Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 07 - Nemesis

“Twenty-one,” answered Tancred, transfixed.

“Twenty-one,” she said with a broader smile. “Welcome, Tancred! I was beginning to feel a bit lonely.”

She beckoned him to her and placed her hand lightly on his shoulder, so that he was forced to sit on the broad bed. She sank down next to him in a fragrant cloud. For one short moment, her cape glided over one knee, revealing an ivory-white, extremely well-shaped naked leg.

“Tancred, my new, handsome friend ... Will you keep me company over a glass of wine? Drinking on one’s own is so boring.”

“Y-y-yes, please,” he stammered because he did not dare to say no to this intimidating being. He did not want to see her angry.

She rose gracefully and walked over to a sideboard behind him. Tancred had seen it as he entered and he seemed to remember that he had seen two wine glasses and a decanter on a silver tray. He heard how she poured wine into the glasses, and then she returned.

Once again, she sank down next to him, looking him deep in the eyes as she drank. Her eyes were fantastic – like cold precious stones. Tancred was almost dizzy from looking into them.

He drank in great gulps without moving his eyes away from her. The wine was sweet and full-bodied with a stimulating, spicy flavour.

To begin with, he had felt pretty stupid but now his inhibitions were beginning to disappear.

Even so, he was unable to say a word when she, remarkably intimately, pressed against his side. The air was thick with sensuality and ...? Tancred searched for the right word. Pleasure? What a horrible word!

As quick as lightning, he wondered how old she was. She was timeless, eternal in a way. But if he were to venture a guess, she was about thirty-five. A mature, buxom woman.

“So you walked through the forest, Tancred? Along the silver path?”

He merely nodded. The woman sat so that he caught a glimpse into the opening of the cape, and what he discerned sent shudders down his spine. She wore nothing under her cape.

Her big eyes twinkled teasingly at his horror. She took his hand, leading it to her thigh. She radiated eroticism.

Never in his life had Tancred been so confused.

His parents had taught him everything about how a well-mannered, well-educated man should behave, but this situation was bound to be something they had no idea about!

Never hurt others. This was his mother’s first commandment ...

Good God, help me, he thought.

“I ... I had better say ... that I’m quite an inexperienced young man,” he stammered. “And I want to ... keep ...”

She smiled with delight.

Everything was swimming before his eyes and his ears were buzzing.

“What’s your name?” he mumbled in an attempt at regaining his composure.

“Salina,” she whispered.

Everything was turning dizzily in his mind. In a fog he saw that she got up and let the cape fall to the floor. He opened his eyes wide but was unable to see her clearly. She was just a diffuse, ivory-white creature somewhere in the distance. He saw a golden-red triangle – two suggestive eyes ... so close, so close ...Then the fog became thicker and the buzzing in his ears deafening.

Little Tancred disappeared from reality and into a regular nightmare. Or was it a dream? He was unable to decide which because it seemed that his thoughts had melted together.

Grotesque, alarming faces appeared, came close to him and then receded in order to leave the place to new ones in an even, rhythmic flow. Two penetrating eyes above an upper lip that was one foot long, a crumbled harpy, a laughing devil’s face, a horse’s head, which spoke to him with shocking, human eyes, full of hatred and triumph ... The visions kept flowing to him all the time, one after the other.

The woman was there. She encircled him and probably tried to make love to him. But he did not want that because she was as cold as ice – so cold that he felt it right to the core. She gave him a hungry, grotesque smile and he sank, sank and sank, floating down, through an enormous gap in the earth, still further down into a world of ice and darkness ...

The apparitions changed character. They continued to be frightening but somehow more open, no longer so close by.

There was air around him. Cool air, which was bluish-white. He saw a heavily loaded boat glide out from a deserted beach. ‘The death boat,’ he thought. ‘The one that will take me to the land of death. Help me, help me, help me. I don’t want to die, at least not yet!’

The skipper’s face was deathly pale with harsh black eyes. Tancred was on his way down to the beach, carried by a three-legged ghost-horse, which was bony and swayed as it moved. The boat was not yet ready to receive him. It was on its way from land, probably with a different cargo. Now it stopped out on the water near a tall, steep cliff. The skipper got up in the boat and managed to ease a corpse overboard. Heavy stones were tied to the body.

“I thought one was supposed to cross,” said Tancred loudly. The skipper’s penetrating eyes immediately turned towards Tancred.

“Why have you brought him with you? He has no business here!” said the rower while the boat was still rocking after the dead body had been thrown overboard.

The ghost horse left the beach and continued the journey, rocking from side to side. It was cold, and bony fingers swept across Tancred’s face.

‘You won’t reach me,’ thought Tancred. ‘I was on my way to the realm of death. It was a close call! But a descendant of the Ice People is extremely strong. I’m returning to the living once more.’

Tancred was probably the only one of his descendants who had not taken all the peculiarities of the Ice People seriously. But he certainly did now – and he was ever so grateful that he had their blood in his veins.

A terrible, yellow-white face stared down at him. He moaned.

Then the vast darkness enveloped him again.

He woke up with difficulty to a cold and bitter existence.

Somebody was shouting “Tancred!” to him.

His head was as heavy as lead. He was freezing cold. It rustled whenever he moved.

“Tancred! What’s wrong with you? Wake up!”

He opened his eyes.

There were tall trees around him. A raw morning fog blurred them.

A young man bent over him.

“I know you,” mumbled Tancred.

“Yes, of course you do! I’m Dieter. Why are you lying here?”

Tancred pushed himself up on his elbows. He moaned a bit because of the pain this one movement caused.

A horse was waiting right next to them and Dieter was dressed in riding gear.

“Where on earth ...? Where am I?”

“Your aunt’s estate is far away at the fringe of the forest to the right. To be really precise, you’re lying in the grass by the path that I rode on. It follows the forest here. Have you lost your bearings?”

“I suppose you could say that. Only how did I get here?”

Had he maybe walked in a circle?

That was certainly possible. But then ... In the vicinity ...

He sat up. He was still confused in his thumping head.

Dieter said matter-of-factly, “You probably wandered about and then at some point last night you collapsed from exhaustion. You’re freezing cold.”

“No,” said Tancred. “Yes, I’m cold but I can’t have been here. It wasn’t this forest. I was in a castle.

“Which castle?”

“A ruined castle. In the middle of the forest. Not here at all! In the moonlight!”

“A ruined castle?” said Dieter, baffled.

”What are you talking about? There’s no such thing around here.”

“Yes, there is, damn it!”

“You’ve had a nightmare.”

“Yes, I had some terrible nightmares, but that was only afterwards. To begin with, I walked and walked in the forest. Then I lost my bearings and wandered about. And then came to a moonlit path. And then it was all of a sudden a frightening castle. In the middle of a bewitched forest. By a small lake.”