May rang the doorbell before Thorn could voice his doubts, and Abigail opened the door. Her eyes moved from the older skugabor to the younger and back.

‘Hello,’ she said, ‘get inside. You’re letting the cold in.’

He’d nearly backed away again, but May followed Abigail into the home and Thorn couldn’t stay behind. Here, a familiar hallway; the cold tile floors, the large kitchen, the wood stove every foster kid burned their fingers on - but only once. He hadn’t been here since the night Sigrin died.

Gods, the memories. He wished those would fade, over the years, the way people’s memories of him eroded. Abigail and May had dissapeared further into the house. The attached shed was behind the kitchen, and that was where Abigail, and Sigrin, and her father before her had kept all their supplies. He didn’t think that would have changed.

He reached out and touched the wooden table. It was old, but not the way his possesions were always battered and broken and frayed. This table had been here for generations without complaint, and would be here longer still. He’d sat here, long ago.

Gods, he’d been so young, then. Seventeen and absolutely shattered. He’d never been off his island before, and Slakshaven seemed so big and so loud. The main island had been too large; had too many places where he couldn’t see the sea. And there’d been the guilt. That towering mountain of guilt.

There were no kids, then, with Sigrin barely in her twenties and with so much hope still. How that had changed. How it had all come crashing down. He ran a hand through his hair, wet with molten snow and full of knots. He hadn’t brushed his hair this morning. Had been too busy staving off the itch.

He’d come here, running, the first time he woke up with those now familiar ants marching through his veins. He’d sunk against the wall. Had he cried? Probably. He couldn’t quite remember. But he had known he would kill again, and yet it had completely fucked him over when it did.

He loathed remembering all of this. With quick steps, he followed May and Abigail into the shed. In low light, the pair stood as far apart as the small space would allow. Dried bundles of leafy plants were drying on the ceiling, and a small but overstocked bookcase dominated the back wall.

‘-I can’t find anything useful in the archives,’ May said-was that where she’d been all those nights?-and Abigail was grinding up a dried plant in a large, stone mortar and pestle.

‘Someone’s censoring that,’ Abigail said. ‘I don’t know who, though. Mom did it, but I never bothered. Wonder who, then…’

‘Could be anyone,’ Thorn said, ‘Family trees are weird, here.’

Abigail froze for a moment, and Thorn pretended he didn’t notice

‘Yeah,’ she agreed, ‘Plently of people related to Sigrin in some way. Could be any of us foster kids, too.’

She finished crumbling up the plant, and tilted the bowl’s content into a paper bag. It looked like a few months’ worth, but she handed it to May rather than Thorn. Then she looked back at him.

‘How are you?’ she said, and there was a second question beneath that, one he didn’t quite catch. It was unsettling, that missed subtext.

‘I’m…’ itching? Tired? Cold? Not dead, somehow? ‘Alright, considering.’

Abigail turned to look at him, leaning back with her hands on her wooden table. ‘Considering?’

Thorn shrugged. His ribs protested. ‘The itch is back.’

How often had he spoken those words, in this house, this shed? To Sigrin, to Abigail? Never before had Abigail frozen, like she did now, at those words, with confusion in her dark eyes.

‘What do you mean, the itch is back?’ she said, ‘Will you die at the end of it?’

A possibility he hadn’t even considered. ‘I don’t think so.’

He stuck he hands deeper in his pockets. Neither of the skugabor had taken their coats off.

‘I don’t understand,’ Abigail said, ‘Weren’t you supposed to die? When May showed up?’

‘I thought so,’ Thorn said, ‘But here I am.’

Abigail, speechless, shook her head. He continued.

‘It came for me a few nights ago,’ he said, ‘The dark. And the thing in it. I don’t see it that…excited very often, and before that I’d wanted to roll over and die like Helga did, but May-’

He hesitated, and the younger skugabor raised her eyebrows.

‘I can’t leave her alone to face this,’ he told Abigail, ‘It’s the only bloody thing about this situation I can change. I won’t let her go through hell alone if I’ve got a say in it.’

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‘What about all the people you’ll kill?’ Abigail said. She’d steeled herself, straightened her spine and lifted her chin. ‘What about their hell?’

‘If I don’t kill them, May will.’

‘You don’t know that!’ Abigail said, ‘What if you’re going to murder double the people together and this time it will be your choice, Terji?’

Thorn took a step back. May looked back and forth the two others, and Thorn knew he should have told her a whole lot of things that he hadn’t, but it was no use worrying about that now.

‘Do you know how fucking selfish you are?’ Abigail said, the heat of her anger radiating through the small space. ‘You’ve taken so much, Terji fucking Mjikkalssen, and now that it could finally be over you choose this?’

‘This is the only thing I can do right,’ he said, but he didn’t think that ever reached Abigail’s ears.

‘You’ve taken so much from so many people,’ she spat, ‘And you’ve taken so much from me.’

‘I don’t want to hurt anyone, Abigail-’

‘Obviously you do! You could end it! Roll over, like Helga did! It’s only right! I spend so much time going from foster home to foster home and they all told me call them mom and dad, only to kick me out in hardly a year-’

‘Abigail-’ May tried, but the other cut her off.

‘And then Sigrin took me in, and I never called her mom until her fucking funeral, Thorn!’

Wide eyed, May stared at him, and Abigail was panting, and Thorn felt as if the walls of the familiar house were crashing down on him.

‘You say it wasn’t you,’ Abigail said, not cold, Gods, Thorn wished she would sound cold - but she was near crying, her red hot anger fading. ‘You say it wasn’t you, Thorn, but it bloody well were your nails and your teeth and your hands, weren’t it?’

May looked at him in horror, and Abigail started sobbing, and Thorn tried not to remember. He’d stuffed those memories deep down in his subconscious, where they only emerged on those summer nights where the sun wouldn’t go down. The nightmares would leak in with the sunlight, then, and refuse to leave him until finally night would come again. He searched for an answer, desperate.

‘Abigail, please, I never wanted to hurt anyone, let alone Sigrin-’

‘You killed her, Terji,’ Abigail said, now calm despite her tears.

‘I had no choice,’ he said, sounding weak even to his own ears. It was true; but the guilt still gnawed at him, Gods, it had for decades, now.

‘You have a choice now,’ Abgail said, ‘And you chose wrong. You should have died.’

That gods-damned itch was growing in his gut again, and he pushed it down. Not now. May opened her mouth to say something, but thought the better of it.

‘I want you out,’ Abigail said, hugging herself. ‘I don’t want you in my house again, Thorn. I don’t care if you’re out of fucking cigarettes, I don’t care if you need help. Stay in the apartment, mom paid it off long before-’

She caught herself, now suddenly unable to spit out those words again.

‘I’m passing on your phone number to someone else for jobs,’ Abigail said. ‘Figure it out. Hell, do you even need the money? Do you even need to eat?’

‘We do,’ May said, and started to leave.

Thorn was still staring at Abigail. May pushed past him, into the kitchen.

‘Do we really-’

‘Go, Thorn,’ she said, shaking her head. She turned back around, steading herself against the table. Her shoulders were shaking when he followed May through the house, through that familiar kitchen, and back out into the cold.

‘You could have told me,’ May said, as Thorn closed the garden gate behind him and wondered if it was to be the last time.

‘I was going to,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t bring myself to it. I still can’t think about it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and then, softer: ‘Do you know why you had to… do that to Sigrin?’

Thorn shook his head, realized the girl probably couldn’t see it in this weather, and added:

‘If there’s a reason, May, I’ve never found it. She devoted most of her life to this; she taught Abigail; she did so much for me she didn’t have to do.’

They walked in silence for a long time, back towards Slakshaven, its lights glimmering below them. Snow twisted around them, the strong winds pushed the clouds along the sky, and Thorn kept trying to push the memories away. Of Sigrin, alive and laughing, first twenty and then near sixty; and of her body, bloodied and broken and down at his feet.

‘You know,’ May said, when they eventually reached the city outskirts, ‘I still have your bloody plant. If you still want it.’