I cover the left side of my face with my hand. The mirror shows a girl with high cheekbones and a small nose covered with freckles. Her eye is green-blue like the sea, her eyebrow and eyelashes so pale they’re almost white. Her lips are small but perfectly formed. I raise the corners of my mouth and a pretty girl smiles back.

And then I take my hand away.

The pretty girl is replaced by a monster. Its eyeball is permanently rotated in the socket, so that it stares upward to the left, making it seem deranged. The lid droops slightly and the whole eye is milky white, clouding the black of the pupil. A jagged scar runs from above the eyebrow to an inch below the eye, like someone attacked it with a knife.

Resentment curls my fingers into a fist.

Dad arranged for a private surgeon to see me at the hospital in Oslo. He was meant to replace my eye with a false one. I would still be blind on that side, but at least the eye could be fixed to look straight ahead. The surgeon took scans of my brain, but the news wasn’t good. ‘No one will operate, at least not yet, I’m afraid. The risk of further damage is too great.’ My hopes splintered under the weight of his words.

I lean in towards the mirror and stare at my good eye. Stupid, stupid, stupid. When will you learn? Don’t hope and no one can hurt you: not the doctors, not Stig. Not anyone.

When I go back to the lounge, Stig is snoring softly. I gaze at him while he sleeps, my heart full of longing. I know it’s silly, but I don’t want to die without kissing him. If the draugr comes back, I want to feel that I have lived. That I’ve had a perfect moment with someone I really care about. Someone who cares about me.

The shadowy dead flit about the room and I catch a glimpse of the girl. Her eyes are as hard as flint. She seems familiar, as if I’ve seen her face somewhere. The journals maybe …

I sit on the sofa and brush my hand over Stig’s jumper, but it only speaks of his dad. I thump a cushion, then rest my head on it. As soon as I close my eyes, sleep wraps its arms around me – pulling me head first into a nightmare.

19

A figure stands by the well: a woman in a cloak, her shoulders hunched with age and her face shaded by a hood. A flurry of snow drifts down but not a single flake settles on her. There is something eerie about the stillness, as if she’s always been here in the gloom, waiting.

Her voice is harsh and cracked. ‘Come.’