by Alan Early
‘No creature should know their fate,’ the Norn Urd mutters.
‘Wait!’ He stops and looks at the woman in the water. ‘Why do you help me?’
‘No creature should know their fate,’ she says cryptically again before receding into the stone wall. The others follow and are gone from his sight in seconds.
He does as they said and climbs over the nearest ridge. It would be a struggle for a normal man, especially carrying the girl. But Fenrir is no ordinary man and manages it easily.
A glimmering rainbow awaits him over the ridge, the shades of colour shifting continuously. He has heard of it. Bifrost – the bridge between the worlds. Taking one last look over his shoulder, he races towards the bridge, towards Dubh Linn and towards Loki.
Arthur opened his eyes to a blinding light glaring into his face. He shut them straight away once more, wincing at the throbbing pain at the back of his head. With his eyelids tightly shut, he collected his thoughts. The last thing he remembered was the argument with Ash and how he’d felt after telling her he was going back to Kerry. He could still see her disappointed face in his mind, the way she’d blushed as her eyes started to glisten with tears. After that he’d … what? Television! He’d watched some TV. And then he’d heard a sound, some noise from the kitchen. He recalled investigating it and then … pain. Blackness. Nothing. And now that he was awake again, the back of his head throbbed dully. It had probably come up in a lump. He went to touch the tender area but found that he couldn’t move his arms. He was sitting in a hard wooden chair and his hands were restrained behind his back. Even his ankles were clamped somehow to the legs of the chair.
Just stay calm, he told himself. Wherever you are, whatever’s going on, just stay calm and you’ll get out of it.
He tried again to open his eyes and, even though he managed it this time, he still had to squint against the brilliant glare in front of him. He could make out the source now: it was a high-wattage desk lamp on a bare wooden table, positioned to face him. He could even feel the heat radiating from the bulb. He gazed around him. Apart from the lamp, the room he was in was in total darkness. It seemed to be a large room – with a parquet floor, he noticed when he looked down. His ankles, he realised, were bound to the chair with plastic cable ties: easy to get on, impossible to get off without something to cut through them.
‘Hello?’ he called, his voice echoing off the walls of the empty room. ‘Let me out!’
As his voice faded he struggled in the chair, hoping to loosen the bonds, but to no avail.
Suddenly, a door opened at the far end of the room. He couldn’t make out much through the glare of the light, apart from some shadows entering. They walked across the room towards him. He judged from the footsteps creaking on the old floor that there were two of them.
‘Who’s there?’ he asked as the footsteps approached. ‘Who is it?’
‘How are you feeling, Arthur?’ The person leading the way tilted the light so he could finally see.
‘Ellie?’
She nodded to him grimly, laying her hands on the tabletop. She was wearing jeans, a cardigan and the ever-present trench coat. Ex stepped up behind her and pulled a chair out for her to sit on. She sat and crossed her legs, keeping her eyes on Arthur the whole time.
‘How’s your head?’ she asked.
‘It could be better,’ he said, easily ignoring the pain in light of this new revelation. Ash had been right about Ellie. He should have listened to her.
‘I apologise for that,’ she said. ‘As I told you the day I met you, Ex doesn’t know his own strength.’
Her brother grunted an apology from somewhere in the darkness.
‘First you knock me out, then you kidnap me! What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ demanded Arthur.
‘I have some important questions for you, and you wouldn’t answer them when I tried talking to you normally.’
‘That doesn’t give you the right to go around kidnapping people. Now let me go!’ Arthur fumed.
‘Not until you tell us the truth, Arthur.’
‘The truth? About what?’
She leaned forward, her face serious, and said, ‘Everything.’
‘About everything? You mean the museum?’
‘That,’ she said, relaxing back in her chair again, ‘and about what happened last October.’
October, Arthur wondered. What does she mean? Ellie can’t possibly know about the World Serpent. Loki wiped the memories of that day from everyone in the world. Everyone except him, Ash and Max, of course.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he bluffed.
‘Sure you do,’ she said. ‘There are no records anywhere in the world for 22 October last year. I want to know why and I think you know something about it. I’m also quite curious about the Viking war-hammer in your bedroom.’
So she had been snooping in his room.
‘Who are you, Ellie?’ asked Arthur suspiciously. ‘Really?’
‘Really, I think you should tell her what she wants to know!’ Ex blurted, taking a step forward, his hands balled into fists.
‘It’s all right, Ex,’ Ellie said in a soothing tone. ‘He has every right to ask.’ She turned back to Arthur and said, ‘I’ll tell you if you answer me first.’
‘How do I know I can trust you?’ How do I know she’s not working with Loki, he thought to himself, pretending to be my friend so she can report back to the god on what I’m doing.
‘You don’t know. Except that you said we were friends and friends are supposed to trust each other, Arthur.’ Her lips turned up in a wry smile. ‘You said so yourself.’
‘Friends don’t usually kidnap each other, though, Ellie.’
‘Hmm,’ she said, seeming to contemplate his point. ‘That’s true.’ She looked over her shoulder to her brother. ‘Ex, will you do the honours?’
With that, Ex whipped a switchblade out of his pocket. It swished open and gleamed in the bright light. Then he advanced on Arthur menacingly.
‘Don’t!’ Arthur cried, struggling in the chair and trying desperately to snap the cable ties. ‘Stay away!’ But Ex just kept coming. He put a strong hand on Arthur’s shoulder to steady him. Arthur’s heart was pounding in his chest and he could feel the blood rushing through his veins. Then suddenly he felt his hands falling free. He raised them to his face: the wrists were bruised from the tight cable ties but not badly. Ex went around to the front of Arthur’s chair and slid the knife into each of the other ties securing his captive. He cut them off and they fell to the ground by Arthur’s feet.
‘This was our last resort,’ Ellie said when Ex went to stand by her side once more. ‘But I’m not going to force it out of you, so you’re free to go. If you wish, that is. But I suspect that you’re as curious about us as we are about you.’
Arthur weighed up his options. Was she lying? Was he actually free to go? And if not, could he outrun Ex if he needed to? Even if he could, would he find his way home to safety? How did Ellie know that something had happened in October and that he was connected to it? She was right about one thing. He was extremely curious about her. He looked at her for a moment, mulling over his options. If she worked for Loki, she probably knew the story anyway so it couldn’t hurt to tell her. If not, perhaps she and Ex could help him in some way. Ellie was certainly smart and resourceful, and he could do with all the help against Loki he could get.
‘I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘The whole truth.’
She nodded her thanks and shot a look at her brother. Ex reached down and took Arthur’s right wrist in his strong grip.
‘Hey!’ Arthur tugged back, but to no avail.
‘Don’t worry, Arthur,’ Ellie reassured him. ‘My brother won’t hurt you. But he can feel your pulse and if it speeds up he’ll know you’re lying.’ Ex’s grip loosened until it felt comfortable. ‘We just want to be sure we can believe you. Please begin.’
Arthur took one last look at Ex’s hand on his arm, then started talking.
‘What?’ she yelled, causing heads to turn curiously in the coffee shop. ‘Have you called Mom and Dad? And have you tried Ash?’
As she talked, Eirik spotted the make-up on the discarded napkin. Before Stace could react, he grabbed the evidence and ran out the door. He’d have to return to the Viking Experience to top up, he realised. Stace was too engrossed in the phone call to even care that he was gone so suddenly.
‘Call the Gardaí, Max. I’ll be there in a few minutes.’
He’d never told anyone the story of what had happened before. Ash and Max were the only people in the world who knew it and they’d lived through it with him. It felt strangely exhilarating to recount the whole tale from start to finish, as if a great weight was being lifted from his shoulders as he spoke. He told Ellie and Ex about Will and described that first trip underground where he found the pendant. He even showed it to them and they both touched it with no ill effects. He spoke at length about that fateful day, of how Loki had tricked them and how the World Serpent had been freed, then eventually destroyed with the help of the Viking army. He told them how Loki erased everyone’s memory with mass hypnotism. The one thing he held back was the whereabouts of the Viking army now. That was one thing Loki couldn’t know and until he was absolutely sure of Ellie and Ex, Arthur felt it was important to keep that to himself. Finally he filled them in on what had been happening since: the museum, his dreams, the lake, the hammer and his suspicions of Ice.
Ellie never took her eyes from his as he spoke, transfixed by the whole crazy story. And Ex never released his wrist. When he was done, Ellie exhaled loudly, staring into the distance.
‘Ex?’ she said to her brother.
‘Above average but a steady pulse throughout,’ said the boy, dropping Arthur’s hand and stepping away finally. ‘He was nervous telling the story but it was the truth.’
‘I thought as much. His body language told me he wasn’t lying too. Now, Arthur, I just need to get my head around a few things–’
‘Hang on. It’s your turn,’ he interrupted.
‘Of course,’ she said, then stood up and started pacing the room. ‘I’m the world’s youngest paranormal detective.’
‘The world’s youngest what?’
‘Paranormal detective. Our parents are both paranormal investigators too.’
‘You said they were archaeologists.’
‘Well, archaeology often comes into it. They travel the world digging for supernatural artefacts, studying their true powers. We travelled with them for a few years, looking for the lost city of Atlantis, examining the Bermuda Triangle and so on. It turns out I have a knack for investigating. I have a high aptitude for deciphering clues and a photographic memory – all vital attributes.’
‘So your parents just allowed you to investigate me?’ Arthur interrupted.
‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘I was telling the truth when I told you that our parents are in Greece. They wouldn’t like my investigating you, but I knew I was on to something the moment I saw you.’
‘Why?’
‘It all started last October. I must have seen your face on the TV, on a news report about the World Serpent. Then, a few weeks ago I saw you on TV again. Rescuing Ash from the frozen lake. And I remembered that your face was very important, only I couldn’t recall why. So I started looking over my records and notes, hoping to jog my memory. And wouldn’t you know it – there was a gap: 22 October, the day nothing happened. That’s when it clicked. A part of me just knew that you had something to do with the missing day. When Loki hypnotised everyone I forgot about you just like everyone else. But I still remembered your face. It stayed in my mind somewhere, locked away for safekeeping where Loki couldn’t get at it. Photographic memory.’ She tapped her temple to emphasise the point. ‘Things go in but never go out. With my parents away, it was pretty easy to track you down and enrol in your school. Ex does a great impression of our dad on the phone. And we investigated you. I acted non-threatening, sweet, coy–’
‘Coy? To be honest, Ellie, you were coming across more lonely than anything else,’ Arthur interrupted.
Ellie turned away. ‘That part … wasn’t necessarily an act. Anyway, when you weren’t very forthcoming with information, and after the events at the museum, I realised something serious was going on. So we had to take drastic measures – interrogating you here.’
‘This is nuts,’ Arthur said, mulling it over in his head.
‘I know,’ Ellie agreed. ‘But, Arthur, there’s more.’
She sat back down and faced him head-on.
‘This wolf from your dreams – I’ve heard of it before,’ she said. ‘Our parents loved reading us all the old myths. The Fenris Wolf was Loki’s second child. And he had one task before the gods trapped him – to make an army. An army of wolves for Loki to enslave the world.’
‘But in my last dream Fenrir escaped,’ Arthur said, ‘and came to our world.’
He stood up suddenly.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Ellie.
‘To get Ash, to work out how to stop Loki.’
‘Let us help.’
‘Now you want to help?’ he said disbelievingly. ‘After kidnapping me on top of lying to me from the moment we met, you expect me to trust you? To believe that you’re some sort of eleven-year-old Sherlock Holmes? Do you have any idea how crazy you sound?’
‘More crazy than a boy defeating a Viking god with the help of a band of dead Viking warriors?’ she replied, angry now.
‘I’ve had enough of this. I don’t have time to stay here arguing with you. I’m leaving and you’re not going to stop me.’
He pushed past them and headed towards the door. Ex stood back, letting him go. As Arthur reached the exit, a shrill beeping sounded behind him and Ellie gasped. In spite of himself, Arthur turned back to see her studying a computer tablet. She looked up at him and her expression made his blood run cold.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘When we started investigating, I set up a system to alert me if anything strange happened at your or Ash’s house.’
‘And?’
She held up the tablet for him to see. ‘The Gardaí have just been called to the Barry house.’
‘What? I need to get there now!’
She stood up. ‘Arthur, please let us help you.’ As he hesitated, Ellie continued, ‘You don’t need to trust us completely, Arthur. Just let us get you home.’
He didn’t have time to argue. He could almost hear the seconds ticking past. Something was wrong at Ash’s house and he needed to go. Damn Ellie, he thought, for putting me in this position.
Arthur looked at the girl who’d just kidnapped him. ‘I don’t really have a choice, do I?’
Ash had lost all sense of time in the darkness of the hood. She knew that they were travelling by road and assumed that, by the amount of space she had to move around, they were in a van. But that was the extent of her knowledge. They could have been moving for less than ten minutes or longer than ten hours; it was impossible to judge. Finally, some hands dragged her to her feet and out of the vehicle. She could hear the lapping of water but was still surprised when they forced her into a wooden boat. She felt slightly nauseous as she was rowed across the mostly still water. When they reached their destination, someone lifted her out and slung her over their shoulder. After a few minutes of jostling she was dropped. She yelped in pain as her shoulder hit a hard floor. A hand pulled the bag off her head roughly. She’d become so accustomed to the dark that she had to shut her eyes against the light, even though the room she was in wasn’t particularly bright. She waited until she heard her kid
nappers’ footsteps recede into the distance before attempting to open her eyes again.
Rapidly taking in her surroundings, she could see that she was in a gloomy room – all dusty stone floor and walls – with a single flaming torch flickering on the wall opposite her. She noted three walls: one was rounded, the other two were straight. There was a heavy-looking wooden door in one of the straight walls. The room was full of dusty clutter: tools and building materials were stacked in one corner and in the other were piles of Celtic artefacts, the bronze and gold reflecting the dancing light from the torch. Everything that had been stolen from the museum, she presumed.
Ash tried to stand up, but bumped her head on something just as she started to straighten her legs. She looked up to see a fine iron grille just above her head. Then she realised with growing awareness that there was a similar grille in front of her, on both sides and a solid wooden floor below.
She was in a cage. A dog cage, by the looks of it.
‘No point in wasting your energy,’ said a voice. She turned around for the first time to see that there was another cage directly behind hers. Its occupant was a grown man and the cage was far too small for him; he was crammed in so tightly that he had to bend his head at an awkward angle. He was sideways on to her so she could not seem him properly, but what she could see was that he had a long black beard and wavy hair, both greasy from lack of washing. He was wearing a pin-striped suit that was covered in dust, presumably from the cellar itself. The back of the jacket had been scorched away and she could see that the exposed skin was red and blistered. The back of his hair had been burned away too, and some of the skin on his neck. But despite all this, what drew Ash’s attention most was the sight of the eyes that now turned to her. They were a golden colour that she had never seen before and they were sad and tired.
‘Just rest, child,’ he said in a deep voice. ‘You’ll only frustrate yourself trying to escape.’
‘But–’