I try to put on the necklace, but I can’t quite open the clasp.

‘Here, let me.’

Stig stands up and walks around the table. I lift up my hair, feeling self-conscious, and he carefully lays the chain around my neck. His fingers lightly brush my skin and I tingle at his touch. He closes the clasp, but doesn’t move. ‘So you’ve inherited all this?’ he asks.

‘I’ve inherited more than that,’ I sigh.

Stig sits opposite me and waits for me to explain.

‘Mormor tended to the tree every morning and she wants me to do the same.’

‘Tend?’

‘It means to look after.’

‘I know what it means. But how do you look after a tree? Doesn’t it look after itself?’

I pick up Karina’s journal and flick through it until I come to a sketch of a woman kneeling inside the tree. There’s a wooden pail on the ground next to her. ‘I need to take water from the well every morning and put it on the roots inside the biggest chamber of the tree.’

Stig takes the journal from me and scans the page. ‘But your grandmother didn’t really believe what it says here, did she?’

I tut, unable to hide my irritation. ‘I don’t know what it says!’

‘Of course, sorry.’ He drops the book on the table, as if something bad has just crawled from its pages, then glances at the window and back to me. ‘According to whoever wrote that, the tree out there is Yggdrasil – the world tree.’

‘The one you said Odin hung from?’

Stig pulls the band from his hair and it tumbles over his shoulders in a great black mane. ‘Yes, the tree at the centre of the cosmos. It connects the worlds: its branches hold the realm of the gods, and beneath its roots is the underworld. It’s where the Norns live.’

My head throbs. Believing in destiny is one thing, but surely Mormor didn’t actually think there are women who weave fate living in the tree outside? Stig flicks through the book and reads, ‘Each day, Odin’s ravens Huginn and Muninn fly through the nine worlds, then perch on his shoulders and whisper their findings to him. Such was his thirst for knowledge, Odin plucked out his eye to be granted a drink from the well of wisdom.’

The pit of my stomach turns cold. ‘Wait. Odin only had one eye?’