“Maya?” Tor was standing in the doorway of the bedroom. “You’ve been in here for hours. Are you okay?”
“Oh yes.” I got up and gestured with the book. “Just reading.”
Later I’d tell him the truth of what I’d remembered. But first I had to draw my memories, wrestle them onto paper and fix them in the real world. First I had to understand them, especially the wraiths, and in my own way and on my own terms, not Tor’s. Besides, he had troubles of his own.
On the bedstead, the sorcerer’s moon had reached its first quarter. Another week, and Tor would be facing the bjarki change once again.
Chapter 8
As bitter as my memory of my last death was, it gave me the theme for my senior project. I started by trying to draw the snow wraiths, first in white pastel on white paper by building up forms that caught the light in a different way than the matte surface. Didn’t work. I tried white Conté on black paper. Those looked like Halloween decorations.
I decided to concentrate on the first landscape painting, a four by six foot view up the slope of the Wilderkaiser hill. I spent the next week drawing at home and painting in my shared studio space at school. I started by drawing the view in detail with charcoal on the canvas. I’d just finished when I was reminded of one of the drawbacks of art school: trendy art students. A guy I knew from a bunch of classes stopped by to say hello. Jason, a decent looking white guy with longish dark hair and light eyes, had asked me out twice, but nothing ever clicked between us. We’d parted friends, well, as much as anyone could be friends with Jason.
He stood in front of my canvas with his hands in his jeans pockets and his head tilted a little to one side. “Jeez, Maya, you’re doing landscape?”
“Yeah. So?”
“With that composition it’s going to look like a backdrop for a Disney movie. Too simple. Illustration.”
I looked heavenward and snarled.
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He grinned at me. “You’re sick of hearing that.”
“You bet I am.”
“Then why do you keep doing it? All this unnecessary detail!” He waved his hand at the canvas. “Realism is so over.”
I counted to ten, then said, “And what’s your senior project?”
“A way of re-perceiving a common object through transformations.”
“Which means?”
“Toilet paper tubes. You know how they rip apart on the spiral seam? I was fiddling around with one of them one day when I—”
“Too much information!”
He snickered. “I’m distorting them into different shapes and taking photos, and then the exhibit will be the tubes backed by a wall mural of the photos. A hundred of ‘em! And oh yeah, some have pieces of toilet paper clinging to them.”
“Not used, I hope?”
“Nah, come on! Just the little pieces that sometimes stick when you tear off the last sheet. I’m calling it the random factor.”
“I suppose you’ve got to call it something.”
His turn for the eye roll. Fortunately, he wandered off to sneer at the next person’s work.
Unfortunately, he was right about the composition. I knew the landscape demanded the image of Audo lying dead in the snow, but I hesitated to add it. The problem: I saw no way to use this painting as part of my original plan for murals. When I took some sketches and a smartphone snap of the canvas to Harper, she reassured me.
“I figured that the mural project might morph into something else,” she said. “Let it. It’s still October, so you’ve got time. What’s interesting me now are these sketches with the superimposed Nazi insignia. Where does that come from? In your mind, that is.”
“Well, it’s kind of relevant again, isn’t it? I mean, when I surfed the Net looking for pictures of the Alps, I found all kinds of totally scary Neo-Nazi sites. And it’s not just Jewish people they’re going after. Most of them rant about the ‘mud races.’ They mean people like us. Some of them don’t even mention Jews. Just the N-word. And yellow peril stuff, too.”
“Oh yes.” Harper shuddered. “I know about that.”
“I keep thinking that I need to include—” Talking about past life memories in front of Harper was a bad idea. “Well, some kind of statement. A lot of these white power rants talk about landscape, the northern natural landscape, they call it, and they think it belongs to the white race, to the Aryans. They blame people of color for breeding too fast and harming Nature. They talk about saving the planet by purifying it.”
“And folks like you and me are the sludge overdue for a clean-up.”
“Yeah. Which is why I want to put a dead man in that painting.”
“It’ll balance the composition, too, keep it from falling into halves, if you place it just right.” Harper picked up an Osmiroid and wrote a few words on my page of her project journal. “You might see where this line of thought takes you. Maybe rather than doing any more big panels, you might want to think about a series of smaller images. Photo-collage is a possibility for works on paper. If you find something perfect that’s not on Creative Commons, I can probably get the college to buy you the rights.”
I thanked her—a lot of times—and left with a head full of new ideas. One of them: smearing mud across one of the paintings, incorporating dirt somehow, to show the world what I was, to mock the mud race meme by claiming it. Or crumpling and staining a drawing to indicate that some people would see it as garbage, just because a woman like me drew it. We were supposed to include a small image of ourselves in the project. I could do a photo of myself with ‘verboten’ across it in red stenciled letters. The landscape would still fit right in, especially if I reached back in art history and drew on Expressionist techniques to avoid the put-down, “illustration.” The snow fields would represent the Aryan fantasy land, all pure and glistening and white.
With a dead man, a dark shape against the snow, lying in the foreground with an empty whisky bottle on his chest. I debated adding a yellow star somewhere on his clothes. It seemed kind of blatant. And illustrator-ish. Instead I decided to put him in the SS uniform. Still illustration, I supposed, but so true that I no longer cared about art critics.
I came home to find Tor sitting upstairs and translating a long email from Liv. The Oakland police had arranged for an officer of the Icelandic police force to interview Tor’s mother about Halvar Svansson’s death. Tor gave me the papers so I could read the English version, then leaned back on the couch to watch me .
“I’ve got to hand it to my mother,” he said with a grin. “She didn’t hold anything back.”
The substance of her testimony came down to, “Halvar was an awful old man, and everyone was glad he was dead.” The New York City police must have had enough suspects to fill Yankee Stadium, to hear her tell it. Although the men in the family had kept the details from her, she did know something about Halvar’s unsavory business dealings. She held papers that proved he’d collaborated with the defeated Nazis who’d fled to South America with stolen German gold. She was convinced he’d helped set up the policies that eventually led to Iceland’s big bank crash in 2008. She knew that Nils had profited from that crash somehow. She also suspected both Nils and Halvar of bankrolling profiteers, particularly those who trafficked in women, on the Russian market after the fall of the Soviet Union.
“If they take all this seriously,” Tor said, “the police here are going to have a whole new gang of suspects for Nils’ death. Which is all to the good.”
“I hope so. You’re right about your family, y’know.” I set the translated letters down on the coffee table. “You’re lucky that I’ll stoop to marrying you.”
He laughed and kissed me.
“How did the session with your advisor go?” he said.
“Really well. You know, I’ve changed my mind. I think I will want to work downstairs, at least on part of the project, because I’ll be doing smaller pieces for most of it. If it won’t disturb your work.”
“No, if you don’t mind me
chanting now and then.”
“I’m used to that. I’ll need to get a work table and shelves for the empty rooms downstairs. And I’ll need to clean them out, too. I bet there’s a lot of dust.”
“Yeah, I’m sure of that. I can help if you don’t mind waiting. There’s nothing I can do about it right now. The moon’s almost full.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Yeah.” He got up and stood looking out the window. “When I think about the way Halvar got his money, I sometimes feel like his family deserves a curse. Not my mother or Liv or even her feral spawn. Maybe it’s right that I take the curse and keep it off them. Accept the bjarki. Face whatever wyrd lies ahead. I’m the head of this family now that Dad’s gone. It’s part of the job description, y’know, taking on the family curse.”
“What? No! It’s not your fault. But if it bothers you so much, maybe you should give all the damn money away. I don’t care. We’ll get by.”
For a moment I thought Tor was going to weep. He swallowed hard and forced out a grin. “Yeah, we could manage,” he said. “But if we do dump the family money, I’ll get the job in the burger joint, not you.”
“You really do love me, don’t you?” I grinned at him. “But from what your mom told the cops, anyway, Nils is the one who deserved the curse. He profited from all that dubious business stuff. The wyrd came down on him, and then he made you share it. It wasn’t your fault.”
Tor stared at the floor and considered what I’d said. Finally he looked up.
“Okay,” he said, “we’ll keep the ill-gotten gains. For now, anyway. Which means it’s time to see what I can do about getting rid of the bear spirit. I’m going downstairs, but I’ll be right back.”
When Tor returned, he was carrying the rune plaque in its shoebox. He set the box down on the coffee table as casually as if it didn’t hold a small fortune’s worth of ancient gold.
“What’s that for?” I said.
“I’m going to try putting the plaque in the bedroom for the full moon nights. I’m guessing that the runes spell out a galdr that’s got something to do with were-creatures. It’s time to find out.” He fished in his jeans pocket, took out a curl of slender leather thongs and laid them on top of the shoebox. “These are for the plaque. I’ll hang it up somewhere in the room before the spirit comes for me. Somewhere I can see it and touch it if that seems right.”
Before we went to bed that night, he hung the gold plaque from the drawer pulls of the dresser. He also set up the nanny cam we’d bought to observe what happened to him during the transformation.
“Do you want me to record you again?” I said.
“Yeah. I need to know if the talisman makes any difference. If she gets hold of me, I won’t remember enough to tell.”
Her again. You ugly sow! I thought. You won’t take my man if I can help it.
The transformation started the next morning. Tor had time to feed us both with all the élan we could absorb before he felt the lunar influences gathering around him. He strode over to the bedroom door, then turned to look back at me. Something about his facial expression and his posture struck me as different from the other times I’d witnessed the bjarki moon. He looked like a warrior, ready for battle.
“Lock me in,” he said. “And start recording.”
Although I did what he asked, I refused to watch him transform, not even on a laptop screen. I went downstairs to clean up the two empty rooms that would be my new studio space.
The bigger of the two stood just under the Burne-Jones bedroom and the smaller, under the pseudo-secret room at the end of the hall. Both had plain museum gray walls. The smaller had built-in bookshelves, but the previous owner must have used the larger as a gallery for his art collection. The remnants of museum-quality picture hangers marked the walls, and on the ceiling he’d installed spot lighting. It also had a much bigger window than the one upstairs, and the hardware to hang drapes, though the cloth was long gone. At the moment both rooms contained dust and not much else. I got out the downstairs vac, put in a new bag, and got to work.
By the time I finished, noon had come and gone. I returned the vac to its closet in the kitchen area and headed for the stairs. I was thinking of not much more than taking a shower when I heard a sad little whine, a noise like a lost cat might make, behind me. I spun around and saw the nisse. He appeared as little more than a shape made out of shadow, about two feet high, sort of human, sort of simian, standing at the end of a bookcase.
“What’s wrong, little guy?” I said.
He whined and jigged up and down in an agitated dance.
“It is Tor? The bjarki?”
He was gone, just like that. For a moment I doubted that I’d seen him, but the whine and the shadow-shape stayed clear in my memory. I hurried upstairs and drew him to fix the image, before I took the shower.
At intervals during the afternoon, I checked the laptop screen. Tor seemed calmer than I’d ever seen him during the full moons. Although he crawled around on his hands and knees, and at times stood to walk flat-footed and clumsy like a bear, he never once rammed himself against the bedroom door. He did growl now and then and turn his head slowly and suspiciously from side to side. Around four in the afternoon he curled up on the floor and fell asleep. I allowed myself to hope that this time the bjarki moon would pass easily for him.
Fail! I’d forgotten how things changed at moonrise. The last of the sunset was fading when I heard the bjarki ramming himself against the bedroom door, a dull thud that echoed through the silent flat. Now and then he roared, as deep as a lion’s roar but breathier. Another evening crawled by while he ached, and I felt helpless.
About two in the morning I did manage to fall sleep, but I woke again with the dawn. In the gray light I crawled out of bed and listened. The bjarki had fallen silent. I got dressed, and as I did, I glanced at the alchemical barometer. I saw the naked wild man, crouched and gnawing on his bone. Above and behind him in the sky shone a tiny golden spot, not big enough for the sun. Hope? I thought. But he doesn’t see it. That’s when I remembered the gold rune plaque.
I jogged down the hall to the living room and booted up the laptop. I started recording the nannycam signal and paused to watch the screen. Tor had taken off all his clothes. He crouched on hands and knees in the middle of the floor and swung his head from side to side as if he were a bear looking for prey. Now and then he raised his head and sniffed the air. On the dresser behind him the talisman glittered in the first light from the east-facing window. I ran to the bedroom door.
“Tor! Remember who you are! Can you hear me?”
Silence, not so much as a growl.
“Tor! The gold talisman! Find the talisman. It’s behind you. Gold, Tor! Find the gold.”
I heard a shuffling sound, nothing more. I realized that like an idiot I’d left the laptop in the living room. I ran back and picked it up, walked slowly, carefully, held it steady back to the bedroom door. I could see the bjarki sitting up on his hind legs—Tor’s posture was so bear-like I couldn’t think of it any other way—with his paws dangling in front of him.
“The gold, Tor! Find the gold!”
He stood and shuffled like a bear to the dresser, where the rune square hung from its leather thong. He peered at the gold plaque with his head lowered, then held out both hands and laid them like paws on either side of the rune-marked square. In the small image on the screen I couldn’t see his face, but I heard him scream, a long drawn-out howl of agony.
“No, don’t!” I was screaming myself. “Don’t touch it! I was wrong!”
He ignored me. I sank to my knees and just managed to put the laptop safely onto the floor. My hands were shaking so badly I nearly dropped it. I could barely breathe, but I forced myself to look at the screen.
Tor had picked up the plaque in his hands—human hands with fingers that bent the way fingers were supposed to bend. He freed the leather thong from the drawer pulls and stood up—slowly, as if he hurt, but he stood like a man. He
slipped the thong over his head and settled the plaque against his chest. When he turned around I could see that he was smiling. He walked over to the door and knelt to talk to me.
“Maya? Still there?
“I sure am. Should I open the door?”
“No! I don’t know how safe I am.” He sounded exhausted. “The bear could come back. I just don’t know.”
“Okay. When you screamed, I thought oh my god I’d killed you.”
“You heard the bear, not me. I’m going to work with this spell. Then we’ll see if I can come out.”
I took the laptop back to the coffee table and flopped onto the couch. Onscreen, I saw Tor sit down on the edge of our bed and study the plaque without taking it off. Since he hadn’t bothered to get dressed, I could see the new bruises on his shoulders and upper arms from the bjarki’s attempts to knock down the door. Now and then he paused to let the golden square lie against his chest so he could rub the sore muscles, but he always picked it up again. He’d pull the plaque out to the length of the leather thongs and turn it this way and that to read the runes in their spiral.
I fell asleep without meaning to, slumped back against the cushions. I woke to the sound of Tor chanting runes. Sunlight filled the room, and the air seemed oddly stale and hot. Onscreen I saw Tor, wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else but the gold square. He stood with his arms raised high in the rune shape of Elhaz, the fierce protector. One at a time he sang out the runes, but not in the futhark order. I assumed he’d memorized the writing on the plaque and was intoning it rune by rune.
Even through the muffling door his voice throbbed with power. He fell silent, lowered his arms, and paused to take a few deep breaths. He raised his arms again and took a sideways step with one leg so that his body took the form of an X, Gebo, gift. He was invoking the power that the plaque had gifted him with. This time when he chanted, he spoke words. As they vibrated through the air, I felt I understood them—not literally, I could never have written out a translation—but on some wordless level I knew them. I remembered hearing them. Somewhere. Some time a very long time ago, ages ago, not in Germany, not in Denmark, somewhere older and stranger than that.