The Morning Flower Read online

  I dutifully sat up straighter and hung on to the bench. As much as I enjoyed flirting (or even attempted flirting) with Pan, I valued not flopping around in dirty water or being eaten by alligators even more.

  When we got back to Rikky’s I called dibs on the shower, which would have been enjoyable if not for the major moral dilemma that arose when I came face-to-face with a spider.

  Behind the showerhead, in the corner underneath the rusting eaves, was a fat garden spider in a huge web. My stance on most living things was one of “live and let live.” And I was determined to abide by that despite my very real fear that the spider would leap into my face and bite me.

  This led to a terrifying, lukewarm, seven-minute shower. The one good thing was that I was so focused on the spider that I didn’t have any time to worry about whether or not anyone could see me naked through the shower curtain.

  When I finished, I found Pan and Rikky sitting in the main room. A ceiling fan made from old car parts languidly cooled the room, and Fleetwood Mac played on the record player. Both of them were lounging on the couch and drinking dark liquid out of green mason jars.

  “Ulla! Come join us!” Rikky exclaimed as she saw me. “Have a drink!”

  Before I could respond, she flitted over to the table and poured a glass from a big jug. She thrust it at me, and I tentatively took it from her. “What is it?

  “Omte sangria,” she said with a laugh.

  Pan rolled his eyes. “It’s blackberry wine and eldvatten, which is a fancy name for Omte moonshine. It’s good, but pace yourself.”

  I sniffed my drink, and the smell was a tart mixture of Jolly Rancher candy and kerosene, so I decided that I’d work up to it.

  “We were talking about all the disturbing crap we learned today, including living sacrifices and helifiske.” Rikky did exaggerated air quotes around the final word.

  “Helifiske?” I repeated. “I don’t think I’ve heard of that before.”

  Rikky sat on the couch next to Pan and pulled her feet up under her. “Before today, neither had I. But you may know it by the more anglicized name—sacred recruitment.”

  That clicked with me because I’d only learned of it recently. Calder had gotten a book for me about the followers of the Älvolk—the legendary guardians who protected the Lost Bridge of Dimma—and it had mentioned something. The book was mostly a series of commandments and a few simple parables and poems, and there were key phrases repeated throughout. Lots of references to blood, “magick,” supremacy, and getting to a magical land of riches and reward.

  One of the ways to gain access to this utopia was to commit acts of service. Most of them were simple and made sense, like setting aside pursuits of gold and following the orders of the Älvolk leaders. But there was also talk of “payments in blood and flesh,” as well as the importance of “sacred recruitment” and “blodseider magick”—but neither of the terms had been specifically defined in the text.

  “If you’re ready to get into it all, you might as well sit down and make yourself comfortable.” Pan motioned to a pile of cushions and ikat pillows on the floor, between the record player and the birdcage that housed the sleeping squirrel.

  I peeked in the cage, checking out the fat gray ball of fluff, before settling down on the cushions. “Okay. I think I’m ready.”

  “It’s sex,” Rikky said bluntly, then laughed at the shock on my face. “Helifiske. It’s the sacred act of using sex to seduce prospective converts into joining the cult. Or, I’m sorry—they prefer to be called Freyarian Älvolk or Guardians of the Lost Bridge of Dimma.”

  “There is a lot more to it than that,” Pan admonished her. “Yeah, helifiske is a part of the teachings of the Freyarian Älvolk, but it is more than a recruitment. I read about a lot of rituals that mentioned sacrifice and sex with blodseider magick, but most of them had nothing to do with attracting new members or proselytizing of any kind.”

  “What were the points of the rituals, then?” I asked.

  I decided it was finally time to sample the “sangria,” sipping it slowly and inconspicuously. That turned out to be a very smart move, since it tasted like battery acid mixed with sugar. I managed to keep my expression neutral as it burned down my throat, and I forced myself to focus on Pan’s explanation.

  “I don’t know exactly,” he admitted. “Pleasure? Power? Delusions?”

  “It all starts with Frey,” Rikky interjected. “The Älvolk in general buy into the whole Alfheim creation myth. You know, the one that says ‘god’ or ‘gods’—depending how closely you follow the orthodoxy—all live in Alfheim. They either came from Alfheim and created the earth, or they lived on earth and created Alfheim as a paradise for the gods and heroes.”

  Pan took a long drink of his sangria while Rikky was talking, and he shook his head as he swallowed. “No, no, that’s not quite what the Älvolk believe. I don’t think they know who or what created Alfheim and the earth and universe. They think that Alfheim is a better place to live with a higher quality of inhabitants. Whether Alfheim is another kingdom, continent, planet, or maybe entirely made up is anybody’s guess.”

  “So maybe a real place or maybe a paradise of the gods?” Rikky asked with a teasing smile.

  “Okay, it’s basically the same thing, but I want to be precise with my language. It’s one thing to believe a place is a utopia, and it’s another to believe that it’s an afterlife that you must do good deeds to gain entrance to,” Pan clarified.

  She held up her hand. “You’re right, you’re right.”

  “So how do the Älvolk and the helifiske fit into finding Eliana and the First City?” I asked.

  “Áibmoráigi was built near the Lost Bridge of Dimma to guard and conceal it,” Pan said.

  “Other stories say that the bridge was supposed to be a secret, and that trolls built the First City too close to it,” Rikky added. “And that’s why they ‘lost’ the bridge, to protect it.”

  “No matter how you slice it, the First City and the Älvolk are connected,” Pan said. “Many of the legends diverge at certain points, but there is a lot that is similar. Trolls and humans lived separately for a long time—with the trolls alluded to as being on Alfheim, and the humans on earth. There was a bridge between the two worlds, although the exact descriptions of what the bridge looked like or how far it spanned are usually vague and frequently contradict each other.”

  “Yeah, I read on Trollipedia that some historians thought that tales of the bridge were created to explain natural phenomena like the aurora borealis because of how often the bridge was described as bright lights that were gone in a matter of seconds,” Rikky said. “But then I read several passages today that described it as a dark tunnel that took forty years to pass through.”

  “It could even be that they’re talking about two separate things but the folklore got all mixed up together,” Pan said. “But the main point is that there was some mystical bridge that connected the troll world and the human world.

  “And also, just to be clear, they don’t use the words troll and human,” he went on. “Those from Alfheim are álfar, and those on earth are called ekkálfar, so really the bridge connected the álfar world and the ekkálfar world.

  “A city sprang up around where the bridge met the earth, like many ports that eventually grew into bustling centers of culture and life,” Pan said. “And that’s exactly what Áibmoráigi did, eventually becoming the First City and the birthplace of troll society.”

  “But then something happened.” Rikky’s thick eyebrows bunched together, and she stared up at the skylights for a moment. “There isn’t a clear record of what transpired, but something changed.”

  “The most consistent explanation that I’ve heard is that old nursery rhyme,” Pan said. “The one with a bird and a fish and a bunny and, I don’t know, some kind of big cat or something. And they’re all pals until this giant worm, of all things”—he rolled his eyes at that—“messes everything up. It’s basically a Norse Tower of B
abel.”

  “Tower of what?” Rikky asked.

  “My bad.” He laughed to himself. “I forgot you guys grew up so isolated from humans. I doubt that there’s a lot of copies of the Old Testament floating around in nightstands around here.”

  “Anyway, it was all sunshine and Towers of Babel,” Rikky said helpfully to move the story along.

  “But other than the giant worm stirring up trouble, I haven’t got a clue about what caused the rift between Alfheim and earth, but for some reason the álfar decided they no longer wanted to keep the Lost Bridge open,” Pan said.

  “They didn’t call it the Lost Bridge back then, though,” Rikky said. “They hadn’t lost it yet, so it was called Bifröst.”

  “And it became ‘lost’ when the álfar tried to destroy it, but it couldn’t be destroyed,” Pan went on. “The best they could hope for was hiding it away. That’s where the Älvolk came in. They were the álfar who stayed behind to guard the bridge and keep anyone from crossing it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But you said this was all because of Frey, and so far he hasn’t come up.”

  “Oh, we’re getting to that now.” Rikky sat up straighter. “He was an álfar, and he decided to stay on earth after the bridge closed. His followers say he stayed because he was fond of everyone on earth and he wanted to help us get back where we belong. His detractors argue he stayed because his trollian abilities like telekinesis and persuasion made him like a god among the humans.”

  “You studied Norse, right?” Pan looked to me. “How much do you know about Frey?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t studied the myths that much. Just the language. All I really know about Frey is that he’s the god of love … or fertility? I think?”

  “More like the god of sex,” Pan said.

  Rikky lifted her glass and winked. “And wine.”

  “A regular party god, then?” I said, and she snickered.

  “As you can imagine, a secret group of monk-like guardians had a difficult time keeping up their numbers,” Rikky said. “A bunch of old dudes living a life of sacrifice and solitude protecting something that nobody really knows about didn’t attract a lot of members.

  “Then, suddenly, old writings of Frey’s surfaced, where he details his life of debauchery.” Rikky did jazz hands to show her faux-surprise. “And now these texts instructing ‘ritual orgies’ as a means of getting to paradise are no longer viewed as crude stories but instead as literal instructions on how to open the bridge and get to Alfheim.”

  “That’s how the Freyarian Älvolk began,” Pan said. “When the Älvolk tilted away from a simple life of service to a really twisted, zealous doctrine. But this was way back in the late 1800s. The Freyarian cult rose and fell through the years, until a particularly resilient sect took hold in a Trylle community in Northern California in the 1970s. This latest wave differentiated itself from the past iterations by having an overt mission to convert trolls and prepare for the discovery and reopening of the bridge.

  “This is also the group that took the calls for blood and flesh to the most literal and most disturbing degree,” he continued and grimaced.

  “The records we were reading, a lot of them were partially censored.” Rikky shivered involuntarily. “They were deemed too graphic for public consumption.”

  “So, if the Lost Bridge even really exists—if it is a tangible place that we can get to and not an allusion to the northern lights—it’s currently being guarded by a group of psychotic monk warriors?” I asked.

  “Yep. And that’s the good news,” Pan said.

  Rikky scoffed. “How is that the good news?”

  “Because at least we were able to find out more about the Älvolk. We learned something new,” he reasoned. “The bad news is that we don’t even know where the First City is. The location of that has been hidden for centuries, and the bridge has been lost for much longer than that. And we still don’t know if the bridge is even real or just a myth about the northern lights.”

  “Yeah, that is bad news,” I agreed and gulped down my sangria.

  5

  Sangria

  It was later, although I didn’t know the time. The sun had gone down, and the bugs had come up. The three of us had gone out to the dock after our discussion, when Pan declared that he was hungry. Rikky had suggested cooking on her charcoal grill, so we all sat out in rusty lawn chairs. After we ate, we tossed the excess vegetables at Drake the alligator snapping turtle—all while sipping on Omte sangria.

  We stayed out there, talking and laughing and drinking, until the air was alive with mosquitoes, then we escaped back into the house, into “my” room, where the screens kept the bugs out but let the evening breeze in. Rikky moved around some of her half-finished projects—a torn-apart box fan, a sanded old nightstand, a stack of driftwood meticulously arranged so it was starting to take shape as reptilian sculpture.

  I offered to help, but Rikky waved me off, so I lounged back on the daybed. Pan moved aside a pillow, then lifted my legs so he could sit under them. Rikky talked to herself as she rearranged, muttering her plans for this or that.

  In fact, Rikky had done most of the talking all night, mostly regaling me with tales of life growing up Omte. It involved an awful lot of brawls, cookouts, and various adventures in foraging—each story usually featured at least two of those elements. The Omte community seemed a lot more involved with each other and more neighborly than I was used to—albeit more assertive. I couldn’t say if that was because of the warmer climate vs. the subarctic one, or if it was something else.

  Rikky straightened up and let out a pained groan. “Oh, my.” She put her hand to her forehead. “That sangria must’ve been stronger than I thought it was, and now with that little bit of work, I am winded.” A small laugh escaped through her strained smile. “I hope neither of you would mind too much if I went to bed early.”

  “No, no, of course not,” Pan assured her.

  “All right, thank you.” She smiled at him, still strained and uneasy, and when she walked past us, she roughly tousled his hair. “I’m leaving the stereo on because I don’t want to deal with it, but feel free to turn it off.”

  “Nah, it’s cool. Everybody loves ABBA,” Pan said with a big goofy grin, then looked over at me. “Right?”

  “Yeah, it’s great,” I agreed, but Rikky was already in the main room, the storm door swinging shut behind her.

  The walls and door were thin enough that the music easily drifted through—although admittedly the disco pop was playing very loudly inside the living room. Still, when I spoke, I made sure to keep my voice low so as not to bother Rikky.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Good, good.” He laughed and rested his hand on my calf. “But I don’t think I even finished one glass of that, and I think Rikky had, like, three.”

  I laughed dubiously. “Did she really?”

  That only made him laugh harder, putting one hand on his chest and nodding vigorously. The whole daybed was shaking, but I didn’t really mind, because I slid closer to him, so my thighs now rested on his.

  “I can’t believe she stayed up as long as she did,” he agreed once his laughter subsided. “I said she should slow down, but she does what she wants.”

  Over the course of a couple hours, I had slowly drunk from my one glass, and I was still feeling it. The alcohol left my stomach hot and tingly, and my head was light and floaty, the words slipping from my lips with an ease I wasn’t used to.

  “Thank you for coming here with me,” I told him emphatically, and I put my hand over his—his skin felt so much cooler than mine; how could he stay so cool when my whole body flushed with heat?

  “As I’ve already told you, like, a thousand times—you’re welcome.” And that really had to have been at least the tenth time he’d said that.

  “I’m really glad that I don’t have to do this all by myself. And I don’t just mean because I don’t know where I’d be staying,” I said, and h
e laughed again—a quiet, warm rumble. “This is a whole lot to sort through, and I don’t know how I can make it up to you for enduring this.”

  “Enduring this?” He laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, it’s so brutal. I’m researching a history that really intrigues me, while hanging out in the beautiful—albeit wild—wetlands, and I get to hang out with a very cool girl while doing it.”

  “Aw…” I started to say, when something hit me. “Wait. You do mean me, right?”

  “Yeah, of course I mean you.” He rested his head on the back of the daybed and looked at me. “You always gotta make me say how I think you’re funny and smart and beautiful. Who else would I be talking about?”

  “I don’t know.” I lowered my eyes and I was thankful for the dimness of the room hiding the blush on my cheeks. The only lights in the room were a kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling and a few citronella candles.

  I wasn’t looking at him, but I could feel his eyes, studying me.

  “You thought I was talking about Rikky,” he realized quietly.

  “Maybe.” I shrugged. “I don’t exactly know what your relationship is with her.”

  “She is my ex-girlfriend,” he admitted slowly.

  “How long did you date?”

  “A little under a year.”

  “Wow. So, it was a serious thing?” I asked carefully, and he nodded. “Why wouldn’t you tell me? You didn’t even say that she was a girl.”

  “I don’t know. It was a dumb thing to do, not telling you, but I didn’t know what to say about it.”

  Pan fell silent, long enough that I looked up at him to make sure he hadn’t passed out, and he was staring off into the night. I sat up, pulling my legs off his lap and hugging my knees to my chest.

  “Okay, so I don’t know how to explain it to you without putting it all out there, so here goes.” He took a fortifying breath. “I like you. And I think you might like me.”

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, then quickly looked back at the swamp. “And I feel like we’re in this weird spot where we’re not an item but we’re … I don’t know. We’re not really nothing either. And life happened, and the stuff we’re doing to find Eliana and to find your parents, that obviously—and it should—take precedence, but then it makes our non-thing-thing even more confusing to me, and I guess I don’t really know how to act or what the proper etiquette is in this situation.”