Skane was a silent land. The ancient trees stood tall and still, whispering to one another now and then. The ground lay heavy with snow, enshrouding its secrets of a time gone by. It had been walked by people not quite like us, but not so different either. It had seen things we would never know, been in the presence of immortals who had disappeared like a breath into winter air.
But Skane as we knew it was still young. The Skane of my people: the frightened, wide-eyed survivors who had seen it through fog and crashing waves out at sea, who had cried with relief at its form silhouetted against the stars. Who had thought its frozen shores and mighty forests held the one thing they had been longing for on their treacherous flight from home: safety.
Well, safety never lasts for ever. What my ancestors did not know, when their boats ground on to the beach, was that Skane had a secret. Its sky held a power, and when it flushed a burning red, when it engulfed our island in a fist of blood that lasted only minutes, it meant that for many, death was certain. Imminent. Time would begin to count down, and while we could wait and watch and pray to the Goddess above for salvation, we had a greater chance of counting every star in the night sky than stopping it.
They had escaped Löska. They had escaped the Ør. But they hadn’t escaped death.
Winter had settled into the very bones of Skane. Nights were bitter and sharp in that way that made every breath ache and every bit of exposed skin burn like a licking flame. Thick snow clung to the fir trees, cloaks of white to keep them warm. While all others were huddled beneath soft blankets and warming animal skins, waking now and then to stoke the fire and rub their hands together against the chill, I was deep in a cave outside the village, scratching away at rock. My fingers ached, both from the bitter cold and from gripping a writing stone for hours.
I sat back on my heels and flexed my hands, staring up at my work. Perhaps in the years to come, no one would find these stories of me and my love interesting or worth reading, but knowing they were there, written in stone, filled me with all the comfort of a warm blanket on a cold night.
The countryside around Skane was riddled with caves just like this one – dark, frigid places that offered both a place of quiet and a surface like the one before me. When I had first discovered it, it was no more than a wall of rock, uneven here and there, but unblemished and unadorned. Ready for my writing. For my stories and etchings.
Not any more.
I had been coming here for seven days now, each day adding more and more scrawls. Even on the days when I should have been collecting berries to eat or wood for fires, I would steal in here and continue my work with aching fingers and stinging lungs. No one would think to look for me here – or no one would bother. I had shirked enough duties and responsibilities to flee into the woods for solace so often that it was unlikely that anyone would bother reprimanding me. I wasn’t the only one: there were several of us who spent much of our time in the caves, although for the most part, they were reading the writings of people long dead. Even though many of them had told their stories to their children, there had been a sense of urgency early on, to write down the things that had happened, what sent them fleeing from Löska, and the things that were waiting for them in Skane. How they had survived the winters, or built their homes, or started a new life. They were afraid, back then, that one by one they would all die off and there would be no record of them having ever existed.
Many did die, but many also lived.
I was still writing, still telling stories in a way that could transcend time. Paper could burn or rot to pieces, and spoken words only mattered so long as there were still people around to speak them. But these caves would remain long after I and everyone I knew no longer drew breath. I would one day be ash and lost to memory, but this stone would live on.
A gentle rush of cold air blew against my cheek, and I looked around, a weight suddenly pressing on me. I couldn’t explain it, and I didn’t tell the others, but sometimes I could still feel his presence around the village, under the trees, in the caves. A breeze would brush past, bringing with it a faint impression of him, the tiniest hint of his scent. It was in my head, no doubt; I dreamed it up to feel a slight ease in the pain, to find some small amount of comfort for a time. Heartbreak is a room with no light and no air, and I’d spent the past year just trying to breathe.
I ran my fingers over where I had carved his name into the wall beside mine, sharply, so it would never fade away.
Janna and Sølvi.
The hour had to be past midnight. There was more to say, more to write, as there would always be, but my hands were cold, and the night was growing ever deeper. My veins ran with moonlight and my heart beat for the stars, but no matter how inviting these dark hours were, with their bitter cold and creeping frost, I couldn’t survive being outside all night. If I stayed out much longer, my mother and father might send out a search party, and it was better to avoid that for everyone’s sake.
I stuck the small stone I used to write into a crevice in the rock and stood, shaking out my sore limbs and expelling a long breath in a burst of white. The lantern on the floor flickered with my sudden movement, sending my shadow dancing and quivering around the cave.
Pulling my fur cloak tighter around my shoulders, I took my light and moved down the narrow cave tunnel towards the exit. As I neared it, I froze. My feet would not move – a shadow, I was certain, darted out of the exit and out of sight.
I stood still for a moment to calm my pounding heart, imagining how the thick walls of the cave and the snow beyond would mask my screams. An animal, surely. It had seen the glow from my light and entered out of curiosity but grew frightened at my approach. Nothing more. I pushed it from my mind, unwilling though it was to go.
Somehow, the air seemed less frigid the closer I got to the opening. It made sense: the inner tunnels and cavernous rooms never saw daylight, so the cold was given free reign. I opened my mouth to yawn as I passed through the opening of the cave, but I froze as my eyes were drawn to the sky.
No.
Something was wrong. Something I had never seen in my eighteen years. Something that sent dread bursting from my heart and into every vein in my freezing body. The night sky, filled with stars as always, was glowing red.
Red.
I stared until the colour was all I could see, until it stained every inch of my vision and I was drowning in blood.
Red.
From time to time, the sky shone green, sometimes blue. We had learned to associate the blue lights with snow, because without fail, when the lights glowed blue, a fierce storm would come rolling in from the sea within a day or two. But this … this was different. Red was different, and as the tales and songs came crashing back into my mind like a wave on to a shore, I knew what it meant.
Somewhere in Skane, death was creeping closer like winter frost.