Fragments of your Soul (The Mirror Worlds Book 1) (3 page)

Gjell still threw her gloomy glances, and after Thoke’s explanation Arvid felt so confused that she followed him automatically as he turned around and went off. A murmur went through the group, as everyone grabbed their weapons and joined them.

They passed the old school, then a huge, dark wooden building, which was also a ruin. Behind it the outlines of houses emerged. It was indeed a city. Arvid’s breath almost stopped at the sight, and suddenly Thoke’s words seemed not half as absurd and ridiculous as a moment ago.

The houses were all of similar design and at first glance they looked like huge, angular mushrooms. The lower, narrow parts were built of white stone, above that several protruding floors of wood followed, which were crowned by tall, black roofs. The eaves were lit from below. Arvid could not really see what it was, but from a distance it looked as if glowing glass balls hung there, which plunged the undersides of roofs, facades, and the streets in cold light.

As they approached the houses, Arvid also saw people. Most of them were wrapped in cloaks and furs and barely visible in the dim light. There were carriages and horses, and from somewhere voices, laughter, and soft music came to her ear.

Soon after they parted. Gjell gave commands in a loud voice, then he dismissed his men toward the town.

“Gjell will be with us, but we’ll make a detour to avoid the market,” said Thoke, after they had started to move again. Arvid saw that he was shivering now. His boots looked warm, but other than that he was only wearing light trousers and a plain blue cloth tunic.

They followed Gjell along the edge of the square until they turned around a corner and reached a narrow alley. The houses stood close together. In the spaces between Arvid could see baskets, jugs, bundles of wood, tools, brooms and other things, which remained hidden in the shadows. Two reassuringly ordinary looking cats ran across the cobbled ground, and a little later they saw two children playing in front of a house. Arvid saw that they held stones and small carved wooden figures in their hands.

From a distance, music and noise could still be heard. Here and there a window rattled, and they passed people in woolen cloaks and thick furs, who looked them over with undisguised curiosity. Arvid noticed the looks that followed them, but this was not the only reason why she felt more and more uncomfortable. The more she saw of the city, the more she realized that this could not possibly be a real place on earth. Had Thoke really been telling the truth? Or was she just losing her mind?

The market noise grew louder, and when they reached another street branch, Thoke pointed to the right. Arvid saw that they were very close to the market now. The branching alley led to a road that was almost overflowing with people. Over their heads Arvid could see the roofs of colorful stalls. Many were decorated with pointy streamers, the rest of the market disappeared in the crowd of visitors equipped with baskets, bags and carts. The air was filled with loud voices, only broken by occasional laughter and the loud shouts of merchants touting their wares.

“A market in the middle of the night?” Arvid asked uneasily.

“It’s not night,” Thoke said. “It’s only the sixtieth hour, early afternoon.”

“But how…”

“At this time of the year it’s always dark,” said Thoke. “We only have sunlight for a few weeks in summer.”

“Are we far north?”

“No,” replied Thoke, “at least not very far north. North of the equator, but… let’s discuss this later.”

This time Arvid didn’t object. “Why is the city called Black Castle?” she asked instead.

Thoke wrapped his arms around his shivering body, turned half around, still walking, and looked into the distance. “Unfortunately, you can’t see it now,” he said, “but over there, there’s a castle—the Black Castle. Long ago demons destroyed everything here. The people fled, but decades later, they returned and built a new city. Since there was no longer a king, the fortress wasn’t restored, but the city is still called Black Castle.”

“They destroyed the whole city?” Arvid asked, shuddering and pulling her cloak close.

“Yes,” Thoke said, “but that was centuries ago. Back then people did not know how to protect themselves.”

They reached a narrow, old-looking house. It was of the same type as most of the houses here, only smaller and shabbier. Quite obviously it was Thoke’s home because Gjell, who had previously preceded in silence, let him go first.

A dark, smoky, but warm room received them. Arvid could not remember when she last had been so glad to get inside a house. To her left there was a table with wooden chairs; to the right she could see through an open door into a narrow living room. In the opposite corner was a sooty stone fireplace, next to another door, in which at this moment a gray-haired woman appeared.

She was at least seventy years old and wearing a long, light brown dress. A surprised, almost frightened expression spread on her face when she saw Arvid and her companions. Gjell greeted her in a formal-sounding voice, and quickly a heated conversation started. Arvid could not understand more than her name, but the old lady seemed very upset. After Gjell had spoken to her for a while, insistently, but not unfriendly, she nodded and left the room.

Thoke, who had followed the conversation in silence, turned to Arvid. “Sit down, please,” he said. “Gjell will need to write down a few things about you.”

Arvid was not comfortable, but did as she was told. Thoke and Gjell sat down at the table also. Thoke smiled, but Gjell looked at her seriously, just as if she had done something wrong.

“As commander of the City Guard Gjell is obliged to report to Asgard when someone ‘arrives’…” said Thoke. “But you have nothing to worry about. Once he’s written down everything he needs, he will leave again and you can get some rest.”

“Who’s Asgard?” said Arvid.

The old woman came back and brought Gjell paper, ink and a quill. He thanked her, took an empty sheet and started to write something.

“Asgard is not a person, it’s a place,” Thoke said after the old woman was gone. “It is the home of our gods. I thought that this was known even in the Light World.”

Arvid looked at him, puzzled, but now Gjell said something in an impatient tone.

Thoke looked at Arvid piercingly. “Gjell will ask you a few questions. I’ll translate it. It is important that you answer as honestly and as accurately as possible. They say the oracle can see through lies at once.”

Arvid decided not to ask what this oracle was, because everything she was hearing at the moment only seemed to confuse her more. Gjell wrote down her name, the names of her parents, her age, and her hair and eye color. Then he asked her about some very strange things, such as whether it had been raining or snowing on the day of her birth, if her mother had children from other men and more. Many questions Arvid could only answer vaguely or not at all, but in the end Gjell seemed satisfied. He folded the paper and noisily rose from his chair, then he shook her hand vigorously and said something. He spoke exaggeratedly slowly and firmly looked at her, but even with the best intentions Arvid could not understand anything. She looked at Thoke in a pleading manner.

“Gjell thanks you for your help,” translated Thoke. “He’ll come back as soon as he gets a response from Asgard.”

Arvid made a helpless gesture toward Gjell. “Thanks… I think.”

Gjell gave Arvid a wide smile, revealing a row of slate yellow teeth, then he said goodbye to Thoke and the old woman and left.

Over the next hour Arvid was washed and her feet rubbed with ointment. The old woman gave her warm clothing that probably belonged to her. Arvid learned that her name was Falla. Thoke lived with her and helped her in the house. The language they spoke was called Jördish. Falla combed Arvid’s still damp hair and insisted on braiding it into braids. Thoke told her that it was customary to do so when you wore long hair, regardless of whether you were male or female.

Thoke showed her a niche in the ridge of the roof, equipped with soft furs, which was accessible via a narrow ladder and where she would be able to sleep. He also offered her something to eat, but Arvid felt neither hungry nor tired. She was stirred up, so she walked around uneasily and examined everything closely.

The floors of the old house were covered with colored rugs and furs. On the walls straw wreaths and embroidered images hung. There were tables and chairs, stone jars and bowls, chests decorated with carvings and even a few books, but those were written in incomprehensible runes.

The windows of the house were made of glass—real, clear glass—although there were a few small bubbles in it. There didn’t seem to be any electricity or artificial light. Arvid saw several of the strange glowing glass balls, which she had seen outside, but there were also candlesticks and small lanterns made of metal. Nothing pointed out that someone just pulled a prank on her. The city outside the windows was real; this house was real. There was nothing that even remotely looked like a backdrop, and she found no artificial materials such as plastic.

Eventually, Arvid gave up. Her feet hurt, she felt helpless and confused, and so she sat down at the table next to Thoke. He was reading a book but put it aside immediately when he saw her.

“You still don’t believe me?” he asked gravely.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Arvid said tensely. “Right now I’m just waiting for the moment I wake up in my bed at home.”

“I know. It takes time to accept it, but then it will be easier, you’ll see.”

“I doubt that,” Arvid said irritably. “How am I supposed to just accept that? Although I have no idea how, but… I’m probably just in a secluded corner of the world.”

“You are not, however,” Thoke said.

“And I’m supposed to believe that, simply because you tell me?”

“Should I lie to you and have you believe you’re just stranded somewhere on a small island off the coast of Finland for as long as possible or something like that? Just so the shock is even bigger when you realize that it’s not true?”

“You say this is a different world, but how do you know Finland then?” Arvid said excitedly. “And why do you speak my language?”

Thoke smiled gently. He was so calm, it almost made Arvid aggressive. “It’s my mother tongue,” he said. “Most of those who show up here come from the same region. I lived in Finland, my father’s homeland, before I came here.”

Arvid stared at him in disbelief. “You mean, you… you also…?”

“Eventually woke up in this world, confused and scared, yes,” Thoke completed her sentence. “However, I wasn’t as lucky as you were. I wandered around for a few days before I met other people.”

Arvid didn’t know what to say. Her thoughts seemed to be cumbersome, as if they were moving through thick, sticky syrup. Everything seemed so unreal, as if one of her dreams suddenly had become reality and her life was just a memory of a long, very realistic dream.

“All right,” she finally said, “let’s just assume you’re telling the truth… How long have you been here?”

“Almost fourteen years,” Thoke answered. “However, the years are longer here, and the time does not behave exactly the same way. If a year passes in the Shadow World, that seems to correspond to about five or six years in the Light World.”

“And… you never wanted to go back?”

Thoke chuckled. “Of course I did. At least in the beginning, but… it’s not possible.”

“What are you trying to say?” Arvid said, horrified. “This… shimmer, or whatever it was—it was some kind of a portal, right? There must be more of them.”

“Suddenly you believe me?” he asked with a hint of mockery.

“What else should I do?” Arvid said angrily. “It doesn’t even matter if I’m in Finland, in hell or somewhere else… I just want to go back as soon as possible.”

Sighing, Thoke pushed the book in front of him aside and looked at her seriously. “I know how hard it is to accept that. You are right about the fact that this shimmer is a portal and that there are more of them. We call them world transitions, but unfortunately they only lead in one direction.”

Arvid stared at him and felt her hands beginning to tremble, only this time it wasn’t because of the cold. “Are you telling me that I’m stuck here forever, in this… this dark hole?”

“Hole? You’ve hardly seen anything of this world. It has its own charm. You just have to get to know it first.”

“But I don’t want to!” said Arvid. “I want to go home, as quickly as possible! Can you imagine what will happen to my mother if I don’t come home tonight?” The sheer thought caused her sickness, and her heart was pounding so hard that she thought she could feel it up in her temples.

Thoke looked at her sympathetically. “I can—sort of, anyway. But I can’t help you. I can’t change it, as much as I want to. There is no way back.”

“Have you ever really tried?” said Arvid, feeling anger and despair rising inside her. “Or did someone just tell you that it’s not possible?”

“Arvid, calm down,” Thoke said with a placating gesture. “The world transitions have been studied by scholars and gods. I know how you feel, but… if the gods don’t know a way, then no one does. It was they who once created the transitions.”

“What?” Arvid asked, stunned. “They created portals that only lead in one direction? I’ve never heard anything dumber!”

It was obvious that Thoke tried his best to stay calm. “That was not their intention. Previously the world transitions led in both directions, but the gods lost control over them centuries ago. They are unpredictable today.”

“Oh, but of course!” Arvid said sarcastically. “That makes it a thousand times better. I mean, it was not their intention, right? In that case, everything is in order, and no one needs to do anything about it!”

“Nonsense!” protested Thoke. “The gods do what they can. I owe Asgard my life. They will help you to find a place in this world, too.”

“But I don’t want a place here!” Arvid shouted angrily. “Because I have one, my home in the Light World, as you call it. These… these gods better take me back there, or I’ll tell them where to stick it!”

For a moment Thoke stared at her in disbelief, then he took a deep breath. “Believe me, if the gods could simply take you back, they would do it.”

“Nonsense! Gods are omnipotent. If I’m supposed to believe all of your absurd stories, then why don’t your fine gods just come here and send me back home to my mother?”

“Arvid, this world is more different from yours than you might think,” Thoke said. “What we refer to as gods might not be the same as in your world, but… in order to understand that, you would have to know so many other things first.”

“Then why don’t you just tell me!” Arvid shouted.

Thoke looked at her in shock, and at the same instant Arvid realized that she once again talked herself into a rage, although deep inside she only felt fear and despair. It was an instinct. She was better at dealing with anger than with fear, but Thoke did not deserve such treatment. He had probably saved her life, and the realization smothered the flames of her aimless rage almost instantly.

“Sorry,” she said weakly and clasped her still-trembling hands together. “I’m sorry, I… I didn’t want to shout. I’m… just completely confused.”

Thoke took a deep breath. “It’s all right,” he said. “Maybe you just need some rest to digest everything.”

Arvid avoided his gaze. “Yes, perhaps.”

Thoke grabbed the book from the table and stood up. “Since I have missed half of today’s lessons anyway, I will quickly go to the market instead,” he said. “Maybe you should try to sleep some in the meantime.”

Arvid nodded silently. She decided not to ask any further questions for the moment. Her mind was spinning, and she felt queasy. Thoke was right, she needed some rest.

After he had left the house, Arvid climbed up into the small alcove and lay down on the improvised bed. It seemed to be made of straw; however, it was covered with soft fur. There was also a feather pillow and two blankets made of wool, so Arvid soon found a reasonably comfortable position. The smell of the bed was unfamiliar but not unpleasant. From outside the soft noises of the market reached her ears, and now and then she heard voices or the sound of hooves from the road.