فصل 33

Sam’s Brother Wakes Up Kinda Cranky

WHEN I SAY the serpent opened his eyes, I mean he switched on green spotlights the size of trampolines. His irises glowed so intensely I was pretty sure everything I saw for the rest of my life would be tinted the color of lime Jell-O.

The good news: the rest of my life didn’t look like it was going to be very long.

The monster’s ridged forehead and tapered snout made him look more like an eel than a snake. His hide glistened in a camouflage patchwork of green, brown, and yellow. (Here I am calmly describing him. At the time the only thought in my mind was: YIKES! HUGE SNAKE!)

He opened his mouth and hissed—the stench of rancid bull’s head and poison so strong my clothes smoked. He may not have used mouthwash, but obviously the World Serpent cared about flossing. His teeth gleamed in rows of perfect white triangles. His pink maw was big enough to swallow Harald’s boat and a dozen of Harald’s closest friends’ boats.

My meat hook was embedded in the back of his mouth, right where the hangy-down uvula thing would be in a human mouth. The serpent didn’t seem too happy about that.

He shook back and forth, raking the steel line across his teeth. My fishing pole whipped sideways. The boat seesawed port to starboard, planks cracking and popping, but somehow we stayed afloat. My line didn’t break.

“Sam?” I said in a small voice. “Why hasn’t he killed us yet?”

She pressed so close to me I could feel her shivering. “I think he’s studying us, maybe even trying to talk to us.”

“What is he saying?”

Sam gulped. “My guess? How dare you?”

The serpent hissed, spitting globs of poison that sizzled against the deck.

Behind us, Harald whimpered, “Drop the pole, you fools! You’ll get us all killed!”

I tried to meet the serpent’s gaze. “Hey, Mr. Jormungand. Can I call you Mr. J? Look, sorry to bother you. Nothing personal. We’re just using you to get somebody’s attention.”

Mr. J didn’t like that. His head surged out of the water, towering above us, then crashed down again off the bow, triggering a forty-foot-tall ring of waves.

Sam and I were definitely sitting in the splash zone. I ate salt water for lunch. My lungs discovered they could not in fact breathe the stuff. My eyes got a thorough power washing. But, incredibly, the boat didn’t capsize. When the rocking and sloshing subsided, I found myself still alive, still holding the fishing pole with my line still attached to the World Serpent’s mouth. The monster stared at me like, Why are you not dead?

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the tsunami crash against the Graves, washing all the way up to the base of the lighthouse. I wondered if I’d just flooded Boston.

I remembered why Jormungand was called the World Serpent. Supposedly his body was so long it wrapped around the earth, stretching across the sea floor like a monstrous telecommunication cable. Most of the time he kept his tail in his mouth—Hey, I used a pacifier until I was almost two, so I can’t judge—but apparently he’d decided our bull’s-head bait was worth the switch.

The point being: if the World Serpent was shaking, the whole world might be shaking with him.

“So,” I said to nobody in particular, “what now?”

“Magnus,” Sam said in a strangled tone, “try not to panic. But look off the starboard side.”

I couldn’t imagine what would be more panic-inducing than Mr. J until I saw the woman in the whirlpool.

Compared to the serpent, she was tiny—only about ten feet tall. From the waist up, she wore a blouse of silver chain mail encrusted with barnacles. She might have once been beautiful, but her pearlescent skin was withered, her seaweed-green eyes were milky with cataracts, and her rippling blond hair was shot through with gray like blight in a wheat field.

From the waist down, things got weird. Spinning around her like a dancer’s skirt, a waterspout swirled within a silver fishing net a hundred yards in diameter. Trapped in its weave was a kaleidoscope of ice floe, dead fish, plastic garbage bags, car tires, grocery carts, and other assorted flotsam. As the woman floated toward us, the edge of her net thwapped against our hull and scraped against the World Serpent’s neck.

She spoke in a deep baritone. “Who dares interrupt my scavenging?”

Harald the frost giant screamed. He was a champion screamer. He scrambled to the bow and threw a bunch of gold coins over the side. Then he turned to Sam. “Quick, girl, your payment to me! Give it to Ran!”

Sam frowned, but she tossed another five coins overboard.

Instead of sinking, the red gold swirled into Ran’s net and joined the floating merry-go-round of debris.

“O, Great Ran!” Harald wailed. “Please don’t kill me! Here, take my anchor! Take these humans! You can even have my lunch box!”

“Silence!” The goddess shooed away the frost giant, who did his best to cower, grovel, and retreat all at the same time.

“I’ll just be belowdecks,” he sobbed. “Praying.”

Ran regarded me as if deciding whether I was large enough to filet. “Release Jormungand, mortal! The last thing I need today is a world-flooding event.”

The World Serpent hissed in agreement.

Ran turned on him. “And you shut up, you overgrown moray. All your writhing is stirring up the silt. I can’t see a thing down there. How many times have I told you not to bite at any old rancid bull’s head? Rancid bulls’ heads are not native to these waters!”

The World Serpent snarled petulantly, tugging at the steel cable in his mouth.

“O, Great Ran,” I said, “I am Magnus Chase. This is Sam al-Abbas. We’ve come to bargain with you. Also, just wondering…why can’t you cut the fishing line yourself?”

Ran let loose a torrent of Norse curses that literally steamed in the air. Now that she was closer, I could see stranger things swirling in her net—ghostly bearded faces, gasping and terrified as they tried to reach the surface; hands clawing at the ropes.

“Worthless einherji,” said the goddess, “you know full well what you have done.”

“I do?” I asked.

“You are Vanir-spawn! A child of Njord?” Ran sniffed the air. “No, your scent is fainter. Perhaps a grandchild.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “Right! Magnus, you’re the son of Frey, son of Njord—god of ships, sailors, and fishermen. That’s why our boat didn’t capsize. That’s why you were able to catch the serpent!” She looked at Ran. “Um, which, of course, we already knew.”

Ran snarled. “Once brought to the surface, the World Serpent is not simply bound by your fishing line. He is connected to you by fate! You must now decide, and quickly, whether to cut him loose and return him to his slumber, or let him awaken fully and destroy your world!”

In the back of my neck, something snapped like a rusty spring—probably the last bit of my courage. I looked at the World Serpent. For the first time, I noticed that his glowing green peepers were covered by a thin translucent membrane—a second set of eyelids.

“You mean he’s only partially awake?”

“If he were fully awake,” said the goddess, “your entire Eastern Seaboard would already be underwater.”

“Ah.” I had to resist the urge the throw away the fishing pole, undo my safety harness, and run around the deck screaming like a little Harald.

“I will release him,” I said. “But first, great Ran, you have to promise to negotiate with us in good faith. We want to barter.”

“Barter with you?” Ran’s skirts swirled faster. Ice and plastic crackled. Shopping carts plowed into one another. “By rights, Magnus Chase, you should belong to me! You died of drowning. Drowned souls are my property.”

“Actually,” Sam said, “he died in combat, so he belongs to Odin.”

“Technicalities!” Ran snapped.

The faces in Ran’s net gaped and gasped, pleading for help. Sam had told me, There are worse places to spend your afterlife in than Valhalla. Imagining myself tangled in that silvery web, I was suddenly grateful to my Valkyrie.

“Well, okay then,” I said. “I guess I can just let Mr. J wake up fully. I didn’t have any plans for tonight.”

“No!” Ran hissed. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to scavenge along the seafloor when Jormungand gets agitated? Let him go!”

“And you promise to negotiate in good faith?” I asked.

“Yes. Fine. I am in no mood for Ragnarok today.”

“Say, ‘By my troth—’”

“I am a goddess! I know better than to swear by my troth!”

I glanced at Sam, who shrugged. She handed me her ax, and I cut the fishing line.

Jormungand sank beneath the waves, glaring at me through a bubbling green cloud of poison as he descended, as if to say, NEXT TIME, LITTLE MORTAL.

Ran’s swirling skirts slowed to the speed of a tropical storm. “Very well, einherji. I promised to barter in good faith. What do you want?”

“The Sword of Summer,” I said. “I had it with me when I hit the Charles River.”

Ran’s eyes glistened. “Oh, yes. I could give you the sword. But in exchange, I would want something valuable. I’m thinking…your soul.”