by Cate Martin
Death Under the Bridge
A Viking Witch Cozy Mystery
Cate Martin
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
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The Witches Three Cozy Mysteries
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About the Author
Also by Cate Martin
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Chapter 1
I'll admit it, I was a little intimidated at the idea of facing my first winter on the North Shore. Not that my hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, was much further south or anything. I had walked to school on days when the air was so cold it hurt to breathe. I knew all about the importance of warm boots and layers of clothing. I had spent more than my fair share of hours shoveling snow off of driveways and sidewalks, snow that was measured in feet, not just inches. And even warm and safe indoors, there was the dryness of the air to deal with. Every doorknob was a shock hazard, and my fine red hair would spark when I combed it and needed a ton of product to prevent it from being in an electrified cloud around my head all day.
Still, the North Shore. Lake Superior. The gales of November.
Winter here was, I was certain, going to be epic.
So when we had gotten our first killing frost that zapped the last of the greenery to a dead brown and carried away the last of the glorious autumn foliage on the trees, I had prepared myself for the change of seasons. I had broken out my thickest sweaters and set my sturdy winter boots on the mat by the kitchen door.
And my grandmother had laughed at me.
"Look," I had said, pointing out the window to the barren patch that had been her herb garden. "It's past noon, and the frost is still thick and white all over everything. It's going to snow soon!"
"It's barely October," she had said.
"Maybe the gales of November are coming early," I had said, and she had laughed again.
"Ingrid, when the gales came early and sunk the Edmund Fitzgerald, it was the tenth of November," she had said.
But a week later, as I followed her along the path beside the river that took us past the meeting hall and then further up the gorge, I had to admit she had been right. That frost had come and gone and left everything in shades of brown under the yellow glare of a sun that rose later, set sooner, and generally stayed lower in the southern sky, but still put out all the heat of late August.
"Why am I wearing a hoodie and a windbreaker again?" I asked, blowing a breath up to fluff the hair off of my sweaty forehead.
"You'll be glad for it soon enough," she said, still refusing to just tell me where we were going.
"But the weather in Villmark is the same as the weather in Runde, right?" I said. "Maybe a little windier up on the hilltop, but not by much."
"Then obviously we're not going to Villmark," she said, looking back over her shoulder at me with a twinkle in her eye. In response, I just lifted a hand to indicate the path in front of her. It only led to one place: the cave behind the waterfall. She laughed and marched on ahead, her walking stick and booted feet marking out a rhythm I was hard pressed to keep up with.
Man, did my mormor have energy.
I hoisted my messenger bag higher on my shoulder and got a tighter grip on my own walking stick as the path drew closer to the spray from the waterfall and the rocks underfoot were more slippery. My grandmother had suggested I bring along my sketchbook and pencils. She hadn't explained the why for that either, but no one ever had to ask me twice to bring my art supplies along.
In the month I had spent in Runde, I had been as artistically productive as ever. I had been worried that without the pressure of art school I would slack off, but actually the opposite was true. I had less time to spend on art given my other current decidedly nonacademic studies, but what time I had was more focused than ever.
And yet, nothing I sent out into the world was coming back to me with anything besides rejection. I knew it was early days yet, and breaking into the world of book illustration was always going to be hard, but still. My teachers had always had high praise for my work. So why wasn't I a success already?
At least Jessica had offered to let me display some of my pieces in her bookstore café. I just had to pick out which ones and get them decently framed. Local art was one of the things tourists came to the North Shore looking to buy. Surely I'd sell something soon.
I stopped just inside the space behind the waterfall and waited for my eyes to adjust to the semidarkness. The ground here was quite slippery, and although I knew it was probably not physically possible or at least not terribly likely to happen, I had a persistent, all too vivid vision of losing my footing and falling into the rush of water that was already so close I could touch it.
I didn't realize I had lost track of my grandmother until I started to head into the cave on the far side of the waterfall and she appeared out of nowhere to grab my arm and pull me back.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"You'll see," she said with a wide grin, then led me past what I thought was the only cave behind the waterfall, the one that led up to the meadow and on to the village of Villmark. Did the path we had followed up the north slope continue on the other side of the river? I thought it was just rock and water over there before, but I had never gotten a good look at it. I was only allowed to go through the cave when I was with my grandmother, and she was always in a hurry to get through to the other side.
And as I followed my grandmother, it still did look like nothing more than rock and water with no path to speak of. We were forced to walk sideways, backs pressed against slick rock and water rushing past mere inches from our noses.
But then the narrow ledge started to widen, and the path turned away from the water, following a chasm that plunged between two rock outcroppings and down into darkness.
At least the path was wide enough here for my walking stick to be of some use. I was just starting to wonder whether I should be waving it around and tapping with it like a blind person, only I wasn't sure exactly how they used that to navigate the world, when my grandmother said something I didn't quite catch.
And then she looked back at me with a grin again, this time with a small glowing ball of flame hovering over her palm.
"Show off," I said. "When do I get to learn spells?"
"When you're ready," she said, which was always her answer. Only she wouldn't tell me when that would be. Not even in general terms. I had no sense of my progress at all, not how well I was doing or how far along I was. I tried to get her to lay it out for me like a school syllabus with an outline of topics and a sense of the learning parameters, but she would have nothing to do with anything like that.
It was, frankly, more frustrating tha
n not yet being able to sell my art.
"Where are we going?" I asked, not bothering to hide my growing frustration. I knew I sounded like a surly child, but I didn't care. She was provoking it, wasn't she?
"Down to the harbor," she said. My surprise that she was actually giving me an answer only grew when those words sunk in.
"Harbor?" I asked. "What harbor? I didn't know there was a harbor."
"How else do you think the Villmark fishermen get out on the lake?" she asked me.
"First of all, I didn't know anyone in Villmark fished on the lake," I said. "I thought they got all of their fish from the river."
"It's not a very large river," my grandmother said, "And they are careful not to deplete their resources. Of course, the modern world doesn't always share the same concerns. As few are the families in Runde that keep on making a living at the fishing trade, even fewer Villmarkers manage it. But it's still a tradition they won't easily surrender." The path had been taking us in a rough spiral, always heading down, although not at too steep of an angle. Just as it leveled out my grandmother turned back to smile at me again. Whatever was up ahead, she was absolutely gleeful at the prospect of showing it to me.
"What's up there?" I asked, trying to look past her.
"Just another little tradition the Villmarkers won't easily surrender," she said. "It's a bit late in the season for this, but the weather has been so unseasonably fine, they really couldn't resist one last trip out this year."
"Ha! Unseasonably fine. I told you that frost should've brought the cold weather with it," I said.
"If you say so," my grandmother said. Then she cupped her hands together, cradling the little ball of flame between them. She whispered something to it again and then puffed up her cheeks and blew on it.
The fire grew blindingly bright. If it was giving off even half as much heat as it was light, my grandmother's hands were about to get toasted. But it wasn't just getting brighter, it was swelling in size as well. Then my grandmother threw it up into the air.
I bit back a shriek of alarm, too late to keep it from echoing through the cavernous space around us. But the light was far overhead now, shooting sparks over a wide expanse of still water that was undisturbed by the sheet of falling water that separated it from the world at large.
I followed the path of the sparks down to the dozen or so small fishing boats pulled up on the gravelly shore just a few steps away from me. Were we going to push one out onto the water and paddle out to the lake? That would explain the hoodie and windbreaker I was wearing.
But then I saw it, past the beached boats, out in the center of the harbor.
A Viking ship. An honest to goodness, real-life Viking ship. It gleamed in the light from the fireball overhead, the wood polished honey-gold with a fiery heart. Its sail was flapping softly as the waterfall pulled the air out of the cave in a continuous breeze.
And on the deck were a couple of dozen Villmarkers, all dressed like Vikings of old, shaking their shields and striking them with their spears as they whooped and hollered.
I'm sure that was more about my grandmother's presence than mine, but it was still a pretty unforgettable welcome.
Chapter 2
As I followed my grandmother along the horseshoe-shaped gravelly beach to the far side of the cave, some of the Villmarkers climbed back down off the ship to run out to meet us. The first were the Mikkelsen sisters, Kara and Nilda, with their close friend Gullveig with them. I knew the sisters well, having spent many an evening with them in the meeting hall. They were my most dedicated teachers of the variant of Norwegian the Villmarkers spoke, and of Villmarker culture in general.
Gullveig I had met a few times, but only briefly. Still, she had made a powerful impression on my mind, as I suspect she did with most people. She was both drop-dead gorgeous and completely unaffected by it. Not unaware - she knew she turned heads - merely unwilling to feel superior just because of a lucky genetic combination.
"Ingrid!" Kara cried. Even when they reached us and could stop running, she was still dancing from foot to foot. "Isn't this amazing?"
"I had no idea this was down here," I said. "You guys were holding out on me."
"Usually it's just fishing boats down here," Nilda said. "Shipbuilding is a wintertime task, and we don't take the new ships out until the spring. But someone persuaded the others that the weather was so fine, they should build next year's ship early."
"Someone?" I repeated. "Why do I get the impression I'm supposed to know who?"
Nilda, Kara and Gullveig exchanged a series of significant glances, but before they could choose which of them was going to just answer the question, my grandmother ruined the moment.
"Let's get on board, shield maidens," she said, touching them each on the shoulder in passing as she headed towards the dock that led to the ship.
"Come on," Kara said, slipping an arm through mine and leading me towards the ship.
"You guys look like real-life valkyries," I said, then looked down at my own windbreaker, jeans and hiking boots. "Why did my grandmother tell me to bring a jacket when there was a whole other dress code we could've gone with?"
"We'll kit you out for the spring launch, promise," Kara said. "There's a rule among us that everyone either makes their own clothes or trades something they made for clothes someone else has made. It's how we keep the old ways alive."
"I don't know the first thing about making clothes," I said. "I made a stuffed animal in home ec once. But I didn't have to weave the cloth first."
"We'll teach you," Nilda said.
"We'll do a better job with you than we did with Gullveig here," Kara added. "She can't weave to save her life."
"So you traded something for that outfit?" I asked. "It must've been something amazing. I love that shade of blue."
"Nilda traded with me," Gullveig said.
"For these," Nilda said, raising her arms to show me her armguards.
"You're a blacksmith?" I asked Gullveig.
"Just armor pieces," she said with a shrug. "Weapons are beyond my skill."
"Look," Nilda said, pulling me to a halt so I could take a closer look at one of her armguards. I saw a pattern worked into the gold, an elaborate knot-work very delicately etched in.
"Wow," I said, turning Nilda's arm so that the armguard caught the light. "I have to get good enough at something to trade with Gullveig for sure."
"Try leather working," Gullveig said. "I need a new belt pouch. This one has a whole in the bottom that opens up again, no matter how I try to repair it."
"Leather working," I said with a nod. "Got it."
"We can worry about all that later," Kara said. "Come on. The guys are waiting for us so they can launch."
"How do we get out of here?" I asked. From where my grandmother and I had emerged onto the beach to where the dock led up to the ship had been an unbroken U. The only way out was through the waterfall.
"Your mormor does a thing," Thorbjorn said as he extended a hand to help me step over the side of the ship.
"Thorbjorn!" I said. "I haven't seen you in days!" Which, sadly, wasn't unusual. In the month I had been on the North Shore, our paths had all too rarely crossed. Of course it didn't help that I had only been to Villmark a handful of times, and he nearly never made time for kicking back in the meeting hall in the evenings.
"I've been in the hills," he said, which was pretty much always his answer.
Behind me, Nilda and Kara were elbowing each other, and I belatedly realized who the someone must be.
"This was your idea?" I asked.
"Who told you that?" he demanded, but his cheeks flaming as red as his hair pretty much answered my question. He looked past me at the others. "You three. Are you coming on board or not?"
"What, no hand for these ladies?" Nilda asked, but before Thorbjorn could reach out to her, she vaulted easily over the side, followed by her sister and Gullveig.
"All on board?" my grandmother called from where she was sit
ting on a little stool at the back of the ship. "Good. Boys, push us away from the dock and I'll get started."
As the men closest to the dock did as she asked, I made my way down the center of the ship to my grandmother's side.
"This is magic?" I asked her.
"The ship? No," she said.
"I meant how we're getting out through that waterfall. That has to be magic," I said. "Can I help?"
She raised a single eyebrow but said nothing. I guessed the answer was pretty obviously no. I hadn't actually learned how to do anything yet. I was still working, for hours a day, on just sensing things.
"Ingrid, come sit with me," Thorbjorn said, patting the spot next to him on the bench.
"Okay, but I'm going to make a terrible rowing buddy," I said.
"Actually, you'd be perfect," he said. "We have to even out over all the oars."
"I think you just called me weak," I said, but took my place beside him on the bench that was closest to my grandmother. Kara, Nilda and Gullveig paired up with men that I couldn't help noticing were considerably less burly than Thorbjorn. Perhaps when they were done teaching me Norwegian and weaving and all that they could show me how they got those biceps.
Then everyone fell silent, the only sound the roar of water falling before us. I tried not to be obvious about it, but I couldn't help looking back over my shoulder to see what my grandmother was doing. She looked like she was meditating, her hands resting limply on her knees and her eyes half-closed. She wasn't whispering any spells or anything. And even when I used the skills she had taught me, I didn't sense any magic around us.
