Fan-Fic Fridays: "On the Edge of Mystery" Chapter 2: An Old Familiar Clue

On the Edge of Mystery

Chapter 2

An Old Familiar Clue

          The next morning I woke up to the smack of a pillow in my face.

          “Wake up, Jarl,” said a voice who unfortunately sounded like Asvord’s.

          “Why do I need to wake up?” I said, very groggy.

          “Because the sun is up,” she said, throwing another pillow at me.  It hit me at the same time I rolled to my left.  The impact continued my rolling… until I fell out of bed.

          “Alright, alright, alright, I’m up, I’m up!” I said in protest.

          Elsa’s voice then quipped, “You’re down, is more like it.”

          “Very funny,” I said as I sat up.

          “Hey, open your eyes,” demanded Asvord as another pillow hit my face.

          I thought, “How many pillows does that girl have?”  Then I said out loud, “I’m awake.”

          Elsa stated, “You don’t look awake.”

          “I’m awake,” I assured.  “I just have the lids closed over my eyes.”

          As soon as I finished I reached with my left hand a pillow that was under Asvord’s bed as Asvord said sarcastically from the other side of the room near the washroom, “Ha. Ha.”

          Yawning I replied, “Don’t wake the sleeping viking with a pillow to the face.”

          “Or what?” Asvord answered as I heard her coming over.

          I threw the pillow that was in my left hand at my sister, “Or you’ll get a pillow to the face as well.”

          I opened my eyes to see the pillow’s impact.  She tried putting up her hands, but it was too late as the pillow hit her square in the face.

          “I saw that pillow coming from a mile away,” Asvord said as she grabbed the pillow.  “How come I didn’t stop it?”

          “Because it was only thrown at a few feet, Asvord,” I replied getting up.

          Asvord smiled, “Maybe I let you hit me.”

          I replied, “One could say, I let you let me.”

          “You guys want breakfast or not?!” mother’s voice yelled up the stairs.

          “Okay,” I yelled back.  “We’re coming.”

          My sisters and I walked down the stairs; Asvord went first, followed by me, and then Elsa.  Mother was waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs and followed in behind Elsa as we all entered the kitchen.

          “Father’s cooking breakfast?” Asvord questioned.

          “What?” father responded.  “You don’t think I can cook?  Who do you think had to cook when I was away?”

          “Dagmar,” mother, Asvord, Elsa, and I all said in unison while pulling up a chair to the table.

          “Ouch, burn, that hurt,” chuckled father.  “You are right and wrong at the same time.  Dagmar did cook to start with but I learned from her.”

          Mother had raised an eye brow, “We had been married for how long before that and I tried to teach you what I knew and yet you were still a bad cooked.”

          “What I learned from Dagmar, finally clicked what I learned from you,” father returned.

          “Nice comeback, dad,” I said.

          “Thank you,” he took a quick bow as he is stirring something on the stove.  “I thought that was quite good myself.”

          “You know I’m here right?” mother smirked.

          Father turned, carrying the medium sized pot in his right hand and stirring the contents with a spoon in the other, “No, actually now you are left here… on my left side.”  Mother just rolled her eyes, my sisters and I could not help but stifle some laughs from mother rolling her eyes; father continued as he set the pot on the table, “Who’s ready for ‘Rat ‘Ol Louie’?”

          “Rat-oh-what?” Asvord declared.

          “I knew it,” mother stated.  “You’re father’s cooking is terrible.”

          “Ye of little faith,” father said while scooping a big spoon full of the soup into each of our bowls.

          After pausing for a second, I announced, “Well I’ll try it.”

          Grabbing my spoon, I took a spoon full of soup.  The soup had chunks of tomatoes, potatoes, with yak hamburger, and carrots in a broth of water and spices.

          “Oooo… this is sick,” I cried out.  “This is bad.  I have never tasted anything like this.”

          I “forced” down the soup.

          Asvord turned her head lightly away from while tilting her head up and squinting her eyes at me, “I smell some sarcasm.”

          “This really is unlike anything I have ever tasted,” I assured, but took another bite.

          Mother asked, “But then why are you taking another bite if you don’t like it?”

          “I never said I didn’t like it,” I replied.

          Elsa said slowly, “But… you… said the soup was bad and sick.”

          “Hmm, let me think about it for a second,” I paused.  “I’m thinking of a four letter word plus two extra letters with an apostrophe before the two extra letters…”

          “Oh great,” Asvord added.

          “Loki’ed!” I finished.

          “Not you too!” Asvord continued right after me.

          I grinned, “I couldn’t help myself.  Everyone seems to be doing some type of Loki-ness lately, so I thought I would do some of my own.  Though, rest assured, nowhere near as bad, as in bad-bad, and dastardly as the Twins are and have been doing.”

          Father looked a little confused, so I explained before he asked the question, “I used the words ‘sick’ and ‘bad’ as the slang versions: ‘The soup is sooo sick and sooo bad… it is good.’  So this bad was bad-good, not bad-bad.  Same with sick.”

          Mother took her spoon, stirred her soup twice, picked up a spoon full of soup, blew on it, and took the bite.

          We all watched.

          “Hmm,” she said and nodded her head back and forth.  “Not bad.”

          Elsa and Asvord followed and agreed.  The soup is not too shabby.

          “See,” said father.  “You won’t know how something is until you tried it.  Even if you are unsure about something but it is from someone you trust with other things, then you should trust them with something as small as cooking,” father then said under his breath, “Unless you had your mother’s cooking when we first met…” Dad cleared his throat.

          “Don’t blame that I me you,” Mother started, as she tried to reach around and give him a slap; she missed.  “That was just because I took the dumplings off the stove too soon and they were very doughy.  Anybody could make that mistake.”

          Again father said under his breath, but could not help but grin, “An easy mistake, yes, but for an entire bowl that was a foot deep and practically all of the dumplings were doughy.”

          “Oh stop it,” she answered.  “I forgot to check the rest of the pot to see if they were all done.  And for another thing, I had not made dumplings for a while at the time.”

          “But I ate them anyway,” father replied, as I could tell he was doing his comeback.  “If anyone else had made the dumplings, I would have said they were horrible… but since you made them, dear, they were wonderful.”

          My sisters and I said together, “Aw, ain’t that sooo sweet.”

          “Why thank you, Sigvald,” Mother looked up and then stared at her soup while she said under her breath, “What if your mother-in-law cooked them?”

          Dad thought for a moment, “Well.”

          I immediately said, “You hesitated.”

          “What?” he replied.

          “You had to think about it,” I answered.  “If you hesitate, that means you were unsure.”

          “Well I didn’t know if it was a trick question or something,” father said.  “Because I knew someone in our family is terrible at cooking dumplings.”

          Elsa then said, “My first guess would be you.”
          Mother laughed, nearly choking on a mouth full of soup, “Ooo… Burn.”

          “Meh,” he ended with.  “She’s probably right.”

          After a few minutes of solely concentrating on eating our soup, we were done.  We all helped with the dishes: Cleaning them and putting them up.  Once that was completed, we all went about our daily chores and then parted ways for a daily work around Berk: I went to Gobber’s shop, taking Fredrick with me; father had a meeting with Stoick to attend; mother is going to meet Dagmar in the marketplace to do some shopping; and Asvord and Elsa were going to go do some… I am not sure what they are going to go do.  I guess whatever girls do on a day when they do not have anything else better to do.

          Berk is kind of in a lull right now, way after the spring planting season but way too soon for the fall harvest season.  But like I told Astrid the other evening, “Today is a new day.”  Or in yesterday’s case, I said, “Tomorrow’s a new day.”

          “Top of the morning’ to ya, Jarl,” greeted Gobber as I entered his shop.

          “Same to you,” I replied.  “So what’s on for today?”

          “Oh nothing much,” he said.  “Same old, same old.”

          “Same old, same old,” meaning I helped Gobber put together some metal parts for various catapults; parts that included the holder, launcher, gears, and the mechanisms.

          Even though I don’t have too much experience dealing with crafting and metals and weaponry, I am a quick learning as I have always loved creating, building, and crafting things.  I just never put the useful to use.  Then when I was recruited and joined the Berk Guard, I had the skill sets needed for the job, now I all I needed was the knowledge.

          Gobber and I worked on the catapults for a few hours; making parts, checking parts, replacing parts, and taking inventory.

          It is now about the middle of the afternoon by now, “Hey Gobber?  Could you hand me the hammer?” I said from under a catapult.

          We were making some repairs to one and I needed to hammer in the last remaining part.  Things were going fairly well, though some of the catapults we had to scrap because they had a faulty part: The wood for the beam connected to the launch basket kept cracking then breaking under the stress of metals or the motion of the catapult firing… you would end up with two projectiles instead of just one.

          “That better do it,” Gobber stated.  “Want to give it a go?”

          I got up from under the catapult and said, “If it is all the same to you, I’d rather fly by dragon, not by catapult.”

          Gobber started laughing, “Oh, Jarl.  You always get me with those!”

          I rolled the catapult out of the shop and readied it for test firing.

          “Ready?” I asked.

          Gobber nodded his head and so I cut the rope for dry firing with nothing in the basket.

          One second it was fine… the other… meh, not so much.  The launch basket did just that… launch.  When the ropes and stoppers caught the beam off the basket from going all the way in a full circle, the beam sliced in half under the stress.  I quickly looked where it was going to go… Snotlout was minding his own business walking across the right grassy area next to The Great Hall when…

          “Snotlout!” I yelled.

          “What?” he answered and turned.

          The beam that was still connected to the basket, stuck in the ground right next to Snotlout and the basket “rang his bell”.

          “Ooo,” I grimaced.  “Wrong place, wrong time.”

          “As I look at it, ‘Wrong place, great timing.’”

          “Oh hey, Cazi,” I answered as I turned around.

          I looked back and saw Snotlout staggering off saying, “I’m okay!  I’m… okay.”

          “What are you up to, Jarl?” asked Annabeth, who is with Cazi.

          “Working,” I replied.

          “If hitting Snotlout is working,” said Cazi.  “Then sign me up.”

          I laughed, “Gobber and I have been trying to fix a couple of these catapults… with not much success.”

          “Jarl!” I heard my name being yelled behind me.

          I looked and then saw Asvord on Spiker flying towards me along with Elsa and Meatballs behind them.  Spiker came in for a fast landing, but stuck it and Asvord jumped off to run over to me.

          Gobber inquired, “What’s wrong, lass?”

          “I don’t know,” she replied out of breath; Asvord put her hands on her knees as she was visibly tired.

          “Catch your breath, sis,” I urged.

          A moment later after she did, she explained, “While Elsa and I were fishing, we caught something.”

          I teased, “That is usually how fishing works.”
          Asvord rolled her eyes and continued, “Not every day do you catch a brown-bellied… saddlebag.”

          Asvord revealed to us a still dripping, soaking wet satchel.

          “Bring it over here, lass, and let’s look at it,” Gobber answered as he pointed to a work table.

          “It looks like a satchel for a person that could double as a saddlebag; possibly for a dragon.  Where’d you find it?” as I took the satchel and put it on work table.  Asvord was about to say something, but I knew what she was going to say, “Beside in the water.”
          “Okay fine,” she said.  “In one of the lakes near our farm.”

          I dumped the contents of the satchel onto the table.

          “In a lake?” wondered Cazi.  “Why would a perfectly good bad be in there?”

          I shook my head, “It isn’t because of the bag.  It is because of what is inside the satchel.  I suspect this satchel was intentionally thrown into the lake.”

          “Why?” Annabeth replied.  “What’s in it?”

          Among the contents were as follows: dried now soggy Dragon Nip, a book, a pencil… and a locket.

          I suspended the locket’s chain between under my middle two fingers on my right hand and let the rest of the chain hang over and down the outsides of my first finger and pinkie.  The locket itself dangled down as I showed it off.

          “Does this look familiar to anyone?” I already knew the answer, but asked the question anyway.

          “No,” responded both Cazi and Annabeth.

          Elsa spoke up, “You guys wouldn’t know about this, we hadn’t met you guys yet.  This locket is… is Annett Thorvald’s.”

          I briefly explained to Annabeth and Cazi who both remembered me mentioning the Thorvalds when talking about my first mystery.

          Cazi then pumped her fist, “Yes, a mystery.  I don’t care if we solve it today, I just want a mystery.”

          “Let’s go back to the lake, girls, and search for any more clues,” I suggested.  “Can we-…”

          “Oh be gone with you,” Gobber waved off.  “You worked enough today already.  I need to make more parts anyway and that I can do myself.  Just as a clue that may be one or not, I saw Annett less than a half hour ago when I to go get that other part that flew off when we tested one of the catapults, so she isn’t in any harm or something.”

          “That’s about the time we found the bag,” Asvord declared.

          I deducted, “So the bag must have been in the lake for a while.  That would explain the bag’s leather being wet completely through.  If the bag had just been thrown in the lake just recently, then the bag by now should have dried off by flying in the wind while you came back, Asvord.”

          Before leaving, I quickly asked something else I remembered about Annett, “Did she have on her locket then?”

          Gobber thought for a moment, “No, I can’t say I saw it.”

          I mumbled, “She told me when she got her brothers Adam and Vemund back, she would never take off the locket or the necklace.”  I pondered for a moment and then relayed a plan of action, “Asvord and Elsa, you go check on Annett.  See if you can find her, and then find out if you can tell without letting on if something is wrong.  Caz, AB, and I will go check for more clues.”

          We all parted ways as we carried out my plan.

          As I went over and woke my dragon up from his nap, which he does often, I saw the Twins flying in from the south.  I saw sitting behind Tuffnut, Trader Johann.

          “What is he doing with the Twins, let alone riding on a dragon?” I wondered as I mounted Fredrick and followed Cazi and Annabeth who had mounted their dragons, Sparklebolt and Anora, respectively.  “I thought he was out on a trade route?  He wasn’t due in Berk for a while?  Where’s his ship?

          I then thought to myself as I concentrated more on flying out to my family’s farm, “One mystery at a time.”