Odin's Murder

“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.