Pan knocked gently on the desk and straightened up. “I’ll let you guys get to work, then.” He started backing away, but his eyes lingered on me. “You know where I am if you need anything.”
I smiled at him. “I do. Thanks for showing me around.”
“What can you make of this one?” Calder asked, tapping the scroll and pulling my attention back to him.
I awkwardly attempted to sound it out. “Miliassnn Togo?”
Calder chuckled and shook his head. “I forget how hard to read these old black letters can be. I’ve gotten so used to the handwriting of Hilde Nilsdotter, I can read it better than my own.”
“Who is Hilde Nilsdotter?”
“You’ve never heard of her?” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “She is perhaps the most important historian in troll antiquity.” He leaned back in his chair and tapped his pen on his paper. “Where were you educated?”
“Mostly in Iskyla, which means practically no education.” I fidgeted with the pendant around my neck. “In Förening, the family I nannied for helped me out with homeschooling.”
That was the short version of the story. The longer one was that I’d tried to go to the school in Förening—Finn and Mia had actually insisted on it, if I wanted to stay with them—and I had been so far behind in most of my subjects that it had been impossible for me to follow along. That led to kids bullying me, and the whole situation was untenable.
At least I knew how to read and write, so Finn pulled me out of school. He hired me a tutor who came a few evenings a week, and the rest of the time I fell under the tutelage of Finn, Mia, the local librarians, and online teaching aids and classes. Together it all added up to a rather hodgepodge but somewhat extensive education, which was how I’d ended up semi-fluent in partially dead languages but didn’t know the name of a famous historian.
“Ah, yes,” Calder said with a sigh. “Iskyla—the frozen village that somehow specializes in letting every one of its inhabitants down.”
It was the weary understanding in his voice that suddenly made it all click. His weathered olive complexion, ruddy cheeks, a scar nearly hidden in the wrinkles around his eyes and bushy eyebrows, and his resigned, stoic expression—in his muddy gray eyes I recognized the pain of a thousand icy mornings, of frozen days when the temperatures dropped and the sun never rose.
“You’re from Iskyla?” I asked.
He lowered his gaze. “From is much too strong of a word, but it’s fair to say that I’m well acquainted with it.” Then he shook his head and offered me a thin smile. “It’s no matter. I’ve been here in the archives of the Mimirin for almost twenty-five years. And you’re here now, which means you’ve managed to pull yourself out of Iskyla, and I’m happy to help you the rest of the way.”
I swallowed the painful mixture of shame and pride, and I fought to keep my expression neutral and polite. “Thanks, but I’m really here to help you.”
“And you will!” He flashed an exuberant smile. “I’ll give you the tools, and you’ll do the work.”
With that, he copied the title from the scroll, duplicating the old Norse calligraphy on top, and then translating below in his clear print. When he’d finished, he turned the paper to face me.
“Viliätten Saga?” I read aloud. “The story of the House of Vili?”
He snapped his fingers. “Exactly! Are you familiar with the House of Vili at all?”
“It was the first troll dynasty, right? From back before all the tribes split?”
“Back when we were all known as ekkálfar.” Calder wrote as he spoke, creating a key between Hilde Nilsdotter’s confusing letters to more modern English. “Before it all became a mess of rivalries and lost histories.”
I rested my arms on the desk, the smooth dark walnut feeling cool through the thin fabric of my shirt. “But don’t you already know about the House of Vili?”
“Yes, but it can be near-impossible to know what you don’t know.” He peered up at me. “There’s an old proverb that my grandmother used to say. ‘A foolish man thinks he knows all. A wise man knows he cannot.’”
“I’ve heard that a few times,” I said with a laugh. Finn had been quite fond of telling me something similar when I didn’t study enough or failed a test.
“That’s why I never stop learning, never stop reading.” He gently tapped the scroll with his finger. “This is Nilsdotter’s most famous and most extensive work. It’s known as the Heimskaga.”
“The story of the world?” I asked, digging deep into the recesses of the old Norse poems and essays that Finn had made me read.
“Correct,” Calder said, sounding impressed. “It took Nilsdotter decades to compile it all, with her writing multiple drafts of the Heimskaga through the years, adding new information and correcting previous errors.
“These particular scrolls are from Isarna in Scandinavia,” he continued. “In the tenth century there was a great exodus of trolls fleeing the violence and plagues the humans brought with them as they conquered and re-conquered the land around our homes. Thousands and thousands of our kind went with the Vikings to North America, but some—no more than a few hundred—stayed behind in the city that became Isarna.
“Because it’s the oldest troll settlement left, it has some of our only records from that era,” Calder explained. “The Mimirin recently reached an agreement with Isarna to review some of their ancient records stored there, and they found a whole trove of documents stored away in an old farm cellar.
“These scrolls may not have been read for centuries, their information unseen and thus unrecorded by anyone here at the Mimirin,” he went on. “In these unread editions, there may be words, phrases, or even whole passages added or translated differently to give us new insights. There could be things about our history that would have otherwise been lost to us, about our time in Scandinavia and the early years in Áibmoráigi—the First City.”
Áibmoráigi was the legendary first city established by trolls, our first home in our recorded history. It was thought to be something like Mesopotamia would be for the humans, but it had been lost for a thousand years.
“So, you scour every version of the Heimskaga in case there is something new to be gleaned?” I asked.
“I scour every version of every scroll or parchment that passes over my desk,” Calder corrected me. “There is always more to be learned from our past.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “How can I help?”
“I want you to start by reading through that scroll and transcribe every name listed and everything that’s written about them. Once it’s all compiled, you can enter that into a database to compare and contrast what’s already been documented.”
“Sounds easy enough,” I said.
Calder chuckled. “Your enthusiasm is admirable, but let’s do a trial run first.” He pushed the alphabet key toward me and then carefully tilted the scroll. “Why don’t you give that a go? Read me the first sentence.”
“Okay, um…” I began by copying the phrase, carefully transcribing Nilsdotter’s words into something I could read.