by Rick Riordan
Utgard-Loki scowled and rose from his throne. “Tiny is right, mortal. You can’t cross-bowl. Once you’ve chosen a lane, you must stick to it.”
“Nobody said that,” I protested.
“Well, I’m saying it now! Continue the frame!”
A giant in the audience rolled my dice ball back to me.
I looked at Alex, but I had no advice to offer her. How do you bowl when your target is a distant mountain range?
Alex muttered something under her breath. As she made her approach, she changed into a full-size grizzly bear. She waddled on her back legs, the bowling ball clutched in her front paws. She reached the foul line and came down on all fours, hurling the ball forward with three hundred pounds of pure force. The ball almost made it to the first pin before stalling.
A collective sigh of relief went up from the giants.
“Now it’s our turn!” Tiny rubbed his palms eagerly. “Go on, boys!”
“But, boss!” Herg said. “Our lane has a big dent in it.”
“Just move over a lane,” Tiny said.
“Oh, no,” I said. “You heard the king: once you’ve chosen a lane, you must stick to it.”
Tiny growled. Even the Elvis tattoo on his arm looked angry. “Fine! Herg, Blerg, just do your best. You already have an unbeatable lead!”
Herg and Blerg didn’t look happy, but they bowled their second frame. They managed to avoid the dent in the lane, but both of them rolled gutter balls, adding no points to their score.
“That’s all right!” Tiny assured them. He sneered at Alex and me. “I was tempted to step on you two in the forest, but now I’m glad I didn’t. Unless you bowl a perfect last frame, you can’t even tie their score. Let’s see what you’ve got, mortals. I can’t wait to cut off your heads!”
Or You Could Just Glow a Lot. That Works, Too
SOME PEOPLE like energy drinks. Me? I find that the threat of imminent beheading wakes me up just fine.
Panicked, I looked back at my friends. Hearthstone signed: F-R-E-Y.
Yes, Hearth, I thought, he is my father.
But how that helped me, I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like the god of summer was going to appear in a blaze of glory and knock down the White Mountains for me. He was the god of the outdoors. He wouldn’t be caught dead in a bowling alley….
An idea started trickling through my brain like maple syrup. Outdoors. The White Mountains. Frey’s power. Sumarbrander, Frey’s sword, which could cut openings between the worlds. And something Utgard-Loki had said earlier: Even the best illusions have their limits.
“Insignificant Mortals!” Utgard-Loki called. “Do you forfeit?”
“No!” I yelled. “Just a second.”
“Do you need to pee?”
“No! I just…I need to confer with my teammate before we are brutally decapitated.”
Utgard-Loki shrugged. “That seems fair. Proceed.”
Alex leaned in. “Please tell me you have an idea.”
“You said you’ve been to Bridal Veil Falls. You’ve gone camping in the White Mountains a lot?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Is there any way those bowling pins could actually be the White Mountains?”
She frowned. “No. I can’t believe anybody would be powerful enough to teleport an entire mountain range into a bowling alley.”
“I agree. My theory is…those pins are just bowling pins. The giants couldn’t bring a mountain range into a bowling alley, but they can send our bowling balls out of the alley. There’s some kind of portal between the worlds right in the middle of our lane. It’s hidden by illusions or whatever, but it’s sending our bowling balls to New Hampshire.”
Alex stared at the end of the lane. “Well if that’s the case, why did my ball come back in the ball return?”
“I don’t know! Maybe they loaded an identical ball into the ball return so you wouldn’t notice.”
Alex gritted her teeth. “Those cheating meinfretrs. What do we do about it?”
“You know the White Mountains,” I said. “So do I. I want you to look down the lane and concentrate on seeing those mountains. If we both do it at the same time, we might be able to make the portal visible. And then, maybe, I can dispel it.”
“You mean by changing our perception?” Alex asked. “Sort of like…the mind healing you did with Amir?”
“I guess….” I wished I had more confidence in my own plan. The way Alex described it made me sound like a New Age guru. “But, look, it would work better if I held your hand. And…I can’t promise I won’t, you know, sense stuff about your life.”
I could see her wavering, weighing the options.
“So I can either lose my head or have you in my head,” she grumbled. “Tough choice.” She grabbed my hand. “Let’s do it.”
I studied the far end of the lane. I imagined a portal between us and the pins—a window looking out on the White Mountains. I remembered how excited I used to get on those weekend drives with my mom when she first spotted the mountains on the horizon: Look, Magnus, we’re getting close!
I drew on the power of Frey. Warmth radiated through me. My hand in Alex Fierro’s began to steam. A brilliant gold light surrounded us both—like the midsummer sun burning away fog and destroying shadows.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw giants wincing and shielding their faces. “Stop that!” Tiny cried. “You’re blinding us!”
I stayed focused on the bowling pins. The light grew brighter. Random thoughts from Alex Fierro whisked through my mind—her fatal fight with the wolves; a dark-haired man in tennis clothes towering over her, screaming that she should get out and stay out; a group of teenagers standing around ten-year-old Alex and kicking her, calling her a freak as she curled into a ball, trying to protect herself, too panicked and terrified to shape-shift.
Anger burned in my chest. I wasn’t sure if it was my emotion or Alex’s, but we’d both had enough of illusions and pretending.
“There,” Alex said.
In the middle of the lane, a shimmering rift appeared, like the ones Jack cut between the worlds. On the other side, in the distance, was the snow-marbled summit of Mount Washington. Then the portal burned away. The golden light faded around us, leaving a regular lane with bowling pins at the end, just as it had looked before.
Alex pulled her hand away. She quickly wiped away a tear. “Did we do it?”
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“Insignificant Mortals!” Utgard-Loki interrupted. “What was that? Do you always confer with each other by generating a blinding light?”
“Sorry!” I yelled to the crowd. “We’re ready now!”
At least I hoped we were ready. Maybe we’d succeeded in burning away the illusion and closing the portal. Or maybe Utgard-Loki was just allowing me to think I’d dispelled his trick. It could be an illusion within an illusion. I decided there was no point overtaxing my brain in the last few minutes it might be on my neck.
I raised my bowling ball. I stepped to the foul line and rolled that stupid pink fuzzy-dice ball straight down the middle.
I have to tell you, the sound of the pins falling was the most beautiful thing I’d heard all day. (Sorry, Prince. You were a close second.)
Blitzen screamed, “Strike!”
Samirah and Hearthstone hugged each other, which wasn’t something either of them tended to do.
Alex’s eyes widened. “It worked? It worked!”
I grinned at her. “Now all you have to do is knock down all your pins and we tie. Do you have any shape-shifting form that could—?”
“Oh, don’t worry.” Her wicked smile was one hundred percent from her mother, Loki. “I’ve got it covered.”
She grew to immense size, her arms morphing into thick forelegs, her skin turning wrinkled gray, her nose elongating into a twenty-foot trunk.
Alex was now an African bush elephant, though one confused giant in the back of the room screamed, “She’s a cat!”
Alex picked up the
bowling ball with her trunk. She stormed the foul line and hurled the ball, stomping with all her weight and shaking the entire alley. Not only did her bowling ball knock down the pins, the force of her stomping obliterated the pins in all twelve lanes, making Alex the first elephant in history, as far I knew, to score a perfect 300, twelve strikes, with only one throw.
I may have jumped up and down and clapped like a five-year-old girl who had just gotten a pony. (What did I say about not judging?) Sam, Hearth, and Blitz rushed us and tackled us in a big group hug while the crowd of giants looked on sourly.
Herg and Blerg threw down their football helmets.
“We can’t beat that score!” Herg wailed. “Just take our heads!”
“The mortals are cheaters!” Tiny complained. “First they shrunk my bag and insulted Elvis! Now they’ve dishonored the Turkey Bowlers!”
The giants began to advance on us.
“Hold!” Utgard-Loki raised his arms. “This is my still bowling alley, and these competitors have won…uh, squarely, if not fairly.” He turned to us. “The normal prize is yours. Would you like the severed heads of Herg and Blerg?”
Alex and I looked at each other. We tacitly agreed that severed heads really wouldn’t go with the décor in our hotel rooms.
“Utgard-Loki,” I said, “all we want is the information you promised.”
The king faced the crowd. He spread his palms like what ya gonna do? “My friends, you must admit these mortals have spunk. As much as we tried to humiliate them, they humiliated us instead. And is there anything we mountain giants respect more than the ability to humiliate one’s enemies?”
The other giants murmured in reluctant agreement.
“I wish to help them!” Utgard-Loki announced. “I believe they have proven their worth. How much time will you give me?”
I didn’t quite understand the question, but the giants muttered among themselves. Tiny stepped forward. “I say five minutes. All in favor?”
“Aye!” shouted the crowd.
Utgard-Loki bowed. “More than fair. Come, my guests, let’s talk outside.”
As he steered us through the bar and out the front doors, I said, “Uh, what happens after five minutes?”
“Hmm?” Utgard-Loki smiled. “Oh, then my liege men are free to chase you down and kill you. You did humiliate them, after all.”
You Keep Using the Word Help. I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
UTGARD-LOKI ESCORTED us around the back of the bowling alley. He led us down an icy path into a wide expanse of forest while I peppered him with questions like “Chase us? Kill us? What?” He just patted me on the shoulder and chuckled as if we were sharing a joke.
“You all did well!” he said as we walked. “Normally we have boring guests like Thor. I tell him, ‘Thor, drink this mead.’ He just tries and tries! It doesn’t even occur to him that the mead cup is connected to the ocean and he can’t possibly drain it.”
“How do you connect a mead cup to the ocean?” Sam asked. “Wait, never mind. We have more important matters.”
“Five minutes?” I demanded again.
The giant pounded me on the back like he was trying to dislodge something—perhaps my throat or my heart. “Ah, Magnus! I have to confess, when you threw that first frame, I got nervous. Then the second frame…well, sheer force never would have worked, but nice try. Alex, your ball almost reached the Taco Bell on I-93 south of Manchester.”
“Thanks,” said Alex. “That’s what I was going for.”
“But then you two broke the illusion!” Utgard-Loki beamed. “That was first-rate thinking. And of course, the elf’s pinball skills, the dwarf’s accessorizing, Sam hitting Fear in the face with an ax—well done, all around! It’s going to be an honor slaughtering the four of you at Ragnarok.”
Blitzen snorted. “The feeling is mutual. Now I think you owe us some information.”
“Yes, of course.” Utgard-Loki changed form. Suddenly the goat-killer stood before us in his black furs, soot-smeared chain mail, and iron helm, his face covered by a sneering wolf faceplate.
“Could you lose the mask?” I asked. “Please?”
Utgard-Loki flipped up his visor. Underneath, his face looked the same as before, his dark eyes gleaming murderously. “Tell me, my friends, have you figured out Loki’s true goal?”
Hearthstone crossed one palm over the other, made his hands into fists, then pulled them apart as if ripping a sheet: Destroy.
Utgard-Loki chuckled. “Even I understood that sign. Yes, my pinball wizard, Loki wants to destroy his enemies. But that is not his primary concern at the moment.” He turned to Sam and Alex. “You two are his children. Surely you know.”
Samirah and Alex exchanged an uncomfortable look. They had a silent, very sibling-like conversation: Do you know? No, I thought you knew! I don’t know; I thought you knew!
“He led you to the wight’s barrow,” Utgard-Loki prompted. “Despite my best efforts, you went there. And?”
“There was no hammer,” Blitzen said. “Just a sword. A sword I hate very much.”
“Exactly…” The giant waited for us to put the pieces together. I always hated it when teachers did that. I wanted to scream: I don’t like puzzles!
Nevertheless, I saw where he was going. The idea had been forming in my head for a long time, I guess, but my subconscious had been trying to suppress it. I remembered my vision of Loki lying in his cave, tied to pillars of rock with the hardened guts of his own murdered children. I remembered the serpent dripping poison in his face, and the way Loki had vowed: Soon enough, Magnus!
“Loki wants his freedom,” I said.
Utgard-Loki threw back his head and laughed. “We have a winner! Of course, Magnus Chase. That’s what Loki has wanted for a thousand years.”
Samirah raised her palm to push the thought away. “No, that can’t happen.”
“And yet,” Utgard-Loki said, “strapped to your back is the very weapon that could free him—the Skofnung Sword!”
My necklace started to choke me, the pendant tugging its way across my collarbone as if trying to get closer to Sam. Jack must have woken up when he heard Skofnung. I yanked him back, which probably made me look like I had a flea in my shirt.
“This has never been about Thor’s hammer,” I realized. “Loki is after the sword.”
Utgard-Loki shrugged. “Well, the theft of the hammer was a good catalyst. I imagine Loki whispered in Thrym’s ear, giving him the idea. After all, Thrym’s grandfather once stole Thor’s hammer and it didn’t go so well. Thrym and his sister have been aching for revenge against the thunder god their entire lives.”
“Thrym’s grandfather?” I remembered the wording on the wedding invitation: Thrym, son of Thrym, son of Thrym.
Utgard-Loki waved aside my question. “You can ask Thor about it when you see him, which I’m sure will be very soon. The point is, Loki advised Thrym on the theft and set up a scenario in which a group of champions such as yourselves would have no choice but to try retrieving the hammer…and in the process, you might bring Loki what he really wants.”
“Wait.” Alex cupped her hands as if wrestling a lump of clay on the wheel. “We’re bringing the sword to give to Thrym. How does that—?”
“The bride-price.” Sam suddenly looked sick. “Oh, I’m such a fool.”
Blitz scowled. “Uh…granted, I’m a dwarf. I don’t understand your patriarchal traditions, but isn’t the bride-price something you give to the groom?”
Sam shook her head. “I was so busy denying that this wedding would ever happen, pushing it out of my head, I didn’t think about…about the Old Norse wedding traditions.”
“Which are also jotun traditions,” Utgard-Loki agreed.
Hearthstone sniffed like he was dispelling something unpleasant from his nose. He spelled out: m-u-n-d-r?
“Yes, the mundr,” Sam said, “the Old Norse term for bride-price. It doesn’t go to the groom. It goes to the father of the bride.”
>
We stopped in the middle of the woods. Behind us, Utgard Lanes was barely visible, its neon sign washing the trunks of the trees with red-and-gold light.
“You mean all this time,” I said, “with the Skofnung Sword and the Skofnung Stone, we’ve been running around collecting gifts for Loki?”
The giant king chuckled. “It is pretty funny, except for the fact that Loki wants to get free so he can kill everyone.”
Sam leaned against the nearest tree. “And the hammer…that’s the morning gift?”
“Exactly!” the giant agreed. “The morgen-gifu.”
Alex tilted her head. “The what-tofu?”
Hearthstone signed: Gift to bride from groom. Only given after wedding is…His fingers failed him. Complete. Morning after.
“I’m going to throw up,” Samirah said.
I translated Hearth’s words for Alex.
“So, the hammer goes to you…” Alex pointed to Sam. “Hypothetically, if you were the bride, which you won’t be. But only after the wedding night, and…Yeah, I’m going to be sick, too.”
“Oh, it gets worse!” the giant said with a little too much glee. “The morning gift belongs to the bride, but it’s held in trust by the groom’s family. Therefore, even if you go through with the marriage and get Thor’s hammer back—”
“It just stays with Thrym,” I said. “The giants get a marriage alliance and the hammer.”
“And Loki gets the Skofnung Sword.” Sam swallowed hard. “No, this still doesn’t make sense. Loki can’t attend the wedding in the flesh. The best he can do is send a manifestation. His physical body will still be stuck in the cavern where he’s imprisoned.”
“Which is impossible to find,” Blitzen said. “Impossible to access.”
Utgard-Loki gave us a twisted smile. “Like the island of Lyngvi?”
Unfortunately, Utgard-Loki had a point, and that made me want to join Sam at the throw-up tree. Fenris Wolf’s place of imprisonment was supposed to be a closely kept secret among the gods, but that hadn’t stopped us from having a small convention there back in January.
“And the sword,” Blitzen continued. “Why Skofnung? Why not Sumarbrander or some other magic weapon?”