The Codex Lacrimae (38 page)

Grimnir nodded. “Go on,” he encouraged.

“If I remember the Norse myths a'right, then the ‘gift to Freyr' and ‘eternity's children, at play, never aging' must mean that this is the world of Alfheim. That would make the children the Light Elves, but I get confused at the meaning of ‘teeth not biting.' Normally in riddles, I'd take a reference to teeth for mountains, and ‘biting, uneating' for chill winds. That's what's confusing. From what I know about the Nine Worlds, Alfheim is a land of warmth and light — forests, seas, great lakes, those sorts of things.”

“It is, indeed,” Grimnir agreed, “and you've reckoned it correctly.” He leaned forward, amusement arching his bushy eyebrows. “I threw in the bit about teeth to refer to Mount Glittertind, and the Jotunheim Mountain Range. The mountains don't come into the old tales nearly as much as they should — Alfheim and Svartalfheim have forests, yes, but they also have many, many mountains. The bones of the world, they are.”

Aurelius followed his gaze and rested his eyes on the great mountain that rose above the forest. “Is that Glittertind, then?” he asked.

Grimnir's eyes clouded. “Part of it,” he said cryptically. He glanced at the squirrel. “It seems that you're the one to misjudge things this time, Little One.”

Ratatosk flicked his tail up in disgust and leapt onto Grimnir's shoulder, curling around the back of his neck, where his head almost got lost in the white beard. The squirrel didn't completely disappear, though, because Aurelius could still see the black eyes peering intelligently at him.

“Tell me, if you will,” Grimnir said, “where did you learn of these ‘myths?' You're Italian, aren't you? Most of your people hold to traditions of the Greeks and Romans. I thought that the ways of the north had been lost in those Mediterranean lands.”

Aurelius smiled. “I grew up in Sicily and southern Italia, so I think that I'm a little bit of both lands.” The fire had diminished while they spoke, and Aurelius picked up a log.

“May I?”

“Of course,” Grimnir said.

Aurelius tossed the wood onto the flames, his effort immediately rewarded by a crackling of renewed combustion.

“As for the Norse myths,” he said, “I was introduced to them by an old friend who used to trade in the northern sea routes.” He paused. “He took me to Norway once. When I was very young.”

Grimnir grunted, raising the bushy white brow over his eyepatch. “You're still very young.”

“No,” Aurelius countered, “even younger than now. I was a boy. I don't think I was even twelve yet.”

“Was your family with you?” Grimnir asked. “Your mother and father, brothers or sisters?”

“No, no —” Aurelius began to reply and then stopped. How did this man know anything about his family? “It was a good trip, though,” he finished, trying to think of something general to say, “and sailing on the northern seas and fjords was an experience I'll never forget.”

Grimnir peered at him with an amused expression on his face, his good eye twinkling.

“I'd not forget that, either, if I were you,” the old man said. “Did you learn the word for ‛ocean' while you were there?”

Aurelius thought for a moment, then murmured from a distant memory, “
Hav
.
”

Grimnir laughed, and tickled the squirrel under its chin. “Yes, yes,
Hav
.
” He adjusted his seat on the log and lifted the fishing rod from the crook of the fallen log.

“
Hmph
,
” he continued, angling his chin slightly to look at the squirrel still under his neck. “It seems that there's much here that you didn't tell me about, Ratatosk.” He then looked intently at Aurelius. “I give you that memory as a gift, Boy. Remember the ocean. It's a good word,
Hav,
and to the Northmen it was everything.”

Aurelius glanced at the running water of the stream, nodding in agreement, still thinking of the trip with that old friend, Devrone di Magglia.

The youth grimaced and tried to push away the memory — that trip had been only six years ago, the summer before Mecina when he was twelve, and marked the beginning of the end of his childhood. Upon returning from that journey, he'd been told by his father that he could never again see Devrone, nor even his professor, Brother Tomas. Then, events had taken a course that saw the boy setting sail to the Holy Land with the spring tide.

Why couldn't I see Devrone and Tomas again?
He silently asked for the ten-thousandth time of his long-absent parents.
If you wanted me to be a priest, I could've served just as well where I'd been training at the monastery of Santa Maria di Corazzo. Why did we let Uncle Servius into our lives, and why was it so urgent that we go to the Holy Land? There was no pilgrimage there, no Jerusalem...only Mecina.

“We had a rough time of it in the North Sea, but made it through to the Schlei Fjord,” Aurelius recalled, “and we spent a week in the town of Schleswig.”

“A busy port, Schleswig,” Grimnir grunted, “but good folk there. Good folk.”

“That was my experience,” Aurelius agreed, then elaborated, “We spent most of the time near the docks, hosted by family friends of my sword-master, Devrone di Magglia. They were shipwrights, working on
knarrs,
” he recalled, referring to the type of shallow-drafted Viking merchant boat used to transport goods and livestock. The young knight shook his head, smiling. “I haven't thought about them in years. Each member of the family was an amazing craftsman.”

Grimnir grunted again in acknowledgement, and leaned to the side to pull a mattock from where it had cloven into the tree trunk. “The Northmen know their boats. Here. Try your own skill with a blade. If you'd like to fish, cut a solid length from those shrubs over there with this. The salmon are very big in this stream, and too slender a rod will snap on your first attempt.”

Aurelius looked more closely at Grimnir's fishing rod and saw now that it was simply a length of hazel-wood, stripped clean of its thin leaves, with a line of horsehair attached to an iron hook that had a bit of partridge feather for a fly.

“Silver salmon run here,” Grimnir repeated, “and there's some bushes yonder that make for decent rods. I'd appreciate any help with catching dinner.” He raised his hands. “These paws don't work like they used to — too often the fish are bigger than I expect and come unhooked before I can club them.”

“They're that big?” Aurelius asked.

“Oh, yes. I've caught some at this part of the river over three handspans long.”

Aurelius took the hatchet offered to him, not believing for a moment that the old man was too weak to clobber a fish. There seemed to be a tremendous power in Grimnir that belied every move he made and word he spoke. Aurelius didn't know why he felt so assured that the old man posed no threat to him, but he felt curiously safe around him and the talking animals.

“
Grazie
,
” he said simply, and walked back to the hazel shrubs, realizing that he was suddenly very hungry. He saw instantly that the shrubs were no such thing at all; before him were ancient hazel trees, so dense that their trunks were wider than Aurelius's waist. He'd have to climb high into the growth to even reach branches that could be serviceable for fishing!

He groaned — the sight reminded him of the times that Devrone had sent him to forage for blackberries, knowing full well that the most bountiful shrubs were those on the western side of the monastery and accessible only by a half day's effort of scaling the walls. Aurelius would return at the end of a hard afternoon's reaping with a couple of basket's worth of berries, only to be told by Devrone that he shouldn't have wasted so much time on a frivolous woman's task and to get back to training with the sword.

Feeling the same flare of temper and irritation that he'd felt ten years ago, Aurelius turned to ask Grimnir if the hazel trees here were the only source of ‘decent' branches for fishing rods. He stopped short. The old man, animals, and even the fire — all were gone.

Aurelius ran to the campsite, in a glance noting that only the fist-sized rocks of the shore, the moss-covered logs, and grassy sward remained. He knelt at the area of the site where the firepit had been and touched the grey stones; they were cold and untouched by flame or ash. He rose and looked up and down the stream, but saw nothing except the water rushing over cobbles, gravel, and sand.

He began walking toward the boulder-bridge, regret and disappointment replacing the irritation he'd felt at the prospect of trying to reach a suitable branch for his rod. He'd still fish, but now without the company he'd found (and welcomed) upon awakening in a foreign land.

Habit took over his acceptance of the situation. For as long as he could recall, Aurelius had been forced to react to situations that were far beyond his control. From when he was five years' old and his father told him abruptly that he'd be spending every subsequent summer with Devrone di Magglia — with no explanation ever given — Aurelius had learned that there were some things in the world that were simply inexplicable.

The same held true in this instance: this dream would unfold in its own way, and he'd awaken from it in his own time.

He chuckled at the memory of the talking squirrel, pecking hen, and irritated wolves.

Da Dio, aveva goduto di parlare con quel vecchio!
By God, he'd really enjoyed talking with that old man!

He reached the bridge and stood above it, watching the river water speed in a cascading rush through the rapids. Mesmerized by the short waterfall and the salmon occasionally making leaps into the lower river, his mind cast back to the days of his earlier youth.

From the age of five until he'd left on that fateful voyage to the Holy Land at twelve, every summer Aurelius had sailed with Devrone to make landfall at the small village of Falerna, a coastal marina on the Tyrrhenian Sea. From there, a four-day hike through dense forests and into the Pollino Mountain Range took him and Devrone to the doorstep of the monastery Santa Maria di Corazzo and the smiling welcome of Brother Tomas Lombardi.

“
È necessario imparare il latino e il greco, Servio
,
” Brother Tomas told him the first time that they'd met. “You must learn Latin and Greek, Servius. Without them, you'll be limited in what you can do in this world.”

It was a phrase that Tomas repeated often throughout the years, even after Aurelius mastered both languages well ahead of the timespans allotted by them in their constant management of his training. He never understood the desperate intensity that informed both men's teaching — Tomas in matters academic, and Devrone in arts martial — but even as a boy of five, Aurelius could sense that there was something akin to fear or rage behind the eyes of the Benedictine monk and the retired imperial naval officer as they mercilessly shaped Aurelius into a scholar and athlete.

The first summer in Calabria had been the most difficult, passing in a haze of pain and exhaustion that made Aurelius dread when the time came to go again the following year. During that initial summer, awakening at dawn to attend mass with the monks, then running through the woods with Devrone before breaking their fast, it seemed to Aurelius that he'd spent most of the time crying and wondering where his parents had gone and why they'd left him with these sadistic instructors.

The rest of the day always alternated between studying in the monastery's scriptorium with Tomas, or going into the yards to train with Devrone in every sort of weaponry, but especially mastery of the sword. It wasn't until the third year that he finally stopped asking his mother and father not to send him away. By that time he was eight, and realized that his studies had put him so far past even his teenaged siblings (and parents) that the eight months he was with his family became increasingly uncomfortable, and even a little boring. He'd come to prefer the Calabrian forests, Devrone, and Brother Tomas to spending time with his own family. Then, when he'd turned thirteen, everything had change with the arrival in Sicily of an Uncle Servius whom he'd never met before… .

A salmon leapt from the river immediately in front of him, interrupting his reverie.

The sun rose above the roof of the forest and its light made something glint in the trees across the river. He instinctively tried to snatch at the fish and, in doing so, tossed the hatchet he'd been holding into the rushing water.

The salmon plopped back into the river, but Aurelius ignored it. He stared at the mattock glimmering metallically in the sandy shallows of the riverbed.

The hatchet was real. I was holding it the entire time. He was here. They were all here.

Disorientation closed upon him and he began murmuring Latin declensions, an old grammatical calming trick that he'd not used in years.

It didn't work. He couldn't reconcile the sight of the tool — the tangible reality of his encounter with the old man and magical creatures — with his belief that this entire world was but a dream of some kind. A sick feeling began to rise in his gorge.