Odin's Murder

We take a rubbing of another that Faye says she can see is kaunan, though I see the jagged, C-shaped mark only after it presses through the paper. The ground slopes down and away from the building on the next side, and I’m not tall enough to reach the plant debris that hangs over the roof, but by teetering on a stack of library books, with Faye holding my hand for balance, I’m able to scrape away the dead vines with a stick.

“This one looks like an F.” She passes my phone up to me, and I manage to hold it high enough to get a reasonable photo. “See, you have a door, too.”

She looks at me, head sideways with narrowed eyes, then looks at the phone. “No, tilt it a little. It’s an A. Ansuz.”

“What’s it for?”

“Order, language. Thought.”

“Thought and Memory, again.”

“Huginn and Muninn.”

“What does this one mean?” I pull ivy away from the last door, and the rune is blatant, an arrow pointing up.

“That’s tyr. Or tiwaz. Means strength, and conflict.”

“That I believe,” I mutter.

“Why, where have you seen it?”

I could tell her I had seen the rune in two places, but I didn’t. I wasn’t ready to share that the mark was seared into my brain from a kiss. “In the book Anders gave us. There’s a chapter on each of the crows. Each one has a symbol at the top of the chapter. Huginn’s rune is one of them, and this tyr is another. I just assumed it was an abstract design.”

“Does the fourth one look like this?” She holds up the first etching.

“Perth, right?”

She points to the church, to the door in Ethan’s picture from this morning. “One door for each crow. We were right! The chapel does tie in to the crows. And you’re right, too. All this is beginning to show a lot of similarities to a fraternal order. We’ve got to find out when it was built!”

“But there are only four chapters in the book, not five. Why five doors?”

“Wisdom’s line didn’t carry on, remember?” she says. “So no raven tales to spin into indigenous folklore. It was on that runestone drawing in the book. I translated it in group the other day.”

“I remember what I see, not what I hear,” I remind her. “But why on earth build a church that’s practically dedicated to crows? The settlers were Protestant missionaries, not Norse pagans.”

“Does Vangarde’s book mention crow worship?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so. I didn’t read all of it before I gave it to Julian. He was about to take my hand off at the wrist to get it.”

“Does he still have it?”

“I’m sure it’s in his stuff.”

“Isn’t his backpack in the dorm?” she asks.

“I’ll get it from Ethan. My sketchbook is in there, too.” I hand her the book bag. “So. I’ve done my part. Now you go apologize to Professor Anders.”

“But we need to look inside,” she says.

“We are not breaking in in broad daylight, and class starts in fifteen minutes. Now go.”

“Do I have to? He always has food stains on his shirt,” she grumbles. “And he needs a belt.”

“See you in class,” I say, laughing.

She stomps off, a disgruntled bundle of brown wool in Victorian boots trudging toward the campus buildings.

But she doesn’t show up for class. When Ethan gestures to her desk, I shrug. After the lecture, I linger with the crowd asking questions.