The Book of Lamps and Banners

by Elizabeth Hand

  “Hej hej!”

  They spoke in Swedish, Quinn occasionally fumbling over a word. I wondered if his accent gave him away as American and hoped he could pass for a Brit or Canadian. With gray stubble hiding his facial scars and the black watch cap pulled low on his forehead, he might have been a fisherman or carpenter. I assumed there were plenty of both on the island.

  “Tack.” He rapped his knuckles on the counter and said something to the girl in a low voice. She laughed and handed him two metal room keys.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked as we climbed the stairs to the second floor.

  “I told her if my wife comes looking for me, I’m waiting for her in our room with a special treat.”

  “Who comes here to have a threesome?”

  “Hey, we might get lucky.”

  Our room was in the front of the building. It was small but clean, and so warm I immediately peeled off my leather jacket. The double bed had two duvets on it, neatly folded down. There was a Formica-topped table and Ikea chair, a single bedside table with an ancient clock radio, a Magnavox TV on a rickety stand, and a radiator too hot to touch.

  Quinn tossed his backpack onto the bed and went into the bathroom. I opened the window and stared out at the slag heap, close enough I could have lobbed the TV at it.

  “At least we have a view,” I said as Quinn emerged from the bathroom, holding two glass tumblers. He filled each with a few inches of whiskey and handed one to me.

  “Skål.”

  “Skål.”

  The whiskey tasted good. I finished it and reached for the bottle. Quinn put his hand around mine. “Not now. We need to eat. You need to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. You’ve snorted your body weight in speed over the last week. C’mon, we’ll grab something, then come back.”

  He turned my hand over, staring at the backs of my fingers, the bones sticking up like they’d puncture the skin if pressed too hard. He shook his head and gazed at me in concern. “You’re a fucking mess, you know that?”

  The only restaurant in town was called Viking Aztec Pizza and Tex Mex. Inside, the walls sported a sombrero, a plastic two-headed ax, faded tourist posters with aerial shots of Norderby, windsurfers, a black ram. Half a dozen people sat in the plastic booths. After turning to give us a cursory glance, they paid no attention to us.

  Quinn ordered a sausage pizza and red wine. The sausage was lamb and not bad. The pizza crust tasted like it had been extruded from a tube of foam insulation. The wine came in those miniature plastic bottles you get on a plane. I poured it into two plastic cups, then picked off the sausage from the pizza and ate it, leaving the rest to Quinn. He polished it off and went to get more wine.

  I stared at the poster beside our booth. A photo of a stone boat like the one on the Jötunn’s Egg album, and another photo of what looked like a very large gravestone with crude figures carved on it. None had any facial features to identify them as male or female, or even human.

  There were other symbols carved on the rock. Ships with upturned prows; snaky-looking creatures; a triskele of an animal with a long muzzle and prominent eyeteeth. A figure wearing a robe with a long, pointed hood, holding what might have been a scythe or a crescent moon. Beneath it was another figure, with a valknut inscribed upon its torso.

  Quinn returned with the wine.

  “What’s this?” I indicated the poster with the carvings. Quinn refilled our cups and pushed mine toward me.

  “Picture stones. You only find them in a very few places, mostly here and Gotland.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Something about Vikings. That’s a longship, and a dragon.” He reached to tap a line of circles on one of the ships. “Those are shields, so some kind of battle.”

  “So this is death.” I touched the mysterious hooded figure. “Like in The Seventh Seal. Didn’t Bergman live here?”

  “No, he lived on Fårö. And I don’t think that’s death.” He leaned over to examine the poster. “Nope. That’s a Valkyrie.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There’s a room in the museum that explains it.”

  “A Valkyrie?”

  “Yeah. See? That’s her drinking horn. She’s bringing it to the dead guy with the valknut—she’s taking him to Valhalla.”

  “I thought that was a scythe.”

  “No. Look, here’s another one—”

  He pointed to a figure I hadn’t noticed, larger and more detailed. The object it held was clearly not a scythe but a ram’s horn.

  “Wait.” I traced an invisible line from the drinking horn to the valknut. “Why is this here?”

  “It’s some Viking thing. You okay?” Quinn glanced at my plate and frowned. “Damn it, Cass, you need to eat something.”

  “I just did. The valknut—”

  “I told you all I know,” he broke in, exasperated. “It’s something about being chosen. Why does it matter?”

  I continued to stare at the poster. My head began to pound, precursor to the explosion of pain I’d felt when I looked at Ludus Mentis. I sank back and covered my eyes with my hands. “Can we go?”

  “Go? We just got here.”

  “I feel sick. And this place creeps me out.”

  “That’s the crank, Cass. But yeah, come on.”

  Outside, the cold air made me feel better. Once I’d pushed the image of the valknut and those carved figures from my mind, it was easy to believe that Quinn had nailed it. Too much crank, not enough food or sleep.

  There was no one in the office when we returned to Slagghögen. Propped up on the desk was a small card with a phone number for after hours. Presumably the receptionist slept somewhere on-site. I hoped it wasn’t in one of those shipping containers.

  I poked my head through the window where the girl had checked us in. A computer sat on a desk, along with a plastic rose in a Starbucks mug. On the wall was an old-fashioned mailbox, rows of pigeonholes with names taped beneath them. I jiggled the knob to the office door. It was locked.

  “What’re you doing?” Quinn asked. “She’s gone for the night.”

  “Curious who else is staying here.”

  “Doesn’t look like anyone.”

  I pointed at the mailboxes. Three had envelopes and magazines stuffed into them. “Someone’s here. Or there, maybe…”

  I stepped to the window and stared out at the hotel annex, each metal unit as welcoming as a prison cell. When we’d checked in, three of the units’ spotlights had been on. Now only one was lit.

  “Who cares?” said Quinn. “I’m going to bed.”

  When I heard his steps on the second-floor landing, I boosted myself through the office window, hopped onto the floor, and pulled a handful of envelopes from one of the pigeonholes.

  All were addressed to Ranim Elbaz. One had a return address at Refugees Welcome Stockholm. There was also a children’s magazine with a cartoon bear on its cover, and the latest issue of Damernas Värld, a women’s magazine.

  The other mail slots held similar items—official-looking envelopes from government agencies or refugee services, a few handwritten addresses postdated from Athens and Aleppo. I grabbed the women’s magazine, hopped back into the foyer, and went upstairs. Quinn was already in bed, his laptop in front of him.

  “Check this out.” I tossed the magazine onto a pillow.

  “Damernas Värld? You can’t even read that.”

  “Check out the name.”

  “Llorde?”

  “The address label!”

  “Ranim Elbaz. You know them?”

  “No. But it’s not a Swedish name. Some of the refugees must be staying there. I checked their mail downstairs—all the names sound Arabic.”

  “Wake up, Cass! There are refugees living here! We already knew that. Leave them alone. Last thing they need is you dicking with them.” He set aside the laptop and turned off his light. “Get some sleep.”

  There was no way that was goi
ng to happen anytime soon. I picked up the laptop and typed in Birdhouse’s name. I ignored his Wikipedia entry and his website and went straight to the online videos. There were more than I’d expected. Some were from his brief MTV heyday, before Nirvana and grunge pushed performers like him off a cliff.

  I focused on what came later—he’d done some recent shows in Helsinki and Stockholm in smaller venues. An American tour scheduled a few years earlier had been canceled due to poor advance sales. He’d made an appearance at a UKIP rally in Sheffield, and another in support of Brexit, where he shared the stage with Roger Daltrey and the lead singer of Iron Maiden. Both Birdhouse performances were shambolic, like watching your drunken dad sing an off-color song at a wedding.

  It was a different thing when I clicked on various cuts from an album that came out in 1991, Sheaf and Knife—a compilation of some of the more gruesome Child Ballads, from the nineteenth-century compendium of more than three hundred collected by Francis James Child.

  Birdhouse’s renditions of the ancient songs were straightforward and stark. No 1980s histrionics or drum machines; just Birdhouse’s reedy voice and a piano, sometimes a harp. His voice had started to go by then, but the occasional missed note and uneven delivery suited the archaic words and melodies. The result was eerie and unexpectedly powerful. More than once I felt the hairs on my neck stand up, and I finally had to close the laptop.

  Sheaf and Knife tanked, the wrong songs at the wrong time. It was Birdhouse’s final commercial album. Just five years later, Nick Cave would do much the same thing with his Murder Ballads, and make a big splash. I couldn’t blame Birdhouse for slinking off to the hinterlands to lick his wounds and raise sheep.

  As I put the laptop on the nightstand, Quinn turned over, growling, “For Christ’s sake, go to bed.”

  I got up, clenching my teeth, gathered the magazine I’d taken from downstairs, my room key and leather jacket, and split. Black energy buzzed inside my brain like a giant fly. I needed to discharge it, but doing so in the same room where Quinn slept wasn’t a good idea. I went downstairs and replaced the magazine where I’d found it. Then I went outside and walked to the back of the building, shivering as the wind sliced through me.

  There were no streetlamps here, just a single floodlight hanging from the eaves. All of the hotel windows were dark, and a few broken. A car rattled by, slowing as it maneuvered around potholes, gunned its engine, and roared off into the night. I kicked a chunk of asphalt and walked to the far corner of the lot, out of reach of the floodlight. The cold air burned my nostrils: particulate from the cement plant. I bet the cancer rates around here were impressive.

  I stopped to stare at the hotel’s annex. In the dark, it looked even more like a meat locker. The same solitary light shone outside a door on the second level. I shifted from foot to foot, pulled up my collar. Gray vapor misted the air every time I exhaled. I shoved my hands into my pockets, staring at the lunar stretch of rock dust and broken glass.

  Desolation flooded me, a ghostly aftershock from Ludus Mentis: the bone-deep memory of that October night on the Bowery. My twenty-third birthday. A broken streetlight, a car slowly driving up behind me in an empty alley. My ears still humming from the waves of feedback and jackhammer guitars back in CBs. It was cold. I was barefoot. There was shattered glass everywhere, empty syringes in the gutter.

  The car pulled up beside me and stopped. I thought somebody whispered my name, Cass, Cass. It was only much later I realized he must have been hissing Miss, miss.

  A knife. Glass bit my knees as I knelt in a vacant lot. My fingers clutched my abdomen as I staggered down the street, blood in my mouth, blood streaking my bare legs and feet. The cop who found me thought I was wearing striped tights. Afterward, always the same two questions from police, my father, friends.

  Why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you fight?

  They were the same two questions I never stopped asking myself.

  I glanced down, saw a shimmering crescent moon reflected in black water. But there was no moon, only a shard of glass from one of those broken windows. I picked it up and tossed it into the shadows. I began to pace, the crank a wire twisting behind my eyes.

  I needed to get out of here—not just here but every place I’d ever been, every place that reminded me of what I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t stay in Reykjavík with Quinn. I was being evicted from my apartment in New York. I could barely afford a return ticket back to the U.S., let alone airfare to visit Quinn in some unimaginable future. I shut my eyes and pictured blue Aegean water and a rocky islet where no one knew us, a refuge we could reach if only we had enough money.

  A door creaked. I looked up to see someone walk out onto the second story of the annex. A boy, thirteen or fourteen. He’d left the door open behind him, and I could see the glow cast by a computer screen and hear the ack ack of a video game.

  The boy leaned over the metal railing in front of the unit and gazed out at the street. The sleeves of his hoodie were pulled down so only his fingertips showed, but the hood was thrown back so I could see his face. Straight dark hair cut short, dark skin, a wistful expression at odds with his grim surroundings.

  From inside the apartment came a blast of artificial gunfire, followed by a groan. A moment later, a second, smaller boy poked his head outside and spoke to the first.

  “Okay,” the first boy said.

  The younger boy went back inside, closing the door behind him. The older remained where he was, leaning on the rail with his chin on his hands. The wind gusted and sent an empty beer can rolling loudly across the lot. I took a step back as the boy looked down.

  When he saw me, his eyes widened. I thought he might cry out. Instead he smiled, a child’s smile, and spread his fingers in a wave. I lifted my hand and did the same.

  Behind him the door opened again. A woman called out words I couldn’t understand with frightened urgency.

  The boy’s expression shifted to alarm. He turned and slipped inside. I walked back across the parking lot, thinking of how swiftly the boy’s expression had changed, as though he’d recognized me as someone to fear. Maybe I was.

  Chapter 43

  Very early the next morning, I untangled myself from Quinn. I staggered into the bathroom and retched, took a quick shower, did a bump, and stumbled back into the other room. My blinding headache subsided. I dressed and left Quinn still sleeping as I went downstairs. In the office, the girl with the Mohawk sat folding towels as she sang loudly and out of tune.

  “Oh! Hej hej.” She smiled and removed her earbuds. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Is there someplace I can get coffee?”

  “Oh sure.” She pointed to a table in the lobby. “I just made some this morning, help yourself. Or there’s a café at the harbor.”

  “This is fine, thanks.”

  She returned to her towels. I poured some coffee and sipped it, black, willing my hands to stop trembling as I gazed out the window. Cars drove past, sending up yellowish spume from the potholes. I finished the coffee and poured myself another cup, stepped to the side window to stare at the annex.

  “Are those shipping containers?”

  The girl plucked out her earbuds again. “Sorry?”

  “That building looks like it’s made of shipping containers.”

  “It is. The former owner, he won them in a bet. They used to be for visiting workers at the cement plant. Now we rent them out.”

  “Must be popular for honeymoons.”

  The girl laughed. “We don’t get too many lovers staying here.”

  “I saw someone up there last night. Kids.”

  “Yeah, there are some refugee families. Their house outside town burned down, they’re only here temporarily.”

  “I thought that was over a year ago. You’d think if someone firebombed your home, they wouldn’t put you in a meat locker.”

  The girl reddened. “It wasn’t a firebomb. It was an accident.”

  “That’s not what I read.”

&n
bsp; “No one has proved anything.” She began folding a towel with surprising vehemence. “I don’t know why they are here. We have no jobs on Kalkö. And Sweden has more refugees than anywhere in Europe, did you know that? The most, for a country of this size. Since I was born, there are twenty-five percent more Muslims here. The government pays for them—”

  She gestured at the stairs. “But I live here with my brothers because we can’t afford our own flat.”

  She gave me a challenging look. I just shrugged.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” I said. “Do you have a pen and a piece of paper?”

  She yanked open a drawer and produced a pen and a small pad of paper. “You can keep that.”

  I stuck them in my pocket, refilled my mug and poured coffee into a second one, adding a splash of milk and four spoonfuls of sugar for Quinn, and made my way back upstairs. Quinn was in the shower. I set down the coffee and sat cross-legged on the bed, pulled out pen and paper, and stared at the blank sheet.

  My nerves blazed like a lit fuse, the memory of symbols tumbling through the air in front of me, red and violet and indigo.

  Wavelet. Fourier transform. Svarlight. Valknut. Ludus Mentis. Mind game. Lamps and banners. It’s all code.

  I scribbled down the words and shut my eyes, trying to concentrate on just one of them.

  Valknut.

  Where had I seen it? Written in blood on Harold’s forehead, tattooed on Freya’s wrist, and Erik’s hand; carved onto an ancient Viking stone with figures of dead men and Valkyries.

  What did it mean? Something about being among the chosen. Valknut, Vikings, Valkyrie…

  I flashed to when I was in Reykjavík, searching for Quinn, and a bartender had spoken to me of Valkyries, quoting from an ancient saga.

  “We sisters weave our cloth with the entrails of men, their severed heads: corpse carriers, our bounty chosen from the bodies of the slain.”

  Someone else in Iceland had said much the same thing, a woman whose brother had just been murdered.

  “On all sides she gathers hordes of the dead, back bent to bear them homeward to Hell. Shield-maiden, skull-heavy.” That is you…