying old man. But something was off. Something was missing. Sound reverberated through her, vibrated to the bone, set off an ecstatic feeling that spread through her body.

  The melody became stronger, louder. The song rose like a wave, broke and prepared to come crashing down with all its accumulated power. It was then that she finally noticed what was missing.

  Sæmundur was about to start singing. He was bathed in red light. She couldn’t see his shadow cast behind him.

  The crashing sound wave hit her.

  * * *

  Everything vanished except her and the stage. The lights shimmered up into the empty firmament. From their tendrils stars were created, brightly shining suns powered by the heavy, cataclysmic metal. She felt her skeleton vibrate with each change in chords so her vision shook, like a large church bell being struck with a great iron hammer.

  The sound broke upon her like waves in a storm. Her body was set alight with sound. In the flickering, celestial lights she saw the shapes of other figures, rigid and grey statues that moved lethargically. Numbing waves of ecstasy came crashing down on her again and again, first manifesting as goose bumps over her hypersensitive skin, then becoming more intimate, deeper, digging down into the bone marrow and spreading through her body. She felt herself getting warm, her heart beating faster and faster, the crashing sound filling her head and flowing down into her chest, her stomach, between her legs. She was beating in rhythm to the song.

  The dance floor was a crystal-strewn wasteland. She realised that she was stroking herself. Every touch was like a droplet into still waters, a mountain crashing into the ocean. In the distance she saw vague forms, writhing in a bizarre dance. Sæmundur sang, but his voice was carried to her before the sound itself and echoed in her head until the tone became unbreakable. The thick bass strings vibrated from his striking them and split the world in half.

  It came to her in an instant. She saw the world for what it was: a glorious, thinly veiled illusion of suffering and hope. And there, towering over it all, a titan made out of newly erupted stone, a chained god that had wound the strings of all creation around its hands. It was growing greater, rising in splendour, a sunrise of enlightenment about to be revealed to her in merciless, unforgiving light. The titan looked down upon her.

  The Stone Giant.

  Then, before she could truly perceive its true nature, the entire vision vanished as quickly as it had appeared, her feet giving way as the illusion that is the world collapsed and everything cascaded down into the cold and patient abyss.

  Light. Dark. Screaming. Whispering.

  * * *

  She was shaking when she came back to herself, soaked in sweat. Her entire body ached and her voice was gone, but she didn’t remember screaming. The concert was over and the band had vanished from the stage. The other concertgoers were as worn out as she was, completely exhausted and satisfied, a strange, communal look in their eyes. She was dying of thirst.

  Everything was a haze. Every face looked like another, nameless worms that thought themselves to be sentient. Walking dreams. She searched for and found him.

  Sæmundur said something and she responded. They laughed. He was changed, too. She now saw through the heavy darkness that had shrouded him. He was still there, himself, hidden behind those layers of anxiety and fear and arrogance. A small glimmer at the bottom of an ancient lake. She felt the strings of his fate beating in sync with her own rhythm and knew that he felt the same. They kissed, deeply and intimately.

  They tore the clothes off each other and collapsed on her bed so it groaned, hot and sweaty, consumed with an intense desire. Garún felt him against her, hard and excited, and the eagerness built up until they merged with each other. Sounds, moans, gasps, blasphemies uttered in the dark. Flesh against flesh, warm and lush and ravenous.

  * * *

  She woke up in the gloom. It didn’t matter now if it was night or day. The bed sheets were soaked with sweat and she felt a dried wetness between her legs. He was lying next to her, pretending to sleep, and she thought of the last time they tried to sleep together. She thought of herself, standing in the rain, holding a cat. The darkness that surrounded him.

  “Leave,” she whispered in the darkness. “Leave.”

  Nítján

  BEFORE

  When Sæmundur was two years old his mother died in childbirth. He and his siblings were split up into foster care all around the country. Or so he was told. He couldn’t remember either his mother or his siblings. His father he’d never heard mentioned, but he spent a large part of his childhood waiting for him. The only vague memory he had of his mother was that she used to sing lullabies to him. Still today he felt a regret he could neither explain or fully understand if he heard some of the old Hrímlandic songs. Perhaps it was a false memory. Perhaps what really filled him with sadness was the thought of the childhood he could have had.

  Sæmundur was eleven winters old when he put his first draugur to rest. He had been herding sheep for the farmer in Hofteigur when a great, thick fog descended upon the heath. The land faded
like a photograph left too long in the sun and he felt that he faded along with it. It was the middle of the day, but the fog was so thick it was as if the sky had darkened. That was when he encountered the haugbúi.

  In the fog he came upon a small mound he didn’t recognise. A young girl sat on top of it. He knew she had been waiting for him. She was beautiful, but just as grey and faded as the dead grass on top of the mound. He wasn’t surprised by this, even though everything was green all around. He knew that this was the infamous Hóla-Skotta, who had led shepherds and travellers to their deaths since the earliest times of settlement, when she had been drowned for cannibalism and buried up on the heath.

  “Come here, shepherd-boy,” she called to him in a sweet voice. “Up here I can see where the flock of Hofteigur’s old farmer has gone.”

  “Although lambs are easily herded for the slaughter, it takes more than that to entice me,” Sæmundur answered.

  She laughed. “So you say, but still your ear is tagged with my name.”

  Sæmundur felt something hot drip on his shoulder. He wanted to turn away and run as fast as he could, but before he knew it he was standing on the mound in front of Hóla-Skotta. He saw how her black pupils burned and smelled the stench coming off her, a heavy smell of earth, bone and rotten blood. He was brought into her arms and she stroked his cheek, pushed him in to her bloated bosom. She was cold and the stench of rot was overpowering, but in it was an underlying, sickening sweetness that fascinated him. He’d never been so close to a girl before. The cold fog cut to the bone and Sæmundur wanted nothing more than to vanish into the ashen mound with the draugur.

  “Wait.” His mind felt heavy and groggy, making it difficult to talk. It was as if the fog had gathered in his mind. “I know of another mound, closer to the village, where people walk every week on their way to church. If I moved your bones then you could eat the fattest meat the region has to offer instead of making do with starving shepherds.”

  “Why should I risk that when I’ve got you here? So tender and soft?’

  He twitched away from her fingers stroking through his hair.

  “Everyone knows where your burial mound is. You must rarely eat.”

  The draugur thought for a while. With every minute that passed Sæmundur started doubting himself. What could be better than to let her touch him, to feel her teeth break through skin and tear flesh? What a sweet release that would be, to bleed into her mouth, to let her drain him of his life’s essence, to fade away into nothingness in her soft, tender embrace.

  The haugbúi agreed just as Sæmundur was about to give in and beg her to devour him, let him into the dark behind her eyes. She released him and immediately he started to frantically dig at his feet with his bare hands.

  It took him all day to dig her up. The sun had started to set and it was likely that soon people would start looking for him. Sæmundur dug until he’d torn off most of his nails. Eventually he found Hóla-Skotta’s bones. He gathered them carefully and made sure to get each and every single piece.

  When they were all gathered up he shattered the femurs so Hóla-Skotta fell down, crippled. With his dagger he carved a stave of drowning upon the skull and smudged his blood over the symbol, making Hóla-Skotta cough up water until she drowned again. He then took the bone fragments and cast them into the boiling hot springs of Heiðarstaðahverir, the bottomless deeps of which were said to reach down to the eternal inferno itself.

  When Sæmundur came back to Hofteigur, the farmer asked where he had been and he spoke plainly of it. The farmer was so terrified of the boy’s knowledge that he dared not keep him on as a farmhand and sent him straight to Reverend Hrafnkell, who was also the most learned man in the county.

  Reverend Hrafnkell treated Sæmundur better than the farmer in Hofteigur. For a long while Sæmundur imagined that Hrafnkell was his father, but he knew well that it was nonsense. He still found it comforting to imagine. The priest asked Sæmundur about Hóla-Skotta, after verifying that the haugbúi was indeed placed to eternal rest, and how he had learned to draw galdrastafir. Sæmundur knew it was very bad to know galdur without being allowed. He convinced the priest that the farmer hadn’t taught him, which was true. The farmer used staves and minor incantations of galdur to fish well or bring in bountiful hay for the winter, as every man in the county did, some minor occult meddling that usually never worked. But Sæmundur had studied those symbols and seen what had worked in them and what didn’t, although he couldn’t explain why, and so he had made the stave of drowning up on the spot by turning a defence against drowning into its opposite.

  The priest had never heard anything like it, and it was a mercy that Sæmundur had ended up with a man who was such a tolerant scholar. He strictly forbade Sæmundur from ever doing such a thing again and told him vile stories of demons and possession, men who had lost their minds and flesh to inhuman beings who only wanted to destroy and deform. Most others would have charged the boy to the magistrate, but Hrafnkell saw in him a talent that was meant to be nurtured, disciplined and controlled. He taught Sæmundur to write, read, recite a few relatively innocent incantations and words of power. It was the first time Sæmundur felt that his life meant something. This is what he had been born to do. This was his destiny.

  Sæmundur enjoyed his time with the priest, but resented the weekly church visits. Kneeling in front of the king’s idol, singing hymns and praying to the distant throne – it was all something he found unnatural and idiotic. The mountains outside invoked in him a much greater sense of reverence than the supposedly divine king of Kalmar. Remaining after the Mass and watching the local big shots of the county gossip and plot was terribly dull. He never mentioned this to the priest. After all, Hrafnkell was faithful and kept true to the doctrine he preached, even though he was more tolerant than most other priests.

  After a few years of strict preparation and studies, Sæmundur started his tutelage in the Learned School in Reykjavík, where he made friends for the first time in his life. It was a joyful experience, but simultaneously a painful one. In the remote reaches of the north there were few peers his age, and he rarely met them. Reverend Hrafnkell wrote to him regularly and sent him money when needed, which Sæmundur managed to spend wisely for the first few years, out of fear and respect for his benefactor.

  At first he liked the Learned School, the studies were demanding and opened new worlds of knowledge and skill to him. It didn’t last long, however. Soon he butted heads with his teachers and was sent to the rector’s office more than once for arguing with them during classes and refusing to do the tasks laid out for him. His new-found associates grew distant and he spent more time alone in the library than in their company.

  Soon he started to drink, more out of boredom than anything else, and waited for the chance to get out of school and away from Hrímland, which he had started to despise with all his heart. Hrímlanders were nothing but a bunch of peasants and petty fishermen who thought too much of themselves, all of them as thick-headed as the next. Soon after that he started to smoke highland moss and experiment with seiðmagn, which was when he met a young blóðgagl that called himself Rotsvelgur. When he graduated at eighteen, almost all of his funds were spent in drinking and nonsense, but even though he barely had enough for ink or coal he managed to remain at the top of his class.

  It was decided that the Royal University in Hafnía would be the best preparation he could receive for ongoing studies at Svartiskóli, which Sæmundur had aimed for ever since Reverend Hrafnkell told him stories of his years of study there. The priest said goodbye to the young man at the docks at Grandi, himself having become aged as the child turned into a man. It was the last time they saw each other, as he died shortly after Sæmundur left. Since he had no children, he had bequeathed his wealth to Sæmundur, who had squandered that money in as rapid a manner as only a Hrímlandic student abroad could.

  Sæmundur had never properly thanked him. He never returned north, where the priest lay buried. It was futile. He had
no home.

  Tuttugu

  Garún woke with a start, the dregs of the nightmare still looming over her. It had been a few days since the concert. She slept with the delýsíð sheet under her. It radiated anger, leaking into her dreams. She told herself it was to keep her on edge, but she knew that wasn’t the entire reason for it. Someone was pounding at the door. She reached for the pale blue jawbone underneath her pillow.

  “Who’s there?’ she asked.

  “Hrólfur,” was the response.

  “And Diljá. Let us in, please.

  Diljá sounded as if she was on the verge of tears. It could be a trap. But why would the Crown waste time playing games when they could easily charge in and overpower her? Garún held the jawbone behind her back, readied like a dagger, and sneaked towards the door. She opened it a small crack. Through it she saw Diljá and Hrólfur, standing alone in the dark hallway. They looked terrible. Their clothes were roughed up, their eyes wild like those of a cornered animal.

  “Wait,” Garún said.

  She shut the door again and tore the sheet infused with seiðmagn off the bed. It reeked of feverish sweat. She stuffed it in a hole in the floor in one of the corners of the room. Immediately it was more bearable to stay inside the room, but you could still feel faint hints of its effects. She was about to open the door, but hesitated. She had no idea why they were really here, or if they could really be trusted. Garún hid the jawbone in her belt and opened the door hesitantly.

  Hrólfur and Diljá slunk inside as soon as she opened. They were like mice, sneaking along the walls. Hrólfur headed towards the boarded window and tried to peek outside.