Darkness carved in bone

Chapter 1

One year later.

As of lately Helen found herself contemplating on how to end her life more often than not. Yesterday she had considered a good place to hang herself, and today she was assessing the river. She stood on the middle of the wooden bridge, the snow crumbling under her boots, counting the logs that made up the railing across the bridge. She would have to climb the first one, and then she could hoist her legs over the edge, and then it would only require one small little push and she would be tumbling down into the frantic rush of the ice-cold river below. It would not be a quick death, nor would it be painless. The ice-cold water would not kill her immediately, nor would the fall. The frantic current of the water could perhaps make sure she would go under quickly, and perhaps she would not be strong enough to breach the surface again, and she would drown. Or perhaps she would crack her head on one of the sharp rocks that protruded from the water. As she stood and looked over the buzzing and almost black river, her body started shaking from the cold. Her breath came out as smalls white puffs of smoke, and her fingertips beginning to sting from the cold inside the mittens her mother had knitted for her.

Helen didn't want to die, but the life that had been staked out for her was the last life she would want to live. She was almost certain that she would end up utterly miserable and unhappy, to the extent that she would kill herself in the end. And since she knew that death surly lay ahead if she chose to live that life, she figured it was better to be prepared for what would come.

Helen glimpsed up as the sun finally breached through the thick layer of clouds that made the midday seem more like dusk or twilight. She closed her eyes and inhaled the crisp winter air as she let the sunrays fill her with warmth and energy. Oh, how she loved these moments with the sun. It almost felt like all the ice and coldness around and inside her melted away, and made her into the person she truly was, not this dark and suicidal creature. She half-blamed the darkness that seemed to last longer each day now, for her foul mood. But now, in the small and brief moment of sunlight, Helen couldn't think about the river bustling below her or her stark future. All she could feel was warmth and light.

But the clouds enveloped the sun again, and a layer of molten darkness seemed to wash over Ejfjordswerf again. And when that darkness returned, so did her thoughts about the river.

She was sure that no one knew what she was planning, because the people of Ejfjordswerf surely believed that she was the happiest girl under the sun. The truth, however, was something else entirely. She had become betrothed to her childhood boyfriend, Sam. The only problem was that she did not love him. She had thought she had loved him when she was sixteen, when they had first started seeing each other, but after some months she had understood that she had only been in love with the idea of love, and not him. But she hadn't been able to break up with him, partly because she liked the attention but also because she was afraid of hurting him. So, they had stayed together, and she had become so skilled at convincing him and the entire village of Ejfjordswerf that they loved each other, making them all blind to her secret. So, it should not have come as a surprise to her that on her eighteenth birthday, which had been a week ago, her parents announced that they had arranged the betrothal between her and Sam. But it had come as a surprise to her, and when she had heard the news, it had felt like her entire world had come crashing down around her. And that had been the moment the thoughts of death had started popping up in her mind. She could not even imagine herself being happy for a moment as his wife. She would be miserable and bored out of her mind. And she knew she would snap, sooner or later it would happen, and then she wouldn't care if she hurt her entire family by killing herself, she would just do it.

An uncomfortable lump formed in her stomach at the thought of her betrothed. She nearly gasped for air as the feeling of not being in control of her own live filled her. A sharp and stabbing pain filled her chest, just in that spot where her heart sat. She started hyperventilating as her hands shook in her mittens. She didn't know if it was some mix between anger and fear that consumed her. Anger that her parents, unknowingly, were forcing her into a loveless marriage, that the Sòlangr's customs made her only choice in this life be that she had to find a man to marry. And fear that she could not do anything to prevent that from happening. That she was powerless to stop her own future.