Intellectually cute.
Still, six months without a word, and I must admit I hadn’t quite minded.
It is six months ago, and Prescott has returned to Vanaheim without saying goodbye to Our Heroine. She has come to me for comfort.
“I just don’t understand,” she says between heaves of sob. “I mean, I’m not dumb… I know that we weren’t good together anymore. If we ever were, that is, and it wasn’t just always us clinging to some dumb fantasy. And I know it just wasn’t nearly as exciting since my… I know he had every reason to go. But why did he have to go? I just don’t understand.”
She has iterated her story many times. She does not understand; that alone is clear. The bottle of schnapps that she has brought with her is assuredly not contributing to her comprehension.
“Where’s Shirley?” she asks. Her sobs have suddenly ceased.
“She is researching.”
“Where? In her study? Out in the Two-Story House? Where?”
“She is out. I believe her intention was to visit your father at his library and then to retire to the Elite Café for a session of note-taking.”
She looks into my eyes with a slight squint that suggests some amount of comprehension. Of what, I am uncertain.
“I’m sorry,” she says, though I do not know why. Her eyes are streaked with the red of swollen veins and her mouth is half-open for breath. She has drunk too much.
“I do not understand,” I reply.
“I don’t get it,” I said as I sat down Indian style, across from the woman and the old guy. “So, they worship dogs here or something?” She’d said they were discussing Vanatru theology, but it sure sounded to me like they’d been discussing hounds.
“Hmm? Well, there is a definite reverence for the Arctic fox,” she said. “But no, it wouldn’t be quite accurate to say that they worship them…” She paused, and then I think she realized why I’d asked—what I’d overheard her say before. “Their mythology does include quite a few stories with dogs and foxes in them, though… So, yes, I suppose I should have said that we were discussing Vanatru mythology, rather than theology. Pardon my lack of specificity.”
“I am not fond of dogs,” the old guy said.
The woman crawled down from her chair to sit with me across from him. “He’s lying,” she told me. “He’s fairly fond of his own dogs, at least, but he likes to let on that he’s too gruff and curmudgeonly for that sort of thing.”
The guy snorted derisively, and she smiled up at him.
“So, enlighten our new acquaintance here with the wisdom that you were just about to impart upon me,” she prompted. “About the Aesir and Vanir and all of that other crap.”
“Hmph. Yes. I will tell you a story.”
“Is there a dog in it?” I asked.
“When Christ came to Iceland,” he started, ignoring my question, “Thor met him on the shore and challenged him to a fight, to determine which of them would rule.
“‘I will not fight you,’ Christ told Thor. ‘If you strike me down now, I will only turn the other cheek.’
“‘And that is why you will never conquer Iceland,’ Thor replied, ‘for I am the Hammer and you are the Nail.’
“But Christ was quick with reply and said to Thor, ‘The Hammer was fine in Norway, where it was used to fell bears; what use is it, however, in felling a fish?’
“What Christ had seen and Thor had not seen was this: with no other ready food in Iceland, the people would be able to survive only by the fish, and this was Christ. For he is both fish and fisherman. Even Thor could hear the wisdom in this, then, and he agreed to follow Christ. So this is why the two of them did not fight, and the country was built by both of them. Thor the Hammer and Christ the Nail.”
“And Jesus was a carpenter, too,” I added. The woman nudged me in the ribs with her elbow, though I’d been trying to sound interested rather than disrespectful. The guy’s eyes had been dead before, unfocused, but they’d really lit up now that he was telling his story. Like De Niro when the camera’s rolling.
“When Christ came to the Vanatru,” he continued, “Frey greeted him hospitably.
“‘Your people chew the bark of birches and sleep in clumsy dwellings,’ said Christ. ‘Join with me, and your people will enjoy the fruit of the sea, which is myself, and they will have a place in my father’s house.’
“Frey thought on this, and he came near to agreeing, for it was true that his people desired something more than the meager crops that they were able to grow on the hard inland soil. At that moment, however, a fox happened by, and he began to bark at Christ and to tear at his robes. And when the robes came loose, Frey saw that Christ was truly Loki in disguise. Frey and the fox then chased him away, and he never returned to trouble the Vanatru. This was the same fox that taught the Vanatru to live beneath the ground and who taught them to eat of the ormolu lichen.”
“But how did the fox know that Jesus was Loki?” I asked.
“His scent,” the old guy answered. “Loki could change his shape, but he could not change his scent. When he ran from the gods who sought to punish him, the final form he took was that of a fish.[31] That which the gods thought was Loki, and that which they chained beneath the earth, that was merely another fish that Loki had enchanted to seem as him. Loki was the fish that escaped, and afterward he changed his name to Christ.”
I am a fish.
Bless your throat. The tale of St. Blaise and the fishbone. But what was the fishbone on which I was in danger of choking?
It is early this morning, and I have yet to depart for the Elite Café. I linger in my doorframe, pondering again what I at first took to be a simple salutation. My aim is true. There is something else beneath it, I am certain, but my thinking continually returns to other matters.
It is later this morning, and I have wasted too much time drinking tea. Our Heroine has suggested that she knows the name of Shirley’s killer. She mentioned the name of Hubert Jorgen. I must find him. I do not believe that he was in Denmark or Iceland concurrently with Shirley, but I must find him nonetheless.
“Yeah,” she has said to me. “But the thing is, even if I had a suspicion or an inkling, I couldn’t tell you about it when you’re like this, because you’d just go off and—”
“You have a suspect?”
“I—know. But my point is, what if I had a suspect and I was wrong? My dad’s the same way, if he even had a vague idea about who did this, he’d just go and—”
“I must go now,” I say to her. “I am sorry to depart with such brusqueness, but I have wasted too much time already. Thank you for consoling me, but catching the killer will be the thing that consoles me most.”
“You’re welcome, I guess…” She is obviously distraught, though it is in a way that I do not quite comprehend. Her eyes are open wide to me. “But you just got here… And I still wish you’d reconsider about doing this yourself.”
I rise from my seat. I cannot reconsider. This is something that I must investigate for myself, for reasons apparent and otherwise. “I think I do know something of how you are miserable about Prescott,” I tell her. “I am sincerely sorry that there is no killer to catch that would console you.”
As I move toward the exit, the man with whom Our Heroine had been conversing upon my arrival raises his arm to wish me goodbye, but he lifts it only halfway before he stops to rub his shoulder. I believe his name is Boris Baxter. He appears to be sick. Though the day is cold, still he sweats profusely.
31
See also Jon Ymirson’s translation of