clicked immediately when Niamh called her Jam. “Yeah, of course I know her. I used to love her TV show.”
“Jamisen’s an amazing horsewoman,” Niamh continued. “She’ll be riding all her own stunts. The costume department have this enormous long blonde wig that she wears under her Viking helmet and it will look incredible blowing in the wind next to Troy’s flaxen mane.”
“It must be weird,” I said, “to be not that much older than me and be the star of an entire movie.”
“She’s used to it, I guess,” Niamh said. “What is she now? Sixteen? She’s been famous almost her whole life.”
The arrival of Jamisen O’Brien and Anders Mortenson had everyone talking at dinner. The two stars of the film had finally turned up on a private jet with their entourages in tow, ready to start work the next day.
“Jam’s brought six assistants with her,” Niamh told me as we piled up our plates at the buffet.
My mum had worked on a lot of films and she’d told me some stories but I swear I’d never heard of any celebrity who had that many assistants before.
“What do they all do?” I asked.
“One of them is her personal trainer, one of them is her hairdresser, one of them is her personal assistant …” Niamh rattled them off, counting on her fingers. “Don’t know what the others do.”
Anders Mortenson, on the other hand, had just his personal assistant with him. He’d been famous since he was ten years old when he played a spoilt rich kid in the TV comedy Cody and Toby and now, at the age of fifteen, this was the first time he’d play the hero. He was Prince Sigard, who would fight by Brunhilda’s side as her power grew and eventually marry his queen.
“They get here today and then it’s a week of training with us and the stunt co-ordinators,” Niamh explained, “and then filming will finally begin …”
The sudden hush that fell over the dining room at that moment made me think that maybe Jam and Anders had just walked in. But it was only Gudrun. She stood out from the rest of us in our North Face puffer jackets at the best of times, but today she was particularly wildly dressed in red trousers and a violet cape.
She made a beeline for our table and flung herself down beside me.
“Hilly, we need to talk.”
I saw Niamh tense up in her presence. She couldn’t stand Gudrun; she’d admitted that to me when we’d been working on the goat-hair suits together.
“Don’t you think it’s weird how she always talks to you?” Niamh had said to me once when she was going on about Gudrun’s odd behaviour.
It was true and, yes, I did think it was a bit strange. I was the least important person here and yet Gudrun treated me like someone who really mattered. It made me uneasy but I kind of liked talking to her too.
Niamh stood up to leave. “I have to go. Hilly, let’s meet up at the stables in half an hour, OK?”
“Sure,” I said.
Gudrun waited in silence until Niamh was out of earshot. Her green eyes were even wilder and brighter than usual.
“Do you know what night it is, Hilly?”
“Sunday?” I offered.
“Yes,” Gudrun conceded. “Sunday, the 24th of June. The Jonsmessa is here at last. It’s time.”
Then she leaned closer so that she could whisper to me: “I’ll come for you just before midnight. We must finish what we’ve started. It’s time to meet Brunhilda.”
That night I sat up on my bed, fully dressed, waiting for Gudrun. She said the ritual needed to take place at midnight but by 11.30 p.m. she still wasn’t here. Finally at around 11.45 p.m. I gave up on her and closed the blackout curtains in my room. I had only just started to get ready for bed when I heard this scratching on the glass of the sliding door. Then another sound, a thin, melancholic whimper. I sat bolt upright and listened. More whimpering, louder this time. I got up, and moved cautiously over to the window and flung the curtains apart.
In front of me, right on the other side of the glass door, stood two enormous grey wolves. They were standing there, side by side, like two statues, eyes blazing intently, tongues lolling from their massive open jaws. We were separated by the glass, so they couldn’t get to me, but that didn’t make them any less terrifying.
I put my hand up to the pane and one of the wolves edged closer. His breath steamed the glass and I could see saliva dripping from his white fangs. The other one cocked his head and moved forward too. They were massive, powerful creatures, and I was sure at that moment that if they’d wanted to they could have broken down the glass to get to me. But they didn’t try. They didn’t even growl. They both stared intently at me. Then, as if they’d heard someone calling them, they turned on their heels and bounded away, into the forest. A moment later, another shape emerged from the shadows of the trees. It was Gudrun! I slid the door open for her.
“Quick!” I hissed. “Get inside! There are wolves out there.”
Gudrun was perfectly calm. “There are no wolves in Iceland,” she said.
“I know what I saw,” I insisted. I wanted her to come in so I could shut the door, but she beckoned me outside instead.
“Seriously, Hilly,” she said. “There’s nothing there. Come on. It’s time. We need to go.”
I didn’t want to stay there arguing and risk waking Mum and so I stepped outside and slid the door shut behind me.
We walked to the Colosseum, Gudrun leading the way. The sky up above was cloudless, and the colour of rose petals.
“Quick, Hilly!” Gudrun leapt ahead of me, taking the stone steps two at a time to reach the grassy expanse of the arena. She grasped my hand and shoved the trowel into it. “Dig up the horn while I prepare.”
The dirt mound from our burial had become overgrown with grass, which surprised me as it seemed like such a short time ago we had done the ritual. Gudrun must have marked the spot somehow because she was quite certain where I should dig.
A few feet away she had placed a fire brazier stacked with logs.
“The Vikings always used mountain ash, from the boughs of the rowan tree, for the midsummer ritual,” she said as she rearranged the wood inside the bowl of the rusty brazier and set it alight with a taper. “They believed that rowan has magical properties to ward off evil.”
The wood caught fire almost instantly with a fairy dust sprinkling of orange sparks at first and then a deep, emerald-green flame as the rowan began to burn and crackle to embers. There was something very hypnotic about watching the fire, almost trance-like.
“Hilly!” Gudrun said. “Please, keep digging – it’s time!”
I plunged the trowel back into the earth and heard
