I step into the dark kitchen and light an oil lamp. The journals and drawings are spread over the table, where we left them. I search through the sketches frantically, then gasp when I find it. The creature with a skull for a head and long matted black hair, crawling over a burial mound of faces. It has huge black claws – the kind that could make those marks around the tree and slash Yrsa to shreds.

Stig follows me and stands at my elbow. ‘You’re saying something like that crawled out of the tree, and that’s what killed them?’

I point to the creature’s claws. ‘A draugr.’ Just saying the name turns my insides to ice. ‘Mormor told me about the dead that return. I thought they were just stories.’

Stig grabs the drawing and turns it over. ‘Stop this. You’re making it worse. We don’t know what’s out there. We just have to stay inside and –’

‘And what? We’ll be OK?’ I snatch up some journals. ‘One of these books has to talk about the draugr. Maybe it says how to get rid of it.’ I flick through their pages. ‘We have to know what’s out there, we have to know what it’s capable of, we have to know what it –’

Stig grabs my arm. ‘Breathe, Martha.’

I gulp a lungful of air but it doesn’t lessen my panic. Stig looks at the journals and for a moment I think he’s going to read them. Instead he gestures to the sofa. ‘Sit down. I’ll make us something to eat.’

‘Eat?!’ I clutch the books to me. ‘I can’t eat now!’

‘You need your strength. You haven’t had a thing since breakfast.’

My arms tremble and several journals drop to the floor. He’s right. I need to get a grip. Stig is doing his best to look after me. I feel bad for what I said just now. He couldn’t have known that this would happen.

He turns his back to me and places the oil lamp on the kitchen counter, then picks up a loaf of bread. A surge of loneliness makes me want to hug him.

‘Stig?’ He glances over his shoulder, his eyes more beautiful than ever in the half-light. I muster my best Norwegian accent. ‘Du er deilig.’

He raises his eyebrows. ‘You just said I’m delicious.’

My cheeks burn. ‘I did? I meant to say you’re lovely. I mean, for looking after me.’

He looks startled at the compliment. He coughs, his face flushed, then mutters, ‘Takk,’ and turns away.