Dustin Long - Icelander

“As you hear this, I probably either don’t know where the phone is, or I’m ignoring it, so leave a message and I’ll get back to you when my ignorance has ended.”

“Hey, this is Hugh. I really need your help with something. I don’t want to say too much on the machine, but, um… Come see me. I’m at the home away from home , you know? Think about Shirley. Anyway, I’ll be waiting for you, so I’d appreciate it if you could get here as soon as you can. Thanks. Sorry about last night, by the way. See you soon, I hope.”

Our Heroine plucked the phone from the refrigerator’s top and—setting the knife down on the stove—she dialed Hubert’s number.

It rang, but the bastard didn’t answer. Sorry about last night? And how could she know where he was if he wasn’t home? Stupid clues; say what you mean. At least he was okay. Just mourning in his own way, she imagined. She returned to the bathroom, pulled the plugstop from its snugness, and watched the water drain.

Perhaps Blaise would know where Hubert was. Maybe that’s what the mention of Shirley meant. Our Heroine had to meet him in half an hour, anyway, so it couldn’t hurt to ask. This didn’t help her with Garm, of course, but at least it was something .

Garm’s great-grandfather, the Fenris Dachshund, had insinuated himself into the life of Emily Bean during the same Icelandic vacation on which she first met Jon Ymirson. Emily was walking along the wharf, taking in the view of Reykjavik’s fog-filled bay, when Ymirson stumbled backward into her and nearly knocked her into the water. Hopping one-footed, he caught hold of her with his right hand while with his left he tried to extricate his flailing leg from the jaws of the long, black Fenris Dachshund.

“Sir!” Emily had exclaimed. “For shame to enlist the help of an innocent whelp in such a crude maneuver of courtship. That is neither the way to a woman’s heart nor the proper manner in which to treat a hound.”

Both dachshund and man desisted and turned their eyes to Emily.

Ymirson sputtered. The Fenris Dachshund whimpered.

“Woman,” Ymirson finally managed to bellow in his heavily inflected English. “This hound is not mine. He is a hound of evil who attacks my leg for no discernible reason. And the way to your heart is not—”

“Evil? You poor little thing.” She squatted to gently remove the Fenris Dachshund from Ymirson’s leg and then cradled him in her arms. “Perhaps, sir, if you would take more care in the future not to spill vanilla extract upon your shoes while preparing your morning cocktails, you would have greater fortune in avoiding the attentions of innocent, sweet-toothed dachshunds. Now, if you have finished harassing me and my newfound canine companion, I humbly request that you leave us in peace.”

Ymirson snorted derisively, glowered, and then huffed away, leaving her and what she now called “her” dog in peace. And so went the first meeting of Jon Ymirson and Emily Bean. [10] See the first volume of the Memoirs for a fuller account of these events. Unbeknownst to either one of them, however, the Fenris Dachshund actually belonged at the time to Ymirson’s chief rival, the Danish anthropologist Anders Pytlick.

The two men’s mutual mentor, Clint Van Cleef—distressed by the rift between his two greatest students—had on his deathbed entrusted Ymirson with an unexplained set of geographical coordinates and provided Pytlick with a description of a landmark to dig beneath once those coordinates were reached. The two men would thus be forced into cooperation, Van Cleef had reasoned, by necessity reconciling their differences in order to locate the treasure that their mentor had bequeathed them. Van Cleef died secure in the knowledge that his pupils would thus be reunited. He had, however, never been a very shrewd judge of character.

The Fenris Dachshund was part of Pytlick’s scheme to keep Van Cleef’s treasure for himself. The dog had been trained to follow the scent of vanilla, which Pytlick had mixed into all of Ymirson’s tins of shoeshine, and each night, the amazing canine would lead his master through every step that Ymirson had taken over the course of the day. The plan, naturally, was to wait until Ymirson visited Van Cleef’s coordinates, at which point Pytlick would abscond with whatever legacy their mentor had left them. And, if Ymirson happened to arrive on the scene inopportunely or decided to cause any trouble, Pytlick always had his trusty blackjack.

The loving care that the dachshund received from Emily, however, when contrasted with the abuse he had suffered at the hands of his master, turned him firmly to her side of the struggle once she unwittingly became involved, and—in the end—he not only rescued Emily and Ymirson from a burning house but led them to Pytlick’s hideout as well.

Though Garm was too young to have ever had the chance to help with any of Emily’s cases—and despite a longhair or two on his mother’s side—a rough eighth of his blood was that of a hero.

A staircase led up to the Elite Café from the foyer of a cinema. Steps that Our Heroine had rushed up and down twice daily one summer, still fuzzed with the same footworn carpet. She took them two at a time, now, the rail rewelcoming her hand. Nine strides, eighteen again.

The café was much as she recalled it. Brightened by skylights and wall-spanning windows, populated by the University’s sundry denizens (undergrads discussing paper topics with teaching assistants, grads still rallying around their patron professors; in the least-lit corners registrars pursed their lips and drank their espressos, taking notes that no one would ever see). Our Heroine had gorged herself on this atmosphere back then. In a spiral binder she’d recorded her frustrated fantasies about the lives of these people she didn’t know. How they pursued Higher Truth by day but acquiesced to Deeper Stirrings by night, playing out their academic conflicts sexually until everyone had eventually slept with everyone else… By summer’s end a hundred pages had been filled with analysis of all the ideological consequences of each coupling. She generally stayed away these days and kept her literary aspirations limited to subjects she knew something about.

Blaise had chosen the place for their meeting, but he wasn’t there yet, so Our Heroine stepped counterward to order herself a drink.

“Well, Professor, hello!” a voice called from behind her. It was Boris Baxter, sitting at a table with three other white men. “Have a seat.”

She walked over toward his table but remained standing. “Hello, Boris. Is this all that’s left of your fan club?”

“Oh, my graduate student round-table doesn’t meet until one or so, if that’s what you’re referring to. I’ll be here for the next few hours, if you’re interested. But allow me to introduce Drs. Lorenz, Mohs, and Curleigh. Math, Geology, and Northern Studies, respectively. Visiting professor and two new additions to our little faculty, also respectively. I’m surprised you haven’t heard. Gentlemen, this is that same illustrious doctor of whom I’ve just been speaking. The Bean-Ymirsons’ daughter.”

“A pleasure to finally meet you,” said Dr. Lorenz. He was dressed rather ridiculously, Our Heroine thought—in orange pants and a green jacket—and as he spoke he toyed with a large, gaudy ring on his right hand. “Boris has told us so much, I feel as if I already know you. You’re Anthropology, as well?”

“I’m something of an interdisciplinarian, actually. Linguistics, Anthropology… I’m listed with the Scandinavian Studies department.” [11] For the record, Our Heroine’s own trivial academic interests—as detailed in The Greenland Gravestone Robberies (Volume 12 of the Memoirs )—include: Iceland’s enforced linguistic purity, the patronymic tradition, and the genetic purity requirement of its citizenry—the whole idea of “authenticity,” as she phrases it, and just what it means to be a “real” Icelander.