I picked up the photo of the three Chase siblings. “But sometime during the last week, that same Loki symbol appeared on my uncle’s face. Any thoughts?”
Jack planted the tip of his blade in the living room carpet. He bent forward until his hilt was an inch from the photo. Maybe he was getting nearsighted. (Near-hilted?)
“Hmm,” he said. “You want my opinion?”
“Yeah.”
“I think that’s pretty strange.”
I waited for more. Jack did not elaborate.
“Okay, then,” I said. “You don’t think maybe there’s a connection between…I don’t know, another child of Loki showing up in Valhalla, and this weird mark on Randolph’s face, and the fact that suddenly, after a couple of months of quiet, we have to find Thor’s hammer right away to avoid some invasion?”
“When you put it like that,” Jack said, “you’re right, it’s very strange. But Loki is always showing up in weird places. And Thor’s hammer…” Jack vibrated in place like he was either shuddering or suppressing a laugh. “Mjolnir is always getting misplaced. I swear, Thor needs to have that hammer duct-taped to his face.”
I doubted I would be getting that image out of my head anytime soon. “How can Thor lose it so easily? How could anyone steal it? I thought Mjolnir was so heavy nobody else could pick it up.”
“Common misconception,” Jack said. “Forget all that only-the-worthy-can-lift-it stuff from the movies. The hammer is heavy, but you get enough giants together? Sure, they can lift it. Now wielding it—throwing it correctly, catching it again, summoning lightning with it—that takes some skill. But I’ve lost count of the number of times Thor has fallen asleep in some forest, prankster giants have rolled up in a backhoe loader, and the next thing you know, the thunder god is hammerless. Most of the time he gets it back quickly, kills the pranksters, and lives happily ever after.”
“But not this time.”
Jack wobbled back and forth, his version of a shrug. “I suppose getting Mjolnir back is important. The hammer is powerful. Inspires fear in the giants. Smashes entire armies. Keeps the forces of evil from destroying the universe and whatever. Personally, I’ve always found him kind of a bore. He just sits there most of the time. Doesn’t say a word. And don’t ever invite him to karaoke night at the Nuclear Rainbow. Disaster. I completely had to carry both parts on ‘Love Never Felt So Good.’”
I wondered if Jack’s blade was sharp enough to cut off the too-much information he was giving me. I guessed not.
“Last question,” I said. “Halfborn mentioned that this new child of Loki was an ‘argr.’ You have any idea—”
“I LOVE argrs!” Jack somersaulted with glee, nearly slicing off my nose. “Frey’s Fripperies! We have an argr across the hall? That’s great news.”
“Um, so—”
“One time we were in Midgard—me and Frey and a couple of elves, right? It was like three in the morning, and this argr walked up to us…” Jack howled with laughter, his runes pulsing in full Saturday Night Fever mode. “Oh, wow. That was an epic night!”
“But what exactly—?”
Someone knocked on my door. T.J. poked his head in. “Magnus, sorry to bother—Oh, hey, Jack, what’s up?”
“T.J.!” Jack said. “You recover from last night?”
T.J. chuckled, though he looked embarrassed. “Just about.”
I frowned. “You guys went partying last night?”
“Oh, señor, señor,” Jack chided, “you really need to come out with us. You haven’t lived until you’ve gone clubbing with a Civil War bayonet.”
T.J. cleared his throat. “So, anyway, I came to get you, Magnus. The battle’s about to start.”
I looked around for a clock, then remembered I didn’t have one. “Isn’t it early?”
“It’s Thursday,” T.J. reminded me.
I cursed. Thursdays were special. And complicated. I hated them. “Let me grab my gear.”
“Also,” T.J. said, “the hotel ravens have tracked down our new hallmate. I thought we should probably go be with him. They’re bringing him to the battle…whether he wants to be there or not.”
Love Me Some Weasel Soup
THURSDAY MEANT dragons. Which meant an even more painful death than usual.
I would’ve brought Jack, but 1) he thought practice battles were beneath him, and 2) he had a hot date with a polearm.
By the time T.J. and I arrived at the battlefield, the fighting had already started. Armies streamed into the hotel’s interior courtyard—a topographical killing zone big enough to be its own sovereign country, with woods, meadows, rivers, hills, and mock villages. On all four sides, soaring into the hazy white fluorescent sky, tiers of gold-rimmed balconies overlooked the field. From the upper levels, catapults hurled fiery projectiles toward the warriors below like deadly ticker tape.
The blare of horns echoed through the forests. Plumes of smoke rose from burning huts. Einherjar charged into the river, fighting on horseback, laughing as they cut each other down.
And, because it was Thursday, a dozen large dragons had also joined the slaughter.
The older einherjar called them lindworms. If you ask me, that made them sound like a mildly annoying skin rash. Instead, lindworms were the size and length of eighteen-wheelers. They had just two front legs, with leathery brown bat-type wings too small for effective flight. Mostly they dragged themselves across the ground, occasionally flapping, leaping, and swooping down on their prey.
From a distance, with their brown, green, and ocher hides, they looked like an angry flock of giant carnivorous turkey snakes. But trust me: up close, they were bad news.
Our goal for Thursday’s battle? Stay alive as long as possible while the dragons tried very hard not to let us. (Spoiler: The dragons always won.)
Mallory and Halfborn waited for us at the edge of the field. Halfborn was adjusting the straps on Mallory’s armor.
“You’re doing it wrong,” she growled. “That’s too tight across the shoulders.”
“Woman, I’ve been putting on armor for centuries.”
“When? You always go into battle bare-chested.”
“Are you complaining about that?” Halfborn asked.
Mallory blushed. “Shut up.”
“Ah, look, here’s Magnus and T.J.!” Halfborn clapped me on the shoulder, dislocating several of my joints. “Floor nineteen is accounted for!”
Technically, that wasn’t true. Floor nineteen had almost a hundred residents. But our particular corridor—our neighborhood within the neighborhood—consisted of us four. Plus, of course, the newest resident…
“Where’s the cheetah?” T.J. asked.
As if on cue, a raven dive-bombed us. It dropped a burlap bag at my feet then landed nearby, flapping its wings and croaking angrily. The burlap bag moved. A long skinny animal squirmed out of it—a brown-and-white weasel.
The weasel hissed. The raven cawed. I didn’t speak raven, but I was pretty sure it was telling the weasel, Behave yourself or I will peck your weaselly eyes out.
T.J. pointed his rifle at the animal. “You know, when the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts was marching toward Darien, Georgia, we used to shoot weasels and cook them in a soup. Tasty stuff. You guys think I should get out my old recipe?”
The weasel transformed. I’d heard so much about this new recruit being a monster that I half expected him to turn into a living corpse like the goddess Hel, or a miniature version of the sea serpent Jormungand. Instead, the animal grew into a regular human teen, long and lanky, with a swirl of dyed green hair, black at the roots, like a plug of weeds pulled out of a lawn.
The weasel’s brown-and-white fur changed into green and pink clothes: battered rose high-tops, skinny lime green corduroy pants, a pink-and-green argyle sweater-vest over a white tee, and another pink cashmere sweater wrapped around the waist like a kilt. The outfit reminded me of a jester’s motley, or the coloration of a venomous animal warning the whole world: Try me and you die.
The newcomer looked up, and I forgot how to breathe. It was Loki’s face, except younger—the same wry smile and sharp features, the same unearthly beauty, but without the scarred lips or the acid burns across the nose. And those eyes—one dark brown, the other pale amber. I’d forgotten the term for that, having different-colored irises. My mom would’ve called it David Bowie eyes. I called it completely unnerving.
The weirdest thing of all? I was pretty sure I had seen this kid before.
Yeah, I know. You’re thinking a kid like that would stand out. How could I not remember exactly where we’d crossed paths? But when you live on the streets, wild-looking people are normal. Only normal people stand out as strange.
The kid flashed a perfect white smile at T.J., though there was no warmth in those eyes. “Point that rifle somewhere else, or I will wrap it around your neck like a bow tie.”
Something told me this was not an idle threat. The kid might actually know how to tie a bow tie, which was kinda scary arcane knowledge.
T.J. laughed. He also lowered his rifle. “We didn’t get a chance to introduce ourselves earlier, when you were trying to kill us. I’m Thomas Jefferson, Jr. This is Mallory Keen, Halfborn Gunderson, and Magnus Chase.”
The newcomer just stared at us. Finally the raven made an irritated squawk.
“Yeah, yeah,” the kid told the bird. “Like I said, I’m calmer now. You didn’t mess me up, so it’s all cool.”
Screeeak!
The kid sighed. “Fine, I’ll introduce myself. I’m Alex Fierro. Pleased to meet you all, I guess. Mr. Raven, you can go now. I promise not to kill them unless I have to.”
The raven ruffled his feathers. He gave me the stink eye, like, It’s your problem now, buddy. Then he flew away.
Halfborn grinned. “Well, that’s settled! Now that you’ve promised not to kill us, let’s start killing other people!”
Mallory crossed her arms. “He doesn’t even have a weapon.”
“She,” Alex corrected.
“What?” Mallory asked.
“Call me she—unless and until I tell you otherwise.”
“But—”
“She it is!” T.J. interceded. “I mean, she she is.” He rubbed his neck as if still worrying about a rifle bow tie. “Let’s get to battle!”
Alex rose to her feet.
I’ll admit that I was staring. Suddenly my whole perspective had flipped inside out, like when you look at an inkblot picture and see just the black part. Then your brain inverts the image and you realize the white part makes an entirely different picture, even though nothing has changed. That was Alex Fierro, except in pink and green. A second ago, he had been very obviously a boy to me. Now she was very obviously a girl.
“What?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” I lied.
Above us, more ravens began to circle, cawing accusingly.
“We’d better get moving,” Halfborn said. “The ravens don’t like slackers on the battlefield.”
Mallory drew her knives and turned toward Alex. “Come on, then, sweetheart. Let’s see what you can do.”
Have You or Someone You Love Ever Suffered from Lindworms?
WE WADED into combat like one happy family.
Well, except for the fact that T.J. grabbed my arm and whispered, “Keep an eye on her, will you? I don’t want to get mauled from behind.”
So I brought up the rear with Alex Fierro.
We moved inland, picking our way through a field of corpses, all of whom we would see later, alive, at dinnertime. I could’ve taken some pretty funny photos, but camera phones were heavily discouraged on the field of combat. You know how it is. Somebody snaps a picture of you dead in an embarrassing pose, it makes the popular page on Instagram, then you get teased about it for centuries.
Halfborn and Mallory chopped us a path through a pack of berserkers. T.J. shot Charlie Flannigan in the head. Charlie thinks it is hilarious to get shot in the head. Don’t ask me why.
We dodged a volley of fiery tar balls from the balcony catapults. We had a brief sword battle with Big Lou from floor 401—great guy, but he always wants to die by decapitation. That’s hard, since Lou is almost seven feet tall. He seeks out Halfborn Gunderson on the battlefield since Halfborn is one of the few einherjar tall enough to oblige.
Somehow, we made it to the edge of the woods without getting stomped by a lindworm. T.J., Mallory, and Halfborn fanned out in front and led us into the shadows of the trees.
I moved warily through the underbrush, my shield up, my standard-issue combat sword heavy in my left hand. The sword wasn’t nearly as well-balanced or as lethal as Jack, but it was a lot less talkative. Next to me, Alex strolled along, apparently unconcerned that she was empty-handed and the most brightly colored target in our group.
After a while, the silence got to me.
“I’ve seen you before,” I told her. “Were you at the youth shelter on Winter Street?”
She sniffed. “I hated that place.”
“Yeah. I lived on the streets for two years.”
She arched her eyebrow, which made her amber left eye look paler and colder. “You think that makes us friends?”
Everything about her posture said, Get away from me. Hate me or whatever. I don’t care as long as you leave me alone.
But I’m a contrary person. On the streets, plenty of homeless folks had acted belligerent toward me and pushed me away. They didn’t trust anybody. Why should they? That just made me more determined to get to know them. The loners usually had the best stories. They were the most interesting and the savviest about staying alive.
Sam al-Abbas must’ve had some reason for bringing this kid to Valhalla. I wasn’t going to let Fierro off the hook just because she had startling eyes, an impressive sweater-vest, and a tendency to hit people.
“What did you mean earlier?” I asked. “When you said—”
“Call me she? I’m gender fluid and transgender, idiot. Look it up if you need to, but it’s not my job to educate—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh, please. I saw your mouth hanging open.”
“Well, yeah. Maybe for a second. I was surprised. But…” I wasn’t sure how to continue without sounding like even more of an idiot.
The gender thing wasn’t what surprised me. A huge percentage of the homeless teens I’d met had been assigned one gender at birth but identified as another, or they felt like the whole boy/girl binary didn’t apply to them. They ended up on the streets because—shocker—their families didn’t accept them. Nothing says “tough love” like kicking your non-hetero-normative kid to the curb so they can experience abuse, drugs, high suicide rates, and constant physical danger. Thanks, Mom and Dad!
What surprised me was the way I’d reacted to Alex—how fast my impression of her had slingshot, and the kind of emotions that had stirred up. I wasn’t sure I could put that into words without turning as red as Mallory Keen’s hair.
“Wh-what I was sighing—saying—is when you were talking to the raven, you mentioned you were worried you’d been messed up. What did you mean?”
Alex looked like I’d just offered her a huge wedge of Limburger cheese. “Maybe I overreacted. I wasn’t expecting to die today or get scooped up by some Valkyrie.”
“That was Sam. She’s okay.”
Alex shook her head. “I don’t forgive her. I got here and found out…whatever. I’m dead. Immortal. I’ll never age and never change. I thought that meant…” Her voice frayed. “It doesn’t matter.”
I was pretty sure it mattered. I wanted to ask her about life back in Midgard, why she had an outdoor atrium just like mine in her suite, why all the pottery, why she would want to put the mark of Loki next to her initials on her work. I wondered if her arrival was just a coincidence…or whether it had something to do with the mark on Uncle Randolph’s face in the photo and our sudden urgent need to find Thor’s hammer.
On the other hand, I suspected that if I tried to ask her all that, she would turn into a mountain gorilla and rip my face off.
Happily, I was spared that fate when a lindworm crash-landed in front of us.
The monster hurtled out of the sky, flapping its ridiculous wings and roaring like a grizzly bear with a hundred-watt amp. Trees cracked and splintered under its weight as it landed in our midst.
“AWRGGG!” Halfborn yelled—which was Old Norse for HOLY CRUD, THERE’S A DRAGON!—just before the lindworm smacked him into the sky. Judging from the arc, Halfborn Gunderson was going to end up somewhere around floor twenty-nine, which would be a surprise to anyone relaxing on their balcony.
T.J. fired his rifle. Gun smoke blossomed harmlessly against the dragon’s chest. Mallory yelled a curse in Gaelic and charged.
The lindworm ignored her and turned toward me.
I should mention…lindworms are ugly. Like if Freddy Krueger and a Walking Dead zombie had a child—that kind of ugly. Their faces have no flesh or hide, just a carapace of bone and exposed tendons, gleaming fangs, and dark, sunken eye sockets. When the monster opened its maw, I could see straight down its rotten-meat-colored throat.
Alex crouched, her hands fumbling for something at her belt. “This isn’t good.”
“No kidding.” My hand was so sweaty I could barely hold my sword. “You go right, I’ll go left. We’ll flank it—”
“No, I mean that isn’t just any dragon. That’s Grimwolf, one of the ancient worms.”
I stared up into the monster’s dark eye sockets. He did seem bigger than most of the lindworms I’d fought, but I was usually too busy dying to ask a dragon its age or name.
“How do you know?” I asked. “And why would anybody call a dragon Grimwolf?”
The lindworm hissed, filling the air with a scent like burning tires. Apparently he was sensitive about his name.
Mallory stabbed at the dragon’s legs, screaming more angrily the longer the lindworm ignored her. “Are you two going to help,” she called back at us, “or just stand there and chat?”
T.J. stabbed at the monster with his bayonet. The point just bounced off the creature’s ribs. Being a good soldier, T.J. backed up and tried again.
Alex tugged some sort of cord from her belt loops—a dull steel wire no thicker than a kite string, with simple wooden dowels on either end for handles. “Grimwolf is one of the dragons that live at the roots of Yggdrasil. He shouldn’t be here. No one would be crazy enough to…” Her face blanched, her expression hardening as if turning into lindworm bone. “He sent it for me. He knows I’m here.”
“Who?” I demanded. “What?”
“Distract him,” she ordered. She leaped into the nearest tree and began to climb. Even without turning into a gorilla, she could definitely move like one.
I took a shaky breath. “Distract him. Sure.”
The dragon snapped at Alex, biting off several tree branches. Alex moved fast, scampering higher up the trunk, but one or two more snaps and she’d be a lindworm Lunchable. Meanwhile, Mallory and T.J. were still hacking away at the creature’s legs and belly, but they were having no luck convincing the dragon to eat them.
It’s only a practice battle, I told myself. Charge in there, Magnus! Get yourself killed like a pro!
That was the whole point of daily combat: to learn to fight any foe, to overcome our fear of death—because on the day of Ragnarok, we’d need all the skill and courage we could muster.
So why did I hesitate?
First, I’m way better at healing than I am at fighting. Oh, and running away—I’m really good at that. Also, it’s hard to charge straight to your own demise, even if you know it won’t be permanent—especially if that demise involves large amounts of pain.
The dragon snapped at Alex again, missing her rose high-tops by an inch.
As much as I hated dying, I hated even more seeing my comrades get killed. I screamed “FREY!” and ran at the lindworm.