Iceland Books

“Sometimes we woke in the night, huddled against the cold. Then, in the darkness, the world and everything in it became as skinless as water, no boundaries to show where one wave ended and the next began, our bodies like paired oars, each movement driving us further into the unknown. Time and sensation blurred. Tiny moments of golden brilliance, gossamer-thin and stretched to breaking, in a life otherwise steeped in grim shadow.
I did not simply hold Pétur in my arms; I embraced him with blood and bone, clasped him with muscle and spirit, everything that I was and hoped to be.
God might strike me down, but I felt saved and whole. Afterwards, we fell asleep intertwined. In those last moments of wakefulness, blinking up at the stars, as I sensed Pétur’s sweat cooling on my skin, I felt utterly human and fallen, and utterly content. And in those heat-soaked rags of time, I wished for every mountain in Iceland to shudder down rocks upon us, concealing us for ever from the gaze of the world. If we were ever found, our bodies would be dragged from the rubble together: tangled, knotted – inseparable.
But such moments of savage contentment are as fleeting as the reflection of the swelling moon blinking upon the surface of the sea.
Only ever minutes old, they dissolve with a passing cloud, or a gust of wind.
In every human heart glows a tiny flame of hope that tomorrow will bring a love that might satisfy the smouldering yearning to be known.
In some hearts, that fire is greedy and becomes a devouring inferno. It leaves only dead ash and dry dust behind. The wind whirls it into emptiness.
But there is such heat while it burns … And the light is infinite.”
― Caroline Lea, The Glass Woman