Hel stands and stares down at me. ‘She should be here, but she is trapped in the world of the living, tormented by her regrets, along with all the other restless dead.’

Guilt wraps around my heart. Mormor is out there. She needs me. I should be helping her. Somehow I have to make all of this right.

‘Please, will you hel—’

Hel strides away, the space around her expanding with each step she takes. At first there is only a subtle change in light, as if my sight is adjusting to the dark, and then the image changes and she’s seated on a throne and I am standing before her.

‘Look at me,’ she commands.

I swallow hard and try to focus just on the beautiful part of her face, but the deathly side is too awful and I turn away.

‘Look at me,’ she repeats.

This time I let my gaze rest on all of her. I look into her living eye, and see my own face reflected there. Like her, I am made up of two sides, half of me damaged and scarred. I stare into her empty eye socket and see myself reflected there too. Self-pity, insecurity, self-loathing, they bubble up inside me like tar. All the things I don’t want to feel. The person I don’t want to be. A sob catches in my throat as I see myself laid bare.

A caw of a raven breaks the spell. It flies over my head, then lands on top of Hel’s throne and puffs out its grey-feathered chest. Another raven, smaller than the first, flaps down to stand on the opposite side.

‘Muninn here is fond of stories, aren’t you now?’ Hel raises her right arm and the smaller of the two birds hops onto her hand. ‘Would you care to tell Marta here how I came to be Queen of the Underworld?’

The raven dips its body and, to my amazement, a rich, sonorous voice replies, ‘No, mistress, for it is your story to tell.’

He flutters back to his perch, and Hel turns to me. ‘No one can tell the story of you, but you. Some people are gifted with a gilded tongue. They will tell you who you are with such conviction that you may actually believe them, but this is a reflection, not the truth, for the story of you is not yet written.’

She leans back. ‘You will find these voices in your head also. You will tell yourself how you are a poor victim. Pay no heed and instead look to your soul, for that is where you originate. You write the story of you every day with your thoughts, words and deeds. You create yourself. You get to decide your story. No one else. You.’

A tiny flame of understanding catches inside me.