Inside the Ugly Vulture, patrons crowded around the bar—including several ogres lumbering around and ducking under the thick branches that held up the ceiling ten feet above. The space itself was divided into half a dozen large rooms—evidence of various expansions through the years, leading to a definite design clash between the rooms.
Overgrown vines both inside and out, with branches cutting through rooms with full plumes of leaves, gave it a jungle feel, and the sawdust on the floor and broken beer bottles felt much more rowdy-tavern.
All of it was held together with rusty nails and water-damaged boards. In most ways, the architecture seemed to mainly be a by-product of opportunity and necessity—like the chicken wire over the windows or the dance floor made of old tires. The different themes in the rooms made for a jarring mash-up: Indiana Jones and the Biker Bar.
And that didn’t even touch on the disturbing amount of dead birds. Rikky had explained it to me like this: “The way the Egyptians worshipped cats, the Omte revere vultures, particularly their precious bearded vultures.” There were stuffed birds everywhere—on walls, on light fixtures, even perched on the liquor casks. It was honestly a little unnerving, so I decided the best course of action was to avoid looking at them, and I followed Pan and Rikky through the crowd.
Rikky grabbed us a table near the back of one of the cleaner rooms. I didn’t see any broken bottles on the floor here, but the wooden floorboards did have a suspiciously large splotch of dark red liquid slowly drying.
The walls were painted a deep violet-red, and dim fairy lights were strung through the branches along the ceiling. Here there were fewer actual birds; it was more of a vulture motif, with black feathers and shimmery black stencils of birds on the wall. Black bows with beautifully feathered arrows were a surprisingly elegant touch of weapons-as-décor.
We settled in, and as Rikky flagged down a waiter, I made a startling observation—there were a lot of attractive trolls here. Even the ogres, purportedly hideous disfigured giants, were relatively ordinary-looking, though they were definitely huge.
Sure, some had an asymmetric quality to them, with a few having exaggerated proportions. But most were no more asymmetric than I was, with many even less so.
All my life, I’d been hearing about how all the Omte were so ugly, and I’d been repeatedly told that I should feel “lucky” for being attractive “by Omte standards.” I’d always thought it was a shitty backhanded compliment to begin with, but now I was seeing that it wasn’t even true. I wasn’t “hot” for an Omte—I was average at best.
It was the strangest feeling. I should’ve been saddened to learn I was even less attractive than I thought I was, that there were plenty of prettier girls than me, like Rikky and Bekk, but it was actually a relief.
Even in school, I had been taught that Omte were dumb, ugly, and violent. These were “facts” that had been repeated to me over and over. By teachers, by peers, by nearly every piece of troll literature I’d ever read. I’d been led to believe a negative stereotype about the Omte, my tribe, myself.
And now I had to wonder, how many other things had I learned about the Omte that weren’t true? About other tribes? About humans?
“Ulla?” Pan was saying. I’d been so lost in thought I didn’t notice that a waiter had stopped at our table—a lanky ogre with long hair pulled back into a ponytail.
“Sorry, what?” I asked.
“What’d you want to drink?” Pan asked.
“Our fine waiter Donovan here has recommended the Lakkalikööri cocktail,” Rikky told me cheerily.
“Uh, yeah. That sounds great,” I said, mostly because I didn’t want to make poor Donovan wait around when it was obviously so busy.
He offered a brief smile and in a gravelly voice he promised to have our drinks right out to us, then left.
“So.” Rikky drummed her hands on the table and gave me a toothy grin. “What do you wanna do? How do you wanna go about this?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “This place is quite a bit bigger than I expected. I thought we could glance around, and you’d let me know if you spotted Indu. But that seems kinda naïve now that I’m here.”
“Oh, yeah. The Vulture’s something else.” She leaned back in her chair. “This is called the Red Room. There’s also the Mudhole, the Tree Top, the Dungeon, the Dark Corner, and the Bridge. I figured we’d make the rounds and have a drink in each one.”
“That sounds like a great plan,” I said.
“You know what else is an excellent plan?” Rikky said, just as our drinks arrived.
“What?” Pan asked, but we were left waiting in suspense until after she took a long swig of her Lakkalikööri cocktail.
“Playing a game of økkspill,” Rikky announced, and rather abruptly she sauntered across the room.
On the wall hung a big chunk of raw-edged wood with three separate bull’s-eyes on it—a large white one at the top left, a medium-sized black one at the bottom right, and a small gold one positioned roughly in the center.
The players stood back from the board, maybe fifteen feet, each of them wielding five kasterens. The kasterens were like medium-sized hatchets, but odder looking. They had long, slender handles, and stubby, curved blades with visible hammer marks.
“What’s that?” Pan asked me, and his eyes followed Rikky as she collected a set of kasterens.
“Økkspill?” I asked. “You haven’t played before?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”
“I guess it is kind of a country troll game, and you probably haven’t played many of those, living with the humans and then in a city like Mimirin,” I realized. “It’s a pretty fun bar game. You stand behind the line, and you throw the kasteren axes, trying to hit certain rings for points.”
“So, like lumberjack darts?” Pan asked.
I laughed. “Basically, yeah.”
His dark eyes held mine. “You know, I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier, but you look really pretty tonight.”
I tried to hold his gaze, but I only managed to for a moment before I had to lower my eyes, because I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. “Well, thank you.”
“Hey!” Rikky snapped her fingers and stalked back toward us. “Who wants to play with me?” She was theoretically asking both of us, but her eyes were locked on Pan as she grabbed her drink off the table.
Pan shrugged. “I don’t really know how to play.”
“The guys back there wanna play doubles, so I gotta find a partner.” She downed her drink, then slammed the mug down on the table. “I can teach you as we play. You’ve always been a quick learner.”
He laughed. “I can’t say no now.” As he stood up, he looked back at me with a sheepish smile. “Are you gonna be okay here? Or do you wanna join us as the cheering squad?”
“Nah, I’ll be fine here.” I waved him off. “I’ll keep the table warm.”
“You wanna order another round of drinks while we’re gone?” Rikky asked with a hopeful twitch of her eyebrow.
“Yeah, sure, no problem.”
I watched them walk away—feeling a slight pang of jealousy when Pan put his hand on the small of her back as they weaved through the crowd—then reminded myself that my time here would be better served taking in my surroundings and checking out the other patrons.
Beyond the vulture décor, there were a few pieces of rustic Nordic art. A sign behind the bar was made of planks of wood and held together with twine. It’d been painted with runic symbols that, when translated, loosely meant, “To drink. To fight. To fuck. To live.”
On the wall across from me, a candelabra sconce hung on the wall. It appeared to be made of vulture bones and painted bronze. Just beneath it, perfectly backlit by candles, was a glass display box showcasing a broken bottle. Admittedly an oversized bottle, made of semi-opaque jade-green glass about an inch thick. The neck ended in jagged edges.
Donovan the waiter came back to clear away the empty glasses—Rikky had already finished hers—and I took the opportunity to order more drinks and slip him a hefty tip.
He smiled when he pocketed the money, and I was once again struck by how much different the Omte looked compared to my imagined version. Donovan was obviously an ogre—his hands were so huge, the big mug looked like a child’s toy cup in his thick mitts; his nose was wide and a bit bulbous; his brow extended slightly; his voice was deep and guttural.
But he wasn’t angry or dumb or slovenly. He wasn’t even unattractive, not really. His buttoned flannel shirt had to be tailor-made to fit his unique shape, and it did a good job of showing off a physique that landed somewhere between André the Giant and Superman.
Donovan returned quickly with the drinks and set them down with a smile, and hopefully still carrying a bit of the goodwill that my tip had bought.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” Donovan asked, and he definitely had a unique way of speaking. His voice was like a bass drum, but he put more emphasis on the first syllable of the words, making it sound a little rhythmic.
“Do you know what that’s about?” I pointed to the candelabra and the broken bottle display.
“You know not of the King’s death?” he asked.
I smiled meekly. “I’m not from around here.”
“Thor was the very good King, loved by many,” he explained. “The King of the common troll.”
“He sounds like a very cool guy,” I said.
“Very,” Donovan agreed solemnly. “He lived among us, and he drank in this bar many nights. Trolls argued over stories of the old heroes slaying monsters, and the King was pulled in. He never backed down from a fight. But the bottle got his throat. Before healers touched him, he died.”
“That sounds like … a sad day,” I replied hesitantly.
Donovan spoke of the late King with great reverence, but he also spoke of his death with pride. He seemed happy to display the instrument of the King’s death, so it was mixed signals for me.
“Very sad,” he agreed. “But we honor him here.”
“Were you working here that night?”
“No, that was before my time. I have worked here only seven summers.”
“Wow. That’s still a long time,” I commended him. “I bet you know all the regulars.”
“I know many,” he conceded.
“What about Indu Mattison?” I asked. “Have you seen him around lately?”
He shrugged and shook his head sadly. “I’m not so good with names.”
“If only I had a picture,” I muttered to myself.
The only thing I had to go on was Rikky’s basic description—tall, sorta good-looking, salt-and-pepper hair, maybe forty, and eyes that were either brown or green. Bekk claimed she had no pics of him, and her description varied slightly—tall, black-and-silver hair, hazel eyes, and fit for his age, which she put somewhere between forty and sixty.
Donovan moved on to taking care of his other tables, and I turned my attention back to Rikky and Pan. They were waiting for their turn, with the other team chucking their kasteren axes at the target, and Rikky was leaning against Pan, resting her head on his shoulder.
I grabbed my drink and went about exploring the rest of the bar. I planned on sipping the drink—it was stronger than I was used to—but as I weaved out of the Red Room into the Dark Corner, I felt increasingly intimidated. I’d never considered myself small—I was average height and more than a little overweight, so “petite” had never really been the proper descriptor for me.
But now all the Omte seemed to tower over me—and not just the broad, bumpy ogres, but young women and lanky teens.
As I made my way out of that dim, dank section of the bar, my straw was coming up empty, and I realized that I’d accidentally finished my drink much faster than I’d meant to. I left the glass on a table as I made it into the Mudhole, where Loretta Lynn blasted out of the speakers.
I don’t know how long I wandered through the Ugly Vulture, passing through each crowded room, before I started having the most surreal feeling. I didn’t know if it was the liquor or the thumping bass of the rapcore version of an old troll war song. Or maybe I was overwhelmed and claustrophobic because of all the large bodies surrounding me. But I was suddenly completely untethered. I wasn’t moving at all, but it was like I was floating away from myself, away from everyone.
Like I wasn’t really an Omte. Like I wasn’t really a troll.
Like I wasn’t even real.
“Ulla.” Pan’s voice behind me pulled me back, and then his hand, gentle on my arm, grounded me. I turned to face him. He stared down at me, his dark eyes somehow darker, feeling endless but warm and safe and—
“Are you okay?” he asked, and I didn’t know how long I’d been staring up at him.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” I managed a smile, and then I was grateful for his hand, still on my arm, tethering me there with him.
“Rikky had one too many cocktails and she isn’t feeling so hot, so I’m thinking we should get out of here.” He leaned in closer to me, his voice rough in my ear. “If that’s cool with you.”
“I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Pan started to walk away, and I grabbed his hand, afraid of losing him in the crowd. He glanced back over his shoulder at me, long enough for me to see his smile, and he squeezed my hand as he led me through the crowd.