I turn and see a huge figure and gasp in fright. Twice the size of a normal human being, it sits hunched over me, wearing a tattered robe, its face shadowed by a hood. It looks just like the drawing in the journal: the dark mother, Hel. She stands up, impossibly tall in the tiny space, and a flutter of wings fills the air. I cough and blink against the dust as a cloud of moths flies out from her cloak and spirals up through the tunnel. Hel throws back her hood. The right side of her face is beautiful, with flawless white skin and long black hair. The left side is a bald skull. I recoil and twist my head away.

Hel squats, so that my face is level with her waist. Coldness emanates from her, and I shiver as she leans close. As she peers at me, I see her hair is crawling with bugs.

She lifts my chin with a skeletal finger and I look at the living part of her face. Her eye holds an ocean of emotion, as if every drop of human sorrow has washed upon her shores. Afraid to look into the empty socket of her other eye, I stare at the ground.

Hel rests a heavy, living hand on my shoulder. ‘You are weary, I know, but it is not your time. Why are you here?’

Sadness wells inside me as I search for words big enough to hold my pain, words I can pour my sorrow into: the ache of losing Mormor, my anger that Stig is dead. But no words come, only a memory: Stig and I staring at each other before I marched stubbornly off into the snow. There were so many things we wanted to say, but our feelings were new and fragile – a fledgling thing. Like a bird pushed from the nest before it had a chance to fly, my hopes lie bloodied and battered. How can I tell Hel that I want what was never mine? I want back what I almost had. I want the chance to be loved. I want …

Hel wipes a tear from my cheek, and my words rush out. ‘Stig thought I was beautiful, he really cared. I’ve only just met him. Please, I can’t lose him!’ I glance at the living side of her face, hoping to find some tenderness that suggests she’ll let him live, but the horror of her skeletal teeth and jaw is too strong and I look away.

‘Please can I see him?’

‘Stig is not here.’

Dismay tugs at the deepest part of me. ‘Then where is he?’

‘His spirit still resides in his body. I have not called him to me yet.’

‘Does that mean –’

Her voice is hard-edged. ‘It means what I said.’

I study my boots, not daring to meet her gaze. ‘And Mormor?’