Chapter 13 #2
Rattatosk was looking for her and Mason. That’s what Elias was insinuating.
It can’t be true, she thought. Why us? Why now?
The why doesn’t matter, whispered a darker part of her mind. You knew this would happen. You’ve known since the day your brother ate that eyaerberry. You two are exposed. Your sister is a Valkyrie. The Fenrir wanted you dead, and others probably do, too. This development is an inevitability.
She shouldn’t let her mind go there. Already she could feel another episode beginning, creeping into her body.
It started as it always did: like an orchestra tuning up, the cellos her rising anxiety, the cymbals her quickening heartbeat, the high-pitched violins the buzzing on the surface of her skin.
You are in danger. Your brother is in danger. Your friends are in danger.
And it’s all your fault.
The orchestra played only one note, a note of panic, starting soft but getting louder with every instrument, every body part and internal organ that joined in, all of it against Charlie’s will.
She squeezed her eyes shut. The anxiety built to a crescendo.
It overwhelmed everything else; every sound and smell and touch and sensation—it was all gone. Panic was all she knew.
“—lie?” came a voice at the end of the tunnel she was in. It rose just over the awful music. “Hello? Are you with me?”
Her eyes popped open. She stifled a gasp.
Elias. It was just Elias. He was sitting next to her, driving his car. Only, the car wasn’t moving. It was stopped at an intersection, and he’d turned all the way around in the driver’s seat to stare at her.
You will turn him back into a human.
And you will never trust another boy with your heart again.
“Yes.” She exhaled, laying a hand on her chest. The violins were quieting, the cymbals slowing their crashes. “Yes, I just … I got lost in thought.”
He narrowed his eyes. “That didn’t look like someone who was just lost in thought.”
“Well, I was,” she snapped, and if her voice was a touch too bitchy, whatever. She couldn’t have him knowing about the strange episodes she kept having. Not when they were such an obvious weakness. “Now, can you please start driving again? We’re wasting time.”
Elias hesitated, clearly not wanting to drop the subject. Until finally, with a muttered, “Whatever,” and a shake of his head, he took his foot off the brake and the car pulled forward.
Charlie exhaled in relief. Thank the gods. She turned to face the road, determined to change the subject and keep herself distracted. Keep the episode at bay. And if her hands were clenched in fists a little too tight at her sides, oh well.
“So,” she said, raising her voice to compensate for the wind. “What exactly is this ‘clue’ you claim to possess?”
“I don’t claim anything,” he yelled back. “My intel is very reliable. It came from the Sons of Ivaldi themselves.”
“Wait.” Charlie blinked. “The Sons of Ivaldi?”
She remembered their story well. It was one of the first ones she’d read on Twelve Essential Tales, and it went like this:
Once upon a time, Loki stole the hair from the head of Sif, Thor’s wife, while she slept.
To Loki, it was a funny prank, but Thor was furious.
Sif had the most beautiful hair in all of Asgard, and Loki hadn’t just shaved it off; he’d removed it by the very roots, never to grow back.
When Thor confronted Loki and threatened to kill him, Loki promised to go to Svartalfheim and not return until he convinced the dwarves—the most skilled magical craftsmen in the eight realms—to create a wig that would perfectly replicate Sif’s hair and would bond to her scalp like real hair does.
On the way to Svartalfheim, Loki cooked up a plan. Not only would he get Sif a new head of hair, he would pull off a scheme sure to please all the gods.
When he reached the realm of the dwarves, he sought out the two sets of blacksmiths rumored to be the most skilled in all of Svartalfheim: the three Sons of Ivaldi, and two brothers called Brokkr and Eitri.
Loki convinced them to go head-to-head in a competition to determine which brothers were the most talented smiths in Svartalfheim.
Each team was to create the three mightiest magical items they could, then present them to the gods as gifts.
Whichever team made the item that Odin deemed most powerful would be crowned the winner.
The Sons of Ivaldi created Sif’s magical head of hair, Frey’s flying ship, and Gungnir, Odin’s legendary spear (which Odin later gave up so it could be the anchor for the Seal between Asgard and Earth, though naturally, Twelve Essential Tales didn’t know that detail).
Brokkr and Eitri created Frey’s vicious boar, Odin’s self-replicating golden ring, and—last but not least—Mjollnir, the legendary hammer of Thor.
These six items proved the most important that the gods would ever own, and it was thanks to Loki’s shrewdness that they came into existence.
That was the way of the god of mischief, as Twelve Essential Tales often stated: as much as he caused havoc for the other gods, he also used his shrewdness to their benefit.
“You know of them?” Elias asked.
“Of course I do,” said Charlie. “They’re central to one of the most important stories in all of Norse mythology.”
He glanced over, raising an eyebrow. “Someone’s been doing her research.”
“Obviously.” She rolled her eyes. “So, what do the Sons know about Rattatosk?”
“Well, the Sons died ages ago. They now reside in Helheim with the rest of the dead, in a smithy they built for themselves. Even in death, dwarves have to keep their hands busy. Before I left for Silver Shores, I paid them a visit. I thought they might be able to fashion an object that could track the location of Rattatosk’s leash. ”
“And did they?” Charlie yelled over the wind.
“They did,” he yelled back. “Sort of. They couldn’t track the exact location of the leash—not without a piece of Rattatosk himself.
A hair, a claw, a prick of blood. Something like that.
But they were able to create a set of bowls that, when filled with a certain elixir, revealed which realm the leash is in. ”
For several seconds, Charlie just stared at Elias, saying nothing.
Eventually, Elias glanced over. “What?”
“The realm,” she repeated, disbelief making her face a blank sheet. “The only information you have is what realm the leash is in.”
“Not quite.” He turned off Birch and onto Holland, the main drag that led in and out of town.
They were heading north—away from Silver Shores.
“They created eight bowls, one for each realm. Then they brewed a clear elixir infused with the essence of the binding magic that was used to create the leash. They poured a small measure of the elixir into each bowl, then mumbled a bunch of mumbo jumbo in dwarvish. According to the Sons, whichever bowl’s liquid turned gold was where the leash was at that moment. ”
“I still don’t see how this ridiculous invention is supposed to help our search. Every one of the realms is as big as a planet, Elias. We’d never find it.”
“That would probably be true,” he admitted, “if only one of the bowl’s elixirs had turned gold.”
“Wait. More than one turned gold?”
“Two did.” He paused, flipping on his blinker.
“So there are two separate leashes?”
Elias shook his head, pressing on the gas to speed past the Volvo in front of them. “No. There is only one Rattatosk, and only one leash to control him. The Sons never made a second.”
“So their bowls didn’t work.”
He shook his head again. “No. The Sons’ creations always work. Plus, they repeated the entire process, like, four times. It always gave us the same result.”
“I don’t understand,” said Charlie. “If there’s only one leash—and if you’re absolutely positive the bowls aren’t wrong—then how the Hel can it be in two places at once?”
“That,” he said, “is what brings us to the Saugatuck dunes. There’s only one type of creature that can exist in two places at once.
They’re called joturri. They come from Jotunheim, the land of the giants, and their consciousness exists between two forms: one that looks mostly like any old giant you would come across, and another of their choosing.
It could be a person, land animal, sea creature—you name it.
But there are always two of them, and they act as one being. ”
“I’ve never even heard of them.”
“That’s because joturri are rare. Long ago, the giants turned against their two-bodied cousins. There was a war between the two species, and the giants won. The joturri are practically extinct now. Only a rare few remain, and they keep themselves so well hidden they’re almost impossible to find.”
“Let me guess.” Charlie was already mentally rolling her eyes. “They’re almost impossible to find, but because you are an all-knowing, genius wizard-shadow-sex god, you know exactly where to find one.”
A lopsided grin spread across Elias’s face. “Couldn’t have put it better myself.”
“Of course.” She stuck her hand out the side of the car, opening her fingers to feel the wind rushing through them. The distraction was working; the panic was almost completely gone. “Which bowls’ elixirs turned gold? You didn’t say.”
The smile fell from Elias’s face. They were coming up on a cement mixer, so he flicked his blinker and changed to the left lane.
He cleared his throat. “The bowl for Asgard,” he said, urging the car faster, flying past with only a few feet of space between the convertible’s open window and the truck’s rotating tank.
Charlie held her breath until they burst out in front, claiming the open road once more.
Elias flicked his blinker on again, shifting into the right lane. “And the bowl for Muspelheim.”
A hole opened under Charlie. A well of panic and terror into which her entire body dropped, swallowing her before she could even begin to swim.
“The leash is…” She blinked at Elias. “The leash is in Muspelheim?”
He nodded.
“But that means Surtur has it,” she said. Drums pounded in her ears, her head throbbing in time with their horrible music. “Surtur is the one controlling Rattatosk.”
“Not necessarily,” said Elias, and Charlie exhaled with relief.
“Nothing in Norse mythology suggests that Surtur is a joturri. He is a solitary being, a fiery monster standing in wait at the very edge of Muspelheim, where mist meets nothingness. It’s far more likely that whoever is controlling Rattatosk works for Surtur.
Pays him visits in Muspelheim, where the two of them scheme and plot to bring about Ragnarok. ”
“You can go to Muspelheim?”
“Of course. You can visit any of the eight realms, so long as Heimdall allows you passage on the Bifrost.”
“But that makes no sense,” said Charlie. “If that were true, why haven’t the gods killed Surtur yet? Then Ragnarok could never happen.”
“Muspelheim is a land of mist and fire. The air is so thick with smoke and fog that you can barely see your hand in front of your face. It’s impossible to navigate. Doubly so if you want to find Surtur, who stands at the end of time itself. No one has ever been able to find him.”
“Except the joturri that’s working for him, apparently.”
He lifted one shoulder. “My guess is that, if Surtur wants to be found, he has ways to make sure that he is.”
When his shoulder dropped, his arm brushed Charlie’s neck.
It was only then that she realized his arm was still stretched out across the seat, a hair’s breadth away from her bare skin.
The awareness sent a shiver down her neck, all the way to the base of her spine.
She inhaled, jerking away from his touch, but it was too late.
Her toes were already curled in her shoes, and every part of her was a few degrees too warm.
This was going to be a long ten miles.