by Sam Subity
I turned to her. “What’s up?”
“While we’re here, let me show you something.” She led the way across the space to a heavily scarred table. It was covered with neatly arranged tools. Something about it looked oddly familiar. Gwynn snapped on a desk lamp and blew across the table, sending millions of dust motes swirling in the arc of amber light.
Grimsby sneezed and waved the dust away from his face. “So it’s an old”—he coughed—“table. What’s the big deal?”
Gwynn turned to me. “This was your mom’s. The table. The tools. All of it.”
This took a few seconds to register. I realized then why it looked so familiar. It was an exact replica of the one from our basement back in North Carolina. Same tools. Same books.
A sudden sharp pang stabbed at my heart. My mom? Worked here? Why hadn’t she ever told me? It was like I’d just discovered an entire part of her life she’d kept hidden from me. Hot tears blurred my view of the workbench. Probably I was overreacting, but it made me wonder what else I didn’t know about her.
Then I noticed a gap on the bookshelf. I ran my sleeve roughly across my eyes and stepped forward. What had been there? I thought back to the shelf at home, and then I remembered. Her journal, where she’d recorded all her work. It was missing.
“Is something wrong, Abby?” Gwynn said, looking at me with concern.
“It’s nothing.” I quickly surveyed the rest of the workbench, but the journal was nowhere in sight. I cleared my throat, embarrassed. “So my mom actually worked here? I had no idea she ever came to Vale. I mean, after her days here as a student.”
“Yeah, I guess she was actually sort of a local legend. The Aesir would gather here at Asgard at least a couple times every year. And she was always consulting on some project or another with the Vikings. But I overheard once that she was working on something even bigger.”
I frowned. “Something bigger? Like what?”
She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I never heard what it was.”
Grimsby frowned. “So your mom was some sort of blacksmith?”
I shook my head. “Not exactly. She used to call herself a seeker of knowledge—science mostly, but also history, art—all sorts of fields. I remember when I was little how she’d be up at all hours of the night poring over books with titles I couldn’t pronounce or tinkering on a project in our basement.”
As we moved on to continue the tour, I couldn’t help staring back over my shoulder one last time, imagining my mom bent over the table working. When we reached the other side of the room, another door slid open, welcoming us back to the cool quiet of the hall.
“Okay,” said Grimsby, tilting his head to the side and squinting one eye like his ears were still ringing. “Let’s see if I’ve got this right. The Vikings still exist. In a secret underground bunker. Here in Minneapolis. Couldn’t they have picked someplace nicer? Like Miami maybe?”
Gwynn considered before replying. “Yes, yes, yes, and no. At over six feet tall and more than two hundred pounds on average, can you imagine Vikings in a tropical climate? You’d need a lot of deodorant. It wouldn’t be pretty.”
“But why underground? Are they hiding or something?”
“Not exactly. Hiding, I mean. Think about it. It’s no accident that the largest Scandinavian population outside northern Europe happens to be here in Minnesota. Plus there’s the football team. The Minnesota Vikings. Not exactly subtle. The rest of the world believes that the real Vikings faded into legend. We have a strict vow of secrecy.” She shot a glance in my direction. “Because, let’s just say, there are plenty of people who would love to destroy the Vikings if they knew what we were doing.”
“But this entire place,” Grimsby said, taking in the whole of Asgard with a sweep of his arms. “Doesn’t it bug them being underground all the time?”
“Ha!” I laughed. “You’re talking about a civilization that’s basically used to not seeing the sun for half the year. In Iceland in the wintertime, the sun rises around noon and sets at three thirty. Trust me, this is nothing.”
Gwynn nodded her agreement. “And anyway, this next room may change your mind about that.”
We stepped out of the hallway onto a circular cobblestoned plaza about the size of a football field. It was lined with multicolored buildings constructed of stout timbers, just like in a northern European village. Overhead a huge dome-shaped atrium stretched upward at least three stories high. It was composed entirely of massive triangular glass panels through which sunlight streamed, filling the room with the welcoming glow of a summer afternoon. Looking upward, we could see wispy clouds drift lazily by in the azure-blue sky. In the center of the room was a pond with grass around it and even a gnarled old weeping willow growing over it as if the pond were a basin for its tears. Rough-hewn wooden tables sat scattered around the room, with people seated at them talking, eating, or reading.
“Wait,” said Grimsby, turning back and then forward again, clearly disoriented. “Did we somehow walk all the way back to the surface?”
Far above, I saw what looked like a red-winged creature with a long pointed tail soar through the sky. Then something clicked. “Oh, I get it. This is another simulation, right?”
Gwynn smiled. “Yes and no. The sunlight itself is real, captured on the surface and magnified through a complex set of mirrors and prisms until it reaches here. But we can change the scenery to a variety of things. Thunderstorms. Snow showers.”
“Dragons?” I added.
She nodded. “That was Doc’s idea, actually. He wanted to add some playful elements to keep things interesting.”
“Oooh, I want to try!” said Grimsby, looking around. “Where’s the remote?”
“Um, it’s not exactly something they let anyone control,” said Gwynn. “Anyway, I think you’re going to want to see what I have to show you next.” She led the way across the plaza, indicating the buildings around its edges. “This is what we call the village square.”
“But it’s a … circle?” Grimsby said.
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, it’s more the idea than the actual shape. The goal was to create a community gathering place and central hub much like town centers back in the old country. We have everything from bakeries to tailors and—”
“Starbucks?” I cut in, staring across the room at a familiar green-and-white logo over a storefront.
“Even Starbucks,” Gwynn confirmed.
“That settles it,” Grimsby said. “They are everywhere.”
“As well as lots of other food options,” Gwynn said, leading the way across the room to a row of restaurants. “We’ve got your standard fare over here like pizza and burgers. And over there”—she pointed—“are the more traditional Viking foods.”
One restaurant advertised stuffed boars’ heads on spears next to another called Bucket o’ Haggis.
Grimsby shuddered. “Haggis? That’s, like, sheep intestines, right? But isn’t that a Scottish food?”
“That’s a common misconception,” I said, then shrugged apologetically when Grimsby turned a raised eyebrow in my direction. “Hey, my dad hardly ever has time to cook, so I pick up what I can from the Food Network. Anyway, it was actually the Vikings who introduced haggis to the people of Scotland. The Vikings eventually moved on, but they left their food behind.”
“I don’t think that was entirely accidental,” Grimsby said with a grimace.
Gwynn opened her mouth to continue when Grimsby cut in. “What. Is. That?” His eyes were fixed on a stainless-steel box that looked like an oversized refrigerator set against a green building with a giant 7-Eleven logo on it. On the front of the machine, a touch screen was filled with dozens of colorful icons.
“Oh, that’s the Slurpee machine,” said Gwynn. “Its nickname is Slurpus Maximus. It has about every flavor combination you can imagine, and probably a lot you’ve never heard of.”
“I didn’t figure Vikings for Slurpee fans,” I said.
“Sure
, Vikings invented Slurpees, of course.” She gave me a look like I should have somehow known this. “They didn’t cover that in your cooking shows?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I guess I missed that episode.”
“Yeah, well, when you’re surrounded by ice for ten months of the year, you find creative ways to use it. Go ahead and try it if you want.”
Grimsby was already way ahead of her. He stood in front of the machine wide-eyed. After assessing his options, he started moving his finger over the buttons like a little kid with a new toy as he read the labels. “Let’s see … Wild Cherry—of course. Spam? That’s just wrong. Banana Split—definitely have to try that one later.” His finger stopped over a button with an icon of a movie camera on it, and he turned to Gwynn. “Movie Theater Combo?”
She nodded. “That’s one of the more popular ones. See if you can guess what’s in it.”
He jabbed eagerly at the button, and a cup fell into the dispenser. The machine whirred and a thick icy stream like liquid chocolate sprayed into the cup until it had formed a perfect peak just above the cup’s rim. Finally, a thin straw shot out of the machine with a fwip of air and tucked neatly into the center of the concoction.
Grimsby’s hand trembled as he reached for the icy cup and took a sip. A big smile spread across his face. “Let’s see … I’m detecting buttered popcorn.” He licked his lips as he considered. “Coke and …” He took another sip. “Yeah, Junior Mints! It’s like going to the movies in a cup!” He eagerly looked around at the other shops. “Be right back. I want to see what else they have around here.”
“I guess I should make sure he doesn’t break anything,” Gwynn said. “You want to join us?”
“You guys go ahead,” I said, taking a seat at a nearby table. “I have something I want to check on anyway.”
I opened the browser in my phone and typed “svefnthorn” into the search bar. Immediately thousands of results came back. That seemed promising. But after clicking on several of them, my initial excitement quickly deflated. The legends were maddeningly vague and even contradictory about how the svefnthorn worked. In one story, a king was pricked with the thorn and woke up on his own a few hours later. In another, the thorn’s hold had only been broken when the hero crossed a magical circle of fire.
I was startled out of my thoughts by a loud gurgling noise nearby. When I looked up, Grimsby stood a few feet away slurping the last dregs of Slurpee out of his cup, his blazer pockets bulging with more Viking treats he’d discovered.
Gwynn slid into the seat across from me, shaking her head. “We may never get him out of here.” She pointed toward the phone. “News about your dad?”
I filled her in on the svefnthorn and what I’d found out so far. “I don’t know what to think. My training books didn’t exactly include any chapters on magical fire circles.”
She reached across and squeezed my hand. “If there’s anything we can do to help, just say the word.”
Grimsby sank into a seat beside me, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Oww, brain freeze!”
One corner of Gwynn’s mouth tilted up as she turned back to me. “Or … at least, you can count on me—”
“Abby Beckett?” came a voice from behind me.
I twisted my head around. A short woman with a harassed look about her stood looking down at me. Her hands seemed to flit in continuous motion like birds looking for a place to land, adjusting her glasses, smoothing the front of her skirt, and finally clasping and unclasping.
“I’m Abby,” I said.
“Oh, good,” said the woman. “I’m the assistant to the headmaster, Professor Roth. She requested that I escort you to her office.”
Oh no! What time was it? I checked the screen of my phone and felt my stomach drop into my shoes, realizing that I’d completely missed all my afternoon classes. On my first day. I shot a quick look at Gwynn, who only grimaced and shrugged. “Can I ask what it’s about?”
She shook her head. “She didn’t say. Only that I should bring you as soon as possible.”
I stood and took a quick breath to settle my racing heart. “Okay, I’m ready.” I think.
The assistant led the way wordlessly toward Professor Roth’s office, the only sound the click of her shoes on the cold stone floor. When we entered the hall of headmaster paintings, I again felt their disapproving gazes, and my mind naturally turned to all the worst-case scenarios of what I was walking into. A month of detention for plastering lutefisk all over the front of a teacher’s shirt? A week’s solitary confinement for spilling my secret to a non-Viking? The traditional Viking punishments had been legendary for their gruesomeness. But we were more evolved now. Right?
The headmaster’s office door stood open. The assistant stopped at the doorway and gestured me inside. I gulped and stepped into the room. Upon entering, I was immediately struck by the room’s size, less an office than a royal suite. The focal point was a massive stone fireplace centered directly in the wall ahead. A roaring fire threw flames nearly half the height of the eight-foot black maw. To one side of the fireplace stood a large wooden desk, with a high-backed chair like a throne behind it. The room was lit only by the firelight, heavy curtains drawn against the pale October daylight. The flames cast flickering shadows across the other walls, which were covered with shelves filled with books, vases, and other miscellaneous artifacts. A glass display case held a giant bladeless sword hilt, ornately carved and looking like a relic from an ancient time.
I stopped and looked up at a display on one wall illustrating the growth of Vale’s campus over the years. An old sepia photo showed a small cluster of buildings surrounded by trees. Next to it a similarly old-looking aerial photo showed the campus from above in the early twentieth century. More photos and maps followed Vale’s growth into the future, including artists’ sketches of new buildings yet to be constructed. Scenes of sleek glass edifices glinting in the sun depicted a bright future for Vale.
The door behind me closed with a soft boom that echoed through the large room. Professor Roth’s heels clicked on the stone floor as she approached and stood beside me, looking up at the display.
Her voice was quiet when she spoke. “What we have started here is just the beginning of Vale Hall’s shining future. A rebirth as well as a reinvention. We find ourselves at a critical juncture when every Viking must ask: Will I be a part of that future, or will I cling to our past?”
Was she actually asking me? Or was it a rhetorical question? Confused, I opened my mouth and closed it again, not sure how to respond.
Finally she turned and walked toward the large desk. “Ms. Beckett, we have much to discuss. If you would please join us.”
Us? I looked around the room and noticed for the first time a pair of figures seated toward the head of a long table set apart from the fire. They broke off their conversation and turned toward us as they heard us approach. In the dim light, I couldn’t make out their faces.
Professor Roth stopped at the desk, opened a drawer, and lifted a bundle of gray cloth from its depths. She threw the cloth around her shoulders and pinned it like a cloak at one shoulder. The other two figures stood. They were wearing similar gray cloaks. What had I just walked into? Surely this wasn’t about throwing food in the cafeteria or cutting class. Something tickled my memory, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Professor Roth gestured me toward a chair at the table and then chose one herself. Four seats with high carved wooden backs and crushed-velvet cushions were arranged around the head of the table. Only one was unoccupied.
“Ms. Beckett,” said Professor Roth as she sat, “you have been afforded a unique opportunity today.” She paused, looking at the other two figures. “The chance to have an audience with the Grey Council.”
I gripped the armrests of my chair to keep from completely embarrassing myself by sliding in a dead faint to the floor.
The Grey Council. The cold, faceless “they” who had seemed to run my entire life from a distance. The
leadership body of the Vikings were right here? At Vale Hall? After discovering a hidden city of Vikings beneath my feet, I guess it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. But the Grey Council was almost mythical, so to see them here in flesh and blood was hard to get my head around.
“I’m sure the past few days have been very trying for you,” Professor Roth said. “And we realize that your father may not have filled you in on the full reasons behind your move here to Vale. Indeed, he himself was largely unaware of the extent of the Viking presence here.” Her hands came together in what looked vaguely like a conciliatory gesture. “But we hope to provide you some answers now.”
I paused my mental review of punishments they might be about to inflict on me. Full reasons behind our move? What did she mean by that? The other two heads nodded, but the roaring fire behind them kept their features obscured in shadow.
“Ms. Beckett,” continued Professor Roth. “May I call you Abby?”
“O-okay,” I managed weakly. Come on, Abby, where’s that fiery spirit Dad always talks about?
She gave me a thin smile and nodded. “Very well. Abby, as you know, the Vikings of the Aesir order—an extremely select group that has included many members of your own family—hold a very singular commission: to hunt the creatures known as Grendels.”
I nodded. I’d also gotten the impression from my mom that this commission had been a growing source of contention between her and the Viking leadership.
“Further, the need for this constant vigilance has grown weaker down the ages. Supposed Grendel sightings have become fewer and further between. In fact, we have come to believe that some Aesir have even fabricated such sightings as a way to justify the continued existence of the Aesir order.”
I sat up straighter at this, suddenly finding some of my fire. “My mom would never—”
Professor Roth held up one hand. “I’m afraid that your mother’s activities in devoting much of her life to researching the Grendel problem were more archaeology and historical inquiry than modern forensic work.”
