I bristled and struggled to keep my voice neutral when I tactfully said, “That sounds a tad racist.”
It was more than a tad, honestly, and it was the kind of thing I’d heard used a hundred times to dismiss me. Because I was Omte, and everyone knows they’re the dumbest of the tribes. Because I’m a half-breed, and everyone knows that mixed blood makes them weak and stupid. Because I’m from Iskyla, and everyone knows that only the unsophisticated and naïve live there.
Because I’m female.
Because I’m asymmetrical and overweight.
Because I’m blond.
Because I’m an orphan.
Because.
Because.
Because.
There were a million reasons why my every thought and even my existence should be dismissed. Arguing each point and justifying every single thing was too exhausting, and that’s why I didn’t unload the tirade that was waiting on the tip of my tongue.
But I won’t deny that it hurt, that there was a sting as my respect for Calder dipped.
“I’m certain there is a reason that the humans haven’t figured us out yet, but writing it off as ‘humans are stupid, that’s why’ seems awfully lazy and disingenuous,” I said evenly. “Besides, it’s like you said yesterday. You never know what you don’t know.”
He leaned back in his chair. “You are right. We can’t ever be certain of what is truth or exaggeration, not when it comes to our past and the supernatural. Which is exactly why you’re here, documenting everything. We’re trying to create a picture of the past that’s as complete as it can be, but ultimately it’s up to each individual beholder what they choose to believe.”
“Why do you—specifically, as an individual—think this Adlrivellir place is only the stuff of fantasy?” I pressed.
“Because nobody ever went there,” he said simply. “Take the Vesturlands. Vili’s sons Alfarin and Valdin were explorers. They went to the Vesturlands, but they also came back. Over the course of the next three centuries there are dozens of stories of adventurers traveling back and forth from the Vesturlands. Until finally Asa the Cold settled Doldastam in the Arctic provinces, creating indisputable evidence that the Vesturlands and North America are one and the same.”
“But the Kanin capital is an incredibly obvious example,” I pointed out.
“Maybe so,” Calder allowed. “But the fact remains. There are several stories about Adlrivellir, but in all the tales of explorers, of our trolls and the human Vikings, there isn’t a single account of anyone going there and coming back. That puts it in the realm of an afterlife story. It is our ancestors’ answer to Valhalla.”
I considered what he was saying and tried to remember some of the stories I’d heard about Norse mythology and Valhalla. Those weren’t something that I’d studied up on, but the fairy tales in Bedtime Stories for Trolls of All Ages definitely had a Norse flair to them, and I had spent hours upon hours reading them to Hanna, Liam, Emma, Niko, and the twins.
The doors to the archive swung open, and I looked up to see Pan grinning broadly at us as he walked over. It was the first time I noticed that he had a bit of a swagger to his step. Not too much, but it was right on the line between subtly cool and noticeably dorky. He managed to pull it off, in part because of the way his button-down shirt fit against his broad shoulders and the way his dark eyes flashed when he smiled.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he said cheerily and leaned on the desk. “I hope I’m not interrupting your workflow.”
“No, I can’t say that you were right now,” Calder said. “We were having a break.”
“I came down here to take Ulla up for a blood draw. Can you spare her for a few minutes?” Pan was talking to Calder, but he kept his eyes on me, and something about that made my skin flush and I lowered my eyes.
“Take as much time as you need. Our work here shouldn’t get in the way of Ulla’s pursuit.” Calder spoke in such a flat way that I couldn’t be sure whether or not he meant it sarcastically.
“Thanks, Calder,” Pan said as I rolled up my scrolls.
I grabbed my hobo-style bag from where I kept it by my feet, and I draped it over my shoulder as I walked around the desk. “So where are we going for this blood draw?”
“Up to the Troglecology Department. That’s where all the blood analysis is.” He turned around as he stepped backward, so he opened the door with his back. “Some might even say that’s where all the magic happens.”
“Blood and magic? It sounds like you’ve got a D&D tournament going on up there.”
Pan laughed. “They wish. What happens up there is a lot more scientific than a role-playing game.”
The hallway ended at a very old elevator. Pan had to manually open the ornate brass grille, and inside, instead of buttons, it had a lever that had to be shifted to the floor number. While the elevator was clearly very old, it appeared to be immaculately maintained, with taupe marble floors and a brass bar that wrapped along the walls.
When it first began to move, it jerked upward, and I grabbed the bar in surprise. Pan reached out, putting his hand gently on my arm.
“It’s okay,” he assured me, his warm voice low and comforting, and I felt a heat flush over me. “It always starts rough, but we’ll be fine.”
I let out a nervous laugh and tucked my hair behind my ears. “I’m not that used to elevators, I guess.”
He moved his hand off my arm, but he leaned on the bar next to me, so his hand was mere inches from mine.
“This place takes some getting used to,” he said. “But it gets better. How are things going for you so far?”
“Pretty good,” I said with an uncertain shrug.
“But? You seem like you’ve got something more to say.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. “Calder seems to have a very low opinion of humans.”
“Yeah, everyone does around here,” he said, his words tinged with a weary kind of apathy. “You can’t take it personally. We’ve been living in a caste system for centuries, and unfortunately you can’t eliminate prejudice overnight.”
I looked over at him, studying the unusually stoic expression on his face as he lowered his gaze to the floor. “It doesn’t bother you? What they say about you?”
“Does it bother you?” He scratched absently at his temple, then looked back up at me. “What they say about you?”
I swallowed hard, then answered honestly, “Sometimes.”
“Yeah. Me too,” he admitted with a sad smile. “But it is getting better. Twenty-five years ago, I wouldn’t even have been allowed inside the Mimirin. And now I work here. It’s something.”
The elevator had finally reached the third floor and groaned to a stop. As Pan opened the doors, he said, “The good news is that happiness and indignation don’t have to be mutually exclusive. You can be angry about where we are and frustrated by how far we have left to go, and you can still appreciate the amount of ground that’s already been covered.”
“That is a surprisingly sunny attitude to have,” I said as we walked down the hall together.
“My mom always told me that I had two choices when it came to my life: let my anger consume and blind me or learn to laugh and keep on fighting.”
“Laughter seemed like the easier choice?” I asked.
“The laughter’s not bad, but truth is, I really wanted to keep on fighting.” He winked at me, then pointed over at a door beside him. “We’re here.”
14
Blood
While most of the Mimirin had been decorated and maintained like it was straight out of a medieval fantasy, the south wing on the third floor housed all the labs and troglecology, so it looked a lot more twenty-first century.
It was an admittedly strange juxtaposition when Pan led me into the docent Elof Dómari’s lab and classroom. The stone walls were the same as they were everywhere, but the floor was updated to a slick quartz tile. The original stained-glass windows and vast barrel-vaulted ceiling surrounded sterile islands wit
h shiny lab equipment and bright light fixtures. Most of the islands were bar-height, replete with stools, but a third of them were shorter, designed for the trolls of shorter stature.
All of the classrooms and facilities were built that way. Trolls in general tended to be on the short side, with the exception of the Omte, who averaged over six feet. In contrast, the Vittra had the shortest average height, with the largest birth rate of hobgoblins and trolls with dwarfism. Since the Vittra provided much of the funding for the Mimirin’s programs, it made sense that their facilities were designed specifically with their population’s needs in mind.
Elof himself had dwarfism, and he looked about half a foot shorter than Hanna. Other than that, he appeared to be a typical Vittra in his thirties. His rich olive skin complemented his thick russet hair, and the combo of a strong broad jaw, dark deep-set eyes, and a slightly crooked nose—an apparent remnant from a fight years ago—all came together to make him ruggedly handsome, like a troll version of Indiana Jones.
He was sitting at one of the islands, peering into a microscope with his back to us, and across from him was Dagny, taking notes on a pad of paper. Both of them wore matching loose-fitting caftanesque lab coats. The sleeves were cuffed just below the elbows, and the lab coats were made of white linen embroidered with a pale gold quatrefoil pattern.
“Ah, Ulla,” Dagny said, hardly even glancing up from her writing. “I thought it would be about time for you to come here.”
“You know our eleven o’clock?” Elof asked her and glanced back over his shoulder at me.
“I do.” Dagny set down her pen and pressed her lips into a tight smile. “This is my flatmate, Ulla. Ulla, this is Professor Elof Dómari. He has a master’s in bioengineering from Stanford University, a bachelor of science in laboratory biology from Jakob W. Rells University of Paraspychology and Medicine, and a licentiate in troglecology from the Mimirin.”
It was rare to hear of a troll attending human universities, and he had not one but two degrees from them under his belt. Although, to be fair, the nature of the Rells University as an institution studying the paranormal meant that their student body wasn’t made up entirely of humans.
Elof had turned on his stool to face Pan and me, but he looked at Dagny from the corner of his eye. “Thank you for listing my credentials, Dagny, although I don’t know if that was strictly necessary.”
“It’s always more helpful to overexplain than underexplain,” she said, sounding unfazed.
“What a wonderful attitude for a teacher but perhaps less so for a student,” he muttered, then turned his attention on me. “Are you the one that makes the otherworldly blackberry tarts?”
“No, that’s my temporary houseguest,” I said, and I wondered exactly how Dagny talked about me and Hanna to others.
“Oh, that’s a shame,” Elof replied with an embellished frown. “I was going to suggest a trade of pastries for genetic research.”
I laughed uncertainly. “Well, I’m sure Hanna would be happy to help me out if there’s an offer on the table.”
“He’s only teasing,” Pan said. “Elof will be happy to help you as much as he can.”
“That’s only because I’ve always got Pan and Dagny around to keep me on the straight and narrow.”
“I don’t think most people refer to me as the ‘responsible one,’” Pan said with a laugh.
“That’s only because you’ve never partied with the trog majors after they’ve made a discovery,” Elof said with a waggle of his eyebrows.
Dagny looked over at me with a flat expression. “He’s exaggerating, but it can get wild here.”
“Unfortunately, right now the wildest it’s going to get is this lively questionnaire where I ask you everything you know about your family and your lineage while my associate here steals your blood.” Elof snapped his fingers at Dagny, and she slid a thin stack of papers across the island to him.
“I’ll get the kit,” she said and walked over to a cabinet in the corner to start gathering supplies.
“Have a seat. Make yourself comfortable. This whole process takes a bit of time.” Elof motioned to the stool beside him. I slipped my purse off and dropped it on the floor, then sat down. “I suppose I should ask you if you’re okay with needles.”
“I don’t love them, but I’m usually okay if I don’t look,” I said, just as Dagny returned and set down the kit beside me. She put on a pair of latex gloves, then pulled out a massive thick needle. The thing had to be at least nineteen-gauge and over an inch long. “Oh, my gaad, is that the needle? How much blood do you need?”
“The size of the needle is based on the Omte’s historically tough, deep veins,” Dagny explained. “But we do also take a lot of blood.”
“The more we take, the more precise the tests can be,” Elof elaborated. “At first glance, our blood appears similar to humans’, but it’s far more complex, and it leaves plenty of opportunities to extract information. Large sample sizes give us near-exponential value.”
“Okay. I will try not to focus on the giant stick of metal being jammed into my arm and answer your questions.” I tried to keep my cool, but I flinched when Dagny wiped my inner arm with sterilizing alcohol.
“Look over at Pan,” she commanded. “Making eye contact with someone else can be very distracting from pain or discomfort. We’re social animals, after all.”
Pan sat down on a stool across from me. “How you doing?”
“I feel a bit silly,” I admitted.
“Don’t. It helps,” he promised, and I forced myself to meet his gaze.
It shouldn’t have been that hard, since he had these amazingly deep dark eyes. They were rich brown, somehow comfortingly warm and endlessly dark. They were the walnut floors in the Tulins’ inn, which creaked and groaned when I tiptoed down for a midnight snack with the wind howling outside. They were the black tea that Mia always drank first thing in the morning, before the kids or the sun were up yet, and Niko would sneak out of his bed and snuggle into mine.
The sharp prick in my arm shattered these comforting thoughts, and I flinched. I started to glance over at Dagny’s work, the thick needle and the tube filling with my currantred blood, but Elof cleared his throat and pulled my attention to him.
“So, we’ll start with the easy questions,” he said. “When were you born?”
I looked back at Pan and kept my expression neutral as I said, “I don’t know my birth date, but I was most likely born sometime in the early autumn of 1999, before the middle of October.”
Elof jotted down my response. “Where were you born?”
“I don’t know. I was only a baby when I was left in Iskyla, up in Nunavut.”
“Yes, we are quite familiar with everyone’s favorite frozen dumping grounds,” Elof replied without even attempting to mask his disdain. “When were you left there?”
“The thirteenth of October.”
“Do you know who left you?”
“A woman.” I took a deep breath, hoping that would help with the wave of dizziness that passed over me. “She claimed her name was Orra, and she was tall and carried a sword marked with the Omte insignia.”
“Did she leave anything else with you?” Elof asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes babies are left with a blanket or trinket, even a lock of hair,” he clarified.
“No,” I said, but it took all my energy to force out the words. “The blanket I was wrapped in belonged to the inn where I was left.” I paused, forcing myself to dig through the fog of my brain to answer. “When she left me, she left me with nothing. No clothes, not a name, nothing.”
“Fortunately for you, we . . .” Elof was still talking, but his voice started to fade out, like he was shouting underwater.
“Ulla?” Pan said, and I was only dimly aware that he was saying my name loudly, almost shouting. I wanted to tell him that I was okay, that everything was fine, but I couldn’t form the words.
“Elof, we’ve got a
fainter,” Dagny announced flatly, but Pan was already getting to his feet.
“No, I’m . . .” I tried to argue, but my body felt like it was floating away, and the whole room seemed to pitch to the side as my eyes rolled into the back of my head. My body went limp, and I was dimly aware of sliding off the stool, and then strong arms caught me before I hit the floor.
When my eyes fluttered open a few seconds later, Pan’s face was the first thing I saw, his eyebrows pinched with worry, and his arms were warm around me.
“Thanks for catching me,” I told him groggily, and a relieved smile spread across my face.
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” he said with a light laugh.
Dagny was crouched beside me, wrapping gauze around my arm where the needle had been. Once she was done, Pan helped me back up so I was sitting on the stool, and he hovered beside me, presumably ready to catch me again should I need it.
“I guess these questions weren’t as easy as you thought,” I said to Elof with an embarrassed laugh.
“You answered them as best you could, and you answered them quickly and correctly. That sounds relatively easy to me,” Elof said, sounding entirely unperturbed about the whole thing.
“What he’s trying to say is that you aren’t the only one who came here with far more questions than they had answers,” Pan said gently.
“Did you eat today?” Dagny was finishing up by labeling the vials and cleaning up, but she paused long enough to give me an accusatory glare. “I didn’t see you eat this morning.”
“I wasn’t very hungry,” I admitted, suddenly feeling sheepish.
“Pan, get her something to eat,” Dagny commanded.
“Right. Of course.” Pan touched my shoulder gently. “Will you be okay for a few minutes?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” I gave him the most reassuring smile I could muster. “I don’t think I even need anything to eat. I’m okay.”
“No, don’t worry about it,” Pan said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Dagny, could you go with him?” Elof suggested. “Grab something for yourself and for me as well.”
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