فصل 23

Follow the Smell of Dead Frogs (to the Tune of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”)

WHAT WAS it about dads?

Almost everyone I knew had a garbage father, like they were all competing for the Worst Dad of the Universe award.

I was lucky. I’d never met my dad until last winter. Even then I’d only talked to him for a few minutes. But at least Frey seemed cool. We hugged. He let me keep his talking disco sword and sent me a bright yellow boat in my time of need.

Sam had Loki, who put the con in conniving. Alex’s dad was an abusive raging butt-hat with dreams of global dishware domination. And Hearthstone…he had it worse than any of us. Mr. Alderman had made Hearthstone’s childhood a living Helheim. I never wanted to spend another night under that man’s roof, and I’d only been there once. I couldn’t imagine how Hearthstone would bear it.

We fell out of the golden sky, the way one does when tumbling into the airy world of the elves. We landed gently on the street in front of the Alderman mansion. As before, the wide suburban lane stretched out in either direction, hedged with stone walls and carefully tended trees, obscuring the elf millionaires’ multi-acre estates from one another. The weak gravity made the ground seem squishy under my feet, as if I could trampoline right back into the stratosphere. (I was tempted to try.)

The sunlight was as harsh as I remembered, making me grateful for the dark glasses Alex had lent me, even if they did have thick pink Buddy Holly frames. (There had been much snickering about this aboard the Big Banana.)

Why we had left Midgard at sunset and arrived in Alfheim during what looked like early afternoon, I wasn’t sure. Maybe the elves observed Alf-light Saving Time.

Alderman’s elaborate gates still gleamed with their filigreed A monogram. On either side, the high walls still bristled with spikes and barbed wire to discourage riffraff. But now the security cameras were dark and motionless. The gates were laced shut with a chain and padlock. On either side of the gates, nailed to the brick columns, were matching yellow signs with glaring red letters:

PROPERTY OFF-LIMITS

BY ORDER OF ALFHEIM POLICE DEPARTMENT

TRESPASSERS WILL DIE

Not prosecuted. Not arrested or shot. That simple warning—step inside these boundaries and you’ll die—was much more sinister.

My gaze wandered over the grounds, which were roughly the size of the Boston Public Garden. Since our last visit, the grass had grown high and wild in the rich Alfheim light. Spiky balls of moss festooned the trees. The pungent smell of scum from the swan lake came wafting through the gates.

The half-mile driveway was littered with white feathers, possibly from the aforementioned swans; bones and tufts of fur that might have once been squirrels or raccoons; and a single black dress shoe that looked as if it had been chewed and spit out.

At the top of the hill, the once imposing Alderman Manor lay in ruins. The left side of the complex had collapsed in a heap of rubble, girders, and charred beams. Kudzu vines had completely overtaken the right side, growing so heavy that the roof had caved in. Only two picture windows remained intact, their glass panes smoked brown around the edges from the fire. Glinting in the sun, they reminded me uncomfortably of T.J.’s sniper glasses.

I turned to my friends. “Did we do this?”

I felt more amazement than guilt. The last time we fled Alfheim, we’d been pursued by evil water spirits and elfish police with guns, not to mention Hearth’s maniacal father. We may have busted a few windows in the process of escaping. I supposed it was possible we’d caused a fire to break out, too. If so, it couldn’t have happened to a viler mansion.

But still…I didn’t understand how the place could have been so thoroughly destroyed, or how quickly such a suburban paradise had turned into this creepy wilderness.

“We only started it.” Blitzen’s face was again covered by netting, making it impossible to read his expression. “This destruction is the ring’s fault.”

In the harsh warm light, it shouldn’t have been possible to get a chill. Nevertheless, ice trickled down my back. On our last visit, Hearth and I had stolen a hoard of gold from a slimy old dwarf, Andvari, including the little dude’s cursed ring. He’d tried to warn us that the ring would only bring misery, but had we listened? Nooooo. At the time, we’d been more focused on stuff like, oh, saving Blitzen’s life. The only thing that could do that was the Skofnung Stone in Mr. Alderman’s possession. His price for it? A gazillion dollars in gold, because evil fathers don’t take American Express.

Long story short: Alderman took the cursed ring. He put it on and turned even crazier and eviler, which I hadn’t thought possible.

Personally, I liked my cursed rings to at least do something cool, like turn you invisible and let you see the Eye of Sauron. Andvari’s ring had no upside. It brought out the worst in you—greed, hate, jealousy. According to Hearth, it would eventually change you into a bona fide monster so your outside could be as repulsive as your inside.

If the ring was still working its magic on Mr. Alderman, and if it had overtaken him as quickly as the wilderness had overtaken his estate…Yeah, that wasn’t good.

I turned to Hearth. “Is your dad…is he still in there?”

Hearthstone’s expression was grim and stoic, like a man who had finally accepted a terminal diagnosis. Nearby, he signed. But not himself.

“You don’t mean…”

I stared at the chewed-up shoe in the drive. I wondered what had happened to its owner. I remembered my dream of large green eyes and rows of teeth. No, that couldn’t be what Hearth meant. No cursed ring could work so fast, could it?

“You—you scouted around inside?” I asked.

“Afraid so.” Blitz signed as he talked, since Hearth could not see his lips moving. “Alderman’s whole collection of rare stones and artifacts—gone. Along with all the gold. So, if the whetstone we’re looking for was somewhere in that house—”

It has been moved, Hearthstone signed. Part of his hoard.

The sign Hearth used for hoard was a grasping fist in front of his chin, like he was clutching something valuable: Treasure. Mine. Don’t touch, or you’ll die.

I swallowed a mouthful of sand. “And…did you find this hoard?” I knew my friends were brave, but the idea of them poking around inside the walls of that estate terrified me. Definitely it hadn’t been good for the local squirrel population.

“We think we found his lair,” Blitz said.

“Oh, good.” My voice sounded higher and softer than usual. “Alderman has a lair now. And, uh, did you see him?”

Hearthstone shook his head. Only smelled him.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s not creepy.”

“You’ll see,” Blitz said. “It’s easiest just to show you.”

That was one offer I definitely wanted to refuse, but there was no way I would let Hearth and Blitz go through those gates again without me.

“W-why haven’t the local elves done something about the estate?” I asked. “Last time we were here, they wouldn’t even tolerate us loitering. Haven’t the neighbors complained?”

I waved at the ruins. An eyesore like this, especially if it killed swans, rodents, and the occasional door-to-door sales elf, had to be against the rules of the neighborhood association.

“We talked to the authorities,” Blitz said. “Half the time we’ve been gone, we’ve been dealing with elfish bureaucracy.” He shuddered in his heavy coat. “Would it surprise you that the police didn’t want to listen to us? We can’t prove Alderman is dead or missing. Hearthstone doesn’t have any legal rights to the land. As for clearing the property, the best the police would do is put up those stupid warning signs. They aren’t going to risk their necks, no matter how much the neighbors complain. Elves pretend to be sophisticated, but they’re as superstitious as they are arrogant. Not all elves, of course. Sorry, Hearth.”

Hearthstone shrugged. Can’t blame the police, he signed. Would you go in there if you didn’t have to?

He had a point. Just the thought of traipsing through the property, unable to see whatever lurked in the tall grass, made jumping beans hop around in my stomach. The Alfheim police were great at bullying transients out of the neighborhood. Facing an actual threat in the ruins of a madman’s mansion…maybe not so much.

Blitzen sighed. “Well, no sense waiting. Let’s go find dear old Dad.”

I would have preferred another dinner with Aegir’s murderous daughters, or a battle to the death with a pile of pottery. Heck, I would have even shared guava juice with a pack of wolves on Uncle Randolph’s roof deck.

We climbed the gates and picked our way through the tall grass. Mosquitoes and gnats swarmed in our faces. The sunlight made my skin prickle and my pores pop with sweat. I decided Alfheim was a pretty world as long as it was manicured and trimmed and kept up by the servants. Allowed to go wild, it went wild in a big way. I wondered if elves were similar. Calm, delicate, and formal on the outside, but if they let loose…I really did not want to meet the new-and-unimproved Mr. Alderman.

We skirted the ruins of the house, which was fine by me. I remembered too well the blue fur rug in Hearthstone’s old room, which we’d been forced to cover with gold to pay the wergild for his brother’s death. I remembered the menu board of infractions on Hearthstone’s wall, keeping tally of his never-ending debt to his dad. I didn’t want to get near that place again, even if it was in ruins.

As we picked our way through the backyard, something crunched under my foot. I looked down. My shoe had gone straight through the rib cage of a small deer skeleton.

“Ugh,” I said.

Hearthstone frowned at the desiccated remains. Nothing but a few strips of meat and fur clung to the bones.

Eaten, he signed, putting his closed fingertips under his mouth. The sign was very similar to hoard/treasure. Sometimes sign language was a little too accurate for my liking.

With a silent apology to the poor deer, I freed my foot. I couldn’t tell what might have devoured the animal, but I hoped the prey hadn’t suffered much. I was surprised wildlife that large was even allowed to exist in the tonier neighborhoods of Alfheim. I wondered if the cops harassed the deer for loitering, maybe cuffing their little hooves and shoving them into the backs of squad cars.

We made our way toward the woods at the back of the property. The grounds had become so overgrown I couldn’t tell where the lawn stopped and the underbrush began. Gradually, the canopy of trees grew thicker, until the sunlight was reduced to yellow buckshot across the forest floor.

I estimated we weren’t far from the old well where Hearthstone’s brother had died—another place high on my Never Visit Again list. So, naturally, we stumbled right into it.

A cairn of stones covered the spot where the well had been filled in. Not a weed or blade of grass grew in the barren dirt, as if even they didn’t want to invade such a poisoned clearing. Still, I had no trouble imagining Hearthstone and Andiron playing here as children—Hearth’s back turned as he happily stacked rocks, not hearing his brother scream when the brunnmigi, the beast who lived in the well, rose from the darkness.

I started to say, “We don’t have to be here—”

Hearth walked to the cairn as if in a trance. Sitting at the top of the pile, where Hearthstone had left it during our last visit, was a runestone:

Othala, the rune of family inheritance. Hearthstone had insisted he would never use that rune again. Its meaning had died for him in this place. Even his new set of rowan runes, the ones he’d received as a gift from the goddess Sif, did not contain othala. Sif had warned him this would cause him trouble. Eventually, she’d said, he would have to return here to reclaim his missing piece.

I hated it when goddesses were right.

Should you take it? I signed. In a place like this, silent conversation seemed better than using my voice.

Hearthstone frowned, his gaze defiant. He made a quick chopping gesture—sideways then down, like he was tracing a backward question mark. Never.

Blitzen sniffed the air. We’re close now. Smell it?

I smelled nothing except the faint scent of rotting plant matter. What?

“Yeesh,” he said aloud. Human noses are pathetic.

Useless, Hearthstone agreed. He led the way deeper into the forest.

We didn’t make for the river, as we had last time to find Andvari’s gold. This time we moved roughly parallel to the water, picking our way through briars and the gnarled roots of giant oak trees.

After another quarter mile, I started to smell what Hearth and Blitz had talked about. I had a flashback to my eighth-grade biology class, when Joey Kelso hid our teacher’s frog habitat in the ceiling tiles. It wasn’t discovered until a month later, when the glass terrarium crashed back into the classroom and broke all over the teacher’s desk, spraying the front row with glass, mold, slime, and rancid amphibian bodies.

What I smelled in the forest reminded me of that, except much worse.

Hearthstone stopped at the edge of another clearing. He crouched behind a fallen tree and gestured for us to join him.

In there, he signed. Only place he could have gone.

I peered through the gloom. The trees around the clearing had been reduced to charcoal stick figures. The ground was thick with rotting mulch and animal bones. About fifty feet from our hiding place rose an outcropping of boulders, two of the largest rocks leaning together to form what looked like the entrance of a cave.

“Now we wait,” Blitz whispered as he signed, “for what passes for nighttime in this dwarf-forsaken place.”

Hearth nodded. He will emerge at night. Then we see.

I was having a hard time breathing, much less thinking in the miasma of dead-frog stench. Staying here sounded like a terrible idea.

Who’s going to emerge? I signed. Your dad? From there? Why?

Hearthstone looked away. I got the feeling he was trying to be merciful by not answering my questions.

“We’ll find out,” Blitz murmured. “If it’s what we fear…Well, let’s enjoy our ignorance while we still can.”