Chapter Text
THE MAGE
Kirkjubæjarklaustur — Iceland
1991
Giselle Ives resided in a small yet quaint apartment on the busier side of town; it was about twenty feet wide, and though not remarkably pretty as she had once wished it were, nor extravagantly sizable as she sometimes dreamed it might become, it was home.
The wind howled against the window most nights like a ghost searching for a way in, and that frightened her sometimes, even now. But eventually, Giselle had learned to eradicate that foolish, childish notion — partly due to the fact that she had no other choice. The kettle squealed on the stove in protest whenever she let it boil too long, and that noise frightened her too, though these days it had been more of a pestering evening hymn she had grown accustomed to.
The walls here were floral pink — not her first choice, but they felt soft somehow, like the nursery in her mother's house once meant for her.
A row of neatly lined boots and shoes crowded the entrance beside a rack sagging under the weight of winter coats. There were scarcely any of either, but that was quite all right. It simply meant she had to take better care of them.
A green couch — second-hand, slightly lopsided — leaned into the corner at an angle that was never quite right. She had tried to fix it once, though she had given up. The fireplace burned low but steady, a quiet pulse of warmth against the Icelandic cold.
A boxy television sat opposite the couch. Sometimes it played a DVD too loud, then too quiet, then loud again — volume temperamental, like it had moods of its own. Giselle didn't fix that either. She'd liked it, she decided, and though rare and hard to come across, she'd prop in an undubbed American movie in English and fall asleep to the sound of it.
Textbooks lay open on the floor, pages creased and marked. A Monopoly board remained mid-game on the table, silver tokens frozen in place. Knitting needles rested abandoned halfway through a row that would never quite become a scarf.
There were fabrics — purple, yellow, pink — draped over the back of chairs and pooled near the sewing machine. Dresses in progress. Skirts waiting for hems. A blouse with one sleeve complete, the other pinned but unfinished. Creation interrupted, but not discarded.
Glass milk bottles lined the windowsill, emptied and painted over in blooming flowers. Others were coated in glued-on buttons glowing faintly from candles placed inside. Silver cans decorated with foreign postage stamps held stubborn sprigs of green that leaned toward the light. Paper cranes dangled by the circular window, trembling when the wind pressed too hard against the glass. Watercolour paintings leaned against shelves and walls, some careful, some reckless, all trying.
There was much to see in her home, things mismatched and worn, and yet there was something magical about the place — something that made her chest all warm and fuzzy. This is mine, she told herself every morning, like a prayer. Mine. Not borrowed. Not assigned. Not monitored.
Just hers.
There was a small bed, big enough for only her, and that was adorned with a deep maroon blanket she had knitted herself. Her bedside table held a few crumpled American dollars that had collected dust, accompanied by a glass half full of water, a folded image of a dark-haired boy, and a half-worn Icelandic dictionary.
She had been planning to save for a new television set so she could pass the time more effectively, but otherwise she entertained herself in the short time she had after work through knitting, reading, and solving crossword puzzles.
With a small sigh, Giselle glanced at the clock on the wall, stubborn and ticking, and slipped into her robe.
There was a knock at the door. Persistent and sharp, but she didn’t flinch as she knew who it belonged to. It was expected, awaited even. And about five minutes and thirty-two seconds late.
“Góðan daginn,” a soft voice sang out, almost sweeter than Kate Bush’s high note in Cloudbusting, “Breakfast is ready. Come down, yes?”
“Já,” she called back almost so quickly that her voice cracked, the word still strange in her mouth, somewhat more effortless than English.
She tightened the belt of her robe and opened the door.
Her landlord — rather, landlady, Sigríður, stood in the hallway in her woollen socks, grey hair plaited and pinned like a crown. Sometimes, when she was lonely or tired enough, Giselle would allow herself to believe the fantasy that she was her grandmother.
Sigríður’s eyes swept briefly over Giselle, checking in the way Joyce used to, without ever saying it was checking. Giselle dipped her head, the ghost of a nod, and followed her down the narrow wooden stairs.
The kitchen smelled like warm yeast and something sweet, cardamom, maybe, or cinnamon, drifting through the steam curling from the kettle. Outside the window, the morning was pale, Icelandic pale, something she was not quite used to — after all these years.
On the table sat thick slices of rúgbrauð, butter in a small blue dish, soft-boiled eggs, and skyr, accompanied by a small jar of rhubarb jam. Giselle sat where she always sat, back to the wall, facing the door out of habit. She told herself it was for the view of the harbour. It wasn’t.
“Eat,” Sigríður said gently, the way people spoke to shy children. “You work a long day.”
Giselle did not argue. She rarely did anymore. She split the bread carefully, spread butter edge to edge the way she had learned from watching, not asking. The first bite was dense, sweet, honest. Food still surprised her sometimes, its kindness, its warmth. She closed her eyes for half a second, the way she used to with waffles in another kitchen, another life, someone laughing softly beside her.
She pushed that thought away like a curtain she never wanted to open. Not here. Not now. Maybe not ever or anywhere.
“Good?” Sigríður asked.
Giselle nodded, mouth full, then remembered and said, “Yes. Very good.” Her voice was low, rough around the edges as though the years had finally gotten to her. “Thank you.”
They ate mostly in silence, the comfortable kind. Oftentimes, it was just the two of them.
The clock on the wall ticked with stubborn Icelandic steadiness. A radio whispered in the corner about the weather on the fjords and someone’s lost sheep. Giselle spooned skyr into her mouth slowly, savouring it as if she were still making up for years of hunger — not just for food, but for mornings like this.
𝄪
The cool air bit at her cheeks until complete numbness overcame them, followed by a warm flush of heat.
Giselle's arms already ached and throbbed, but it was no stranger to her these days; in fact, she'd even welcomed it. She didn't mind this kind of pain — the kind that didn't stem from electric shocks or lashings, or even worse — the kind that seeped from within. No, this sensation was, in fact, a reminder to her that she was alive and well, that she worked hard and earned an honest living.
She slid back the barn door with both hands. It complained the whole way open, a long wooden groan that the animals barely twitched at anymore. They knew her now. Heads lifted: sleepy eyes, steam curling from warm muzzles, soft shifting hooves against straw.
“Morning,” she murmured with a smile, "Or should I say, go-than da-yin?"
A few sheep bleeped in response, and it had earned a slight chucle from her. She had given names to each of them: the cows, the sheep, and the pigs, even though they had little numbered tags pierced into their ears; numbers weren't names, she decided, they deserved something more. Something. . . human.
She worked without hurry. Hay forks, water buckets, and grain were measured out carefully, just as she’d been shown. A sheep nudged her hip, bold and unashamed, and she almost laughed. Almost. Instead, she pressed her palm to its woolly head and let it lean all of its trusting weight against her. It felt like being chosen in a small, impossible way.
By the time she reached the last stall, sweat had gathered at the back of her neck despite the cold, and strands of hair stuck to her forehead. Her shoulders burned. Her hands were rougher than they used to be; she liked that too. They looked like hands that belonged to a person who existed. And that was just it.
She existed.
She existed.
She existed.
She paused, leaning on the handle of the fork, catching her breath. Light spilt in through the slats of the barn, thin gold lines striping the dust. For a moment, with the smell of hay and earth and warm animal breath around her, she felt something like contentment, small, fragile, but as real as the ground beneath her boots, as real as the thunder of her heart against her chest, as real as the lov— Oh God, her stomach lurched. It happened again, the way it always did: a thought she didn’t invite. She didn't finish the thought, but the dark-haired boy remained; the way he laughed at nothing, at everything. The way he had once looked at her like she was not a weapon or a miracle, but a person. The sound of him saying her name — not Giselle, the other one — rising unbidden in her head so clearly that she almost turned to answer.
Her throat tightened. She bent to the water bucket as if it needed adjusting, blinking hard until the barn came back into focus.
Not now.
She finished the last of the feeding and stepped outside. Wind rushed across the open field, tugging at her coat. She closed her eyes and let it move through her, like the world was breathing and she was learning how to breathe with it.
She was tired — bone-deep, back-sore tired — but it was the kind of exhaustion that tucked into her gently, not the kind that chased her to the edges of herself. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and smiled, small and private.
Halfway happy. That was enough for today.
𝄪
By the late evening, the wind had picked up, and Giselle was about overjoyed about having remembered to pack a spare coat in her bag. She took slow, ample steps atop the stone pathway of her town. The same she took every evening after working on the farm; she made three stops before making it back to her apartment — to the bakery, to the library, and to an electronics store where she'd eagerly eye the latest thirty-six-inch HDTV as though staring at it would somehow make it hers.
Today was no different, with the exception that the library kept her longer than both the bakery and the electronics store combined, which was altogether strange and unusual but unavoidable. Giselle didn't read much; she had very little time for it, and she enjoyed it less than puzzles, knitting, and working because her mind always seemed to wander these days She did not love reading. That was the truth. Books required stillness, and stillness invited memory, and memory was rarely kind. Her mind did not sit. It roamed. It circled old doors she had nailed shut and tested the handles.
But she borrowed them anyway. For her Icelandic, she told herself. Or to search.
She drifted toward the new releases without deciding to. Her fingers brushed along the spines in a familiar, absent motion — the gesture of someone pretending not to look for something very specific.
Two and a half years of not looking. Then—
A fat book with a dark grey cover and an illustration of a cloaked monster behind a little blonde girl. Bölvun Vecna, it read, with that name hovering hauntingly on its spine. Oh, God, Giselle felt the world spin.
There it was, like a cruel, sick, twisted joke. Or a gulp of cool, fresh air after drowning. Either way, the book she doubted even existed came to be before her eyes in a library so, so far away from home—that place.
Bölvun Vecna.
She did not need to check its spine, but she did so anyway.
The library sounds receded until there was only the faint hum of lights overhead and the beat of her pulse, slow and heavy in her ears. She stared at the cover the way one might stare at a ghost across a room — afraid that speaking would make it real, and equally afraid that it wasn’t.
Cruel. Holy.
Her fingers trembled only once when she pulled it from the shelf. She did not remember walking to the counter. Only the way her hand would not quite steady as she slid the book into her bag.
Keep walking.
Keep walking.
Keep walking.
She didn't often take this route alone; she had friends, of course — like Anna; the fruit stand lady who always gave her wildberry jam, apples, and a kind fee in exchange for tutoring her young son English. And —and Jens, the boy — no, man — about her age whom she met when she still worked as a bartender at their local tavern, and . . . and what was her name again? Jóna? The young housewife who'd taken her in when she found Giselle wandering the town aimlessly upon her arrival.
But today, she was alone, and she knew it wouldn't be long until the loneliness permeated her soul again. There was a time, perhaps not that long ago, when she had something that felt authentic — no, she bit her bottom lip as her throat tightened.
'Not now, El', she told herself, not now. But it was already too late. Her back ached, she reeked of sweat, and she was thousands of miles away from Hawkins, and all she wanted was Mike. Her Mike.
“No,” she whispered automatically, as if saying so would stop her tears from brimming down her cheeks, but it held no avail. Giselle let out a suppressed sob in the middle of the quiet bustle of town, but she refused to do anything but keep walking. It didn't matter that her tears drenched her face, and that snot slid down her nose like a running tap of water that refused to turn off.
"No. No. No" She wept as she made it home and walked past Sigríður with the desire to simply be left alone. "Oh, please no." She said again as she made it to her apartment and beckoned the lock open with the flex of her neck.
"Oh God," Giselle — no, El — dropped to the ground before even closing the door behind her. But her hands groped her bag without a second thought, they dove into her bag, shaking, searching, knowing exactly what they were looking for. Her fingers brushed wool, paper, the edge of a comb — then closed around the thin, familiar spine, and she withdrew that book.
She pulled the book free as if it had been waiting for her.
Bölvun Vecna.The title stared back at her in heavy black print: The Curse of Vecna. Beneath it, in smaller letters, neat and almost smug. International best-seller. Translated into over 20 languages. by MICHAEL T. WHEELER.
Her heart hammered once, twice. The room felt suddenly smaller. The air thickened.
All she wanted was Mike. Her Mike Her Mike. The thought was a wound reopening. It stole the air from her lungs; it made the small lamp in her room flicker just slightly. Her breath came ragged, hitting the back of her throat like it hurt to be in her own body.
She opened the book to the first page; fyrir galdramanninn minn — for my mage.
There it was — the truth she had tried to knit over and bury under Icelandic verbs and sheep with names and maroon blankets. This wasn’t over. It simply couldn't be. The lamp flickered.
Giselle did not mean to go there, and a part of her did not know how she managed to do so without any desire to at all. It was as though her powers had a mind of their own these days, and it came anyway.
The room dissolved not violently, but gently — like breath leaving glass. The pink walls faded into black. The floor softened into something endless and wet, reflective as oil. Sound thinned until there was nothing but the faint hum of existence.
The Void opened around her. She stood barefoot on its surface, the cold of it familiar. It did not frighten her the way it once had. It was not a place anymore.
A thin thread tugged somewhere in her chest.
Light bloomed softly around her. Not harsh, not blinding — only the gentle yellow of a desk lamp burning too late into the night. And there he was.
Mike.
Older. Taller in his stillness somehow. Not a boy anymore.
A man.
His dark hair had grown longer, curling faintly at the ends as though he’d stopped trying to discipline it. It fell over his brow in careless waves, nearly brushing the rim of his glasses. The frames were different now — thinner, rectangular — more deliberate. They sharpened him, gave him angles she didn’t remember. But they didn’t make him severe. If anything, they made him softer. Like a scholar who had forgotten to sleep. Like someone who cared too much.
He had fallen asleep at his desk.
Papers were scattered everywhere — some stacked with meticulous order, others crumpled as if rejected mid-thought. A pen rested loosely between his fingers, still caught in the curve of his hand. His head had tipped sideways onto his forearm, cheek pressed into the cotton of his sleeve, as though he had only meant to close his eyes for a second.
As though exhaustion had claimed him quietly.
The lamp cast gold across his skin. It caught in his lashes, shadowing them against his cheeks. It softened the new sharpness of his jaw, traced the faint stubble along his chin — uneven, forgotten. He looked tired in a way that hurt to see. Not broken. Just worn. Human.
Beautiful, but not in the way heroes in stories were beautiful. Not polished or glowing or larger than life. Beautiful in the way only Mike could be — awkward and devoted and entirely, hopelessly himself.
El’s breath left her in something dangerously close to a sob.
The Void did not ripple beneath her feet as she stepped closer. It seemed to hold her carefully, almost reverently, as if it understood that this moment was fragile. That she was.
She knelt beside him, slow and deliberate, afraid even of the sound of her own movement. Close enough now to see the faint crease between his brows, even in sleep. Close enough to see ink smudged against the side of his hand. Close enough to hear the steady rhythm of his breathing — quiet, even, grounding.
In. Out. In. Out.
Her fingers lifted before she could stop them.
She wanted — God, she wanted — to brush his hair back from his forehead the way she had once done, tentative and shy. She wanted to press her lips to his cheek, just once, just gently, just to feel warmth beneath her mouth instead of the endless cold she had grown used to. She wanted to breathe him in — ink and paper and soap and something unmistakably him.
Her hand hovered inches from his face. She could see the faint pulse at his throat. See the way his lashes trembled slightly against his skin.
He shifted in his sleep. Her heart stumbled.
If she touched him, would he wake?
If he woke, would he see her?
And if he saw her — would she be able to leave?
Her fingers trembled, and she pulled her hand back as though she’d brushed against flame.
“Oh, Mike,” she whispered, but even here her voice did not echo. It simply dissolved into the quiet.
Instead, she leaned forward and rested her forehead against the edge of his desk. The wood was cool. Solid. Real. If she breathed deeply enough, she could almost pretend she felt his warmth through it.
“You look tired,” she murmured, the words breaking apart before they fully formed. “You shouldn’t fall asleep like this.”
He didn’t stir. There were pages beneath his hand. Her eyes drifted to them, hesitant at first — and then they stilled.
Her name. Not Giselle.
The other one.
Written again and again in restless revisions. Crossed out. Rewritten. Rearranged. As though he had been searching for the version that felt truest. As though he refused to let it be imperfect.
Her chest folded inward.
“I’m here,” she wanted to say. I never left.
But she didn’t.
She only watched him breathe, counting each inhale as though it were sacred. The urge to kiss his cheek rose again, overwhelming and foolish and desperate. She imagined it so clearly that her body leaned forward without permission, drawn to him the way a tide pulls toward the moon.
She froze.
Her hand curled into her palm, nails pressing into skin. He shifted softly, a quiet sigh escaping him.
“El.” Her name slipped from his lips in sleep — fragile, barely formed, but unmistakable.
The sound struck her like something physical. Like a door thrown open inside her chest.
Her composure fractured. She reached for him without thinking.
“El?” he murmured again, stirring, his voice closer now to waking than dreaming.
And then the lamp flickered.
Once.
Twice.
The light snapped out.
El gasped as the pink walls of her apartment crashed back into place around her.
The book fell from her hands onto the floor. She was on her knees. Alone.
The fireplace hummed softly. The wind scraped against the window like nothing sacred had just happened. Her chest heaved.
A sound tore from her throat — small at first, then sharper, uglier. Not the restrained tears she allowed herself in public. Not the quiet ones. These were raw.
She folded forward onto her palms, pressing her forehead to the wooden floor where he had not been.
“Mike,” she sobbed. “No.”
Her hands clenched helplessly against the boards. She could still see him. The way his hair fell. The smudge of ink. The crease in his brow.
She had been an inch away. An inch. And it was still an ocean.
The book lay open beside her, the dedication staring up at the ceiling.
For my mage.
El drew in a shaking breath that did not quite fill her lungs.
“I can’t keep doing this,” she whispered to the empty room.
But even as she said it, she knew. She would.
Because somewhere across the world, under a yellow desk lamp, a man had fallen asleep writing her name.
And she had almost touched him.
𝄪
She did not go to work the next morning. She simply couldn't.
The alarm rang once — soft, obedient — and she reached out blindly to silence it. For a moment she lay there staring at the ceiling, watching the light creep across the floral pink walls. It felt wrong that the world had continued. Wrong that sheep would still need feeding. That the bakery would still open. That somewhere across an ocean, thousands of miles away, a man might still be asleep at his desk.
Her body felt impossibly heavy. Not sore-heavy. Not tired-heavy.
Grief-heavy.
She turned onto her side and pulled the maroon blanket over her head as if she could burrow into it, disappear into the wool she had woven with her own hands. The scent of it — faint soap, faint smoke from the fireplace — wrapped around her.
She let herself cry without restraint.
It was the kind of crying that left her nose raw and her throat aching, the kind that made her clutch the pillow like it might anchor her to the mattress. She pressed her face into it and whispered his name as though it might carry.
She missed him with a violence that surprised her. Not just the idea of him — not the boy she had once known — but him now. The man with tired, sad eyes. The way his hair refused to behave. The way he furrowed his brow when he was thinking too hard. The way he rambled every time he spoke.
She missed the way he looked at her. Like she was not something to contain. Not something to study. Not something to survive.
Just… a girl. He had always been so adorably earnest. So stubbornly sincere. Like a puppy who refused to stop following you even after you told it to stay. Like a lighthouse built too small for the storm but standing anyway. She loved that about him. Loved it in a way that made her chest ache.
She missed the softness of his hands — calloused in the wrong places from holding pencils instead of tools.The way he would glance at her before saying something brave, as if checking whether she believed in him.
She did. She always had.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling again, tears slipping sideways into her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure what she was apologising for.
For leaving.
For surviving.
For not being brave enough to stay.
Her throat tightened again, but this time another face surfaced.
Hopper.
The grief shifted shape.She pressed the heel of her palm against her mouth to stifle the sound that tried to escape her. She missed his hugs most of all.
They had been clumsy, crushing things — too tight, too sudden — like he never quite trusted the world not to take her back the second he let go. His arms had been warm and solid, smelling faintly of coffee and aftershave and something distinctly him. Safety had never been a word she trusted, but with him it had been close. Close enough.
She missed the way he would stand in doorways with his arms crossed, pretending not to worry. Missed the way he would say “kid” like it was both exasperation and devotion in the same breath. Missed having someone who chose her without hesitation.
The ache widened.
Her friends followed. Max’s sharp tongue and sharper loyalty. Dustin’s endless talking. Lucas’s steady presence. Will’s quiet understanding. Even the chaos of it — the bickering, the laughter, the shared silence when something unspoken passed between them.
Hawkins. She missed the smell of rain on warm pavement. The creak of Mike’s basement stairs. The hum of a refrigerator too loud at night. The way summer air used to cling to her skin.
She missed home. Not the cabin. The people. The version of herself that had existed there.
The tears came again, softer now, more exhausted than sharp.
By midday the light had shifted across the room and she had not moved. The fireplace had burned down to embers. Her stomach twisted faintly, empty. She stared at the ceiling until the cracks began to look like maps.
You cannot lie here forever, she told herself.
The world will not pause for you.
She turned her head toward the small bedside table. The book lay there, closed now. Watching her. Her chest tightened.
“No,” she muttered hoarsely.
She needed air. Needed movement. Needed something small and ordinary and human. Pastries. The thought arrived without ceremony.
There was nothing else she could do with this ache. She could not cross oceans. She could not undo time. But she could walk to the bakery. She could stand in line. She could hand over coins and receive something warm and sweet in return.
That was manageable. That was survivable.
Slowly, as though surfacing from deep water, she pushed herself upright. Her limbs protested. Her head throbbed. She washed her face in cold water and avoided her reflection.
By the time she stepped outside, the wind had sharpened. The town looked the same as always — small, steady, unremarkable. A few cars moved along the road. A woman laughed somewhere near the harbour. A dog barked.
Normal. And yet. Halfway down the stone path, she felt it, a prickle at the back of her neck.
She slowed.
The sensation was familiar in a way she hated. Being watched.
Her gaze shifted casually across the street — a parked car she did not recognise, dark windows reflecting nothing back. It could have belonged to anyone. Probably did. Tourists passed through sometimes. Delivery drivers. Strangers existed everywhere.
Her pulse ticked once, hard. Don’t. Don’t start that again.
She forced herself to keep walking.
The wind gusted, tugging at her coat, and for a second she thought she heard the low hum of an engine idling somewhere behind her. When she turned, there was only empty road and drifting snow.
You are tired, she told herself firmly. Grief makes ghosts out of shadows. Still, the feeling did not entirely leave. It lingered.
Soft. Patient. Watching. And she walked toward the bakery anyway.
By the time she had returned to Sigríður's lower half of the house, there was something amiss. Her stomach dropped before her mind could catch up.
Sigríður was collapsed, sprawled across the floor, her arms and legs flopped like a ragdoll, blood seeping beneath her.
The groceries slipped from her hands onto the table.
Her body shifted first. Shoulders lowering. Weight redistributing. Breath slowing into something deliberate.
A sound. Soft. A hiss.
Thin green gas curled under the seam of her bedroom door. Her pulse snapped sharp. She held her breath and thrust her hand forward. The cloud recoiled violently, dispersing against the far wall like frightened smoke.
Another canister burst near her feet, the second cloud was thicker, bitter.
It burned.
She coughed despite herself. Arms seized her from behind.
“No—”
A bag was forced over her head. The room — her room — vanished in one violent sweep of darkness.
“Quiet,” an American voice breathed against her ear.
Her wrists strained. Power surged instinctively— flickered, collapsed, wrong.
The gas was wrong. Her head snapped sideways beneath the fabric.
“Let. Go. Of. Me," The words tore from her throat and flung themselves outward, invisible and urgent.
Metal pressed cold against her cheek.
“I said shut up.”
Bootsteps approached. Measured and unhurried.
“Well,” came the voice she knew too well, smooth and bloodless. “Looks like our little game of cat and mouse has finally come to an end.”
Dr. Kay. Everything inside her stilled.
“You should have stayed what you were,” she said almost gently. “A ghost. Yet, here we are. I have to hand it to you, you are fast, but you're not very smart. Are you? ”
“Fuck you,” she spat, blood filled her mouth.
A pause.
“Jab her.” Kay frowned.
The needle slid in. And just like that, darkness gathered her up.