Sif and the Dwarfs' Treasures

by Joan Holub

  For a half second Loki’s shoulders sagged and a worried look flitted across his face. Then he became his old cocky self again. “Butt out,” he said bluntly. “I don’t need help.”

  Sif raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh really? From what we’ve seen and heard so far, it seems like you’re kind of in over your head. And heading for trouble.” She bumped elbows with Freya and both girls grinned at her puns.

  “Yeah,” Freya went on, “so we wanted to give you a heads-up. To maybe stop any heads from rolling.”

  “Ha-ha.” Unamused, Loki opened the door wider. He gestured toward it, saying, “So not sorry you have to leave. Bye now.”

  “Sure.” Sif started for the door. “Too bad, ’cause we have a plan you could try. It involves shape-shifting. But since you don’t want us to bug you with it . . .”

  Catching on quickly, Freya followed her lead, adding, “Then we’ll just hope all goes well and head out. You’ve always had a good head on your shoulders. Good luck keeping it there.”

  Loki went pale. “Okay, okay,” he said, swinging out an arm to stop them. “Let’s not be hasty. What’s your plan?”

  By the time the girls finished explaining, Loki was grinning big and agreeing to their idea. “Now remember,” Sif warned him before they left the storage closet, “only make the dwarfs cause small flaws.”

  “Right,” Freya chimed in. “Just enough damage to help you win the bet. Nothing that will destroy the usefulness of the gifts.”

  “Got it,” Loki assured them.

  After dashing outside again, the girls rushed back to their previous vantage point at the side of the workshop. Through the window there they watched Sindri set a package of bacon (of all things!) and a lump of gold together in the forge.

  “Now pump those bellows for all you’re worth and don’t stop till I say to,” he instructed his brother. As Brokk began pumping air through the bellows to excite the fire and keep it roaring hot, Sindri waved his arms around in slow circles while reciting a magical chant:

  “Take this lump that once was ore

  And bacon that is pig no more.”

  Right in the middle of Sindri’s chant, a fly buzzed out of the crack below the white door that led from the storage closet into the shop. The girls smiled at each other knowingly. Their plan had begun!

  Zzzt! That fly zoomed around and around Brokk, who shook his head this way and that, trying to get it to buzz off. Annoying as the fly was, however, Brokk didn’t once slow his pumping hands.

  Meanwhile, Sindri finished his chant:

  “Let my magic powers soar,

  To create a golden boar.”

  With that, he reached into the forge with his tongs and pulled out a full-size boar made of gold with bristles that shone as bright as the sun.

  The girls’ eyes practically popped out of their heads. “Incredible!” Freya breathed in awe.

  “Yeah, but it’s flawless, so our plan isn’t exactly working,” said Sif. “Fly-Loki needs to annoy the dwarfs into making a few teeny mistakes in their gifts. Otherwise, their work will be better than the Ivaldi dwarfs’, and he could be-head ing for deep trouble. If you know what I mean.” She drew a finger across her throat to illustrate.

  “Good work, bro,” Sindri praised Brokk as the fly buzzed off to circle the room. “Two more gifts like this one and we’ll have Loki’s head decorating our shop for sure. Now keep those bellows going,” he urged as he put another lump of gold in the forge.

  Again Sindri waved his arms in circles and spoke:

  “Listen to this chant I sing

  As I make my next great thing.”

  He was only halfway through his chant when the fly was back to annoy Brokk again. Zzzt! Zzzt! This time it zoomed up his nose! Trying to dislodge the nostril invader, Brokk began huffing and puffing and snorting like a dragon. Suddenly he sneezed! Ah-chooo! Loki shot out of his nose like some kind of crazed winged booger!

  Freya giggled softly. “Now this is more like it. Loki’s doing a good job.”

  “Not too good, I hope,” Sif said with a frown. “We don’t want these dwarfs to mess up too badly. Then their gifts could turn out to be so crummy they’re unusable.”

  Sindri had paused in the middle of this second chant to glance in alarm at Brokk. But seeing that his brother had somehow managed to hold on to the bellows and keep pumping, he now finished the chant:

  “From this lump of gold I’ll bring

  A magic arm-ring, fit for a king.”

  “Or a god,” he added with a smile as he pulled a shining gold bracelet from the fire.

  Sif and Freya exchanged a worried look. That bracelet looked perfect. So far Loki had been unable to cause even one tiny mistake. While Sif was wondering what kind of magic the beautiful bracelet contained, Sindri threw another lump of metal in the forge. Not gold this time, though. Iron. “Pump hard, brother,” he encouraged Brokk. “You must not falter!”

  As Brokk worked the bellows with all his muscled might, Sindri flung his arms in magical circles again and began to recite his third chant:

  “Though in looks it may lack glamour,

  For this gift the gods will clamor.”

  Zzzt! Zzzt! Fly-Loki had returned, landing right between Brokk’s eyes and causing him to go momentarily cross-eyed. The dwarf’s face scrunched and twitched as he tossed his head, trying to get rid of the fly. Thoroughly annoyed, Brokk stopped pumping for a beat to thrash out at the pesky insect. He missed, though. Fly-Loki was too fast for him and only began flying around and around him, doing crazy patterns in the air that caused the dwarf’s eyes to spin.

  “No matter what Loki does, Brokk just keeps those bellows going,” said Sif. “This is not hurting Sindri’s projects one bit.”

  Freya let out a huff. “This is Loki’s last chance. I hate to say it, but things are not heading in a good direction for him right now.”

  Sindri was glancing at his brother in alarm again, but he kept on chanting:

  “ ‘Woe is us,’ the giants will yammer,

  Cursing the day I created this . . .”

  Zzzt! Zzzt! Sindri broke off his chant as the fly abruptly turned in midair and came at him instead. “Bug off!” He grabbed the tongs and swatted at it hard. Whap!

  Fly-Loki fell to the floor! Sif and Freya looked at each other in horror. Had Loki met his end?

  Phew! No! He’d only been stunned. Recovering a moment later, he half crawled and half buzzed off to the closet, where he disappeared under its door.

  Just then Sindri pulled something from the forge. Whatever it was was so heavy that he couldn’t lift it properly with his tongs and was forced to let the object drop to the floor. The girls craned their necks to see it.

  “A hammer!” Freya exclaimed in a whisper. She was good at rhymes and often supplied rhyming words to complete the poems that Principal Odin was so fond of reciting.

  Sif gave her two thumbs-ups, remembering Sindri’s incomplete chant. “Of course! ‘Hammer’ rhymes with ‘yammer,’ ‘clamor,’ and ‘glamour’!”

  The iron hammer’s head was the most massive Sif had ever seen—twice as long and wide as a loaf of bread! However, its handle was super short, possibly due to the missed beat of the bellows during fly-Loki’s interference. Or maybe caused by Sindri’s uncompleted rhyme. Either way, it seemed a flaw. Which meant their plan had worked! She only hoped the tool’s usefulness was still intact.

  “Sorry, bro. My bad,” Brokk said sadly as he stared down at the hammer’s handle.

  “It was that stupid fly’s fault, not yours,” Sindri told him. “Besides, in the right hands—ones that can wield this hammer—it’ll make a fine weapon. One that will thunder!”

  Thunder? In the right hands? Considering his words, Sif smiled eagerly. Was it possible those “right hands” Sindri had mentioned belonged to someone in their Thunder Girl pod? Maybe even her?

  It sounded as if Sindri thought the hammer was still a success. Surely, its short-handle flaw would be enough to make Odi
n judge the first set of three gifts more highly than this second set, though!

  “Tell Loki he can come out,” Sindri told his brother. “Then go with him to Asgard to ask the gods for their judgment.”

  “Which will certainly be in our favor! We rocked it, bro!” said Brokk. The happy dwarfs each grabbed a set of tongs, held them high, and clanged them together in a blacksmithing high five.

  Loki must have been listening at the white door, because he (in boy form now) popped out of the storage closet before Brokk could even start across the shop. Right away the boygod grabbed the bag containing the gifts Ivaldi’s sons had made and slung it across one shoulder. “Time’s a-wastin’,” he said to Brokk cheerfully. “Gather up those gifts of yours and let’s be off to the judging!”

  From his merry tone it seemed obvious to Sif that Loki was convinced he’d win the bet. For his sake—or at least the sake of his poor head—she hoped he was right.

  Brokk quickly bagged the golden boar and the bracelet. Then he and Sindri tugged and tugged at the massive iron hammer, trying to lift it from the floor. “Urgh. Oomph. Uh!” they cried out. It didn’t budge. Not even an inch, resisting all of their efforts to move it. It was as if it were glued to the floor! Loki didn’t even try to help them, but only watched with an amused look on his face.

  “Never mind,” Sindri said to Brokk at last. “I’ll say a magic spell over it that will transport it to Asgard after you arrive.” With that, Brokk and Loki made for the door of the workshop, each carrying a bag of gifts.

  “Quick! We can’t let Loki leave with my new hair!” Sif exclaimed to Freya. “The sooner I have it, the better for the wheat.” The two girls left their hiding place at the side of the workshop and started around to the front.

  Just as Sif and Freya rounded the corner of the workshop, they heard a loud Caw! Caw! Hugin and Munin were back! The girlgoddesses watched in astonishment as the ravens dove down from the sky. One of them caught the back of Brokk’s shirt in its beak, and the other scooped up Loki in the same way.

  “Wait!” Sif and Freya ran after them, shouting in unison. But Hugin and Munin paid them no heed and took to the skies with their burdens. Clamped in the birds’ beaks and still clutching their bags of gifts, Loki and Brokk were carried off in the direction of Asgard.

  “My hair!” wailed Sif.

  “We’ll get it,” said Freya. “C’mon. Let’s hurry back to school before the judging can begin!” Then and there, she pulled her cat’s-eye marble from its pouch. After she summoned her cats, the girls leaped inside her red cart.

  “Fly, kitty, kitty!” Freya commanded. They took off. At Sif’s request, Freya guided her cats to make a quick loop over Midgard’s wheat fields before flying on to Asgard. The girls were horrified to see how withered and brown the fields looked. Freya shook her head. “Not good, is it?”

  Sif twisted her hands together in her lap. “When I finally get my new hair, it’s just got to work. The wheat must survive . . . and thrive.”

  “It will,” Freya tried to reassure her. “I know it will.”

  Though encouraged by Freya’s optimism, Sif was still worried. After all, could a metallic creation—however magical—really replace her amazing hair and bring back her goddess powers?

  10

  Judgment

  THUMP! THE CART BEARING THE two girlgoddesses landed with a jolt in Asgard beside a short ramp leading down to the Bifrost Bridge. Sif and Freya jumped out. Snow had been falling while they were gone, and about a half foot of the powdery white stuff sparkled on the ground and frosted the trees. The second that Freya magicked her cart and cats into the cat’s-eye marble and dropped it into its pouch, Skade and Idun popped out of the golden doors at the top of the bridge. Spotting Sif and Freya right away, the other two girls came thundering down the ramp toward them. Clomp! Clomp!

  “I can’t believe you two went off to Darkalfheim by yourselves. Without even telling us you were going!” Skade scolded immediately. She was wearing her newest pair of snow boots again, Sif noticed. The sparkly red ones.

  “Odin sent us to meet you,” Idun informed them in a gentler tone. She tucked a stray lock of her long brown hair under her yellow knitted hat. She’d stitched a big brown felt stem with a green felt leaf to the top of it, to make the hat resemble a gold-colored apple. “C’mon. All the teachers and students are assembling in Gladsheim Hall.”

  “Odin knows what Loki did to your hair, Sif,” Idun went on as the four girls started up the ramp to the bridge. “And that you two followed Loki to Darkalfheim.”

  “And also what’s happening to the crops in Midgard,” Skade added.

  “I imagine he knows a lot more than that,” said Sif, thinking about the judging to come. It was probably on Odin’s orders that Hugin and Munin had fetched Loki and Brokk and their gifts to Asgard!

  “Hey, where’s Heimdall?” Freya asked when they reached the double doors at the top end of the bridge. Asgard’s sharp-eyed, keen-eared security guard wasn’t at his usual post. Normally he stood on the bridge day and night, watching over it and guarding these golden portal doors, which served as magical shortcuts to Asgard and the academy halls within Yggdrasil’s branches.

  “Maybe he’s up at Gladsheim already?” Skade wondered. Then she grinned. “Along with his noise-toot and hurt-stick.” Heimdall liked to speak in kennings. His noise-toot was his horn, and his hurt-stick, his sword.

  Holding hands so they would all stay together, the four girls leaped through the magical golden entrance to the academy. Seconds later they tumbled to a stop high in Yggdrasil’s enormous, snow-covered branches. Losing balance, Sif fell backward, pulling the other three girls down with her. But the snow made for a soft landing, and the girls only laughed. It was a welcome relief to laugh with friends after feeling so tense about her hair and everything lately. These girls always cheered her up, even when they weren’t trying.

  Up ahead Gladsheim Hall’s silver-thatched roof shone in the sunshine that peeked between Yggdrasil’s huge green leaves. Meeting in this location made sense, thought Sif, since it was AA’s multipurpose gym/auditorium/assembly hall. After they were upright again, the girls made their way through the snow to the multipurpose hall’s front doors. Along the way, Sif and Freya explained all that had happened at Darkalfheim to Skade and Idun.

  Once inside Gladsheim, Sif was momentarily overcome with the usual admiration the hall inspired in her. Its walls shimmered and twinkled as if by magic because the paintings upon them contained tiny chips of glass that caught the light streaming in through the hall’s windows. Most of these paintings were a tribute to Yggdrasil and the various animals the tree sheltered within its branches. Nidhogg the dragon’s eyes glowed like rubies, the white spots on the deer glinted like ice, and Ratatosk the squirrel’s fur sparkled. So beautiful!

  Gladsheim was already jam-packed when the girls entered. It looked as if practically all of the academy’s students and teachers were there. Across the room Sif spotted Odin. For a second his one good eye, the one without a black patch over it, seemed to fix on her. But then he looked away.

  “Where’s Thor?” Sif asked, but none of her friends knew.

  “Heimdall’s not here either,” Idun commented in surprise.

  “And what about Loki and Brokk?” Sif wondered aloud.

  Freya shrugged. “I expected them to beat us here too. But maybe the ravens were slowed down by all the weight they were carrying?”

  The girls began to thread their way through the noisy crowd to the front of the room so they’d have a good view of what was to come. When students stopped Sif now and then to tell her how much they hoped Loki would make good on his promise to get the dwarfs to replace her hair, she thanked them.

  It was warm and stuffy inside the crowded hall. After shucking off her cloak, Sif removed her knitted hat, too, and stuffed it into the pocket of her cloak. To her surprise, she was getting used to her short hair. Almost like it was starting to grow on her. Ha-ha! Still, that didn’t exc
use what Loki had done. Not at all.

  “Fingers crossed your new hair restores your goddess powers,” Skade murmured to her.

  “Yeah. If I ever get it!” said Sif.

  “You’d better!” Freya chimed in.

  “Lives depend on it!” added Idun.

  When they came even with Freya’s brother, Frey, and some of his boygod friends, Frey said, “We heard Loki’s on his way here with the gifts he promised. Any idea who’ll get them?”

  Relieved at this news, Sif replied, “There’s a spear for Odin and hair for me. We don’t know who the other gifts will go to.”

  “There are four more of them, right?” Bragi said eagerly. “I hope I get one.”

  “Me too!” called out several other students close enough to hear.

  Sif sincerely hoped there’d be no arguments about who got those remaining gifts. Freya was probably thinking along the same lines, because she said to her brother and Bragi quickly, “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  The four girlgoddesses continued past the boys till they were near the front of the crowd. From here they could easily see the two academy principals, Odin and Ms. Frigg, sitting side by side on carved wooden thrones that had been set up at the front of the room, facing the crowd. As usual, Ms. Frigg was knitting.

  “Whee!” said a voice. The girls looked over to see that a corkscrew tubular fountain had begun bubbling up from the floor a dozen feet to one side of Odin. Bouncing like a ball atop its waterspout was the head librarian. Since he was supposed to be so supersmart, Sif wondered if Odin asked him here to help judge matters.

  She craned her neck, studying the librarian. Something very weird and yellow was perched atop his bald head. “What’s that thing Mimir’s wearing? It’s not his waterproof cap—that’s orange and white.”

  “Looks like a scared cat with its fur sticking straight up,” noted Skade.

  “Actually, I think it’s a toupee—you know, like a wig,” Freya replied with a giggle.