Available Dark: A Crime Novel (Cass Neary) (20 page)

Yet something hovered in the air a few yards in front of me, wings beating as it flung itself against the wind—the moon’s black shadow, a raven.

I was starting to hallucinate. I rubbed icy grit from my eyes, not daring to halt. The bird was still there. I knew that seagulls would follow boats, hoping to score chum or other trash thrown overboard. Maybe this was an Icelandic vulture, waiting for me to die. I veered and stumbled over a lava mound. The raven followed, diving toward my face. I batted it away and it struck again, its talon piercing my cheek. I stopped, panting, turned and stumbled back the way I’d come as the bird continued to attack me. I covered my head with my hands and ran, dodging lava hummocks. The ground cracked beneath my boot, the skin of ice on a shallow stream, but I kept going until I finally collapsed, retching with fatigue.

When I looked up the bird was gone, and the moon. A few pale stars pricked a charcoal sky. The wind had died, and with it the snow. I couldn’t feel my feet. I stamped them against the frozen ground until a prickle of sensation returned to my toes. I withdrew my hands from beneath my sweater, tried to straighten my clenched fingers, and kept walking.

In the distance smoke billowed, nearer than before, great clouds rolling across the horizon to fade into distant hills. A star shone through the smoke, brighter than the faint stars overhead. I wiped my eyes and saw that it was far too low upon the horizon to be a star. The highlands rose behind it, darker than the sky. To my left, the stream I’d forded widened into an ice-locked river, a serpentine channel that led toward the smoke. I followed this, the rocky ground giving way to knobs of lava encrusted with moss that glowed an improbable beryl green in the darkness. There were two long channels in the frozen turf—dry streambeds, I thought at first, but soon realized they were ruts left by vehicles.

I tried to run, but by now I could barely walk. My legs felt as though they’d been impaled upon steel spikes. A crust of rime formed across my sweater where my breath had frozen. My lungs and heart had fused into a solid burning mass lodged inside my chest. Spidery forms wriggled across my vision. I tripped and fell onto something smooth and circular—a tire. If it had been upright, it would have been nearly as tall as I was.

I looked up and saw an old Econoline van that had been converted to a 4 × 4, mounted on even bigger tires to loom above me like an antiquated space capsule. Beside it were several tarp-covered objects lashed with bungee cords, and what looked like the other part of the lunar landing pod—a snow-covered Quonset hut, its door surmounted by a sign covered with runic letters.

A column of light spilled from a window. I staggered toward the door and pounded as hard as I could until it swung open, and I fell to my knees in the snow.

22

A man shouted. I opened my eyes as someone tried to pull me to my feet.

“Pétur! Getir tú hjálpa mér?”

I kicked but my legs wouldn’t move. I was in a room, dimly lit by a single kerosene lamp. After the endless dark outside I was blinded and saw only a blurred figure above me. A giant of a man, bearded, naked, and glaring.

“Hver í veröldinni ert tú?”
I shook my head, and he demanded, “Who are you?”

My cracked lips couldn’t form a reply. The man frowned, and his anger faded somewhat. “He’s frozen! Pétur, help me get him into the bed.”

A second man joined him, much younger—a boy, almost, twenty-one or -two. The first man hefted me in a fireman’s carry and strode into another room.

It was dark there. The giant set me down on a bed. “You have hypothermia,” he rumbled, his voice so deep it was as though the stones spoke. “You need to get out of your clothes so we can warm you.”

I thrashed feebly as they peeled off my boots, socks, leather jacket. I heard a chink as something fell to the floor, and a low hiss from the big man. The boy, Pétur, pulled off my jeans and sweater and quickly stepped back.

“What the fuck? It’s a woman!”

The older man stared at me. “Go heat some water for her to drink,” he commanded. “Hot, not boiling. Put something sweet in it. Then get me some more blankets. And put the lamp on.”

Pétur hurriedly lit another lantern and left the room. The big man slid into bed beside me.

“Don’t be afraid. We have to warm you, but not too quickly or you’ll die. Do you understand?” I groaned and tried to move away, but he pulled me to him, tugging the blankets over us. “Do you want to die? No? Then be still. I will not harm you.”

The bed was still warm—someone had been sleeping there—and the man’s body radiated heat like a stove. His broad chest enveloped mine, his long hair and beard scratched my face. He reeked of sweat and semen. “You’re like ice,” he said, and shouted for Pétur to hurry. “Just lie still.”

As heat seeped back into my feet and hands I began to sob with pain. The big man reached down to cup my foot in one huge hand. “It hurts, yeah? That’s good,” he said. “That means the nerves may not be damaged. Try not to move.…”

I drifted into a nightmarish state between wakefulness and delirium. My skin felt as though someone dragged a hundred soldering irons across it; my arms flailed uncontrollably. At some point I drifted into unconsciousness, then woke to the man running his hands across my body, as though checking a horse he might buy.

“You are warmer.” He looked to where Pétur stood at the bedside, holding a steaming mug. “Let’s see if you can drink this now.” He pulled me upright, cradling me against him like a child. He took the mug and sipped from it, nodded thanks at Pétur, and held it to my lips. “Here—”

Whatever was in it was black and sweet; hot, but not scalding. I gagged, but the man stroked my back and continued to bring the mug to my lips, until it was empty. He set it on the floor and took my face in his hands.

“Can you see me?” I nodded. “Can you talk? Do you know your name?”

“Yes. Cass.” My throat felt as though I’d swallowed glass. “Cassandra Neary.”

“Cassandra, okay, I’m going to let you sleep. I’ll check back on you. We can talk later.”

He withdrew and tucked the blankets lightly around me, lowered the lantern flame, and left. Pétur remained for a minute, staring at me in wonder.

“No one has ever walked here in the winter. Not even Galdur.”

“Galdur?” I whispered, but the boy was gone.

Exhaustion won out over unease: I closed my eyes and tried to will myself to sleep. Instead I imagined myself with my feet rotted off and blackened stumps where my hands had been. When the man finally returned to check on me, I pushed myself onto a pillow.

“I need to get up.”

He looked at me doubtfully. “Can you stand?”

“I think so. If you help me—”

“Wait—you need clothes to stay warm.” He rummaged around the dim room, returning with a pair of jeans, a flannel shirt, a baggy Icelandic sweater, and heavy wool socks. “These are Pétur’s; they should fit.”

I took the clothes then turned away, swearing when he tried to help me; I swore more loudly when I had to ask him to pull my arms through the sleeves and tug my socks on.

“This is so fucked.” I shrugged into the sweater, trembling. “I can’t even move my fingers.”

“I think you’ll be all right: You didn’t get frostbite, which is incredible. The fact you are alive is incredible. Come in here; I’ll get you more to drink.”

I hobbled after him into the main room of the Quonset hut. It smelled of sulfur and wet wool, a compact space with two smaller rooms carved from it—the bedroom I’d just left and a bathroom. The curved ceiling was covered with rolls of insulation, and on to this were tacked pictures of stars and constellations, hundreds of them. Most had been printed from a computer, though there were several framed color photos, washed out by exposure to sunlight. It took me a minute to realize that the photos formed a star map, like what you see projected on a planetarium dome, showing all the constellations of the northern sky. There was a large telescope, too, in the kitchen area, and on the far side of the open room a set of amps, a drum kit, and an electric guitar.

But not a lot in the way of furniture. Bookshelves, some plastic storage bins. No TV. A pile of rocks in the center of the room, a makeshift hearth or cairn. Pétur was flopped in an armchair, staring at a laptop. There was a sofa and a desk with a flat-screen computer monitor. Sheepskin rugs on the floor. Another laptop vied for space on a table with dirty dishes, wineglasses, and an empty bottle, and there were cases of wine stacked beside the front door. A small gas cookstove. No refrigerator, but who needed one? The entire back forty was a refrigerator. The only light came from kerosene lanterns that flooded the honeycombed walls in gold.

I pointed at the electric guitar. “You’ve gotta be off the grid here. How do you play that?”

Galdur regarded me coolly. At last he said, “There are solar panels on the roof. They are not very useful in the winter, so I run a generator a few hours a day when I need to. There’s a hot spring not far away; I pipe water for heating and washing up. I do not have a lot of demands. If it wasn’t for that”—he gestured at the guitar—“I could live without electricity. But some things I will not sacrifice.”

He sank onto the sofa, ramrod straight. Sitting, he was nearly as tall as I was standing; broad shouldered, with arms as big as my calves and hands that looked as though they could crush a boulder like an acorn. He wore a black T-shirt and black jeans, heavy felted slippers. A bronze ring circled one upper arm. His brown hair was streaked with blond, his carefully trimmed beard gray flecked.

But he had an ascetic’s face, saved from delicacy by a square chin and long, slightly slanted eyes of a shimmering topaz I’d only seen once before: the Marvel Comics version of his brother Einar. He made a fist and inclined his head in a salute. “I am Galdur. Who has sent you here?”

“Uh, no one.” I grabbed a chair and sat. “I was … lost.”

Pétur looked up from his laptop. “Lost? No one comes here, especially in winter.”

“And no one comes here by mistake,” said Galdur.

He stared at me fixedly. I tried to return his stare but gave up: In sixty seconds, I didn’t see him blink. I looked at the photos on the ceiling, the Big Dipper so enlarged that each star seemed to have exploded into red fragments. I was thousands of miles from anyone who knew me, except for Quinn, who may well have been murdered by the same man who’d killed Baldur and the others; the same man who now, inexplicably, had saved my life. It was starting to hit me that maybe he hadn’t done me a favor.

“I wandered off,” I said slowly. “I’m a tourist, I didn’t have a fucking clue where I was.”

“Don’t lie to me. Not even tourists are stupid enough to come to the highlands in winter on foot. You should be dead. No woman can survive, dressed like…”

He crossed the room, seized my leather jacket from a drying rack and shook it furiously, then kicked at my boots on the floor. “… like a cowboy. There are people lost here whose bodies are never found; did you know that? Icelandic trekkers who have climbed the Himalayas—in the winter
they
die here. So I ask you again—”

He flung aside my jacket and sat, regarding me with those vulpine eyes. “How did you come here? How did you come by this?” He held up the spiked bracelet. “Tell me!”

He threw the bracelet at me. I caught it, clutching it like a weapon. “Someone gave it to me. In Reykjavík.”

“Who?”

“A woman in a tourist store. Brynja.”

“Brynja?” Galdur looked taken aback. “Brynja Ingvarsdottir?”

“I don’t know her last name. She owns a tourist shop. A friend of mine dropped me off there.”

“The rune shop?” broke in Pétur. “The one at the edge of town?”

“I guess. She had a lot of stuff like that—books and rune stones. Souvenirs.”

“Is that who brought you here?” asked Pétur.

“Brynja would not leave the city if it was under nuclear attack,” retorted Galdur. “And she doesn’t know where I live; she doesn’t want to know. So I ask you again: How did you come here?”

I flushed but said nothing.

“Did you follow someone? See anyone else?”

“Only a bird.”

“A bird?” Galdur laughed. I glanced over to see Pétur watching me. He caught my eye and shook his head, almost imperceptibly.

“Yeah,” I said. I was pissed that when I finally told the truth, no one believed me. “I saw a big black bird. A raven.”

“You’re lying.” Galdur grabbed my sweater, pulling me until my face was inches from his. “No one sees a raven here in winter in the middle of the night.”

“I did,” I insisted. “I mean, maybe I was delirious, maybe I imagined I saw a fucking bird. But look—” I pointed at the gash on my face. “It clawed me—I tried to run and it attacked me.”

Galdur let go of my sweater. He touched my cheek then drew closer to me, staring at the scar beside my eye. “What is that?”

“I was attacked a few weeks ago. It hasn’t healed yet.”

He stared at me pensively, then gestured at my abdomen. “You have a scar there, too; I noticed it when I was warming you. Show it to me.”

I lifted the sweater and shirt, exposing the map of scar tissue and faded tattoo. Pétur stepped over to peer at it.

“‘Too tough to die,’” he read. “That’s no fucking lie.”

Galdur shook his head. “Tell me your name again.”

“Cassandra Neary—Cass.”

“You’re American?” I nodded, and Galdur turned away. “Cassandra was a seeress. Brynja, too. I don’t know what this means.”

Pétur stood. “It means I’m going to grab a smoke.”

“Take her with you.” Galdur got up and stalked toward the bedroom. “If she wants to run away, let her.”

I felt like shit, but the confined space was making me feel claustrophobic. I hurriedly pulled on my leather jacket and boots and followed Pétur outside. He leaned against the Quonset hut, surrounded by cartons of empty wine bottles, and cupped his hands around a lighter.

“Smoke?”

“No thanks. Christ, my boots are still wet.”

Pétur inhaled and narrowed his eyes, staring at the sky. Night had faded into the northern dawn, a sooty expanse of snow and rock broken by distant black crags and a bright ridge atop the highlands, shining like a blade where an errant ray of sun struck it. The wind blew scattered snowflakes and sent smoke streaming toward us across the plain.