Dustin Long - Icelander

The room was like Grand Central with all the comings and goings; I felt pretty out of place the way everyone else was bustling around me. It was like the projector reel was being cranked back too fast and I was just about the only still thing in the frame. The woman and the old guy in the corner were pretty stable, too, I guess, and that’s probably what drew my attention to them. But even the men in their little squatting groups kept getting up and shifting places, circling around each other… Splitting off and forming new circles. Everything just had this real restless quality to it. Frenetic. I had to walk across the room to shake the sensation.

The woman wasn’t dressed like a native. This pissed me off a little, since I’d been so fervently assured that I was going to be the only outsider in here, but I decided not to make a big deal of it. I leaned up against the wall a few feet away from her and the old dude. He looked kind of familiar to me, but I figured it was probably just the way he reminded me of a generic old-school movie star. He had the traditional big-jawed good looks of a Kirk Douglas, or a Charlton Heston, or a Burt Lancaster. She seemed pretty engrossed in her conversation with him. I was so busy trying to figure out where I knew him from, though, that it took me over a minute to realize they were speaking English.

“But the second occurrence…” she said. Her voice was sort of shaky, like music from a sun-warped cassette. She might’ve been crying. “Well, I’m really not certain. I suppose—if I were to try to trace my own motivations in the matter—that I was attempting in some sense to demonstrate to myself—or, rather, to both of us—that the first occurrence hadn’t in all actuality—Well, that I’d been in control. But I now apprehend the fact that I hadn’t been. And that renders it all the worse, doesn’t it? At least that’s the way that all of the threads seem to resolve, to my mind. I’m not really great with interiority, though, so perhaps I’m reading it wrong. But I’m just rambling now. What’s your opinion?”

“I have said before and I shall say again that it is not your fault. You cannot be held to blame for a dog’s rabid turn. Hmph. You… I do not know what else to say. Dog and hound and cur. I must think for a moment.” The guy’s accent was surprisingly subtle considering that he must have been in his late thirties—at least—by the time Vanaheim was discovered. He was a quick learner, I supposed. Or else he was an Icelander, which would have explained his modern dress-style. I had trouble telling the accents apart.

“I’ve encountered you before, haven’t I?” I noticed that her voice had lost its quaver. And then I noticed that she was addressing me. “Yes, yes; I know who you are. You’re that Hamlet boy from Denmark.”

I should have known I couldn’t avoid my fans, I thought. Then I looked at her full in the face for the first time, and I realized that I actually did know her. She looked completely different outside of the library, though, with her hair down and her glasses removed. I really had met her in Denmark. She’d been researching Hamlet , too.

“Yeah,” I said, pushing myself away from the wall. “Oh, hey. I didn’t recognize you at first.”

“Hmm… Your middle name wouldn’t happen to be Michael or Elmo or Melvin, would it?” she asked me. Her eyes were a little red. The old guy seemed to have drifted off into his own little world.

“No,” I said. “It’s Green. Why do you ask?”

“Green? Hmm… Well, no, that simply won’t do at all. I was attempting to contrive an apposite anagram for you, but I’m afraid you’re short the “M” and the “L” needed for anything to do with Hamlet . But why don’t you sit down and join us? Perhaps I can think of something while we talk. My companion and I were just discussing Vanatru theology.”

With faux-Vanatru spirituality sweeping Hollywood, and everyone from Madonna to Cher overcoming fears of red-paint reprisals by boldly sporting designer fox-fur coats and accessories, and with even fitness guru Billy Blanks tossing aside Tae Bo in favor of Refurserkir-inspired “Fox Boxing,” what could possibly be more chic than dating the daughter of the man who discovered the place? That’s what Bean Day pilgrims were wondering this week when Hollywood heartthrob Nathan—no, I promised.

I tried not to worry about my father, safely in Connie’s care now, as I made my way downtown. Most of the Bean Day tourists were gone by the time I arrived; they’d already moved on to the more outskirtish sites, like the park where Prescott had almost married Gerd, or the burnt-down farm where Surt had buried his forged Viking weaponry. This meant that none of them were around to bother me for an autograph, but it also meant that none of them were around to tell me if they’d seen Garm. I’d decided to concentrate on Garm, while my other problems brewed in my brain. At least he was out here somewhere, running about—not being held captive by Refurserkir or some inept ring of antiquities thieves. All assuming I could believe Connie, of course.

Intellectually sexy. The snow still fell, but somewhere between here and home I’d stopped being angry about it. I supposed it sounded like something he might say. He’d learned most of his English from me.

“In Vanaheim, ‘snow’ is so all-around, it has many words,” he told me once (I translate from the original Vanaheimic). “When its color cannot be seen and it moves as if with life in it, we call it vatn . When it is so cold that it is hard like stone, we call it ís . Only when it is soft and white do we call it snjór .”

Intellectually cute.

Still, six months without a word, and I must admit I hadn’t quite minded.

It is six months ago, and Prescott has returned to Vanaheim without saying goodbye to Our Heroine. She has come to me for comfort.

“I just don’t understand,” she says between heaves of sob. “I mean, I’m not dumb… I know that we weren’t good together anymore. If we ever were, that is, and it wasn’t just always us clinging to some dumb fantasy. And I know it just wasn’t nearly as exciting since my… I know he had every reason to go. But why did he have to go? I just don’t understand.”

She has iterated her story many times. She does not understand; that alone is clear. The bottle of schnapps that she has brought with her is assuredly not contributing to her comprehension.

“Where’s Shirley?” she asks. Her sobs have suddenly ceased.

“She is researching.”

“Where? In her study? Out in the Two-Story House? Where?”

“She is out. I believe her intention was to visit your father at his library and then to retire to the Elite Café for a session of note-taking.”

She looks into my eyes with a slight squint that suggests some amount of comprehension. Of what, I am uncertain.

“I’m sorry,” she says, though I do not know why. Her eyes are streaked with the red of swollen veins and her mouth is half-open for breath. She has drunk too much.

“I do not understand,” I reply.

“I don’t get it,” I said as I sat down Indian style, across from the woman and the old guy. “So, they worship dogs here or something?” She’d said they were discussing Vanatru theology, but it sure sounded to me like they’d been discussing hounds.

“Hmm? Well, there is a definite reverence for the Arctic fox,” she said. “But no, it wouldn’t be quite accurate to say that they worship them…” She paused, and then I think she realized why I’d asked—what I’d overheard her say before. “Their mythology does include quite a few stories with dogs and foxes in them, though… So, yes, I suppose I should have said that we were discussing Vanatru myth ology, rather than the ology. Pardon my lack of specificity.”