Odin's Murder (18 page)

Memory snatches them up. “So we need to pick out the photographs that best support our project theme, right?”

“Or just illustrate it.” I say. “I mean, it’s kind of hard to ‘compare and contrast the significance of crows’ in photographs. I tagged the ones I thought were the most relevant. Or had birds in them. Most are of the chapel, but I took some shots of other buildings to compare, too. None of them have the really old doors, though.”

“That isn’t a crow, it’s a rooster.” Memory points to the weather vane, but Faye is staring at a picture of one of the chapel doorways, the one that had her bird nest in it.

“Look,” she breathes. “
Perth
.” She points to the door. The flash has heightened the contrast, and a symbol shows up in faint relief on the surface, at the top. “I didn’t see it, when we were there.”

“It’s not in this one,” Memory says, pointing to the shot with natural light. “Are you sure it’s not just a weird shadow?”

“Isn’t that a Greek letter?” I ask “Like the ones over the fraternity dorms? Sigma or something.”

Both girls shake their heads. “Sigma looks like this,” Memory says, sketching a symbol that’s crooked in a different way.

“It’s a rune.
Perth
,” Faye says. “Or
pertho
, or
perthro
, depending on where you are from and when and what futhark you are using.”

“What does it mean?” I ask, despite myself. The stone she gave me is still in my pocket.

“Magic. The feminine mystique. Sometimes luck or secrets. Do all the doors have these?” She rifles through the photos, but only the one has the mark. “Can I keep this?”

“Sure,” I tell her. “Keep them all.”

“Are we finished?” Memory asks. She covers a yawn with her hand.

Faye half raises her hand. “I have one thing.”

“What’s up?” I ask.

“Yesterday, when I went to the library so early, it was to gather information about psychic connections. Our revelations the other day sparked my interest, and I’d never given it much thought, other than your basic paranormal theories, but the fact we had this similar connection—a bridge almost, between ourselves and the birds, I wondered if we were missing something.”

“Did you find anything?” I ask.

Cherry folds her arms across her chest, glances at the ceiling.

“The amount of information out there is endless—” Faye begins again.

“Yeah, and my brother and I have read all of it,” Memory says. She drums her fingernails on the tabletop.

“I guess the tricky part is separating fact from fiction, and there is no real way to measure or qualify that. I focused on shared and co-dreaming. Julian gave me some pointers on what to look for.”

“He was there?” Cherry drops the attitude.

“Yes. He helped me rule out astral projection. I did gather information on interpretations of dreaming about crows, meaning—”

“Crows represent death. And darkness.” Memory interrupts. “Or maybe annoying habits. We know all this, Faye. How did my brother look? Did he say anything about me? Was he still mad?”

“He was fine.” The tiny girl pouts. “And I wasn’t saying you haven’t looked, I just thought, maybe that I could find something different, a new angle.”

“Julian and I have researched the hell out of this topic. There is no stone unturned. We’re freaks. Twin freaks that must have had some kind of damaging occurrence in the womb. Maybe our mother drank the wrong kind of tea or took too many vitamins. Maybe she ran over a crow and it’s our curse. There’s nothing you can find that we haven’t already combed through.”

Faye shakes her head. “There has to be more. I refuse to believe this is a coincidence.”

“Drop it, Faye!” Memory’s tired eyes snap with irritation.

I watch the girls; I’ve seen them both pissed off, and I’d take even bets if it came to an all-out cat fight. Might be fun to see. But because I’m the kind of fool who fights a six-foot-twelve guy named Bruno over the last non-pink shirt in the laundry room—some gangbanger drops a red bandanna in the whites at least once a week—I suggest to the girls who are glaring across the table, “Maybe we should call it a day. Cherry, you look like you need a nap. Faye, give her a little space.”

Memory responds with a long middle finger. Faye bursts into angry tears and mutters at me under her breath. Both leave the room scowling, but at least not at each other. The black looks of feminine death are focused in my direction now. I can admit I’m a little intimidated by Cherry, but Faye? That chick may hex me while I sleep.

18.

Mannaz

I walk slowly in my lace-up wedges. Faye still takes nearly two steps to every one of mine.  “He’s right,” I say. “I am exhausted. He just didn’t have to be such a condescending jerk about it.”

“Well, I shouldn’t be so intrusive.” She flashes me a tentative smile. “It’s just terribly fascinating, and I’m not very experienced when it comes to interpersonal relationships with people my own age.”

“You’re fine. It’s just a tender topic, sometimes.”

“You’re not a freak, you know. Every girl on campus would like to be you. Even the ones who—”

Three guys, all in black jeans and black long-sleeved shirts, walk past us on the path, reciting what sounds like Shakespeare put to a hip-hop tune.

“Mi’lady.” A heavy, dark-skinned boy bows with a flourish and a brilliant smile as he steps to my left.

“No, every girl on camps wants to
look
like me,” I tell Faye. “Even the ones who what? Call me names behind my back? Say I’m trashy?”

She looks at the ground. “They say things about me, too. I’m the ‘orphan girl’, right?”

“I tell you what,” I say, throwing my arm around her shoulders. “I’ll come live with you in your cardboard box.”

“By the campfire under a railroad bridge?” She giggles. “Okay, but you’ll have to teach me how to wear scandalous skirts and smutty lipstick. And bras.”

“Short skirts aren’t hard to wear; you just put them on and go.”

“It’s the walking in them that looks hard,” she protests. “And none of the girls in the dorm can figure out how you sit down without giving a view all the way up your fallopian tubes.”

“Gross!” I gesture for her to go ahead of me up the steps to the dining hall, but stop before we go into the cafeteria doors, and dig in my bag for my buzzing phone.
             
The doctor doesn’t want to discharge me while I still have a fever. They’re moving me to an outpatient room. Looks like another night of mystery meat and Jell-O
.

I show my brother’s text to Faye. She pouts.

I type:
How are you feeling?

“Tell him about the book I found,” my roommate says, standing on tiptoe to see the screen when it vibrates again. “About the Native American myths.”

“That would be torture for Jules,” I murmur. “Talking about a book he can’t read.”

Tired. The rash is gone, though. Mostly. 
Faye leads me though the double doors and through the line while I work my thumbs over the phone, but another message comes through before I hit send. 
Have to go. Allergist is here.

Faye grabs an extra plastic tray, slides it along next to hers and plunks a salad on it. I erase what I’ve written, and start again:
Tell me what they say. And when they think you can get out. Faye and Ethan miss you.

“Can’t we go see him?” Faye asks. “The Dean would give you permission, wouldn’t he?”

“Maybe, but I’d have to find a way to get there.” I hand the cashier my meal card, and frown at my phone.

I miss them too
.

He really is doped up. Faye pays for her food, and leads the way to our usual table. “You could take a taxi. Or maybe they’d let Jeremy take you. You could bring him the book. It would give him something to do for the project. There are several in there with bird tales. I like the Cherokee stories about the Tla-Nu-Wa. They were huge magic birds who could speak the language of men. I marked them in the book. There’s a very traditional one where a medicine man casts five baby magic birds into a cave where a bottomless river flows. The comparisons are fascinating.”

Ethan is eating at the table by himself. His hair has grown in a little more, a lighter blond than his eyebrows. I wonder if it’s straight or curly, and if he always shaves it, the way swimmers do. Danielle is sitting several tables away, laughing with girls in her project group. Interesting.

Faye claims a spot several spaces away from him, without saying hello. I ignore him, too, setting my tray down. I sit, and then pivot, swinging my legs over the bench in a practiced move.

“It’s all in the knees,” I tell Faye. “I actually keep them together a lot more than people assume.”

Ethan coughs, takes several swallows of soda, but continues to stare at his food.

*

“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.

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.”