Dimmuborgir
Chapter 13: Ireland, part 1
She wakes in Ireland.
She's been having nightmares of mountains exploding, covering cities and forests and seas in lava. Petrifying everything, freezing it in time even though there is no time left. Yellow haze, no birdsong, no life.
When she turns her head with some effort she sees why: Tom is very close to her in bed.
He is awake, though he looks like he is regretting being so. With her slight movement he turns and meets her eyes. He looks terrible. Skin pasty and sweaty. Sunken, dull eyes. Cracked lips.
They both sapped themselves to near depletion.
"I don't want to do that again," she says.
His smile is very small, barely there, but it looks genuine. She finds that she wants to see it again sometime.
That…that is bad.
"You did very well, Hermione," he murmurs. He reaches for her, then frowns when she pulls away.
"The dreams…the nightmares I've been having…they're from you, aren't they?"
He doesn't bother denying it.
"Of course," he says, and rolls onto his back, arms behind his head. "Your barriers are down in sleep. Things are bound to…seep through."
"And for you," she says slowly, "those aren't nightmares, are they?"
"No," he says simply, while looking up towards the ceiling. "They are not."
She looks up too, tries to comprehend how her nightmares could be someone else's daydreams. She can't. She stares at the ceiling instead. Only she can't really see it. It's too far away. With a real effort she sits up and tries to make sense.
They are not in the hotel room in Israel, as she had first assumed.
They are in a circular room. Ceiling, walls and floor are of stone. High up, higher than she could reach, are stained glass windows going all around the walls. Blues and greens and reds, such vivid jewel colours. Higher still, beams are criss-crossing each other way up there in perpetual half dusk.
On the wall opposite the bed there is a lead framed window at normal height. She struggles for a second, but manages to stand from the bed and then walk across the floor towards it. She is barefoot and bare legged; Tom must have removed her tights and shoes.
She looks out on ruins. Jagged stones and gaping absences where stones should be. Pillars standing upright, pillars fallen down, faded old stone masonry strewn haphazardly about.
Beyond lies an old cemetery. Beautiful and abandoned, with gravestones poking higgedly piggedly through the ground, leaning at odd angles or simply falling down. There are bare yew trees and overgrown paths, snarled brambles and frozen wild roses.
And it snows. Fat snowflakes falling quietly towards the ground, occasionally getting whirled about by mischievous gusts. It's already thick on the ground, on the gravestones, the crumbling angels.
It is more beautiful and peaceful than it has any right to be . She can't stop looking, even if the draft from the window is nigh on unbearable, even though her bare feet are as cold as ice, even though she has to support herself on the window ledge to remain upright.
"We are in an abandoned monastery," comes Tom's voice from behind her. "This tower is the only remaining part standing. It was the best I could do. I fear I struggled mightily to bring us here."
She looks at the Celtic crosses out there in the graveyard, the ornate decorations, the snow clad hills beyond.
"Ireland?" she guesses in a hoarse murmur.
"Indeed."
She turns back to face him. He's still on the bed, doesn't look like he fancies standing up anytime soon.
"And what are we doing here?"
He shrugs laying down, and perhaps it looks too studiously casual. Perhaps she is too exhausted to care.
"Recuperating, for now. We will take as long as we both need."
She doesn't quite believe him; that it is that simple. Even so she decides not to challenge him.
She looks around the rest of the tower room instead.
The bed is the only piece of furniture. He has piled it high with blankets and furs and what looks like tapestries.
There is a fireplace large enough for her to stand upright in, a fire lit within, taking some of the chill out of the stones. It burns bright and merry with an assortment of furniture and furnishings he must have pilfered from about the place. Curtains. A broken up table. Newspapers. Along with a few candles it provides the only light source in this room.
Before the fire stands an old copper bathtub; she can see steam rising from the water in it. It's clearly for her, and a rare kindness from Tom, who cares little about acceptable temperatures and who keeps himself clean through no conventional ways. This is all for her, and she is immediately suspicious.
But it looks so tempting. It looks amazing. She is cold, and she is filthy from the Jerusalem landfill, and the hot water is impossible to resist. To hell with him and his no doubt nefarious intentions; she just wants a fucking bath.
Without a word she slips her dirty dress from her shoulders and lets it pool by her feet. Then, wearing nothing but the necklace, she steps into the tub and sits down. The water is hot. Almost too hot. But she doesn't care. Pulling her knees against her chest she sinks backwards, down, until her ears are underwater, then her mouth, her eyes. Eventually only her nose breaches the surface and her hair fan out, undulating slowly around her face. When she closes her eyes she feels safe. She's curled up in warmth, and everything is far away. All she can hear are the sounds of her own body, her heart and her slight movements, and this is the most escape she's had since he took her.
When she opens her eyes again she looks straight into his.
He is standing over her, with his hands braced against the rim of the tub, looking down at her face.
He retreats a little when she sits up, granting her some space but not enough. His eyes are heavy on the water that beads on her skin, doing strange things to the water droplets and their density. Under his gaze she feels like they are forever suspended from her breasts, shivering and shimmering in the firelight.
"What is it?" she asks him quietly.
He only shrugs.
"I like looking at you," he says like it means nothing. Perhaps it doesn't.
He sinks into a crouch so that they may maintain eye contact. His hands rest on the rim, and his hair is curling a little from the steam of the water. His eyes are as fierce as always, too light and too cold, and on his finger glints brass and iron.
At her look he wraps his other fingers over the sigil, and his smile is mostly a snarl.
"I would rather you did not touch this. You understand, I am sure." And the way he looks at the necklace around her neck is heavy with implication, heavier even than the metal. She touches a hand to the Brisingamen, as has become her wont, and she supposes that she understands his concern.
Even with him inserting himself into her white-knuckled peace she is unwilling to relinquish it. Not just yet. She turns over onto her stomach, enjoys the hot water closing over her sore back. The peculiar amalgam of burn mark and tattoo that he left on her is a constant ache, seeming to penetrate deep into her epidermis and then further still. The water soothes it somewhat, and she rests her chin on the edge of the tub and enjoys the sensation. Eyes half closed she drifts a little, only absently noting that he is playing with her hair where it floats on the surface of the water. She can't tell for sure, but she thinks that she is somewhere in the hinterlands between wakefulness and sleep. Drowsily, without really thinking of it, she reaches with her mind for his.
She makes contact easily, too easily, but even like this, barely awake, she knows to tread carefully. He mustn't know that she can come inside of him. She's got no doubt that he freely avails himself of her. That he pries into her emotions and that is how he knows her so well, predicts her without fail, but she cannot allow him to know that she might be able to do it right back.
Gently and quietly she moves forward, curious, afraid.
Almost immediately, however, she has to turn back. She is unable to withstand the light inside of him, so blinding, and the impenetrable darkness, so black. Chasms and ruptures, screams and beauty, all in flashes, in claire-obscure.
She retreats, comes back to herself, shaken. How can she ever hope to make sense of that? Delve deep enough to unearth some kind of vulnerability? Look at what he is, the very essence of him, without losing her mind?
She realises that she has shot upright, is sitting straight up in the bath, covered in goosebumps. He looks at her curiously.
"Are you cold?"
"I…I think…" she casts around for something to say, distract him, distract herself, then she sees something that brings her up short:
The palimpsests lie discarded on the floor next to the bed.
She frowns. It is unlike him to be so careless with the vellum sheafs. Indeed, since he stole them from the library in Saint Catherine's he has guarded them jealously, rarely allowing them to leave his person.
He runs a finger along her collarbone, and correctly interprets her consternation.
"No more deciphering. I know the two last items we must retrieve. I know what we must do."
She shakes her head.
"….how long was I out for?"
"Days. It allowed me all the uninterrupted time I needed."
Days.
"So when are we leaving here?"
"I told you. We will take our time. We will remain here for as long as we need."
She quiets, considers. He has taken her with breakneck speed towards his goal, impatiently moving her from one country to the next. Flitting and robbing and leaving chaos in their wake. Now, when they are coming towards the end of his journey, when they are within reach he slows them down.
It makes no sense. She doesn't understand it. Perhaps it is something that she doesn't want to understand.
She stands, dripping water, and he is there with a blanket to wrap around her shoulders. She accepts it with another frown as she steps out of the tub. It is not in him to be nice or caring, she is sure of it. Yet he rubs down her back and arms through the blanket, helping her dry, and it's terribly disconcerting. Wrong.
She shakes him off and walks around the room, caged and antsy, all feelings of content drowsiness eradicated by his aberrant behaviour.
She is looking for something to distract herself and there is a mirror, leaning forgotten and askew against the wall. Filthy and dusty but whole and clear underneath the dirt. She uses a corner of the blanket he gave her to wipe it clean. Then she stands back, drops the blanket from her body and looks at herself.
The first thing she sees is his handprint. It's as if the shadow of a hand is thrown across her left breast, but the shadow is stamped onto her skin, right over her heart. Seems that summoning the jinn had forced a power so great that an imprint of him on her skin was left behind. Now she is marked by him on her front, and on her back. More and more she is becoming something that is his, and she has no idea how to undo it.
She sees more, but that is all herself and nothing of him. She doesn't quite recognise what she sees, but she knows this is her now. The deeper dips and higher slopes of ribs and collarbones, the meaner contours, the slimmer thighs. Her breasts, higher and smaller, one shivering under his mark.
And…
Slowly, without taking her eyes off herself in the glass, she braids her long hair back into a severe French plait, leaving her face entirely exposed. It is time to stop avoiding herself, shy away. It is time to accept that she is changing, turning into….something else.
Her face is the same, but also not. Sterner, sharper, with shadows playing across it in new ways. No girlish roundness left. Not much colour either, but her eyes… He's right about her eyes, but she already knew that of course. Lightened to a bright amber, they stand out, making her look strange and fey.
He emerges behind her in the glass. Stands close. His front to her naked back, forcing the illusion of them as a two-headed creature in the mirror, siamese twins in different colourways. Without a word he slips a hand across her shoulder and down, fits it perfectly atop his palm print on her breast.
Their connection sings with that, and inside her heart stirs the vow he swore her. But really, she reflects; mutely and quite without realising she had given him an even stronger vow in return. He won't kill any more girls, but only if she gives herself freely to him.
She turns her head, looks up at him.
"Can you see the cracks?"
He doesn't ask her what she means. He says simply:
"No."
"But I can," she tells him as she turns to face the mirror again and leans her head back on his shoulder. "I can see them. They are all over me, and they are growing wider. Soon I'll become a mosaic. A great many fragments held together by almost nothing."
His arms cross over her and tighten. Absently he begins playing with her breasts, no real intent nor fire behind it. Just a weighing of flesh and her heart in a ponderous way. And he tilts his head and listens when she carries on:
"Do you know of Villa dei Misteri? In Pompeii?"
"I do," he answers, and glides his hands down to her naked hips instead, pulling her closer into him.
"Then you know of the frescoes. They are amazing, aren't they. Am I like the girl in those frescoes? She's facing something entirely unknown, and it sings even through lime and tempera. Then she disappears from the paintings, only to return entirely changed."
He sighs, but remains patient.
"The frescoes in Pompeii are entirely immaterial, Hermione. Stop trying to cling to human reason and sensibility. It will not help you."
"But I..." She interrupts herself, sighs. "You were there, weren't you? In Pompeii, when Vesuvius eradicated everything."
"Yes."
Of course he had been. Her skull feels too tight for her brain. Old Hermione might have assaulted him with a thousand questions, historical curiosity overwhelming, but this Hermione needs to get away.
On the end of the bed she sees her bundle of clothes. He must have brought them along. Yet another kindness that itches uncomfortably across her skin. She slips out of his arms, walks across the floor and begins getting dressed. Underwear. Another long dress. A coat and a hat.
"I'm going outside for a spell," she tells him. "Fresh air."
Suddenly nothing seems more vital.
He nods.
"I will accompany you."
Not what she wanted, but what can she do?
They step outside into the graveyard. She can see nothing beyond it, no buildings, no people, no vehicles. They appear to be far away from anything: disappeared for a spell. The snow falls so very quietly, muting everything, making the edges of this small world soft and treacherous.
"I didn't think it ever snowed in Ireland," she says as she begins walking among the gravestones.
"We are up in the hills," says Tom.
She sticks her tongue out to catch a few flakes, shivers and rubs some warmth into her arms, but she doesn't want to go back inside.
"Did we come here because you know I hate the cold?"
Beside her he shrugs.
"No. We came because it is beautiful."
At her look he steps in front of her, stops her with both hands on her shoulders.
"What?" he asks. "Do you think me unable to appreciate beauty? Quite the opposite. Given the choice, I will always seek it out."
"I don't believe you," she says flatly. "You seem to seek out only chaos."
He shakes his head.
"Not true. I have learnt, along the way, that there are all kinds of beauty. There is beauty in destruction, in chaos, just as well as in a silent snowy landscape or a forest at dusk. You know this, you feel this, I know you do." He briefly puts his hand on her heart, and it betrays her as ever. "There is grace in all, if one knows how to see ." His eyes flash. "And it was this thirst for grace, the surety that I could make the world greater even than my father's vision, that saw me fall."
"Because you saw humanity as a smirch on your father's creation."
He meets her eyes squarely. He's unapologetic, entirely safe in his own conviction.
"Yes."
"Your contempt is devastating."
"But hardly unexpected. Never unexplained. Definitely right."
"Definitely right?" She struggles a little against his grip on her, but he's not letting her go and her heart isn't in it anyway. "What have you done? The damage you've caused the world. You've been trapped here, and you've been bored, haven't you? It shows. Look at the ruination you've caused."
He laughs a little, quite incredulous. Puffs of frosted air billow from his lips and wash over her face. As always she takes some small comfort in this sign of humanity, that air circulates in his lungs.
"You think every bad thing that ever has happened is because of me? You are a little fool." He shakes her, albeit gently, then releases her and takes a step back. "I thought better of you than the rest of them. Was I wrong?"
He turns, walks a few steps away from her, then spins back around. There's that flush high on his cheeks that she has come to recognise as a sign of strong emotion, and he pulls his hand through his dark hair, making it stand on end. Snowflakes settle on him as he looks at her, but the winter around him does nothing to temper the fire burning in his eyes.
"You truly think so? That everything that is wrong with this world is because of me? Oh no. No, Hermione. That is all you. You humans. I will admit, I enjoy playing. I am curious by nature, and I have been trapped here for a long, long time."
"You've played ant-farm," she interrupts quietly.
"I have," he contends easily, like it means nothing. "I have done terrible things, just for fun. Just to see what would happen. Experiments. I have been drawn to disasters and world-changing events and I have engineered a few of them myself. The tipping of the balance of darkness and light? Yes. But, the truly heinous things? The business in Germany? The towers? The genocides, atrocities, terrorism? The oil spills, the casual befouling of the air? The forest devastations and the annihilation of entire species? That. Is. All. You."
He spreads his arms wide, to indicate everything and anything around them.
"Humanity," he hisses, and she can tell that the word is offensive to him. He wants it gone from his mouth, it is something foul-tasting and rank on his tongue. "Vermin that would spit on one of the greatest gifts ever given. Undeserving filth."
"I'm human," she says.
"Perhaps," he answers, "- but you are my human."
"A useful pet."
"More than a pet. You are a companion. You are powerful. I can abide you."
"You lie," she says, quite calmly. "You do that. That's what you do."
He smirks, a quick lopsided grin, just a quick flash of…
"You are a clever little thing."
She shakes her head, tries to back away, sick with realisation, with grief. But he won't let her, refuses to give her space.
"But you know I am right, Hermione," he whispers and moves closer to her again. He cups her face between his hands, quite gentle, and tips her chin up so that she must meet his eyes. "This world, this beautiful, spectacular world, has been ruined. By greed, by spite, by pettiness. By humans. Soon there will be nothing left."
Her ears are ringing, a vehement kind of tinnitus shutting everything else out. Her fingers and toes are tingling. She feels sick, nauseous, that she might vomit hot bile onto cold snow. He is right. Of course he is right, and damn him straight back where he came from! The world, the earth, is on its knees. Wars and genocide and climate change. All self-inflicted. All avoidable
"I am right, am I not," he says again, gentler now, handling her softly and with care, his cold hand on her cheek, the other sliding into her hair.
She doesn't have to say anything. He reads her answer, her resignation and her sadness, as clear as if it was Enochian written on her brow. He smiles, and clasps her to his chest before digging the dagger deeper.
"And what have you done, Hermione? Have you tried to make a difference? Have you fought against this swelling tide of destruction? No. You have hidden away, have you not? Buried yourself in books, in the past, blinding yourself to the fact that soon there will be nothing left." He brushes his thumb across her lower lip. "But I am giving you an opportunity now. To right wrongs. To make up for the ennui of your life. Will you take it, little one?"
Back to that old pet name. She looks into his eyes and she knows that he is quite insane.
She nods, just once.
"Good girl," he whispers, before he kisses her with a new sort of violence.
He does seem very fond of that, she reflects as she meets him in kind, as she sucks on his tongue and whimpers broken notes into his mouth. Kissing her. Perhaps he is warming himself like this, with his tongue in her mouth?
Or perhaps he's just trying to win.
While biting her lip he moves her backwards, up against a gravestone.
"What are you doing?" she asks as he grabs her about her hips, lifts her up on the ragged old stone and then insinuates himself between her thighs.
"I have need of you now," he says and pushes the dress up to around her waist. Frigid air and snow hit her uncovered thighs, and she shivers closer to him even though he's colder even than the winds.
He's not playing, or taking his time. There is no artifice to the way he rips her underwear apart, leaving red welts biting into her hips. No coyness in how he fumbles with his zipper and buttons before he brings his cock out, flushed and weeping. Certainly no tenderness in how he pushes himself inside of her even though she isn't nearly ready.
She hisses, whimpers, wriggles against the intrusion, then shifts her hips closer to his. She remains balanced on the gravestone only by wrapping her legs around his hips, the uneven granite surface digging into her backside.
He grabs her waist, and pulls her even harder down onto him. Their hip bones meet, they are belly against belly, mouth to mouth, and she grunts. He kisses her, wet, sloppy, all tongue, then presses his face against her throat. He thrusts, then he thrusts again, not allowing her any movement, it's just so he can get himself as very far inside of her as it is possible to go.
Then he stills.
She throws her head back, and groans up into the snowfall, tries to urge him into movement, but he's got other ideas.
He grasps her chin, forces her to meet his eyes, and she can't bear what she sees. A riptide of turmoil, whirling emotions, glee and sadness and ravaging intent. She thinks of what she saw when she ventured inside of him. The bright light and the ceaseless darkness and the beauty and the ugliness.
"Those little sounds you make," he says, as he somehow gets himself even closer. Her heart beats against his, her lungs expand as his does. "Pained, but not. When I hurt you and you should move away, but you move closer to me instead. Those little sighs. Those are my favourite things about you. Addictive. And they say so much."
"Don't," she begs. "Please don't. Please just move."
He doesn't. He stays still, impaling her, splitting her in two, but denying her the slippery relief of movement.
"You and I, we will change things. You are mine now, and you will help. I know you will. Will you not?"
She looks him straight into his eyes, and she wonders what would happen if she were to deny him now, tell him no. Or say yes without meaning it.
She must mean it.
"Yes," she whispers. Then, louder, because there can be no doubt. "Yes."
He pulls out of her, and she gapes at him as he takes a step back and catches her as she slides off the gravestone.
"Get on the ground," he whispers as quietly as the snow falls, and he looks at her like he might rip the entire world to pieces if she were to slip between his fingers.
She smiles at him, and she means that too. She means her smile.
And there is a feeling that could perhaps be elation when she obeys him, when she falls to her knees and braces herself on her hands.
Together they make some twisted angels in the snow.
Afterwards he helps right her clothing and brushes ice crystals from her hair. Then he takes her by the hand and leads her back to the ruins of the monastery with its one standing tower.
"We didn't just come to Ireland just to look at winter landscapes, did we?" she asks on their way. She's limping. He had fucked her like he had meant nothing more than to own her, and it is difficult to walk right.
He laughs, very quietly.
"No. I chose our place of recuperation with some care."
"What then, are we here for?"
"A book."
He needn't say more. There is only one book in Ireland that could be valuable enough, powerful enough, to warrant his interest. To be one of the "keys" he's looking for.
"The Book of Kells."
His answering grin is sharp with glee.
"Indeed."
She…she feels excited. She has no doubt that they will manage to steal the priceless book, one of the the most beautiful ever created, and then she can…touch it. Read it, study it, hold it close.
She grins back at him.
But when they are back inside, moroseness assaults her yet again.
He is changing tactics. The way he took her just now…still overbearing, sure, still domineering, but nothing like the near violence which which he had approached the act before. No, just now he had attempted to be something like…caring.
Wonder what that had cost him, she thinks wryly.
She thinks that he is now trying to…trying to seduce her.
Not bending her to his will by force. Not brutalising, manipulating, taking what he wants and damn her will.
Well. Actually. Not seduce, she thinks as she watches how his shadow moves queerly on the wall behind him even though he is standing perfectly still. It is not seduction, what he is doing right now.
It's corruption.
And yet, she thinks as she sits down on the bed, it is rather nicer than anything else he has plagued her with.
She remembers what he said about free will. How he wants her to have it. Presumably that is so that she can choose to use it to go his way. It seems clear that he wants her, or perhaps more accurately he wants the raw force that lives inside her. Perhaps he even needs it. In that case, she thinks grimly, it seems more prudent than ever to ensure she can control it. Harness it, steer it.
She takes a deep breath, turns to him.
"Bring me some more animals. I need to practice."