Lilia Snowfield Anderson was named after a great-great-uncle she never met. Bartending shifts consume her nights and a pesky novel draft consumes her days. She lives in a small, Minnesota lake town and is always accompanied by the magically real. Her fiction can be found in The Marrs Field Journal, The Agapanthus Collective, Blood & Bourbon, and more.

Runerock

When she took exit 203, Hannah’s mind was so full of water monsters and lying mothers that she forgot to brace herself. Her car began to wobble with the unmistakable sensation of deep potholes, as the smooth interstate ended and the jostling New Oslo roads began. It was more than enough to wrench her from the depth of memory.   

Hannah tightened her grip on the wheel, slowing down as she focused on the road ahead. She swerved away from a few severe holes before stopping at a light. Her eyes wandered, taking in the golds, oranges, and reds decorating the nearby patch of trees. 

It's October, she thought. They should have dealt with the roads by now. 

On her three-hour drive, Hannah had, between her dips in and out of the remembered world, prepared herself for the possibility that the town had changed. From her Uncle Rodney’s reports, all she could assess was that a Walmart had been built, a coffee shop had opened and closed, and the American Legion had funded a new pavilion at Lake Linda City Park.

As she drove through the town she had fled, she realized she had prepared in vain. New Oslo could never change, not with the same handful of families filling the schools and bars and cemeteries. It was the same town, even with the new Walmart, which Hannah passed on her way to Overgangen Health. She didn’t need to look beyond the concrete building to know that it hid Fisker’s Drive, the maple-lined dirt road leading to Larsen Farm. It would surely be beautiful this morning, as the ten o’clock sky was starting to reveal a vibrant blue that only intensified the colors of the leaves. For a moment, she sunk back into the world of before, recalling previous years when the trees had burned with autumn. 

Hannah kept driving. No need to stop. 

However, as she pressed on, she wondered what the thirty acres were called now. Uncle Rodney had mentioned that someone bought Larsen Farm back from the county, nearly a decade after the family foreclosed. Her mind wandered. She wondered how much it had been listed for. It was a rather infertile patch of farmland with a dilapidated pig barn, but at one point it had been the most sacred ground in New Oslo. 

It was the site of the Runerock discovery. 

When Hannah was a little girl and the town still believed in it, she used to beg Uncle Rodney to tell the story anytime one of her friends came by the trailer. Now, as she took deep breaths and approached the entrance to downtown, the faux-wood paneling of her childhood home, the scent of burning hot dogs, and the opening crack of a Miller Lite flooded her memory.

“I’m telling ya kid, I’m a simple guy with a few jokes,” Uncle Rodney would say whenever he told Hannah the story, his lanky body taking up what seemed like half of the tiny trailer. “I was never good at the books ya know, never even cared for the Scandinavian stuff beyond wanting some lefse at Christmas.” Hannah’s eyes would widen as she imagined the thin pastry on her lips. “But for some reason, it was me who spotted that rock under the ice. I was just trying to catch something different to eat for dinner – don’t tell your grandma, but I sure got sick of those stews during wintertime – and just as I went to cut my fishing hole, there it was! Gray, smoothed by time, but I could see them etchings, even through the water. A few days later, we were charging a buck a person to come check ‘er out, and uffdah, by the time the month was over those university historians were drivin’ up.”  

After he finished high school, Rodney started working full-time with his father and brothers. At the time, Larsen Farm had been marginally successful with plenty of work to go around. Rodney may have been the youngest and least motivated of his siblings, but he never shirked his responsibility. He entertained the family, even his severe older brothers, with celebrity impressions, characters he invented, and hyper-exaggerated Scandinavian accents. Hannah’s mother recalled laughing until she cried one day as she helped bale hay and Rodney performed a Shakespearean-esque sonnet about a Viking that yearned to stop pillaging and become a violinist. 

His decision, after three weeks of keeping it at the farm, to donate the Runerock to the New Oslo Scandinavian Heritage Museum made him all the more popular. “A boy who’s in it for the culture, for the roots!” they would say as they toasted him night after night.  

The museum had just one employee at the time, curator Bjorn Benson, and he insisted with all the power affiliated with his position that the rock was legitimate, that its inscriptions should be considered fact, and that Rodney Larsen was a hero. 

In a town of fast talkers, things move quickly, and once the collective mind is made up not much can sway it. It did not matter how many historians, reporters, or out-of-towners pointed out the improbability of the rock’s authenticity; New Oslo had accepted it, placed it in its museum, and that was that. 

The artifact itself contained a narrative, flowery inscription that described a group of valiant Vikings. They had voyaged for years, found great stores of riches in the natural world, and were now finally returning to their homeland. 

“I leave this account of my presence, our presence, here, under the surface near the spot I pitched my tent. The others are at the lake now, but I have received the sustenance I need from this pond,” Bjorn Bensen’s gravelly voice reached across Lake Linda City Park as he publicly translated the final lines. Hannah could not imagine how it had looked that day, packed with people as Uncle Rodney officially donated his discovery. 

As she drove past it now, the lake was just as small, the grass just as unmowed, and the public restroom just as out of service as she remembered. When she was a child, she firmly believed that Lake Linda held all the water monsters in her Norse storybooks, its darkness and depth seeming like the perfect habitat. 

Now, she knew it was just full of muck. 

The pavilion, however, painted a crisp red that matched the maple trees, was a nice addition. It’ll be falling apart soon enough, Hannah thought, returning her eyes to the road.  

The largest intersection in town, Highway 19 and Main Street, was now visible in the distance, yet she slammed on the brakes as if it were right in front of her. She took a deep breath, thankful there were no other cars on the road. No new crosses today, she thought to herself as she recognized those of Fred Jons, Martha Hansen, and her cousin Daniel in the rearview mirror, peppered along the highway, uncomfortably white against the dying grass.

Hannah did not want to go down Main Street, but her only other options involved backroads that circled several of New Oslo’s many lakes. This would certainly make her late to Overgangen. So, when she reached the stoplight, she reluctantly flipped on the right blinker and turned on Main Street. 

For a moment, Hannah was a child again, meandering past the bakery, diner, and wool shop, clutching her mother’s limp hand in excitement as they neared New Oslo’s most prominent pitstop attraction. The thirty-foot tall Viking statue, with its gallant blonde beard and gleaming ax, had been Hannah’s favorite thing in the world. Her mother would bring a picnic of peanut butter sandwiches and sit on the bench with a cigarette while Hannah ran around the Viking, which she had named Thor, of course, her imagination spinning images of she and the statue saving the town, saving Iceland, and Norway and Sweden, saving her mother and her Uncle Rodney. While she constructed these vibrant worlds in her brain, she thought of every detail, from what she and Thor would eat on their journey, to the way the morning ocean would look when they crossed it. 

She had never determined, or cared to determine, what she and the Viking were saving everyone from. Now, Hannah could see Thor in the distance and was grateful that she would turn before having to pass him. 

Kubel appeared on her left, identical to the bar of her childhood: small, one-story, windowless. The only discrepancies were the signs plastered against the building’s southernmost side. The Magnusson’s must have paid for new ones, as crisp blue paint against various white backdrops advertised “cheap beer,” and “a family-owned bar and grill.” A large depiction of the Minnesota Vikings mascot grinned at oncoming traffic, a Miller Lite in its hand and the word “skol” in its speech bubble.  

When her mother had been beautiful, all her evenings were spent inside this dingy little establishment. She took advantage of the revelry that surrounded Rodney, as every night the town watched its hero greet his older sister. 

The year following the Runerock’s discovery passed blissfully – green returned to the trees, summer hit and the days were comprised of beer cans and inner tubes. The leaves died, the snow fell. Hannah’s mother wore skirts with flowers on them, even when it got cold, and grinned widely as men asked her to dance. 

On New Year’s Eve, after just one drink, she vomited everything she had into Kubel’s sole toilet and realized she hadn’t bled in two months. 

Over the coming weeks, months, and years, nobody had the courage to ask Hannah’s mother who the father was, and she certainly didn’t volunteer the information, so that was that. 

After Hannah was born, her mother dug her nails into her rapidly deteriorating reign as the most desirable woman in New Oslo, carting her new baby, a bottle, and a few diapers to the bar. She would capitalize on Uncle Rodney’s kindness or Marnie Magnusson’s broken heart, dropping the baby into one of their laps as she walked away. She would then approach the bar and wait for one of the men in its stools to buy her a drink. The more Hannah grew, the more time passed between their entrance and a cold glass appearing in her mother’s hand. On her second birthday, her mother waited for an hour before, for the first time in her entire life, buying her own beer.

Marnie Magnusson, the barren woman who had always wanted a baby, quickly tired of playing mommy as soon as Hannah became too old to be held for hours. Uncle Rodney loved to watch the child as she ran underneath the tables and giggled as she slapped at the jukebox, but he could never ensure she stayed safe. It took Hannah’s mother a drunken drive to the emergency room, clutching her daughter’s bloody hand, shards of glass poking through her soft baby skin, to admit that her time at Kubel needed to end. 

The bar became smaller and smaller in Hannah’s rearview mirror as she made her way down Main Street. She sped through the 3rd Avenue intersection, unwilling to glance down the road that housed Poplar Estates. She would not see the trailer park today. She would not go visit the single-wide her mother had moved into after announcing she was pregnant, where she had stared at the snow through the minuscule window, dreaming of the white powder transforming into sand and the frigid winds into island breezes. 

Yet, as she sped past 3rd Avenue, Hannah did wish she could see her old Poplar neighbors. She thought of them often, reflecting on the hours of unpaid babysitting they must have done, as Hannah’s mother had not been allowed to bring an infant into the diner when she waited tables. Hannah remembered the unconditional kindness of these people, even when the hesitation about the Runerock began. They never made her uncomfortable with prying questions or accusatory looks. 

The same could not be said about the rest of town.  

The rumblings began roughly fifteen years after the rock’s discovery. Over burnt coffee and runny casseroles, people began doubting its authenticity. Some returned to the articles written by the university historians, claiming that Bjorn Benson had incorrectly dated the artifact. Some thought that it was all a big prank that Rodney, the most indolent of the Larsen boys, had concocted to get out of farm work. Some blamed Hannah’s mother, although no one really knew why. Regardless of the reasoning, the more time that passed, the more people’s certainty in the Runerock slipped, and the more Hannah’s mother and Uncle Rodney drank.  

Within the Larsen family, the alienation happened slowly. While they had avoided Hannah’s mother since they found out about Hannah, their cultural passive-aggression prevented them from completely cutting ties. Holidays were still shared, birthday cards were still sent, but the shame was palpable. Usually, all parties were happier when the shared interactions ended. 

Uncle Rodney, however, had never wavered in supporting his sister. He was the only one camped out in the waiting room on the day Hannah was born, the only one who knew her favorite color, and the only one who attended her band concerts. 

Eventually, the Larsens stopped associating themselves with Rodney, too. The drinking certainly didn’t help, but Hannah was convinced the Runerock rumors ignited much more shame. A part of Uncle Rodney chipped off and floated away every time he was avoided by a brother, a parent, a niece or a nephew. By the time Hannah was in high school, the Larsens had stopped saying much at all to Rodney, let alone she and her mother. 

Her mother was drunk the first time Hannah brought up going to college. Hannah, then sixteen, had cleaned the entire single-wide that day, nervously anticipating the conversation. She blew on her spoonful of boiling Chef Boyardee, her hand shaking.

“I’ve been thinking,” she began. 

Her mother didn’t look up, keeping her eyes on the steam coming off the two bowls. “You microwaved it too long,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Hannah said, putting down her spoon. 

“It’s fine.”

Hannah stared at her mother now, more intently than before. Her hair was thinning, a darker blonde than it had been when she was young. She rarely had it out of a ponytail these days and had taken to wearing only eyeliner, as most of her lashes had fallen out. She wore jeans and a zip-up sweatshirt that was stiff and pilled with age. Most of Hannah’s clothes got softer the more she washed and re-wore them, but her mother’s tended to harden and shrivel into themselves. 

“Like I said,” Hannah tried again. “I’ve been thinking.” Her mother said nothing, so she continued. “I want to go to college.” 

The next evening, Hannah tried again. She was more prepared this time, retaining her optimism despite the previous night’s reaction of confusion and laughter.

It was the first snowfall of the year, but the air still held its October warmth, so Uncle Rodney and her mother chose to spend the evening outside, sprawled in lawn chairs with Millers in their mittens. Uncle Rodney turned when his niece exited the trailer. “Hannah Banana!” he said with a smile. “How’s the best girl in New Oslo?” 

“I’m good,” she said, pulling her sweatshirt sleeves down to cover her hands. The booze had warmed her mother and uncle, but she was cold. While the latter spoke of an out-of-towner he met at Kubel the night before and the former stared at the snow, Hannah took deep, nervous breaths. After a minute of nodding and inserting “oh, really?”s, she finally said what she had come to say.

“Uncle Rodney, did my mom tell you I’m gonna apply for college?” 

Her mother snapped her head back to the trailer, locking eyes with the girl in front of it. 

For the rest of the night, Hannah and her uncle discussed what she might study, all the college graduates he knew, and the intense amount of pride he had for his favorite niece. 

Her mother just stared at the falling white. 

Two years later, Hannah, having just started her Saturday shift, was trying her hardest to be polite as a large Danish family pressed their noses against the glass encircling the Runerock. Several small children left greasy handprints on the exhibit and the clan’s patriarch repeatedly muttered how “loony this whole thing is,” as she attempted to move the tour along.

So, when the phone rang, she was incredibly grateful to excuse herself from the exhaustive group. 

Hannah exited the exhibit and entered the room that served as the welcome center, gift shop, and office. She picked up the screeching phone. “Thank you for calling the New Oslo Scandinavian History Museum, this is Hannah.”

The voice on the other end of the phone spoke. It was her mother, who had never once called Hannah at work. Morbid thoughts pierced her mind as her hands began to shake. Something must have happened to Uncle Rodney. 

She sighed in relief – she was wrong. When she heard the news her mother had called to share, however, an iceberg slowly began constructing itself around the organ pumping her blood. 

“Honey, you didn’t get in.” 

And so began Hannah’s final years in New Oslo. She continued her work at the museum, hoping her diligence would impress the history departments she was applying to. When she wasn’t clocked in, she was either tearing through books or checking out new ones. She had a minimal desire to spend time with people anyway, as more and more were starting to think Uncle Rodney had made up the Runerock. 

While working at the museum, Hannah’s mother called her with three more rejections. She never heard from the rest. 

She tried to start drinking at Kubel, but the ghost of her mother when she had been beautiful haunted the bar and it was all too much. 

Without realizing it, Hannah had arrived at Overgangen Health, her car squarely in a parking spot near the visitor’s entrance. She inhaled and exhaled deliberately before getting out and walking toward the brick building.   

Besides the time bar glass had stabbed her toddler palms, Hannah had only been to Overgangen once. Her grandfather broke his hip when she was eight years old, and all she could remember was that his room smelled like eggs. Now, she inhaled an identical scent as she approached the reception desk where Nancy Hansen sat behind the sign-in sheet and pretended not to recognize her. Hannah was grateful for this, but took her sweet time in savoring the frown lines and thinning hair of the former prom queen. Stifling a smirk, she signed in and headed up the carpeted staircase. 

She reached the top of the steps, turned down the hallway and followed the sound of shrill, feminine laughter. Peering through the open door of room 315, she saw three nurses standing around the bed, grins on their faces as her uncle did his Jim Carrey impression. Hannah smiled to herself and knocked on the doorframe. 

“My niece is here!” Rodney said, craning his neck to see her. He tried to stand, but his effort was quickly inhibited by six female hands pressing him down against the bed. 

“Rodney, don’t even try,” one laughed. 

“Just relax and enjoy your visit,” said another. Hannah thanked them for taking good care of her uncle as they exited the room. 

Resting her eyes on the man in the bed was more painful than she thought it would be. She hadn’t seen him since the previous Christmas, and he’d been skinny even then. “This is what a deteriorating liver will do,” he had laughed as they took a necessary break during their walk around the city park. Now, his hair was thinner, his cheeks more hollow, and his skin sincerely yellowed. 

“How are you feeling?” Hannah asked, bending down to hug the bedridden man. 

“Oh, they take good care of me here,” Rodney responded between coughs. “Most of the staff thinks I made up the Runerock, but uffdah, those three are dang nice to me anyway.” Something like sadness conquered her uncle’s demeanor. 

“The Runerock is a historical artifact,” Hannah said, trying to keep her voice steady as she pulled up a chair. “Nobody intelligent thinks you made it up.”

Rodney smiled, his closed lips shifting into the position Hannah recognized. “Thank ya for coming,” he said. 

“Don’t thank me,” she said, pretending she wasn’t bothered by his mustard-colored skin as she grabbed his hand. “You drove to the city for so many years, this was the least I could do.” 

For the next two hours, uncle and niece talked about their favorite moments from Saturday Night Live, wondered aloud if the Runerock writer had a Viking girlfriend waiting for him back in Iceland, and split a pack of Charleston Chews. When Rodney entered his third yawning fit, Hannah insisted on letting him sleep. 

“I promise I’m not going anywhere,” she said, squeezing her uncle’s hand. “I brought a huge stack of papers to grade.” 

“Make sure ya get something good to eat,” Rodney said, gently shutting his eyes. “Ya know, I’m sure the raw fish consumed by our Viking friend tasted better than the cafeteria food here. Go to the diner or something.” 

Hannah laughed and shut off the light on her way out. She didn’t have the heart to correct her uncle, but she would not be leaving Overgangen Health other than to check into her hotel. This facility would be the only place she stopped in New Oslo. She would not, she could not, stay here, could not go to the diner, could not see Thor. She would sleep fifteen miles away and spend the sun’s hours with Uncle Rodney, holding his hand until he died. She would stay however long it took, and she would try to convince herself she was in no rush. 

Later, her eyes were glued to a minuscule cafeteria television as she nibbled on a soggy sandwich, begging the chaotic sitcom family to distract her from her shame. 

Hannah’s nineteenth year passed without a college acceptance letter. She turned twenty and got a small raise at the museum. 

By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, she hadn’t applied to a single school. 

“It’s a fruitless pursuit,” she said, stabbing her boxed stuffing with a plastic fork, breaking off one of its prongs. 

“Don’t say that!” her Uncle Rodney exclaimed, his mouth full of cranberry sauce. “Ya know what, Hannah Larsen? You’re gettin’ in this year and uffda, are you gonna show those snobs what they’ve been missing!” 

Two years earlier, a comment like this would have made her smile, but Hannah had heard too many words of encouragement from this man. She stared at her plate, refusing to respond. The rest of the meal passed without another word.

But that night, alone in her tiny trailer bed, she updated her resume and wrote a brand new personal statement. On December 1st, she mailed her applications. 

A few weeks later, the first Christmas in which she and her mother did not receive a pity invitation to the Larsen holiday celebration passed. On New Year’s Eve, Hannah vomited from overdrinking, competing with the woman who birthed her for toilet space in the trailer’s bathroom. 

Soon, it was Valentine’s Day. Since that year, therapists, counselors, and the very few people she told about New Oslo have been quick to piece together Hannah’s horrid correlation between cupid’s holiday and demise. Those she didn’t let in were hopelessly oblivious. Once, a man she dated for over six months sent a dozen bright pink roses to her office on Valentine’s Day, where the receptionist and graduate students swooned and sang over the lovely bouquet. Hannah never spoke to him again. 

On the dreaded day of St. Valentine, a group of locals entered the museum. They thoroughly wiped their boots at the door, as all good Midwesterners know to do, before proceeding to the exhibit. Hannah opened her mouth to remind them of the $2 entrance fee, but nothing came out as they walked past her, swinging open the door that led to the Runerock. Marnie Magnusson, the old woman who could never have babies, was the only one who even acknowledged Hannah, meeting the gaze of the girl she had held and rocked. Something like pain muddled with the blue in her eyes before she quickly ripped them away. 

In her years of working at the museum, nobody had refused to pay the entrance fee, and Hannah was not sure what she was supposed to do. Bjorn Benson was out, having said something about buying flowers for his accountant as he ran out the door. Hannah was on her own. From her seat at the welcome desk, she could hear the flash of cameras and mumbled insults directed at her Uncle Rodney. She had no clue what they intended to do, and she doubted that she would have the courage to tell them off, but at the very least she could collect the money they owed. 

Upon passing through the door, Hannah was not at all surprised to see that the group was surrounding the Runerock, ignoring the other exhibits about the Scandinavian migration, the founding of New Oslo, and the culinary history section that she herself had worked so hard on. 

“Can I collect your $2 entrance fees, please?” she asked the group. 

“Why?” one of the men asked. “So your family can make even more money off this piece of shit?” he asking, gesturing to the Runerock. “Do you take the money from the till and give it to your uncle?” 

Hannah could feel her face redden and her eyes narrow as rage consumed her. She had never been this angry in her entire life, and would have been embarrassed by her reaction had it not been for the group of incredibly uncomfortable people in front of her. Marnie Magnusson looked like she was going to cry, the man who had spoken had placed his gaze on his boots, and the rest seemed like they’d rather be anywhere else. Even in a confrontation, the people of New Oslo possessed not an ounce of their ancestors’ undaunted spirit.

“Rodney Larsen donated the Runerock to the New Oslo Scandinavian History Museum in 1970,” Hannah said, directly quoting the presentation she delivered when she gave tours. “He has never received payment for its viewing or study. And,” she said, altering the final line, “if you all don’t pay the $2 entrance fee, feel free to get the hell out.” 

Three minutes after the group left, Hannah too faced the blistering February air as she locked the door. She left a note for Bjorn saying she felt sick, which she knew would save her from any trouble. The man was quite afraid of germs. 

Her car had barely begun to warm up by the time she reached Poplar Estates. It was quiet, with the children at school and everyone else at work or inside hiding from the cruel air. Her mother was home, she knew, as she worked the early morning shift at the diner on Wednesdays. She was normally asleep this time of day, so Hannah was more than startled to see her standing over the kitchen sink holding the mail. 

Well, a piece of mail. A burning piece of mail. 

Her mother whipped around, her tiny eyes wide as she dropped the letter. She was far too stunned, or hungover, or both, to beat Hannah in the race to the ground. The daughter beat out the flame with her mitten. She glanced around the trailer – there was no smoke, no fire, just a single candle next to the sink. 

“Did you drop this on the flame?” 

Her mother reached for the letter, but Hannah instinctually pulled it away. Confused, she looked down at the first few lines.   

“Dear Hannah Larsen,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to the University of….”

Hannah looked at her mother. The iceberg that had formed around her aspirations started shattering, cascading into the sea until all that was left was her future. She would study history, she would make friends, she would date and have sex, she would get her Ph.D., she would become a professor, and she would only return to New Oslo when her Uncle Rodney was about to die. 

“You were burning this?” she asked, her voice shaking. 

Her mother said nothing. 

“You burned all of them?”

Still nothing. 

“How many did I get into? Last year? And the year before?”

The mother’s glassy eyes bore into the daughter’s. “All of them,” she said.

Hannah was underwater and she couldn’t breathe. But, like the sea monsters from her book of Norse stories, she kept moving as she gathered what she needed. She threw clothes in a duffel bag and books in a backpack. When she surfaced, she told herself, she would take the bus to the city. She had some money saved, with an account in her name, and she would get a job. She would get a place, but frankly, she didn’t care if she had to stay at a shelter until school started. She was going to the city. She was going to college.  

After two minutes of packing, she stood in front of the door and met her mother’s eyes. The skeleton of a woman swimming in a one-night-stand sweatshirt was crying.

“I should have known,” Hannah said as she secured the duffel bag on her shoulder. “You said honey when you called me about the first one. You’ve never called me honey.” 

She pivoted, turned the trailer’s plastic doorknob, and descended its iron steps before her mother could say nothing in response.