Dustin Long - Icelander

The Bean-Ymirsons eventually brought everything to a happy conclusion, of course. Bragi fell to his death in an attempt to stop Our Heroine from disrupting Prescott’s ascension, Jon Ymirson foiled Jonsi’s scheme and turned him over to the authorities, Emily Bean convinced Gerd of the error of her ways, and the family adopted Prescott, bringing him back home with them to the States rather than leave him to the mercies of his uncle’s remaining supporters. True, Gerd had popped up on a few occasions since then to cause trouble for Our Heroine, but for the most part things had worked out well for everyone involved. At least up until the last six months.

Vico Road, on which Hubert’s shop was situated, was at least well plowed, though the snow still annoyed. Flakes drifting back and down and forth, to hit the ground, like space invaders in the cinema lobby that summer.

“It must be so cool to have a whole town celebrate your mom every year,” Nathan offered as they walked past a streetvendor’s table laid with complete sets of the Memoirs .

“Which Bean Day attractions have you visited so far?” she asked.

“Well, not many, to tell the truth. I kind of got a late start on this whole thing, since my literary agent didn’t even call me to tell me about this gig until yesterday, and I had to drive up late last night. I’ve only been with him for a little while now, since my old agent died of food poisoning, and so we still haven’t quite worked out the kinks of communication, you know. Let’s see, I did have a cup of ormolu tea when I woke up this morning, though. And I bought a ticket to the “Discover Vanaheim” exhibit at the museum this afternoon.”

“Didn’t you say you’ve already been to the actual Vanaheim?”

“Yeah, but this exhibit’s supposed to compress the whole experience into about half an hour, so I figure it’ll be pretty intense.”

“I’m sure. Anyway, here we are.”

Dust-encrusted curtains cut the interior from view through the window, but darkness beamed beneath their edges. He was probably in there hiding.

“And where is here, exactly?” Nathan asked.

“This is a book-store. It belongs to a friend of mine. Hubert Jorgen.”

“And you think your dog might be in there?”

“Just as likely here as anywhere else, I suppose. It’s kind of a home away from home.”

“All right. Should we break the window, then?”

Our Heroine glanced up at him. He seemed serious.

“Let’s try the door, first,” she suggested.

“Ah. Right.”

The door swung open with a bell-tinkle to further expose the lack of light within. Our Heroine glanced around. The street seemed pretty empty. And no one peering down from any windows. But then she saw: Wible’s pipe spilling smoke around the corner down the block. Well, so what if they were following her. She turned back to the door.

“Hubert?” she called. “It’s me. And I’ve brought a friend.”

“Doesn’t look like anybody’s in there,” Nathan said.

“Hubert, are you here?” Her words went echoless, absorbed by the books.

“Shut the door,” she said to Nathan as she stepped into the store in front of him. “The light switches are in the back; I’ll go get them.”

Hands out front, sliding her feet along the floor so she wouldn’t trip, Our Heroine faded into the ash-colored quarter-light of the store’s far end. When a shelf got in her way she cursed, glanced back at Nathan’s silhouette against the yet-open white rectangle of doorway, then turned and moved on. Nothing sounded, aside from her shuffling. Finally she found it, cold concrete wall and rusty metal box on it; careful not to cut herself she reached inside and flipped the switches.

“Can I come in now?” Nathan called beneath the new fluorescence.

“Yes. And I told you to shut the door.” This time he did.

She found the key to the back room in a drawer beneath the cash register, attached to a plastic keychain bauble shaped like an Arctic fox. Hubert’s silly little fascination.

“Stay here a minute. Browse,” she said.

“Will do,” he replied, kicking the unswept floor and gazing up at the books above.

A smell hung in the back room like the mildewed towel beside the sink. Not good for antique books, though most of the piles on the floor just looked like modern firsts.

“Hubert? Are you even back here?”

She climbed the ladder to his workspace. Not there, either, but the desk lamp was on. A relatively new looking hardcover book and a few loose, older pages lay between his restoration tools and an ancient black rotary phone. She pulled a mint leaf from the plastic bag in her fleece pocket and curled it beneath a molar.

The loose pages looked like vellum, though she was far from an expert. Writing scarcely visible through the brown of age, she was afraid to touch the sheets lest they crumble. What she could make out, however, looked Vanaheimic. Possibly Old Norse, but—

The ladder creaked behind her.

“Hey, this is a cool little room,” Nathan said, poking his prairie dog head through the ladder hole.

“I thought I told you to stay down there and browse.”

“Yeah, I was browsing, but then it occurred to me that I probably shouldn’t touch anything… You know, the books being rare and therefore probably fragile. So I figured I’d be better off up here under your supervision. What’s that you’ve found?”

“Nothing related to Garm. Looks like pages from some old book Hubert was restoring. Or maybe something he was checking to see if it was a forgery, since that was sort of his specialty.” Squinting: “As near as I can tell, it’s a history of Denmark… Shit.”

“The Historia Danica ?”

She turned her head to him in surprise but then looked back to the pages.

“No. Not exactly. At least not the one I think you’re thinking of…” As she spoke, though, she happened to glance at the book beside the pages.

“But that’s odd,” she said.

“What’s odd?”

“Well, these pages aren’t from the Historia Danica —they’re not even in Latin—but this looks like a modern copy of the Historia Danica right here beside them…” Then, looking up at him: “How do you know about this stuff, anyway? I mean, you don’t exactly strike me as the most likely Saxo buff.”

“Well, I played Hamlet a couple years ago.”

Our Heroine felt a slight shiver in her neck, and she turned her eyes back toward him. He still looked harmless enough. It was probably just a coincidence. Besides which, she wasn’t investigating anything, so what did it matter to her if it wasn’t a coincidence? But still, considering what Shirley had been working on before she died…

“So playing Shakespeare’s Hamlet inspired you to read the Saxo version of the story in the Historia Danica ?” she asked him.

“Yeah,” he answered. “I mean, a translation of it, anyway. Just to get into the role, you know, that being the earliest extant version of the story and all. But really, the only reason I’ve even heard of Saxo or any of that stuff is because I read about it in The Memoirs of Emily Bean . Surt’s schemes always revolved around some obscure piece of Scandinavian trivia like that. Or the pseudonyms he used would have some esoteric meaning that was supposed to clue your mom in that it was him. But I guess you know that, don’t you?”

The arch-criminal known as Surt first crossed swords [21] An apt choice of cliché, for once, compared to all of the “derisive snorts” and “malicious grins” found elsewhere in the text. The mythological character from whom Surt derived his nomme de crime is neither one of the Aesir (the central deities of mainstream Norse theology) nor one of the Vanir (the central deities of Vanatru theology). Rather, he is a singular primal being from the fiery land of Muspellheim (somewhere south of the inhabited world), where he silently awaits the advent of Ragnarok, the day on which he will reforge his flaming sword and with it fell the dead hollow form of Yggdrasil that new life might grow in its place. with the Bean-Ymirsons on the case of the Backwards Bookshelf and continued to plague them until his fatal plunge into the Arctic Ocean during the case of the Greenland Gravestone Robberies. His crimes ranged from the bootlegging of beer in Reykjavik during prohibition to the murder of a former Danish viceroy. But the crime that pleased him most was undoubtedly the addition of his sobriquet to the Icelandic Book of Settlements . Despite her philosophical opposition to him, Emily couldn’t help admiring his genius. [22] A common topic of debate among Valison scholars is whether or not genius was the only aspect of Surt that Emily Bean admired. Jon Ymirson, on the other hand, restrained himself from such admiration quite easily.