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 wished it were, nor extravagantly sizable as she sometimes dreamed it, it was home.
Her home.
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.
By the circular window, she had a wooden table, second-hand, of course. On top of it sat a lamp, a few scattered GED textbooks, a kettle, a tea box, and an iron.
In the corner of the floor, there was a neatly lined row of her shoes and boots, a basket of her clothes, and an ironing board.
She had been planning to save for a television set so she could pass the time more effectively, but otherwise, she entertained herself in the short amount of time she had after work through knitting, reading, and solving crossword puzzles.
That was it, her home, her lips tilted into a grin at the mere humour of calling a simple layout home, but it was, truthfully, so. With a sigh, Giselle spared a glance at the clock before slipping into a 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.
“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.
She smiled the way people here often did, not wide, but certain. 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, the kind of light that did not shout but slowly arrived.
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. But she always had a book or two to better her Icelandic — or, truthfully, search for something she might not even want to find.
She lingered a little longer by the new releases, her fingers brushing the spines of each book on the shelf, her eyes mindlessly searching — hoping — the same way she had for the past two and a half years of her life in this town. But this time, it had almost felt like a dream.
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.
She checked it out of the library almost instantly, with hands that trembled even after she placed it in her bag without allowing herself to form another thought.
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 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.
Giselle wasn’t done with being El.