Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

Partly because he had to rest, as the two ascents in the deep, wet snow had tired him, and partly because he wanted to reduce how long he was out on open ground as much as possible, he regularly took cover beneath the trees and stood there unmoving for a time before he continued.

Slowly he moved through the forest. The snow lay white between the green trees, which shone with moisture from the mist. Sometimes the snow would open to divulge a dark stream, and sometimes a bare, black circle under a tree, sometimes a steep rock face on mountain or hill. He had lost his sense of time as he walked, but, because he had started so early, he thought it must be about midday.

His gaze constantly swept the snow in front of him. Occasionally he tilted his head back and squinted up, now and again he turned to look behind him.

After a while he came to the edge of a slope that bottomed out into a flat, treeless area, presumably a bog. He stood close to a tree and let his gaze wander over the landscape beneath him. At first he saw nothing unusual. But he didn’t move, knowing that stillness eventually elicits movement in the forest, and he might have been standing there half an hour when he suddenly sensed something in motion. His eyes immediately turned to the spot. Something had stirred in the crown of a great oak tree perhaps fifty yards below him. The movement had stopped now, but it altered the nature of his vigilance: now his eyes were looking for something definite. And then they picked it out straightaway.

An angel was standing on one of the lowest branches, half hidden by the trunk. Antinous saw its head, the top of its body, one leg. It was staring down at the bog.

Was it keeping watch? Or was it just standing there, resting?

The snow fell silently. As long as he didn’t stir he was safe. But sooner or later he must move. Then he would have to hope the angel wouldn’t notice him, or had already left.

He had no idea how long he stood there. Because nothing moved, there was nothing for time to latch on to. He stood there, the bog lay there, the snow fell, the angel stared.

Then suddenly it crouched down, gripped a branch just above it, and swung to the ground. It sank to its knees in the snow, straightened up, and began to walk up toward him.

Antinous went cold with fear.

It was coming straight toward him. Its wings were red, folded down its back. The wingtips just brushed the snow each time a new step caused its body to sink. Its skin was pure white, like china or bone.

It walked between two spruce trees that seemed to stand apart on a small level in the sloping forest side, twenty yards farther down. It had an air of unconcern about it, and Antinous realized that it hadn’t noticed him. It walked as if it were quite alone. Despite this, his heart hammered in his chest. For it was moving closer and closer. If it carried on another fifteen yards in the same direction, it would come face-to-face with him.

He heard the sound of each step, the feet sinking into the wet snow, the faint rustle of the wings dragging across it, and finally even its breathing.

When it halted, it was five yards away from him.

Its eyes were red. Its hair as white as its skin.

It craned its head back and turned its eyes to the sky. Suddenly the face began to twitch. Its eyes blinked rapidly in short spasms, its upper lip was drawn up again and again. Then the fit subsided, and its head was jerked backward several times in succession, its mouth open.

Finally it became calm. It stood quietly looking into the forest for a while before slowly continuing up the slope.

Antinous waited a long time before venturing out. When he did finally leave his hiding place, he bent over the tracks the angel had left in the snow. They were like the others he’d seen. About the size of a human foot, but with claws instead of toes.

He began to follow the tracks up. They continued in the same direction for a while, before gradually changing direction, eventually making for the middle of the valley.

He caught sight of it twice more. Each time between the trees several hundred yards ahead of him. He was certain that it didn’t know it was being followed. There was no sign of hesitation in the footprints, it just continued straight ahead, and it was walking quickly.

How many were there here?

Up on the mountain there had been the footprints of two. He’d seen a couple in the air. They might be the same ones. But not this last. It hadn’t been on its guard for anything. It hadn’t noticed him.

So there must be at least three of them.

All at once he noticed he was hungry. The last time he’d eaten was at dawn, and then only some morsels of bread and biscuit. Since then he must have walked many miles through heavy snow. He was thirsty, too.

He stopped and ate a little snow, tore a bit of bark from a tree and began chewing it while he followed the tracks onward. Up a gently sloping wooded hillside, through the deciduous trees that grew on its spine, across a stream and over to the other side.

In the landscape beneath him he saw the glow of several fires.

He looked around him. Everything was totally still. He looked up to the sky. Nothing moving up there, either.

Then he looked out again. He counted five fires. They gave off a strange, dull glow from in among the misty trees.

They’re here , he thought. And there are lots of them .

His first impulse had been to turn on his heel. Go back while he still could. But at the same time he knew that no human being had ever recorded witnessing what was in front of him. Would he ever be able to forgive himself if he turned his back on it? Would he be forgiven?

He walked slowly down. He kept the sky above him and the ground behind him under constant observation.

When he began to get closer, he saw that it was no ordinary fire burning in the copse below, but a huge wheel, perhaps thirty feet across, that lay on the ground covered in flame.

There wasn’t a living thing in the vicinity.

He halted in the trees above it and stared down at the copse. Apart from the flames that arose from the wheel, and the snow that fell, everything was still.

He didn’t like it. He’d left tracks over half the valley and all the way to where he now stood. Perhaps an angel had spotted him coming down from the mountain. And now he was here staring at a fiery wheel in the forest.

From somewhere came the sound of another cry.

It came from farther up the valley, and he began to walk in that direction. On the way he saw several sets of tracks. And soon the glow of another fire shone out from between the trees in front of him.

He crouched down behind a tree trunk. There were five angels there. Three of them stood between him and the fire, staring into the flames, two more were beneath the trees a little way off.

A few fish lay on the ground by the nearer group, half covered by the falling snow. A sword lay there too, also partially covered with snow.

None of the angels moved. Their wings were completely white. One of them was spattered with blood.

The clearing they stood in stretched a good way down, and after a while all three turned their heads and looked in that direction.

Antinous rose as carefully as he could and eased his head around the trunk a little to see what they could see.

Two angels were walking up the clearing. They were dragging an animal behind them. Its legs were bound together, and Antinous saw how it writhed and struggled as it was hauled across the snow. When the three by the fire went to meet them, the couple hissed at them. Soon after that they stopped. One of them fetched the sword lying in the snow, knelt down by the animal, which was a roe deer calf, and hacked at its neck. Its throat opened and blood poured out over the snow. When the animal continued to twist, the angel grabbed its head, bent it back, and cut with full force at the neck. With the decapitated head lying on the snow with eyes open and its neck steaming, the angel turned the body over and bent above it. The four others approached. Suddenly it turned on them and snarled. The whole of its chest and chin was covered in blood. They stopped, and it bent over the carcass again.