“Ah, yes,” Calder said with a sigh. “Iskyla—the frozen village that somehow specializes in letting every one of its inhabitants down.”
It was the weary understanding in his voice that suddenly made it all click. His weathered olive complexion, ruddy cheeks, a scar nearly hidden in the wrinkles around his eyes and bushy eyebrows, and his resigned, stoic expression—in his muddy gray eyes I recognized the pain of a thousand icy mornings, of frozen days when the temperatures dropped and the sun never rose.
“You’re from Iskyla?” I asked.
He lowered his gaze. “From is much too strong of a word, but it’s fair to say that I’m well acquainted with it.” Then he shook his head and offered me a thin smile. “It’s no matter. I’ve been here in the archives of the Mimirin for almost twenty-five years. And you’re here now, which means you’ve managed to pull yourself out of Iskyla, and I’m happy to help you the rest of the way.”
I swallowed the painful mixture of shame and pride, and I fought to keep my expression neutral and polite. “Thanks, but I’m really here to help you.”
“And you will!” He flashed an exuberant smile. “I’ll give you the tools, and you’ll do the work.”
With that, he copied the title from the scroll, duplicating the old Norse calligraphy on top, and then translating below in his clear print. When he’d finished, he turned the paper to face me.
“Viliätten Saga?” I read aloud. “The story of the House of Vili?”
He snapped his fingers. “Exactly! Are you familiar with the House of Vili at all?”
“It was the first troll dynasty, right? From back before all the tribes split?”
“Back when we were all known as ekkálfar.” Calder wrote as he spoke, creating a key between Hilde Nilsdotter’s confusing letters to more modern English. “Before it all became a mess of rivalries and lost histories.”
I rested my arms on the desk, the smooth dark walnut feeling cool through the thin fabric of my shirt. “But don’t you already know about the House of Vili?”
“Yes, but it can be near-impossible to know what you don’t know.” He peered up at me. “There’s an old proverb that my grandmother used to say. ‘A foolish man thinks he knows all. A wise man knows he cannot.’”
“I’ve heard that a few times,” I said with a laugh. Finn had been quite fond of telling me something similar when I didn’t study enough or failed a test.
“That’s why I never stop learning, never stop reading.” He gently tapped the scroll with his finger. “This is Nilsdotter’s most famous and most extensive work. It’s known as the Heimskaga.”
“The story of the world?” I asked, digging deep into the recesses of the old Norse poems and essays that Finn had made me read.
“Correct,” Calder said, sounding impressed. “It took Nilsdotter decades to compile it all, with her writing multiple drafts of the Heimskaga through the years, adding new information and correcting previous errors.
“These particular scrolls are from Isarna in Scandinavia,” he continued. “In the tenth century there was a great exodus of trolls fleeing the violence and plagues the humans brought with them as they conquered and re-conquered the land around our homes. Thousands and thousands of our kind went with the Vikings to North America, but some—no more than a few hundred—stayed behind in the city that became Isarna.
“Because it’s the oldest troll settlement left, it has some of our only records from that era,” Calder explained. “The Mimirin recently reached an agreement with Isarna to review some of their ancient records stored there, and they found a whole trove of documents stored away in an old farm cellar.
“These scrolls may not have been read for centuries, their information unseen and thus unrecorded by anyone here at the Mimirin,” he went on. “In these unread editions, there may be words, phrases, or even whole passages added or translated differently to give us new insights. There could be things about our history that would have otherwise been lost to us, about our time in Scandinavia and the early years in Áibmoráigi—the First City.”
Áibmoráigi was the legendary first city established by trolls, our first home in our recorded history. It was thought to be something like Mesopotamia would be for the humans, but it had been lost for a thousand years.
“So, you scour every version of the Heimskaga in case there is something new to be gleaned?” I asked.
“I scour every version of every scroll or parchment that passes over my desk,” Calder corrected me. “There is always more to be learned from our past.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “How can I help?”
“I want you to start by reading through that scroll and transcribe every name listed and everything that’s written about them. Once it’s all compiled, you can enter that into a database to compare and contrast what’s already been documented.”
“Sounds easy enough,” I said.
Calder chuckled. “Your enthusiasm is admirable, but let’s do a trial run first.” He pushed the alphabet key toward me and then carefully tilted the scroll. “Why don’t you give that a go? Read me the first sentence.”
“Okay, um . . .” I began by copying the phrase, carefully transcribing Nilsdotter’s words into something I could read.
Within a few minutes, I ended up with the phrase: Vili hét einn herkonungr; hans synir kölluð Vilfinga ætt, fór til Vesturlands, ok er til sigra allt sem þeir fundu.
I focused on trying to dig up all the Norse and Swedish Finn had encouraged me to study. “‘Vili is . . . the King. His sons are called the House of Vili . . . and went to Vesturlands?’” I looked up uncertainly at Calder. “Is that the name of a place or is it saying Western Lands?”
“It’s referring to North America, but Western Lands is the name given here,” Calder explained.
“So his sons went to the Western Lands to . . . fight . . . what they found.” I exhaled and said that didn’t sound quite right. “Sigra. No, not fight. Conquer. To conquer what they found.”
“Very good,” Calder said. “The most accurate translation would be ‘Vili is the one King; his sons are called the House of Vili and went to the Western Lands, to conquer all they found.’”
“Not too bad for my first official translation.” I beamed at him.
“Not too bad,” he agreed guardedly. “But I think your time in the archives should be equal parts transcribing and equal parts studying the languages. The more fluent you are, the more capable you’ll be at your work.”
12
Adjustments
By the time I’d ended my first day of work at the archives, I hardly had the energy to do what I’d come here for: research for any information about my parents.
Calder worked over an hour past the end of his shift, but he still left before I did. Before that, he showed me where the Omte records were kept. In the corner of the archives, through a set of heavy wooden doors, a narrow staircase led down to a dimly lit, temperature-controlled cellar.
“Unfortunately, there isn’t much here in the Omte vault.” Calder sounded rather grim as he motioned to the sparse shelving. “They’re not exactly known for their recordkeeping or sharing with others. But I hope that what we have is enough to help you out.”
“Well, I’ve got nothing now, so even a little something will leave me better off.”
He took me back to the shelves labeled NINETEEN-HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE. Since I had been left at the Tulins’ in the fall of 1999 as an infant, it stood to reason that I had been born that year, and I was looking for any pregnancies, births, or unexplained absences during that year.
Calder left me alone to dig through dusty pages of angry chicken scratch. This was yet another way that trollkind’s aversion to technology became an inconvenient hindrance. Typing up or even scanning the records into computers would make it all a lot easier, but here they were, all handwritten and stored in a basement.
I worked as long as I could, but I’d only made it to the end of January 1999 when I had to stop. My eye
s burned and my lids were heavy, and I was going to have to get up and do it all again tomorrow.
The walk back to the apartment wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. It was late, the sun already dipping below the walls that surrounded the citadel, and the streets were much emptier now than they had been this morning. I only made a wrong turn once, and I quickly figured my way back to the right path.
When I finally rounded a corner and saw the carriage house I’d be calling home for the next six weeks, I let out a relieved sigh. That is, until I spotted the battered Jeep, still parked underneath the wooden staircase, and I realized I’d forgotten all about the wild-haired creeper and reporting them to security.
Well, that would have to be a problem for another day. Today I couldn’t wait to get out of my skinny jeans and wash the scent of must and dust off me.
The windows of the apartment were open, and when I walked up the stairs I could hear Hanna singing a Taylor Swift song. As I passed the window, a subtle sweetness filled the air, and I inhaled deeply.
It was a wonderfully familiar scent, which instantly brought me back to the long summer days back in Iskyla, when the sun made Mrs. Tulin smile and hum and she’d spend the afternoons baking pastries and tarts for nearly everyone in town.
“Ulla!” Hanna announced, the moment I opened the door. “You’re finally home!” She’d been wiping down the counter when I came in, but she paused to smile at me. “There’s beet salad in the fridge, and I just pulled the blackberry tarts out of the oven.”
“Is that what I smelled?” I asked.
“Yeah, and they taste even better than they smell,” Dagny chimed in through a mouthful of food. She sat on the lumpy couch, her feet propped up on the wooden pallet-cinderblock contraption that served as a makeshift coffee table.
“Sit.” Hanna tossed the washrag in the kitchen sink, then wiped her hands on a flour-sack towel. “Are you hungry? I’ll fix you a plate.”
“Um, yeah, I can eat.” I gave an uncertain laugh and took a seat on a stool next to the bistro table.
As I watched Hanna run around the kitchen—first handing me a delicate little pastry topped with a dark purple-blue glaze, then carefully piling a plate of deep burgundy beets, sharp green apples, and bright lemon and yogurt cream sauce—I couldn’t help but think back to the petulant child I’d been dealing with back in Förening. Hanna wasn’t a bad kid, but her mom would probably faint in shock at the sight of Hanna cooking and cleaning without putting on a major protest first.
I took a bite of blackberry tart, deciding that I was old enough to eat my dessert first, and it was the absolute perfect blend of light flaky crust with a creamy bittersweet sauce. “Wow.” I groaned happily between bites. “Oh, this is amazing. You really outdid yourself this time, Hanna.”
She shrugged and tried to demur, but her pride was unmistakable in her wide smile. “Well, I figured since I had nothing to do all day, I ought to make myself useful.”
“This is definitely a good start,” Dagny admitted. She stood up and grabbed her book bag from where it’d been sitting on the floor near her feet. “But like my mother always said, Fish and houseguests start to smell after three days.”
“I’ll be sure to put on deodorant after I shower,” Hanna said with a flat smile.
“Always a good idea,” I chimed in.
“I’ll be in my room if you need me, and I seriously encourage you not to need me tonight,” Dagny said over her shoulder as she walked into her room. While she didn’t exactly slam the door, she shut it loud enough that it caused Hanna to jump a little.
“So.” She hopped up on the stool across from me and rested her arms on the table. “How was your first day?”
“It was good.” I took a bite of the beet salad—which, again, was exquisitely executed, walking that fine, bittersweet line between acidic salt and creamy bland that the subarctic troll cuisine was known for—and I thought over my answer as I ate. “Exhausting, but good. I think.”
“Did you find your parents yet?” Hanna asked.
I shook my head. “No, I hardly even had a chance to look.”
“Dagny told me that’s how things are done here.” Her gaze lingered on Dagny’s closed bedroom door, and she lowered her voice. “They want to milk you for every ounce of labor they can get, which doesn’t leave you with much left over. She said that if you’ve got stuff you want to do here, you better be willing to fight for it, because they aren’t going to give it to you.”
“Well, I’m willing to do whatever it is that I have to do,” I said, but my words didn’t have quite as much conviction as I’d had before I got here. But I assumed that things would get better once I settled, and once I got a few good nights’ worth of sleep.
“What do you wanna do after supper?” Hanna propped her head on her hand and stared at me with big, hopeful eyes. “Wanna go out on the town?”
“Actually, I wanna take a nice long shower and then get some sleep.”
Her face fell and her more customary whine tinged her words. “Really? But I’ve been cooped up in the apartment all day.”
“I know that sucks.” I met her plaintive gaze, and I tried my best to keep my tone as gentle as I could. “But this isn’t summer camp, Hanna. I’m here to work. If you wanted to have fun running around and hanging out, you should’ve stayed with your grandparents.”
She rolled her eyes and leaned back away from me. “Oh, that’s not fair. I never agreed to go to my grandparents’ in the first place. You basically kidnapped me. You can’t get mad at me for not taking it lying down.”
“I did not kidnap you! Honestly, I don’t even know what the big deal was. Your grandparents seemed perfectly nice and ordinary. What was so bad about it that you couldn’t stay there?”
Hanna stared down at the table and shrugged. “I don’t know them.”
“You don’t know Dagny either, but you seem to be having a fun time hanging out with her.”
“That’s different,” Hanna said, but really, I was a little surprised that she let my description of Dagny as “fun” slip right on by.
“Why?”
“Because.” Hanna sighed dramatically. “Dagny doesn’t make me uncomfortable like they do.”
“How do they make you uncomfortable?” I paused, taking a moment so I could carefully ask, “Do they . . . hurt you?”
“No, no,” she replied right away, and then she groaned. “I mean, not like that. It’s just that they’re always going on and on about Nikolas, and . . . I don’t know him, and I don’t want to know him.”
She stared down at her lap, absently picking at her chipped purple nail polish. “I know that he died, and it wasn’t like he chose to leave me, and my grandparents and my mom have always told me how much he loved me. But . . . he’s just some stranger. Dad is my dad.”
“Have you talked to your mom about how you feel?” I asked.
“No, not really. She always gets so sad and quiet when the subject of Nikolas comes up,” Hanna said. “It’s easier to avoid talking about him.”
“Sometimes you gotta talk about the sad stuff if you wanna feel better,” I said gently, but that only made her sulk more.
“Yeah, well, I’m sure I’ll have to do plenty of talking when I get back home,” she grumbled.
“Do you know when that’ll be yet?”
“No. I talked to Mom today on the phone.” Hanna cast a disparaging glare over at the corded telephone attached to the wall. The magic that shielded Merellä also messed with cell phone reception and Wi-Fi, which only encouraged trollkind’s reliance on and persistent obsession with paper texts and other outdated modes of technology.
“And?”
“And they’re still trying to figure it all out,” she said. “With all the royalty in town for the Skojare King’s quintessential jubilee—”
“I think it’s quinquennial, actually,” I corrected her, stifling my laugh.
“Whatever.” She waved me off. “The point is that my dad can’t get away fro
m work, and the twins are teething, and Grandma Annali sprained her ankle this morning. She’ll be fine, but it’s not a good time. I know that Mom is doing everything she can to get it figured out, but it’s probably going to be at least a few more days.”
I stood and brought my plate over to the kitchen sink. “Well, you better figure out a fun way to pass the time here.”
13
Fables
Calder liked to work with music on, citing the Mozart Effect and its alleged positive influence on information retention. While I didn’t think it hurt anything, I wasn’t so certain that brash recordings of Bach rattling out of an ancient transistor radio were doing much to help.
Still, I continued making progress, deciphering and outlining the scrolls that had been lent to us from Isarna. We’d been working most of the morning when I came across a name I’d seen before but I didn’t know what it meant.
A message did once come from Adlrivellir, in the time after the Battle for the Bifröst. It promised only that the sun sets in the green sky when the good morning becomes the violent night.
“Where is the Adlrivellir?” I asked Calder. “Is it the same as the Vesturlands?”
He sat beside me at the desk, a pair of copper-framed spectacles sitting at the end of his nose. “It’s nowhere,” he said, without looking over at me or at the scroll I was working on. “It’s a place of fantasy, no different than Mount Olympus or Wonderland.”
“Can I ask you something that I’ve always wondered about concerning troll historians?”
Pushing his glasses up on the top of his head, he answered with a brusque “Of course.”
“How do you know how to decipher what’s fiction and what’s fact when it comes to our history?” I asked. “The humans think all of our stories are just old folklore and myths. Heck, they don’t even think we’re real.”
“Well, I would argue that we’re far more observant and intelligent than the humans,” he replied with a derisive chuckle.
The Lost City Page 6