Dustin Long - Icelander

“This is not the way to Vanaheim,” my father said as we made our way in the direction of Garm’s howls.

“We’ll be there soon, Pa. First we just have to make one little stop to pick up Garm.”

“Hmph,” he snorted. “This is nonsense. I have never shared your mother’s fondness for hounds. We should leave for Vanaheim immediately.”

Once he had parted from Our Heroine outside Hubert Jorgen’s storefront, we proceeded to follow the actor for what seemed like minutes. The snow was useful in obscuring us from his sight, but perhaps we were not as obscure as we might have been; it is possible that he was attempting to shake us from his trail. His path followed no pattern that we could perceive. Meanderings that crossed each other and doubled back upon themselves, like the aimless explorations of a man without a map in a city that he does not know. He seemed to be tracing out some indecipherable hieroglyph in the rough lines of the city streets. A rune of protection? From whom? We overtook him before he could achieve its terrible completion.

“Pardon us,” we said as we caught him up. “May we speak with you for a moment?”

“Oh, hey…” Impassive. “Yeah, it’s really me. So, do you guys want an autograph or something?” He patted at his pockets, presumably for a pen.

“There is no need for that; we are aware of your name. You are an actor as well as an author, are you not?”

With mute nod and sheepish smile, he affirmed our assertion.

“Hmm. It is a bit of an anomaly to find a celebrity of your caliber in a town as small as New Crúiskeen.”

“Yeah, I’m just here for Bean Day, actually… I’m speaking at the Valison panel. And, if you guys don’t want autographs, I should probably get a move on, because it starts pretty soon…”

“Of course. We do not mean to delay you… But my partner and I were just—quite coincidentally—discussing your superlative interpretation of the role of Hamlet, and we were hoping that, perhaps, you could spare just a moment to discuss it with us.”

He was taken in by our subterfuge.

“You guys saw that? Yeah, I’m really proud of that movie. I mean, I realize I’m no Olivier, but I do feel that it was one of my finer portrayals.”

“Indeed. It was an astounding mimesis, and you must have studied the character in some depth to render it with such verisimilitude.”

He mock-waved away our flattery.

“Yeah, well, I did take it pretty seriously,” he said. “I’d never really done much Shakespeare before, so I spent a lot of time just reading the play—over and over—until I was sure I understood every single word… I even went to Denmark for a while, just to get a feel for the atmosphere in which it takes place, you know.”

“Hmm…” we said, genuinely pensive, for this resonated unexpectedly well with other entries in our casebook. “During what period of time were you there, exactly?”

“Oh, that was back in the summer of ’98. It took a couple years for the film to hit the States, and even then it didn’t get a wide release… It was a good experience all around, though; I really learned a lot. I mean, for instance, did you know that Shakespeare wasn’t even the first guy to write a story about the character? The early versions were more action-adventure than tragedy, apparently. But I was able to work a lot of that into my portrayal. If you ever watch the movie again, you should pay attention to how the way I develop as a character parallels way that the character evolved. From Saxo Grammaticus straight through to Thomas Kyd. And then Shakespeare, of course… I mean, it’s pretty subtle, yeah, but it’s all in there.”

All of the fears that we had harbored till now—that the object of our search was but an ignis fatuus ; that no true illumination awaited us at the end of our path; that we had been led on, thus far, by mere coincidence—had dissolved in the moment that the actor said the name. Thomas Kyd. Until our involvement with Ms. MacGuffin, we had been incognizant of this name, just as we had been incognizant of his purported Hamlet . Further, from what we knew of the actor, it did not seem likely to us that such information would ordinarily be found in the domain of his knowledge, either. We were excited, then, at the prospect of what seemed to be both confirmation of our fundamental hypotheses and an undeniable lead in new directions. We did not, however, allow this excitement to influence our tone of voice.

“Thomas Kyd?” we asked. “But Thomas Kyd’s version of the play is lost, is it not?”

“Yeah, wow… Well, you guys are way more up on your Hamlet than I ever was. I’d never even heard of his version before I took on the role… But yeah, I guess it’s lost, or it was never properly published or something. In Denmark, though, I met this woman who was trying to reconstruct it… Or at least she was trying to write her own verbally viable version of it or something. Like one that conformed to the syntactic patterns of Kyd’s other plays. It sounded like a pretty cool idea…”

“This is all… quite intriguing,” we said.

“Yeah… Well, anyway, it was nice talking to you guys…” he indicated his watch. “But I’ve really gotta be going.”

“Indeed you do,” we replied. “Indeed you do.”

Feeling oozed back into my hands before we reached the bottom of the cave. The stench of sulphur was pretty strong, but if that meant warmth, then I figured I could get to like the smell pretty easily. About fifty meters down the tunnel, right around the first bend, there was a little kiosk where an ancient park ranger was sleeping with this huge grin on his face. The son walked up and knocked on the glass, but I was kind of sorry to see the old guy roused, he’d looked so happy. I imagined he was dreaming of a long-dead wife. Or maybe his wife was alive and he was dreaming of some girl he’d known before he got married. After he’d rubbed his eyes awake, he just gave us a tired frown.

“I’d like to get a three-day pass,” I said.

The guy looked completely blank. Like he was blind from birth and I’d just asked him why the sky was blue. But there was no way he didn’t speak English. Sure, most tourists enter Vanaheim at Snaefellsjökull—and that’s exactly why I was entering here, to avoid the crowds—but I was pretty sure that even at this entrance they still got American tourists all the time. I considered trying my mediocre Danish out on him, but thought better of it when I remembered how well that had gone over in Denmark. The father stepped in to save me the embarrassment.

“Give my father your wallet,” the son told me. “He will return you a fair remainder.”

I handed it over—I had almost two hundred bucks in it, but what else was I gonna do—and the two older men began to yell at each other.

“It will be fine,” the son said. “You just have to wait a couple of moments while they niggle over the price. Do you want a Royal Crown? I will buy it.” He motioned toward a gift shop a couple decimeters beyond the kiosk.