The Viking Witch Cozy Mysteries

Chapter 2

When my grandmother came to my door just before dawn, I was still wide awake, just staring up at the wood panels over my bed, tucked in its cubby among an array of cupboards. She didn"t knock, just waited for me to turn my head and give her a nod. She returned my nod, then headed back downstairs to the kitchen and the coffee I could just catch a whiff of in the air.

Mjolner wasn"t there, hogging my pillow. I wondered if he had gone on ahead or was hunting in the garden.

He was planning to move up to Villmark with me, right?

I looked back up at the panels overhead. Just flat slats of oak, polished to a fine glow but otherwise unadorned. I was going to miss my little bed. And that feeling only intensified when I turned on my side to sneak one last look out at the view of Lake Superior framed by pine trees through the little window near my pillow.

Then I got up and got dressed and shoved the rest of my clothes into my duffel bag. I already had my art things packed and downstairs waiting by the door, so I followed the scent of coffee and fresh waffles down the stairs to the kitchen.

I set my things by the rack that held our walking sticks, then shuffled over to where my grandmother was holding out a large mug of coffee. But when I reached out for it, she moved it away, setting it on the table to pull me into a tight hug.

"Mormor," I said, surprised. "I"m still going to see you. This isn"t goodbye."

"I know," she said, squeezing me all the tighter. "This is for you. You look a wreck."

"Gee, thanks," I said.

"I know you didn"t sleep last night," she said. "Your poor heart."

"It"s all right," I said as cheerily as I could. "Coffee would help."

"Of course," she said, finally letting me go. I reached for the mug and took a big swallow. The caffeine hit me at once in a rush. After a second swallow, I was ready to sit down at the table and turn my attention to the monster-sized waffle my grandmother had put in front of me. It was a savory waffle, filled with ham and cheese, and she drizzled a white sauce over the top of it before handing me a fork.

"I knew it was going to be a big day, but I had no idea it was going to be carb-loading big," I said. Then I took a bite and any other words I might have wanted to say were lost in a long hum of pleasure. The salty tang of the ham, the sharpness of the cheese, and the richness of the white sauce were pure perfection. I always loved waffles, but this was waffles on a whole other level.

"One last breakfast together," she said, chin on her hands as she sat across from me and watched me eat. "I"ll be seeing you when I can, but probably not for breakfast. Not for quite some time."

"Brunch works for me," I said between bites. "Or tea time."

She just smiled.

Although my back was to the eastern window, I could sense the sky there lightening by the minute. The sun would be up soon. I finished off my waffle and the last of my coffee, then went to get into my parka, hat, and mittens.

I handed my grandmother the duffel that held my clothes since it was the lighter of the two bags, then hoisted my art bags onto my own back. I had both my usual one that I carried with me everywhere with my sketching implements in it and a larger one that held all of my other tools. Bottles of ink clacked together as I hefted it up into place. Then I picked up my easel, collapsed into its most portable form, and looped an arm through the carrying strap so that it rested on my back on top of my other two bags.

It was a lot to carry. Luckily, we didn"t have far to go.

Unluckily, the bit we did have to go was mostly uphill, on a narrow rocky trail that was always slick and wet from the waterfall that cascaded just a few feet away.

The sky overhead was immense and cloudless, but the sun about to rise behind us was winking out the stars one by one. No wind stirred the air, but it was so cold it hurt to breathe, and I kept the collar of my parka zipped up over my nose.

No birds were out and the lack of wind made the lake itself unusually silent, but the rush of water in the river beside the path was joined by the faint hum of the occasional early morning truck crossing the bridge across the gorge far over our heads. But soon even that engine sound was drowned out by the roar of the waterfall.

We climbed without speaking, although I could hear my grandmother"s breath even through the layers of scarf she had wrapped around the bottom of her face. At last we reached the turn in the path from steeply climbing uphill to narrowly ducking behind the cascading water.

Usually the cave behind the waterfall felt like a relief to reach, a shelter from the elements. It was a place to pause and unzip coats and pull off woolen hats and mittens before pressing on to the deeper chambers. But since the morning was windless, the air behind the waterfall was no warmer than out on the rocky bluff, and the droplets that always sprayed across the cavern were quite icy.

My grandmother pulled the scarf down off her nose only long enough to call out, "Which Thor is guarding?"

I was hoping to hear Thorbjorn"s voice, but it was his younger brother who answered. "Well met, Nora Torfudottir. It is I, Thorge, who guards."

Then we heard the sound of stone grinding on stone, and the light from the distant bonfire flickered down the turn of the cave that suddenly appeared before us.

We hustled in to reach the warmth of the bonfire. I could smell its familiar smell, some type of wood I couldn"t identify but was always the same. Like how my grandmother"s kitchen always smelled like coffee and waffles, this place had a smell of its own that felt like a different kind of home to me.

Thorge was waiting for us at the stone doorway, and after we passed through, he rolled it closed again behind us. I wasn"t sure if this was about the cold or some new security measure, or if Thorge was just more cautious when he was on guard than some of his brothers.

I gave him a questioning glance, but he just gave me a warm smile of welcome. "Well met, Ingrid Torfudottir," he said.

"Well met, Thorge Valkisson," I said. His words to me had flowed naturally off his tongue, so why did my response sound so stilting and formal?

We had only met once before, on the night that he and his brothers had fought the trolls that were aiding in a Villmarker"s flight from justice. I glanced up at the elaborate knot work tattoos that arced over his ears. His long red hair was shaved on the sides to show them off, and I still longed to sketch them into one of my books, to really study the pattern. I didn"t think they were actual magic, but they had some meaning, surely.

But now was probably not the time. With a sigh, I followed my grandmother to stand by the bonfire.

"Is there some kind of ritual?" I asked as I held my mittened hands out to the warmth of the fire.

"No," my grandmother said, bemused, as if I had asked the oddest sort of question.

"I was supposed to be here by sunrise," I said. "I thought there would be some sort of... reception?"

"No, nothing like that," my grandmother said. She too had been warming her hands at the fire, but now she clapped her hands together as if declaring herself warm enough to continue. "Shall we?"

"I suppose," I said. Thorge waved farewell to us, then settled onto one of the three-legged stools by the bonfire to continue his watch. "So the sunrise thing was just a deadline?" I asked my grandmother as we walked up the natural stone steps at the back of the cave and up to the meadow that overlooked the waterfall, the town of Runde, and the lake beyond.

"Not everything is magic," she told me. "That doesn"t make it less important to be on time."

"No, I suppose not," I agreed. But it was disconcerting to yet again have to adjust my expectations. I wouldn"t have to keep adjusting if people would just be straight with me about what was going on.

We walked through the little forest to the village of Villmark. The streets were empty and silent, but there were lights on in some of the windows as people within began to stir. We continued straight on to the well that stood in the center of the square that was once the village commons.

When the original settlers had built the first iteration of the village, they had built their homes around this central square to keep the few cows and goats they had brought with them safe from wolves. As the village had grown, the dairy herds had moved to the valley south of the village and the village itself had taken on more of a grid of roads type of layout. The commons, no longer needed for grazing animals, had shrunk to a mere square at the crossroads.

The only thing that had persisted through all that time was the well which still stood at the center.

Not that anyone used it for water anymore. Every house had indoor plumbing now. But the only thing in Villmark that was older than the well was the bonfire in the cave behind the waterfall.

My grandmother and I turned left at the square. The house she had grown up in, our ancestral home, was only a few doors down on the right from that well. She led the way up the walk and inside the house, setting my duffel of clothes and her walking stick just inside the door and pulling off her boots before heading further inside to turn on light after light.

I left my easel and art bags by my duffel of clothes but took off my parka, hat and mittens as well as my boots before stepping up out of the entranceway into the main part of the house.

My house. My grandmother had made that clear on many occasions. She had grown up here, but it was no longer home to her now. Her heart"s home was her cabin in Runde, and especially the mead hall she kept that stood where Runde and Villmark overlapped. This place was mine now.

Only it didn"t feel like it.

I rubbed at my arms as I passed the cozy little kitchen tucked off the corridor, close to the front door, and stepped into the great room.

The north and east sides of the house were divided into two stories, but the south and west half was all one room, this room. The north end rose up half a level, almost like a dais, which effectively set off about a third of the floor space closest to the stairs to the second level.

The rising sun was not yet visible through the south-facing floor to ceiling windows, but its light was shining on the frost-covered trees of the hills.

"Everything is in order," my grandmother said, and I looked up to see her coming out of one of the bedrooms on the second floor. "I had some things removed, but just little personal things. Every room is furnished, and you can take whichever one you like. Move the furniture where you want it, add or remove anything, don"t feel like you have to ask permission from me."

"Okay," I said. My voice sounded small, like that big empty room was just swallowing it up.

"Well, your friends have already been here adding things, I see," she said. At first I didn"t know what she meant, but when she came into the great room to stand beside me, I followed her gaze to take in a stack of wrapped packages left on the row of built-in benches along the eastern wall.

"My friends?" I said as I crossed the room to look closely at the brown wrapping. There was no card, and nothing was written on the paper.

"Loke dropped those off, unless I"m very much mistaken," my grandmother said. "Coffee?"

Normally I didn"t drink even as much coffee as I had had before we"d left her house less than an hour ago. But I hadn"t slept, and I knew it was going to be a long day. "Do I have any?" I asked.

"I brought some," she said, then disappeared into the kitchen.

I turned my attention to the packages. They were flat and rectangular, but it was definitely not boxes inside, as nothing rattled when I shook them. I carefully unwrapped the paper.

What I saw under the paper brought a well of emotion to my throat. They were my own pen and ink drawings of different places around Runde. My grandmother"s cabin, the banks of the river, tree-lined views of the lake. Not mere sketches but finished drawings I had done, then tossed onto the pile of things I might someday put up for sale on Jessica"s café wall.

But someone had taken them and framed them. I ran my fingertips over the wood of the frames. Real wood, cut and finished by hand.

Somehow, I just knew they were Andrew"s work. It was like I could feel him there with me when I touched those frames. Like I could smell him standing just behind me.

Which was silly. I could smell the frames, new as they were, but not specifically him. It was just a strong association. Andrew always smelled of wood and stain, and usually had bits of each clinging to the wool of his sweaters.

And just as surely as I knew the frames were from Andrew, I knew that it was Loke who had brought these here. It was Loke who knew just what I needed to make this foreign-feeling place feel a little more like my home.

My grandmother came back in and handed me one of the mugs of coffee she was carrying and I set the pictures aside to take it.

"That"s lovely," she said as she picked one up to look at it more closely. "Yes, I told him this was a good idea."

"Loke," I guessed.

"Hmm," she agreed as she sipped at her coffee. "Of course Andrew was involved as well. He picked out which drawings to pilfer from you, but I was sure you wouldn"t mind."

"Not in the least," I said.

"I"m sure they"ll look lovely wherever you decide to hang them," she said, looking around. Nothing changed on her face, and her tone was still cheery, but her next words were a bit chilling. "You know, I never quite liked this house."

"Really?" I said. I thought the coldness was something only I felt, because this was all still new to me. But she had grown up in this house.

"Oh, nothing tragic," she assured me. "I had a perfectly lovely childhood, and two parents who adored me. It just never felt like I belonged here. Well, lots of kids feel that way, don"t they? And then..."

But she trailed off, giving herself a little shake and then me a reassuring smile.

"Never mind, dear," she said. "A story for another time."

She was still smiling, but I knew that no matter how I begged, she wasn"t going to finish what she had been about to say until she was good and ready.

And as it turned out, she wouldn"t have had time to anyway, as at that very minute there was a knock at the door.

"That will be Nilda and Kara," my grandmother said as she waved me towards the door. "They promised to stock your pantry and will likely have gifts as well."

I could tell my grandmother was right before I even opened the door. The smell of fresh-baked bread preceded my two friends, and my mouth was watering despite my belly still being full of waffles.

Then I swung the door open, and that smell wafted past me. It was almost like I could see it moving down the hall, spreading throughout the house, mingling with the smell of my grandmother"s coffee to dispel the older, staler smells of a too-long-empty house.

We hadn"t even built up a fire yet, but my friends were already warming my house for me.