فصل 51

We Have the Talk-About-Turning-Into-Horseflies Chat

HEARTHSTONE WENT to sleep first, mostly because he was the only one who could sleep with Thor’s snoring. Since the god had crashed outside, Hearthstone commandeered the two-man tent. He crawled inside and promptly collapsed.

The rest of us stayed up and talked around the campfire. At first I was worried we might wake Thor, but I soon realized we could’ve tap-danced around his head, banged gongs, shouted his name, and set off large explosions, and he would’ve slept right through it.

I wondered if that was how he had lost his hammer. The giants could’ve waited until he was asleep, backed up a couple of industrial cranes, and done the job easy.

As night fell, I was grateful for the fire. The darkness was more complete than in the wildest places my mom and I had ever camped. Wolves howled in the forest, which gave me a bad case of the shivers. Wind moaned through the canyons like a chorus of zombies.

I mentioned this to Blitzen, but he set me straight.

“No, kid,” he said. “Norse zombies are called draugr. They move silently. You’d never hear them coming.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s a huge relief.”

Blitzen stirred his cup of goat stew, though he didn’t seem interested in tasting it. He’d changed into a blue wool suit with a cream-colored trench coat, perhaps so he could blend in with the Jotunheim snow in the most stylish way possible. He’d also brought each of us a new supply pack filled with fresh winter clothes, which of course he’d sized perfectly just by guessing. Sometimes it pays to have a friend who’s a thoughtful clotheshorse.

Blitz explained how he’d delivered the earrings to his mother, then gotten detained in Folkvanger for various duties as Freya’s representative: judging an oyster bake, refereeing a volleyball game, serving as guest of honor at the 678th annual ukulele festival.

“It was murder,” he said. “Mom liked the earrings. Didn’t ask how I got them. Didn’t want to hear about the contest with Junior. She just said, ‘Oh, don’t you wish you could do work like this, Blitzen?’” From his coat pocket, he pulled the rope Andskoti. The ball of silk glowed silver like a miniature moon. “I hope this was worth it.”

“Hey,” I told him, “what you did in that contest? I’ve never seen anybody work that hard. You poured your heart and soul into that Expando-Duck. And the bulletproof tie? The chain mail vest? Just wait. We’ll get you an endorsement deal with Thor, and you’ll start a fashion trend.”

“Magnus is right,” Sam said. “Well, maybe not about the endorsement deal with Thor—but you have real talent, Blitzen. If Freya and the other dwarves don’t see it, that’s their problem. Without you, we never would’ve gotten this far.”

“You mean you wouldn’t have gotten kicked out of the Valkyries; Magnus wouldn’t have died; we wouldn’t have half the gods mad at us; fire giants and einherjar wouldn’t be out to kill us; and we wouldn’t be sitting in the wilderness of Jotunheim with a snoring god?”

“Exactly,” Sam said. “Life is good.”

Blitzen snorted, but I was happy to see a little spark of humor in his eyes. “Yeah, okay. I’m going to sleep. I’ll need it if we’re going to storm a giant’s castle in the morning.”

He crawled into the tent and muttered to Hearthstone, “Make some room, you tent hog!” Then he draped his overcoat across the elf, which I thought was kind of sweet.

Sam sat cross-legged in her jeans and new snow jacket, her hood pulled over her headscarf. Snow had started to fall—big fluffy flakes that dissolved and hissed in the flames.

“Speaking of the contest in Dwarfland,” I said, “we never got to talk about the horsefly—”

“Hush.” Sam glanced apprehensively at Thor. “Certain people aren’t keen on my father, or my father’s children.”

“Certain people are snoring like a chain saw.”

“Still…” She studied her hand as if making sure it hadn’t changed. “I promised myself I wouldn’t shape-shift, and in the last week I’ve done it twice. The first time…well, the stag was after us on the World Tree. I turned into a deer to distract it so Hearthstone could get away. I didn’t think I had a choice.”

I nodded. “And the second time, you turned into the horsefly to help Blitzen. Those are both great reasons. Besides, shape-shifting is an awesome power. Why wouldn’t you want to use it?”

The firelight made her irises almost as red as Surt’s. “Magnus, true shape-shifting isn’t like my hijab’s camouflage. Shape-shifting doesn’t just change your appearance. It changes you. Every time I do it, I feel…I feel more of my father’s nature trying to take hold of me. He’s fluid, unpredictable, untrustworthy—I don’t want to be like that.”

I gestured at Thor. “You could have him for a dad—a farting giant with goat grease in his beard and tattoos on his knuckles. Then everybody in Valhalla would love you.”

I could tell she was trying not to smile. “You are very bad. Thor is an important god.”

“No doubt. So is Frey, supposedly, but I’ve never met him. At least your dad is kind of charming, and he has a sense of humor. He may be a sociopath, but—”

“Wait.” Sam’s voice tightened. “You talk as if you’ve met him.”

“I…I kind of walked right into that, didn’t I? Truth is, he’s been in a few of my near-death experiences.”

I told Sam about the dreams: Loki’s warnings, his promises, his suggestion that I take the sword to my Uncle Randolph and forget about the quest.

Sam listened. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or shocked or both.

“So,” she said, “you didn’t tell me this earlier because you didn’t trust me?”

“Maybe at first. Later, I just—I wasn’t sure what to do. Your dad is kind of unsettling.”

She tossed a twig into the flames and watched it burn. “You can’t do what my dad suggests, no matter what he promises. We have to face Surt. We’ll need the sword.”

I remembered my dream of the burning throne—the dark face floating in the smoke, the voice with the heat of a flamethrower. YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS WILL BE MY TINDER. YOU WILL START THE FIRE THAT BURNS THE NINE WORLDS.

I looked around for Jack, but I didn’t see him. The sword had volunteered to hover the perimeter “on patrol,” as he put it. He suggested I wait until the last possible minute to reclaim him, since once I did, I would pass out instantly from the strain of murdering a giantess by nostrilcide.

Snow continued to fall, steaming against the stones around the fire pit. I thought about our near-lunch in the food court of the Transportation Building, how nervous Sam had acted around Amir. That seemed like a thousand years ago.

“When we were on Harald’s boat,” I recalled, “you said your family had a long history with all the Norse god stuff. How? You said your grandparents came from Iraq…?”

She threw another stick into the flames. “Vikings were traders, Magnus. They traveled everywhere. They got all the way to America. It shouldn’t be a surprise they got to the Middle East, too. Arabic coins have been found in Norway. The best Viking swords were modeled after Damascus steel.”

“But your family…You’ve got a more personal connection?”

She nodded. “Back in medieval times, some of the Vikings settled in Russia. They called themselves the Rus. That’s where the word Russian comes from. Anyway, the Caliph—the big king down in Baghdad—he sent an ambassador north to find out more about the Vikings, set up trade routes with them, that kind of stuff. The ambassador’s name was Ahmed ibn-Fadlan ibn-al-Abbas.”

“Fadlan like Fadlan’s Falafel. Al-Abbas like—”

“Right. Like me. Al-Abbas means of the lion. That’s my branch of the clan. Anyway”—she pulled a sleeping bag out of her backpack—“this guy Ibn Fadlan kept a journal about his time with the Vikings. It’s one of the only written sources about what the Norse were like back then. Ever since, my family and the Vikings have been intertwined. Over the centuries, my relatives have racked up a lot of weird encounters with…supernatural beings. Maybe that’s why my mother wasn’t too surprised when she found out who my dad really was.” She spread out her sleeping bag next to the fire. “And that’s why Samirah al-Abbas is fated never to have a normal life. The end.”

“Normal life,” I mused. “I don’t even know what that means anymore.”

She looked like she wanted to say something, then changed her mind. “I’m going to sleep.”

I had a weird vision of our ancestors, medieval Chase and medieval al-Abbas, sitting around a campfire in Russia twelve hundred years ago, comparing notes on how the Norse gods had messed up their lives, maybe with Thor snoring on a bed of furs nearby. Sam’s family might be intertwined with the gods, but as my Valkyrie she was also intertwined with my family now.

“We’ll figure things out,” I promised. “I don’t know about normal, but I’ll do everything I can to help you get what you want—a place in the Valkyries again, your marriage with Amir, a pilot’s license. Whatever it takes.”

She stared at me as if processing the words from another language.

“What?” I asked. “Do I have goat blood on my face?”

“No. Well, yes, you do have goat blood on your face. But that’s not…I was just trying to remember the last time anybody said something that nice to me.”

“If you want, I’ll go back to insulting you tomorrow,” I said. “For now, get some sleep. Sweet dreams.”

Sam curled up by the fire. Snow settled lightly on the sleeve of her coat. “Thank you, Magnus. But no dreams, please. I don’t want to dream in Jotunheim.”