“Go gather some acorns? Go gather some acorns? You can’t talk to me like that. I’m Ratatosk, messenger to the gods!”
“More like messenger to some overgrown lizard and birdbrain,” Pru said, looking over her shoulder and remembering what she’d read about how Ratatosk delivered messages between a dragon and an eagle.
“How dare you?” Ratatosk’s tail poofed to an alarming degree. “You mewling ingrate! You serpent-tongued half troll! You fish-bellied shortwit!”
“Hey!” Pru interrupted, spinning around. “I’m not short!”
Ratatosk rolled his eyes, a gesture that Pru found even more insulting than usual when performed by a squirrel.
“No, no, no,” he chattered in a patronizing voice. “It’s no fun at all insulting you if you don’t know what I’m saying. I didn’t call you short.”
“Oh. Okay, then . . .”
“I called you an idiot.”
“Hey!” All the insults Pru had heard (and given) in the schoolyard scrolled through her mind as she scrambled for a response. “Yeah, well, you’re so stupid, you could get hit by a parked car.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Pru realized she’d crossed a line. Who knew how many of Ratatosk’s friends and relatives had found themselves on the wrong end of a speeding sedan? Ratatosk’s eyes widened and he clutched his tail.
“Okay, look, I’m sorry.” Pru slumped against another nearby tree as Ratatosk stared at her in horror. “I’m under a lot of pressure. Loki made a fool out of me and now I don’t know what to do.”
Ratatosk snorted, but he also released his tail. In a somewhat sympathetic voice, he said, “Don’t feel bad. Loki fools everyone, sooner or later—usually more than once, yes, and often before breakfast.”
Ratatosk sounded like he was speaking from experience. Pru thought back to what else she’d read about the squirrel at Winterhaven House. The sign had said that Ratatosk often knew more about the gods’ comings and goings than even they suspected.
“Has Loki ever fooled you?” she asked, following a hunch.
Ratatosk began to tug on his tail again. The gesture reminded Pru of ABE running his hands through his hair. “Maybe.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Pru leaned forward. “I wondered how Loki found the stone here in our town. I mean, nobody comes to Middleton. You told him it was here, didn’t you? Because you didn’t have to find it. I bet you saw Odin hide the rune stone here, all those years ago.”
“I am outraged by your accusation!” Ratatosk exclaimed. “Incensed. Infuriated! How dare you suggest I would spy on the Allfather? I never would, no, no, no!” Then, sounding slightly less outraged, he added, “It’s not my fault I accidentally saw him hide it one day, while minding my own business in the Allfather’s general vicinity.”
“And did you tell Loki?”
From the way Ratatosk settled back on his haunches and looked away, Pru suspected that if squirrels could blush, Ratatosk would be bright red.
“Well, technically, I suppose I did. But just because Loki asked nicely. It only took him a few thousand years to think of me. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? No one ever thinks of talking to me. It’s always, ‘Ratatosk, go tell that carrion-eating stinkfart this,’ or, ‘Ratatosk, go tell that weak-winged crow that.’ A lifetime of carrying other people’s nasty little words, and no one asking to hear mine.”
“That does sound pretty lousy,” Pru admitted. She began to understand why Ratatosk used so many words when he did get a chance to talk.
“Then Loki came along and he was nice. Kind. Considerate. He told me that all those insults I had to carry did nothing but build walls, and if there was one thing he understood, it was the importance of not building walls. He said that if I helped him find the Eye of Odin, we’d be friends and he’d change things so that I never had to carry another insult again. But as soon as he knew where the rune stone was, he didn’t have time to listen to me anymore.”
“Wait,” Pru said, frowning. “Loki said that about not building walls?”
“Yes. Why?”
“It’s nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s just, I have a friend who says the same thing. She’s pretty much my only friend at this point.”
My closest friend.
Pru’s eyes widened in horror and Ratatosk took a step back, scanning for a predator.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Oh no.” Blood rushed to Pru’s head. It carried with it a tide of memories. Words and images flooded her brain.
Building walls. She remembered “The Story of Loki and the Building of Asgard’s Wall.” In it, Loki was forced to stop the building of the wall around Asgard. Fay’s voice reverberated through Pru’s mind.
“And if there’s one thing I understand, it’s the importance of not building walls.”
Other memories rushed in then, wave after wave of recollection. The story had also said that Loki wasn’t actually a Norse god. It said he lived among them, though, and that the other gods had always been suspicious of him, even as a youth. Fay’s voice once again echoed in Pru’s head.
“But where I grew up, I was very different from those around me. Some things that were very easy for my peers were difficult for me.”
“No!” Pru repeated. It wasn’t true. Fay couldn’t be Loki. Loki was a man!
Except when he wasn’t.
One last memory from the story surfaced. In it, Loki had changed into a mare, a female horse, to distract the builder’s stallion. Loki had even given birth to an eight-legged foal while in that form, which he’d given to Odin as a gift.
“Though motherhood came to me unexpectedly, and it saddens me to say that I gave my child to someone else to raise shortly after his birth.”
The tide of memories receded and left Pru with the truth.
She’d been wrong. She’d been so wrong.
“It wasn’t ABE or Mister Fox,” Pru said to Ratatosk. “It never was.” She covered her face with her hands. “The whole time, it was Fay.”
A shadow stretched out from the woods as someone approached Pru from behind. She didn’t bother to look up. She knew instantly to whom the shadow belonged. This time, for the first time, his appearance didn’t startle her at all.
CHAPTER
20
“I’M GLAD YOU TWO SORTED THAT OUT, BECAUSE WE have work to do,” Mister Fox said, leaving the cover of the trees and walking up to Pru.
“Stay away from me,” Pru said, taking a step back.
“What’s wrong?” A gust of wind swirled the coat around the detective’s feet as he came to a stop, frowning. “You know I’m not Loki. I just heard you say it.”
“So you didn’t lie to me about being an evil being from another world who was going to someday start a war that kills pretty much everyone. So what?” Pru folded her arms across her chest. “You still yelled at me.”
“Pru, listen to me, we don’t have time for hurt feelings. Something’s happened.”
Pru’s arms remained folded as she remembered the look of rage she’d seen on Mister Fox’s face when he’d found her in the Henhouse. She took another step back.
“Fine,” Mister Fox grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Right. We’ll make time. Okay, look, Pru, I’m sorry. This is something you won’t hear me say very often . . . but I made a mistake. I didn’t think I was yelling at you. I thought I was yelling at Loki.”
“What?” The tension left Pru’s arms and they dropped to her sides.
Mister Fox released his nose and looked at Pru. “Once you and ABE discovered the true power of the Eye of Odin and I understood the danger it presented, I decided the Middleton Stone would be safest with me. So I took the stone and brought it to the Henhouse. No one’s supposed to be able to get in there without my knowing. When I arrived home and discovered someone there, I assumed the only person who could have possibly broken into the Henhouse was Loki. Do you understand now? Loki fooled me, too.”<
br />
“Wait. How could you think I was Loki? I never even got a chance to tell you Loki was mixed up in things.”
“No offense to your squirrel friend, but your town is being invaded by beings from Norse mythology. Anytime there’s trouble involving Norse mythology, you can pretty much expect Loki to be part of it. He’s the well-established troublemaker of the group.”
“But if you knew Loki was involved, how come you didn’t tell me and ABE?”
“You already know why. You’re no good to me if you believe everything you’re told. You needed to keep an open mind and discover your own answers. Which, obviously, you did.” Mister Fox’s nose twitched. “Out of curiosity, how did you figure out Loki was involved?”
“Thor told me.”
At Mister Fox’s prompting, she explained her discovery of the imprisoned thunder god. As she spoke, she reviewed her experience in the Henhouse in her mind. Seen through the lens of this new information, Mister Fox’s reaction to finding her in the Henhouse did make sense.
“And you’re sure Thor won’t help?” Mister Fox asked when Pru had finished.
“Pretty sure, yeah. He won’t disobey his dad again. He said he’s going to stay in jail until his dad lets him go. Then he’s going back to Asgard.”
“That’s a shame. We could have used him. As I was saying, we have a problem.”
“I know.”
“You do?” Mister Fox sounded surprised.
“Obviously.” Pru braced herself for Mister Fox’s reaction. “I gave Loki the Middleton Stone.”
“That? That wasn’t your fault. Loki is called the Lord of Lies for a reason. Of course he fooled you. He even fooled me, and that’s saying something.”
“Someone’s a little sure of himself,” Pru said. Despite her teasing, though, she could feel a wave of relief passing through her at the realization that Mister Fox was once more an ally. Irritating as he could be, he was also clever (not that she’d admit it to him). He could fix this! Her relief faltered a bit, though, as she saw the look of irritation on Mister Fox’s face.
“The point is, your mistake is not the problem. The problem is ABE. He’s missing. I think Loki took him.”
“What? Why would Loki take—” Pru cut herself off as the last clue fell into place. “Of course. ABE figured it out.”
“What did ABE figure out?” Mister Fox peered at Pru. “That Fay was Loki? How do you know that?”
Pru reached for a nearby branch. Breaking off a stick, she used it to begin scratching letters in the dirt. “I’m an idiot! I should have seen it right away. I found these words in ABE’s notebook,” she explained as she scrawled them out: I AM OFTEN LYING.
“I was so stupid! I thought ABE was confessing to being Loki. That’s why I went to the Henhouse in the first place. But it wasn’t a confession! The answer was right in front of me. There were other words above those. They were crossed out, though, so I didn’t look at them hard.”
Now, however, Pru reversed ABE’s process. She crossed out one letter of his so-called confession at a time and rewrote the letters in a new arrangement: FAY LONINGTIME.
“She told us.” The stick dropped from Pru’s hand as she stared down at Fay’s name. “She told us the very first day we met her that there were secret messages in her name. She—he—was taunting us the whole time. ABE’s crazy for words and riddles. Plus, he’s read all the Norse myths. He found this secret message in Fay’s name and figured out the lying was a reference to Loki. And he figured it out at the Earth Center. He’s way too honest. It would have shown all over his face.”
Mister Fox studied the words in the dirt. “And Loki knew he’d been caught, so he took ABE to keep him from talking,” he said. “You’re right. That has Loki written all over it. Not literally, of course, but almost. Look. There’s another possible arrangement.”
Bending to retrieve Pru’s stick, he rearranged the letters once more, this time spelling out FOALING ENMITY.
“That’s Loki, to be sure,” he said. “Foaling, of course, means giving birth to a baby horse. And enmity means hatred. Who but Loki has reason to hate giving birth to a baby horse?”
“What are we going to do?” Pru drove her foot into the ground and began grinding out the letters, trying to erase every last trace of Loki’s tricks and her stupidity. “What if ABE’s . . .”
“ABE’s alive,” Mister Fox assured her. “The Henhouse places certain enchantments on anyone who enters it. I’d know if ABE were hurt, or worse. He’s alive. I just don’t know where. The good news is, he’s not on Earth.”
“How is that good news?”
“Because it means Loki is either on Asgard or Niflheim, and time passes differently on Worlds of Myth. We have time to figure out where Loki’s gone, and where he’s taken ABE.”
“Loki must be going after the Eye,” Pru said.
“Agreed. Unfortunately, both Asgard and Niflheim are big places. Since we don’t know where the Eye is, we don’t know where to start looking.”
In the near silence that followed Mister Fox’s statement, Pru heard a small sound. Or, rather, the sound of someone small, clearing his throat.
“Ratatosk!” Pru felt a thrill of understanding and hope. “You know, don’t you? You know where Odin hid the Eye. You read what was on the stone, didn’t you?”
“Well, maybe a little,” Ratatosk admitted. “But you can’t tell Odin. He would think I was being nosy, and he doesn’t like that. I wasn’t, of course!”
“Of course not,” Pru agreed. “You were minding your own business . . . in the general vicinity of the rune stone.”
“Exactly!”
“So where is it?” Mister Fox asked.
“It’s in the nest of that lice-ridden eagle perched atop Yggdrasil. Otherwise, I’d go get the Eye myself, just to hide it from Loki again. But that bird is bad news.”
“Okay,” Mister Fox said. “I can work with that. The Henhouse can get us to Asgard and close enough to Yggdrasil to find Loki and ABE.”
Mister Fox’s gaze traveled from Ratatosk to Pru. His expression darkened.
“After that, Pru, it’s going to be up to you to save ABE.”
“What do you mean? We’ll save him together.”
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can. The Henhouse can take us to Asgard. You said so. Then we’ll find ABE and stop Loki.” Pru couldn’t understand why Mister Fox was suddenly being so dense.
Mister Fox drew his hand across his face, pulling at his chin.
“Pru, I can’t.”
“Stop saying that!” Pru’s hair spun in the air as she shook her head back and forth. “What does that even mean? Why can’t you?”
“Because of what you just said. I’m too sure of myself.”
“That? You’re mad because I said that? I’m sorry, okay? I take it back.”
“You can’t take it back, Pru, because you’re right. I am too sure of myself. That’s the problem. It all comes back to belief and the certainty it breeds. Like I told you that day in the Henhouse, only those people who are unsure of what they believe are able to experience magic. That means that only people who are unsure of what they believe are able to travel to Worlds of Myth.”
“I get it. So what?”
“So here’s what you have to understand. Nowadays, those people are all children. All of them. Children are like the early people who discovered the Worlds of Myth in the first place. They’re still new to the world. They’re not so sure of things.”
The detective removed his hat and massaged the bridge of his long nose. Pru thought he looked tired. He’d never looked tired to her before.
“Things change as you get older,” he said. “This is going to be hard for you to understand, but as we age we accumulate experiences, a terrible wealth of experiences. Those experiences teach us who we are. That’s the trade-off. As you grow up, you trade possibility for certainty. I’m sure of myself. I know who I am. I know what I think and what I’m capable of. Min
d you, I’m capable of some pretty amazing things. But traveling to Asgard or any World of Myth isn’t one of those things, not anymore. I’ve lived too long in the world.”
“But you can experience magic,” Pru argued. “I’ve seen it. You talk to squirrels. You fight giants.”
“You’re right. I spent most of my childhood traveling in the Henhouse through Worlds of Myth, and because of that I’m still able to do some things that other adults can’t. If something comes into this world, I can see it, usually. More and more, though, I need help. My looking glass gives me focus, and so does seeing through the eyes of young Fibbers. The older I get, the more I miss. Every year, every day, the magic slips further and further away.”
The detective paused to look off into the distance.
“Sometimes I’m afraid that I’ll return to the Henhouse one day and she just won’t be there anymore. Or, worse, she’ll be there, but I won’t be able to see her.” He returned his gaze to Pru. “So, yes, I still get to have some fun. But only here in this world.”
Pru put a hand on her forehead as the reality of Mister Fox’s words sank in. A vein beneath her skin pulsed, rhythmic, like the ticking of a clock. Ba-boom, ba-boom.
“And you’d let me go . . . ?” she whispered.
Ba-boom. Tick. Tock.
What time is it, Mister Fox?
“Yes,” the detective said. “If anyone is going to go save ABE, it’s going to have to be you.”
Midnight.
CHAPTER
21
MYSTERY AND ADVENTURE WERE ONE THING. TRAVELING between worlds that a week ago Pru hadn’t even known existed was something else altogether. Pru wanted ABE to be safe. But hadn’t her father wanted to keep people safe? And hadn’t that turned out to be a deadly mistake?
Ratatosk had agreed to travel to Asgard ahead of Pru to do some scouting and then to meet her when she arrived. The promise of the squirrel’s company was briefly reassuring. Pru’s resolve to go on alone to Asgard lasted until she and Mister Fox reached the edge of the cemetery. Then it fled, and so did she.
The Entirely True Story of the Unbelievable FIB Page 13
