Friend

Ashwater was what the troll called the place beneath the glacier, where the snowmelt turned gray with soot, where the birds never flew, where the rocks wept black tears no one could explain. He said it was older than language, deeper than death, and that only children could find it.

Brynja was nine the first time she heard the name.

She had wandered past the schoolhouse fence on a Wednesday afternoon, chasing a dog that wasn’t really there. Past the sulfur springs, past the collapsed turf church where moss grew over gravestones and the wind made sounds like someone choking on their own tongue. No one in town went beyond that. But Brynja wasn’t anyone. Her father didn’t notice when she was gone, and her mother had drowned in the lake last summer with a baby still in her.

That’s when she heard it. A voice, low and rich and warm, seeping from the mouth of a cave like hot broth.

“Why do trolls never get lost?” it asked.

Brynja stepped into the mouth of the cave, where it smelled like rotten apples and copper.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Because they follow their hunger home.”

The laugh that followed curled around her spine. It didn’t sound evil. It sounded… amused. The troll didn’t look like a monster. Not at first. He was huge, yes. And pale as boiled bone, with hair like frozen lichen. His eyes shimmered like the belly of a dead fish. But he smiled. And his voice was kind.

“You’re the one I’ve been waiting for,” he said.

“I’m Brynja,” she told him, like a secret.

“You may call me Friend.”

Every day after that, she came back. The troll never left the cave. The sun, he said, turned him cruel. But inside he was wonderful. He knew stories. He knew songs no one else remembered. He could braid her hair in the dark with fingers the size of loaves and never tug once. He liked riddles. He liked her laugh. He liked the smell behind her ears. And he never asked her to leave. She brought him things. Bits of cloth. A doll’s blue eye. Half a cookie from school lunch. He gave her berries that glowed. A black stone that hummed. A secret name she swore not to say aloud.

“You’re my best friend,” she whispered once.

He blinked slowly. “Say that again.”

So she did.

And his chest swelled, and the walls of the cave trembled like a heart waking up.

Then he asked for something else.

“A memory,” he said. “A sharp one.”

She hesitated.

He leaned close. “Something bitter. Something with skeletons.”

So, she told him about her mother, her pale hand slipping below the lake’s surface. About the screaming. The silence. The way her father stood on the shore like a wax figure, unmoving even after the bubbles stopped.

Friend closed his eyes and inhaled.

“You taste like sorrow,” he whispered. “I could eat you forever.”

She laughed.

But the next day, the cave had changed.

It was deeper. Narrower. Alive. The walls throbbed softly, slick with some warm secretion. Her feet stuck with every step. The light behind Friend had dimmed.

He looked… older. Eyes sunken. Lips split. Bones jutting from his back like antlers.

“You didn’t come yesterday,” he said.

“I had school,” she lied.

Friend’s face split in a smile too wide for his skull. “School won’t save you.”

“I wasn’t hiding,” she added.

“You should have been.”

She turned to leave. The way back twisted, wrong. The walls had grown teeth.

“Don’t go,” Friend said.

“I need to go home.”

“This is your home,” he hissed.

Brynja ran.

The cave groaned. The ground yawned beneath her, hot and pulsing. She smelled burning hair and salt. But somehow, she burst through into the blinding snow, her hands red, her feet raw. That night, the dreams began. Her closet wept. Her sheets writhed.

The dead eider bird crawled from under her bed and whispered, “He’s not done with you.”

Friend was inside her now. In the folds of her mind. In puddles. In reflections that didn’t quite match.

“You belong to me,” he would whisper. “Say it. Say it. Say it.”

Her father found her muttering in her sleep, skin blistered from frost that hadn’t touched the room. He hit her once, just to feel something. Then hung himself the next morning in the cellar with a rope made of sheep wool.

The note said only one word: “Ashwater”.

They took Brynja away. Years passed. She forgot her mother’s face. She learned to speak other languages. Grew tall. Got tattoos. Worked in a museum that smelled like vinegar and dust. Wore gloves when she touched the bones.

But the troll never left her.

She heard him in parking garages. In subway grates. In the stillness between clicks of a ceiling fan. He spoke in riddles. He sang lullabies in her own voice. She told a therapist once. They called it trauma hallucination. Gave her pills that tasted like mold and turned her dreams gray.

But dreams don’t forget.

And neither do trolls.

One summer, something pulled her north.

She booked a flight to Keflavík without knowing why. Rented a car. Took the old roads. The mountains looked like sleeping giants waiting for her return. The lake hadn’t changed. The sulfur springs still screamed. The cave was waiting. Exactly where it had always been. This time, she didn’t hesitate. She stepped in.

Friend was there. Bigger than memory. His face had folded into itself, mouth where his stomach should be. A thousand eyes opened and closed like sores. Antlers sprouted from his hips. But his voice, his voice was still hers.

“Hello, little girl.”

“I’m not little anymore,” she said.

He leaned close. “But you still taste the same.”

“I’m not yours,” she said.

He opened his palm.

In it, her doll’s blue eye. Her mother’s hairpin. The bottlecap from her 7th birthday. Her father’s belt.

“You gave me all of you,” Friend said. “You never left.”

The walls pulsed. The cave began to breathe. Her heartbeat slowed. Her skin itched from the inside.

“I’m done,” she whispered. “You can’t have any more.”

Friend tilted his head. “Then give me back what I gave you.”

She understood. She took the stone from her coat pocket. Black, smooth, warm from her chest all these years. Friend opened his mouth. She stepped forward. And placed the stone in. The cave shrieked. The walls cracked. Friend began to fold inward, curling like a dying spider. Light burst from every joint. Screams in old tongues rattled the stone. Then, silence.

Brynja walked out, ash on her skin, her eyes hollow but dry. She never spoke again. No one knows where she lives now. But if you listen closely, some say her voice can be heard on the wind. Whispering riddles. Asking questions. Waiting for a child who will answer. Waiting in the black moss beneath the glacier.

Waiting in Ashwater.