Death Under the Bridge

by Cate Martin

  "How's that?" the woman said at last. Thanks to Kara and Nilda, I could understand her even though she wasn't speaking English.

  "Sure and that's fine," the man said, taking the axe from her and admiring the fresh runes carved into the side. "Here you go," he said, handing her a thick coin. She took it and bounced it on her palm as if checking the weight, then accepted it with a nod. The man left, and she tucked the coin away in a pocket of her leather apron, then turned back to her worktable.

  I thought she was going to carry on ignoring us, but then she said, "and what have I done to bring you to my door?"

  "We have some questions for you," Loke said, still lounging on the stool. "Magna, this is Ingy."

  "Ingrid," I said. No matter how many times I asked, I could never get Loke to stop calling me Ingy. I certainly wasn't going to take it from anyone else. "Ingrid Torfudottir," I clarified.

  "I assumed," Magna said, and gestured at the red hair that peeked out from under my cap.

  "Ingy is still working on her Norwegian. How's your English?" Loke asked.

  "Well enough, I should think. The young folk disagree," she said in English. She spoke slowly, her accent thick but melodic.

  "We had some questions for you," I said, speaking a little slower than I usually would to be sure she understood. "What do you know about this?" I crossed the room to set the wooden troll on an open patch of worktable. Magna looked up at it, but her face revealed nothing.

  "Are you selling?" she asked, picking up the troll to take a closer look at the carving.

  "No," Loke said. "But lots of other people are. Do you recognize it?"

  Magna gave him an irritated look, but then turned her attention back to the troll. "I have some like these," she said at last, then pointed to one of the shelves. "Not many. I get them secondhand. What's this mark?" she asked, tapping the logo on the bottom.

  "I was hoping you'd know," I said. "I think it's a maker's mark."

  "Hm," Magna said, although what that meant I had no clue.

  "Magna, we saw dozens of these in a store out in the modern world," Loke said. "Just one store, but I've been told they're in others as well. Far too many."

  "You accuse me of something?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

  "The council has rules," Loke said.

  I didn't know what to make by that. Loke sounded genuinely angry that someone might be breaking the rules. But that would be so... un-Loke.

  "I know the council's rules," Magna said. "I sell to no one who does not walk into my shop on their own two feet."

  "Has anyone with two feet bought a lot of pieces from you?" Loke asked.

  "I do not break the rules," Magna said. "If the council is worried, the council can speak to me directly."

  "I think we've gotten off track here," I said. "Loke, we didn't come to accuse anyone of anything. This is a fact-finding mission."

  "I do not break the rules," Magna said again. I'm not sure she understood what I had just said.

  "Don't you?" Loke asked. He was still sitting on the stool with his arms crossed, but he seemed to be towering over Magna and I. The floor was still sloped here; he was, in fact, higher than we were. But still. I moved closer to him until he just seemed like a normal-sized Loke.

  "Loke, we're here about the murder, remember? And there's no way she did that, right?"

  "A murder in Runde is one thing," Loke said. "Exposing Villmark to the world is quite another."

  "But we don't know that's happening," I said.

  "Yet," he said.

  "Would you just let me do the talking?" I asked. "If we turn up anything suspicious, you're going to want me to talk to the council anyway, right? Not you?"

  He glared back at me, but I knew I had him. Then he started to grin at me, and I knew he knew I knew.

  "Carry on," he said with a theatrical sweep of his arm.

  I turned back to Magna, who was watching us both with growing annoyance. "I do not break the rules," she said again.

  "I know," I assured her. "We... I mean, I just wanted to know if you recognized the work. Do you know who made this troll?"

  "Of course," she said. "Such work only comes from one pair of hands. But he doesn't sell, ever. He only trades."

  "But you said you had some here?" Loke asked.

  "He trades with people who sometimes sell," she said.

  "Who?" I asked.

  "Solvi," Magna said.

  "The Solvi who did the carvings on the Viking ship," I said, looking more closely at my troll. The carvings on the ship had been more rudimentary, just decorative touches where the troll was a lovingly rendered complete piece. Still, now that I was looking, I could see the similarities in technique. "Of course."

  "Great, thanks for the help," Loke said, hopping off the stool to grab my elbow and propel me out of the shop.

  "Thank you, Magna!" I called back over my shoulder. But the minute we were outside, I wrenched my elbow out of his grip. "What is with you today?" I demanded.

  "If there's anyone less likely to be moving a lot of Villmark art outside of the bounds of the village and into the modern world than Magna, it's Solvi," he said.

  "Really?" I said with as much disdain as I could muster. "Less likely than Magna, you say? After all that just happened down there?"

  "Please, I have a reputation to protect," he said with a wave.

  "Still, I have to talk to Solvi," I said.

  "We're going to need help with that," Loke said.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Why?" Loke repeated, and he was grinning at me again. "My dear Ingy, don't you know where Solvi lives?"

  "No," I admitted.

  "Solvi lives out in the deep, dark woods," Loke said, already leading the way back through the marketplace towards the main road. "And while I'm perfectly happy to traipse through those woods all on my lonesome, you still need a little something more."

  "I need a Thor," I said.

  "Bingo," Loke said.

  Chapter 13

  I half expected to see Thorbjorn waiting for us at the end of the northern road when we got there. He always seemed to know when I needed him. But this time, he wasn't there.

  Instead, we found him just inside his garden gate, arming up.

  "Looks like we caught you just in time," Loke said. "Patrol?"

  "Patrol," Thorbjorn agreed as he buckled a leather bracer to his arm. Then he looked up at me. "Did you need something?"

  "Loke and I were going to talk to Solvi," I said.

  "Solvi? What about?" he asked. I held out the troll statue I had been cradling in my arms and he took it. "Yes, this looks like his work all right. But why do you need to talk to him about that?"

  "We think he has a connection to the murder victim," I said. "The one under the bridge. He might know something that could help."

  "This isn't a matter for your police, then?" Thorbjorn asked.

  "I'm not sure yet," I said. "But there's another matter, too. The murder victim was selling lots of Solvi's work, all up and down the shore, apparently."

  "Solvi is breaking the secrecy rules?" Thorbjorn asked darkly.

  "Someone is," Loke said. "Magna says it isn't her, and I believe her."

  "No, I don't see her selling to anyone outside our village. That's not her way," Thorbjorn said with a shake of his head. "But Solvi doesn't sell his work at all. He only offers it in trade."

  "That's why we have to talk to him," I said. "We need to know who he might have traded with. And if he knew anything about Garrett Nelsen."

  "If you're busy, I can take Ingy there myself," Loke said.

  Thorbjorn's eyes swept up and down Loke's frame. "You're not even armed."

  "Aren't I?" Loke asked as he quirked one eyebrow.

  "Clearly, I have to take you," Thorbjorn said, buckling his sword belt around his waist and tucking his axe into its loop on the other side. Then he took up a spear and motioned for us to precede him out of the garden.

  We followed the same trail thro
ugh the meadow that Thorbjorn had taken me down once before, but after reaching the forest he changed directions, heading away from Runde, the highway and the lake and towards the dark mountains on the horizon. The ones that didn't exist in Minnesota.

  "Why does Solvi live way out here?" I asked. "Especially if it isn't safe."

  "He's perfectly safe," Thorbjorn said. "It's dangerous for you because your magic would attract things."

  "My magic," I said, looking down at my perfectly ordinary hands. "I have enough magic to attract trouble, but not enough magic to protect myself?"

  "Ironic, right?" Loke said with a laugh.

  "Not enough control over your magic to protect yourself," Thorbjorn corrected me. "But that will come."

  But as we walked on, deeper into the forest, I became less inclined to talk. It felt wrong, somehow. Like to speak would be to disturb something best left undisturbed. It was so dark, and so silent under the trees.

  At first I thought we were walking through shadow because the hill was between us and the sun, but as we walked, I realized that it was nearly midday. The sun would be southerly this time of year, but still more or less above us. Even the clouds overhead weren't thick enough to make it this dark.

  No, it was the trees themselves creating the darkness. And yet, they weren't crowded close together like in the woods around the Sorensen hunting cabin. The trunks here were few and widely spaced, and nothing branched off until it was far overhead. Even the evergreens were bare at our level, although the forest floor was thick with many years' worth of their needles.

  The sun wasn't the only thing missing here, either. There wasn't so much as a breath of wind. I supposed we were in a sort of bowl between the tall hill overlooking the lake where Villmark stood and the beginnings of the hills still ahead of us somewhere, with more hills close in on either side. But the air felt too still, too quiet. It was like the forest around us was swallowing up any sound we made. Even sweeping my feet through the dried needles and scattered leaves didn't seem to make the correct amount of noise.

  Also, it really felt like something was watching us.

  "Is something out there?" I whispered to the others. "Something that's watching us?"

  "Don't be silly," Loke said with a laugh. But he was whispering too, and his laugh sounded forced.

  "It's nothing," Thorbjorn said, but the momentary surge of relief that his words gave me exploded to smithereens when he added, "it's just the trees."

  "The trees are watching us?" I asked.

  "Well," he drawled, taking entirely too long to end on, "no. It just feels that way because of the way the trees are. In layers, where it feels like you can see through the trunks for miles, but when you try, you realize it's just a few feet."

  I looked around and saw that he was right. The layering thing was exactly it. I realized it was like how animators used different cells for the foreground, mid-ground and background, then stacked them up and moved them over each other. Each cell might be sparsely populated with trees, but when they were stacked the gaps between the trees never seemed to line up the way they should.

  "How far do we have to go?" I asked, hugging the troll statue close to my chest as if it could warm me.

  "Not far," Thorbjorn said, and moved to walk closer by my side. "I didn't think this would bother you so much. We came down here all the time as kids."

  "Still don't remember," I mumbled. But I found it incredibly hard to believe I could ever have been unbothered by such a place. Had I at eight been just that brave, or just that foolhardy?

  "Here it is," Thorbjorn said a few minutes later, and I looked up to see the path ahead of us opening up into a clearing. The mix of trees became nothing but beech in a ring around that clearing, the branches tangling together as if to form a protective circle. They even still had their autumn leaves of scarlet and gold. Perhaps the lack of wind down here helped those trees hold onto their foliage crowns.

  At the center of the clearing stood a little round house with a bright green door, rounded on top but straight down the sides, so not quite like Halldis' round red door that still haunted my dreams. I could see a kitchen garden just on the other side of the house, all dried and brown now but still sporting bean poles arranged like tee-pees at the back of the plot, the desiccated remains of pumpkin vines twined near their bases. There was a woodpile against the other side of the house, another pile of uncut logs a little further away.

  But mostly the clearing was full of carvings. A few were former tree trunks that had been carved where they had stood into elaborate dioramas I longed to take a closer look at. Others were freestanding, a variety of animal shapes that had the same quality as the pieces in the store in Grand Marais, like they were moving whenever I looked away. It made it look like the clearing was hosting an animal party, and we three had just interrupted the festivities.

  "Solvi!" Thorbjorn called as we stepped into the clearing. We headed towards the door, but stopped as Solvi himself came around the side of the house from the backyard, a hammer and chisel in his hands.

  "Thorbjorn," Solvi said. Then his eyes passed to Loke and me. "And guests. I don't often get guests. I'm afraid I have nothing to offer you just now."

  "That's all right," I said. "We don't want to intrude. We just had a few questions to ask you."

  "Questions," Solvi said, as if he wasn't sure what the word meant. "I'm working on something at the moment, and this time of year the light passes so quickly. Do you mind if you ask your questions while I continue with my work?"

  "No, no problem," I said. I'll admit I was a bit disappointed. I was insanely curious to see what was inside his house, especially now that I had gotten a closer look at his door and windows. Everything had subtle decorative touches. It wasn't like a gingerbread house, it didn't have that sort of overwhelming clash of excessively elaborate design elements. It was more like, if two pieces of wood were going to join for functional purposes, he had found the most beautiful way to make that happen. Everything had a flow that suggested water, and I longed to run my fingertips over the patterns in the wood slats of the house walls.

  Instead, I followed the others to the back of the house. Besides the kitchen garden which I had glimpsed from the other side, there was also a collection of wood benches around a fire-pit that was currently cold ash but whose blackened, cracked rock borders spoke of many nights of roaring flames and intense heat.

  One of those benches had been pulled a little apart from the others and that was where Solvi sat now, returning his attention to an upright log of about half his height which was standing on a low table in front of him. He had just started roughing out a shape, and although there were no details yet, I thought I could make out the outlines of a bear with a fish in its hands.

  "First question," Thorbjorn said, and gave me an inquiring look. I nodded that he should go on with what he wanted to ask first. "I don't remember seeing you after the excursion last night."

  "Really?" Solvi said. He didn't sound bothered, and his eyes were focused on the sculpture in front of him. He rubbed his thumb over a line that divided the bear's arm from its body but didn't raise his chisel. "I'm not surprised if your memory is faulty, given all the drinking you did. You don't usually even come down to the mead hall. But after such a fine day out on the water, who could resist, eh?"

  "Hm, yes," Thorbjorn said, tugging at his beard. "So you were there?"

  "Aye," Solvi said, running his thumb over another line carved into the wood and frowning as he made his artistic assessment.

  "And someone else who was there could attest to that? Someone with a better memory of last night than me?" he asked, not at all embarrassed to admit to the fault in his own recollection.

  "I am, as you know, less inclined to socialize with others than even you," Solvi said.

  "I have noticed that, yes," Thorbjorn said. I heard Loke stifle a snicker and shot him a quelling glare.

  "But the occasion demanded some form of salute, so I was there in the mead hall
with the others, although it's not my natural place." His eyes were still on his work, and he finally chose the place to set his chisel and began tapping away at it with the hammer. "I downed a mug of beer among my fellow travelers, yes, but it was more among them than with them."

  "So no one saw you?" Thorbjorn asked.

  Solvi kept tapping at his chisel for a moment, not looking up at us or answering. When he finished, he blew the wood dust off the sculpture to assess this new bit of work, and only when he was satisfied with that did he speak. "I saw Roarr, briefly," Solvi said. "But I'll accept you might not accept his vouching for anyone."

  "Roarr is a free man with all legal rights and responsibilities intact," Thorbjorn said. "The council ruled so."

  "This is a legal matter?" Solvi asked, finally looking up at Thorbjorn.

  "We're still trying to determine that," I said.

  Solvi didn't respond, and I wasn't sure if he had even heard me. But then he turned back to the sculpture and raised his chisel and hammer again. "Nora Torfudottir served me my beer."

  "Then you were there," Thorbjorn said with an air of finality. "I am sorry I didn't remember seeing you."

  "You saw many others," Solvi said diplomatically. "Why does it matter where I was last night?"

  "Do you know Garrett Nelsen?" I asked.

  "Garrett Nelsen," he repeated, then lapsed into silence as if consulting some mental contacts list.

  "This is your work, right?" I asked, thrusting the troll out towards him. He looked up at it with mild surprise.

  "Yes, that's mine," he said. "Where did you get it?"

  "Is this your mark?" I asked, turning the statue over to show him the spiralling logo on the bottom. He leaned forward on his bench to take a closer look.

  "I've never had any need for a mark," he said. "Everyone knows my work. Perhaps someone else added that."

  "Garrett, maybe," Loke said to me. But I wasn't so sure. The whirlpool pattern looked like it moved. Not so much on the troll's foot, but definitely on the plaque in the store.

  "We should've taken pictures at the art shop," I said back to him, but then turned to Solvi. "Pieces like this are on sale all over the North Shore. Did you know that? I'm certain they are all yours."