February 12, 2019
With numb fingers, Agnes unties the knot at the back of the woman’s skull. When it comes free, the woman tilts her head forward, yanking the cloth out of her mouth. She coughs, swearing in another language.
“Do you speak English?” Agnes asks, feeling the heavy sense of unreality unfolding around her. Distantly, she knows there’s a ticking clock. That at any moment, Thor could show up. They’re both cold, exposed, and weak. But she’s stunned. Ása’s alive.
Ása stares up at her, her expression wild and fearful. She can’t seem to bring Agnes into focus. How long has she been down here? Luckily, Agnes thinks, she’s wearing a snowsuit. Thick pants and thick jacket. They hang on her frame, as though they don’t belong to her, but to a bigger man.
“Help me,” Ása says, her voice nothing more than a croak.
“I will,” Agnes promises. She reaches for the woman’s hands. She tries to untie the knot there. The plastic rope digs into the woman’s skin, leaving it red and raw. Agnes struggles with it, but her fingers bend against the binding. “We’ll have to cut that off you,” she says, “when we get back.”
“Get me out of here,” Ása says. “Please.”
Agnes looks around her. There are no steps into the cellar. No stepladder, either. While she catalogs her options, Ása sways unsteadily on her feet, threatening to pitch backward, farther into the cellar.
“Come here,” Agnes beckons.
There’s something wrong with the woman’s pupils. She’s spent time in absolute darkness, and this room isn’t exactly bright. Her pupils shouldn’t be this small.
“He’s been drugging you,” Agnes says.
The woman nods. It sets her off-balance again.
Agnes grabs for her arm. She tugs Ása closer to the edge of the cellar. Tells her to jump. “Try to land on your elbows, then I’ll pull you,” Agnes says, aware of her own limitations.
Ása jumps, but it’s a pitiful hop. She lands wrong and falls to the side. She tells Agnes, “Sorry.”
If Agnes’s skin weren’t crawling, if she weren’t waiting, every heartbeat, for the door to open, for Thor to walk in and discover them, she would cry. Instead, she tells the woman to try again. “I’ve got you,” she says, forcing her body into a crouching position that crushes the broken bones and overstretches the frayed cartilage in her leg. She clamps both hands into the woman’s armpits and leans back on her heels, left heel quaking beneath her and making her whole body shake. She counts to three and the woman hops again. When Agnes feels Ása’s body lift from the floor, she throws her weight backward, a scream tearing through her as though splitting her open.
Her knee comes undone. This is it, she thinks. It’s ruined. Shot.
And there’s the heavy weight on top of her. The smell of an unwashed body. Animalistic terror. The dank stench of deep earth.
The woman rolls off her, and she’s all elbows and sharp corners, scrambling. Agnes slides back to give her space, breathing hard, but she can see the woman’s problem. Ása’s ankles have been tied together, too.
“Stop,” she says. She reaches for the woman’s legs. The knot, nestled between the legs, is big enough for Agnes to struggle it loose. It takes far too long. Agnes feels sweat pouring down her temples, her teeth grinding, but finally, the rope falls to the floor.
“Takk,” Ása says.
Agnes pushes herself to standing. The makeshift cane trembles beneath her. Her left leg shakes and jolts, weight on it or not. “We have to go,” she says. “Can you walk?”
“I will.” Ása pushes herself awkwardly to standing. She can’t find her feet, and she seems close to fainting, but she stays upright. “No other choice,” she says.
They shuffle forward, down the hallway, and it’s slow, but it’s going.
There’s no room for thought. No room for feeling.
If there were, though. If Agnes had the space to think about it, to name the emotions coiling around her. She’d call it desperate. Terrified.
She’d call it relief, too.
She found Ása.
She’s alive.