Blinking, the camera flickered to life. It absorbed the details of a clean Jeep dashboard and the rocky hills of Svalbard's wild terrain outside, dotted with boulders and patches of snow before a voice began to narrate in a dramatic tone.
"Death vlog entry twenty three: I continue to suffer from boredom in exile on Svalbard. I was supposed to be filming my aunt's job for assignment, having gotten a lead about a possible corpse at the end of the world. Instead, it has come to my attention that my aunt would not make a great parent since she's abandoned me—a convicted felon—to my own devices in a vehicle all alone." The camera panned onto a sixteen-year-old with short cut dark brown hair and light blue eyes before it panned back out to the rich wilderness and a winding path that lead up into the mountains. Three people rounded the curving path and came into view hobbling towards the Jeep. "And here comes the Belle of the ball. Oh, wow, she's even bringing home a drunk homeless guy! Very classy, Aunt Em!"
Nikki scooted over to the door and watched as they neared. Their 'guest' looked at their vehicle with a childlike curiosity and wonderment as they approached. As though he had never seen a vehicle before. Nikki dismissed his behavior, thinking him to be a hermit they encountered with his disheveled appearance.
"Do you have an explanation for Mom about this when I show her just how responsible you are?" Nikki asked, backing off as Nickolai opened the door.
"Would you put that away? You're supposed to be grounded for stealing that car!" Emily hissed at her.
"I didn't steal that car, I 'borrowed' it," the youth rolled her eyes. "And besides, you were supposed to be showing me your very important job for my school assignment. Mom said!" she watched as the strange man started to look around at the car.
"Same damn thing," Emily growled through gritted teeth, her patience clearly wearing down, just when a strong odor wafted under Nikki's nose.
"Hoofa! What died?" she complained. Holding her nose she scooted back until her back was up against the door.
"That would be the sulfur from the thermal vent," Nickolai explained. "We found our friend in an underground chamber not far from a thermal spring."
"You wouldn't believe me how we found him," Emily said, a note of excitement in her voice.
"And you wouldn't let me tag along?" Nikki retorted in a pouting tone.
"The place was crawling with volcanic and radioactive activity, it was unsafe. Your mother would kill me if I let you tag along only for you to get hurt in an unsafe environment," Emily warned.
Unable to handle the stench any longer, Nikki pulled her scarf up over her nose and eased out the other door before rounding the back of the vehicle to join her aunt. She was able to get a better look at their guest. He looked like a strange hermit they came across upon observation. She couldn't see what was so special about him.
"So who's the fuzzball?" she asked curiously, holding her phone for that perfect angle as she filmed him. He appeared to be very curious, poking and feeling along any surface as though it was all brand new to him.
Emily looked between their guest and Nickolai before answering. "We don't know."
###
As Emily's niece filmed them, the Norseman crouched around the Jeep, examining the wheel. "What is this material? It looks soft but it's firm to the touch."
Nickolai swallowed. Great. So much for his shock making him unobservant. He took a deep breath and said in English to Emily, "Water bottle and whatever snacks Nikki hasn't eaten yet."
Emily nodded and started to rummage through the rear storage and the cooler they'd brought with them. Nickolai turned back to the Norseman, who was examining the window glass with fascination.
Nickolai turned to Nikki. "Are you filming?"
"Uh, yeah. For my vlog," Nikki said belligerently. "God, where did you dig him up? He stinks." She sniffed. "You stink!"
Nickolai burst out laughing.
"What?" Nikki asked.
"Remember that you asked that question later," Nickolai said, chortling. He pulled out his digital camera, which was still recording from before. He checked the battery and the status of the storage chip and found that they had enough capacity to get them back to the hotel. "In the meantime, can you record him with this?"
Nikki took his camera and shrugged. "Sure, why not?"
"Good. Now, where's the satphone?"
"Uh... trunk, I think," Nikki said, and her usual belligerence was starting to give way to a cautious curiosity. "So... what gives?"
"Explain in a moment!" Nickolai said, and stepped quickly to the trunk, where Nikki had already made a significant dent in their supplies. Emily had given up on shoving the empty wrappers aside and was now stuffing them into a plastic bag.
"Satphone, satphone..." Nickolai repeated anxiously, looking for the hard plastic case buried somewhere under the detritus.
"What's this?" suddenly came from his right, and Nickolai and Emily both jumped as the Norseman appeared at the trunk gate, looking inward at the colorful mess that the teenager had left behind.
"Supplies," Nickolai said in Old Norse after a moment hunting for the word. "Food, water... other things."
"Provisions?" The Norseman looked quizzically at the bag Emily was holding. "Those are the strangest provisions I've ever seen."
I bet, Nickolai thought to himself, and Emily gave a cry of triumph as she found the cooler.
Popping it open, she pulled out a plastic bottle of water and a plastic wrapped sandwich and handed both to the Norseman.
He blinked. "Uh... thank you?"
While she couldn't understand his words, the tone was unmistakable. "Oh, sorry!" she said, and took back the bottle of water. Twisting off the cap, she handed it back to him, and then took the sandwich and unwrapped it.
Nickolai suddenly found himself praying that the Norseman wasn't allergic to salami, tuna, or eggs.
The Norseman looked at the sandwich with confusion—and then took a closer look at the bottle. His eyes widened. "The glass... it's soft! How?"
Nickolai resisted the urge to turn and pound his head against the Jeep's side. Who was studying who here!?
Instead, he said, "I'll explain later. Drink. Eat."
As the Norseman chowed down on his first meal in a thousand years, and making entertaining noises as he did so, Nickolai found the sat-phone. Pulling the cumbersome device out of the carrying case, he turned it on and watched as it went through the boot sequence and found a satellite.
Dialing the number he had for his Norwegian government contact, he was put on hold almost immediately.
"What's that?"
Nickolai managed to keep himself from jumping into the air and dropping the expensive satphone, but it was a near thing. He turned to see the Norseman, empty bottle of water in hand, standing only a few paces away. He held out the bottle, and said, "Your soft-glass waterskin is empty. Thank you." He eyed the satphone dangling in Nickolai's hand. "Your... tool there is making... music?"
And indeed, issuing from the speaker was some generic 'hold' music.
Nickolai moaned—and decided to take the offensive.
"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?" Nickolai asked in Old Norse, motioning to Nikki to make sure she got this on recording. The teen, looking interested by dint of a lack of anything else to do, shrugged and gave a thumbs up.
The young man shook his head slowly.
"So... much has been lost over... over the years," he began, choosing his words carefully. He didn't want to push the Norseman into another fit of shock at the reminder of how long-lost his era was. "How your people lived... what they did, how they worshipped..."
The Norseman nodded. "You're a skald."
"A scholar, yes. Of your people. That's why I can speak your tongue."
The Norseman seemed to consider this. "Why do you want to know?"
Nickolai blinked. "Why?"
"Why study my people? You said it's been..." he swallowed, "a very... very long time. Why? Why study sticks and bones of a forgotten people?"
Nickolai looked at him and reached up to pat him on the shoulder.
"Think of it as a matter of..." Nickolai briefly paused, trying to search for the right word, "The pursuit of knowledge, and reconnecting to our roots for some," Nickolai looked pointedly towards Nikki who filmed the Norseman.
The Norseman glanced towards Nikki. Her scarf hung down around her shoulders, exposing her neck, and Nickolai could swear his eyes would pop out of his skull seeing how round they were.
"You keep thralls?" the Norseman sounded offended, which threw Nickolai for a curve. It was common practise for Norsemen to keep thralls. He then glanced over at Nikki and saw what he meant. The thick wire-and-chain choker she wore apparently looked like a thrall collar to the Norseman.
"Oh, no, no! Keeping thralls has long been abolished," Nickolai was quick to correct. "She chose to wear that collar. It's an uh, necklace." Nickolai watched as the Norseman looked at Nikki briefly, as though he was trying to understand why anyone would consider wearing such a thing for fashion. He hoped the fashion statement had not offended the Norseman too much.
"I don't understand. You said that she's from a land far to the West."
"Yes, but her family came from the Norselands, centuries later, and settled there."
"So... you look into the past... just to know?"
"To understand, to appreciate, to..." Nickolai searched for the word, "To connect with those who came before. So that they're not forgotten. Our... our joint heritage, as mankind." Nickolai didn't mention those people who were going around destroying Norse sites because, to their eyes, they were contaminated by alien influence in the form of the Asgardians. While contact with the Asgardians about this man was inevitable... that shock could wait.
The Norseman glanced back to Nikki before he gave Nickolai a wary look. "Odin warns about such things. But, well, that never stopped me." He spread his arms in a shrug and glanced aimlessly to the side, clearly thinking over Nickolai's words. The gesture made his pants ride up a little bit, exposing the cuff of his prosthetic. No simple peg, it was a complex arrangement of metal and wood, likely containing a spring inside given how it bobbed up and down as he adjusted his weight.
"If I may ask, is that how you..." Nickolai gestured to his leg.
The Norseman looked down. "What, this old thing?" he lifted his left leg for Nickolai to get a better look and seemed to admire it himself. "A souvenir of a battle from when I was fifteen," the Norseman appeared proud of his wound as he smiled, and then it vanished. "Saved my people that day..."
Nickolai cleared his throat.
"So, right, questions," he prompted, trying to pull the Norseman away from obviously painful memories. He was going to have to focus purely on technical subjects, and avoid social topics that would undoubtedly conjure painful memories. "Well, for starters, one thing that is a topic of active debate was how the Norse navigated in the open sea. We know that you found a..." latitude, latitude... what's the damn word... "line across the sea where the sun was at a given height above the horizon at noon and keep it there to travel east and west, but how would you be able to tell what height it was above the horizon on a cloudy day? Some of us scholars speculate that you used special stones—sunstones—to find it through the clouds. It would mean much if you could confirm it one way or another."
That question seemed to draw the Norseman away from whatever thoughts were consuming his mind as his shoulders rolled back.
"Well, the seafaring tribes in the archipelago do use sunstones as you described. But my tribe... we're uh… We're different from your typical Vikings," the Norseman explained with a hint of hesitation to his tone.
Nickolai cocked a brow. The Norseman's tone was a mix of pride and hesitation. As though afraid to share a secret.
"Different how?" Nickolai asked, worried that the Asgardians had meddled somehow with the Norseman's tribe. As demonstrated by whatever it was that had preserved him for so long, they had at least some interest in his people directly.
"Uh... tell you later? I did just meet you," the Norseman said a bit warily. He reached for a compartment on his forearm and undid a latch. Pulling out something, he held out his hand to Nickolai.
"If it helps, I do use a sunstone."
Nickolai's eyes widened to see the clouded white crystal as the Norseman revealed it to him.
"You can't exactly explore without one. Whether you're on a ship, or... travelling in other ways."
Nickolai eyed the chunk of crystal in the Norseman's palm and reached out for it cautiously.
At that point, a voice came from the satphone. "Nick!? Nick, you there?"
Jumping almost as if he'd been burned, Nickolai held the satphone up to his ear. "Martin, oh god," he said in Norwegian.
"What? You sound like you've got marbles in your mouth, Nick."
Nickolai realized that he was still speaking the Old Norse dialect—or something half-way between it and modern Norwegian—and the Norseman was staring at him, eyes round, presumably fascinated by the voice in a language very similar to his own emerging from a device he didn't understand.
Taking a deep breath, Nickolai said, "Remember that lead I mentioned? Up on Svalbard?"
"That internet rumor? Yeah. What about it?"
"Marty... I found... something." He glanced at the young man, who had clearly understood that, and was looking a bit offended. "Scratch that, I found..." He swallowed, and tried to think of a way to juggle what he was about to say. "I found someone. Suffice it to say..." he glanced at the Norseman and realized that he, at least, knew who had put him in storage, "suffice it to say that our recent immigrants left us a present from a thousand years ago."
"Wait, what? The Asgardians left something?"
Nickolai winced, and glanced at the Norseman. Yep. He'd caught that. Sighing, Nickolai said, "Yes. And given the expression on the thousand-year-old Norseman's face at the moment, as he seems to be rapidly figuring out how his language changed into yours..." Nickolai decided that the damage was done by now and said flatly, "Pull whatever strings you have to pull. We're coming to you, and we need to have an audience with Thor or Heimdall."
The Norseman's eyes were round.
"Nick, you're joking."
"No, I'm very definitely not. Emily and I found a twenty-year-old Norseman left in the middle of a tomb, complete with Stone Ship, on Svalbard, preserved with Asgardian tech and he's awake and giving me a very, very curious look as to whom I'm talking to and how. I'll upload you the coordinates as soon as I hang up. You'll want to send a curatorial crew at the very least to secure the site against vandals and looters until the funding can be scared up for a proper dig."
"Did you say Thor?!" the young man said in a very close approximation to Norwegian. "You know him? But then... why do you need me to answer questions?"
Nickolai sighed. "It's a long story."
"Nick, Nick, I need a name at least. You know how they are about security since the assassination attempt," Martin said.
The young man glanced down at the empty holster on his thigh, and seemed to come to a decision. He took a deep breath, and said in heavily accented Norwegian, "Tell them... tell them that Hiccup Haddock wants to see them. That I spoke to Heimdall that day Hela's disguise broke, and he helped me save my people. And that I'm Thor's... nephew." This last came out as a whisper.
Now it was Nickolai's turn to stare with round eyes. But he repeated it, word for word, into the satphone.
Martin, his tone dubious, said, "I'll pass that along. Send me the coordinates and whatever photos your bandwidth can handle and I'll see about that curation crew."
"Will do. See you soon." Nickolai pressed the End button and hung up.
The Norseman stared at him. "What is going on?"
"That will take a lot of explaining. And I don't want to..." Nickolai paused, realizing that there was really no good way to tell the young man that he wanted to study him.
"Want to what?"
"I don't want to tarnish and taint your memories of your own life with modern life when there's so much to learn about how ordinary Norsemen lived a thousand years ago. History that we've lost. History that the beings you call gods didn't care about enough to record!" Nickolai said, starting slowly and ending with a near-yell.
The Norseman blinked and, bizarrely, a smile crossed his face. "Yeah, well, my people weren't very... ordinary. So where are we going?"
Nickolai blinked. He hadn't been expecting that response, but said in reply, "Oslo. It was founded... years after your time. But there, we should be able to get some answers."
Then, off to the side, Nikki burst in from behind the camera. "Hey, someone mind cluing the teenager in on what the fuck is going on?!" she blurted in English.
###
Astrid strode out into the great hall, Snotlout at her side, and they were immediately greeted by a tumultuous roar of questions.
"Where's Hiccup!?"
"What happened to the sky!?"
"Where are we!?"
"What happened to the seas?"
She looked out across the assembled tribes and chiefs and swallowed against a lump of worry and fear in her throat. Getting them all here had been a trick and a half. In the handful of... days since it had all happened—there were still chunks of Bewilderbeast ice outside that they were cleaning up—it had become clear that, whatever Hiccup had done, it had taken them... some... place.
The sky flickered with the colors of the Bifrost during the day, and it gave light and warmth enough to keep the plants alive and cast shadows through a window, although the light came from everywhere, directionless and omnipresent. Well, except at night. In as much as they could call it night. The first time it had happened, it had been terrifying. They'd watched as their island and the seas around it had apparently looped up into the sky as if on some giant funnel, and then, with all of them screaming, it had plunged—without the sense of them moving!—back down through the surface of the seas from elsewhere in the archipelago... only for them to pass through that surface, and find themselves in a darkened space that approximated night. The 'stars' above had been too few, but they'd found the reason for that—they were the lights of the other villages, somehow suspended above them.
And 'dawn'...
Well, Astrid had flown up as high as she could on the third 'morning' to watch. And what she'd seen still boggled her mind.
The islands and water moved across the inside of a giant tube, the mouth of which admitted light... and 'dawn' broke when they reached the lip of the tube and flipped smoothly from the 'inside' to the 'outside', exposing them to the light of the Bifrost. 'Night' was when they reentered the 'inside' of the tube.
The shape of it made her head hurt trying to visualize it, and it made navigation between the islands nearly impossible. Or at least it would have been impossible if not for the dragons somehow being able to find their way. So they'd gone out and collected all of the chiefs of all of the tribes for this Thing.
They weren't happy.
She turned to Snotlout. "You're the interim chief," she said. "All yours."
He swallowed, stepped forward, and nodded to Dagur. "Yes?"
Dagur crossed his arms and said, "Snot. Where's Hiccup, and what the Hel happened?"
Snotlout paused, clearly thinking hurriedly, and Astrid sighed. Stepping forward, she spoke. "Hel is exactly what happened. Hela manifested near Berk and tried to take control of our dragons and kill us all. Hiccup stopped her, by apparently praying to Heimdall to send the Bifrost to take us out of her reach. He listened... and sent us here. Hiccup's outside this... bubble and promised that he'd find a way to get us back out when it was safe."
And there it was. Not a single untruth.
Just not the whole truth.
The assembled chiefs murmured—and then someone burst out laughing.
"What do you take us for?" Thuggory of the Meatheads cried. "Credulous fools?"
Bertha of the Bog Burglars turned and gave the younger chief a flat look. "Have you failed to look at the sky in the last few days? Or is your head actually made of meat?"
There were titters through the crowd.
Bertha and her heir, Camicazi, looked to Astrid. "How long will it take him to undo this?"
Astrid sighed. "We have no idea. It was a bit... crazy, even by his standards."
There were more titters—a bit hysterical in tone this time.
"So we're stuck here?" Thuggory demanded.
"No! He'll find a way to get us back to Midgard!" Snotlout insisted.
They continued to argue and explain, but the bare facts of it didn't change.
They were stuck here until Hiccup could come and get them out.
Eventually, there was acceptance—some understanding, some grudging, and even a few that were excited about it all.
Finally, though, Snotlout said, "We're all in this together, and we'll get out of it together. We'll keep messages going through Terror Mail, and if there are any problems, we'll deal with them and help each other out! It's what Hiccup would want us to do!"
"And if we don't behave, will he leave us here?" Thuggory asked petulantly.
Snotlout sneered at him. "Why don't you try something and find out?"
They stared at each other for a moment, until Thuggory looked away.
Astrid breathed a sigh of relief. No war today...
Then another excited voice called out. "You said that Hiccup spoke to the gods! And they listened! How? Why?"
Astrid swallowed, and looked at the speaker. One of the Bog women in Cami's entourage, her eyes shining with fervency. Thankfully, though, Snotlout managed to keep to their intended statements, instead of giving the pretty woman a full answer. "Hela had come to take our dragons for an attack on Asgard itself. Heimdall saw this and when Hiccup asked for help, he answered."
There were more murmurs at this, and then one of Thuggory's men spoke up. "We need to give thanks to the gods for saving us from Hela's wrath! I propose a special blot at..." he glanced at the door and the swirling colors outside, "Well, I was going to say 'Midsummer,' but I do not even know if this part of Yggdrasil's Roots has seasons!"
"Have it be in two months! We shall have a grand blot to the gods in thanks and gratitude for their rescue!" called the Bog woman, her voice ecstatic. "That gives us all time to prepare proper sacrifices in thanks!"
There was a murmur of agreement across the room—and then Dagur spoke up. "Where will we have this grand sacrifice?"
"Here on Berk, where else?" the Meathead replied—and Astrid didn't miss the aghast look Thuggory gave his man. "It is clearly blessed by the gods!"