She removes a rope from her waist. ‘With this you can save your grandmother and the rest of the dead.’ She wraps the rope around my middle and raw elemental energy surges through me, making my body tremble. I gasp as the cord tightens itself around my waist and slithers into my coat pocket. ‘Place one end in the hole of the tree and hold the other until the dead have returned.’

Hel bends close so that her face is centimetres from mine. A spider crawls out from her empty eye socket, then scuttles across her cheek and disappears into her jaw. She lifts the charm from my neck and whispers, ‘Payment.’

I bite my lip and resist the urge to grab it back. I need it. It helps me find the ancient force inside me. But if I give it willingly, perhaps she will look kindly on me.

‘And Stig?’ I ask hopefully.

Hel spins around, her feathered cloak a tornado of destruction, and I glimpse the terrible power inside her: the power to strip flesh from bone and turn the living to dust.

She strides into the darkness. ‘Return the dead and kill the draugr. A single, clean blow.’

23

I wake inside the chamber of the tree, under a blanket of moss and leaves. A grey-chested raven pecks and pulls at my wrist, and I blink in wonder as a root unwinds from my arm and slides across the ground, back into the hole behind me. The bird releases my other arm and flaps away with a caw. I sit up and groan. Everything hurts: my arms, my legs, my head.

Images flutter up from the back of my mind. A tattered cloak, an axe dripping with blood, a hollow eye socket … memories of a dream I can’t stitch together.

Something jumps in my pocket and I feel a jolt of energy. The cord – I’m meant to use it to return Mormor and the rest of the dead. And then I have to … I rub my temples and try to remember. The axe … If I stop the creature, then maybe …

Stig.

My breath catches just to think his name. Hel said she hasn’t called him to her yet. If I return the dead and kill the draugr, perhaps she will let him live. I push myself to my feet and step outside. As long as there is a shred of hope, I have to try.

The blizzard has stopped and snow sparkles in the sunshine. I wince against the glare, then hold my arm before me and search in every direction. I used to love the way snow makes everything new, but now the sweep of white seems sinister, as if deliberately hiding what went before.