Death Under the Bridge

by Cate Martin

  Nothing was happening.

  But no one else was getting restless, so I told myself to be patient.

  Then my grandmother sat up straighter on the stool with a sharp inhale of breath, and I thought I saw a flash of silver from her eyes, although perhaps that was a trick of the light.

  The light. There was suddenly a lot more of it. I spun my head back around to see the waterfall in front of us parting like a curtain. Everyone around me was readying the oars, and I put my hands on the oar in front of me, for all the good I'd be. The moment that curtain had parted wide enough, with no signal passing among us, everyone started to row.

  I tried to help, keeping my arms moving with the rhythm Thorbjorn set, but my mind was elsewhere. Like everywhere elsewhere. The morning sun was shining right ahead of us, filling the cavern with light that penetrated into dozens of deeper nooks I had totally missed seeing before. Then we were passing under the falls itself, and the sight of all of that water directly overhead, tons and tons of it barreling down toward us but then just parting to fall safely to either side, was chilling.

  Literally. I felt a shiver run up the back of my spine and was finally glad for my layered hoodie and windbreaker.

  Then I felt the river current catch us. At first it was a chaotic spinning, but the Villmarkers on the oars knew how to keep their ship straight until we were out of the pool under the falls and into the flow of the river.

  "Won't someone see us?" I asked Thorbjorn. I realized I was whispering, but when he answered he whispered as well.

  "Your grandmother's magic hides us," he said. We were still rowing, but only to steer around the occasional rock, and the oars slid through the water soundlessly.

  Then the Villmarker ahead of me turned to say to Thorbjorn, "that's new." He was pointing a thumb back over his shoulder and I sat up a little straighter on the bench to see over the double row of Villmarkers on the other side of the ship. I just saw something glinting in the morning light. Most of that glinting was off of the water of a large creek, but not all of it.

  "Steel," Thorbjorn said with a low chuckle. "That is new."

  "What's new?" I asked.

  "The bridge," he said, but we were moving too quickly. By the time I turned my head to look again, the smaller river was behind us. Its shores and anything spanning them were now behind a thick ridge of evergreens.

  "I've not been on that side of the river much," I said. "Only to see Tuukka Jakanpoika's farm, and that's further back in the gorge than this. What's funny about a steel bridge? Because you laughed just now."

  "There have been a dozen bridges across that span of river since the Norwegians settled here in the 1800s," he said. "Each one has been destroyed, broken apart by axes or burned down. But steel? That's going to be trickier. Could be fun to see what happens next."

  I was tempted to ask for more details, but I doubted Thorbjorn would have them. We were in Runde now, not Villmark. I made a mental note to ask my grandmother what she knew about this bridge business after we were home for the night.

  I glanced back at her again. She was still sitting ramrod straight on her stool, and I could see a glistening drop of sweat running down the side of her face. The magic she was doing was a strain, more than what she did nightly at the meeting hall so that the two villages could mix with no one from Runde noticing they were drinking with, basically, Vikings.

  I really wished she would let me help her more. And I really, really wished she would share with me what I needed to do to make that happen. I needed more structure in my education. Not knowing how I was doing was going to drive me mad.

  "There's the lake," Thorbjorn said with a sigh of satisfaction, but my eyes were still on the shore. Or more specifically, the cabin and fishing house that belonged to Lisa Sorensen's parents. I had solved the mystery of their daughter's murder, for all the good it had done them. They lived in Runde, completely unaware of the existence of Villmark. And I had to do my part to keep it that way. The Norse village was secret and had to remain so.

  But it hurt, not being able to tell them how and why their daughter had died. Not to be able to tell them that her murderer was locked away where she could never harm another again. Not to offer them any sort of closure. It had been a month, and the police must have either already stopped working the case or were about to.

  I was pretty sure that if it were possible to magic away their pain, my grandmother would've done it already. But still my heart ached. I had solved the murder, but in the end that wasn't enough.

  Not for the Sorensens in their grief, and not for me.

  But it wasn't just that I couldn't tell them what had happened. I felt somehow like there was a task left unchecked on my to do list. But what?

  Chapter 3

  "Ingrid?" Thorbjorn said, calling my mind back from the gloomy place my thoughts had gone. I gave myself a little shake and then forced a smile.

  "I'm good," I said. He gave me a skeptical look, and I knew if I didn't distract him he was going to start asking questions. And those answers were going to completely ruin the day he had put so much effort into. I had to find something more cheerful to say, and quick.

  I looked down at the oar in my hands, its wood shining even more brightly golden in the morning sun. "Is this oar hand-carved? The end of it is like an animal claw or something."

  "Everything is hand-carved," he said. "I helped with the mast mainly myself. It takes a particular kind of tree, and my brothers and I had to scour the forest to find the perfect candidate."

  "Your brothers," I said, sitting up straighter to look around. Which wasn't easy; even the Villmarker women towered over me. "Are they here? I still haven't met even one of them. I'm starting to wonder if you made them up."

  "Ingrid, we all six played together as children," he said, "back before we had responsibilities."

  Six, which meant the five brothers plus me. Only I didn't remember more than a few random images. I had spent an entire summer with my grandmother when I was young, exploring Villmark and its environs, only to forget it all when I went back to my mother in St. Paul. I don't know when exactly I started forgetting, if it happened all at once or slowly over time.

  Strong images had stayed with me, recurring in dreams that I later turned into my illustrations. Since coming to Runde I had gone through all of my old art and sketchbooks and saw specific things I knew to be real now.

  Things like the ship I was on.

  "I was on a ship like this before, right?" I said.

  "Yes!" Thorbjorn said. "You're starting to remember?"

  "Not really," I said with an apologetic smile. "I just saw some drawings I did that I guess I didn't draw from my imagination like I thought I had."

  "My brothers were with us that day, but not today," he said. "Protecting the village is a vital duty, and we take it seriously. Even I haven't seen all of my brothers together at once since the night Halldis attacked you."

  "When you fought the giants," I said with a sigh. "I would rather have been there watching that."

  "It wasn't much of a fight, really," he said, but I could see his cheeks pinkening in a way that had nothing to do with the intense sun reflecting off of all that water.

  "At any rate, we all pitched in to craft this ship. Tasks were assigned by skill and ability. Hence the heavy lifting for me and my brothers. But anything that shows real art, that's all Solvi." Then he pointed with his chin to a Villmarker a few rows ahead of us. This man was tall, with broad shoulders and long blond hair. So basically he looked like most of the other guys on the ship.

  But he heard someone saying his name and turned to see who it was. He gave Thorbjorn a little wave, his face unsmiling, then turned back to his oar.

  "This is amazing work," I said, running my fingers over the grooves in the wood. I had done a little sculpting in art school, but only with clay.

  "You should walk around, take a look at everything now in the sunlight," he said.

  "I will. In fact, I'm guessing that's why m
ormor insisted I bring my sketchbook with me," I said, digging into the bag I had tucked under the bench behind my feet.

  It was truly a magnificent day. The wind blowing over the water was brisk, but the sun shone down warmly in a nearly cloudless sky. As I moved from place to place around the ship, sketching not just the details of the ship but also the people around me, the Villmarkers began to sing what I guessed were rowing songs. I could catch about half of the words, and had a pretty good hunch that the half I wasn't understanding were likely quite bawdy. The raucous laughter would certainly say so.

  Although we were out in the daytime, that night was going to be the full moon, and the waters were clearly feeling it. The waves grew ever higher, rolling the ship and launching it into the air before catching it again in a cold spray. I think I would've been seasick - or, I guess, lake-sick - if not for the focus I was putting on sketching what was right in front of me.

  I could only imagine what it was like for our ancestors out on the ocean waves in such a ship. Massive swells, no land in sight. Their bravery was awe-inspiring.

  My grandmother kept up her meditative spell the entire day. It wasn't hard to guess why; there was always a freighter on the horizon or a fishing boat or sailboat passing closer by. A ship full of costumed Vikings out on the lake would be a little hard to explain.

  Lunch was a portable smorgasbord, with open-faced cold meat sandwiches and a variety of creamy salads we all passed around. Then the Villmarkers leaned in to their oars and turned the ship around to head back the way we had come. The sail snapped full, and the wind was carrying us now, and to my surprise the Villmarkers abandoned their oars and stripped off their armor to dive into the lake.

  Into the freezing waters of Lake Superior. In the middle of summer, that water was still dangerously cold. In October? Only crazy people would jump into that.

  "Are you coming, Ingrid?" Kara asked as she, Nilda and Gullveig prepared to dive over the side.

  "Are you kidding? Only crazy people would jump into that," I said.

  "Next year she'll be diving in for sure," Thorbjorn said to them. They laughed, then jumped into the water, joining the others in splashing and diving under the waves.

  I didn't have to ask why Thorbjorn wasn't joining them. It was pretty obvious he was still on duty, eyes alternating between scanning the horizon for signs of danger and counting the heads that were bouncing in the water, making sure we didn't lose anyone.

  The swimming didn't last long. Aside from the water being excessively cold, the wind was carrying the ship at a fast clip, and keeping up had to be exhausting. One by one the Villmarkers came back aboard to sprawl out on the benches and let the sun dry them while they stayed low and out of the wind.

  Gullveig was the last to pull herself on board, and she looked as fresh as when she had first plunged into the water, not a bit like she'd just been swimming at a sprinting pace for the better part of the afternoon.

  The sun was setting behind the hills as we finally dropped the sail and took up the oars once more to row against the current, up the river to the waterfall. We reached the pool and used the oars to hold us steady and face-on with the waterfall.

  Which was still falling in an unbroken sheet.

  I looked back at my grandmother and to my dismay saw she was slumping on her stool. She had been using magic all day to keep us out of sight. I even thought once or twice that I could feel her exerting her will on the weather, keeping the day fine and the waves high. I hadn't spoken to her all day, since she had stayed in that meditative state which I was reluctant to disturb. But maybe I should have, at least once, pulled her out of it enough to check on her.

  Was she too tired to get us all the way home again? What if she couldn't part the waterfall? Would we have to beach the ship here, in Runde? Where could we hide it?

  I could hear murmurs of voices around me. I wasn't the only one who was worried, although everyone was still keeping their voices low, not disturbing my grandmother.

  I looked back again. She was whispering to herself, but her hands dangled uselessly at her sides.

  I had to do something.

  But so far I had only been taught to sense the presence of magic, not to access it myself. What could I do?

  But I had accessed magic before. I had seen patterns like runes that had given me clues to solve Lisa's murder. Not that seeing patterns was going to help me now.

  A sudden inspiration struck me and I dug my sketchbook back out of my bag. When I had seen those patterns, I had been imagining drawing what I was looking at. But I could do more than imagine it now. I turned to a blank page and began sketching furiously. I was drawing what I saw before me, every rock and twisted tree, the pool and even the prow of the ship. I strove to get down every detail as accurately as I could.

  Save one. The waterfall I drew was parted like a curtain, the water cascading down around a gap just wide enough for my sketched ship to pass through.

  I ran out of details to add and just turned my attention to the shading of the water itself, rubbing the graphite from my pencil with my thumb. I was trying to keep my movements smooth like the water, but then my thumb made a little hitch all on its own.

  Had I just traced a rune in the sketched water?

  I started to lean in to get a closer look at the drawing in the fading light, but was distracted by a sudden cheer rising all around me. The Villmarkers shouted and clapped but quickly turned their attention back to rowing, to get the ship into the harbor before the waterfall returned to its natural form.

  "Nice work," Thorbjorn said to me as I put my sketchbook away.

  "I'm not sure I did anything," I said. "I don't actually know how to use any magic yet."

  "Your instincts are good," he said.

  The ship jostled against the dock, and a few of the men leaped over the side to tether us in place. Darkness fell abruptly as the waterfall closed behind us.

  I turned to see my grandmother sitting up straighter on her stool but rubbing her face tiredly. "Mormor?" I asked.

  "I'm all right," she said. "I just need a moment."

  I wanted to argue. She looked like she'd just run a marathon without training for it first, really inadvisable at her age.

  But I could feel something happening around me. I couldn't quite get it into focus, but I sensed that the very stone around us was passing something into my grandmother. Magic? Power? Or just a mundane sort of energy so she could get walking again?

  I tried to feel where it was coming from more specifically, suspecting it was from the fire in the cave above, the one the Villmarkers never let die out, but that level of perception was still beyond me. I could sense its presence and motion, but nothing more specific.

  Still, if I kept setting myself little tasks like that, I could start measuring my own progress. If my grandmother wouldn't offer me a way of measuring it, I could find my own.

  "A fine day," someone said, and others agreed, getting up from the benches and slapping each other on their now-sunburned backs. But no one was in a hurry to disembark. It was like they were all holding their breath, waiting for something to happen.

  "Yes, a fine day," my grandmother said, and finally dropped her hands from her face to smile radiantly at everyone. "Now, who's up for an equally fine night?"

  The crowd roared its approval, and two of the larger men moved to the back of the ship to lift my grandmother up on their shoulders. They looked like football players carrying their triumphant coach off the field after the big game, but I suspected they knew as well as I that my grandmother was hiding just how tired she was from all of us.

  "Can she handle this?" I whispered to Thorbjorn as the two Villmarkers carrying my grandmother led the way up to the higher cave, the rest of the group following behind in laughing and chatting clumps, the meeting hall their final destination.

  "She can," Thorbjorn assured me. "She would never put us at risk by pushing herself too hard. You can put your trust in that."

  I nodded, but
inside my own head, I wasn't so sure.

  Chapter 4

  Thorbjorn and I were the last of the group to emerge from the riverside path and walk past the sandy pits to the meeting hall's back patio.

  It still looked like it always did by daylight: rain-damaged plastic patio furniture stacked against old aluminum siding, the patio itself badly cracked concrete. The weeds that fought their way up through the cracks were the same dead brown as everything else since that frost. Everything looked perfectly normal from a Runde perspective.

  But it was well after sunset now. It should look different.

  "It's all right," Thorbjorn said, but I think he was trying to reassure himself as much as me.

  We went in through the door to find the other Villmarkers, still dressed as Vikings, gathering around badly balanced and scuffed tables. Unbothered by the drab appearances, they were pulling out plastic chairs to drag them closer to what might have been a space heater but was in no way the magnificent fireplace it should be.

  And then, in a blink of an eye, it was. The rafters overhead were carved wood darkened by decades of smoke, the long tables were beer-stained wood, and the chairs were heavy benches. The fire on the hearth was burning hot and bright, and everyone gave up yet another cheer.

  "It's a good thing it's too early for locals to be in here yet," I said to Thorbjorn, but he laughed and pointed to the far end of the room where a trio of farmers were looking at each other with nervous eyes. I could tell they wanted to ask each other if they had all just seen what had happened, but no one wanted to speak first.

  Then one of the Villmarkers approached them with two mugs of beer in each of his hands, and they greeted him with a very relieved shout. By the time they had quaffed those beers, it was like the moment when the world around them had suddenly changed was just gone from their minds.

  "Your grandmother still has it," Thorbjorn said to me.