Chapter 9
Maggie was only half listening to Liz, who’d spread her hiking map across their table and was pointing to a steeply contoured section that she’d circled in red. “We should be able to reach the foot of Blafjell on our second night.”
Maggie was aware of a prickling across the back of her neck and had the sensation that someone was watching her. She waited a few beats, then turned.
In the far corner of the bar, the older couple, Bj?rn and Brit, were glancing in her direction. When she looked up, they averted their eyes.
Maggie felt uneasy, her cheeks growing warm. No one wanted to be a doppelg?nger of a girl who had disappeared.
Helena returned with the wine, setting down the bottle on the center of the map and pouring three glasses. “So, troop leader. What’s cooking?”
Liz slid the wine to the edge of the map. “We’re talking camping spots. Once we reach Blafjell, there won’t be much flat ground at that elevation to pitch our tents, so we need to make sure—”
Maggie felt something brush against her legs and looked down to see the wire-coated dog from the lobby beneath their table. It had a cracked leather collar that looked too tight, and she leaned down, rubbing its ears affectionately. The dog lifted its head toward her touch.
“Runa, kom!” called Vilhelm, its owner.
As the dog loped toward him, its lead caught around the table base, sending a slosh of wine spilling across the map.
“Runa!” Vilhelm growled, freeing the dog’s lead. “I am sorry,” he said, taking a napkin from his pocket.
“It’s fine,” Maggie said, stroking the dog.
As Vilhelm blotted the map, Liz’s red marking smudged. “Blafjell,” Vilhelm remarked, peering more closely. “That is where you are hiking?”
“Yes,” Liz answered.
Vilhelm’s gaze remained on the spot, something wary in his expression. “It is a challenging peak.”
Maggie looked at him closely, sensing that there was more he wanted to say. She waited, but after a moment, he carefully folded the napkin and returned it to his pocket. He tugged on the dog’s lead and went to leave.
“Wait,” Maggie said, a strange, cool feeling spreading in her gut. “Earlier, you said a girl disappeared in these mountains.”
Vilhelm paused. Then slowly, he nodded. “Karin.”
“Where was she hiking?”
He pressed his lips together, as if he didn’t want to say any more—but Maggie could sense his answer in his silence.
“It was Blafjell, wasn’t it?”
Vilhelm’s gaze lowered. “That’s where she was last seen, yes.”
“Is Blafjell . . . dangerous?” Maggie asked.
“All mountains can be,” Liz said crisply.
Vilhelm nodded at Liz, then made to move away, as if dismissed.
“But there’s something about Blafjell, isn’t there?” Maggie called after him.
Vilhelm hesitated. Quietly, he said, “Some locals think that there is . . . an energy about the place. A sense of something larger than us.” He spoke only to Maggie. “A vibration, if you will. This one knows it. Hackles go up. Ears pinned right back. Starts to whine. Dogs can sense the other.”
Maggie’s skin grew cool. “The other?”
Vilhelm looked directly at her, his gaze clear and intense.
“Something beyond the limit of our understanding. That feeling of unease, of not being alone, that isn’t immediately explicable.
It’s where the mist hangs. Chills you to the bone.
Not the temperature. It’s a feeling. Like something pressing on your chest.”
Maggie shuddered.
He lowered his voice. “Blafjell is said to be a . . . thin place. You know what that means?”
Slowly, Maggie nodded. She’d read about thin places before. “It’s where the distance between our world and the next is thinner, more permeable.”
“Correct. Where order meets chaos. Where life meets death. Where you see things you’d rather you hadn’t, ja? I don’t go up the mountain. Stick to the forest, the river, the other peaks. Not Blafjell.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Liz said, tone clipped, “but we’ll be fine.”
Vilhelm straightened. Nodded once. Then he tugged lightly on his dog’s lead, and the two of them slunk away.
“Think he works for Visit Norway?” Helena asked.
Maggie leaned forward until she could feel the table edge pressing against her lower ribs. “What if he’s right? What if Blafjell is a thin place?”
“He’s winding us up,” Helena said. “He probably saw the price tag still on Liz’s fleece.”
Maggie looked at the map, tracing the tightening contour lines as the green rush of forest turned pale brown, rock rising out of earth. “It’s over a thousand meters! It looks terrifying.”
“It’s a map,” Liz said.
Maggie found herself saying, “I don’t think we should climb it.”
“Because of Vilhelm?” Liz said, incredulous.
“Perhaps we should just do the first part of the trail.”
“It’s a circular walk,” Liz said. “You can’t just do a part of it!”
“Blafjell is too high. Too challenging.”
“It won’t be if you’ve done the training,” Liz said shortly.
There was silence.
Maggie felt heat spreading up her neck.
“We’re not backing out now,” Liz persisted. “We’ve come all this way to hike to Blafjell.”
“I haven’t,” Maggie said, shaking her head.
“I’m here because I didn’t want to be in the house without Phoebe.
And Helena’s here because she needs a break from work.
The only reason we’re in Norway, in this lodge, is because it was your turn to choose, Liz, and we wanted to support you—but why did you have to choose something so hard? So inaccessible for the rest of us?”
“We’ve done the poolside holiday again and again. I’m over it! I need a change! An adventure. A reset.”
Maggie caught the strained, reedy quality to Liz’s voice, as if it was set to crack.
Helena picked up the wine bottle. “Let’s have another drink. Relax. Shake off the day’s traveling. We’ll feel differently in the morning.”