by Rick Riordan
Finally, just to make small talk, I asked, ‘So who’s trying to kill me?’
He turned right on Arlington. We skirted the Public Garden, past the equestrian statue of George Washington, the rows of gaslight lamp posts and snow-covered hedges. I was tempted to bail out of the car, run back to the swan pond and hide in my sleeping bag.
‘Magnus,’ said Randolph, ‘I’ve made my life’s work studying the Norse exploration of North America.’
‘Wow, thanks,’ I said. ‘That really answered my question.’
Suddenly Randolph did remind me of my mom. He gave me the same exasperated scowl, the same look over the top of his glasses, like, Please, kid, cut the sarcasm. The similarity made my chest ache.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll humour you. Norse exploration. You mean the Vikings.’
Randolph winced. ‘Well … Viking means raider. It’s more of a job description. Not all Norse people were Vikings. But, yes, those guys.’
‘The statue of Leif Erikson … Does that mean the Vikings – er, the Norse – discovered Boston? I thought the Pilgrims did that.’
‘I could give you a three-hour lecture on that topic alone.’
‘Please don’t.’
‘Suffice it to say, the Norse explored North America and even built settlements around the year 1000, almost five hundred years before Christopher Columbus. Scholars agree on that.’
‘That’s a relief. I hate it when scholars disagree.’
‘But no one is sure how far south the Norse sailed. Did they make it to what is now the United States? That statue of Leif Erikson … that was the pet project of a wishful thinker in the 1800s, a man named Eben Horsford. He was convinced that Boston was the lost Norse settlement of Norumbega, their furthest point of exploration. He had an instinct, a gut feeling, but no real proof. Most historians wrote him off as a crackpot.’
He looked at me meaningfully.
‘Let me guess … you don’t think he’s a crackpot.’ I resisted the urge to say, Takes one to believe one.
‘Those maps on my desk,’ Randolph said. ‘They are the proof. My colleagues call them forgeries, but they’re not. I staked my reputation on it!’
And that’s why you got fired from Harvard, I thought.
‘The Norse explorers did make it this far,’ he continued. ‘They were searching for something … and they found it here. One of their ships sank nearby. For years I thought the shipwreck was in Massachusetts Bay. I sacrificed everything to find it. I bought my own boat, took my wife, my children on expeditions. The last time …’ His voice broke. ‘The storm came out of nowhere, the fires …’
He didn’t seem anxious to share more, but I got the general idea: he’d lost his family at sea. He really had staked everything on his crazy theory about Vikings in Boston.
I felt bad for the guy, sure. I also didn’t want to be his next casualty.
We stopped at the corner of Boylston and Charles.
‘Maybe I’ll just get out here.’ I tried the handle. The door was locked from the driver’s side.
‘Magnus, listen. It’s no accident you were born in Boston. Your father wanted you to find what he lost two thousand years ago.’
My feet got jumpy. ‘Did you just say … two thousand years?’
‘Give or take.’
I considered screaming and pounding on the window. Would anybody help me? If I could get out of the car, maybe I could find Uncle Frederick and Annabeth, assuming they were any less insane than Randolph.
We turned onto Charles Street, heading north between the Public Garden and the Common. Randolph could’ve been taking me anywhere – Cambridge, the North End, or some out-of-the-way body dump.
I tried to keep calm. ‘Two thousand years … that’s a longer lifespan than your average dad.’
Randolph’s face reminded me of the Man in the Moon from old black-and-white cartoons: pale and rotund, pitted and scarred, with a secretive smile that wasn’t very friendly. ‘Magnus, what do you know about Norse mythology?’
This just gets better and better, I thought.
‘Uh, not much. My mom had a picture book she used to read me when I was little. And weren’t there a couple of movies about Thor?’
Randolph shook his head in disgust. ‘Those movies … ridiculously inaccurate. The real gods of Asgard – Thor, Loki, Odin and the rest – are much more powerful, much more terrifying than anything Hollywood could concoct.’
‘But … they’re myths. They’re not real.’
Randolph gave me a sort of pitying look. ‘Myths are simply stories about truths we’ve forgotten.’
‘So, look, I just remembered I have an appointment down the street –’
‘A millennium ago, Norse explorers came to this land.’ Randolph drove us past the Cheers bar on Beacon Street, where bundled-up tourists were taking photos of themselves in front of the sign. I spotted a crumpled flyer skittering across the sidewalk: it had the word MISSING and an old picture of me. One of the tourists stepped on it.
‘The captain of these explorers,’ Randolph continued, ‘was a son of the god Skirnir.’
‘A son of a god. Really, anywhere around here is good. I can walk.’
‘This man carried a very special item,’ Randolph said, ‘something that once belonged to your father. When the Norse ship went down in a storm, that item was lost. But you – you have the ability to find it.’
I tried the door again. Still locked.
The really bad part? The more Randolph talked, the less I could convince myself that he was nuts. His story seeped into my mind – storms, wolves, gods, Asgard. The words clicked into place like pieces of a puzzle I’d never had the courage to finish. I was starting to believe him, and that scared the baked beans out of me.
Randolph whipped around the access road for Storrow Drive. He parked at a meter on Cambridge Street. To the north, past the elevated tracks of the Mass General T station, rose the stone towers of the Longfellow Bridge.
‘That’s where we’re going?’ I asked.
Randolph fished for quarters in his cupholder. ‘All these years, it was so much closer than I realized. I just needed you!’
‘I’m definitely feeling the love.’
‘You are sixteen today.’ Randolph’s eyes danced with excitement. ‘It’s the perfect day for you to reclaim your birthright. But it’s also what your enemies have been waiting for. We have to find it first.’
‘But –’
‘Trust me a little while longer, Magnus. Once we have the weapon –’
‘Weapon? Now my birthright is a weapon?’
‘Once you have it in your possession, you’ll be much safer. I can explain everything to you. I can help you train for what’s to come.’
He opened his car door. Before he could get out, I grabbed his wrist.
I usually avoid touching people. Physical contact creeps me out. But I needed his full attention.
‘Give me one answer,’ I said. ‘One clear answer, without the rambling and the history lectures. You said you knew my dad. Who is he?’
Randolph placed his hand over mine, which made me squirm. His palm was too rough and calloused for a history professor’s. ‘On my life, Magnus, I swear this is the truth: your father is a Norse god. Now, hurry. We’re in a twenty-minute parking spot.’
FIVE
I’ve Always Wanted to Destroy a Bridge
‘You can’t drop a bombshell like that and walk away!’ I yelled as Randolph walked away.
Despite his cane and his stiff leg, the guy could really move. He was like an Olympic gold medallist in hobbling. He forged ahead, climbing the sidewalk of the Longfellow Bridge as I jogged after him, the wind screaming in my ears.
The morning commuters were coming in from Cambridge. A single line of cars was backed up the length of the span, barely moving. You’d think my uncle and I would be the only ones dumb enough to walk across the bridge in sub-zero weather, but, this being Boston, half a dozen runners were chugging along, looki
ng like emaciated seals in their Lycra bodysuits. A mom with two kids bundled in a stroller was walking on the opposite sidewalk. Her kids looked about as happy as I felt.
My uncle was still fifteen feet ahead of me.
‘Randolph!’ I called. ‘I’m talking to you!’
‘The drift of the river,’ he muttered. ‘The landfill on the banks … allowing for a thousand years of shifting tidal patterns –’
‘Yo!’ I caught the sleeve of his cashmere coat. ‘Rewind to the part about a Norse god being my pappy.’
Randolph scanned our surroundings. We’d stopped at one of the bridge’s main towers – a cone of granite rising fifty feet above us. People said the towers looked like giant salt and pepper shakers, but I’d always thought they looked like Daleks from Doctor Who. (So I’m a nerd. Sue me. And, yes, even homeless kids watch TV sometimes – in shelter rec rooms, on public-library computers … We have our ways.)
A hundred feet below us, the Charles River glistened steel grey, its surface mottled with patches of snow and ice like the skin of a massive python.
Randolph leaned so far over the railing it made me jittery.
‘The irony,’ he muttered. ‘Here, of all places …’
‘So, anyway,’ I said, ‘about my father …’
Randolph gripped my shoulder. ‘Look down there, Magnus. What do you see?’
Cautiously I glanced over the side. ‘Water.’
‘No, the carved ornamentation, just below us.’
I looked again. About halfway down the side of the pier, a shelf of granite jutted over the water like a theatre seating box with a pointy tip. ‘It looks like a nose.’
‘No, it’s … Well, from this angle, it does sort of look like a nose. But it’s the prow of a Viking longship. See? The other pier has one, too. The poet Longfellow – for whom the bridge was named – he was fascinated by the Norse. Wrote poems about their gods. Like Eben Horsford, Longfellow believed the Vikings had explored Boston. Hence the designs on the bridge.’
‘You should give tours,’ I said. ‘All the rabid Longfellow fans would pay big bucks.’
‘Don’t you see?’ Randolph still had his hand on my shoulder, which wasn’t making me any less anxious. ‘So many people over the centuries have known. They’ve felt it instinctively, even if they had no proof. This area wasn’t just visited by the Vikings. It was sacred to them! Right below us – somewhere near these decorative longships – is the wreck of an actual longship, holding a cargo of incalculable value.’
‘I still see water. And I still want to hear about Dad.’
‘Magnus, the Norse explorers came here searching for the axis of the worlds, the very trunk of the tree. They found it –’
A low boom echoed across the river. The bridge shook. About a mile away, amid the thicket of chimneys and steeples of Back Bay, a column of oily black smoke mushroomed skyward.
I steadied myself against the railing. ‘Um, wasn’t that close to your house?’
Randolph’s expression hardened. His stubbly beard glistened silver in the sunlight.
‘We’re out of time. Magnus, extend your hand over the water. The sword is down there. Call it. Focus on it as if it’s the most important thing in the world – the thing you want the most.’
‘A sword? I – look, Randolph, I can tell you’re having a hard day, but –’
‘DO IT.’
The sternness in his voice made me flinch. Randolph had to be insane, talking about gods and swords and ancient shipwrecks. Yet the column of smoke over Back Bay was very real. Sirens wailed in the distance. On the bridge, drivers stuck their heads out of their windows to gawk, holding up smartphones and taking pictures.
And, as much as I wanted to deny it, Randolph’s words resonated with me. For the first time, I felt like my body was humming at the right frequency, like I’d finally been tuned to match the crappy soundtrack of my life.
I stretched my hand out over the river.
Nothing happened.
Of course nothing happened, I chided myself. What were you expecting?
The bridge shook more violently. Further down the sidewalk, a jogger stumbled. From behind me came the crunch of one car rear-ending another. Horns blared.
Above the rooftops of Back Bay, a second column of smoke billowed. Ash and orange cinders sprayed upward as if the explosion were volcanic, spewing from the ground.
‘That – that was a lot closer,’ I noted. ‘It’s like something is zeroing in on us.’
I really hoped Randolph would say, Nah, of course not. Don’t be silly!
He seemed to get older before my eyes. His wrinkles darkened. His shoulders slumped. He leaned heavily on his cane. ‘Please, not again,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Not like last time.’
‘Last time?’ Then I remembered what he’d said about losing his wife and daughters – a storm out of nowhere, fires.
Randolph locked eyes with me. ‘Try again, Magnus. Please.’
I thrust my hand towards the river. I imagined I was reaching for my mom, trying to pull her from the past – trying to save her from the wolves and the burning apartment. I reached for answers that might explain why I’d lost her, why my whole life since then had been nothing but a downhill spiral of suck.
Directly below me, the surface of the water began to steam. Ice melted. Snow evaporated, leaving a hole the shape of a hand – my hand, twenty times larger.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d had the same feeling when my mom first taught me to ride a bike. Don’t think about what you’re doing, Magnus. Don’t hesitate, or you’ll fall. Just keep going.
I swept my hand back and forth. A hundred feet below, the steaming hand mirrored my movements, clearing the surface of the Charles. Suddenly I stopped. A pinpoint of warmth hit the centre of my palm as if I’d intercepted a beam of sunlight.
Something was down there … a heat source buried deep in the frigid mud of the river bottom. I closed my fingers and pulled.
A dome of water swelled and ruptured like a dry-ice bubble. An object resembling a lead pipe shot upward and landed in my hand.
It looked nothing like a sword. I held it by one end, but there was no hilt. If it had ever had a point or a sharp edge, it didn’t now. The thing was about the right size for a blade, but it was so pitted and corroded, so encrusted with barnacles and glistening with mud and slime, I couldn’t even be sure it was metal. In short, it was the saddest, flimsiest, most disgusting piece of scrap I’d ever magically pulled from a river.
‘At last!’ Randolph lifted his eyes to the heavens. I got the feeling that, if not for his bum knee, he might’ve knelt on the ground and offered a prayer to the non-existent Norse gods.
‘Yeah.’ I hefted my new prize. ‘I feel safer already.’
‘You can renew it!’ Randolph said. ‘Just try!’
I turned the blade. I was surprised that it hadn’t already disintegrated in my hand.
‘I dunno, Randolph. This thing looks way past renewing. I’m not even sure it can be recycled.’
If I sound unimpressed or ungrateful, don’t get me wrong. The way I’d pulled the sword out of the river was so cool it freaked me out. I’d always wanted a superpower. I just hadn’t expected mine to entail retrieving garbage from river bottoms. The community-service volunteers were going to love me.
‘Concentrate, Magnus!’ Randolph said. ‘Quickly, before –’
Fifty feet away, the centre of the bridge erupted in flames. The shock wave pushed me against the rail. The right side of my face felt sunburned. Pedestrians screamed. Cars swerved and crashed into one another.
For some stupid reason, I ran towards the explosion. It was like I couldn’t help myself. Randolph shuffled after me, calling my name, but his voice seemed far away, unimportant.
Fire danced across the roofs of cars. Windows shattered from the heat, spraying the street with glass gravel. Drivers scrambled out of their vehicles and fled.
It looked like a meteor had hit the bridge. A
ten-foot-diameter circle of asphalt was charred and steaming. In the centre of the impact zone stood a human-size figure: a dark man in a dark suit.
When I say dark, I mean his skin was the purest, most beautiful shade of black I’d ever seen. Squid ink at midnight would not have been so black. His clothes were the same: a well-tailored jacket and slacks, a crisp shirt and tie – all cut from the fabric of a neutron star. His face was inhumanly handsome, chiselled obsidian. His long hair was combed back in an immaculate oil slick. His pupils glowed like tiny rings of lava.
I thought, If Satan were real, he would look like this guy.
Then I thought, No, Satan would be a schlub next to this guy. This guy is like Satan’s fashion consultant.
Those red eyes locked on to me.
‘Magnus Chase.’ His voice was deep and resonant, his accent vaguely German or Scandinavian. ‘You have brought me a gift.’
An abandoned Toyota Corolla stood between us. Satan’s fashion consultant walked straight through it, melting a path down the middle of the chassis like a blowtorch through wax.
The sizzling halves of the Corolla collapsed behind him, the wheels melted to puddles.
‘I will make you a gift as well.’ The dark man extended his hand. Smoke curled off his sleeve and ebony fingers. ‘Give me the sword and I will spare your life.’
SIX
Make Way for Ducklings, or They Will Smack You Upside the Head
I’d seen some weird stuff in my life.
I once watched a crowd of people wearing nothing but Speedos and Santa hats jog down Boylston in the middle of winter. I met a guy who could play the harmonica with his nose, a drum set with his feet, a guitar with his hands and a xylophone with his butt all at the same time. I knew a woman who’d adopted a grocery cart and named it Clarence. Then there was the dude who claimed to be from Alpha Centauri and had philosophical conversations with Canada geese.
So a well-dressed Satanic male model who could melt cars … why not? My brain just kind of expanded to accommodate the weirdness.
The dark man waited, his hand outstretched. The air around him rippled with heat.
