‘Huldúfolk!Huldúfolk!’ Gunnar chanted.
‘Stop!’
‘I will take care of everyone on the airport shuttles. I will even be nice to the annoying ones with their bags that are too large and the ones with all the questions when it is so early.’
‘Give me my pastry! Thor is already on your bus, so I guess I have no choice.’
‘There is always a choice, Erik. But, know you made the right one.’ Gunnar handed him the pastry. ‘And you have done a good deed for Hildur. I will be sure to tell her!’ He was backing away before Erik decided to fire him. Although, with tourists here for the ultimate Icelandic winter experience in the run up to Christmas, he very much doubted his boss could afford to do that. ‘And I will take the greatest care as always. I will not be too heavy on the brakes even when the tourists stand up when they are not meant to. I will treat them like they are porcelain. Or large boxes of fragile eggs. Nothing broken or even cracked.’
‘Erik! There is a problem with this bus.’
The shout from another driver had his boss distracted and Erik turned away, going towards the next morning crisis.
Satisfied he was in the clear for this shift change, Gunnar whipped around, and that’s when the collision happened…
5
Chloe had a mouth full of thick padded jacket and a hand full of what felt like icy grit. Everything was suddenly spinning and she couldn’t work out quite which way up she was or what had even happened. Cold. Cold was infiltrating her fast. The ground. She was definitely on the ground. Or, at least, some of her was. The rest of her was on a padded jacket apparently…
‘I do not know which one of us should move to make this better.’
A man’s voice. A man’s jacket she still had in her mouth. She needed to end that.
‘You are Icelandic? You do not speak English?’
Before Chloe could say anything else he was talking fast in words she definitely did not understand and both of them were still, somehow lying on the ground. There was only one thing she could think to say…
‘Attú vín?’
‘Hvao?’
She had asked if he had wine! Why had she said that?! ‘Sorry, I do speak English and, I think, if you just move your right leg a bit I can move my arm and?—’
He did as she asked and, with a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, like some crazy version of Twister, she was able to get to her feet and realise that quite a lot of her felt sore.
‘You are OK?’ he asked.
She had to be OK. Michelle was depending on her. She looked up at the man she had been half-mounted on and observed him for the first time. Tall. Broad. Hair the colour of corn, not super long but long enough to be poking out from underneath a beanie. The bluest eyes…
‘I’m OK,’ she answered.
Hot air came fast from his mouth as he exhaled in what seemed like deep relief. He said something – presumably in his native tongue.
‘What does that mean?’ Chloe asked.
‘It means I am happy you are OK.’
‘That’s a direct translation? Of what you just said?’
‘You do speak Icelandic?’
‘No, just a gut feeling that you swore.’
‘Really?’ Those blue eyes widened as he looked directly at her, got bluer still somehow. It started to get intense like he was challenging her on what she was going to say next. She liked a challenge.
‘Really,’ she said, matching his gaze.
And that’s when time seemed to really slow right down and everything going on around the outside area of the airport – the travellers rolling suitcases, the engines of the buses – became smaller, quieter, insignificant to whatever was happening across the icy air.
