We armed ourselves with whatever we could lay our hands on—Mordur found a large hunting knife, Michael a board, Sarah kept the metal poker. I picked up a walking stick. We waited, listened. When we finally thought it was safe, Michael slid the pole out of the rings and slowly lifted the trapdoor. Mordur leaned into the hole, craned his neck so he could see into all corners of the lower croft room. “It is gone,” he said. He climbed down the ladder, holding the knife in one hand. Michael, then Sarah, followed.
I decided the walking stick was too thin to be a good weapon, so I searched around for something else.
“Angie, what’re you doing up there?” Michael yelled through the trapdoor.
“I’ll be down in a second.” I found another fire poker leaning against a chair, and next to it the backpack that Michael had used to carry our lunch. A few inches away was the box of calfskins. It seemed to be my job to clean up after these guys. I gently put the box inside the backpack and pulled it over one shoulder. I grabbed the poker and went to the stove, twisting a key on the oil lamp. The wick sank out of sight, the light died. I stumbled across the floor to the trapdoor and climbed down the ladder.
The front door had been knocked off its hinges; snow blanketed the ground floor. Mordur was bent over one of the horses. “Poor Sleipnir. Look at his throat . . .”
Sarah turned away. “It’s terrible.” I was glad to be standing a few feet away, I couldn’t see anything clearly.
Mordur stared at Sleipnir, his face grim. “Thordy and I will come back to bury them. They will be good here for now. With the snow and cold.”
Mordur stood up and stared out the entrance, holding his knife out in front of himself. “I do not think that . . . that thing will be back soon. It will be holed up somewhere with a sore eye. The snow is cleared, maybe enough to make home. Are you ready to go?”
“We don’t have much choice,” Michael said. Sarah was already tightening a scarf around her face. I pulled my zipper up. I didn’t want to spend another moment in this place.
We entered a world of whiteness. There was a splash of red next to the broken door. I stepped closer and found a small cloth sack on the ground, just like the one I’d seen back at Uncle Thordy’s house. It had been torn open and a black liver-like thing sat on the snow.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Butcher bag,” Mordur said. “Livers and hearts and organs. For fox traps.”
“I saw a bag like that near the house,” I said. “What’s another one doing here?”
He shrugged. “I do not know. But we better go home.”
We marched through the snow, which had now gathered into huge drifts. The occasional blast of wind tried to knock us off our feet and coated our eyebrows and scarves with wet snow. We struggled through high banks, frosty air rising from our mouths. I had no idea what time it was anymore. The light behind us was fading.
On the plateau, the snow made everything look even flatter. There was no horizon, just a blank world. Somehow Mordur found the way. We traveled in single file, one step behind him. He would turn to help when there was a long drop or a difficult area to cross.
We hardly spoke. Sarah stumbled and Michael let her lean on his shoulder. They walked this way for quite a while, helping each other. I thought of Andrew and what it would be like if he were still here. Tears welled up in my eyes.
I was growing colder and rubbed my cheeks to get the blood flowing, then tightened up my scarf.
Mordur halted every once in a while and searched around as if trying to see some invisible pursuer. I sped up so I was a step behind him. “I got your dad’s letters,” I yelled above the wind.
“Did you?” He looked surprised and relieved. “I forgot them from my mind.”
“I knew you’d want them.” I wanted to say something else. Something about his father perhaps. Maybe I’d tell him I knew what it was like to miss someone you cared about.
Mordur cast another glance backwards, but before I could open my mouth to tell him what I was thinking, he shouted, “Hurry! Soon there will not be any light left.”
The sky was now gray. How long had we been out here? I picked up my pace, gave up on talking. Every ounce of energy was funneled towards putting one leg in front of the other. I couldn’t help but think that there was something in the snow behind us, pursuing us.
The feeling of running away reminded me of my nightmares. Were they warnings about what attacked us in the croft house? Or was there something worse out there?
When I first spotted Uncle Thordy’s house, I let out a small cheer. The porch light flickered and Uncle Thordy’s truck was parked outside. We broke into a run, kicking snow ahead of us.
We burst into the house without knocking. Uncle Thordy met us in the hall, his fists clenched. “You’re back!” he exclaimed, dropping his hands. “Are you alright?”
At first none of us spoke. Whatever he saw in our faces must have answered his question. “What happened?” He looked directly at Mordur. “What happened?”
“The úlfslikid, it attacked us.”