Å

25 km

After that sign, the E10 twisted like a serpent through jagged cliffs and sodden hills, the narrow ribbon of asphalt hemmed in by water on one side and dark, towering rock on the other. Sofia Skarvik hadn’t passed another car in almost an hour; just seabirds overhead, their cries thin and sharp as needles in the pale midnight sun.

Above the Arctic Circle, night had ceased to exist. It was nearly one in the morning, yet the sky was a smudged ochre, an endless twilight that neither dimmed nor brightened, only hung there — watching. The sun hovered low over the ocean like something tired and unwilling to set, casting long shadows that pointed the wrong way.

As the narrow road slithered through valleys and mountains, way too thin to allow for two cars to pass one another, let alone touristy RV’s crammed with families, pets and luggage, Sofia eased her rental car along a stretch of road flanked by skeletal birches. The white bark was peeling, and the way they leaned — always slightly toward the sea, gave them a bent, whispering look, like they were confiding in one another about who was returning. Her mind was not racing, merely stagnated on one simple thought.

Another break-up. I bet I know what Besta will say…

She began imitating her internally in a humorous way.

Oh my little beetle Sofie, why can’t you keep your men? Must be those ripped jeans that make you look like a drifter… Why don’t you stay in Å with me? I’ll find you a nice boy before you can say ‘The Coldplays’.

Sofia did not visit her mother’s and grandmother’s (Besta) hometown that often anymore. Not since the funeral. She was fifteen and they buried her mother in Oslo (it was really just her prized possessions, for her body was never found, disappearing mysteriously and declared dead a year or two later by the authorities). Her Besta had come all the way down in her black wool coat despite the heat, the old lady a stickler for traditions and keeping the spark of the old ways alive (whatever that meant). That was the last time they’d spoken in person. Letters had followed — Besta had no phone (nobody in Å did: no infrastructure to speak of up there) — but those grew fewer, and Sofia had never written back.

Now she was coming home, gypsy jazz blaring in the speakers of that rugged Fiat.

But it didn’t feel like home.

Not really.

Å was the last village on the Lofoten chain, quite literally. Past it, there was nothing but broken coastline and open sea; the sort of place that felt forgotten on purpose. She glanced at the GPS: still no signal. The road curved again, and then there it was: the cluster of red wooden cabins, their stilts standing over inky and agitated water. The fjord was still. Not calm: still, like a photograph, or something holding its breath. Mountains rose behind the village like the broken black teeth of an experienced fisherman. In fact, that was the only activity left to do in Å: fishing. The main and only tourist attraction? A Fish museum! She always laughed about it with her friends, about the small village where everyone knew everyone, where awkward and quirky traditions were deemed imbecilic by city folk, and of course, of the fish museum.

Her phone buzzed, but when she looked, the screen was blank.

Just a flicker. She felt her skin crawl.

Besta’s house sat just past the old cod-drying racks, which were empty now but still smelled faintly of brine and bone. The same creaking wood and sagging porch. The same carved lintel over the door, with the barely legible runes her grandfather had etched decades ago. Sofia parked and sat in silence for a moment, engine ticking. She watched a single crow flutter from the chimney and vanish into the birch line.

I don’t remember it ever being so quiet…

The front door opened with a slow, deliberate creak. Besta stood in the threshold, eyes like polished flint.

“You came,” she said. “Good. You’re just in time.”

She got out of the car and grabbed her backpack from the rear seat, asking. “In time for what?”

When she turned around, her Besta was already in the house, the door left slightly ajar.

***

The next morning — or what passed for morning in a place that never darkened — Sofia awoke to the smell of boiled coffee and salty air. Besta was already outside, hanging linens in the unending daylight like she always had, her back straight despite the years. What is she now? 70? She’s holding up quite well… she thought, pulling back the drapes and getting out of her pajamas and into her jeans and t-shirt. After breakfast, they both went out.

Sofia found the village unchanged in the worst way. Not timeless, but preserved; pickled in silence, salt and stubbornness. They gathered in the old meeting house around midday, where a long wooden table had been set with gravlaks, sour cream waffles, and rhubarb cordials that burned like fire going down. The locals were polite in that small-town-way: half warmth, half surveillance. Her return had stirred something.

It’s either curiosity or superstition. But probably a mix of both.

The gossiping whispers were loud enough for her to hear. It was hard not to. When old people go deaf, they cannot really speak in hush tones anymore. She found that amusing, pretending not to hear.

“She’s still not married?” one gray-haired woman with a pinched mouth said to another. “Not even engaged?”

Another, clinking a spoon against her glass, leaned in to say, “There’s still time, vet du. Midsummer’s the right time to dream…” and winked at her.

Everyone laughed. Sofia smiled like she meant it. She didn’t bother correcting them about her breakup. Let them simmer, they love a good gossip.

That night, as the low sun painted everything gold and wrong, Besta brought out an old silver tin. Inside were faded photos, a spring of dried juniper, and a yellowing newspaper clipping about a missing hiker.

“Tomorrow,” Besta said, as they sat by the window, “you’ll go to the midsommerfest. You can wear my crown if you like.”

Sofia arched an eyebrow.

“Besta, I came here to see you. I’m off from school on midsommer. That’s why I came. Not for the flower thing…”

Besta frowned at her in a way that made her want to continue.

“Look, I’m not putting flowers under my pillow and singing silly songs… that’s for children.”

Besta sipped her tea calmly, never breaking eye contact with her. “So is dancing in circles. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.”

“I don’t think I’m looking for anyone, Besta…”

The old woman put her cup down, looked at kitchen wall, adorned with black and white photos of Sofia as a child, of her mother, of them together, happy. She spoke without taking her eyes off the memory mural.

“You don’t have to be. You do it right, and they will find you.”

***

The village green had been transformed in the blink of an eye.

Ribbons of blue and gold hung from birch poles. Children wove garlands from buttercups and harebells. An accordion played a clumsy waltz while elders in wool vests clapped along. Tables sagged with pickled herring, fresh strawberries, and towering kransekake rings.

There was a maypole, of course — though they didn’t call it that here, just stanga. Villagers danced around it barefoot, their laughter light but somehow strained, like they were acting out something for someone watching just beyond the trees.

Sofia felt it then — that the festival wasn’t just for joy. It was also a ritual. A remembering. A reenactment of something older than everyone dancing.

When people got sick of all the cardamom pastries and herring, the music stopped. Besta, in charge of the festivities, said out loud.

“It is time to pick the flowers!”

Sofia followed the others, all young women, down the winding path through fields and woods. The air had grown still. Even the gulls were silent.

They spread out, each alone.

The rules were simple.

Seven flowers.

Each from a different place. Each a different type.

No speaking.

No looking back.

And above all, no matter what you hear, no matter what you think you see:

Don’t answer if someone calls your name.

“Are you serious?” she asked one of the younger girls that explained this to her.

“Yes!” her answer came with shock and a small hint of offense.

As she went looking for flowers by a larger field next to the forest, Sofia felt utterly ridiculous. Even more so, as she began to remember all the weird names the flowers had, explained by Besta when she was but a little girl: The mailman’s vest, The Widow’s veil, Thor’s hammer…

These all sound like bad porn movies… she laughed to herself as she bent and picked random ones — the ones that looked prettiest. The singing of the younger girls resonated from afar, bouncing back and forward from the edge of the forest.

When fields lie calm

and wind stands still.

Run home,

Run. Home.

Sofia’s ears felt pierced by something unnatural. She struggled not to look behind her, but knew better of it and turned. Nothing was there. Yet the sound of young girls — children — kept humming and singing in unison. By the time the second verse started, their voices were more of a chant: darker, layered, as if hundreds of demons were cackling at her. The sky turned gray, a wind that never should have been there blew birch leaves aggressively.

As the crows make night

of the fading sun.

Hide now,

Hide. Now!

This is not a song I remember at all, she told herself and started walking towards the woods. Her heart was beating fast. Around her, no other picker was there anymore.

Just herself.

And her… (she looked down at her hands to count) six flowers.

She pushed into the woods, the low branches clutching at her crown like fingers. The path she thought she’d seen had vanished. There was no sound now: no singing, no gulls, not even the sigh of wind. Just the brittle snap of her own footsteps on dry moss.

Something about the silence felt placed, as though the world had paused to listen.

Six flowers. One more.

Her fingers tightened around the bouquet, petals bruised, stems bent. She crouched to pluck a bright blue bloom near a rock, but hesitated. It was one she did recognize. Five frayed petals, and a black center like an eye.

“The Widow’s Veil”, Besta’s voice echoed in her memory. “You don’t pick that one, not unless you want the dead to follow.”

Sofia stood abruptly, heart pounding.

To her left, something moved. A shape, too tall and too narrow. Not quite a tree.

Then:

“Sofia.”

Her name. Soft. Familiar.

It came from deeper in the trees.

She turned toward it reflexively.

But stopped.

She hadn’t meant to. Wasn’t supposed to.

Shit!

Another voice joined in. Then a third. Low, wrong, out of tune. The voices layered, mimicking each other like echoes that didn’t understand the language they were speaking.

“Sofia.”

“Sofia.”

“Sofiaaaa… We choose you…”

The chant from before resumed, slower now, more broken. As if something else was trying to remember how it went.

She stumbled backward, crushing the bouquet in her hand.

“You looked back,” a voice whispered; not aloud, but calm and collected.

Something cold touched her ankle.

She screamed in terror and jolted, then ran as fast as she could.

Branches clawed at her dress, ripped the hem. The forest blurred. Every tree seemed closer than the last, leaning in. Her breath came in wet gasps, but the way was gone. There was no path, no field. Just birch and shadow and that damned sunlight that never dimmed.

And then she saw it.

A clearing.

Bathed in strange light, gold flickering like firelight underwater.

At its center, a single bloom. Delicate, violet, pulsing gently with windless motion. Sofia didn’t recognize the type. It seemed to shimmer, the edges always shifting.

She stepped forward.

“Seven,” she whispered, and picked it.

Trying to sing something in her head to cheer her up from the strange panic attack she obviously finished having, Sofia hurried back towards where she thought the festivities were. By now, it must have been way over two or even three in the morning. When she finally got out of the woods and into the clearing, seeing the tents clearing out and the people going back home in their pick-up trucks, she sighed of relief. Sitting there, in the empty field, flowers in hand, all scrunched up and almost destroyed, Besta’s crown on her head and a white dress — now dirty beyond belief from her running in the forest, she thought to herself:

Yes Sofia, take your free extended midsommer weekend out in Å, where time stands still and people act like we’re still hunting witches. That should be fun, no?

***

Sofia didn’t remember falling asleep.

She just woke in Besta’s bed, fully dressed, her legs still smeared with dirt and streaks of something green and sticky. Her head throbbed. The air smelled of damp stone and lavender.

In the kitchen, Besta was slicing bread. Calm. Too calm. Sofia sat down slowly. Her hands still trembled. She hadn’t let go of the flowers. They lay wilted beside her now on the table, blackened at the stems.

“You turned, didn’t you?” Besta said, not looking up.

Sofia blinked. “What?”

“You heard your name. And you turned. I told you not to. They told you not to.”

Sofia opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“They needed someone,” Besta said. “Your mother was chosen. She ran. She died. They waited. Now it’s your turn.”

She turned toward Sofia and smiled.

Something bloomed in her mouth.

A small white flower, trembling between her lips, petals unfolding in time with her breath. Another peeked from one tear duct, wet and shining. Blood and pollen mixed at her nostrils. Her smile stayed fixed.

Sofia stumbled back from the table, knocking over the chair.

Besta laughed: a rattling, wet sound that seemed to come from the walls, from the floorboards, from beneath.

“You were meant to stay, little beetle Sofie. The land asked. It always asks. And always takes.”

Sofia ran awaym still wearing Besta’s white midsommer gown and her now almost destroyed crown of flowers.

She barely remembered grabbing the car keys or getting into the rental. Her vision pulsed at the edges. She drove too fast down the narrow road that hugged the cliffs, the world blurring into streaks of color and cold air and salt. Her breathing was so heavy it was barely manageable.

The GPS blinked. Searching. Searching.

She just needed to get out. Get off this island. Onto the E10. Anywhere.

Ahead, at the final bend where the road split from sea to mountains, someone stood in the middle of the asphalt.

Sofia slammed the brakes. The tires screamed.

The woman didn’t move.

She wore a white dress.

Like hers.

Crown of crushed flowers.

Like hers.

As Sofia’s heart slammed against her chest, she realized: it was her mother.

Dark veins crawled like roots across her face. Her eyes were empty, except for the smallest shimmer of movement; something turning inside them like petals.

Her mother raised her hand and waved.

Sofia screamed.

The wheel jerked, the car leaving the road abruptly.

When they pulled her body from the crushed rental at the bottom of the cliff the next day, they said she must have fallen asleep at the wheel. The sky had never darkened, after all. It was easy to lose track of time.

At her funeral, no one spoke about the flowers in her lungs. No one mentioned the way her eyes were still open.

Back in Å, the birch trees swayed in a wind no one felt. The village green was being swept. The stanga stood tall.

And somewhere in the woods, something sang again.