Chapter 21
Von opened the door before Tor had finished knocking. He was barefoot on the hall runner, in the same black T-shirt from the morning, the K-pop Demon Hunters' faces creased and smeared with more dust than before they had left.
"Fucking finally. Get your slow asses inside," he said, stepping aside.
"Give us a break. We were sleeping," Layla grumbled.
"Well, I haven't slept. I didn't bother trying. I've been thinking about all of Loki's children, not just lovely Fenris here. It kicked me off down a rabbit hole, but I did find things."
"So you mentioned in your text when you woke me up. It better be worth it, Von," Linnea said and poked him in the chest.
Fenris's hand twitched, wanting to rub her scent off the shaman. He still hadn't had a proper chance to talk to Linnea yet and didn't want to start acting overprotective and make whatever he had done worse. The run with Tor had helped with some of his restlessness, and now it all came rushing back.
"I'm sure it will be, but it's kind of complicated to explain," Von replied, catching her hand and tugging Linnea inside.
"I love complicated at 2 a.m," Tor said, hanging up his coat.
Arne patted him on the back. "Pretty sure that's all this family knows how to do."
Fenris followed Linnea and Von down the hall, not bothering to remove his jacket. He didn't like letting her out of his sight, and he had already been away from her for hours.
Mate is here now, his wolf said. That is enough.
Linnea was unwinding her scarf in front of him, the back of her braid loose and still sleep-mussed.
She had taken his paw before they were interupted by Von's message, and he counted that as a good thing.
He would be patient for the moment, but as soon as he got her alone again, he would demand to know what he had done wrong.
Von was already halfway down the hall. "Lounge room, please! I need to lie down on something comfortable."
"How much coffee have you had?" Tor asked him.
"Enough to have my best idea ever," Von replied.
Ciara let out a soft snort. "Surprised he isn't climbing the walls."
The lounge was warmed by a small fire going in the grate.
Two deep oxblood couches faced each other across a long oak table that hadn't been there earlier in the day.
Von must have dragged it through from the library.
A chaise was pushed against the wall under the window, a blanket bunched on it, a book open, face down, on the floor beside it.
Von set a small book with a cracked leather cover down on the long table under a lamp, before leaning his hips on the table edge and pointing at all of them.
"Okay, sit your asses down, please. It's story time."
Linnea took the couch closest to the table, and Fenris took the seat beside her without asking, but was careful not to touch her. He wasn't sure if he was allowed to anymore, and it was driving him crazy.
"I've spent the entire night going through everything I've ever written down or filed on Loki. There's nothing more I can do there. We have plowed that field to death, so I decided to go widen my gaze and focus on his kids."
He looked at Fenris when he said it, with a small apologetic incline of the head. "Sorry, love. Everything I have about you is bad."
"You don't need to apologize for searching my family," Fenris said with a shrug. "What did you learn?"
"I went to Jormungandr first. As far as I can tell, no one writes useful things about him because everyone is too busy being terrified of him.
Bless." Von folded his arms. "I went through Sleipnir next, which gave me a great deal of horse-stuff, charming but also useless.
I saved Hel for last because her lore is the most obscure.
I went through a lot of the same monastery panic documents that I collected years ago, and then I remembered I had bought this. "
Von picked up the little book again. The leather was old, dark, and soft from handling. There were no decorations on the leather, and it had a plain, unadorned clasp.
"This frustrating little book is an account I bought ten years ago off a man in Reykjavik who didn't know what he had.
The text claims to be written by Brother Eyvindr, a monk from a monastery in Iceland.
The first page is in late medieval Latin, the kind you can pick up in a year if you have the discipline for it.
I've translated that first page myself, but after the manuscript stops being in Latin my real frustrations began. "
Von passed the book to Fenris. "This is what the rest of the manuscript looks like.
I've shown it to four Old Norse specialists at three universities, and to the best linguist at the Reykjavik Library.
They all looked at it and said they had no idea how to read it.
They agreed it is in a dialect of Old Norse, but it's so archaic that none of them can translate it.
There's no extant text in this form, no reference grammar, or parallel corpus.
I've tried to crack it with every method I know.
I have tried for years. I gave up on it three winters ago, and I told it to leave me alone. "
Von paced the room, pushing his hands through his hair.
"Tonight, I was like, what the hell, I'll have another look and found my notes on the Latin.
The story begins with a wandering old man who turned up at the monastery one winter night and told the monk a tale of meeting the goddess Hel and a great treasure hidden in her realm.
That's all I know, and yes, before you bitch me out about waking you up, I remembered we have a really old god at our disposal now, and maybe he can make sense of it. "
Von gestured at Fenris to open the book and flopped down on the chaise lounge beside him. "Please try and read it. I need to know my decade of headaches has not been for nothing."
"Let me see. It's been a long time since I read anything, shaman," Fenris replied and opened the book. "I never learned Latin, but this here…" He leaned closer to look at the black markings and reached back into his memories. After a few moments, the meanings started to come to him.
The strokes of the letters were for Norse sounds, set down by a man who hadn't been trained to write the tongue, only to hear it. He had spelled it phonetically, the way a song is taken down by ear.
The language itself began to make sense as Fenris realized what the monk had tried to do. He had spoken this tongue every day with the humans he had lived with.
Fenris lifted his eyes to Von. "It is messy where the monk tried to spell out the sounds, but I can read it."
Von made a sound that was half a sob and half a laugh, already wiping at his face with the back of his wrist. "Oh, thank Odin. Linnea, Layla, get a notebook each to start writing so I can leave a copy here and take one with us if we need to."
"Wait, I'm going to need more coffee and some food before we start this. My brain is still asleep," Ciara said, already getting up.
"I need a beer," Tor grumbled.
"I'll have another coffee too, please," Von said, not moving from his pile of cushions. "Black and stronger than my grandfather's opinions, thank you."
"Sure thing, princess." Tor patted him on the head. "You just stay comfortable."
Fenris grinned at his sarcasm, but Von didn't seem to notice.
He turned back to the little book and thumbed through a few pages.
It wasn't like the other decorated manuscripts he had seen earlier in the day.
It was more like a messy little private journal that had somehow been preserved.
He was feeling more confident, understanding the words by the time everyone came back from the kitchen.
Linnea set a glass of water and a cup of coffee beside him. "I didn't know what you would like."
"I… Thank you," Fenris replied with a smile.
Her cheeks flushed a little, and she sat back down beside him.
She opened a leather notebook and took a pen from the table.
Layla had taken the other couch with a spiral pad and a pen she had been chewing on.
Arne draped an arm around her shoulders and looked ready to fall asleep again.
"Begin when you are ready, Fenris. I'm ready and listening," Von said, pulling a blanket up to his chin.
Fenris cleared his throat and turned back to the first page. He didn't read the Latin, but he did read the transcription paper that Von had done.
"Written in the year of our Lord, by my own hand, Brother Eyvindr of the X monastery on the cold edge of the bay. May God have mercy on what I have written here, and not strike me for the keeping of it..."
Across the room, Von's mouth moved silently, mouthing the words a half-beat behind him. Fenris smiled at the shaman's enthusiasm and read on.
"In the winter of the year before, a wanderer came to my door…"
In the winter of the year before, a wanderer came to my door. He was tall, and his cloak was the color of storms. One eye of his was bright as a coin, and the other was hidden under the brim of his hat. He asked for shelter. I gave him bread and a place by my fire.
He thanked me, and he said: Brother, I will tell you a story, and you will write it down, and you will hide it where the wise will find it and the foolish will not. Do this for me, and I will leave you with a small blessing.
I agreed because it seemed like a strange but a simple request.
This is the story the wanderer told:
"I journeyed once into the realm of mists.
I went down into the cold places under the world, past the roots of the great tree.
I came at last to a hall built of black stone and wood, and at its door stood a woman who was beautiful on one side of her face and terrible on the other.
She was the goddess of the dead, the keeper of the lost, the strongest of the judges, the queen of the corpse-shores.
She greeted me by my own name, though I had not given it to her.
“She let me into her hall and poured me wine, and we spoke long of the worlds above. I poured out for her the mead of poets, and it pleased her.
“She said, ‘Wanderer, because you have pleased me, I will tell you of a great treasure that lies in the deepest path of my realm. I will let you try for it, if you wish. Many have tried. Few have lived. Most have left their wits behind them. Will you try?’
“I said yes.
“She told me of the treasure. She said, 'It is a power that walks on no feet and runs on all.
It is wealth that empties and never lessens.
It is the mare that bore the swift one. It is the salmon's tail that escaped the net.
It is the falcon's wing that crossed Jotunheim.
It is the seal that wrestled the necklace from the deep.
It is the mother that births monsters and the father that loves them.
It is the brother bound by oath to the brother who wears the cloak of crows.
It is the voice that lies the world into being and the silence that holds the world together when nothing else will.
It is the one who walks in fire and the one who weeps in iron. Find it if you can.'
“No coward am I, and I agreed to fill my luck cup with the treasure she promised. I went down into her trials.
“I came first to the river of swords, where I could not cross with strength, so I crossed with a song's feet.
“I came second to the still pools where the dead wore faces of loved ones. Though they called to me, I did not step into the water.
“I came third to the bridge where the gatekeeper asked me to name what I truly sought. I answered her with the truth as far as I knew it, and the bridge held.
“I came fourth to the hall where what was sat at the tables and what was offered to me was what I had not been brave enough to remember. I sat with them, and I let myself remember the heart griefs in my chest.
“I came fifth to the place where the great serpent gnawed at the lowest root, and I paid the tithe that was asked of me, and I lost something I will not name.
“And I came to the last door. I was asked to give what I could not give.
The price was too high. I refused. The goddess of the dead came to me herself and smiled at me, and she said, 'You are wise, wanderer, but wisdom is not always courage.
Go home. I send you back to the land of the living.
My realm is closed to you now in this life. You shall not pass this door again.'
“I woke in the living lands, under the sky's cold lantern, and I have not been the same since."
"Priest," the wanderer said. "If ever you should meet a wolf with one eye like winter and a girl who can sing the dead to sleep, send them down the path I could not finish. The treasure is theirs to claim, if any."
This is what the wanderer told me. I write it down. May God forgive me, and the wise find this account in time. May the foolish never know it exists.
Brother Eyvindr.
The first night of Advent.