“Well. I suppose if you have a legitimate reason for using the library,” he began, mustache twitching, “I’ll have to allow it. But,” he finished, a note of stern authority entering his voice, “the candles must remain outside—only lamps will be permitted near the books.”
Hjerald coughed. “Ahhuhuhuwhataprickhuhuh.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing,” said Hjerald.
Obediently, they left the candles at the desk, then attacked the card catalogue, then spread out among the stacks looking for anything even remotely related to the madness outside. After an hour, the small research group gathered their finds at the broad mahogany table in the center of the room.
“We’ve got to be out of our minds,” said Shingo, “to even consider that any of this stuff has anything to do with what’s been going on.”
Meredith had to admit, looking at the pile of books, she felt a little stupid herself. It was a fine selection, and would have been the basis for a good syllabus in one of Michael’s courses, or at the least, several weeks of interesting reading.
Fuji’s pile was the one with the most treasure; it was her library, after all. She found early bound copies of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as the Icelandic Volsungasaga and several copies of both Eddas in editions ranging from recent paperbacks, all the way back to illuminated texts which predated Columbus.
June had amassed a similar pile, having located scholarly and critical texts relating to the Eddas in both Swedish and English, also in volumes produced over the course of centuries.
Shingo took a more generalized tack, digging out copies of Hamilton’s Mythology, as well as about twenty books by and about Joseph Campbell, who specialized in myth and archetype regardless of cultural basis, and was probably the closest contemporary example of the kind of scholar Snorri Sturluson was.
Meredith screened through the periodical database, locating contemporary scholarly writings on the Eddas, the Nibelung, and Norse mythology. Several times, she came across a reference to or work by Michael, and tried not to wince.
Hjerald found several books which featured children’s versions of The Ring and general Icelandic and Scandinavian myths, a hardcover copy in German of several issues from the comic book series Thor, and a copy of Walt Disney’s version of Peter and the Wolf.
“Peter and the Wolf?” asked Fuji.
“Hey,” said Hjerald. “I loved that movie.”
“Give me a break,” said Shingo.
“Earl,” said June admonishingly, “it is often in the children’s stories that the germs of truth may be preserved, for they still care about them, telling and retelling and passing them on, when the adults have moved on to other things.”
“Sorry, Pop. Sorry,” he said, turning to Hjerald. “I didn’t mean to make fun of you in front of the adults.”
“That’s okay,” said Hjerald. “Hey, wait a minute …”
Meredith looked around the room, and suddenly realized that they were there in support of her as much as to look up mythological references—not to mention that it gave them all something productive to do. “Well, where do we start?”
“Hagen,” said June. “Hagen and Siegfried.”
“I’ve got that,” said Fuji, reaching for a 19th-century British textbook on the Nibelung titled ‘Song of the Nibelungs: A New Study.’ “It’s somewhat dry, but it has a few concise summations of the story.
“The Nibelung itself is a treasure possessed by the hero, Siegfried, and is actually rather incidental to the narrative. The only significant involvement it has is in that it’s stolen from Siegfried by Hagen, who dumps it into the Rhine to hide it. Of course, Hagen’s plan is to eventually recover the treasure—but before he can do that …”
“He’s killed, just because he’s an evil sonnuva bitch,” said Hjerald.
“That’s right,” said Fuji. “How did you know?”
“That’s how all the good stories go,” retorted Hjerald. “That’s just how things work.”
“Ah, Weird Harold,” said June, “you have a good heart.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“The reason he was killed,” Fuji continued, nodding to Hjerald, “was for his evil deeds—particularly the murder of Siegfried.”
Hearing this, Meredith couldn’t suppress a shudder. Shingo edged his chair closer and put a reassuring hand on her knee.
“The treasure was lost, since Hagen never told anyone where it was prior to his own death.”
“How was it that Siegfried and Hagen came together in the first place?” asked June.
“I’ve got that one here,” said Hjerald. “All of these stories were pretty romanticized—as a matter of fact, they only really existed as oral tradition for several centuries, before they were written down and mixed around with other legends.”
“Okay,” Meredith said. “That explains how the Swedish, Norse, and Icelandic stories all got combined and compiled.”
“Bingo. The original historical events on which the Nibelung stories are based took place around the fifth century, when Attila the Hun was tromping around Europe kicking the snot out of everybody. Four or five centuries later, the tales got packaged up with the Elder Edda, and then got shuffled around again by Snorri Sturluson a few hundred years after that.
“There’s a lot of fluff, but the whole thing revolves around a woman named Kriemhild, who is the sister of Gunther, the King of the Burgundians—you know, those guys Attila beat the snot out of.”
They all nodded supportively—June and Fuji in surprise as much as support. Meredith thought the realization that there was an honest-to-God researcher who could accurately distill and convey information somewhere inside Weird Harold was a revelation on par with planes turning into dragons.
“Anyway, Siegfried has the hots for Kriemhild, right? So they get married. Now, Gunther, the King, has his eye on a woman named Brunhild who is a princess from Iceland—she’s probably the one who inspired the term ‘Ice Princess.’”
“Why do you say that?” asked Shingo.
“Because, she was one mean-ass chick—sort of a female Lancelot-type, who was pretty much as good as they got at battle. It was declared that only he who bested her in deeds of skill and strength could win the right to woo her.”
Meredith couldn’t help giggling. “Woo her, Hjerald?”
“Yeah, woo. Now Gunther sets out to do these things, and as Siegfried was basically the same kind of warrior as Brunhild, y’know, like Lancelot …”
“… But male?” put in June. Even Fuji cracked a smile at that.
“Yeah … No. You know what I mean. So Siegfried and Gunther, friends and allies, go to Brunhild, and, um … Well, basically, they cheat. Siegfried uses a magic cloak to turn invisible, and he helps Gunther defeat Brunhild in the three tests she demanded he face. They get married, and she goes to Worms to live with the King.”
“Worms?” asked Fuji.
“Sorry. That’s the name of the place on the Rhine where his court was.”
“Hm,” grumbled Shingo. “So much for chivalry, huh?”
“Oh, it comes around to bite them in the ass,” said Hjerald. “Brunhild figures out she was tricked, and that it was really Siegfried who deserved to win her, not Gunther. This causes a lot of strife at Gunther’s court, and one of his henchmen kills Siegfried.”
“Hagen.”
“Right. At that point, Brunhild disappears, and the rest of the story is about Kriemhild’s revenge, which is handled mostly by her second husband—Attila—who …”
“… kicks the snot out of Burgundy,” said June. “That’s a terrific story, Harold.” He must’ve been impressed—he forgot his usual politely added ‘Weird.’
“So,” said Shingo, “someone playing Sigfried’s been killed by a man who believes he is Hagen. What should we be looking into next? What about this festival, the thing in Bayreuth?”
“From what I understand,” said Hjerald, checking the clippings pulled from his omnipresent
, overstuffed satchel, “it involves a performance of Richard Wagner’s four-part opera, ‘The Ring of the Nibelung.’”
“That may be the understatement of the day,” Meredith said, smiling. “I have some clippings here from the periodicals, but I can tell you about it off of the top of my head just as easily. Basically, it’s the Wagner festival—Bayreuth revolved around him like a moon—and they built an immense opera house there just for performances of his work, but particularly for the Ring Cycle. The Festival has existed for decades, and is one of the big high society gatherings in Germany, maybe even all of Europe. Think Oscar night with operas. Michael had always asked me about going with him—I never did—but as far as I know, he went several times, and enjoyed them greatly. I’ve never given the festival another thought until Hjerald told me about him being murdered there on Monday.”
“How are the performers chosen for the festival?” asked June.
“You’ve heard the joke about how you get to Carnegie Hall?” Meredith said. “Well, it takes a far sight more than that just to attend the festival at Bayreuth, much less perform. You have to be world-class, just to get an audition. Caruso class; Pavarotti class. It’s strictly elite at the Bayreuth festival. He may be a murderer, and he may be crazy, but I’ll say this—whoever Hagen is, I’ll bet he has a beautiful voice.”
Hjerald began tapping his pencil on the table, a confused expression on his face. “But, Reedy,” he began, “I’m a little confused. How is it that a professor of Ancient Literature ended up singing one of the lead roles in the most exclusive opera performance on the planet?”
It hit Meredith with the force of a thunderbolt, it was so obvious a question, and so glaring a contradiction. Everyone else got it at the same time she did, and looked at Hjerald with a mixture of awe and utter confusion.
“What?” said Hjerald. “I just thought …”
“And I wasn’t thinking, Hjerald,” said Meredith. “I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me.” A sudden thought leapt to mind. “Is it possible that the reports were wrong? That it was a different Michael Langbein?”
“Mmm. I’ll check.” He rooted around in his bag for a moment, then pulled out the wire service report. “… Michael Langbein was an associate Professor of Literature at the University of Vienna, where on investigation …”
“Let me see.”
There was a photo with the report. There was no mistaking him—Meredith was the one who had taken the photo, years earlier.
She shook her head, still rolling Hjerald’s insight over and over in her mind. “I don’t understand—he shouldn’t have even been on that stage.”
“‘Usurped the stage’ is how it describes the situation before the fax starts coming and going,” said Hjerald, peering closely at the yellowing sheet, “so apparently, neither of them was supposed to be there. It also says … Reedy, did you know he was fired?”
Meredith’s face creased with a frown as she reached for the paper. “No, I had no idea. But,” she continued, scanning the fax, “they were apparently colleagues … No, wait. Hagen—I mean Galen—was his boss at the University. I wonder if that had something to do with the conflict in Bayreuth.”
“Aw, gee,” Hjerald said, visibly deflating. “You really think so?”
“It’s perhaps part of it,” Fuji said supportively, “but it’s more likely that they were fighting over a magical talisman—the sword, perhaps.”
“Good idea,” Hjerald said, brightening. “I’ll make a note.”
“I wonder,” Meredith began, still examining the fax, “if there isn’t a connection to the University itself. Does it make sense that two professors, one a Rector, no less, would suddenly decide to take over the most prestigious festival in Europe? It may be that we should look to Vienna for answers, and not merely Bayreuth.”
“That sounds like a good angle to pursue—a very strong one, in fact,” said June.
“I’ll get on it as soon as I can,” said Hjerald. “I’d’ve already done it, if the phones weren’t out.”
“So what now?” asked Shingo, looking around at their assorted findings. “Do we start looking for Attila the Hun?”
“Why not?” Meredith said. “That’s as good a start as any.”
“I respectfully disagree, Meredith,” said June apologetically, “and I’ll tell you why—events of the past few days may have coincided with a reenactment of elements of The Song of the Nibelungs, but the overall effects have progressed far past the killing of your stepfather, or a search for a lost treasure. I think we need to look more deeply, at the broader scope of the myths. I think what may be occurring is far worse than any of us could have imagined.”
“What are you saying, June?”
Slowly, he looked at Fuji, then to Hjerald, Shingo, and Meredith. She suspected they each had the same thing in mind, but no one was willing to commit it to speech.
Finally June, solemnly, spoke. “Ragnarok.”
“The Twilight of the Gods? Really? You can’t really think so, June.”
As if in answer, Fuji began reading from one of the older books on the table. “There are many things that must come to pass before the onset of Ragnarok. First, comes the Fimbulvetr, the ‘Terrible Winter’, then, a great wolf will swallow the sun, bringing fear and terror to the hearts of men. Not long after, another wolf will seize the moon, devouring it. The stars will disappear from heaven, and the whole of the earth will tremble and shake; trees will be uprooted, mountains will shatter, oceans flood the valleys, and all the bonds forged in heaven, hell, and earth will be loosened, freeing the ravagers upon the earth.
“First will come the wolf, Fenrir; and the Midgard Serpent, roiling the seas, thrashing about in a terrible fury in its attempts to come to the shores of the world …”
Meredith felt a chill at this, remembering her dream.
“Look,” said Shingo, “let’s get a grip, here. Wolves? The Midgard Serpent? That seems a little farfetched a direction to be taking this story.”
“It’s not a story anymore,” said Hjerald to no one in particular. “It’s what he said,” nodding at June. “The Twilight of the Gods.”
“Uh huh.”
“What religion do you believe in, Shingo?”
“Well,” he said, looking a bit abashedly at his parents, “I don’t really go in for that too much, but I guess I’d say I’m Christian.”
“Okay,” said Hjerald. “Then you believe that the Bible is a historical record, and not just myth, or allegory, or metaphor?”
“Sure.”
“Do you believe in the prophecies about the end of the world, God’s vengeance, all that?”
“Basically—yes, I guess I do.”
“All right then,” said Hjerald, hefting a bound copy of both Eddas, “then who’s to say this isn’t a history as well, or that its predictions of Ragnarok aren’t as likely to happen as your Christian apocalypse?”
“I’m not saying it’s impossible,” countered Shingo defensively, “I just think it’s all unlikely to the point of impossibility.”
“As unlikely as a jetliner turning into a dragon and consuming all of the passengers?”
“Ah … Well, uh …” said Shingo.
While they argued the relative merits of the End of the World, Meredith had been looking over the book that Fuji had been reading, and the descriptions of the events of Ragnarok, when something caught her eye. “Fuji, you missed almost an entire page, here.”
“Well, I thought the larger, generalized events would be the most relevant ones.”
“Maybe,” said Shingo, “but remember—Hjerald started all this with the theory that a single murder was the fulcrum. That’s about as specific and non-generalized as you get.”
“Shush, everyone,” Meredith said. “Listen to this:
“Brothers will fight
and kill each other,
siblings
do incest;
men will know misery,
adulteries be multiplied,
an axe-age, a sword age,
shields will be cloven
a wind-age, a wolf-age,
before the world’s ruin …”
She stopped, gasping, as a sharp pain seared her leg; Shingo, startled, pulled away his hand. Where he had been gripping Meredith, five rivulets of blood began winding down her thigh. No one noticed the surprised look on her face, though, or the look of shock and surprise she threw at Shingo, because Fuji had fallen to the floor in a dead faint.
Everything got dropped as they rushed around the table to her aid. June, sitting next to her, reached her first, and with Hjerald’s help lifted her to a couch where they could lay her down.
Shingo stood back, mute; Meredith ran to the door and yelled at Bristol to bring Delna and a pitcher of water. By the time the librarian and Mrs. Beecroft entered the room with the water and several blankets, Fujiko was awake and laughing, if a bit pale.
“Please, please—do not be making such a fuss,” Fuji said. “I am going to be all right.”
“You fell out of your chair,” June admonished gently. “Let us make certain you’ll be fine before you get up.”
“Here, duck,” said Delna, wrapping a blanket around Fuji’s waist. “Let’s get you warmed up, then I’ll fetch some ginger lemonade, warm you right up.”
“Really,” said Bristol, clucking his tongue. “We shouldn’t have lemonade, or this pitcher of water, for that matter, anywhere near these books. I must insist …”
“Oh, bugger off,” said Hjerald.
“Well,” Bristol sniffed, backing out the door. “Well.”
“Weird Harold,” June began, “I really wish …”
“I know, I know,” said Hjerald. “Pardon my language.”
“That’s not what I was going to say,” June said, smiling. “I was going to say that I really wish we had hired you as our librarian instead of him.”
“Gee, thanks,” Hjerald said, beaming.
Fuji sat up and waved off all of their ministrations. “I’ll be fine, really. Just a bit light-headed is all. We ought to be getting back to the books …”
Mythworld: Invisible Moon Page 6
