Shadows of the Short Days

by Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson

  He nodded his approval.

  She realised who the man behind the light was. That same, repugnant voice. It was the man who’d caught her after she bought delýsíð in the Forgotten Downtown. The officer she thought Sæmundur had killed.

  She tried to free herself. Screamed. Viður moved closer, now staring at her intently. She refused to look at him, clenched her eyes shut.

  But it was for nothing.

  * * *

  Hljóð.

  A single word encompassing both silence and sound. One and the same.

  For everything is sound.

  His heart was no longer beating. Instead a thunderstorm raged inside him. His bones sang with reverberation.

  Everything trembled. Everything quaked. Everything resounded.

  The world was a stage. This was something he had been absolutely certain of. Every world and every dimension there was. Deceptions and illusions. But he now saw that was only a fraction of the truth.

  Every world is a frequency. A sound wave. Only existing as long as the movement does, as the frequency rises and falls. In the beginning, there was nothing. Then, there was the word. The sound. The wave rises and the vibration, the reverberation, births existence. The frequency reaches its limit, and falls back down into nothingness. The world ends, only to dive and rise again and birth a new universe. The sound wave vibrates up and down, up and down. Every peak and valley only a fraction of a single note, which itself only lasts for a moment in a long and majestic work of music which his mind could barely fathom. Everything was sound, birthed from the same source.

  That was the fountain galdur drew its power from. When galdur worked, it was only because a minor harmonisation occurred with that original sound, the tone of creation which was the source of everything. Planets, dimensions, life and darkness itself. Everything. Only a side effect of whatever end the greater score was working towards.

  He could hear them. All the worlds, together, sounding. Nothing but echo that is thrown back and forth until it fades away.

  But behind that was the beginning and the end. That which Kölski had talked about. That which is and is not. Was never and has always been.

  The almighty overwhelmed him completely.

  * * *

  Life is chaos. An incomprehensible pandemonium. We try to place events in context, understand cause and effect, but behind each incident is a meeting of endless threads into one possibility, which then multiply. How can the infinite multiply itself ? It is impossible. The human mind cannot fathom infinity. Not in a real sense.

  But time had unwound itself in Sæmundur’s mind, spread out and poured over him in its true image. That which had been a linear and comprehensible form, stretched out and mutated. Became incomprehensible. Time did not exist. Had always existed.

  There was no cause and effect. No past or future. That which living beings experienced as fundamental change – every death and every birth, revolutions, supernovas burning out, galaxies colliding, entire dimensions collapsing – all of this was drowned out in the background and blended into one constant.

  * * *

  She couldn’t move.

  Katrín, Styrhildur and Hraki were standing in front of her and shaking their heads in disappointment. They were covered in terrible wounds.

  “We should never have trusted her.”

  “I am so glad she’s dead.”

  “She deserves worse.”

  “Selfish bitch. Stupid, selfish bitch.”

  “You deserve this.”

  Then they set her on fire. But she couldn’t die. She was alive and she felt the flames cover her, the fat crackling and the eyes bursting.

  * * *

  He could send planets off their orbits. Make suns pull his chariot. Let ocean and sky change their place. Remove the force of gravity. Rewrite the laws of nature.

  But none of that mattered. The entire work of creation was an insignificant detail, a speck in a microscope, completely without significance. So many things moved before his eyes, in his mind. Greater and more important than anything he had ever imagined.

  * * *

  In the beginning was the word.

  Tone.

  Sound.

  But before the tone of creation sounded, the same which still resounded and created reality itself, there had been silence. And after the tone would fade, silence would still remain.

  Emptiness. Nothing.

  Silence. Sound.

  Hljóð.

  Galdur.

  * * *

  They were robbing her of herself. It was not enough for them to simply execute her – no, they had to reach back in time and kill her there as well. Murder her memories and her along with them.

  The same thing she had done to Hálfdán. She felt as if he now took up more room in her head that she herself did. They’d mostly let him be once they realised what had taken place. What would happen if it kept on like this? When would Garún disappear and this other element take over?

  She held on dearly to those good memories she had left. They had no reason to take them away from her, but she was certain that Viður was sneaking into them and feeding upon them like delicacies. But she could not be certain. She could not know what she had lost. She only knew that it happened, had to have happened, because she remembered the interrogation. But there were also some things in her life that didn’t fit together any more. She couldn’t remember how she’d met Sæmundur. Why they’d broken up. Where he was. What she’d asked him to do.

  But she remembered when she was painting in the living room one summer evening, and he was playing some ditty on his guitar and singing along with it. Just making something up. She had been so happy. She held on to this memory with all her might, reliving it again and again in her mind.

  She tried killing herself by beating her head against the rock. There was nothing else in the cell. The only things she accomplished were new wounds and being unconscious for a vague amount of time.

  The beatings had stopped. She didn’t know how long she’d been kept here. Time had no meaning to her any more. But she wished that they’d kept on. Perhaps they would have accidentally killed her.

  * * *

  It didn’t add up. The same man she’d seen overpowered by living darkness. Þráinn Meinholt. Sæmundur had killed him. At first she thought she had gone insane. Had imagined it all along. But the next interrogation happened in the same bright room, and he was always there. Him and Viður. She screamed at him, demanded answers, said it wasn’t him, she would not fall for this trick, but he never did anything except to smile in return. Then, when Viður drew closer her words of hate immediately evaporated. She begged for mercy. She would tell them everything. Anything they wanted to know. So long as they did not take anything further from her.

  She hated herself for breaking down like this. Being turned into this wreck. After every interrogation, she decided to never beg them again, but she broke down each time. It kept on happening faster and faster.

  * * *

  She was tied to the chair when she came to. She was alone in the interrogation room. No officer, no Viður, not even the table was there. Perhaps it was a different room. Opposite her was an empty chair.

  The sound of steps, behind her. Someone walking down the hall outside. The sound of keys jingling and then the door being unlocked. Someone entered. The door slammed shut.

  She didn’t look up. Her head hang limply forward.

  A man in an expensive suit sat in the chair against her. Well-polished shoes, trousers neatly pressed.

  “Hello, Garún.”

  She looked up. She had assumed it to be the officer, Þráinn. But the voice had been too familiar.

  Hrólfur leaned back in the seat against her.

  No words. No words would do for her. They were all ruined, meaningless.

  “I’m not quite sure what I’m doing here.” He reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and shook one out. “They told me to leave it be. That it was pointless. But I
felt like you deserved something. Some explanation. So I asked them to ensure that you would remember enough for the purposes of this conversation.”

  She watched him light his cigarette and inhale the bluegrey smoke. Factory rolled cigarettes. With no character. Her ears buzzed.

  “You …’

  She swallowed. It was hard to speak. Every word she tried to speak out loud only came forth as involuntary twitching as they all simultaneously fought for purchase. She felt nauseous.

  “All this time?’

  He nodded, brushed ash off his trousers.

  “All this time.”

  “Also Diljá? Katrín?’

  She could hardly form sentences. Her mind reeled as she went through their time together, or what she had remaining of it, re-examining every single word, every moment, every decision.

  “No. Just me.”

  “Where is Katrín?’ Garún struggled to keep her voice level. “What did you do to her?’

  “She’s here. In the Nine.”

  “And Diljá?

  Some shadow of pain had moved across his face when she said Diljá’s name. As if it hurt him to be reminded of her. As if he had loved her. Garún felt heat flow into her. Her heart pounding. Screaming.

  “That’s none of your concern.”

  She spat in his face. There was blood in the saliva.

  “You’ve killed them! You’ve killed them! You disgusting fucking pig!’

  She struggled against her restraints and screamed, not aware of what she was saying. The chair rocked and she fell to the floor. But she still kept on going. The doors opened and guards came in, but Hrólfur said it was fine, they could go.

  She pushed, fought and screamed until she became completely numb. Sore and empty. Hrólfur lifted up her chair and sat back down against her. He’d wiped the spit off himself.

  “Finished?’

  She said nothing.

  “I cared for Diljá. I really did. But she was always trouble. These huldufólk are always groping your emotions when you least expect it. It just won’t do. So when the pressure became considerable, I decided to develop some feelings towards her. Only let her sense love and affection. I wished it hadn’t had to come to this. But I was always prepared for it. As you said yourself, she was completely aware of what she was signing up for.”

  “Knew what she was signing up for?’ Garún screamed. “Are you completely fucking insane? You betrayed us! You killed her!’

  He shook his head. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. I don’t why I thought you did, after you went so completely off the rails.”

  “Understand what? That you are an inhuman piece of shit?’ She shook her head and laughed. “It doesn’t matter. You didn’t manage to stop us. The stiftamtmaður is dead. Loftkastalinn is gone. The Crown is not invincible. The people will rise up against their oppressors and tear down all the despicable walls you have built around yourselves.”

  He stared at her, dumbfounded. “Stop you? But that was exactly the purpose. To remove Trampe.”

  She could not speak. This was the last thing she’d thought he would say.

  “Well, all right. The goal wasn’t exactly to kill the stiftamtmaður,” Hrólfur went on, twirling the cigarette in his hands. “It was to destabilise Trampe and get some leverage on him. Removing him was a long-term political plan, if you can wrap your head around something like that. That was always the agenda, long before that crappy little newsletter was founded. This course of events was set in motion before you needed more delýsíð and went to Viður to buy more. The trap he set you up with. Everything.”

  He took a drag of smoke and studied her as he blew it out.

  “The only thing I did not expect was that fucking Sæmundur. And you going so absolutely off the goddamn rails. Never expected him to be the lunatic he turned out to be. But it was fine, we will have Sæmundur neutralised soon enough. And it turned out to work out well for us that Loftkastalinn vanished.”

  “Well for you? You work for the fucking Crown!’

  He sighed and leaned forward in his seat.

  “Garún, think. Who benefits the most from getting the stiftamtmaður out of the way? Do you have any idea of the political landscape in this country? Or are you so completely absorbed in your own revolutionary rage and sense of self-righteousness that you are absolutely out of sync with reality?’

  He threw his cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his heel.

  “I work for Innréttingarnar. For Sheriff Skúli. For the party. Trampe was trouble from the get-go, and he had to be managed. That was why we let your little rebellion operate for as long as it did, printing Black Wings without repercussion. It worked, for a while – Skúli thought he could slowly undermine Trampe. But then Katrín got that fucking article in the paper and sabotaged the deal for Perlan. Goddamn, how you bitches went behind my back. You ruined everything, Trampe went berserk when he heard about it. The entitled moron . . . He never compromised!’

  Hrólfur leaned back and crossed his legs.

  “I guess you two had that in common. Trampe never understood how everyone could profit. How everyone’s interests could be ensured, so that everyone could come out of a deal having gained something. He never knew how to compromise. So we had to put some pressure on him. That’s why the protests were allowed to happen. You weakened Trampe’s hold on Hrímland and gave us the chance to form the Home Rule Party. Everything you did, everything you fought for, was for our benefit.”

  “He’s dead,” said Garún. “So your little plan, to use the protests to manipulate him, fucking exploded in your hands. No matter what the reason for it was. He’s dead and the people will rise up against you.”

  “Why should one dead nobleman ensure a nation’s independence? Even if he was assassinated. Even if Loftkastalinn, their little science experiment, has disappeared. People still know their place, as always. The Crown still controls the army, their warships and biplanes. And now they have those fucking alien things that suck the life out of people – as you’ve seen first-hand.”

  She did not know what he meant by that.

  “So, Trampe is dead. Maybe not exactly what we were planning for, but we knew the possibility was there. A political failure removing Trampe from office would have been preferable – but beggars can’t be choosers. So, Hrímland needs a new stiftamtmaður. It just so happens that the most suitable candidate is the king’s close nephew, Loretz Engel Gyldenlöve. Respected in the court, an educated person of great pedigree, but at heart a simple man who likes to drink and thinks more about fucking than politics. He is a man who will do as he’s told and like it, unlike Trampe. A man who sees that it’s to everyone’s benefit to, for example, properly privatise Perlan and put some real industry on the map here. Put all this fucking unnature around us to some use and let the cogs of the economy work freely, so cash can flow in the right place. Everyone benefits, and we won’t have to destabilise the country just to get the stiftamtmaður to do as he’s told.”

  He leaned in towards her. “The only thing we needed was a credible reason behind the dissent. A buffer between us and the protests. Along came the spirit of the revolution: you.”

  “You’re lying! I’m in the Nine, a prisoner of the Crown! That officer, Þráinn, works for them! They would have realised this long ago!’

  “Hegningarhúsið at Skólavörðustígur 9 is not run by the Crown, although many people think it is. It’s run by the Ministry of Justice – specifically, the Directorate of Immigration. The Hrímlandic government. Lögrétta. This house was built by Innréttingar, one of their first ventures, along with the parliament building. And that officer, Meinholt, he’s just like me, and his boss, the commissioner. On the party’s payroll.”

  Hrólfur stood up. “The revolution isn’t coming. I just wanted to you know that. I always found your pretentious arrogance to be completely insufferable.”

  He walked behind her and knocked on the door. Her heart was beating so fast that she thought she might
die. She wished she could die. There were so many things she wanted to say, she wanted to do. She wished she had said, or done.

  “They will execute you in a few days,” he went on in the same, casual tone. “I convinced them to leave some memories behind.” She could hear the guard opening the door for him. “You won’t simply die. You know that, right? You haven’t earned death in some blissful ignorance. The seiðskrattar will ensure you get a traitor’s death. You’ll be tortured for an eternity.”

  She leaned back in the chair, stretching to see him. She could not hold back the tears that now flooded unhindered from her eyes.

  “What about Katrín and Diljá? Hraki? Is Styrhildur alive?’

  “Styrhildur and Hraki will find themselves here soon enough. Katrín will be executed along with you, but in a more humane way. Her father managed to get that through, although he could not convince Skúli to completely spare her. Diljá is none of your concern.”

  The door slammed shut.

  * * *

  A sorrowful scream woke Sæmundur from his torpor, the overwhelming ennui which had overtaken him. He brought his tiny fragment of the world back into focus. The sound came from Reykjavík.

  He turned towards the city. His limbs were so heavy that he barely managed to find the strength to move them. Turning his torso was like weathering down a mountain with nothing but the wind. An impossibly long and exhausting effort.

  He listened closely. It was a terrible wail, which never needed to draw breath. It cut him to his deepest core. He knew that voice.

  Garún.

  She was in a bottomless pit, imprisoned deep within the ground, bound with sorrow and regret. Tortured. Memories ripped out, bloody, and devoured raw. Blasphemy.

  Her suffering and despair came pouring over him in full force. Touched something deep within him, a sensitive core which had still not hardened and become numb to emotion.

  He had abandoned her so many times before. He’d lied to himself that he wasn’t ashamed of bringing her to the party at Svartiskóli. But it wasn’t true. He’d sacrificed a creature Garún loved dearly, just to further his own selfish desires. He had betrayed her over and over again.