The Girl Who Died, Ragnar Jonasson [small books to read .TXT] 📗

behind her. She didn’t dare look round.

Then her eye happened to fall on the text of the page where the photo was kept. It was a poem, a familiar poem.

Lullaby, my little Thrá,

may you sweetly sleep,

dreaming of the sunny lands

beyond the ocean deep.

A lullaby by Thorsteinn Th. Thorsteinsson.

Above the title, someone had written in elegant pencil, the lettering a little faded:

The favourite poem of my little girl Thrá.

IV

Somehow Una made her way into the hall and to the foot of the stairs, hardly knowing what she was doing, so great was her shock. Thrá’s favourite poem had come to her in a dream. It was a poem she hadn’t heard before, as far as she knew. She couldn’t see any natural or logical explanation for that …

Darkness had fallen outside and the staircase lay in shadow.

She mounted the first step and reached for the light switch as she did so. There was a deathly hush in the old house, not even broken by the usual moaning of the wind or creaking of the timbers.

As Una pressed the light switch, they appeared at the top of the stairs: the figures of two little girls, Edda and Thrá, standing side by side.

Both dressed in white, their faces blank, their eyes boring into her.

Once again Una felt the chill spreading through her nerves and flesh.

She stood frozen to the spot, her gaze fixed on theirs, until gradually it came home to her that she was no longer afraid.

Neither figure spoke, they just went on staring at her in the weak glow of the low-watt light bulb, only now she knew exactly what their silence was meant to convey:

Welcome to the village, Una.

Read on for a sneak peek at Ragnar Jónasson’s next novel, Outside, coming soon in hardcover from Minotaur Books

The snow,

mother soft,

enfolds me,

for a moment

I am saved.

I hear

a loud whisper

—are you here?

It’s so cold,

hold me tight.

Fill,

fair snowdrift,

so gentle,

the emptiness

inside me,

but not quite yet …

… let me live

just a little while longer—

It was mind-numbingly cold.

Although Daníel was well wrapped up in layer upon layer of wool, with a thick down jacket over the top, it didn’t help: the cold still found its way inside, piercing him to the bone.

He wondered if his travelling companions were suffering similar torments but didn’t dare ask, just kept his head down and ploughed on, buffeted by the wind and driving snow. He couldn’t see the surrounding landscape, couldn’t tell what kind of terrain they were crossing; his whole world was reduced to a swirling whiteness and the vague shapes of figures moving ahead.

No one had said anything for a while now. They were all doing their best to keep going, trying to stick close together and follow Ármann’s lead. Since he knew the area better than any of them, all they could do was trust him when he said there was an old hut ‘not too far away’.

The way he put it didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Although Daníel had grown up in Iceland, he’d been living in Britain for a number of years, first as a student at drama school, then trying to make a living from the stage.

This reunion trip with his old friends had been on the cards for a while. Ármann had offered to organize it, then, at the last minute, suggested they swap their planned visit to a summer house for a ptarmigan hunt on the moors instead. He was from the east of Iceland and assured them that he’d been on countless hunting trips in the highlands there and that there could be few better ways of cementing their friendship. When the message arrived, Daníel had been extremely busy with rehearsals in London and simply hadn’t had time to raise any objections. He didn’t have a gun licence, but Ármann had offered to teach him to shoot. ‘There’ll be no one there to see us, so you’ll get a chance to bag a few birds, don’t worry.’

Then everything had gone wrong.

They didn’t even have all their luggage with them, only provisions for that day, though they had their shotguns, of course, since that was the whole point of the exercise. Daníel had suggested leaving the guns somewhere and coming back for them later, but this had not gone down well.

He tried to soldier on, reminding himself that he must on no account lose his concentration. There was a tacit agreement among them to put their faith in Ármann and trust that he would get them to shelter.

Sure, Daníel was freezing, but hopefully the worst of the chill would be banished once he was safely indoors, out of the elements. He tried not to dwell on the thought that they didn’t even have their sleeping bags with them, and that the wretched hut they were trying to find apparently didn’t have any form of heating. No electricity; no way of getting warm.

As if the cold wasn’t bad enough, deep down the fear was growing that they were lost; that Ármann’s sense of direction wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. If this turned out to be true, Daníel wouldn’t just be worried, he’d be literally scared to death. There was no chance of their finding their way back. If the storm continued with the same violence, they would have no choice but to stop somewhere and wait it out.

He couldn’t see a bloody thing.

Of course, Daníel remembered storms from his youth, but nothing like this, and his years in Britain’s gentler climate had softened the memories, making him forget what the cold was really like. The blizzard they were experiencing now was more brutal than he would have believed possible. And that it could be pitch black in the midst of all this whirling white snow was incomprehensible.

He was terrified he would lose sight of the person immediately in front of him. They were walking in more or less single file, with him bringing up the rear, and it was taking all his strength to keep up. He could tell that