Sif and the Dwarfs' Treasures

by Joan Holub

  Yggdrasil’s curved inner walls were lined with runebook-filled shelves that extended from floor to floor as far downward as Sif could see. There were ladders on wheels that followed tracks here and there along the shelves. By climbing from one ladder to another, you could easily reach all the other floors and their books. And scattered throughout the library on every floor were comfy seating areas.

  Suddenly a column of bright-blue water shot through one of the tubular slides to bubble up in a tall, fountainlike spout at eye level. Atop the spout sat a disembodied bald head! Glub, glub. “May I help you?” the head asked her pleasantly.

  This was Mimir, who was quite literally the head librarian. In other words, he had a head but no attached body! Freya had discovered him here. He had been hiding out in the library ever since the Asgard-Vanaheim war began, while protecting Asgard’s gold from giants.

  Since Sif could see the section on Ragnarok from where she stood, she only said, “I’m looking for information on prophesying.”

  Before she could continue, Mimir’s head twirled around once in excitement. When it stopped, a smile brightened his face. “My favorite subject!”

  He had lost his body around the start of the Asgard-Vanaheim war. Good thing his head seemed to work just fine without it. In addition to being incredibly smart, he was an oracle known in all nine worlds for the accuracy and power of his prophecies. In fact, Odin often consulted him.

  “You’ll want the Future Studies section,” Mimir told her. “Next floor down and to the right of the direction you’re now facing.” Cocking his head, he added, “I have a meeting with Odin at the Well of Urd in a moment and may be gone for an hour or so.”

  “Okay,” said Sif. “Thanks for your help.”

  But he hardly noticed her reply, for he was already yelling, “Gullveig! Where’s that gift from Ms. Frigg?”

  At his summons the library assistant came over. She was wearing tons of gold chains and smiled at Sif as she set an orange-and-white waterproof cap on top of Mimir’s head. Then she tied its dangling straps under his chin. The cap had a ruffle attached to its top front edge, making it resemble a baby bonnet. Hey! It looked like the thing Ms. Frigg had been knitting in Runes class. So it must’ve been intended as a gift for Mimir. As usual, her knitted creations proved giggle-worthy.

  “Gullveig is off work in another few minutes,” Mimir told Sif, directing a kind smile at his assistant. “But if you should need me, just push this switch over to the right and I’ll immediately pop back up.” Here he glanced meaningfully at a green-colored switch that sat beside him at the top of the slide. It must be the switch that reversed the direction of the water flow, Sif realized.

  “Ready?” Gullveig asked Mimir.

  The librarian bobbed his head. His assistant’s gold chains swung forward as she reached down and pushed the green switch over to the left. The water, which had been flowing upward to keep Mimir balanced at the top of the slide, immediately reversed itself. Caught in the downward flow, Mimir shouted “Whee!” as he whirled through the maze of transparent tubular slides, descending from floor to floor and eventually disappearing from view.

  Gullveig grinned and winked at Sif. Speaking fondly of Mimir, she said, “Smarter than anyone, but goofy as a happy little kid when it comes to those slides.”

  “How will he get back up?” Sif asked curiously.

  “Nose nudge,” Gullveig informed her. “There are more switches in various places and at the bottom of the tree. He can push them with his nose if no one’s around to help.”

  After Gullveig left, Sif quickly went to the Ragnarok section and found a list of happenings that were supposed to lead up to that terrible event.

  Ragnarok would take place in winter. One of the first things to herald it would be warnings from three roosters. A blast from Heimdall’s horn would bring the dead heroes out of the friezes and back to life, and then a great battle would take place in the Valhallateria! Wow, talk about a major food fight!

  Ragnarok would mean much more, as she already knew from Ragnarok Survival Skills class. In the end, all nine worlds would be destroyed. Yggdrasil, too. Sif shuddered at the idea. At least now she knew what incidents would hint to them that it was beginning.

  Hmm. It was already winter. Still, she hadn’t heard any roosters crowing so far, thank goodness!

  Deciding she’d learned enough, she used the ladders to go down one floor, where she easily located the Future Studies section. As far as she could tell, she was the only student in the library right now. On a Friday evening, others would likely be skiing, skating, or sledding, hanging out in Breidablik or Vingolf, or on guard duty. When she reached the section labeled FUTURE STUDIES, she began to browse the runebooks on the shelves.

  Because of her reading difficulties, sometimes even deciphering runebooks’ titles took time and effort. Sif ran a finger down each book’s spine, pausing as necessary to wait for the rune-letters to stop shifting around. Among the titles were Prophesying  for Dummies, How to Win Friends and Influence the Future, See Tomorrow Today, and The Rudiments of Rune Spells.

  That last title stopped her cold. Runes had been the cause of the Horrible Thing! Still, using runes to see into the future might help her figure out what those frost giants were up to, stealing and stockpiling wheat crops. If only she could figure out some way to guarantee there would never be a problem like the one she’d caused Lofn if she started prophesying again . . .

  “Maybe instead of avoiding you, I should learn everything about you,” she murmured, tapping her fingertip on the word “rune” on the book’s spine. “If there’s a way I can use you to safely prophesy, without causing another Horrible Thing to happen, I want to know.”

  She took down the runebook and carried it to a nearby table. It was warm in the library, so she slipped off her cloak and draped it over the comfy cushioned stool she’d pulled up to the table to sit on. Scanning the table of contents inside The Rudiments of Rune Spells, she saw from the chapter headings that the runebook contained mostly introductory stuff. (“What Are Runes?,” “An Alphabet of Runes,” “Why Are Runes Useful?,” etc.) This was not unexpected, since “rudiments” was just a fancy word for “basic information.”

  She thumbed through the book, though, and sat up straighter when she came across something interesting in a later chapter. “ ‘Difficult rune interpretations can sometimes be solved through dreams,’ ” she read aloud. “Now, this is more like it!”

  The author of the book recommended repeating words that related to a particular runeword over and over in your mind as you went to sleep, but without making any effort at turning the runeword into a prophecy. Supposedly, your brain would supply the connections to do that on its own through your dreams, which you’d recall when you woke up.

  Hmm. Sif filed that information away. Then she skipped to the section on rune writing. “ ‘Written runes carved into pieces of wood or stone as charms can be altered by certain persons under certain circumstances,’ ” she read. Well, thank goodness for that. Otherwise, what she’d done to Lofn could have turned out much, much worse than it had.

  By this point The Rudiments of Rune Spells, which lacked many illustrations or diagrams, was getting kind of boring, and Sif caught herself yawning. Her sleepiness was made worse by the soothing sound of the water running through Mimir’s tubular slides. Bubble, bubble. Glub, glub. Just one more chapter, she told herself as she struggled to keep her eyes open. But, oh, a nap would be so nice! Soon her head drooped onto her arms and she began to snooze. Zzzz.

  Sometime later Sif woke with a start. She yawned, blinked, and looked around sleepily. For some reason she felt curiously lighter, and there was a cool breeze on her neck that she wasn’t used to. She shivered. Brr. Time to go, she decided. She could come back another time to finish the research she’d started.

  As she rose from her stool, her cloak slipped off of it and fell to the floor. She bent to pick up the cloak. And that’s when she saw the soft, lustrous ma
ss of long golden tresses heaped all around her stool.

  Huh? In a panic, Sif flung her hands to her head. “Arghhh!” she screamed. Her hair, her beautiful hair. It had all been cut off!

  No wonder she’d felt lighter. Gingerly she patted all around the top of her head. Her remaining hair was mere stubble now. No more than an inch long. She was a porcupine-head! Almost as bald as Mimir!

  “Who would do such a cruel thing to me?” she wondered aloud. And not just to her, because this despicable act could have consequences for others, too. Without her hair—the source of her goddess powers—who knew what would happen to the golden fields of wheat that humans grew down in Midgard? Without her hair’s magic, what would protect the grain and help it thrive?

  Tears of anger (and embarrassment, too) began to fall from her eyes. She swung around, looking in every direction. “Who did this? Who cut my hair? Show yourself, you sneaky hair-snipper clipper!” she shouted. But no one appeared.

  Wait a minute. Clipper? Klippa! Loki! His runeword in class that afternoon had been klippa—“to clip or cut.” When she’d asked him what he thought it meant, he’d acted weird and claimed he didn’t know.

  “Liar!” she yelled into the empty library. His runeword had turned out to be prophetic, but it wouldn’t surprise her if it was the word itself that had given Loki the idea to cut off her hair in the first place! Did he think this was funny or something? Well, it wasn’t! And if cutting off her hair was an example of him trying to flirt with her, like Freya had speculated, this was totally the WRONG way to do it!

  With tears streaming down her face, Sif gathered up the cut hair. Unfortunately, it had power only when it was growing on top of her head. Yet she knew of no magic spell that could reattach it. Sadly, it was no good to her anymore. Or to anyone else, for that matter. So she found a pretty wooden box and lovingly placed her tresses inside, then set the box in the trash can.

  “Farewell, fair hair,” she said over it, as if she were at a hair funeral and burying it in a grave.

  Fury fueled her now as she wrapped herself in her cloak and flipped its hood over her practically bald head. “Knowledge is power,” she murmured as she drew the words on her palm. Instantly she found herself outside Yggdrasil again. She scurried through the golden forest and down a branchway toward Vingolf Hall.

  When the idea of making a wig floated into her mind, she almost turned back for her hair. But even if she could successfully make one, it wouldn’t lend her the same power as growing hair. Before she could decide, she heard footsteps pound behind her.

  “Sif? Is that you? Wait up a minute!”

  Recognizing the deep voice as Thor’s, she felt her heart leap into her throat. She’d been hoping to get back to her room without meeting anyone. Thor was probably the very last person she wanted to see her right now! Not that people wouldn’t find out about all this soon enough. Too bad hair grew so slowly. She wasn’t aware of any magic that could make it grow faster.

  Automatically Sif clasped the bottom edge of her hood with one hand, tightening it around her head. Pretending she hadn’t heard Thor, she kept moving, almost jogging now. But with those long strides of his, the boygod caught up to her anyway.

  “Yep, turns out we do have a giant giant problem beyond our wall,” he confided in a serious voice. “I’m not sure our weapons can keep them at bay. I can tell Odin’s worried. The last thing he wants—the last thing anyone wants—is another war.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Sif muttered. She didn’t want to encourage him to go on. In addition to the wheat-stealing giants and that half-giant Loki, she had her own giant problem to worry about right now! She sped up.

  “Well, I guess it’s not really a new war,” Thor corrected himself, easily keeping pace with her. “I mean, ever since the beginning of time, when Odin and his brothers slew the giant Ymir and built the nine worlds from his body, the frost giants have been fighting mad.”

  As everyone had learned in Norse History classes here at the academy or at their old schools, the sea had been formed from Ymir’s sweat, mountains from his bones, trees from his hair, and the sky from his skull. The wall encircling the human world of Midgard had been made from Ymir’s eyelashes, and from his brains clouds had been sculpted. Though all of this had happened in the far-distant past, frost giants had long memories.

  Suddenly a puzzled expression came over Thor’s face. “Wait, why are you being so quiet?” he asked, leaning around to try to see Sif’s face deep within her hood. “You’ve hardly said a word the whole time we’ve been walking. Something wrong?”

  “Um. Yes! I mean . . .” She gestured in frustration with both hands, releasing her grip on her hood. A brisk wind whipped up and her hood was blown back. Oh no! She caught it and flipped it back up to hide her semi-baldness. But it was too late. A shocked look entered Thor’s glacier-blue eyes.

  “That’s . . . different,” he murmured as they paused on the path to stare at each other. “Did you . . . um . . . cut it yourself? Is it the newest style or something?”

  “What? No!” Sif exclaimed bitterly. “I’d never cut it. My hair is the source of my goddess powers!”

  “Oh!” Thor’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah, so, then why . . .” His brow furrowed.

  “I didn’t cut it!” she exploded, holding her hood more tightly closed as she spied other students coming toward them on the branchway. “I was asleep in the library and somebody else did.”

  Thor frowned suspiciously. “Loki?”

  “Maybe. I mean, who else?” Sif replied mournfully. As they started off walking again, she explained about Loki’s klippa runeword. “What did I ever do to him?” she went on fiercely, even as they turned up another branchway toward the dorms. “Nothing, that’s what! Not that I know of, anyway.” Carried away by her anger, she forgot for a minute who she was speaking to and added, “To do something like this—he must really hate me! Freya was totally wrong to think that he’s been trying to flirt with me.”

  From the corner of her eye she watched Thor’s jaw clamp tight. So did his fists. “Loki’s reasons for doing anything are way too twisted to understand. But this time he’s gone too far!” Seeming every bit as angry as her, he slammed a fist into the palm of his other hand and looked around, as if searching for Loki.

  “Wait!” she warned. By now they had reached the entrance to Vingolf Hall. Facing Thor, she said firmly, “It’s my hair and my magic. I want to handle this. I’m ninety-nine percent sure Loki was the one who cut it, but I want to talk to him before you clobber him or something. Maybe it was an accident or someone tricked him into it. Maybe he’s sorry.”

  “He can say he’s sorry all he wants, but this time Loki’s going to pay for what he did!” Thor boomed.

  “Loki does deserve to be punished, and I appreciate your wanting to help me,” Sif told him earnestly. “Who knows how the loss of my hair will affect Midgard crops? You’ll be adding to my worries if you try to punish Loki before I can question him, though. End of subject for now, okay?”

  Thor shuffled his big feet for a moment or two, then reluctantly said, “ ’Kay.”

  “Thanks.” With a quick wave, she started in through the hall’s front door. In the mudroom she shucked off her boots and placed them in the racks. She tried not to cry again. Nothing but time could bring back her hair, she knew.

  She clenched her teeth. It was bad enough that giants had been stealing Midgard’s wheat. If what was left in the fields died, the consequences would be severe. Wheat was needed to make bread—a major source of food for humans. Without wheat, they might starve!

  While thinking all this, Sif headed for the Thunder Girls’ sleeping pod, ignoring anyone hanging about in the communal area and grasping her hood tight around her head. She was almost there when a horrible thought occurred to her. What if, when her hair regrew, it didn’t have the same magical powers it had had before?

  6

  The Dream

  WHEN SIF ENTERED THE SLEEPING pod, Freya, Skade, and Idun glan
ced up at her. They were playing some kind of card game together, sitting cross-legged on one of the snowflake-shaped wool rugs Ms. Frigg had knitted for all the pods in Vingolf. Their snowflake rug had seven points instead of the usual six and was rather misshapen. Still, Sif quite liked it.

  “Come hang out,” Freya called to her. “We’re playing Crazy Nines, and Idun brought apple tarts from the Valhallateria.”

  “To cheer us up about not getting any information from the girlgiants at Freya’s party after all,” added Idun. “Want one?” She motioned with her handful of cards toward a plate of tarts on the rug.

  “Thanks,” said Sif, still wrapped in her hooded cloak. “Maybe in a minute.”

  “Better hurry, they’re disappearing fast,” warned Skade around a bite of tart. She sighed blissfully. “Mmm. So did anything come of your trip to the library at least?”

  At her mention of the library, Sif felt tears pricking her eyes again. Hunching her shoulders, she turned away from her roomies. “Not really.” It was true. She hadn’t learned anything about Ragnarok or runes that would necessarily help with the current giant situation.

  She wished she could be alone in the pod for a while, but she couldn’t very well ask her podmates to leave. I suppose I should get it over with, she thought miserably. Steeling herself, she turned back to them and said, “You all won’t believe what happened to me. It’s pretty terrible. Don’t laugh.” Slowly she lowered her hood. And then burst into sobs.

  “What in the nine worlds . . . ?” Skade exclaimed. Freya and Idun stared, momentarily too shocked to speak.

  Sif choked back her next sob. “I f-fell asleep in the library. When I woke up, my hair was lying all around me on the floor.” No one laughed. Instead her podmates immediately abandoned their card game and tugged Sif down to join them on the rug.

  “Sit here,” Freya said, bringing her to sit between her and Idun. Sif sat, and immediately Freya and Idun each wrapped an arm around her shoulders, doing their best to comfort her. From her place across the rug, Skade leaned over to join in the group hug. Afterward, she offered up the plate of tarts. Sif shook her head to indicate she didn’t want one just now. This caused new tears to flow when she didn’t feel her hair sway at her shoulders.