Nordic Nights (The Alix Thorssen Mysteries)

by Lise McClendon

I was ostensibly in charge of the ice-carving event but had delegated my authority to the chef of the Snow King resort, Dieter Moritz. Dieter was Swiss and had more experience in ice carving than all Wyomingites combined. I found him bundled up in a red knit cap and brown Carharts, helping adjust the tilt on a six-foot-tall chunk of ice. Grunts and groans from the four men finally resulted in a slight alteration of its lean. When Dieter saw me and came over, his round face was flushed.

  “Good day for ice.” Dieter’s breath made a cloud in front of him as he clapped his mittens together.

  “I heard the weather forecast,” I told him. “We’re due for a thaw on Saturday.”

  “One more day, that’s all we need. If we can make it to Sunday, it will be perfect.” Dieter pointed to the other slabs of ice standing upright around the square as if waiting for the pagans. I had the odd sensation of my nose hairs freezing up, collecting ice crystals, and rubbed the broken protuberance gingerly.

  “All are spoken for,” Dieter said proudly. “Had to twist a few arms. No one really wanted to be out here in zero weather for days on end.”

  “Thanks, Dieter. Do you know what they’re going to be carving?”

  Dieter shook his head. “We never tell. That is the fun of ice carving. You must see the form develop out of the formless ice, like a mermaid emerging from the sea.”

  “Hmmm, do you think anyone will be carving a mermaid?”

  Dieter laughed. “Only if they put some clothes on her. She will freeze her little tetons off out here today.”

  I smiled and shivered, feeling like a mermaid in January myself, despite being well clothed. Of the eight blocks of ice, seven were now occupied by carvers with picks and chisels and spray bottles. All around the sound of tapping clattered on the hard, cold air. It had the effect of being in an old shoemaker’s shop.

  “Where’s that one?” I nodded toward the unoccupied block of ice, sitting untouched.

  “That’s Merle’s. He’ll be here, he said he would.” Dieter didn’t sound too convinced. “Merle Tennepin. He cooks for the Rockefellers when they’re in town.” The Rockefellers once owned the Grand Tetons, just one of the small family holdings. When the park was formed, they kept the homestead inside its borders.

  “Don’t think I’ve met Merle.”

  “You would remember. Only cowboy with Cordon Bleu diploma.”

  “A real cowboy? Like from Wyoming?”

  Dieter nodded. “He met Skippy or Daisy, or whatever her name is, in Paris, and they brought him back to cook. He should be here tonight.”

  “I’ll look for him.” I picked my way across the trampled snow, dodging flying ice chips, across the street to the gallery. I should have wondered when I saw Una and Hank flanking Glasius Dokken, their heads together. I should have seen they were up to something. Instead I hung Erik’s old down jacket on the hook, let my boots drip on the mat, and poured another cup of coffee to warm me. I settled into the mail, entering the checks received on a deposit slip, the bills received in the account book The gallery was warm and cozy, the murals were hung, the ice sculptures under way, I had lunch plans with Maggie. Nothing could spoil the sense of accomplishment I felt just then. I was on top of things. Neither my mother nor my demanding artist wanted anything from me.

  I was so grateful I didn’t pay attention.

  maggie barlow owned an insurance agency in Jackson, an independent outfit that did a booming business in the second-and third-home insurance racket. She was a hometown Jackson girl, played ice hockey with the guys, and was the current caretaker of my wild horse Valkyrie. When I slipped into the booth in the bar at the Cadillac Grille, she had a glass of wine waiting for me. She was that kind of friend.

  “I thought I was going to have to drink that myself.” Maggie smiled, putting aside the News. “Not that I wouldn’t have sacrificed myself for you, honey.”

  “Am I late?”

  “You’re always late. But we love you anyway.” Maggie’s black hair swung over her shoulder, dangling on her menu. “Now don’t be mad, but some male types are joining us.”

  I frowned over my wine. “Maggie, you didn’t.”

  “It’s not like that. Not a setup or anything.” She looked up and straightened, smiling. “Oh, shit, here they are.”

  I took one gulp of wine and turned to get a gander at them. From first glance it was obvious they were both athletes; their Lycra gave them away. There is very little more thrilling than a man in Lycra tights. Well, there is my mother’s dumpling soup.

  “Alix, you know Carter Reineking,” Maggie said, rising halfway out of her seat, then thinking better of it.

  We shook hands. Carter was the director of the cross-country ski area at Teton Village and served as the Nordic Nights chief ramrod. “We’ve been seeing too much of each other inside stuffy rooms,” I said, smiling.

  “Amen to that.” Carter grinned through his brown beard. He was handsome in a hairy kind of way that Maggie apparently liked. She was salivating, checking out his Lycra. “This is Bjarne Hansen.”

  Tanned, with a thatch of blond hair flopping over his forehead, Bjarne looked every inch the Olympic-class Nordic ski racer that he was, lean and strong. Best in Norway, Carter had told us at meetings for weeks. Now he was here to race and promote Nordic Nights.

  We ordered lunch, Bjarne next to me, Carter next to Maggie. I smiled at my friend, hoping the points of my teeth were glimmering. As the food came, I realized Bjarne hadn’t said a word; he was probably feeling as awkward as I was. Maggie and Carter were whispering. I wondered how long this had been going on.

  Bjarne was eating an avocado sandwich with sprouts and a cup of minestrone. “How’s the course?” I asked.

  He almost spit out his soup. Swallowing, he nodded. “Very nice. Lots of good snow. And of course, we like it cold.” He smiled at me, his blue eyes suddenly meeting mine. It gave me a jolt, and I quickly took a sip of wine.

  “You speak very good English,” I said.

  “Norway is a small country. Most of us speak four or five languages.” He shrugged. “It is necessary.”

  “Glasius Dokken—the artist—is over at my gallery. His English isn’t nearly as good as yours.”

  “Dokken. Yes, I’ve heard of him.”

  “He paints those big murals with the Norse gods on them, warriors and battle-axes and ships. You should come see them.”

  “My mother took me through his studio once when I was small,” Bjarne said. “He is quite famous in Norway.”

  “Oh, you’ve seen the murals, then.”

  Bjarne shook his head. “It was long ago.” There was something sad in the way he said it, as if both Norway and his youth were so very far away. Carter must have heard it too.

  “Why don’t you go over and meet this Dokken, Bjarne? We can take the afternoon off.”

  I touched Bjarne’s arm; he tensed in the nylon windbreaker. “Yeah, that would be great. I’m sure Glasius would like meeting you too.”

  “Wait, wait.” Maggie held up her hands, traffic cop. “I have a special treat for us after lunch. There’s this mysterious woman who reads fortunes. I’ve got it all set up. She’s over at Cosmic Connie’s.” Carter gave her a look: Do I know you? “Oh, come on.” She put her arm through his. “It’ll be fun. Connie told me you encouraged her to bring somebody in for Nordic Nights. So she found this woman. She reads the runes.”

  Bjarne perked up. “The runes? Like Viking runes?”

  “Yeah, you’ll see. It’s fun.” I looked at my watch and opened my mouth. Maggie preempted me. “No excuses. You work too damn much. Call Artie and tell him you’ll be an hour longer.”

  So I did.

  Cosmic Connie’s real name was Doreen MacAllister, but like many people in Jackson, she had shed a skin along the way and reinvented herself. Now she wore her wavy hair past her waist, streaked with green and purple, and had a tiny moon-and- star tattoo on her left cheekbone. Her bead shop was lined with strings of exotic African and Czechoslovakian beads of ever
y color imaginable, from gold beads the size of golf balls to transparent seed beads the size of a pinhead. Red polka dots, flower child designs, blue, black, green, and orange. The back wall of the shop was decorated with a mural of the universe with flying saucers, shooting stars, comets, Saturn with rings, a tiny green Earth. There a table had been set up, covered with purple velvet. A small crowd stood around the table. We walked slowly to the back of the store, Maggie dragging us with invisible cords.

  Connie came out of the group, wearing a drifty assortment of blue-green scarves, and hugged Maggie. As her insurance agent, Maggie was privy to much of Connie’s personal history. Such as that she was supporting an ex and their sixteen-year-old daughter, who still lived in Kentucky, and that the reason she was now Cosmic Connie of Jackson Hole had to do with a role as an extra in a movie that led to a hot fling with a well-known actor. She appeared to be still playing a role.

  She shook hands all around, giving Bjarne an extra-long handshake and a little arm squeeze. “Norwegian? You must know all about the runes, then.”

  Bjarne frowned a little, causing Connie to reach over and pinch his cheek. I thought he would jump at the touch, but he actually seemed to warm up a little. “Well, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Sure, the runes are all over Norway and Sweden,” Bjarne said. “On old memorial stones and stave churches.”

  Maggie and Carter worked their way into the crowd, mostly women, who stood around the table. The voice of a woman behind the table was low and indistinct; I could see only the top of her head through the people. Behind her, though, a tall man stood out, a very dark African wearing a black tunic. He held a large wooden box with brass latches, like a flat trunk.

  “Are we talking about the runes like letters?” I asked.

  “The Viking alphabet,” Connie said, acknowledging me briefly before snuggling closer to Bjarne. “Mistress Isa uses the old letters to find the messages to your future. Come, you must be next.” She pulled him around the women, slipping her chiffon-encased arm through his. His blue eyes caught mine briefly, and then he was gone. I moved around to the other side of the group to watch.

  Mistress Isa, the fortune teller, was holding both hands of a young woman in the audience. The woman looked like a Texan— don’t ask me why, but after a while in a tourist town you just start guessing. Half the time you’re wrong, but it’s more a feeling you get from people. This woman, wearing a jean jacket decorated with sparkly puff-paint dots, had a Texas-size sense of wonder on her face as the fortuneteller told her the end of the story.

  “To pick this rune for your future position is a sign of great things, new beginnings in your life. A time of fertility—” The woman getting the reading couldn’t have been twenty; her friend, with a nose ring, poked her and laughed. “A time of great power. Do not take this sign lightly,” Isa counseled. “Finish projects you have begun, and begin anew. You have been closed in a bubble. Now the bubble has burst, and you are free. But take your flight in a full mind. Be centered and alert, and anything is possible.”

  “Wow. Cool.” The Texan was grinning as she withdrew her hands from Isa’s. “What do you call that one?” She pointed at the rune on the purple table cover, one of three small wooden squares inlaid with turquoise and silver.

  Isa picked it up and laid it in her palm. “Inguz. The goddess of the vulva.”

  The girl with the nose ring guffawed; titters were heard throughout the crowd. Cosmic Connie pawed Bjarne’s arm and whispered something in his ear.

  “Anything is possible?” the Texan asked, her voice squeaky with anticipation. Isa closed her eyes and nodded. She was a very pale woman with platinum hair pulled straight back into a tight bun at her neck. Her colorless face was punctuated by eyes clearly enhanced with purple contact lenses. She wore a creamy white cloak, matching angora sweater, and slacks. Around her neck was a blue leather thong connected to a small leather bag, also sky blue.

  “Wow,” the Texan said again. “Thanks.” She handed back the small rune and backed away, eager to begin her adventure.

  “Find your center. A full mind possesses the will to succeed,” Isa called in parting. A full mind probably wasn’t in the cards for Miss Texas, but one could always hope.

  “Mistress Isa?” Connie stepped up to the table, a death grip on Bjarne. His face was expressionless, tanned, and smooth. If anything, he looked tired; he must have come straight to lunch from a workout. “This is Bjarne Hansen. He would like a reading.”

  Isa had picked up the three runes on the table and turned to the tall black man beside her. He opened the box as if he were selling cigars, revealing many more wooden squares inside. The backs of them were inlaid in silver, the smoothed wooden corners more visible against the satin lining. The assistant moved his large hand over the pieces as if blessing them. When he moved his hand away, I realized he had been mixing them up. I perked up. This was just like Scrabble. Maybe Bjarne would get a triple word score.

  The woman next to me, with beaded dreadlocks, had one finger raised in anticipation of being next. She wagged it a couple times, then sank back, rejected. To her friend she whispered, “At least he’s cute. Maybe I’m in his future.”

  I pushed closer. A painted wooden sign across the front of the table read “Mistress Isa, White Queen of the Runes.” Where had Connie found this woman? I glanced back at Maggie, who winked at me, grinning. She had her arm through Carter’s and looked quite pleased with herself. Carter stood stoically in the athlete’s at-ease position, wrists crossed in front of him. This was sure to be a test of the newborn relationship.

  Bjarne was picking runes from the box and placing them one at a time on the velvet. Isa laid her hand on each of the three, straightening them into a line square with the front edge of the table. She had numerous silver rings on her fingers, some with gems, some with what looked like rune lettering, a pointy sort of crude alphabet that Vikings used to hack into stones when they wanted somebody to remember them. A step up from pictographs of the Bronze Age, with a little help from the Italian and Germanic tribesmen of premedieval days, they later evolved into Old English and Old Germanic lettering. I had read about runestones in the old country but had never seen them. The first letter on the rune Isa turned over was a funny sort of jagged 5.

  “This rune is your past. Sowelu stands for the sun’s energy, the wholeness that comes from a complete nature.” Isa suddenly went rigid and closed her eyes. She lifted both hands up toward the ceiling. Her voice was formal, hypnotic: “You who are the source of all power, whose rays illuminate the world, illuminate also my heart, so that it too can do your work.”

  Bjarne had his eyes glued to her. She lowered her hands, opened her eyes, and looked at him. “In the past you have felt the need for wholeness but not felt whole. You have felt the need for power, for strength, but the power necessary to complete your goals was not there. You retreated from your goal because you were not whole. Is this not true?”

  Bjarne squirmed, shifting his feet and swallowing. His jaw muscles clenched. He gave a curt nod.

  “Then let’s see where you are today.” Isa turned over the center rune. It was the shape of a pointy P. She reached out and extracted one of his hands from Connie, stroking it with her other hand. “Thurisaz,” she said in a throaty whisper. “The sign of Thor, a sign of enormous power and energy.” Isa looked Bjarne straight in the eye from a distance of only a few feet. “Thurisaz can be good energy or bad, good power or destructive. The old ones have written, ‘In the thick of battle, if my need be great enough.’ Then Thurisaz will come to your aid. If your need be great enough.” She looked at the crowd, holding them in the palm of her hand, sweeping her pale-painted nails across the air. “Thurisaz is a call to your inmost soul. Can you use the power? Will the power of this rune destroy you and all you love? Or will you find a place for it in your dreams?”

  Connie scratched her nails up and down Bjarne’s arm excitedly. She smacked her lips and stared up at Bjarne’s chin, stuck out stubbo
rnly. His eyes, however, held something akin to fear. I wondered if his being Norwegian had made him more susceptible to the charms of this witch. She was charismatic. Isa dropped Bjarne’s hand.

  “Let us see how Thurisaz relates to your future, the final rune of this casting.” Isa turned over the last rune. It was shaped like an H. She closed her eyes; her outstretched hand shook for a moment, then she clenched it. She stood like this for what seemed like a long time, as if getting signals from the runes. The black man in the shadows behind her began to stir, looking closely at her, his fingers squeezing the rune box. He licked his lips and shifted his weight. It was the first time I had seen him move during the reading, as if he was supposed to stay still and unobtrusive. His apparent anxiety made me uncomfortable. What had been just in fun suddenly seemed twitchy and strange, and I wished it were over. I looked at my watch; I hadn’t been here that long, but I really wanted to go now. I looked at Maggie. She had her lips close to Carter’s ear and was whispering sweet nothings, oblivious to the vibes I was feeling.

  “Hagalaz,” Isa said loudly, opening her eyes. “In your future Hagalaz will protect you from bad weather. You have to use the power of the previous rune outside, in the weather. This rune will make sure the weather will be good.” She scooped up the three runes quickly and said to the assembled, “That is all for today.” She turned to the black man and deposited the runes in the box. Pulling the white cloak tighter around her shoulders, Isa pushed through the crowd toward the door. Connie stared after her, mystified.

  “Um, Mistress Isa will be back at four o’clock,” Connie announced to the disappointed women in the crowd. I cut across the departing group toward Connie and Bjarne in time to hear Connie talking to the black man.

  “Is anything wrong, Peter? Mistress Isa left so quickly.”

  Peter kept his eyes down, gathering up the items left on the velvet cloth: a stick with letters carved in the side, a seashell, a section of a birch limb, an old coin. He put these in a leather pouch.

  “No, nothing is wrong.” His voice was very low, and he had a Caribbean accent.