*
“So what exactly are you looking for?” I ask, fanning my face with one of Ethan’s photographs. Twenty minutes of rain has done nothing to tame the heat, and now steam rises from the trees around the little church.
“I want to see if the other doors have rune markings, and if they are all the same.” My roommate has shed one sweater, in polite acknowledgement to the sun.
“So what do you need me for?” I ask her.
“I’m not tall enough to reach them,” she says, making a face.
“Okay. I’ll do this, but you have to promise me something.”
“Of course. Anything. What?”
“That you’ll go see Dr. Anders before class, and apologize for yesterday.”
“Why?” Her face scrunches up even more. “He asked us to ask questions, but was rude when I did. Then he deflected my inquiry and switched the subject, and treated me like a child!” She drops her sweater and her book bag under a tree. “And I think Julian is right. There’s something weird about that book.”
“Well, maybe there is a puzzle he wants us to solve? What if there is a reason for them being so similar? What if there’s an oral tradition being passed down, that only a select few know about?”
Her eyes grow wide. “What, like a Masonic ritual?”
“Why not? The words are passed down without change for hundreds of years, right? It would explain a lot.”
“Still doesn’t give him the right to be dismissive and impolite,” she huffs.
I sigh. “Faye, it’s his classroom. He has the right to do anything he wants, including kick you out of it.”
“But—”
“I’m not saying that you or my brother is in the wrong. He’s usually right—please don’t tell him I ever said that—but what if there’s stuff Jules doesn’t know, and because you’ve been uncooperative, we don’t get full credit for the course? You’ve openly accused Dr. Anders of some pretty heinous things without knowing all the facts.”
She twists her fingers in her long skirt, and finally nods. “I’m not very good at this. My father paid my tutors, so none of them would have dared to speak to me that way.”
“Well, maybe just tell him that you are not used to a classroom situation, and apologize for being disrespectful.” I nudge her shoulder with my elbow, nod to the church. “So what exactly are we doing here, Tiny?”
Faye takes a piece of paper from her bag, and a box of children’s crayons. “Sometimes, when a carving has eroded away, and disappears to the naked eye, it will still show up in a rubbing.”
She hands me the sheet of vellum, and I place it where the mark is in Ethan’s picture. She holds it down at the bottom corners, standing on tiptoes. I hold it at the top with one hand, and she tells me how to stroke the purple crayon back and forth over the vellum, until the rune shows up, clear as a blueprint.
My roommate grins. “It wasn’t just a shadow. See, it is perth.”
I walk around to the left, and lean over the stone stairs that descend to a lower door. “There’s one on this one, too. It’s visible, if you know where to look,” I tell her. Hanging onto the stones that edge the door with one hand, I brush some lichen from the door. “It doesn’t look like the same symbol. It looks like an M.”
“Is it ehwaz or mannaz? Is it a regular M, or does it have an X in the points?”
“It has an X.” I trace the lines with my fingertip.
“Does your phone have a flash? Can you take a picture?”
“If you stand below me, and catch it if I drop it.” I say, and she hops down the stairs, and grabs her skirt by the hem, holding it out like a net. I take the photo without mishap, and climb down. “It’s not very clear,” I tell her. “I’ll draw it when we get back.”
“No, it’s fine. That is definitely mannaz.”
“What’s it mean?”
“The self. Ego. Memory.” She grins at me.
“Great. So even the ancient Norse decided I was vain?” I joke, though my chuckle tastes a bit sour.