Odin's Murder Page 6

  “I’ve seen similar things,” Faye says. I don’t really pay attention to her, until the tiny hand not holding the book reaches for mine under the table, and she presses something small and hard into my palm. Metal? It’s smooth, and round, flat on one side, with grooves in it, and I rub my thumb over it, and my irritation fades into my curiosity. I stow it in my pocket until I can examine it later. “Usually in tribal ritual and some animism, which includes the transformation of human to bird—crows, or ravens specifically,” the odd girl continues.

  “Like witchcraft?” Julian asks her.

  Faye flips a couple pages. “It’s unclear, but it seems early inhabitants of this area may have used the well for human sacrifice. If a person was a true shaman they could transform into one of these birds, which gave them the ability to cross over into different worlds, and have visions, and even communicate with the dead.”

  “If they weren’t a true shaman, then they died at the bottom? Like the witch trials where they tied girls to chairs and if she drowns then ‘Oops! She wasn’t a witch after all?’” Julian is eyeing her book like it is candy he’s been denied.

  Faye shrugs.

  “So is this what we want to focus on? This well? These legends?” Memory asks, looking from Faye to her brother.

  “Why not?” I ask, forcing her to include me. “We could at least tie it in. Give it a local angle. The scholarship is sponsored by the school, right? They’d like that.”

  “We’ll have to break it up. I need to do some research—you can help me with the on-line searches,” Julian points to his sister. “We have to find out when it was built, and by whom. Make sure it’s even historically accurate. Faye, you would need to check out the history of the symbols. What the crows and the sacrifices mean. And Ethan, I suppose you could document all of this, if we can prove any of it.”

  “No problem,” I say. I think about the chapel and the photos I took the night before. “See if you can find old photos or paintings of the chapel.” I don’t look directly at Memory, but she nods, not quite looking at me either.

  “And Faye, maybe you could check out the chapel. Look for more details that might tie in to what we’re looking at.” Julian says, falling into the leader role of the group. I let him.

  “Sure,” she says, and then looks at me. “Would you come with me? This afternoon. After lunch?”

  I blink, and nod once.

  “Shouldn’t he take Danielle?” Memory asks, walking away from our table. Her brother huffs, gets up to follow her. I trace the indented line in the stone in my pocket, and smile at her retreating form, because yeah, it’s nice, back arched in the little shoes with the heels that slap against the bottom of her feet as she walks away.

  “So, what is this?” I ask Faye, holding up the smooth grey rock. There’s a symbol on it, a line with a slant off the top.

  “Laf,” she says, not looking up from her book. “The rune used to calm stormy seas.”

  *

  My t-shirt is drenched in sweat by the time Faye and I walk across campus to the chapel. She’s wrapped up in a sweater and a bunch of skirts and manages to look like she’s cold, but I make like a shot arrow to the trees that shade the older area of campus.

  Unlike Memory, with her long legs and rolling stride, Faye hops from spot to spot, peering at whatever catches her interest. When there’s a lull in her chattering, I look up. She’s pointing to a rusted weather vane lying by the side of a tumbledown rock wall. I realize she wants me to take a picture, and I grab my camera, but then I have to scrub the sweat off my face with my shirt before I look through the viewfinder.

  “This heat doesn’t get to you?” I ask her.

  “You’d think it would, especially since my dad is from Iceland and my mother was Finnish, but I was born in Cairo, and grew up mostly in hot climates so this place seems a bit chilly, to be honest. I’m surprised that you’re uncomfortable, being from the area. Most people are acclimated to the temperature they were born in. The natives here ran around in breech cloths. Would you be more comfortable in something like that?” She looks me up and down, head tilted to the side. “It would have to be rather large, wouldn’t it?” She makes a vague motion to my shorts. “I’m assuming you are equipped proportionally to your bone structure. Most men are, I’ve heard.” She’s stone-faced serious, and my sides hurt with the effort to keep from laughing. I don’t know how to answer her, so I don’t, but she’s already distracted by something she finds in the grass.

  “This is it,” I tell her, peeling off my backpack and dropping it at the doorway of the old church. She pulls out her notebook and a pencil and starts scribbling. I look between the building and Faye. I have no idea what she’s seeing, and her writing looks like nothing more than bird scratchings on the paper. I hang my camera strap over my neck and say, “Let me know if you see anything in particular you want me to shoot.”

  “You’ve got a good eye. Just go for whatever interests you. The doors are fascinating, though the Romanesque arch seems out of place here.” She’s picking tiny flowers that grow between some stones.

  “The what?”

  “The rounded door. It’s a very early architectural style.” She peers up, hops on her tiptoes. “Is something up there?”

  “Only a bird nest.” I reach in and work it free, a bundle of sticks and gray down, one pale blue shard of eggshell stuck to the side. Faye is delighted, and takes it from me like it’s a treasure. I snap a shot of her holding the nest, and then the door itself, because the old hinges are cool, and I pop another with a flash, just to be sure I get all the detail. “So where do you think the well is?” I ask.

  “The library book suggested under the building, which is odd, unless that was an intentional move by the builders to hide it, which I suppose is entirely possible if the natives were really were tossing people down there to see if they had shape-shifting powers. I wonder if there’s a cellar of some kind?”

  “Could be.” I walk around the building, looking for a way in.

  “That’s strange,” she says, hands on her hips. “It’s built like a Greek cross, but it’s a round church, like an octagon, only it’s irregular. Look at the doors.”

  I look. They’re wood, with old, white, ceramic knobs, a rusted bolt in the center. I jiggle one. “It’s locked.” They’re decrepit though, so ancient I could probably just snap the doorknob off with my hands.

  “There are five of them,” she says frowning. “In most architecture like this—and what it’s doing here and now I have no idea, honestly--it’s practically Visigothic or pre-Kalmar Viking, but never mind that. There should be four doors. I’ve never seen one like this.”

  The door to the left has a staggered set of steps that lead down to a covered doorway, with narrow vent windows on the side. I point over her shoulder. “There’s your basement.”

  She flits over to it, tugs at the rusted handle. “Should we break in?”

  “Uh, no. Probably not. Let’s just report this back to the group and see what everyone else thinks.”

  Her bottom lip puffs out, and I laugh at this tiny homespun girl committing larceny. I snag a shot of her scowl. A bird in the tree above her squawks at the flash that I’ve forgotten to turn off, and a few more rise into the sun, cawing in sympathy.

  “I’ve always wanted to be the first one at an archaeological site. Like my father, at the Öland excavation. He was only twenty-two, and it launched his career.” She wraps the sweater around the nest.

  We walk back to the dorms. Faye splits off the path to go to her own building, and I’m about to enter my room when Jeremy appears at my door. “Don’t forget, cafeteria at 6:30. Once you’re finished there, pick an activity until curfew.”

  I nod, fighting my irritation. I’d gotten used to the lack of wardens around this place.

  I push open the door. Julian is reading at the desk.

  “How’d it go?” he asks.

  “Fine. I took a bunch of photos and Faye made a thousand notes about somet
hing. Possibly about a breech cloth,” I say, shrugging at Julian’s confused expression. “I don’t even know. We’ll have it ready for the group tomorrow.”

  Julian closes the book and opens his mouth to speak, but says nothing. His eyes drop back to the page. I start to gather my things for a shower, even though I’ll be trapped in steaming dishwater for half the evening, but before I leave the room, Julian looks up again.

  “What?” I prompt him to spit it out, not in the mood to explain my hallway conversation with Jeremy.

  “What was she like?”

  I frown. “Who?”

  “Faye.” He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Never mind.”

  “Oh.” I lean against the door. “She’s alright. A little weird, sometimes I can’t even understand what she’s saying, but she’s funny as hell. Why?”

  He shifts on the bed, looks down at his book. “Just checking. You know, to make sure everything is going smoothly. For the project and everything.”

  I nod, opening the door and stepping out into the hall, making no effort to understand what’s on this kid’s mind. Hard time prepared me for many things, but playing research assistant to a flock of nerds wasn’t one of them.

  8.

  Mind

  Any hope of an air conditioned reprieve in the liberal arts building is burnt to ash the minute I step through the heavy wood doorway. Dr. Anders’ office is three floors up and my deodorant fails me by the time I find the right hallway. The lights are off, but the door is partially open; I clatter my fingernails on the nameplate, and wish I’d remembered to spit out my chewing gum.

  “Miss Erikssen, come in.” He half stands from behind his not-so-large desk. The oak surface is piled high with papers, a leather briefcase, and an opened laptop. “How are you this afternoon?”

  I ignore his mess of a tie and his shaggy disaster hair. I should be happy to have a professor who is so relaxed and hip, but his appearance is so grubby I’m afraid to breathe through my nose. As I take the seat he’s offering, I lecture myself for being judgmental, especially since I’d called my brother an ‘obsessive-compulsive whiner’ less than an hour ago. “I’m fine, thank you. Just dealing with this heat.”

  “It’s oppressive, isn’t it?” He leans back in his chair, reaches out to the metal box fan—which is doing nothing to the air but making noise—and tilts it toward me. “How goes the project?”

  “We’re still trying to get organized. There’s so much information out there that we’ve had a hard time settling into a direction.” I scan the room, taking in the sloppy stacks of books, a laptop with broken hinges balanced precariously on the top of the desk computer, the overflowing trash can; my eyes land on an ornate, wrought-iron bird cage behind his desk.

  A black bird sits inside.

  I swallow my gum.

  “Do you have a thing for crows?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.

  The bird’s beady eye fixes in my direction. In the shaft of light through the window, its feathers shine with the same iridescence of a black pearl. My latest dream flashes in my mind, desperate claustrophobic images, and the teacher’s office now seems cold, despite the sun.

  Dr. Anders glances over his shoulder and smiles. “Corvus brachyrhynchos.”

  “So why not parrots, or blue jays? Or doves?”

  “Jays are actually a form of corvidae, did you know that? They’re magnificent creatures, crows and ravens, with a full history, as I’m sure you’ll come to realize in the upcoming weeks.” I do know that, but I say nothing. “I’m excited to see where your co-op project will go, this summer. Maybe you’ll become as fascinated as I am,” he says.

  My shirt sticks to my back, clammy and gross. The crow blinks, clacks its beak at a bar and I’m overwhelmed with the need to flee the room and take the bird with me. “Why did you choose us? Our group for the crows?” My voice is a croak in my throat.

  “Frankly, because of you, Miss Erikssen.” Dr. Anders turns to a stack of files, rummages through them. Several spill out onto the floor. He turns back, a familiar, glossy red folder in his hand. “While most of the group topics were random, I admit I did choose yours. Largely because of this.” He opens my portfolio and turns to the back, to the final page in my creative writing sample, and holds up the illustrated page. “This is a lovely drawing. Corvus ossifragus, the fisher crow. Is your original sketch this size?”

  “Oh!” Absurd relief bubbles out of my mouth as laughter. “No, it’s about twice that. We were on a wetlands field trip when I saw him. He was funny. His feathers puffed out when he squawked.”

  The bird in the cage makes a noise of contempt, beak in the air, feathers remaining smooth. Dr. Anders and I grin at each other. “Now. About your project.” He sits down. “Your group is still defining your statement?”

  “Well, today we talked about working in some of the local legends in the area.”

  “That’s an excellent approach.” He spins in his chair, rolling over what looks like my brother’s writing portfolio, and faces a listing shelf. He pulls down a book with one finger. “I have some reading material that might be perfect for you. It’s not very well known, and quite old, but some parts could be pertinent.”

  I take the ancient book and turn it over gently. The spine is cracked, the binding peeling away from the cover. “It seems very fragile, are you sure?”

  “I have another copy in mint condition,” he says. “This one I don’t mind loaning to students.”

  I carefully open the front cover, to a pattern of crows lining the inside flap. Unease flares in my stomach again, and I shut the book. “What is this?”

  He sits in the chair behind his desk. “A treatise on crows in Appalachian folklore and their ties to the Old World. It was written by one of the original professors here at the college.”

  “What was his field?”

  “Greek mythology.” He smiles at this revelation, a private joke I don’t understand. The bird squawks in its cage, flapping its wings.

  I turn the book over in my hands. The decaying paper smells like autumn leaves. “A Greek scholar writing about southern folktales?”

  “The parallels may surprise you.” His statement seems like a dismissal. “I think you’ll find some compelling information in there.”

  I stand, and wind through piles of books and papers toward the door. “Julian is going to freak out. He would kill to read a book this old.”

  Dr. Anders laughs again. “He does seem to be determined to get his hands on every book ever published.”

  “Determined? More like fanatical.”

  “Well,” he says, digging around a stack of folders on his desk, “He should be pleased with you for bringing this to the discussion.”

  “Or furious that you didn’t give it to him first!”

  He laughs again. “You’re all equal members of the team. I know things are rough being down a person. Hopefully this will help.”

  “It just might,” I say, as he pushes his glasses up his nose. “Thank you.”

  “See you in class, Miss Erikssen.”

  *

  “You want to hang out after dinner?” Jeremy whispers across my neck.

  “I think I have to go to evening activities.” I blink, pulling up the dorm bulletin board in my mind’s eye. Swimming, Movie Night, and Lawn Chat are the options for this evening. “Don’t you have to supervise us?”

  “Do you need supervision?” he asks, hand on my lower back and eyes on my chest. I can’t blame him. My dress is low cut and shows more than an appropriate amount of my lace bra, but no one ever says I’m appropriate.

  “Definitely. Which activity are you assigned to?”

  “Movie night.”

  I smile and brush the hair from his eyes. “What film are we not watching?”

  He smirks into my cleavage. “No idea. Let me go check on my crew and make sure no one burned down the dorm yet.”

  “Okay. Save me a seat in the back.” I watch as he jo
gs across the common area and up the stairs to the boys’ dorm. I don’t usually go for athletic types, but I’d seen him running this morning across campus in the early morning fog, before the heat became unbearable, in nothing but a pair of compression shorts, and, well, that is a memory I replay often. Once he’s inside I go to my own room.

  “Hey,” Faye says from her desk. She’s on her laptop for a change, though her desk has five neat piles of tiny leaves.

  “How did your date with Ethan go?”

  “It wasn’t a date. Not that I wouldn’t date him. I would, I suppose, if there was enough mutual attraction.” She looks up from the computer with a frown. “Though, after this afternoon I don’t feel as though our sexual chemistry is very noticeable. Maybe he has low testosterone—or maybe it’s too high? He does have that warrior thing going on. Tribal soldiers were known to have extreme amounts of testosterone, which made them perform better on the field.”

  I think about Ethan and his broad shoulders and the constant anger roiling beneath the surface, wearing medieval armor. “I don’t imagine low sex drive being a problem with that one,” I mutter.

  “Oh, do you find him appealing?”

  “He’s attractive, I guess.” Attractive as a magnet, though we’re opposites, repelling with that bubble of friction that pushes and spins, misaligned and wrong. “Did you get any photos?”

  “Yes.” She nudges the laptop in my direction. “Ethan sent them to me to go over. He seems to use some kind of filter, or a program, I suppose. See how each one has a different tint?”

  I lean over and clicking through the photos, one by one. She’s right; there is a strange effect on the images, almost like an aging process. “They’re actually really good, aren’t they?” I push the screen back, but the images still flick through my mind’s eye. “Julian is going to freak about the manipulation. He’ll say it could take away their benefit as primary sources. I suppose Ethan can print them out normally. Did you found anything else interesting?”