by Sam Subity
After a minute, Grimsby pointed to a small rectangle at the top right of the campus. “Here it is.”
“How do you know?” Gwynn asked.
“Well, look at the little scribble there. Doesn’t it look like a plant? I bet they used that to indicate the greenhouse.”
I squinted at the tiny sketch he was pointing to. It did sort of look like a plant. “Where is that?”
Gwynn’s face fell. “It looks like it’s right around where the swimming pool is now. They must have demolished it at some point to make way for the expanding campus.”
“So I guess we’re not any closer, then,” Grimsby said.
I looked up at them. “Well, at least from the journal we know the plant probably exists. And it was even grown here at some point. That’s something. Maybe they moved the plants somewhere else when the greenhouse was torn down?”
Grimsby grabbed the botanist’s journal again and quickly riffled through the pages.
“Careful with that!” said Gwynn. “It could fall …” She trailed off as a page fell out of the book onto the table. “Apart.” She glared at Grimsby. “Great, now look what you did.”
He plucked the page off the table. Its paper looked different from the rest of the journal, like a piece of lined notebook paper folded in half. He unfolded it and scanned the page, a grin spreading on his face.
“ ‘My dearest Eunice,’ ” he read aloud. “ ‘I can hardly wait until our next …’ ”
I reached across and snatched it out of his hands.
“Hey!” he said.
“Don’t read that out loud,” I said as I quickly perused it. “This is a private message. Probably two star-crossed but secret lovers exchanging notes hidden in library books.”
“That’s so romantic,” said Gwynn.
Grimsby made a fake retching noise. “Spare me. And anyway, Eunice? Whoever it was, it was a looong time ago. I don’t think they’d mind.”
“Why don’t I just hold on to this for safekeeping,” I said, and slid the note into my blazer pocket.
“So what’s our next move?” Grimsby said.
Gwynn sat on the edge of the table. “Well, let’s review what we know. There’s a mention of a plant—possibly the svefnthorn—that was grown in a greenhouse—”
“Yeah,” Grimsby interjected, “that was apparently demolished to make a pool so Chase Lodbrok can win even more sports medals.”
“Where is this pool?” I said. “I mean, I know the greenhouse isn’t there anymore, but maybe we’ll find something that could help anyway.”
A bell chimed overhead, signaling five minutes until first period. Gwynn shrugged. “It’s worth a try. Should we meet at lunch and check out the pool?”
“I’ll bring the fish tacos,” said Grimsby.
I groaned. “Is food all you ever think about?
He spread his hands. “What, do people in North Carolina eat fancier stuff, like octopus sushi? But anyway, fish tacos … because it’s a pool. And fish swim in … Oh, never mind.”
I anxiously sat through my first-ever class with Mr. Wendel, watching the clock make its painfully slow march toward lunchtime. The day’s topic was genetics, and by halfway through the class the whiteboard was full of boxes demonstrating how combined traits from parents like blue eyes and brown eyes typically resulted in brown-eyed kids.
On the bottom of my notes, I scribbled, “Aesir mom + non-Aesir Dad = ?” If I were an Aesir, maybe I’d be smart enough to figure out how to help my dad. Or maybe I’d even have been able to help us avoid this whole mess in the first place.
But the jury was still out on me. And this jury was in danger of dying of old age. Sort of like the skeleton hanging in one corner of the science classroom, which was probably a former student who’d died waiting for one of Mr. Wendel’s tedious lectures to end. When the bell finally rang, I leapt out of my seat and headed for the door.
“Don’t forget,” Mr. Wendel announced over the sound of zipping backpacks. “Your midterm is at the end of the week. And remember, it will count for a full half of your grade.”
I stopped at Gwynn’s desk. “Midterm?”
“Yeah,” she said. “But I’m sure Mr. Wendel will give you more time.”
“Ha!” said Grimsby, coming up behind us. “That totally doesn’t sound like him.”
I sighed. “Great. Well, I’ll worry about that later. Which way to the pool? I want to see if we can find anything there or if it’s a dead end.”
“This way,” said Grimsby, frowning. “But maybe don’t say ‘dead end.’ Remember that death rune from the journal’s cover?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Bad choice of words.”
He led the way around a corner into another hall filled with athletic trophies. “So what are you hoping to find? A surviving specimen of that svefn-thingy?”
I shuddered, remembering the wicked-looking thorn Dr. Swenson had showed me. “Isn’t it funny how you’d never suspect something so deadly looking would be able to heal too? Almost like it has a secret double identity.”
“Yeah,” said Grimsby, sliding his gaze toward us. “Sort of like two normal-looking sixth-grade girls who happen to be a harvester of souls and a Viking assassin?”
Gwynn laughed. “Fair point.” She narrowed her eyes, looking at Grimsby. “So what’s your deep, dark secret?”
He looked away quickly, mumbling something I couldn’t quite understand.
Our route continued outside through an open atrium. Grimsby reached out and rubbed his palm on the head of a statue as we passed by. It was a bronze figure of a man wearing a billowing fur-lined cloak. His arms were outstretched over a small pool of water where a fountain burbled softly. The top of his head was shiny as if it had been rubbed frequently.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“What’s what?” Grimsby said absently, turning to follow my gaze. “Oh, you mean the statue? That’s the famous Bellyflop Bjarni.”
I recognized the name from Doc’s mention the previous day in class. “The Viking who saw North America first? Why Bellyflop?”
“I guess because it looks like he’s about to do a belly flop into the pool. The dude had the amazing fortune of finding a whole new continent completely by accident, so everyone rubs his head for good luck.”
I laughed, then jogged back and reached out to rub his smooth head. I needed a little extra luck right then.
Minutes later we re-entered the building through another hallway. Overhead a light buzzed, went out, and struggled to come on again. Ahead a door stood slightly ajar onto a dark room. Cue the horror movie music, I thought.
I pushed through the door, and immediately we were enveloped in a damp chlorine haze. The silence inside was so intense that I winced at the squeak of our shoes on the tiled floor. The room was nearly pitch-black, the only illumination coming from a couple of dim mercury vapor lights high up in the rafters and a faint blue glow from the pool. Large, shadowy shapes were obscured in the far corners of the room like hulking things waiting to pounce. I shuddered instinctively.
After the door settled shut behind us, the place was as quiet as a tomb, other than a faint dripping noise coming from somewhere in the shadows.
“ACHOOO!”
I nearly jumped out of my flannels. “Shhhhh!”
“Sorry,” whispered Grimsby. “Chlorine always makes me sneeze. Anyway, why do we have to be quiet? It doesn’t look like anyone’s here.”
“Doesn’t this place give you the creeps?” I said, peering into the gloom.
“Only because it reminds me of my first time seeing Mr. Bost in a Speedo,” he said with a shudder.
“Who’s Mr. Bost?” I asked.
“PE teacher.”
“I’ll go find a light switch,” Gwynn said as she disappeared farther into the room.
I slid my runestone out of my shirt and examined it.
“What’s that?” Grimsby said.
“It’s that necklace I mentioned earlier. The one that lit u
p with the upside-down Algiz rune when I had my run-in with that intruder in my house in North Carolina.”
“Oh. What’s it doing now?”
I turned the stone’s blank face toward him. “Nothing.”
“See? Like I said. Nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
As we waited for the lights, Grimsby suddenly said, “Oooh!”
“What is it?”
Without answering, he shuffled toward a small table nearby. He returned with a pair of Ping-Pong paddles. “Want to play?”
“In the dark?”
“Glow-in-the-dark balls,” he said, holding up a ball that glowed with an almost-alien light. “Anyway, got anything better to do?”
“Okay.” I shrugged. “But I haven’t played in forever, so I’m probably a little rusty.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll take it easy on you.”
He took up position on the other side of the table, then … WHACK! Something whizzed by within inches of my head.
“Hey!” I said, ducking for cover. “What gives?”
“Oops, sorry. Just, um, warming up.”
I could hear the tick-tick-tick of the ball as it bounced away from us on the tile floor and then a wet plip as it dropped into the pool.
“It was a bad idea to put the Ping-Pong table so close to the pool,” Grimsby said.
“You think?” I gave him a look that was probably wasted in the dark. “Hold on a sec. I’ll go grab it.”
I trotted toward the edge of the pool and peered down. The ball should have been easy to spot even in the dim glow of the underwater lights. But I couldn’t see it anywhere. That was odd.
Suddenly some sort of sixth sense—maybe my new internal weirdness alarm—went off. Something wasn’t quite right. As I gazed into the pool, there was an almost-imperceptible movement along the bottom. I squinted, trying to make it out. What I initially took for the translucent green floor of the pool seemed to be …
I gasped and rapidly backpedaled away as a giant green tentacle shot out of the pool with a loud splash.
SMACK!
It slapped wetly against the concrete where I’d been standing seconds earlier. My heart raced wildly while I watched the tentacle slide back into the pool. What was that … thing in the pool? And where had it come from?
“Abby?! What happened?!” Gwynn shouted with alarm.
Just then there was a loud metallic THUNK, and the lights started to come on. A side door opened, and a group of swimsuit-clad students poured out of the locker room. They were led by a shockingly pale, overweight man wearing nothing but a Speedo and a whistle. The kids were talking and laughing, headed right for the pool, oblivious to the danger.
Not sure what to do, I panicked and shouted the first thing that came to mind: “Sea monster!”
Everyone stopped in their tracks, and twenty heads turned toward me. We stared at each other for a few seconds.
“In the, uh …” I said, stumbling over my words and pointing toward the pool. “A sea monster. Or giant octopus. Or something like that.”
A couple of the guys burst out laughing. I recognized one: Chase. Oh, great.
“Oooh, sure, a sea monster in the pool,” said Chase. “I’m soooo scared.” He trotted over to the pool to look in. Suddenly his smirk froze. His face instantly lost all its color when a long tentacle launched out of the pool and wrapped around his torso. It dragged him clawing and screaming toward the water.
“HELP!” he cried in pure terror. “Get me out of here!”
Instant pandemonium. Suddenly kids were running around yelling, aimlessly bouncing around the room like yesterday’s bingo balls in a blind panic to get away from the monster. Another tentacle shot out of the water and narrowly missed flattening a girl as she ran past.
I looked to the teacher, Mr. Bost, but he was only running around in circles blowing his whistle uselessly. As much as it pained me to help the one guy who seemed determined to make my life at Vale miserable, I knew we had to do something to save Chase. Fast. I whipped my head around, looking for a weapon or anything that might help.
Glancing down, I remembered the Ping-Pong paddle in my hand. I shrugged, then hauled back and chucked it at the tentacle dunking him into the pool.
But another tentacle erupted from the water and curled around the paddle’s handle, plucking it out of the air. I ducked, half expecting the paddle to come flying back at me. Instead, the scaly arm waggled the paddle in the air.
Grimsby apparently noticed this too from under the Ping-Pong table, where he’d retreated for safety. “What’s it doing?” he shouted at me.
“I don’t know,” I shouted back.
Chase had one arm around a pool ladder, and his free fist beat wildly at the tentacle that held him around the waist.
Grimsby cocked his head to one side with a strange look on his face. “I think the sea monster, uh, wants to play a round of Ping-Pong.”
“What? Seriously?”
He shrugged and grabbed another ball, tentatively slapping it toward the pool with his paddle.
The tentacle holding the paddle launched into action, swishing toward the bouncing ball. With a loud crack, its paddle connected with the ball. I had just enough time to flop onto the floor as the ball came rocketing back toward us. Rolling to my belly, I followed Grimsby’s awed gaze to where the ball was now embedded in the far wall of the gym.
“Try it again!” I shouted over the screaming kids. The monster seemed to have temporarily forgotten about Chase.
“Are you nuts?”
“Hit the ball again! Try to distract it while I figure out how to save Chase.”
Grimsby nodded and reached for another ball. He swatted it toward the pool as hard as he could, then immediately ducked for cover back under the table. It worked. The ball came zooming back toward us like a comet. For a sea monster, it sure had a wicked backhand.
“Again!” I shouted, making a circular motion with my hand. “Keep it up!”
While Grimsby kept the creature distracted, I scanned the room looking for anything that might help.
“Abby!” Gwynn called from across the room. I saw her standing well clear of the pool holding a long pole used for rescuing swimmers. She made a few stabbing motions toward the pool with the pole, and I caught her drift. We could poke at the monster on the pool’s bottom. That might annoy it enough to let Chase go. And maybe get it to come out of the pool and into the open.
That could be bad. But, well, we’d figure that part out when it happened. One thing at a time.
Gwynn pointed over my head, and I turned around. There on the wall behind me was a similar pole with a net on the end. I grabbed the pole off the wall and turned back to face her. Signaling a thumbs-up, we both cautiously approached the pool from opposite sides, careful to watch for other tentacles.
Silently I mouthed, “One, two, three … NOW!”
We both stabbed into the pool, trying to get as far as we could toward the bottom. But I only connected with water. The poles weren’t long enough. I ducked as the tentacle holding the Ping-Pong paddle suddenly stopped and swept toward me. A forest of tentacles blasted out of the water and waved around wildly. We may have missed, but we’d gotten its attention. More screams erupted from the terrified kids all around us as they dodged the slimy green arms. We’d been trying to irritate the thing. Mission accomplished.
I retreated like any sane person would. But Gwynn made a barbaric battle cry and leapt into the air toward the monster. She splashed into the water headfirst and disappeared, her battle cry cutting off abruptly when her head went underwater. I called out in alarm and ran toward the water, battling back scaly arms. I frantically scanned the water for any sign of Gwynn. Then a tentacle shot out of the water, dangling her by one ankle. She furiously pummeled it with her fists.
“Gwynn!” I shouted in horror. “What are you doing?!”
“Don’t … worry … about me,” she grunted as she flailed at the writhing a
rm. Despite her heroic efforts, it looked like we might all soon become sea monster food.
“Abby!” shouted Grimsby.
“Kind of busy right now,” I yelled in exasperation while beating back tentacles.
“No, listen,” he said. “Remember when you guys distracted the monster?”
“Yeah?” I slapped a tentacle away from my ankle. “What about it?”
“Well, another Ping-Pong ball fell into the pool. But then it disappeared. The ball, I mean. I think the creature, um, ate it.”
“Ate it? But why would it eat a Ping-Pong ball?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it thinks they’re eggs or something.”
I delivered a hard karate chop to a tentacle that was trying to wrap around my arm. It recoiled but continued to hang menacingly in the air. “But then why would it hit them back at you?”
“Beats me. Likes to play with its food, maybe?”
“Hmmm,” I said, an idea slowly taking shape. “How many more balls do we have?”
He peered down into a five-gallon bucket next to him. “Lots. This is almost full.”
“Okay, this may be a ridiculous idea, but the balls are full of air, right?”
“Uh, right,” he said, a confused look on his face.
“So if the monster eats enough of them, then all that air should make it float toward the surface. Then we can attack it with the poles.”
“You’re right. That’s a pretty ridiculous idea.” He grinned. “But it might work.”
“Hope so. But it could take a while.” I looked toward Chase, Gwynn, and the others still running around the room. “And I’m not sure we have that long.”
Grimsby looked down again at the bucket. “Leave it to me. Just keep that thing busy.”
“Okay,” I said. Then I shouted toward Gwynn, “Grimsby says to keep it busy! He has an idea!”
“No … prob—” she grunted back as the tentacle dunked her headfirst into the pool. She emerged seconds later sputtering, her long hair plastered across her face.
I started to take another run at the pool with my makeshift weapon but skidded to a halt as a loud howl suddenly filled the room.
