Odin's Murder (16 page)

“No, of course not. But if it’s not a known variant, like if there is a major particular detail that is very different, you could trace the source.”

“So what’s the point?” I take the stairs two at a time after him.

“Faye’s father unearthed that poem from a ship burial four years ago. This book, by Johann Vangarde? It was published nearly a hundred years before that.”

“So ask Anders about it.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a problem with that.”

“What?” Pulling information out of this kid is harder than getting extra bread in a chow line. And he dogged me for holding back info?

“I need to talk to my sister, first.” He’s reaching for his phone, but I stop him.

“You can talk to her tomorrow, man. Let it be for tonight.”

He sighs, nods, but doesn’t put the phone down.

“I may have gotten some local folklore on the crow stuff, tonight,” I say, and it works, he puts the cell in his pocket.

“
You’ve
been in the library?”

“Hell, no. I was talking to this woman who works here, in the kitchen. She knows Sonja’s mother.”

“She say where Sonja is?” When I shake my head, he asks, “What were you doing in the kitchen?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Maybe it is,” he challenges. “Maybe you need to stop keeping secrets. Why were you in the kitchen?”

I clench my teeth, breathe in. “I’ve been working off my fight with Marcus.”

“Doing dishes? That explains why your shoes are soaked every night when you come in. Okay, so you met this woman—”

“Constance. The cook. She’s part Native American.”

“Why didn’t you tell us you were punished for the fight?” he asks. I don’t answer, and he eventually asks, “So what did she say?”

“Tyrell, Erikssen, curfew.” Jeremy, my personal warden, calls from the dormitory steps. He needs to find a new project. One other than me.

“Come on, I’ll tell you inside,” I tell Julian, pushing past College Boy without meeting his eyes.

16.

Misbehavior

I give up on sleep sometime after 3 am, and shove the tangled sheets off my restless legs. My pillow is a mangled lump, smeared with yesterday’s mascara. Between crying over my idiot brother’s stupid mouth and doing my damnedest not to dream, I’ve slept maybe an hour.

The mirror isn’t kind this morning, either. I give it the finger and notice my nail is chipped. I find a file and my brightest red polish,
Cardinal Rhapsody
. If Julian wants to call me a slut, I’ll give him reason to.

Faye is already gone when I get out of the shower. A note on the desk says she is at the library and will meet me at the study room. I’d faked sleep when she’d come in last night, all glowing smiles and dancing in her boots. She’d reached for her phone twice, changed her mind and set it down. I’d almost ‘woken up’ to ask her if the performing arts cutie with the gingery hair was the one to walk her home.

I lace up my most outrageous sandals, tug down the hem of my shortest skirt, and smooth a flyaway wisp of hair into my ponytail before walking out the door, five dollar bill in my hand for the fanciest coffee I can buy. Extra caramel, too, please.

Faye and I aren’t the only ones up and out this early. Zoe and Danielle sit near the fountain. Closer to the dining hall, Ethan’s got his camera out. More than once, his lens focuses in my direction. I pretend not to notice. “How was Julian this morning?” I ask him when he slides into the line behind me at the coffee kiosk. “Still pissed off?”

“No idea.” He packs his camera away. I’m glad. I’ve forgotten my sunglasses and I don’t want any photographic evidence of my bloodshot eyes. “He was already gone when I woke up. He had some kind of idea rolling around in his head last night, about Anders’ book.” He sips from his own cup. There’s no lid; he drinks it black. “He probably went to the library the second someone unlocked the door.”

“Faye was going there, too.” We enter the dining hall, heading straight for the donuts. “Something was eating his brain last night. Probably why he was such a jerk. I hope he doesn’t make her cry again.”

He laughs. “I think they’ll be okay.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Faye’s not you, wrapped up in vanity.”

“So now I’m a slut and vain, too.”

“I never called you a slut. Trust me. I like the look.” His eyes roam my body, head to toe. “I appreciate you wanting to look that hot.”

Over his perverted shoulder I see Jeremy waving at me from a table. I fight a sigh, force a smile on my face and wave. Ethan looks over his shoulder and scowls.

“See you in group,” I say, powdered sugar-sweet. That’s what he gets for calling me vain. Even if he did say I was hot.

*

“I texted him twice,” I tell Faye, with a shrug, though I’m not surprised that Julian hasn’t texted back. My messages weren’t particularly nice. My brother never showed up to study group, which was fine by me. I didn’t even forge his name on Zoe’s sign in sheet; he could come up with his own excuses. I check the time on my phone again. Professor A. is usually late, but my brother never is, and class starts in one minute. “Did either of you see him at lunch?”

Ethan shakes his head.

Faye says, “I saw him in the reference section this morning. He was pretty caught up in what he was looking up. I left the library before he did.”

“He goes on knowledge binges sometimes,” I tell her. “Like he gets all manic about it. Practically inhaling information. You should have seen him the week before we took the SAT’s.”

“Good afternoon, class.” Professor Anders drops a stack of papers and books on his desk. I swing around so I’m facing forward, and the rest of the class does the same. Julian’s empty seat next to me has me drumming my fingernails on my desk, but if he gets in trouble for being absent, that’s his problem. “Sorry I’m late.” Dr. A waves a bandaged hand in the air. “The bookshelf in my office collapsed this morning, but all is well. No books were harmed.”

The class laughs politely as he writes the words ‘Oral History’ on the whiteboard with a green marker.

Someone behind me snorts. “See that, Memory?” he whispers. “He’s talking about you!”

I turn around and glare at Marcus. “Grow up, asshole."

“Today we will discuss how folklore comes about,” Dr A. continues. “How a seed of truth grows into an accepted mythology.”

“Like an urban legend?” Danielle asks.

“In modern terms, yes, exactly. Anyone have an example of one?”

“I’m not sure if this counts but my mother always told me if I swim after eating I would get a cramp and drown,” a boy in the back says.

The class laughs but most of us nod.

“Perfect example. That’s what we call a ‘wives tale’.”

“I heard that if you take LSD more than seven times you can be declared mentally insane.”

We all glance at the girl who says this. Given her colorful appearance, I suspect she’s asking for personal reasons.

“That one is also false.” The teacher smirks. “The literature and legends surrounding drug use is an excellent study in propaganda on both sides, from the counter-culture that encourages use, to the prevention groups that hope to prohibit.”

The windows in the room open horizontal
ly
. Three black birds sit on one, peering into the room. They touch beaks on occasion, as if discussing the professor’s lecture amongst themselves. I think back, flip through memories, but spoken words don’t embed like images.

“Hey, didn’t Faye say she had five—” I whisper over my shoulder, before I remember that Julian’s seat is empty, but two more join the three on the ledge. They are small, with shorter beaks, Southern Crows, native to this area.

A light wind eddies into the classroom, a premonition of a summer thunderstorm. I hope it lasts long enough to take some of the sweaty heat out of the air. I lift my ponytail off my neck with hands, and my spine pops, muscles still stiff with the lack of sleep last night.

“Ooh, yeah,” the voice from behind me cuts under the class discussion. “Arch your back like that, just a little more.”

A crash of noise stops the lecture, the hollow bang of a hand meeting a metal desk top. The entire class turns to look in Ethan’s direction. His hand is in a rigid fist, the tips of his ears red. He’s staring at Marcus with murder in his eyes.

Dr. Anders turns, frowning, and eyeballs Ethan.

“Oh, pardon me!” Faye’s voice is bright, artificial. She shifts her chair, a delicate scratch on the floor, nothing like the noise still bouncing around the silent room. “I have a question. About what you said earlier, about phrases and words in common usage?”

“Yes?” The professor is scanning the room.

“How long can an idiom or concept survive? Like, passed down?”

“Can you be specific?” He looks to Marcus, then back to Ethan, whose lips are moving in a silent whisper, like he is praying. Counting, maybe?

“In
The Origins of Appalachian Folktales
, Johann Vangarde refers to Odin as the ‘Rune-smith,’ implying that the god made them, not just gained their meaning. There are only two other places that I have seen that particular phrase; one was published six years ago, and seems to rely
heavily
on Vangarde’s work—”

Dr. Anders’ eyes narrow at Faye.

“—and the other is on a stone from the mid-ninth century, excavated in June of last year.”

“Ah. Well, I doubt that you have managed to read
every
treatise on Norse runes, Miss Jarvi, but your question is valid. You’re asking how long can a word or idiom stay in common usage?”

My roommate’s mouth pouts tight, but she nods. I have no idea what she’s babbling about, but it’s working. Ethan’s fingers are uncurling from his fists, and the class and the teacher are no longer eyeing him.

“Let’s look at Shakespeare,” Dr. A. continues. “In Othello, written over four hundred years ago, Iago says ‘jealousy is a green-eyed monster.’ We still use the phrase ‘green with envy’ today.”

“But Shakespeare is still in print, and has been performed this whole time. How is that an oral tradition?” Faye counters.

“Another issue you have to consider is independent re-invention. Take Pascal’s Triangle. Any of you geniuses here good at math, too?”

Several hands wave.

“Binomial co-efficients,” Danielle says with a smirk. Know-it-all.

“In Iran, it’s called Khayyam’s Triangle,” continues our teacher, ‘and was postulated five centuries before Pascal. And in China, Yang Hui’s Triangle. All independent observations of the same principle.”

“But that’s not—” Faye fidgets in her seat. The crows at the window rustle in agitation.

“Miss Jarvi, you obviously have an agenda here. And while I am very interested in your question, this is not the place for personal postulations. Come by my office when I’m not in class, I’d love to discuss this more with you.” Dr. Anders smiles at her.

“It’s not a personal postulation!” She stands. “There are several papers written on the uniqueness of—”

“Sit down, Faye,” the professor says. He’s not smiling anymore. The rest of the class watches their argument, mesmerized.

“How can you—”

“You are disrupting my class, Miss Jarvi. Another word and I’ll ask you to leave.”

Faye shrinks into her seat, red faced, looking too young and too small to be in this classroom. She says nothing more through the lecture.

After class I gather my things and follow Ethan and Danielle into the hallway. We wait by the staircase for Faye, but she rushes down the stairs, her chin jutted out in anger.

“What’s her problem?” Danielle asks. “She acts like she’s never gotten the smack-down by a teacher before.”

“Probably hasn’t,” I say. “Home-schooled.”

“That explains a lot,” she says. “So what did your brother want with the dean?” She smiles at my confusion. “I saw him at the library. He was asking at the front desk where the office of the Dean of Arts and Humanities was.”

Marcus avoids Ethan, walking down the hall, rather than taking the stairs where we’re loitering.

“What time was this?” I ask Danielle.

“Maybe eleven? Before lunch.”

“Great. So he’s interviewing professors without us?
And
he hasn’t had anything to eat since last night, and the dining hall doesn’t open until five—”

“You’re not his mother, Memory,” Ethan says when I check my phone again.

“Shut up.”

*

I don’t make it to dinner either. At five-thirty Zoe rushes into my room and says I need to go to Dr. Anders’ office. Immediately. I can tell by the wary look in her eye something is wrong, but when I press she shakes her head, and says Dr. A will tell me.

“He didn’t tell you anything?” I ask, when she tries to change the subject to her college sorority function.

“I’m sure everything is okay.” She gives me a sympathetic smile. I hope she’ll leave me at the door but instead she follows me up the stairs to the office. Dr. Anders’ door is open when I arrive, but his back is to us. He’s staring at the books on his shelves. There’s still a void left by the book he loaned me.

“Sir?” Zoe raps one knuckle on the door frame.

“Ah, yes.” He turns, makes a hand gesture that waves me in and dismisses his assistant at the same time. “Thank you for coming. I’ve just been informed that Julian has been taken off campus to the hospital. Apparently, he suffered a bee sting and had an allergic reaction.”

“Did he use his Epi-pen?” I ask. The bird behind the desk chirps and flaps its wings. It’s different from the one the other day. Bigger, with dark amber eyes.

“Ah, yes, there was mention of that. A very good thing, too. But they’ll need to keep him overnight for observation.”

I nod. “They usually do. Let me get my bag and someone can drive me over.”

He smiles but shakes his head. “Things are under control, Miss Erikssen. The school has already contacted your parents and they are aware of the situation.”

“How did you get a hold of them? They’re on a retreat.”

“Apparently, it took a while.” He makes a wry face. “All-terrain bicycles were used.”

“I should be there,” I insist.