“They? Who’s the they who went after Joel?”
“The rime jötnar, of course. I wonder if they thought he was me.”
“They’re terrified of you.”
“True. I bet they wanted a hostage. Get the upper hand that way.”
“A what? You mean they want to trade Joel for the gold plaque?”
“That’s my theory, yeah. Well, if I’m right, it’s not going to work. I told them no, they couldn’t have the goddamn plaque, and I will not go back on my word.” Tor crossed his arms over his chest and stuck his chin out. “If I do, it’ll only cause more trouble later.”
“Oh yeah? And what are they going to do with Joel, then? I bet they don’t just let him go.”
“They’ll probably threaten to kill him. In some unpleasant way.”
“Tor, you can’t let that happen. You’ve copied the inscription. You even made a rubbing of it. You know what it does now. Why not let them have the chunk of gold, if the rotten plaque means so much to them?”
“It’s the principle of the thing. When I shouted at that kid in our driveway, I meant what I said, and I said what I meant.”
I’d had enough of his heroic posturing. “And an elephant’s faithful one hundred per cent. Right, Horton?”
“Maya, damn it!”
“Well, if you want principles, for crying out loud, he’s your kinsman. Your fathers were brothers. If you let him die, you’ll be dishonored.”
Reading the old sagas had just paid off big-time. Tor opened his mouth to speak, stopped, hesitated, then sighed and uncrossed his militant arms. He let his hands sag onto his thighs and sighed again.
“Okay, you win,” he said. “I’ll have to think about this. There’s got to be a way out of the dilemma. It’s the classic cleft stick.”
“I don’t even see why it’s cleft.”
“I know you don’t, but I do.” Tor stood up and smiled at me. “And that’s what counts. I’m going downstairs. I’d better put the plaque in the safe.”
If I’d had the stupid thing within reach at that moment, I would have heaved it at his back. As it was, I sat and steamed for a couple of minutes before I got control of myself. I got out my phone and texted Liv. “Situation worse. Jötunn s--- hit the fan.” She answered, “Reached airport. Plane not loading on schedule, but hope, they say. No storm yet.”
I offered up a prayer to the Aesir that the Icelandic weather would hold until her plane was safely on its way. They seemed like the right ones to ask.
When Tor came back upstairs, he looked oddly calm, not smiling, not frowning, just calm in a way that I found terrifying.
“You’ve made up your mind about something, haven’t you?” I said.
“Oh, yeah.” He sat down, but he took an armchair rather than sit next to me on the couch as he usually did. “Don’t worry about Joel. I’ll make sure nothing happens to him.”
My terror turned into ordinary anxiety.
“Something I need you to remember,” Tor said. “Don’t ask me why, because it might not matter. But I put my ski parka on the old couch in the library room. Remember that. It’s on the couch.”
“All right. But I—“
“Hush!” He held up one hand. “This is one of those times when words have power. We can’t discuss anything that matters.”
I really did wonder if the stress had sent him over the edge into insanity. He looked at me so calmly, a little sadly, maybe, but too self-possessed, too serene to be crazy—unless that unnatural calm was the symptom.
“Okay,” I said. “What can we talk about?”
“You could surf for news on my laptop. Just in case the police found something useful.”
I’d just booted it up when I heard a car pull into our driveway. I put the machine into stand-by.
“That’ll be the guys,” Tor said. “I called them when I was downstairs. They know what’s happening already, so we don’t have to tell them again. Come on. I’m going to do a summoning. Why hang around and wait for the fucking jötnar to show up?”
The autumn night was cool enough that I grabbed a sweater. Billy, JJ, and Aaron met us outside on the driveway. In dead silence we walked around the house to the back yard.
“You stay here,” Tor said. “In the south.”
I took the place in front with the three guys behind me in a horizontal row. Tor stood in the middle of the lawn and faced east. He began to chant softly, his voice a growl in the night, as he scribed runes in the air. Like the hand of a clock, he kept turning. Each turned scribed more runes until he’d complete a glowing gold circle about six feet above the ground.
Tor raised both arms in the air and called out three words. I saw, some fifteen feet above the ground, a silvery dome appear, marked with fiery red runes. As Tor continued to chant, the edge of the dome began to drip pale light. The drips became a flow of bluish light and turned into a shimmering wall that slowly, a foot or so at a time, incorporated the circle. The flow of light turned green and slipped further until it reached the ground.
Once again, Tor faced the north. He chanted a galdr while he made a peculiar rubbing motion with his right hand. A door appeared in the wall of light.
“The dome should hide everything,” Tor said, “from the neighborhood.”
“Let’s hope,” JJ said. “We don’t want the cops swarming in here.”
“Or the alarm system going off,” Aaron said. “I’m kind of surprised it hasn’t. Lot of energy flowing around.”
The door in the wall sprang open. The air trembled, thickened, became a pale bluish fog that brought with it a chill wind. The door widened slightly as four figures stepped through into our world from Jötunheim. An enormous flood of élan swept through with them. I soaked up as much as I could gather. The two male jötnar were easily twelve feet tall, huge men, heavily muscled, with white hair that flowed around their pale faces. One carried a flaming torch; the other, a battle axe with a long wooden handle and double-bitted blade. He held it casually in one hand, where it looked no bigger than the axe Tor kept for firewood.
With his other massive hand the axe-wielder pushed Joel forward, then snarled as he forced him to his knees. In comparison to Joel’s head, the axe appeared huge. In the flickering torch light Joel looked as pale as the giants, but his mouth was set in a grim line of fury, not fear. His left eye was swollen and bruised. They’d bound his hands in front of him.
The fourth person was a woman who looked delicate next to the men but who stood somewhere over seven feet tall. Although her skin appeared pale, her hair was blonde, worn in a crown of braids. In one hand she held a knife that glowed with runes along the blade—the etinwife, I realized, who had magic of her own.
“So!” the axeman said. “Give us our gold. We give you your kinsman.”
“No,” Tor said. “I told you no, and I meant no.”
“Then your kinsman dies.”
He swung up the axe, but Tor sang out a galdr. The axeman froze in place, axe raised, and tried to speak. He gabbled. Foaming spittle ran from his mouth into his beard. The woman sang out a few runes of her own. He lowered the axe but stayed silent. Tor grinned, narrow-eyed, and nodded in satisfaction. Here, wherever we were between worlds, his galdrar had more power than I’d ever seen him summon before.
“Joel, get up,” Tor said. “Never grovel before scum.”
The axeman snarled but never moved as Joel got to his feet. Joel trembled, but only slightly, and his face betrayed no feeling at all.
“Here’s my offer,” Tor said. “My kinsman goes free. I take his place.”
The woman and the torchbearer both spoke at once in their language. I knew none of it, of course, but they sounded utterly confused. From behind me I heard Billy mutter, “What the fuck?” I glanced back and noticed that Aaron had his smartphone out. He was concentrating on taking photos of the giants. I had the insane thought that he was going to post them on Facebook.
The axeman finally spoke. “Why?” he said. “I trust not this.??
?
“A vitki never goes back on his word,” Tor said. “I told you no, I won’t give you the gold. If I’m the hostage, then giving you the gold is someone else’s decision.”
The woman laughed in an oddly pleasant way. She spoke to the axeman, who nodded.
“Clever,” he said. “You will promise, yes, not to harm us?”
“I swear I won’t harm you, your kin, your steading, your thralls, or your livestock unless you attack me.”
“I swear no attack on you by me, my kin, my warband, my dogs, or my thralls. Very well. We take the bargain.” He pushed Joel forward. “Go.”
Joel strode forward to join Billy and JJ, then staggered so badly I feared he’d faint. JJ threw an arm around his shoulders and steadied him.
“Woman!” Tor turned to me. “It’s cold in their country. I need my parka.”
“I’ll fetch it.” I said.
I ran inside, ran to the library room, and grabbed the parka from the couch. I had the muddled thought that I should just fetch the gold plaque right then, but I couldn’t think beyond that one impulse. Later I’d realize that Tor had cast some kind of spell to ensure that I wouldn’t demand he give it to me. At the time I just ran back with the parka. He’d stashed something in each of the interior pockets: his rune knife, a leather sack of staves, and the carved stone bear.
When I got back outside I saw that Tor had taken a few steps forward. He stood poised between two worlds, ours and that of the jötnar. When I handed him the parka, I said, “Why are you doing this?”
He grinned at me. “It’s the cave bear’s own country.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Don’t give them the gold.”
“Fuck you! That’s my decision now.”
Tor started to speak, but the etinwife snapped out, “We must go! The galdr weakens.”
“We return tomorrow night,” the axeman said. “Give us the gold. We give you the vitki.”
Tor laughed and put on the parka. He took a couple of steps forward, turned to face us all, and swung his arm in a circle. Overhead the dome cracked. The blue fog swirled around the yard as the giants and their hostage vanished. Tor’s voice sang out one last time.
“Joel, your dad really was a werewolf. Wanted you to know—.”
Joel sagged in JJ’s arms and fainted. Billy sprang forward to grab him, and in the confusion, I never saw the dome disappear and the fog dissipate. When I looked again, the yard had returned to normal—except the patch of grass glittered with frost. I stared at it as it melted away.
“Maya!” JJ’s voice cut through my confusion. “Are you okay?”
“No, but that doesn’t matter. Let’s get inside.”
By then Joel lay on the ground, awake but totally dazed. Billy knelt beside him. He took a Swiss Army knife out of his jeans pocket and began cutting through the thongs around Joel’s wrists. JJ and Aaron stood watching.
“How can you guys act so totally cool?” My voice shook beyond my power to steady it.
“We’ve seen worse,” JJ said. “Back when Tor was still learning—shit, man! When he fucked up, it was spectacular.”
As if this wasn’t, I thought to myself. A fuck-up, that is.
“Besides, it’s simple,” Aaron said. “Maya gives them the gold thingie, and Tor comes back. Right?”
The men were all smiling at me. I shook my head. “Wrong,” I said. “Because the cruddy thing is in the safe, and I don’t have the combination.”
The smiles disappeared fast. Joel groaned and sat up, rubbing his wrists. “Please,” Joel said, “tell me this is all a drug experience.”
“I only wish I could,” I said. “C’mon, guys, let’s get inside before the neighbors notice something. Okay?”
While Billy and JJ helped Joel up the stairs to the flat, Aaron and I went to look over the safe. Built right into the wall, it measured four feet on a side, solid steel, probably, with some kind of fancy plating on the front as well. The combination lock looked like state of the art—three little wheels of numbers, stacked one inside the other and set above a steel handle.
“I was hoping for something digital,” Aaron said. “I could’ve cracked that.”
“Do they make digital safes?”
Aaron shrugged and continued studying the lock. He gave it a couple of experimental turns. I could hear nothing, no useful clicks like in the TV shows.
“Nitroglycerine,” I said. “That’s the only thing I can think of.”
“Right, and blow up the whole house.” Aaron scowled at me. “Last chance. Let me have Tor’s laptop. Maybe he recorded the combo somewhere.”
The laptop sat on the coffee table in the living room. When we got upstairs, Aaron grabbed it and took it over to the breakfast bar to work. The other two guys were drinking beer on the couch, while Joel slumped in an armchair and pressed a plastic bag full of ice cubes to his swollen eye. I snagged a dish towel from the kitchen.
“Wrap the ice in this.” I handed him the towel. His wrists were bruised and chafed red from the thongs. “It’ll be more comfortable.”
“Thanks. Tor tried to warn me, didn’t he? When I was leaving. Did I listen to him? Oh no! Dumb as a bucket of mud, that’s me. I thought he was nuts.”
“I can understand why.” I sat down in the other armchair. “He takes people that way sometimes.”
“Maya?” He leaned forward to look right at me. “Was Dad really a werewolf?”
“Fraid so. He bit Tor, as a matter of fact.”
“But Tor changes into a bear, not a wolf,” Billy put in. “Only once a month, though.”
“The talents come from Grandfather Halvar,” I said. “Your cousin Liv has magic, too, but she’s not a were-creature.”
For a moment I thought Joel was going to faint again. He slumped to one side, but only to set the ice pack down on the floor. When he straightened up, he had the same grimly furious look on his face that he’d shown when the giants forced him to kneel.
“Are you telling me,” Joel said, “that I belong to a family of sorcerers?”
“Exactly that, yeah.”
Joel glanced at Billy and JJ for a second opinion.
“She’s right,” Billy said.
“You bet,” JJ said.
“Shit.” Joel retrieved the ice pack. “Well. Just shit.” He leaned back in the chair.
We all waited for him to say more, but he stared with his good eye at the ceiling in silence. We gave up and let him brood in peace.
“Hey, Aaron,” Billy said. “Any luck?”
“No.” Aaron looked up from the screen. “But there are a ton of files on here in other languages.”
Billy groaned and pried himself off the couch. “We should be looking for a string of numbers.”
“Yeah, but who knows if he used numerals or wrote them out?” Aaron took off his glasses and wiped them on the hem of his tee shirt. “I guess Old Norse had numbers.”
“Of course it did! I mean, everybody had numbers, even the Egyptians. I bet we can find them online.”
“And next they say,” JJ murmured. “Look, historical babes!”
I managed a smile that that.
About an hour later my phone rang in the backpack by my feet. Liv—she had a couple of minutes before her plane left the gate.
“They’ll be making us shut off real soon,” Liv said. “I tried to text Tor. Is his phone offline?”
“No,” I said. “He is. He’s in Jötunheim.”
“God in heaven help us! The idiot! What’s he doing there?”
“It’s too complicated to explain right now.”
In the background I could hear a stewardess’ voice droning in Icelandic. I assumed she was repeating the usual safety instructions.
“Look,” Liv went on, “they’ve cancelled the direct flight to SFO. I’m heading for New York. I’ll be in touch. Gotta turn off.”
The connection went dead. I put my phone back in my backpack and slung the backpack onto the coffee table. JJ was watching me expectantly.
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“Liv’s coming. Tor’s sister, y’know?” I said. “I just don’t know exactly when because of weather delays.”
“I’ll pick her up at the airport,” JJ said. “I’ve met her, and I won’t be Tee Aying tomorrow.”
“Doing what?”
“Leading student sessions as a TA. How exploited grad students earn their seminars.”
“Right. I knew that. Sorry. I’m all to pieces.” I took a deep breath. “I could strangle him.”
“I’ll help.” JJ shot me a grin. “If we could only get that damn safe open!”
While Aaron and Billy worked over every sector on the hard drive, JJ and I searched through all the papers on Tor’s business desk, the place where he paid and filed things like bills and tax statements. None of us ever found the combination. Around four in the morning we all agreed that the job was hopeless. The combination existed only in Tor’s brain, and that was in Jötunheim with the rest of him.
“When they come back tomorrow,” Billy said, “make Tor give you the combination. Or if you can’t pry it out of him, I bet Liv can. Liv’s awesome.”
“Good,” I said. “I’m so glad she’s on the way.”
I cooked everyone breakfast while the guys planned strategy. Joel came out of his funk long enough to eat.
“Do you have someone picking you up at the airport?” JJ said. “In New York, I mean.”
“No, I left the car in the long-term lot. Good thing, huh? I don’t want to call the police right away and tell them I’m okay. I mean, shit, they’ll ask me who attacked me. What am I gonna say?”
“Nothing, that’s what,” JJ said. “Lay low until we get Tor back.”
“I’ll call into work and tell them I’m taking an extra day, maybe two,” Joel said. “They know that I had a lot of crap to do out here. If they’ve seen the news story, I’ll just say it wasn’t me.”
“You can get some sleep in the spare bedroom.” I said. “I’ll get some clothes out of it first. JJ, I hope Liv phones in soon. You can take Tor’s car to pick her up.”
“Hey, a chance to drive that baby? It’s worth the trip.”
We’d just finished eating when Liv texted me from New York. She’d been through Customs and found a flight that would take her direct to the Oakland airport. It was scheduled to land at three p.m. our time. I texted her that JJ would be there to meet her.