“The moon’ll be dark next weekend,” I said. “I wonder if we’ll hear from him then?”
“What’ll you bet?” Tor shook his head with a sigh. “Just my luck.”
Chapter 7
While I ate a late breakfast on Saturday, Tor went downstairs and brought back the nisse’s empty glass and the plate, also empty except for the apple core and a few bread crumbs. I gave Tor a quick kiss, just to see if I could smell brandy or apple on his breath, but he was innocent. Unless he’d sneaked down there in the middle of the night, someone—or something—else had eaten the food and drunk the alcohol. I suspected a big hung-over rat until I started to toss the core into the garbage. I noticed tiny toothmarks, flat ones, in a half-circle like a human would make, not like a rodent’s two front choppers at all. Tor watched me and grinned.
“You didn’t believe me, did you?” he said.
“About the nisse? I didn’t know whether to believe you or not.”
“Know something?” His smile reminded me of a shy schoolboy. “I don’t know whether to believe it, either.”
I reached up and kissed the dimple at the corner of his mouth.
“I’ve wanted to do that for days,” I said.
He laughed, grabbed me, and kissed me in return. He was in such a good mood that I decided I could finish clearing my conscience.
“The people we’re going to have dinner with?” I said. “They’re the ones I told about your being a shape-changer. I thought you should know, so you can play along with the joke if someone brings it up.”
“Okay, I’m glad you warned me. I’d have to answer honestly, anyway. I can’t lie about myself.”
“It’s never a good idea, yeah.”
“It goes beyond that. I just can’t.” He turned serious and let me go. “It’s an oath I took a long time ago. I cannot lie about myself if someone asks me a direct question.”
“That’s why you were willing to tell me so much that first night. The one where I took the part-time job, I mean.”
“I don’t know about being willing. I had to answer your questions. The runes desert a liar.”
“I keep forgetting how much the runes mean to you. It’s like a religion, isn’t it?”
“No. Religion is something you accept. The runes—you have to gain them. You fight for them. You don’t just take what some priest hands you.” His mouth twitched in a smile. “I’m really a barbarian, you know. Deep in my heart.”
Oh yeah sure! I thought, not that I said anything aloud. I couldn’t picture him in a helmet with horns.
When the time came to change for dinner, I went into my room to put on my one good skirt and my best black top, which was too low-cut for me to wear a bra. I still thought of the second bedroom as ‘my room’ because I’d have to sleep in it during the bjarki’s domination. As I was changing, I noticed the writing desk. The green lion had disappeared. In his place a man and a woman were having sex in a big tub of water. Each of them wore a crown. Rather than being erotic, the image made me feel deeply uneasy. I finished dressing in a hurry.
We’d made plans to meet Cynthia and her husband Jim, plus Brittany and my brother, at a family-style Chinese restaurant on Clement Street in San Francisco, near where Brittany was living. I figured we’d better take my car to avoid awkward questions about travelling by sorcery. As I drove over the Bay Bridge, Tor said nothing, just watched the traffic with a slight frown.
“Am I driving okay?” I said.
“What? Of course. Sorry. I’m just thinking about the rune cast. I can’t seem to make sense of it. It’s like there’s a piece missing from it.”
I would have asked more, but a black SUV swerved right in front of us. I pumped the brakes, turned the nose of the car, and just barely managed to avoid an accident. Horns honked, drivers swerved, my heart pounded. The SUV sped off without even flashing a signal.
“Shit!” Tor muttered. “Idiot drivers out tonight!”
“There sure are.” I took a deep breath and concentrated on driving. The irony struck me hard. I worried constantly about my disease, but here we could have both been killed by another driver’s careless moment.
When we reached the city and the first off-ramp from the bridge, traffic slowed way down. The cars around us began lane-hopping just as if it would do them some good. The luck of the shuffle brought us next to the black SUV in the lane on our passenger side. Tor glanced over and shook his head.
“She should know better,” he said. “A middle-aged woman, no less!”
The traffic closed up and began to crawl, which gave me time for a safe look at the offending driver.
“That’s not a woman,” I said. “It’s a guy, but I can’t really see him clearly.”
The driver glanced our way and hit the gas. The SUV swerved again and cut across two lanes in a blare of outraged horns. For a brief second it disappeared so completely that I thought it had gone over the edge of the elevated roadway. It reappeared from behind an RV and turned onto the off-ramp. It sped out of sight as the traffic flow swept us onward and past.
“That’s a difficult minor illusion,” Tor said in his usual calm way. “Looking like someone else entirely. It must be our friend, whoever he is. Uncle Nils, probably.”
“Must have been. God, I hope he’s not going to dog us everywhere. That’s creepy!”
“Sure is.” Tor laughed under his breath. “When he jumped lanes to get off the freeway, I was hoping someone would hit him, but no such luck.”
“I wonder if he meant to make us hit him. This old Chevy would have taken a lot of damage, but that hulk he was driving would have barely felt it.”
“That occurred to me, too.”
I was expecting him to say more, but he merely stared out of the window, his mouth a little slack, his eyes distant, as if he were thinking about some deep subject. It occurred to me that he might be working some kind of magic, scrying for danger, maybe. I kept quiet rather than interrupt. Besides, I kept thinking about an ugly fact: I’d seen through the illusion without needing to draw it, without even half-trying. The talent Tor had pointed out was growing of its own accord in my mind, like one of those volunteer plants he’d spoken of during our night of illusions. Roses or deadly nightshade? Which would the talent turn out to be? I had no idea, and I was frightened.
We reached the restaurant without any further trouble. I even found a parking spot only two blocks away on a side street. As I locked up the car, I noticed Tor waving his hands at it. I waited till he’d finished.
“Was that a ward?” I said.
“Yes. I don’t want anyone tampering with the car. If the ward’s gone when we come back, I’ll know that another sorcerer messed with it.”
I gulped in audible terror. Tor caught my hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. I glanced around at the houses that lined the street in the usual San Francisco style, that is, set really close together and flush with the sidewalk. Most of them had lights in their front windows. Some even had their porchlights on.
“This neighborhood should be safe enough,” he said. “But keep your eyes open.”
We hurried back to the bright lights and traffic of Clement. Restaurants, produce markets with bins right out on the sidewalk, the occasional odd little store selling a combination of things like movie posters and computer parts, or shoes and kitchen utensils—the street always reminded me of pictures of Shanghai or Hong Kong. Cars choked the roadway. On the crowded sidewalk people strolled along or paused to look over a vendor’s supply of bitter melon and bok choy or to duck into a bakery for pork buns. Several people bumped into me, just by accident, and I took the chance to swallow a slurp of their élan. The near-accident had cost me energy.
Our restaurant was a silver building with a huge curved window jutting out from the second floor. When we went upstairs, the street noise vanished into the laughter and talk of several big parties. The hostess directed us toward the back. Cynthia and her husband Jim had already arrived and been seated at a big round fam
ily table.
“Brittany’s going to be late,” Cynthia said, grinning. “What do you bet?”
“I never bet on a sure thing,” I said.
When I introduced Tor, Jim stood up to shake hands with him. They were both about the same height, but Jim was portly where Tor was lean. Jim’s blond hairline had already decided to make a run for the back of his head, too, even though he was only in his twenties.
The two men had just sat down again when Brittany surprised us all by arriving on time. She and Roman walked in holding hands, the tip-off that she’d given him a better way to forget the war than mere drugs. She winked at me and Cynthia, then sat down while I introduced my brother to my boyfriend. They looked each other over carefully, but neither growled—a good start.
I hadn’t seen Ro looking so good in years. Although he was still too thin, his skin had a healthy undertone. His dark eyes looked clear, and he smiled at everyone. I almost let myself believe that he’d solved his problem, but I’d read too much about addiction to fool myself. Brittany had a long hard job ahead of her.
Once we’d all settled ourselves at the table, the waiter came over with pots of tea and menus. With that many people to choose dishes, and the waiter offering advice as well, it took us a while to come up with a reasonable dinner. Everyone was in a good mood, laughing, making jokes. Roman said very little, but he smiled a lot. I loved seeing him smile. Now and then he glanced at Brittany to reassure himself that she was still sitting next to him.
In the midst of the general chatter, I leaned over for a semi-private word with him.
“Ro? Is this going to work?”
He knew what I meant. “I sure hope so. I’ve been going to the group every day. There are other vets in it. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
“Good for you! I mean, god, you made it through Marine boot camp, didn’t you? You can do this.”
“Yeah, after that—piece of cake!”
I had to remind myself that it was too soon to hope.
Once we’d settled on the menu, Tor ordered a couple of large bottles of a Chinese dark beer for the party. He told the waiter to tally the beer separately and to make sure that he got the bill. Squarish liter bottles of beer and glasses arrived with a second waiter, who poured it round. The first waiter brought appetizers, then scurried off again.
For a few minutes everyone scarfed egg rolls and bits of pork rib and drank beer with only the occasional comment. The inevitable moment, however, arrived when Brittany turned her big blue eyes on Tor and said, “Maya told us you were a were-bear. Is that true?”
“Of course,” Tor said. “But only at the full moon.” He tipped back his head and roared with a growl and a chuff. Though he kept the volume way down, he sounded like a bear, not a guy pretending to be one.
Everyone laughed and toasted us with their beer glasses.
“Where did you meet Maya, anyway?” Jim asked. “At the zoo?”
“No, in Copenhagen on the docks,” Tor said. “She’d come down with her maid to greet her husband when he sailed into port. He was the captain of a whaling ship.”
“Tor!” I snapped. “You liar! When did I ever—”
“You don’t remember because it was in a past life, that’s all. Not our most recent ones, though. It must have been about a hundred and sixty years ago.”
More laughter and more beer toasts. Tor poured the last of the bottle into Cynthia’s glass, then signaled the waiter to bring two more.
“He was gone again in the spring,” Tor went on. “So we had an affair. It went on for a couple of years. I ended up having to face the husband in a duel, and he won. I wasn’t much of a shot with a pistol. I died on the field.”
“In her arms, I hope.” Jim was grinning at us both.
“No such luck,” Tor said. “She’d already run away with someone else.”
“I had not!” I burst out, then covered my surge of indignation with a laugh. “It was cold and rainy, that’s all, and I didn’t want to stand around in the mud and watch.”
“Worse yet!” Cynthia said. “You heartless creature!”
“Standing around in a corset and those awful heavy winter skirts was hard on a girl.” I laid a dramatic hand on my forehead. “I would have fainted at the sight of blood.”
Even the waiter was laughing by then. He uncapped one of the new bottles and began to pour around the table. I noticed Brittany, smiling, certainly, but at the same time she was considering Tor with an oddly curious intensity. Oh come on! I thought. It can’t be true. But somewhere in my mind I heard a woman weeping in huge sobs—no, I was the one weeping, wrapping my arms tight around my chest, and rocking back and forth like an abandoned child. The rain-soaked man who watched me smiled, a tight-lipped narrow-eyed smile of triumph.
“Maya?” Tor said. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry.” I shook my head to clear it and came back to the present. “Maybe it’s the beer.”
No one else had noticed my fugue state—I guess you’d call it that. The two waiters were bringing the food, a perfect distraction. Everyone was helping themselves and passing the dishes around. Cynthia and Brittany began discussing school, and I joined in. We needed to finalize our schedules for fall, because we liked to have one class in common every term. Jim and Tor talked mostly about cars, while Roman just watched, smiling at the noise and laughter.
The evening became a normal night out with friends, perfectly normal except I kept trying to remember our Danish names, kept seeing a view of a city where gas lamps burned on the street corners and horse-drawn cabs clopped by. I ended up drinking more beer to drown the memories, enough so that Tor had to drive us home.
Tor’s driving impressed me. He drove fast but well; he concentrated on the city traffic, took no risks but missed no opportunities, either. In my blurry state of mind I watched the lights zipping by us on the streets and thought of very little. Once we merged onto the entrance ramp for the Bay Bridge, the traffic slowed to a Saturday night crawl.
“Maya?” Tor said. “I’ve been thinking about that near accident. Well, if it really was accidental on his part.”
“Yeah?” I realized that I should have been keeping a watch for the black SUV. “Kind of scary, huh?”
“Look, let me get you a better car. I’m not trying to buy you. I just don’t want either of us to get mangled in a wreck.”
I disliked the idea of letting him spend that kind of money on me, but he had made a point I couldn’t ignore.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m not real keen on getting mangled, either. Something solid but not too expensive.”
“Anything solid will be expensive.” He sounded annoyed. “Cheap means a junker. I do know something about cars.”
“Okay, then, whatever you want.” Totally rude, Maya! I told myself. “I mean, thank you. I really am grateful. I’m just kind of muzzy from the beer. I guess I’m a cheap date.”
I glanced his way and saw him smile.
By the time we got back to the house, I’d sobered up, but the memories remained. I can’t lie, Tor had told me, if someone asks me a direct question. Jim had done that. In the stuffy living room Tor opened the west window to let in the night air. He flopped down on the sofa and patted the seat next to him. Instead, I sat down on the chair opposite.
“Tor,” I said. “That story you told, about Copenhagen and the duel. It can’t be true, can it?”
“Of course it’s true,” Tor said. “Remember the day you drew my portrait? I was wandering around, and then I saw your name card at the booth. I knew you had to be the person that the rune cast indicated, the one who could see through illusions, but I didn’t suspect who you actually were at first. I was wondering if you could help me with the illusions, nothing more. And then you handed me the finished drawing. Something clicked.” He paused, then made an odd gesture with one hand. “Wait! So that’s what—you gave me the drawing in a cardboard tube. I flipped it up like the pistol. And I recognized you. That’s why I cast that stupid spell
.”
Just as something had clicked for me in the restaurant. My stomach twisted, and my hands started shaking. I clasped them in my lap as if I could strangle the memories, but they insisted on staying alive.
“Tor, I swear it, I never ran off with anyone.”
“He told me you had. His second confirmed it. That’s why I let him shoot me.”
“They lied! You were the only man I wanted.”
“Then he was even more dishonorable than I thought.”
I nodded, got up, paced to the west window and looked out at the distant city. They say that San Francisco brings out the magic in people, that the city is itself a magnet if not for actual magic, then for strange happenings that border on magic. I had just felt that magic sweep me up and carry me far out on a dangerous sea.
“My mother talked about past lives all the time,” I said. “I thought she was just being weird. My crazy mother. Y’know?”
“No, she wasn’t.” He spoke softly, calmly. “The Buddhists know all kinds of things worth knowing.”
I turned around so I could see him, smiling at me, just a soft, almost melancholy smile. More memories rose in my mind, bitter ugly memories.
“In our last life,” Tor went on, “I don’t know where you were. I was reborn in 1913. I grew up remembering you. I looked for you all over Europe. It was the Thirties. Jobs were hard to find, but I did anything I could to keep moving, to keep looking. Washed dishes in restaurants, did farm work, loaded coal onto trains, anything so I could eat for a while and keep trying to find you.”
I stared open-mouthed. How could he remember? Why did I believe him?
“When the war with Germany came,” Tor said, “I managed to get home to Norway just ahead of their army. I got my hunting rifles out of my family’s attic and joined the Resistance. We ambushed Nazi supply trains. It was winter when we made the raid where I died. I don’t remember the details. They don’t much matter. I just remember watching my blood stain the snow while I was dying.” He hesitated briefly. “And I wondered where you were. I really did. I never thought of God or eternity, nothing like that. I wondered where you were.”
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