BUTTFUCK NOWHERE, NORWAY
Title: BUTTFUCK NOWHERE, NORWAY (for lack of a better title)
Fandom: None, this is original fiction
Series: Folklore Noir
Characters: Ask, Embla,the fossegrim, Niels
Warning: Murder (mentions of,attempted and successful)
Word Count: 5655
Summary: Ask and Embla, folkloric detectives extraordinaires, investigate in the back of beyond.
Author's Note: Beta by the excellent manzanadorada. Any mistakes left are mine, not hers. Notes about folklore and references are at the end of the fic.
February 17th, 2000, Stordal, Møre og Romsdal county, Sunnmøre region, Norway, Europe
This is getting ridiculous, Ask thinks. (Go on, make a joke. She’s heard them all.)
It’s the fifth time this year a body’s been found drowned in a lake or river or large body of water of some kind. And it’s only February.
Okay, so people are drowning, big fucking deal.
Or at least, it wouldn’t be, if all the deaths hadn’t occurred within ten miles of Stordal, a town freshly under 1,000 inhabitants in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Which is why Ask is now lying on a couch and trying to glare a hole into the opposite wall of the motel room in the Backwater Motel just outside Podunk, Norway.
Because, seriously, what the fuck is Niels doing? He’s supposed to be taking care of Norway. Investigating mysterious drownings is pretty much his job description.
Scratch that. Investigating mysterious drownings and then calling for backup is pretty much his job description.
Not dropping off the face of the fucking planet.
So yeah, Ask has a bad feeling about this case.
“Honey, I’m home!” sing-songs Embla from the doorway.
You can laugh. If Ask’s parents were bad at names, then Embla’s were worse and all the other Busters thought it was too hilarious not to pair them together. (Like they have room to talk. Who names their super secret organisation after an 80s movie?) Ask and Embla, the Wonder Twins. Too bad they’re both women.
“Joy,” Ask dead-pans back.
“Any word from Niels?” asks Embla, as she unpacks the groceries - although the word ‘supplies’ might be more appropriate, seeing as how they could probably withstand a siege with the amount of stuff Embla is carrying.
“Yes,” Ask answers, “and no.”
“Which means?”
Ask rolls her eyes. “No news from Niels.”
“That’s the ‘no’. What’s the ‘yes’?”
“Most of the victims had something in common.”
Embla waits.
She sighs. “Are you going to keep being cryptic all evening, or can I expect some answers sometime today?”
“All the victims, except the first one, had bleeding fingers.” Ask throws an envelope at Embla’s head.
“Sheesh, Ask, what is up with you? You’re even pissier than usual, and that’s saying a lot. You need to get laid.”
Ask just glares until Embla picks up the envelope. (At this point, it should probably be mentioned that Ask is quite good at glaring.)
“Hmm,” Embla remarks, “those kinda look like paper cuts. And there’s a lot of them. D’you think that could be cause of death?”
Ask shakes her head. “There’d be more blood.”
“Running water,” objects Embla. “Ice cream?”
“Yes, please. Even so, the coroner said that the wounds were either ante- or post-mortem, but too close to the time of death to be the cause.”
“Do you think it’s relevant to the case?”
Ask rolls her eyes, as if to say, “Mysterious wounds on mysterious serial suicides? Yeah, I’d think so!”
Embla scoops some ice cream into a glass and hands it to Ask, along with a spoon and a can of whipped cream.
Ask shakes the whipped cream vigorously, taking out her rage on innocent dairy.
“You know,” Embla says, “I don’t get you. It’s freezing outside, literally, there’s ice everywhere, and you’re eating ice cream.”
“Never a bad time for ice cream.” Ask sprays whipped cream over her ice cream, takes a bite, and sighs delightedly.
Embla sits on the bed and pulls up the search for possible culprits, which, unfortunately, only seems to pull up lyrics to songs by Bon Jovi.
They sit in silence. It’s not exactly comfortable, but it’s not what you’d call awkward either.
Embla turns the TV on and Ask glares at whatever stupid stupid stupid gameshow comes on.
Embla starts looking for something that might actually be useful.
Ask just glares.
When Embla falls asleep on the bed, Ask takes the computer from her and lays her trenchcoat on her.
Ask goes outside and lights a cigarette. She walks around the hotel, laying wards.
There’s wind blowing through the trees, and it almost sounds like violins.
February 18th, 2000, Stordal, Møre og Romsdal county, Sunnmøre region, Norway, Europe
Embla shakes Ask awake the next morning. Ask opens a bleary eye, throws a quick look at her surroundings, pulls her jacket over her head and turns around on the couch.
Embla pokes Ask until she extracts a mumble from her. Ask’s Scottish accent is so thick right now that Embla wonders if she isn’t speaking Gaelic.
Embla keeps poking at Ask, even as Ask starts glaring at her full force (quite a feat of contortion, since Ask’s body is still facing away from Embla).
“Gon ‘way,” Ask says, “’mam sleep.”
“No, you’re not,” Embla replies.
“’mam. Gon ‘way.”
“But it’s important.”
“’snt,” Ask says, and wow, Embla wonders how Ask can pronounce something without any vowels in it.
“Oh, okay, I’ll just go tell the dead person that they’re not important.”
“ey’re dead, ey‘ll n’t care,” half-snores Ask.
“I’m sorry, can you run that past by me again? I don’t speak Sleepy Grump.”
Ask just throws a cushion at Embla in answer.
An hour and a half later, Ask emerges from the bathroom, still a little sleepy-eyed.
“Coffee’s on the table,” Embla says patiently.
Ask grabs the pot and glowers at it, trying to turn the coffee into tea by sheer force of will. It’s not going very well.
“We don’t have all day,” Embla says.
“I am NOT a morning person,” Ask retorts.
Embla looks unimpressed. “Oh, really? I never would have noticed.”
Twenty minutes and two thirds of a pot of coffee later, the two of them are finally, finally, it’s-almost-noon-and-we-should-have-been-there-hours-ago finally, on their way to the place the newest body was found.
The body is still there, waiting for the ambulance from the nearest city to bring it to the morgue. He is, or rather, it was, a middle-aged man with greying hair and more laugh lines than sorrow lines. He lies face up on the edge of the pond, his upper torso half-submerged. His fingers are bleeding sluggishly into the water and his hands are clawed.
They look at the body from afar, not wanting to disturb the evidence. It makes their job harder, but it beats going to jail for murder or even obstruction.
“He looks like he was holding something,” Embla remarks.
Ask nods, she had been about to say as much. “He’s got a bruise,” she points out, gesturing to the appropriate spot on her own jaw.
Embla takes her binoculars and zooms in on said bruise, when the sound of an approaching car is heard.
“Fuck,” Embla says.
They run.
"Sooooooooooo," Embla stretches the syllable, if only because it makes Ask tick, "what have we learned?"
"Nothing," Ask replies in a tiny, disappointed voice.
Embla just shrugs because, yeah, it's not like you can reasonably expect her partner to be optimistic. That would be a sign of the Apocalypse, or at least a sign of an Apocalypse.
So maybe not that unexpected after all.
"We know who he was," Embla says. At Ask's raised eyebrow, she continues, "An elderly tax accountant who taught music in his spare time."
Ask enquires, "Violin?"
Embla browses through her files. "Yes, how did you know?"
Ask stares, conveying 'I had a hunch and this could be a clue but I'm going to be an ass and not tell you about it because I am grumpy - and, by the way, Embla, it's "arse" ' without saying a word. Ask is quite good at making stares convey a great variety of meaning, which can be useful, but it would be even more useful if she just opened her bloody mouth for once.
Embla stares back.
They keep staring at each other for a while until Embla's phone rings.
She picks up while Ask goes back to browsing various websites and their collected data, a packet rather thinner than it would have been had Niels been there to help.
"Embla,” she says. Ask can only hear one side of the conversation from her spot on the couch.
"Can this wait? I'm on a case here."
"How urgent is 'urgent'?"
"Look, I've got dead bodies piling up over here, no possible culprit in sight and Ask in a bad mood, are you really sure this can't wait?"
"She's communicating mostly by glares and stares, right now."
"How about you forward us the data and we'll try to have a look?"
"Seriously, could you at least tell me what's going on so I can make a decision?"
"Why not?"
"No, I've told you, we're working on something already."
"No, we can't help any more than that."
Ask gets up and takes the phone from Embla mid-tirade from her interlocutor (Mark? A small part of her thinks she recognises his voice).
"Busy. Bye," she says, and hangs up.
Embla gawks at Ask, who wears a look on her face that clearly says that she has no idea why Embla is looking at her like that. "Could you be more rude?" Embla asks.
"Said 'bye'," Ask says, because she did, and what's Embla fussing about now?
"I suppose you did," Embla says with a sideways glance. "Find anything?"
"2 and 5 had violin lessons," Ask replies, referring to the victims by numbers, not names. It's never names, with Ask.
"They're connected? Why didn't we pick that up?" Embla asks, like Ask is fucking incompetent or something.
Ask answers both questions with a simple, "No."
"Yes? You want to elaborate on that?"
"Fiddle." Ask points at 2. Then at 5: "Violin." And that, right there, is the whole case. A bunch of leads that fall apart under examination.
"So that's it? We still don't have a clue what's going on. Unless..." Embla trails off, an idea hitting her suddenly. She rummages through their files, now a complete and utter mess, until she finds what she was apparently searching for. "Here, look!"
Embla is pointing at a news clipping.
Ask looks at the paper, then looks at Embla, then back to the paper, then back to Embla and shrugs dismissively. It's just an ad for a violin solo concert.
"Look at his last name. Grieg, like Edvard Grieg. Victim Number 3," she adds at Ask's blank look.
A flash of understanding hits Ask.
The last of the victims (4) is easily linked back to fiddling.
"Oh my god," Embla says, with a hint of something in her voice that Ask can't place, wistfulness, maybe, "We're tracking a fossegrim."
And yeah, that's definitely wistfulness and longing and heartbreak in Embla's voice and Ask feels bad for her. She didn't deserve to have her dreams crushed the way they were.
After that, it's all frantic googling and cross-referencing and pots of (truly awful) coffee. Despite all that, they still can't figure out precisely how the fuck to summon the fossegrim. Which is completely unfair, because people are dying.
It's also night-time and far too late to drive to the nearest supermarket or shopping mall to pick up anything they might need for the summoning.
Ask goes to sleep after that, as always, on the couch.
Embla goes for a walk, not as always, but she needs the space, Ask figures as she drifts into sleep.
February 19th, 2000, Stordal, Møre og Romsdal county, Sunnmøre region, Norway, Europe
They spend the morning researching more precisely how to summon a fossegrim. It's been done before, obviously, but the lore suggests that each fossegrim is summoned differently.
Lunch is half a Mars bar and two cups of coffee for Embla and three cups of coffee and no Mars bars for Ask.
In the end, they decide to hedge their bets: blood (Embla's), a black animal (a raven), some of Ask's cigarettes (instead of snuff) and a bottle of whisky (instead of Swedish vodka). They're not sure if this is going to work, but they have to try.
Embla suspects Ask let her win the coin toss of who would summon the fossegrim but if Ask won't say anything, she won't either.
Embla goes to the largest lake within the area.
She tosses the contents of their summoning into the water, and waits.
February 20th, 2000, Stordal, Møre og Romsdal county, Sunnmøre region, Norway, Europe
It's after midnight when the lake start rippling.
A figure shoots out of the water, a few feet into the air, before coming down slowly to rest on the surface of the lake.
He walks towards the shore, and Embla.
He appears to be a young man in his early twenties, pale like the moon, with pale blond hair and wide blue eyes, the colour of a still pond under a calm night sky, and that’s a particularly precise metaphor that Embla doesn’t dwell on.
"You called me," he says, when he reaches the shore.
He opens his hands. The cigarettes fall out onto the grass. The bottle is empty of whisky, but full of water, tiny rainbows playing inside the glass.
Out in the forest, a raven crows.
"Yes," Embla says.
He waits for her to continue but she can't, because her throat is so knotted with awe, respect and, although she'll never admit it to anyone, fear, longing and jealousy.
"Why," he says finally, more deadpan than questioning.
"Teach me," Embla says. "Please, teach me."
He looks at her at her for a long time.
Finally, he tilts his head to the side, letting a soft whistle escape from his lips. Within seconds he holds a fiddle and a bow.
He holds them them out to her. She takes them, careful and reverent. When her fingers brush his, she notices how cold his skin is.
Embla is surprised to find that the fiddle has nine strings, although it makes sense. She is not, however, surprised to find that the fiddle is lighter than any violin she has ever held. It’s almost as though it doesn’t exist.
He whistles again, the same tune but slightly slower. The fiddle and bow he now holds look for all the world like congealed moonlight.
He puts bow to strings and starts playing. What begins as a single, crystalline note becomes two notes then three then five, all held together at once and each of them more perfect than the other.
Then, something starts creeping in beneath the music, magic appears between the notes, though there is nothing within the night air that isn’t magic, because the music is the magic, and the lake slowly starts to freeze over.
Embla doesn’t notice when the solo becomes a duet, sunk into the music as she is. Her fingers fly over the strings, weaving a melody of their own.
Grass starts growing on the riverbank, tiny flowers blossoming among the blades, spots of blue and silver under the moonlight.
The frost on the lake starts shooting upwards and re-shaping itself into strange and graceful sculptures of ice.
Then the figures start dancing, casting small rainbows across the water.
It's like something outside of a fairytale, Embla thinks from where she kneels in the flowers, ice statues gliding across an unfrozen lake, diffracted light sending sparks of blue and green into the softly scented air.
The tune of both fiddles threads through the forest, rustling the leaves.
Suddenly, Embla realises that she has stopped playing. Her arms and upper torso are wrapped in vines, her bow hovering slightly above the strings of the fiddle.
The vines slowly drag her arms back until her hands are held up in the air, shoulder blades close to touching.
The fossegrim walks over to her and touches her forehead with the first two fingers of his left hand.
He draws his hand back and opens his mouth to speak, when his back arches up to breaking point, head snapping violently. He thrashes a few times before falling unconscious into the water.
When the fossegrim comes to, he is tied to something.
His coat is gone and that gives him distress. It was given to him by a human, once upon a time, and he has worn it ever since. He should not feel as naked and vulnerable as he does- it is only a piece of cloth, after all, and it is not as though he is actually naked, his shirt is still on him- why then does he feel this way?
He puts the question aside for later. There are more important things to worry about this instant.
Eyes still closed, he explores his surroundings, reaching out with each of his senses.
He is inside a great big box made of stone. No, not stone. Sand? How can a box be made of sand?
His feet are resting on a flat surface made of a strange matter that is half tree-leaves and bark, half something else, other and utterly alien to him.
He can taste his own blood on his tongue, as well as lingering sparks of caged lightning.
There is sharp buzzing in his ears that does not sound like anything from nature and that somehow makes him sick to his stomach. This noise, whatever it is, is somehow anathema to his very being.
The smells are no more comforting or understandable. Leather, metal, that strange alien thing, more metal, more strange-alien, cloth, things that he supposes must be food, tree-bark-leaves, sickness and fresh blood to his far left, many flowers behind him, sex, fear, anger, joy, sleep, tiredness, smoke, blood, and strange, bitter smells.
He thinks that, maybe, for all the emotions he can smell and feel, going back a long time, this must be a house. He has never been in a house before.
He opens his eyes.
The woman in front of him shouts one word in a language he does not recognise. She is holding a kenaz-shaped thing and pointing one end at him. She has short, wild hair the colour of sunset and the rhythm of her heart is a fast and slightly irregular ta-tun-ta-tun-tun.
The woman from last night steps into his line of vision from the left. She has small strips of cloth wrapped around her fingers, to stop the bleeding he assumes. Her heartbeat is strong and clear, lub-dup.
"We were wondering when you were going to join us," she says. He stares at her, uncomprehending.
"We know you murdered those people. We want to know why," she continues.
"I do not understand."
"You killed those people. Why?"
"I do not know what you are talking about."
Ta-tun-ta-tun-tun says something to Lub-dup, in the same language as before. Lub-dup answers, still in the same language. They sound angry.
Lub-dup walks over to a contraption consisting of a flat surface balanced on four columns, and picks up some tree leaves that are extremely straight-edged and rectangular shaped.
When she comes closer, he notices that there are spots of various colours on the leaves. She holds them up and says, "Do you recognise these people?"
"Yes," he answers.
"How do you know them?" she asks, speaking slowly, as if to a child.
"I taught them what I taught you," he says, and a glimmer of something happy flashes in her eyes.
"Then why are they dead?"
"They are dead?" he asks, shocked.
Ask throws a glance at Embla. "Looks sincere."
"Yeah, I think so too," Embla replies. "Except he's our only lead, so what do we do?"
Ask shrugs, gets up and turns off the speakers.
Relief washes over the fossegrim's face.
"Tell us what you know," Embla says, so he does.
"They were alive when I left. I know no more."
Embla translates rapidly for Ask, who raises an eyebrow.
"What is happening to these people?" the fossegrim asks.
Embla snaps, "If we knew, we wouldn't be asking you."
The fossegrim stays silent then, looking lost deep into his thoughts. All his facial expressions so far have been some variation on bored or deadpan. Ask thinks it's probably his default setting.
Finally, the fossegrim asks, "Is there any danger to the others?"
Embla blinks a couple of times. "What others?"
"There was a woman," the fossegrim begins, "and later a man."
"When were they here?"
"She was here the new moon before the full moon three full moons ago."
"Too long ago to be relevant. What about him?"
"It was half a week after last full moon."
"Relevant.”
Ask watches the two of them volley words back and forth, utterly lost in the rapid flow of quicksilver Norwegian.
"He was no taller than me but broader. Light brown hair, green eyes, a birthmark under his right eye," the fossegrim says.
Before he can continue, Embla picks up her coat and roots through its pockets until she finds her wallet.
She takes a photo out of it. She's in the photo with Ask beside her, and Anne and Mark and Viv and Denny and Ned and everyone.
She points out Niels to the fossegrim. "That him?"
"Yes," the fossegrim says.
"What's going on?" Ask asks.
"He says Niels was here," Embla replies, which makes little sense.
Ask conveys her skepticism through an arched eyebrow.
"He's sure," Embla asserts.
Embla says, "We should free the fossegrim."
Ask takes her knife and cuts his bonds. The fossegrim gets up instantly, whispering something that might be a thanks and might be a curse.
He steps on the floorboards and whistles. Grass and vines start growing between the wood. The fossegrim bends down, laying his hand among the greenery.
The vines wrap around his hand, wrist, arm, upper arm, shoulder, floorboard creaking all the while.
The floor splinters upward as the fossegrim disappears into the earth.
Ask shuts her eyes, covers her face with her arms, and shouts as she crouches, "EMBLA!"
Meanwhile, Embla drops to the floor and rolls behind the couch. "I'M OKAY!" she screams, both their hearing being shot to bits.
"That," Asks says, "was a bad plan."
Embla shakes her head to clear the ringing. She picks shards out of her hair and goes over to Ask. Ask has a couple splinter grazes on her arms and back but nothing too serious.
Embla goes to the bathroom to get the medical kit while Ask takes off her shirt.
Just as Embla is about to ask just how, exactly, they're going to explain the (complete lack of) floor to the hotel managers, said floor starts repairing itself.
"Huh," Ask says.
Embla clicks her tongue admiringly when she steps back into the bedroom. She spreads disinfectant on Ask's back while Ask takes care of her own arms.
"We have to talk to Niels now," Embla says. Ask just nods in answer.
It takes them a little over an hour to get in touch with Kal. The line crackles and lurches when she picks up.
“Sorry about the reception- we have an exploded water balloon in the cellar,” Kal says.
There’s a muffled shout heard over the line and Kal adds, “Jay says hi, by the way.”
“Kal? Do you have a moment? We could use some help over here,” Embla replies.
“Depends, help with what?”
“We need to locate Niels.”
“Niels? I thought he was MIA.”
“Which is the problem. He’s involved in a case.”
“This is against my principles,” Kal frowns over the phone. “If Niels wanted us to know where he is, he would have told us. I’m not going to break his trust.”
“Kal, he’s a vital witness and people are dying. Please, we need your help on this.”
There’s a lengthy pause on the other end as Kal thinks things over. The silence is broken by the fizzles and pops of the connection and the sound of dripping water.
“I’ll tell you how far away from you he is. Is that okay?”
Embla knows that it’s the best offer Kal is going to make so she accepts right away.
Niels, as it turns out, is within a ten kliks radius of where they are. That’s slightly over 300 square kilometers of terrain to search. There’s no way they’ll ever be able to do that in time.
“We need help,” Embla says after hanging up.
Ask nods and sighs. There’s only one other person that might help them right now, but there’s no guarantee he will.
People usually don’t take too kindly to being Tasered and kidnapped.
Finding the fossegrim again proves surprisingly easy, all things considered. He’s sitting on a rock near the lake, when they find him.
“We brought your coat,” Embla says, holding it out for him.
The fossegrim jumps off his boulder and reaches out. He stops his fingers a few inches from the coat.
“I was once told that there is always a trick,” he says, voice whisper-soft.
There’s a question in there, that Ask answers with a simple, “Help us.”
“We need your help,” Embla says and hands him the coat. Ask looks faintly surprised and starts frowning.
He takes the coat, running his hands lightly over the cloth.
He shrugs on the coat in fluid movement, bringing to mind water flowing down a stream. "I do not know what I can help you with."
"The man you taught, the one I showed you," Embla adds, at the fossegrim's stare, "do you know where he is?"
"No," he replies, truthfully.
"Can you find out?"
He hesitates, then sighs, "Yes."
"Where's Niels?" Ask says.
Embla looks over and replies, "I don't know yet".
Ask's face takes on a look of murderous fury.
"I can bring you to him," the fossegrim says.
"No," Embla says, "you have already done enough."
The fossegrim hums softly under his breath, raising his hands. Moisture starts to condense between his hands until it reaches the size of a beach ball.
The swirling waters calm and resolve into an image of a man, tall and broad-shouldered, favouring his left leg slightly as he paces around a small lake. There are trees around the pond, none them being particularly memorable or striking.
"Where- " Ask starts.
Embla over-rides her, "Where is this?"
The water-beach-back-camera-view-point zooms out between the trees and pans up until it shows a bird's-eye view of the forest surrounding them.
The fossegrim stabs a finger at the map. "Here."
"Should've done that first," Ask mumbles.
Now that they know where Niels is, it's a simple matter of getting there before he leaves.
When they get there, Niels is shirtless and waist-deep into the water, turning slightly blue around the edges.
"Hello," he says softly, all calm and charm, like he isn't speaking through purple lips, "I have been expecting you."
"Why?" Ask says, deadpan.
Behind her, she hears Embla's breath catch as she notices the silver chains lying on the ground and trailing into the lake.
The chains circle slowly behind Niels until one of them goes taunt. The other chains strike out in the same direction, disappearing into the lake. There are deep red undercurrents trailing in their wake.
"Niels, what's going on?" asks Embla.
Niels smiles, a slow, shark-like show of teeth that's far more like a grin than any smile has a right to be. Blueish streaks start crawling up his waist. "The End is coming," he says.
"The end of what?" Embla asks, as the muffled clanging of distant chains makes itself heard.
"Everything," Niels whispers, with closed eyes, looking for all the world like it's obvious and why can't they see?
Embla stares at him, until Ask's voice rings out across the forest. "And?" she asks.
"I don’t want to live in fear," Niels says.
"What fear?" Ask pursues. "It's only the end of the world."
Niels laughs, a sharp peal of sound let more out of derision than anything else. With his head thrown back, the blue tinge inching up his throat is all the more obvious.
"Be that as it may," he starts, but is interrupted by the chains dragging a figure onto the ground.
"Ah, our guest has arrived," Niels says, completely letting go of his previous sentence. The figure heaves, still wrapped in chains. A flash of recognition hits at the sight of those long limbs and the particular color of that coat.
It's the fossegrim, but he doesn't look like himself. He's gaunt and paler than he should be, eyes the palest blue, hair barely a shade darker than white.
A ripple of white travels down the chains and Niels's lips turn purple under the blue.
"If I could have, I would have done things differently," Niels says. He takes out a knife from behind his back.
The chains dart out every which way, forcing the fossegrim spread-eagle as they attach themselves to boulders, trees, anything they can.
Niels steps out of the water, yards of wool wrapped around his hips and trailing around his legs. There's something about the weave that's awfully familiar, yet utterly, utterly wrong, even from this distance.
It's a tartan, Ask realises with a start. Except it's not a tartan she's ever seen before, and Ask knows most of the clan tartans by heart. (Could draw some of them in her sleep even, Campbell, MacDonald of Sleat, Wemyss...). It's layered shades of every blue from deep sea blue-green to sky blue passing through dark ultramarine.
Niels kneels down next to the fossegrim, pulls up his shirt and lays the tip of his knife just below his breast bone.
He hunches over to whisper in the fossegrim's ear, putting just enough pressure on the knife to start drawing blood. "I'm sorry," he whispers. "Please forgive me."
The knife digs deeper into the fossegrim's chest. One inch, two inches.
There's a noise like a wet finger dragged across the edge of a crystal glass. It grows shriller as the knife goes deeper. This is how fossegrims bleed, Ask realises.
She's been slowly moving closer to Niels, slow enough not to spook him. It's not fast enough.
There's a blur of deep purple as Embla tackles Niels.
Embla's shoulder impacts Niels in the side and they pitch over into the water. The knife rips across the fossegrim's stomach, flies out and falls into the lake.
Niels brings his hands up, striking Embla in the throat.
She digs her nails between his ribs.
Ask goes to the fossegrim and takes off her hoodie to stop the bleeding, out of habit. She's pressing it to his wound before realising that there's no blood to stop. The shriek dims and the fossegrim looks marginally better so she figures it's not a total loss.
Embla and Niels are still fighting in the lake. She's punching him in the ribs while he's pulling her hair.
Ask tries to get up to help, but the fossegrim grips her arm. He's surprisingly strong for a half-dying semi-noncorporeal guy. "Please, stay," he says.
Ask looks up just in time to see Embla headbutting Niels in the face. "Alright," she says.
As Ask shivers in the cold, Embla kicks a stone on the slope at the bottom of the lake. She uses the momentum it provides her to flips their positions, grabbing Niels's neck to pull him down.
He claws at her eyes as she holds him down under the water.
Embla keeps pushing down, thumbs digging under his jaw, hands around his neck. His arms drop down and flap uselessly into the water a couple of times.
Horrified, Embla lets go. Too late. Niels's final breath bubbles to the surface as he closes his eyes.
"Fuck." Ask tugs on her arm sharply and presses the fossegrim's hand to her hoodie. "Keep the pressure on."
She jumps into the lake and wades through the water towards Embla. Embla stares at Niels blankly, clearly in shock, tears trailing down her face.
"Hey, hey, c'mon," Ask says as she hugs Embla. "Gonna be okay."
Embla sobs softly, "I killed him. He - he was my friend and I killed."
"Hush, hush, it'll be alright. Let's go somewhere warmer." Ask shivers.
"I...," Embla takes a deep breath, "yes."
Ask wraps her arm around Embla's shoulder and leads her towards the bank.
"What about Niels? We can't leave him like that," Embla says.
The fossegrim coughs, like nails on a blackboard.
Ask kneels next to him. "Feeling better?"
The fossegrim sits up. "Yes," he says, "thank you." He hands Ask her hoodie, revealing a decades old scar two knuckles long below his sternum.
Ask takes her shirt and offers it to Embla, who just stares at her.
"What," Ask says.
"I asked you a question!" Embla shouts.
Ask sighs, "Yes. Okay? Yes, I'll leave him like that."
"He was your friend too! More than me!" Embla's hands clench into fists.
"He was a murderer! You did the right thing." Ask pulls her hoodie over her head.
The fossegrim steps in between both of them. "I owe you both my life."
They ignore him.
"He was your friend," Embla says, uncomprehending.
"Besides, if you hadn't done it, you'd be dead and so would he," Ask replies, jabbing a finger in the fossegrim's general direction.
The fossegrim starts singing, softly. It’s something like a lullaby, with actual words in an actual human language.
Embla starts feeling sleepy and she suspects Ask does too.
She can't leave Niels like that, he was her friend, after all, but she can't very well carry the body on her own long enough if Ask won't help.
She goes back into the water, ignoring Ask's protest and the fossegrim's incomprehension.
She reaches Niels's already sinking body and pushes it towards the center of the lake. It'll resurface in a couple of days but by then, they'll be long gone.
"I'm sorry," she whispers.
The fossegrim helps her out of the water when she reaches the bank.
"Let's go back to the hotel," Ask says and Embla agrees, so they do.
February 21rst, 2000, Stordal, Møre og Romsdal county, Sunnmøre region, Norway, Europe
When he opens them again, Niels’s eyes are blue.
NOTES
Ask and Embla
An 80s movie.
A fossegrim.
Edvard Grieg
Tartans
Stordal is a real Norwegian town, with around 1000 inhabitants. I don't know if they have a motel.