by E. G. Foley
“Done,” Jake said with a chuckle.
Isabelle and Dani smiled gratefully at Archie, looking relieved that Jake wouldn’t have to go it alone after all.
It seemed they all had their jobs to do.
“Don’t forget a hat and coat,” Dani warned, and of course, the boys obeyed. Jugenheim was part of Scandinavian legend, after all. It was likely cold where they were going.
Archie wrote a hurried note canceling the four o’clock panel discussion that had already been rescheduled. Considering that Dr. Wu would probably not be back in time for it either, this seemed the only sensible thing to do. Dani promised to take the note to the office for him.
Saying their final goodbyes, Jake suddenly remembered to consult the girls for any helpful tips they might have about how Snorri might win the heart of his princess. When he asked their advice, they rattled off a whole list of bewildering pointers, which Jake memorized to tell to Snorri later.
With that, Archie and he set out, their first stop the edge of the fjord to collect the Pigeon. There, they hauled the poor, half-mangled flying machine out of the water and set her on her wheels.
As the water poured off her wings, the boys gathered up the broken bits of flying machine strewn around the beach and stowed them in the cockpit.
At last, with the Pigeon limping along on her bent wheels—much as her young inventor was still limping from being accidentally dropped by the giant during his abduction—the boys began pulling the flying machine back up the mountain, where Snorri awaited their return.
Snorri sat inside the darkened cave, anxious to get out of Midgarth and home before certain gods found out about his trespass.
Of course, Odin was technically retired now, and had been ever since the monks had first come over from Ireland to convert the Vikings to the Cross. But still, the old, one-eyed former god of war remained someone only a fool would trifle with.
Loki must be truly mad to think of going up against Odin and Thor. Snorri shuddered at the thought of incurring their wrath himself. He hadn’t meant any harm. Breaking the seal had been an accident—and just his luck.
Nothing ever goes right for me. He heaved a lonely sigh in the darkness, hoping he wasn’t being stupid again for trusting those two boys just like he had trusted that lying little crow. He hoped they could help him.
With his boots freshly laced, his cloak fastened around his neck, and everything in him longing to go home, he got up and paced toward the mouth of the cave to see if the boys were coming. He couldn’t wait to be on the road.
Back to Kaia…
Snorri was eager to meet the Isabelle-and-Dani girls that the boys were bringing to help give him advice.
Suddenly, halfway up the pitch-black tunnel, a glint of gold shining on the cavern floor caught his eye.
He bent down and picked up the small, unusual object.
“Hullo, what are you, then?” His bushy eyebrows shot upward as he lifted it up to his face for a closer look. A tiny, shiny cylinder of gold sparkled between his fingers.
“Ohh, look what I found,” he murmured to himself in wonder. “Byoootiful…jewelry!”
With a tiny sculpted dog’s head on the top!
Kaia loved dogs, and therefore, he instantly knew what to do with it. He’d give it to her for a present.
Princesses loved presents. Everybody knew that.
The shiny thing had a small ring at the top of it; he would string it through some ribbon and she could wear it round her neck.
With a grin, he tucked the golden jewelry into his pocket to give to her when the time was right. Best to keep it secret until then, he thought. He didn’t want anyone trying to steal it or ruining his surprise.
Why, he quite believed he’d turn out to have a knack for this romance business, once he got the hang of it.
Then he heard the boys calling from outside.
Jake and Archie were a little winded from hauling the Pigeon back up the mountain. Thankfully, Red had helped once they met up with the Gryphon inside the forest.
The noble beast had lowered his dignity to allow the boys to harness him with the ropes, then he had pulled Archie’s flying machine behind him like a horse hitched to a wagon.
Snorri was disappointed when he saw that the girls had not come with them, but Jake assured him that Isabelle had sent him with good advice, which he would soon share once they were underway.
But first he told the giant he would have to carry the Pigeon. Snorri felt guilty for breaking it, so he gladly agreed. Jake slipped the harness off of Red, then tied the ropes into a huge loop so Snorri could sling it over his shoulder. This the giant did, lifting the flying machine easily onto his back.
“All right, then. Everyone ready?” Jake asked, glancing around at his companions. “We have to be back in three days for Archie’s speech, so we’d better get going.” He turned to Snorri. “Which way?”
“Uhh…”
The giant went and stood on a boulder to get a better view of the surrounding landscape. Lifting his hand to visor his eyes, he turned this way and that, hesitating.
“Snorri,” Archie mumbled in exasperation. “Have you forgotten the way back to Jugenheim?”
“There!” the giant suddenly said, pointing as the misty clouds parted. “Look! Yggdrasil,” he said in a tone of awe.
There, on a distant mountaintop, a gigantic tree trunk as thick as a Norman tower rose from the crest of the mountain, up, up, into the gray clouds.
The boys stared at it, then looked at each other in amazement. Jake had never even heard of a tree that big.
“Jugenheim is up there somewhere in its branches,” Snorri said. “Home.”
“You mean we have to climb that thing?” Archie asked.
Snorri nodded. “C’mon.”
The giant started marching off with his usual enormous paces. Boom-boom, boom-boom.
“Wait up!” Jake hollered.
“Huh?” Snorri stopped and turned around, then smiled sheepishly when he saw that he had nearly left them a quarter-mile behind. “Sorry,” he rumbled when they finally caught up to him.
“We have to stick together!” Jake chided, panting after running to catch up.
“Sorry, I’m just eager to go home. But don’t worry, I can walk slower.”
“Good,” Archie muttered, giving Jake a reproachful glance—as if every mishap along the way was already his fault.
Jake was too excited about the adventure before them to care. His eyes were shining and his steps were light as the four of them set out—together this time—for the first leg of their journey, to reach the legendary Tree of the Universe.
Snorri led the way with the Pigeon slung across his back. Jake and Archie followed, but they soon found that walking directly behind Snorri meant having to cross through each of his giant footprints, jumping down into the foot-shaped depression, climbing up the other side.
Since this was a waste of energy for the long journey ahead, they moved up to walk beside him, one on either side. Red prowled along beside Jake, who, for his part, could not have been happier, to be heading out on an adventure.
It was a great day: This was what he had been born to do, Jake thought, following in his parents’ footsteps.
He might never have known them, torn away from them as a baby by the wicked schemes of Uncle Waldrick and the sea-witch, Fionnula Coralbroom, but in acting as a Lightrider, like they had been, Jake almost felt as if he knew them.
Marching through the tall grass of a high, mountain meadow, he was invigorated for the quest ahead. The breeze tousled his blond forelock; beneath it, his eyes gleamed with anticipation.
He could barely wait to see Giant Land.
PART III
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Enchanted Wood
Hiking through the forest, the travelers glimpsed the azure sky now and then through the branches. Along the path, they passed fascinating rock formations like trolls turned to stone.
Occasionally, the trai
l broke into sweeping views of distant emerald valleys and the sapphire fjord, where a whale breached with the simple joy of being alive. They shouted in amazement to see it splashing up into the air and crashing back down into the deep. When its great gray tail slipped below the water for the last time, they trekked on, through tranquil woods perfumed with the piney scent of Christmas trees.
To be sure, Jake was many miles now from the grimy streets of London, coated in coal soot. But as much as he could appreciate spending a beautiful summer’s day roaming through the green mountains of Norway, he was impatient to get there, reach their destination.
Besides, he was still a city kid at heart, and every now and then, he could not help feeling as though things in the forest were watching him.
Then they set foot on the base of the next mountain, and Jake grew nearly certain of it. Indeed, he could almost pinpoint the exact moment they crossed the border leaving the normal world and entered into magic-ruled territory.
He could feel it in his bones, and he became uneasy.
This second mountain was the one at whose summit Snorri had spotted the mysterious Tree they’d have to climb to get to Giant Land.
As they started up the slope with Snorri in the lead, he recalled the odd rock formations they had passed and tried not to think about Miss Langesund’s earlier mention of trolls. Giants were obviously real, so why should trolls be any different?
He didn’t mention this concern aloud, though. He didn’t want to scare Archie. If trolls were real, maybe they were afraid of giants, he reasoned. Maybe, seeing Snorri, the trolls would keep their distance, and if all else failed, at least they still had Red.
Recalling how vicious the Gryphon could be—when the occasion called—helped to put his mind at ease.
Up the mountain path they marched. His knapsack started to feel like twice its weight hanging off his shoulders. Jake was glad he’d worn good boots.
At least there was plenty of time to discuss Isabelle’s tips for Snorri about how to woo the princess.
Snorri was as shocked as Jake had been when he’d first heard her strange advice. “Listen to her?” he echoed. “Make her laugh?”
“I know. Weird, huh? But that’s what she said.” Jake wiped the sweat off his brow with a pass of his forearm, then stepped over a mossy log.
“But I already do all that!” Snorri replied.
“Then maybe she already likes you, and you just didn’t know it yet,” Archie chimed in from several feet behind them.
This shocked Snorri even more. The giant paused in astonishment and turned around to gape at him. “Already likes me?” He abruptly frowned. “Say, little master, are you all right?”
“My leg’s bleeding again,” he admitted.
Hearing this, Jake also stopped and turned around in concern, only to find his cousin limping along and lagging farther behind on the trail than he had realized.
Blast it, he had forgotten all about Archie’s hurt leg. He frowned and went back to him, thrusting away a flitter of fear as he hoped that nothing with fangs in the forest smelled the blood oozing through Archie’s bandage.
Wolves. Bears. Trolls?
“Why don’t you ride on Red for a while?”
“I’ll be fine.” Archie picked up a suitable walking stick from among the fallen branches lying around. It split into a natural Y shape at the top, so he used it for a crutch. “There. Right as rain.”
“Honestly, Red doesn’t mind—”
“I don’t need to be carried! I can pull my own weight,” the smaller boy said defensively.
Jake suspected Archie’s pride was still smarting from Dani O’Dell’s offer to protect him. Somehow Dani’s opinion on most things seemed to matter an awful lot to Archie, Jake had noticed.
“Suit yourself,” he mumbled. “Just don’t overdo it, Arch. We’ve still got a long way to go.”
“Actually, I think we’re almost there!” Snorri pointed in excitement. “I see a clearing. It’s not far!”
All Jake could see was the dense forest surrounding them and the angled ground before them, covered in its uniform blanket of old brown pine needles and dead leaves.
Snorri could see farther than they could from his vantage point, however, being five or six times taller than the boys. “Another mile at the most and we should be there, at the Tree,” the giant promised.
“Well, that’s good news,” Archie murmured. Red pounced over to walk beside the boy genius the rest of the way in case he stumbled. Jake gave his Gryphon a discreet nod of gratitude for looking after his cousin.
They labored on.
But with every step closer to the summit and the Tree of legend, Yggdrasil, the more Jake’s sense of eeriness intensified. The forest shadows seemed to grow darker. The path became more difficult, a steep, rocky scrabble.
At one point, a rush of stones rolled down the trail at them, as if the mountain itself were trying to drive them off. Fortunately, Snorri was at the front of the line and these were no more than pebbles to him. The giant quickly turned his back, put his feet together, and shielded the boys and Red from the brief rockslide.
“Whoa! Avalanche,” Jake exclaimed as the stones bounced past them on both sides.
“You two pips all right?” Snorri asked after the rocks had passed. The boys nodded and asked him the same. Snorri said he was quite unscathed, so they thanked him for his quick thinking and pressed on.
Then Jake noticed that the Gryphon also looked on full alert. Red’s small tufted ears were cocked, his golden eagle-eyes scanning the surrounding trees for any sign of a threat. It seemed he wasn’t the only one who sensed something strange about this mountain.
Red let out a low, unhappy growl.
“I know, boy,” Jake murmured to his pet. “I feel it, too. We’re not welcome here. Unfortunately, we’ve got no choice. It’s the only way to Yoo-gan-hime.”
The Gryphon snorted skeptically through his leathery beak.
Then Jake noticed that his cousin was wearing a look of perplexity, like he was pondering some equation. “What is it, Arch?”
“Oh, I was just thinking about the rockslide.”
“What about it?”
“Why it might’ve happened.”
“Something doesn’t want us here.”
“Nonsense. There’s obviously a logical explanation.”
“Oh?”
“Given the time of year, the melting snows and spring rains must have loosened the turf and freed the stones,” he mused aloud. “Then gravity takes over and the stones fall away from their places, following the path of least resistance—”
“Ow!” Jake suddenly cried as an acorn beaned him in the head.
He looked up into the branches above him with a scowl while Archie started laughing.
“Good shot, squirrel!”
“I didn’t see any squirrel,” Jake muttered, rubbing his noggin indignantly. “Did you see it?”
“No.” Archie shook his head. “But what else would it be? Maybe the wind…”
“There is no wind,” Jake replied.
Archie frowned, then they pressed on, until a moment later, another acorn struck—this time hitting Archie on the shoulder, while a third thunked Snorri in the back.
“What is this? Somebody’s throwing acorns at us!”
“What kind of squirrel has that good of aim?” Jake demanded.
Snorri stopped and turned around, eyeing the boys as though he suspected them of playing a prank on him. “Was that you doing that?”
“No!” they exclaimed in unison.
Then a shower of acorns came down on them all at once.
They were too busy protecting their heads to see who or how or where it was coming from, but it would have taken an army of trained squirrels to unload on them like that.
Fortunately, the deluge of acorns pelting them was brief. When it had passed, they looked at each other in bafflement.
“Honestly,” Archie murmured, frowning as he scanned the woods. �
�My weird-o-meter is going off.”
“You have a weird-o-meter?” Jake asked in surprise. “Now there’s a useful invention!”
Archie just looked at him. “It was a joke.”
“Too bad. Maybe you should invent one. It would probably come in handy, given the lives we lead,” Jake muttered, then he shivered a little. “Is it getting colder?”
Archie nodded. “Because of our elevation.”
“Ah.” It was a fine thing, having a logical, science-minded person on hand under such circumstances, Jake reflected. But as they soldiered on toward the clearing that Snorri had seen ahead, things got even weirder, until not even Archie could explain the strange sounds the forest was making.
They moved into the gloomy shadow of the mountain, where the trees seemed to moan at them like spirits in a cemetery, creaking their branches and rattling bony twig-fingers as though trying to scare them away.
Just the breeze, just the breeze, Jake assured himself over and over as he glanced around.
He could have sworn some of those trees got up and walked a few steps, writhing on their roots somehow.
The vines seemed to slither over the thick boughs. The thorny brambles here and there seemed to reach for them to tear their skin, and from the corner of his eye, Jake kept seeing threatening faces in the gnarled bark of the old oak trees.
They passed strange, knee-high mushrooms with polka-dotted umbrellas and smooth boulders covered in rich moss, like cozy little resting places made just for them.
But Jake knew a magical trap when he saw one, and none of them dared even pause.
All the while, as they labored on up the steep path, an abnormally large wood moth followed them, wavering after them from tree to tree.
Each time it landed on a tree-trunk to rest, the white markings on its ragged brown wings spied on them like big, strange eyes.
Stupid bug, Jake thought, resolving to ignore it—and to stick to cities from now on. Determined to ignore the eeriness of this forest, he concentrated on putting one foot after the other.
