She grew round and charismatic, bursting with juice like a berry. At court she laughed loudly at things that weren’t amusing, and she let her young breasts sparkle in the golden glow. After dinner the queen had to watch as the Dog King sucked sauce from every single chubby finger.

As the weeks passed, a greyness overgrew the queen, a filth. The smile crumpled on her lips. She began to pick at her nail beds. 104

One day she summoned the peasant girl and offered her a lovely hot soak in the royal baths. By then the young girl had fallen so fiercely in love with her own gilded face that she suspected nothing. She let herself be taken to the baths, a closed box of stone. Fire blazed tall in the large ovens. The air was deep red, then orange, then blue, and smelled sweetly of rosemary. Darkness lapped in the drains. Water there was none.

The peasant girl must have thought it would be fetched. She lifted her chin and bullied the queen’s handmaidens as they undressed her. Now she stood naked, brimming with pearly lustre, and now they left, now the door was locked. Soon the air began to thicken. The heat rose. The floor grew warm beneath the girl’s bare feet. Then searing.

The queen threw a ball.

Morning came. They dragged the peasant girl out by her toes. By then some limbs were scorched, and others were as shiny as boiled crayfish.

The Lord held the Dog King responsible. Since he was so fond of hunting and so careless with his spoils, he would be left to hunt, night after restless night, till Judgement Day.

Fritz cleared his throat and put on his schoolmaster’s voice. ‘Poor countryfolk still cross themselves, fearful at the sight / Of dogs and huntsmen tearing past in deepest darkest night.’ 105

Marita had laughed. Bitten his shoulder.

Now she turns over in bed. The darkness is groping at the furniture. Perhaps she’s been asleep. She can hear the dogs now. Her legs feel exposed, far away from her chest. She has to draw them up.

Outside, beyond the black curtain, the roads are dead; they die every night. Marita can’t get used to the blackout—that’s the one thing. The dogs are growling, an obtrusive sound, a rumbling now, and hoofs trampling; the baying of the dogs rises to the roar of engines above the roof. She curls up underneath the bedclothes. The sound of the low-flying huntsmen drifts onwards over the city.

The houses are like submerged rocks appearing out of the blackness, not recognizing each other. The Dog King’s horse is white as a searchlight. A solitary stare. She knows it.

At night, when the war puts out the light, every house in the city is like hers, a submerged ghost, a drifting island.

106

ROYNDIN FRÍÐA