by Rick Riordan
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?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Utgard-Loki admitted. “Nor am I sure how Loki would get the sword to his true location or use it. But I’ve
heard Loki’s bonds are quite hard to break, being iron-hardened guts—strong, sticky, and corrosive. They will dull any sword, even the sharpest. You could perhaps cut one bond with Sumarbrander, but after that the blade would be useless.”
Jack’s pendant buzzed unhappily.
Calm down, buddy, I thought. Nobody’s going to make you cut iron-hardened guts.
“Same with Skofnung…” Blitzen cursed. “Of course! The blade has a magical whetstone. It can be sharpened as many times as necessary. That’s why Loki needed both sword and stone.”
The giant king slow-clapped. “Ah, with only a little help, you put it together. Well done!”
Blitz and Hearth glanced at each other like, Now that we’ve put it together, can we please take it apart again?
“So we find another way to get the hammer,” I said.
The giant snickered. “Good luck. It’s buried somewhere eight miles under the earth, where even Thor can’t reach it. The only way to retrieve it is to convince Thrym to do so.”
Alex crossed her arms. “I’ve heard a lot of bad news from you, giant. I still haven’t heard anything I would call helpful.”
“Knowledge is always helpful!” Utgard-Loki said. “But as I see it, there are two options going forward to thwart Loki. First option: I kill you all and take the Skofnung Sword, thus preventing it from falling into Loki’s hands.”
Sam’s hand crept to her ax. “I’m not liking option one.”
The giant shrugged. “Well, it’s simple, effective, and relatively foolproof. It doesn’t get you the hammer back, but as I said, I don’t care about that. My main concern is keeping Loki in captivity. If he gets free, he starts Ragnarok right now, and I, for one, am not ready. We have ladies’ night at the bowling alley on Friday. Doomsday would completely mess that up.”
“If you wanted to kill us,” I said, “you could’ve done it already.”
Utgard-Loki grinned. “I know! I’ve been on pins and needles! But, my tiny friends, there’s a riskier option with a higher payoff. I was waiting to see if you were capable of pulling it off. After your performance in the contests, I think you are.”
“All those challenges,” Sam said. “You were testing us to see whether or not we were worth keeping alive?”
Hearthstone made a few hand signs I decided not to translate, though the meaning seemed clear enough to Utgard-Loki.
“Now, now, pinball wizard,” the giant said. “No need to get testy. If I let you go, and if you can beat Loki at his own game, then I get the same rewards, plus the satisfaction of knowing the upstart god of mischief has been humiliated with my help. As I may have mentioned, we mountain giants love humiliating our enemies.”
“And for engineering that humiliation,” Alex said, “you gain respect from your followers.”
Utgard-Loki bowed modestly. “Maybe in the process you get Thor’s hammer back. Maybe you don’t. I don’t really care. In my opinion, Thor’s hammer is nothing but an Asgardian boondoggle, and you can tell Thor I said so.”
“I wouldn’t,” I said, “even if I knew what that meant.”
“Make me proud!” Utgard-Loki said. “Find a way to change the rules of Loki’s game, the way you did today at our feast. Surely you can come up with a plan.”
“That’s option two?” Alex demanded. “‘Do it yourself’? That’s the extent of your help?”
Utgard-Loki clasped his hands to his chest. “I’m hurt. I’ve given you a lot! Besides, our five minutes is up.”
A BOOM reverberated through the woods—the sound of barroom doors being thrown open—followed by the roar of infuriated giants.
“Hurry along now, little ones!” Utgard-Loki urged. “Go find Thor and tell him what you’ve learned. If my liege men catch you…well, I’m afraid they are big fans of option one!”
We Are Honored with Runes and Coupons
I’D BEEN CHASED by Valkyries. I’d been chased by elves with firearms. I’d been chased by dwarves with a tank. Now, lucky me, I got to be chased by giants with giant bowling balls.
One of these days, I would love to exit a world without being pursued by an angry mob.
“Run!” Blitz yelled, like this idea hadn’t occurred to us.
The five of us raced through the woods, jumping over fallen trees and tangled roots. Behind us, the giants grew with every step. One moment they were twelve feet tall. The next they were twenty feet tall.
I felt like I was being pursued by a tidal wave. Their shadows overtook us, and I realized there was no hope.
Blitzen bought us a few seconds. With a curse, he tossed the bag Emptyleather behind us and yelled, “Password!” The mob of giants abruptly found their path blocked by the appearance of Mount Bowling Bag, but they quickly grew tall enough to step right over it. Soon we would be trampled. Even Jack couldn’t help against so many.
Hearthstone sprinted ahead, frantically gesturing Come on! He pointed to a tree with slender branches, clusters of red berries just ripening in their green foliage. The ground beneath was strewn with white flower petals. The tree definitely stood out among the huge pines of Jotunheim, but I didn’t understand why Hearth was so anxious to die in that particular location.
Then the trunk of the tree opened like a door. A lady stepped out and called, “Here, my heroes!”
She had fine elfish features and long hair of red gold, rich and warm and lustrous. Her orange-red dress was clasped at the shoulder with a green-and-silver brooch.
My first thought: It’s a trap. My experience with Yggdrasil had given me a healthy fear of jumping through doorways in trees. Second thought: The lady looked like one of the dryad tree spirits my cousin Annabeth had described, though I didn’t know what one would be doing in Jotunheim.
Sam didn’t hesitate. She sprinted after Hearthstone as the red-gold woman stretched out her hand and cried, “Hurry, hurry!”
That also seemed like pretty obvious advice to me.
The sky above turned midnight black. I glanced up and saw the yacht-size sole of a giant’s bowling shoe ready to stomp us flat. The red-gold lady pulled Hearth inside the tree. Sam leaped through next, followed by Alex. Blitz was struggling with his shorter stride, so I grabbed him and jumped. Just as the giant’s boot came down, the world was snuffed out in absolute, silent darkness.
I blinked. I seemed to be not dead. Blitzen was struggling to get out from under my arm, so I deduced he wasn’t dead either.
Suddenly, I was blinded by a dazzling light. Blitz grunted in alarm. I got him to his feet as he scrambled to put on his pith helmet. Only when he was safely covered up did I scan our surroundings.
We stood in a lavish room that was definitely not a bowling alley. Above us, a nine-sided glass pyramid let in the daylight. Floor-to-ceiling windows surrounded the chamber, giving us a penthouse-level view over the rooftops of Asgard. In the distance, I could make out Valhalla’s main dome. Hammered from a hundred thousand gold shields, it looked like the shell of the world’s fanciest armadillo.
The chamber we were in seemed to be an interior atrium. Ringing the circumference were nine trees, each like the one we’d stepped through in Jotunheim. In the center, in front of a raised dais, a fire crackled cheerfully and smokelessly in the hearth. And on the dais was a chair elaborately carved from white wood.
The woman with the red-gold hair climbed the steps and seated herself on the throne.
Like her hair, everything about her was graceful, flowing, and bright. The movement of her dress reminded me of a field of red poppies swaying in a warm summer breeze.
“Welcome, heroes,” said the goddess. (Oh, yeah. SPOILER ALERT. By this point, I was pretty sure she was a goddess.)
Hearthstone rushed forward. He knelt at the foot of the throne. I hadn’t seen him so awestruck since…well, ever—not even when he was facing Odin himself.
He finger-spelled: S-I-F.
“Yes, my dear Hearthstone,” said the goddess. “I am Sif.”
Blitz scrambled to Hearth’s side and also
knelt. I wasn’t much of a kneeler, but I gave the lady a bow and managed not to fall over in the process. Alex and Sam just stood there looking mildly disgruntled.
“My lady,” Sam said with obvious reluctance, “why have you brought us to Asgard?”
Sif wrinkled her delicate nose. “Samirah al-Abbas, the Valkyrie. And this one is Alex Fierro, the…new einherji.” Even Officers Sunspot and Wildflower would have approved of her look of distaste. “I saved your lives. Is that not cause to be grateful?”
Blitz cleared his throat. “My lady, Sam just meant—”
“I can speak for myself,” Sam said. “Yes, I appreciate the rescue, but it was awfully convenient timing. Have you been watching us?”
The goddess’s eyes flashed like coins underwater. “Of course I have been watching you, Samirah. But obviously I couldn’t retrieve you until you had the information to help my husband.”
I looked around. “Your husband…is Thor?”
I couldn’t imagine the thunder god living in a place so clean and pretty, with an unbroken glass ceiling and windows. Sif seemed so refined, so graceful, so unlikely to fart or belch in public.
“Yes, Magnus Chase.” Sif spread her arms. “Welcome to our home, Bilskirnir—the renowned palace Bright Crack!”
All around us, a heavenly chorus sang Ahhhhhhhh! then shut off as abruptly as it had begun.
Blitzen helped Hearthstone to his feet. I didn’t know godly etiquette, but I guessed once the heavenly chorus sounded, you were allowed to get up.
“The largest mansion in Asgard!” Blitzen marveled. “I have heard stories of this place. And such a fine name, Bilskirnir!”
Another chorus rang out. Ahhhhhhhh!
“Bright Crack?” Alex didn’t even wait for the angels to finish before asking, “Do you live next door to Plumber’s Crack?”
Sif frowned. “I do not like this one. I may send it back to Jotunheim.”
“Call me it again,” Alex snarled. “Just try.”
I put my arm in front of her like a guardrail, though I knew I was risking amputation by clay-cutter. “Um, Sif, so maybe you could tell us why we’re here?”
Sif’s eyes settled on me. “Yes, of course, son of Frey. I’ve always liked Frey. He’s quite handsome.” She fluffed her hair. Somehow I got the feeling that by handsome Sif meant likely to make my husband jealous.
“As I said,” she continued, “I am Thor’s wife. That’s all most people know about me, sadly, but I am also a goddess of the earth. It was a simple matter for me to track your movements across the Nine Worlds whenever you passed through a forest, or tread on living grass or moss.”
“Moss?” I said.
“Yes, my dear. There is even a moss called Sif’s hair, named after my luxurious golden locks.”
She looked smug, though I wasn’t sure I would be so excited about having a moss named after me.
Hearth pointed at the trees around the courtyard and signed, r-o-w-a-n.
Sif brightened. “You know much, Hearthstone! The rowan is indeed my sacred tree. I can pass from one to another across the Nine Worlds, which is how I brought you to my palace. The rowan is the source of so many blessings. Did you know my son Uller made the first bow and the first skis from rowan wood? I was so proud.”
“Oh, yeah.” I recalled a conversation I’d once had with a goat in Jotunheim. (It’s depressing I can even use that sentence.) “Otis mentioned something about Uller. I didn’t know he was Thor’s son.”
Sif put a finger to her lips. “Actually, Uller is my son by my first husband. Thor’s a little sensitive about that.” This fact seemed to please her. “But speaking of rowan trees, I have a gift for our elfish sorcerer!”
From the sleeves of her elegant dress, she brought out a leather pouch.
Hearth almost fell over. He made some wild hand gestures that didn’t really mean anything, but seemed to convey the idea GASP!
Blitzen grabbed his arm to steady him. “Is—is that a bag of runes, milady?”
Sif smiled. “That’s correct, my well-dressed dwarven friend. Runes written on wood carry a very different power than runes written on stone. They are full of life, full of suppleness. Their magic is softer and more malleable. And rowan is the best wood for runes.”
She beckoned Hearth forward. She pressed the leather pouch into his trembling hands.
“You will need these in the struggle to come,” she told him. “But be