by Sam Subity
I opened one eye and looked at him skeptically. “Oh, really? After you just told me you lied to me?”
He looked away. “Well, usually.”
I studied him standing there, with his floppy hair, too-big blazer, and pale, skinny legs. And I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It just came out. “Usually? Well, forgive me if I don’t find that super encouraging.”
He grinned. “No, for real, I’m a highly trustworthy individual. So why don’t we start here: The Vikings don’t only exist in history books, do they?”
I’d kept this part of me secret for so long that it was hard for my brain to even form the words to tell another person about it. “Okay, you’re right. They—”
Grimsby raised an eyebrow.
“Fine, we never actually disappeared. We figured out that instead of raiding and pillaging, we could be more effective by assimilating into different cultures and working behind the scenes.”
“Wow, you just made Vikings sound super boring. But you still get to whack people when you have to, right?”
I laughed. “Sometimes I guess that still happens.” I opened my eyes wide and held up my hands. “But I’ve never done that, of course. Killed someone, I mean.”
“Wow, so let me get this straight. You’re a Viking warrior. No kidding. Like a stone-cold member of an ancient civilization of bone-crushing giants.”
“Well, technically, I’m not a warrior yet. You have to be at least fourteen for that. And only then if you’ve also got some wicked good skills. Until then I’m a thrall, which doesn’t sound even half as cool.”
“Thrall … thrall,” Grimsby mouthed, letting it roll around on his tongue, then shaking his head. “Yeah, I’d stick with the warrior thing. That’s our ticket to the upper echelons of middle school society right there.”
“Our ticket? I’m telling you this in confidence, remember? You have to promise not to tell anyone.”
His face fell. “What? But think of all the—”
“I’m serious.”
“Fiiiine,” he moped. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“So now that you know,” I said, “can we please get back to checking these frames?”
I bent down to run my fingers along the edge of one of the frames, hoping to indicate that I was done talking about the subject for now. While I’d initially felt a little sick to my stomach at divulging my secret to another person, now more than anything I felt … well, relieved. It was actually kind of nice to feel like I had someone to share it with for once. Like I was suddenly a little bit lighter somehow.
Just then I felt my back pocket vibrate. When I extracted my phone, the name on the display was Bryn, my dad’s nurse.
“Bryn?” I said, suddenly feeling out of breath. “Is everything okay with my dad?”
“Sorry to call you at school,” came Bryn’s voice. “I just thought you’d want to know right away. The doctors think they’ve figured out what’s wrong with your dad. Hold on. I’m texting you a photo.”
My heart knocked against my ribs as I waited, not missing the fact that she hadn’t answered the question: Is everything okay with my dad? After a few seconds, a text came through. When I thumbed it open, I saw a photo of a clear disk made of two halves of glass fitted together. Inside was what looked like some sort of thorn or claw.
Nervous butterflies stirred in my stomach. “Wh-what’s that?”
“Hold on. I have Dr. Swenson right here too. She can explain it better.”
“Hi, Abby.” Dr. Swenson’s voice came over the line a few seconds later. “I hope you’ll forgive me for not sharing this news in person, but I have to be away for most of the afternoon and wanted to make sure you knew what we knew. Are you familiar with the legend of the svefnthorn?”
I stared down at the screen of my phone. Whatever it was, it was sharp and dangerous-looking. “No, what is it?”
“Svefnthorn translates roughly to ‘sleep thorn’ in English. It’s an artifact described in some ancient medical texts. Its sting was said to put one’s foes into a deep sleep. I’ve never seen a real one. Indeed, until now I wasn’t even sure they were more than a legend.”
My exhausted brain was having trouble making the connection. “Okaayyy … so what does this have to do with my dad?”
“When we examined your father’s wound, instead of the usual pellets that we’d expect from a shotgun blast, this is what we found. In fact, we removed several of these from his upper chest and shoulder. We think this is the reason for his current condition.”
I felt my breath start to come faster and struggled to shove down the grim scenarios that came flooding in. “Condition? What do you mean? You called this a sleep thorn, right? So he’s … asleep?”
“Essentially, yes. It’s more like a sort of coma. According to the texts I could find, usually a person stung by the thorn would drop into a deep sleep and regain consciousness after a few hours.”
“It’s been way longer than that,” I said, feeling like I was stating the obvious. “So why hasn’t he woken up yet?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line that may have been less than a second but felt like hours. “To be perfectly honest with you, we don’t know yet,” came Dr. Swenson’s voice at last.
I pressed the phone tighter to my ear. “Should I come to the hospital? If there’s anything I can do …”
“All his vital signs remain stable. And now that we have a better understanding of what we’re up against, my team will be able to analyze the toxin released by the thorn and attempt to engineer a countertoxin. Best-case scenario: It may wear off and he’ll wake up on his own. So finish off the school day. We’ll take good care of your father.”
I nodded mutely like she could see me. Why had the giant on the motorcycle been firing these strange thorns? And why hadn’t my dad woken up yet? It didn’t make any sense.
“Okay, Dr. Swenson, thanks so much for letting me know.”
After hanging up, I stood staring blankly at the photo of the svefnthorn. Despite Dr. Swenson’s reassurances, I was struggling to feel relieved by the news. Probably because there was something in her tone just like when my dad tries to withhold information, thinking he’s protecting me.
“Abby?” Grimsby said. “Everything okay?”
Not sure how to respond, I blinked and slid my phone back into my pocket. “Yeah. Fine, I guess.” I gestured toward the wall nearby. “Find anything?”
He pointed to a nameplate beneath one of the portraits. “Maybe. Take a look at this.”
The nameplate read “Jason ‘Jay’ Gould, 1881–1885.” I turned to him, nodding excitedly. “Maybe Doc didn’t mean ‘gold’ as in the color gold, but ‘Gould’ as in his last name.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
“Hey, can I borrow that glass you’re holding?”
“Sure,” he said, handing it to me. “What’s up?”
I leaned closer, holding the cup like a magnifying glass over the tiny words I’d spotted below the nameplate. “ ‘Press here,’ ” I read aloud.
I reached out with my pointer finger and tentatively pressed the nameplate. With a soft beep, the plate depressed like a button, and a panel in the wall slid away, revealing a small slot behind it.
Grimsby turned to me with a surprised expression that mirrored my own. “Now what?”
“It’s got to be …” I removed Doc’s G39 card from my pocket, then slid it into the slot and waited. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then suddenly an entire section of the wall slid away to one side, leaving us staring into an empty elevator car.
Grimsby took a step back in surprise. “Whoa! Secret Vikings. Hidden elevators. And I thought this was gonna be a normal Tuesday.” He bowed slightly and gestured toward the elevator. “After you.”
Inside we stood staring at the button panel.
“Which floor?” he asked.
“Good question.” I stared down at the card I’d retrieved from its slot, then studied the walls of the elevator c
ar. “I don’t see another slot. And there’s no thirty-ninth floor. There are only buttons for nine floors here. And G. For ‘ground,’ I guess.”
“Or ‘garage.’ I bet Vikings have some pretty sweet rides.”
I pushed the “1” button to see where it went, but after a few seconds, the whole panel flashed and the door dinged open again. Next I tried the “2” and “3” buttons with the same results.
Grimsby held up a finger like he had an idea. “Let me try …” He punched in the sequence G-3-9. This time the entire panel lit up. The door closed and the elevator started moving downward.
“Nice,” I said.
He shrugged. “Glad to— Ahhhhhhh!” He finished with a cry of terror as suddenly the elevator plunged downward like its cable had snapped.
“What did you do?!” I screamed. I clutched a metal handrail on the wall and held on for my life.
“I don’t know! I was trying to get to another floor. Not plummet us to our deaths!”
I frantically started mashing all the buttons at once with the palm of my free hand, trying to stop our free fall. But the lit panel simply blinked frustratingly back at me. The elevator kept speeding faster and faster. I would have screamed, but it felt like my stomach was jammed in my throat.
Finally the elevator jerked to a halt, sending us crashing to the floor. That’s where we lay sprawled in a tangle of arms and legs when the doors dinged open.
“Would you two stop messing around already?” said a familiar voice. I looked up from the floor. Gwynn, aka rainbow unicorn girl, smiled down at us with one eyebrow raised. Except she wasn’t wearing her backpack anymore. And on her back were what looked very convincingly like feathery white wings.
“Is this heaven?” Grimsby asked a little dazedly, apparently spotting the wings too. Then he gasped, evidently remembering the direction we’d just traveled, and his eyes grew wide. “Or the other place?”
“We’re not dead,” I said, handing him one of his loafers, which had somehow ended up lying on my ear, and pushing myself off the floor. “I think.”
“Not yet,” added Gwynn helpfully as she eyed Grimsby.
I squinted past her at a short tunnel leading to an enormous room. “Where are we?”
She spread her hands and said, “Welcome to Asgard. Also known as Viking central command for North America.”
I sat up quickly. “Whoa, what?! You’re telling us the Vikings … have a secret headquarters … right here under Vale Hall?”
She smiled wryly. “Well, it was a secret, anyway.” And she shot a glance toward Grimsby before turning a withering gaze on me.
She had a point. But I’d only caved with permission. Sort of. Which meant that Doc was … who, exactly? To change the subject, I said, “You have, uh …” I pointed to my back and made a vague flapping motion like wings. “So you’re a … Valkyrie?”
I was familiar with Valkyries, of course, from stories my parents had told me when I was little. They were winged women who carried fallen warriors to Viking heaven. But I’d always thought they were just characters from fairy tales.
She shrugged casually and nodded, then slid a finger over one feathery wing. The wings had multicolored tips just like her hair. For a brief second, a sad look crossed her eyes as she caressed her wing, but then she blinked and turned to us, all business. “There’s a lot you need to know. Doc said you might be, um, dropping in.”
My eyes lit up as I suddenly made the connection. “The Valkyrie thing! That’s how you—”
“Found you and your dad?” she finished for me. “Yeah. Valkyries have a sort of radar for people in peril. You know, the whole taking-dead-souls-to-Valhalla thing.”
“Wow, well … thanks,” I said. “Really. I don’t know what my dad and I would have done if you hadn’t found us. Oh, and thanks for not taking him to Valhalla.”
She laughed. “No problem. Now, why don’t you two follow me? I’ll give you the grand tour.”
“It’s okay if Grimsby comes along?”
She glanced in his direction, then shrugged. “I guess we can’t just leave him here unchaperoned.” She narrowed her eyes mischievously. “We can always wipe his memory later.”
Grimsby let out a little strangled noise and threw his hands protectively over his head. “Hands off the merchandise!”
On the threshold of the next room, I froze and breathlessly took it all in. The cavernous space looked like what I guess you’d get if the NASA command center and a medieval castle had a baby. Giant television screens played news feeds from around the world. And everywhere was a flurry of activity. People in heated debates in front of whiteboard-sized maps. People moving among sleek, glass-topped desks and typing at computers. No, not just people. My people.
“These are all …” I started.
Gwynn nodded. “Vikings.”
My heart swelled with a sense of pride. A feeling of … not being alone for the first time in such a long time.
“This way,” Gwynn said, and led us farther into the room.
The walls were lined with more of the torches that filled the halls of Vale above us. But as with those other torches, I couldn’t get over the feeling that there was something off about them. When I stepped closer to a sconce on a nearby wall, it didn’t take me long to figure out what the problem was: It wasn’t giving off any heat.
“It’s a hologram,” said Gwynn. She waved for us to follow her.
“But it looks so real!” I poked my finger and then my entire hand right through the flame. I was relieved when my hand didn’t come out burned black like an overcooked hot dog. Kids, don’t try this at home.
When I turned, Gwynn was already halfway across the room. As I hustled to catch up, I noticed what looked like massive tapestries along the walls depicting battle scenes, feasts, and epic adventures. But these weren’t ordinary tapestries. The figures in them moved as if they were alive, two battling Vikings even leaping from one tapestry to the next as their swords clanged together.
“Millions of electronic pixels are embedded in the cloth,” said Gwynn, following my gaze. “Basically, live-action tapestries. Sort of a modern upgrade from the old days.”
I watched a dragon ship slice through a wave with a spray of water that doused the revelers in a neighboring tapestry, causing them to roar and shake their fists in complaint. I spun in a slow circle, wanting to take in everything. I had to admit, I was impressed. I’d had no idea there were so many of us. Or that we were so high-tech. This whole space. Her wings. The Vikings … I had so many important questions to ask.
“Can you get ESPN on those?” Grimsby said excitedly. That was not one of those questions.
“Actually, yeah,” Gwynn said. “You should see it in here on Sundays when the Minnesota Vikings are playing.”
“Coooool,” he said. He couldn’t seem to get over her wings. He reached out to touch one like he couldn’t believe they were real, but she smacked his hand away. “What gives? I’ve known you since I was, like, two years old, and you never told me you have wings?”
“You never asked,” she said with a shrug.
Gwynn led the way through a set of large steel doors inlaid with intricate carvings. “The complex here is built in a wheel-and-spoke model patterned after the ancient Viking fortress at Trelleborg in Denmark. We have living quarters, medical offices, stores—everything we need to be completely self-sufficient if necessary.”
I glanced up at the ceiling, picturing the world above continuing oblivious to the presence of a city of Viking warriors living under its feet.
Gwynn stepped up to what looked like a dragon-head prow fixed on the wall. A thin beam of light scanned her face, and after a second the dragon’s eyes glowed green. A door slid open, and we were blasted by a twin assault of heat and the noise of metal ringing against metal.
“The forge,” she shouted over the noise. “This is where they make all the good stuff!”
The huge, cave-like space was dim, like stepping into a twilit world. I
t was illuminated only by the pulsing orange glows of numerous fires that reflected in the steam that billowed out of sight into the looming blackness above. The smells of molten metal and a humid dampness permeated the air. Nearby, a leather-aproned blacksmith whose height would have easily qualified him for the NBA hammered at a glowing sword blade. His face was hidden behind a welder’s mask, but by the journeyman’s braid at one end of his flowing golden hair, I guessed he was probably only a few years older than me. His muscular arms flexed with each blow, sending sparks raining around him with each stroke. He looked up as we approached and nodded at Gwynn before plunging the sword into a nearby water trough. Steam hissed and rose from the cooling metal.
Gwynn’s face flushed as she watched him work. “Did you hurt your arm?” she said, pointing to a bandage wrapped around one bicep.
The giant glanced down at his arm. “Work injury,” he grunted before returning to hammering the glowing metal.
“Friendly guy,” Grimsby joked under his breath as we continued our tour.
“I, um, think your backpack is on fire,” I said, pointing to his back.
“Huh? What?” He frantically spun around in a circle, then finally shrugged off his backpack and threw it on the ground, stamping on it until the small flame went out.
“Sorry,” said Gwynn. “Should have warned you both to watch for stray sparks.”
“Thanks for telling me now,” Grimsby said. He lifted his backpack off the ground and frowned at the charred front pocket.
I picked up a short throwing knife from a nearby table as we passed by. “Isn’t the forge kind of … old-school by comparison with the rest of Asgard?”
Gwynn plucked the knife from my hand and expertly twirled it in her fingers. “Sometimes the old ways are the best. We’re still trying to reproduce the methods of the original Viking masters. Their blades were said to defeat even magical charms. Unfortunately, those skills remain lost to history.”
I watched another Viking worker grind a razor-sharp edge on a wicked-looking battle-ax. I was thinking maybe I could use a new ax when Gwynn said, “Oh!”
