by Cate Martin
But the circumstances were dire, and our walk was almost a jog.
The only bridge across the river that the Villmarkers called Konallelva and the people of Runde called simply the Konal was the one that carried the highway over the entire valley where Runde lay. We had to climb up the steep embankment to the crossroads where the restaurant, gas station, and bookshop café were all clustered, then cross the bridge to get to the southern side before descending another footpath to the south side of the Konal.
I had never wondered before why there was no bridge in the valley. The only thing on the south side were a few widely scattered farms. But now it seemed odd that those people didn't want a closer connection to Runde proper. Was it because the Villmarkers needed the river bridge-free to launch their Viking ship? I would have to ask my grandmother about that. Their fishing boats could fit under any standard bridge, but that ship with its tall mast would require a lot more space.
"So you're a fishing Sorensen?" I asked, and Tobias nodded. "But you still understand all the fuss about this bridge? Because I've never had it explained to me."
Tobias sighed. "You know, I think the fuss about the bridge is part of what drove my dad away from the farm," he said. "It goes back generations, like something from a novel. The Hatfields and the McCoys, you know?"
"I think those were actually real," I said.
"Maybe," he said. "All I know is, the Runde founders declared the banks of the river as common use land. Everyone needed to fish it, especially in the town's early days. But the argument is over whether that meant the banks of the creek too, particularly the large one that splits the Nelsen lands in half."
"What do the Sorensens care if the Nelsens bridge their lands?" I asked.
"Because technically they're doing it just a few feet on the wrong side of the property line," he said.
"On Sorensen land," I guessed.
"Depends on where that easement is," Tobias said. "But that's the crux of the argument."
"Why don't the Nelsens just move where they're trying to build?" I asked.
"That would be losing the fight, admitting they were in the wrong, giving in," he said. "Plus the stone supports are already placed there. The farming Sorensens destroy the wood structure every time the Nelsens build a new bridge, but those stones remain. Like a dare."
"No one seems like the good guy the way you tell it," I said. Tobias just shrugged.
It took nearly half an hour for us to walk across the highway bridge and then down the bluff on the south side, and by the time we were once more in the river valley, the sun was fully risen over the lake. But that light wasn't going to last long. I could already see cloud cover rolling in from the west. We approached the steel bridge from the opposite direction than I had seen it the day before, but it still gleamed brightly in the first rays of dawn.
That sight only transfixed me for a split second, because the scene around the bridge was anything but tranquil. I could see my grandmother standing with her back to me, a crowd of men and women between her and the bridge itself. The crowd was all talking at once, the voices loud and urgent but not shouty.
Not yet.
Most of the crowd had dark blond to light blond hair, like the two Sorensens who had come to fetch us, but a smaller group standing apart from the others had dark brown to black hair. I guessed those were the Nelsens, especially after I saw old Tore Nelsen standing among them. They were fewer, but if anything they were angrier. I guessed that was understandable, if the victim was one of them.
"Enough!" my grandmother suddenly commanded. Her voice carried over the furor, although she was not shouting. It sounded like a trick of the acoustics near the river, but I suspected she was adding a little magical oomph to it.
I thought that would be the end of the arguing, but to my surprise the Sorensens and Nelsens carried on bickering with each other. Tobias and I hurried our steps, but by the time we got there the fists were already flying.
"Mormor?" I said, both to let her know I was there and to ask her what I should do. She didn't so much as glance at me. She pressed a hand to her forehead, but only for a moment. Then she straightened up and threw both of her arms wide.
"Enough!" she said again, and her voice rang through the air like the bells warning of an attack by sea.
This time the fighting stopped, both among the people who were still arguing and the few who had decided to use violence to make their points. Fists were lowered, and everyone pulled apart to stand staring at their own feet like children caught making trouble.
But my grandmother didn't say anything to them. Then I saw that her knees were buckling, and I lunged to catch her before she could fall. She stayed on her feet, but her hands gripped my arms painfully tightly. Her breath was coming in hard pants like she'd just run some wind sprints.
"Mormor?" I asked.
"Too much," she said, mostly to herself. "Too much, too soon."
"Do you need my help?" I asked, although I had no idea what I could draw that would be of any use.
She held up a hand to me, and I fell silent. Then she turned to the others and just made a waving gesture. The crowd parted, and I helped her walk past them to the base of the bridge.
Then we saw the body. It was still in the water, floating face-down with some sort of spear in its back. It had hung up against the bridge support, but the way the current was tugging at it, I wasn't sure how much longer it would stay there.
The Konal could carry it out to the depths of Lake Superior in under a minute. I wondered if that had been the murderer's plan?
"We shouldn't touch it, right?" I whispered to my grandmother. "Look, we can see the weapon. Clearly this wasn't magic. And he's not a Villmarker. So we should leave this for the police. Right?"
"Yes, the police," my grandmother said as if half-asleep. But then she looked me straight in the eye and she was as wide awake and lucid as ever. "We need to be absolutely certain first. But, Ingrid, I don't think I'm up to this. Not today. Can you do it? Tell me true. If I leave you in charge, can you be absolutely sure that this isn't a matter for the two of us to deal with before the police arrive?"
"Yes, of course," I said. "I'll take a look around without disturbing anything and try to see if I sense anything. I've got this."
"Well, just do your best," she said, and my heart sank at her lack of faith in me. "Magic lingers. Once I've recovered, I can come back and look again. I'm not sensing anything now, but I'm not sure. And I want to be sure. I need to be sure. Do you understand?"
"Yes," I said. "I'll do my best."
"Good girl," she said, and tried to give me an encouraging smile. Mostly it just made me want to pick out a few of the bigger Sorensen farmers to carry her home. She looked dead on her feet.
But then she turned to the crowd and lifted her arms again to point at one then another of the troublemakers who had been fist-fighting moments before. "Listen, the police will be called, and they may have things to ask of you all. But for my part, I'm asking all of you to stay put. No one leaves Runde. Not until either this matter is resolved or I say otherwise. Understood?"
"Yes, Ms. Torfa," the oldest of the Sorensens said, shooting quelling looks at some of the younger Sorensens.
"Yes, Ms. Torfa," said an older woman who was standing among the Nelsens. Tore was close beside her, but not making eye contact with my grandmother. "I'll see my clan sits tight. But you swear to us you'll give us justice?"
"Don't I always?" my grandmother shot back, and the woman reluctantly nodded. "Good. Now, I have other things to attend to, but you will all give my granddaughter Ingrid all the assistance you would give me in her place. Ingrid, you're in charge."
Suddenly all eyes were on me, and I really wished the ground would just open up and swallow me. But it didn't. It just kept holding me up as my grandmother made her slow way back towards the path. But she didn't head back the way I'd come. She headed straight to the river. Did she know a shortcut? No one else seemed to notice, and in a moment she
was gone from sight, lost behind the trees that grew near the riverbank.
And then I was alone, an outsider among two warring clans. And everyone was watching me closely, waiting to see what I'd do next.
Chapter 6
The first thing I had to do was get rid of the audience. They were making me too self-conscious to even figure out where I should start. But how could I ask them all to leave? The eyes tracking my every move were deeply suspicious, Sorensen and Nelsen both.
"Andrew!" Tobias called suddenly, and I turned to see Andrew Swanson walking towards us, hands buried deep in his jeans pockets, the wind off the lake tossing the locks of his dark blond hair around. He looked up when he heard his name to give Tobias a wave, but then he saw me standing there next to Tobias and quickened his steps to join us.
"Ingrid," he said. His mouth kept twitching, and I gathered that he was suppressing a smile for me because of the gravity of the moment. "When did you get here?"
"Just a minute ago," I said. "You were already here, I take it?"
He nodded. "I just went to the Sorensen farmhouse to call the police from their landline. My cell wouldn't get any service down here by the creek."
"They're on their way?" I said, and he nodded again. "Not much time, then."
"Not much time for what?" he asked.
"My grandmother asked me to look around," I said. "Say, can you and Tobias convince these others to go home for now? They're not helping now, they didn't witness what happened then, and I'm sure the police will appreciate it if their crime scene isn't mobbed by citizens when they get here."
"Sure, we can do that," Andrew said. "But why are you looking around?"
"To set my grandmother's mind at ease," I said. "Another murder, you know?"
"Yeah, and they never solved the last one," Andrew said grimly. "Just be sure not to touch anything, right?"
"Of course," I said brightly. Then, as he and Tobias approached the others to convince them to move along, I turned to get my first close look at the body.
It was hard to tell much about the victim without touching anything. Facedown in the water with his water-logged jacket billowing around him, even saying it was a man was a bit of a guess. There was what looked like a spear in his back, but not a Villmarker spear, I didn't think. This was a modern tool, a fishing spear with three steel prongs. Which didn't mean that it couldn't be Villmarker; a lot of what they had up there was quite modern-looking. But I could see the manufacturer's logo on a sticker still stuck to the bottom of the wooden handle. Sometimes Villmarkers carved runes like a personal logo on their work, but they definitely never used stickers.
"What are you thinking?" Andrew asked. He had come over to stand beside me, and I glanced over to see Tobias walking away with the rest of his clan. The Nelsens were doing the same thing, but in a different direction. No one had crossed the bridge, though. The Sorensen farmhouse was further upstream, built close to the bank. I wasn't sure where the Nelsen place was, but the clan was heading east towards the lake.
"That's a fishing spear," I said. I didn't tell him that ruled out an entire village of potential suspects. He had no idea that Villmark even existed just a short walk away from where we were standing. Or that his best friend was a native of that place.
"That doesn't mean much," he said. I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "I mean, it could have been a fishing Sorensen, but not necessarily. The professional fishermen in Runde all use nets, not spears. Some people spear fish, mostly in the river or streams and especially in this particular creek, but that could be anybody. It might not even have been a local. It could've been a tourist."
"Maybe," I conceded. He knew a lot more about what happened locally than I did. "But did he die from the stabbing or the drowning?"
"The police will figure that out," Andrew said, looking up as if to see if they were coming yet.
"They can get their cars down to this bridge, right?" I asked.
"Oh, sure," he said. "The bridge is between two farm fields, so that's just a tractor trail up there, but there's an old logging road that leads up to the farm on the west side. I sent Davey up to where that road meets the highway to flag them down so they don't get lost."
"You think of everything," I said. He just shrugged, but I could sense that suppressed smile again. "Did anyone figure out who he was yet? Tobias and Carl didn't know."
"Garrett Nelsen," Andrew said.
"You're sure?"
"The Nelsens were sure," he said. "I didn't know him well myself. He graduated the year before I started high school, and I never really saw him around town either. The Nelsens are pretty reclusive. Their kids don't really go in for extracurriculars."
"I noticed no one was throwing any accusations around when I got here," I said.
"No, this has taken everyone by surprise," Andrew said. "Garrett wasn't up to anything that could've led to this kind of trouble. Not that anyone in his family knew of, that is."
"So it wasn't about this bridge, then?" I asked. "I suppose it's possible he was stabbed further upstream and just got hung up here. Maybe at the Sorensen farm? Someone could've been hoping he'd float all the way to the lake."
"That's a lot of speculating," Andrew said.
"You're right," I said with a shrug. "Help me look around. Maybe we're missing some clues."
"Just to show the police when they get here," he said. "We're not touching anything."
"I know," I said. But as soon as I started looking around, I was immediately discouraged. "All the grass is flattened here, but the crowd we just dispersed probably did that themselves. I wish they would've stayed further back. Now there's no way to know if there was a fight here or not."
"I see something," Andrew said, pointing towards the muddy riverbank. I saw something there too, something that gleamed in a nonrock way. We both squatted down to examine the object.
"What is that?" I asked. "It's wood, but is it a little toy?"
"It looks like a whistle," he said, but I didn't see it. I shook my head in confusion. Then he raised a hand, indicating the length of it with a finger that came nowhere near touching the thing. "See, you blow in here, and the air and sound comes out here."
"Oh, sure," I said. "You said whistle, and I was picturing something round on one end like a coach's whistle or something. But this is more like a slide whistle without the slide. Or like a little flute."
"It's only going to make one note, and a bet it's a pretty irritating one. That's what kids like best. Luckily, I doubt it's so loud as a coach's whistle. But look, there's something written on it," he said, ducking his head closer to the ground. "It's mostly in the mud, but I definitely see the tops of something. Are those letters?"
"I see it too," I said. "But I can't tell what it says. Or how long it's been here. It might not actually be a clue at all."
"The police will decide," Andrew said, straightening up to look for approaching cars again.
"Maybe you should watch from the bridge," I suggested.
"Yeah," he said. "They should be here soon, but they might miss seeing us."
"I'm just going to take another look around and make sure we didn't miss anything," I said, then deliberately put my hands in the pockets of y windbreaker so he would know I wasn't going to touch things when he was gone. He nodded and started to climb the embankment, but a thought suddenly struck me. "Say, you haven't seen Luke around, have you?"
"Luke?" he repeated, stopping halfway up to look back at me. "No. Why?"
"No reason," I said. "I just wanted to ask him something."
"He doesn't usually come to this side of the river," Andrew said. "Is it important? Do you need me to call him? I usually have to leave him a message, but he always calls me back, usually inside of five minutes."
"No, it's not important," I said, indicating with a wave of my hand that he should continue on.
Once he was gone I turned my attention back to the river and the body within it. I sat down on the cold ground and slowed my breathing, r
eaching out with my magical senses the way my grandmother had been teaching me to.
But nothing happened. Except, after nearly five minutes of listening to the river burble by, I really needed a bathroom.
I was tempted to tell Andrew I had changed my mind, that he should call Luke. But I wouldn't be able to send a message to Luke through Andrew. First of all, he had no idea that Luke was really a Villmarker named Loke. Aside from that, I had no idea how to say "I need magical advice" in code.
I wished I had brought my bag with me with my sketchpad and pencils. Maybe if I drew what I saw, I would notice more. Not that I'd ever tried that before with magic, but I knew even in a mundane sense, I saw details in things when I was drawing them that I never noticed just looking at them. And drawing the waterfall parting had helped my grandmother the day before.
But I had left my bag at home.
I didn't sense anything magical, and certainly nothing seemed magical about a man who had been stabbed by a fishing spear and left to die in an icy cold creek on an October night.
But like my grandmother, I wanted to be sure, and I wasn't. Because it was too possible that there was something there, but I didn't have the skills to perceive it.
I really wished Loke were there.
"They're coming!" Andrew leaned over the steel rail of the bridge to yell down at me.
"Great!" I called back, then scrambled up the embankment to meet him at the edge of the bridge. "You don't need me here, right? You can show the police everything without me."
"Sure," he said, but there was a quizzical arch to his brow.
"Like I said, my grandmother was worried and just wanted me to check things out," I said. "But she's not feeling too well, so I should really get back. If I'm here when the police arrive, who knows how long I could end up stuck here?"
"Yeah, no problem," he said. "Do you want me to stop by when I'm done here?"
"That would be great," I said. "You could fill mormor and me in on everything the police have to say. Thanks so much, Andrew."
