by Alan Early
He smells the acrid stench of the flesh of his palm burning and singeing as he holds it. He keeps his hand like that for as long as he can, relishing the pain and savouring the power. Then he loosens his grip slightly between his index finger and thumb. He blows into the hollow he has created. Icy air escapes from his lungs and envelopes the moonstone. It cracks and hisses and whistles sharply as it cools. The burning sensation is gone now, but the pain remains.
He opens his hand. His palm is red raw; the skin has burned off it completely, exposing strips of blood and muscle. It is not pretty to look upon and the pain is inching further up his arm but he doesn’t mind. His attention is focused on the small pebble.
Now that it has cooled down, it no longer appears white but is transparent, like a piece of glass. He takes it in his other hand – with a flash of green light, his burned hand repairs itself – and examines it more closely. The pebble isn’t fully clear: pale swirls of green and pink dance in the glass and motes of moon-dust glitter throughout. It is a perfect circle, with a smooth convex curve on each side, and the moon itself is magnified behind it as Loki holds it up to the light.
‘A piece of the moon,’ he says to no one but himself. ‘Did the Moon-wolf Hati bite you off?’ Hmm. Hati’s Bite. A suitable name.
He can’t take his eyes off it. Such a small and pretty trinket and yet so powerful, so dangerous. The destruction it has caused in this clearing will be a drop in the ocean compared to what he will do with it. It is just what he needs.
A noise unexpectedly breaks through his train of thought. It is a whining sound, coming from the edge of the clearing, shrill and piercing like the cry of an animal in pain. Loki turns towards the noise and squints at the source through the darkness.
With the beast’s black coat, Loki has trouble spotting it at first, but then he notices a shape. ‘Oh,’ he says with glee when he sees what it is. ‘Fortune favours me tonight.’
It is a wolf, lying on its side under a half-fallen tree. Its head rolls around and it is whining, clearly hurt. Loki walks towards it to get a closer look. The fur on one side of its body has been burned away, presumably scorched by the impact of Hati’s Bite. Bare skin and muscle are exposed underneath and he can see the animal’s ribs shuddering up and down with each laboured breath.
Loki kneels by the wolf and slides his arms underneath it. At first the beast growls at him but then whimpers when Loki lifts it off the ground. Its head lolls to one side; it is too weak to lift it.
‘Fortune favours you, too,’ Loki tells the wolf as he carries it back into the centre of the clearing. ‘I will make you better. Better and stronger and more powerful than you have ever been. You will walk on two feet and you will make me an army.’ He crouches down, laying the beast on top of the small mound. Its back twists awkwardly over the bump. ‘I will give you a piece of my power. For you are my second child, my Fenris Wolf.’
With that, he points Hati’s Bite at the moon. Rays of moonlight fall through the glass, contracting into a single beam of white. Loki murmurs words constructed from the ancient and primordial language of runes and tilts the piece of moonstone, focusing the light beam over the wolf’s face and into one fearful eye.
There is a sudden and blinding flash of light.
‘Argh!’
Arthur sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in sweat. He’d finally had it! The dream he’d been expecting and dreading ever since his pendant had glowed a few days ago – he’d finally had it. He felt a dull, throbbing pain in his right hand. He looked down at it, holding it palm-up. It looked fine, but the memory of soreness was still there. He recalled with great discomfort that Loki had burned his own right hand in the dream. Whatever was wrong with Arthur’s hand, the pain was gradually fading, so he put it out of his mind.
A pale white light flowed in through the curtains of his bedroom. Some of the glass had been smashed while Arthur had been away. He assumed correctly that it was a result of the hammer breaking through, while Joe thought it had been some neighbours’ kids and a misplaced football. Either way, the hole was now patched with a sheet of cardboard; Joe had promised to get it fixed on Monday. Arthur glanced at the phone on his bedside locker. It was still dead from the frozen lake. He’d tried the trick of holding it under a hair-dryer but to no avail. He got up, walked barefoot across a chilly floor to his desk and switched on his laptop. By the time it had finally booted up, it was 7.21. Far too early to be up on a Saturday morning. However, he knew that there was no chance of getting back to sleep again after that dream.
When they’d arrived home the day before, Joe had still been at work so Arthur had spent most of the evening in the Barry house, playing with Ice. Joe came knocking around seven and, after simultaneously commending Arthur for rescuing Ash and reprimanding him for putting his own life at risk, he took him to a local pizzeria for dinner.
Arthur sat down at his desk, his cold toes curling under the chair, and logged on to Skype. The instant-messenger service popped up on the screen, telling him that Ash was online. That didn’t mean much as Ash usually left her laptop on overnight anyway, downloading the latest updates for all her favourite pieces of software. And Ash had a lot of favourite pieces of software.
However, it was worth a try, so he double-clicked on her name. The tone of a phone played through the speakers. It rang six or seven times and Arthur was just about to hang up when–
‘Morning,’ Ash croaked and a dark and grainy image of her face filled the screen. ‘It’s very early, Arthur. What’s up?’
‘Sorry,’ he said, tilting his own webcam so she could see him better. ‘I know it’s early but can I call over? I have something to tell you.’
‘What is it?’ She rubbed her eyes, still not awake enough to look concerned.
‘I had one of the dreams.’
Those words managed to shake her awake and she looked at him on the screen with wide, worried eyes.
‘You’d better come over, then.’
Ash was still in her peach-coloured pyjamas and dressing gown when Arthur arrived at her door a few minutes later. Ice was at her feet, wagging her tail merrily at him.
‘Have you eaten yet?’ she asked, leading him into the kitchen. The house was quiet; all the other Barrys were sensible enough to still be in their cosy beds. Even from downstairs, he could hear Granny Barry’s ragged snores from the spare room.
‘No, I wanted to tell you right away.’
She opened a cabinet over the sink and pulled out a box of cereal. ‘Fancy some?’ He nodded and she started collecting bowls, spoons and milk.
‘Listen, Ash …’ he started as she worked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Wait till we’re finished eating.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the longer I put off hearing about the dream, the longer I can imagine he’s not back.’ She sat down and poured herself a heaped bowl of Cornflakes, splashing milk liberally over them. Arthur watched in silence as she started to eat, then sat down across from her and copied her.
For the next few minutes, they didn’t speak. The only sound in the kitchen was the crunching of cereal and Ice’s paws and wheels rolling on the tiled floor. The tension didn’t break until Ash slurped the last of the milk from her bowl and put it aside.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’
He told her. He told her about Loki’s flight through Asgard, about the moonstone and the clearing, and lastly he told her about the Fenris Wolf. As he recounted the story, he paced the room, looking anywhere but at Ash. He studied the floor, the ceiling, the plates in the open dishwasher.
And most of all, he studied Ice. She sat in front of him, looking at him with her big black eyes and with her ears cocked as if listening to his tale. The more he watched her, the more he was filled with a sense of unease about the pup. The way she was looking at him seemed to be intense, intelligent, almost human.
When he was done, all Ash could manage was, ‘Wow.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But that’s not the
worst part of it.’
‘What’s the worst part?’
Before the pup had time to react, Arthur picked her up and dropped her out into the hallway, shutting the door between them. He urgently turned back to Ash, who had a confused look on her face.
‘Why did you–’ she started.
‘Listen, Ash,’ he leaned over the breakfast table, whispering frantically, ‘just as I was telling the story, I realised something. Have you ever noticed how Ice looks just like a wolf cub?’
Ice was scratching the door, whining to get in.
‘What?’
‘Think about it. The long snout, the pointy ears. What dog looks like that? She looks just like a younger version of the wolf in my dream.’
‘Arthur don’t be ridic–’
‘Look at how we found her! On the ice. How did she get out there by herself? She could barely crawl to you, let alone make it that far out.’
‘It’s like Cousin Maggie said: someone put her there to die.’
‘No, don’t you see? She was there deliberately waiting for us.’
The scratching had become increasingly fevered. Ash looked at Arthur, the accusation hanging in the air between them.
‘You think … you think that my puppy was trying to kill us?’ She raised her eyebrows as she said it and he could see she was sceptical.
Arthur let out the breath he’d been holding and said, ‘Look, I know it sounds crazy, but if you’d had my dream you’d be suspicious too.’
‘So what do we do now?’ Ash asked. ‘How do we prove or disprove your theory?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied.
‘Wait! I have an idea!’ Ash tapped Arthur’s chest. ‘Loki can’t touch the pendant without it hurting him,’ she reminded him. ‘Surely the same would apply to this child of his, this Fenris Wolf.’
Arthur thought it over before nodding. ‘You could be right.’
Ash got up, walked to the door and opened it. Ice practically fell into the room. Ash smiled for a second as the cute pup licked her ankles innocently then picked her up and carried her to Arthur.
He took the pendant from around his neck and dangled it over the little pup in Ash’s arms. She gawked up at it, the bronze disc reflected in her dark eyes.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Here goes.’ He lowered the pendant until it hung just above Ice’s fur. He hesitated, bracing himself in case of the blast that had happened every time Loki had touched the pendant, then placed it against Ice’s back.
Nothing happened.
The dog twisted in Ash’s arms and snapped at the pendant as if she thought Arthur was teasing her with it, but he snatched it away before she could catch it.
‘Well, that answers that,’ said Ash with a relieved smile. She nuzzled her face into Ice’s fur before setting her back down.
‘I’m not sure it answers anything,’ Arthur warned.
‘What do you mean?’ Ice looked from one friend to the other, wagging her tail excitedly.
‘We don’t really know if the pendant would have any effect on the wolf. I had no chance to try it against the World Serpent,’ Arthur said. ‘We can’t let ourselves be fooled again.’
‘Be fooled? What do you mean? Look at her, Arthur. She’s tiny and helpless – do you think she’s faking the problem with her legs? How could she possibly hurt us?’
‘Listen–’
‘No! You listen to me.’ She was suddenly furious, more so than Arthur had ever seen her, and he decided it would be prudent to stay quiet. ‘You’re obviously scared of Ice. I know she almost got us drowned, but it wasn’t her fault. It was mine. Clearly that wasn’t a real Loki dream you had; it was just an ordinary nightmare. A bad nightmare – like Max has been having.’
‘Yeah … OK, maybe you’re right,’ Arthur admitted, putting the pendant back around his neck. An awkward silence ensued and then, ‘Well, I suppose I should go home. You probably want to get a little more sleep.’
‘Yeah, I’m still pretty tired, actually.’
They didn’t say anything else to each other as Arthur let himself out. On the walk back to his house, he wondered about his dream. He wasn’t at all convinced by Ash’s idea that it was a simple nightmare. He was sure that it had been a vision and that Loki’s second child was a wolf, so he had a bad feeling and really didn’t know what to think about Ice. Despite the lack of reaction to the pendant, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they shouldn’t trust the little dog. He’d been tricked once before and it had almost cost him, Ash and Max their lives. Even if he couldn’t convince Ash, he wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.
Chapter Nine
Arthur walked to the bus stop by himself on Monday morning. He left early, hoping to avoid Ash, but she’d obviously had the same idea. When he got there he found her sitting by herself.
They hadn’t spoken since Saturday morning when they’d had their disagreement. Arthur knew they should have been over it by now, but this was their first argument and it felt strange – uncomfortable, somehow. The rest of the weekend had passed slowly. He’d spent most of it playing an Xbox game that Joe had bought him for Christmas. His heart wasn’t in it, though, and he barely noticed any time one of the computer-generated zombies attacked his avatar. As he stirred some soup for himself and Joe on Sunday afternoon, he spotted Ash through the kitchen window. She and Max were on the green chasing after Ice while the pup rolled after a football. Arthur could have gone out and said something, but he didn’t know what to say. He certainly wasn’t going to apologise, as he was still certain that his hunch about Ice was spot on, but he knew that Ash wouldn’t want to hear about it again.
‘Hey,’ Arthur said as he got close to the bus stop.
Ash looked up. ‘Oh, hi.’
‘Going in early?’
‘Something like that. Listen, Arthur–’
‘No need to apologise.’
‘Apologise?’ she said, affronted, her voice rising. ‘Why would I apologise?’
‘Oh, so it’s me who’s in the wrong, is that it?’ Arthur shouted, equally outraged.
Ash didn’t reply, but the way she crossed her arms and stared at him said it all. Just then, a bus pulled up to the stop. They boarded in silence and sat at opposite ends to each other.
It was the first proper day back to normality after the Christmas break for thousands of workers and schoolchildren so the traffic moved frustratingly slowly. Whatever their reasons, it turned out it was a good thing they’d left early because otherwise they’d have been late for their first day back.
The morning bell rang as they walked across the car-park in front of Belmont School – Ash keeping twenty paces ahead of Arthur at all times, pointedly ignoring him. The building was modern and boxy, with one side completely constructed from glass. At the sound of the bell they started to run, and as they dashed inside they found that they weren’t the only ones late and racing down the hallway. Other students and even some teachers were speed-walking towards their classrooms, including their own Miss Keegan.
‘Hi, Miss,’ Ash said when she caught up with her.
‘Oh, good morning, Ashling. Arthur.’ Her strawberry blonde curls cascaded out from under a pink, woollen beanie and she was wearing a matching cardigan with a yellow blouse underneath. She was younger than most of the other teachers in Belmont and certainly the most fashion conscious.
‘I saw you two on the news last week,’ she said as she walked with them. ‘You were lucky Arthur was there, Ash.’
Ash’s face flushed red as she muttered grudgingly, ‘I know.’
From the stony silence that followed, Miss Keegan realised that all was not well between the two friends so she quickly changed the subject. ‘We have a couple of new students today, so you’re no longer the new kid, Arthur.’
Despite their argument, Ash and Arthur looked at each other, concerned. Could this mean Loki was back in his Will-disguise? Like the rest of the world, Miss Keegan had been hypnotised to forget that Will had ever existed,
so he could easily have slipped back into class and only Arthur, Ash and Max would know that he was a threat.
Their fellow pupils were mostly sitting around on the desks when Ash, Arthur and the teacher reached the classroom. They were swapping lists of Christmas presents or sharing funny stories about things that had happened over the break. When they saw Miss Keegan, they all shuffled into their seats with much scraping of chair legs on the linoleum floor. Arthur took his seat next to Ash and quickly scanned the room. No sign of Will. In fact, there was no one new here at all that he could see.
‘I trust you all had a nice break,’ Miss Keegan was saying, taking off her coat and pulling some books out of her large handbag. ‘I hope you’re all so well rested that you can’t wait to get back to work!’
There were some groans at this. Kevin and Colin – the ginger O’Toole twins – said in sync, ‘Go easy on us, Miss!’
‘Yeah, Miss,’ Rob Tynan spoke up. ‘We need to warm up first.’
The class made some general sounds of agreement as Miss Keegan chuckled to herself. Just then, there was a knock on the door. The teacher went over to answer it, holding a finger to her lips at the class. Arthur caught a glimpse of their principal before the teacher shut the door behind her. As the other pupils started murmuring and whispering to each other again, Arthur turned to Ash.
‘Could you see the newbie?’ he asked.
‘Nope. Do you think it’s him?’
‘Will?’
She nodded.
‘I hope not.’
The door opened again and the class fell back into hushed silence. Miss Keegan re-entered, ushering a boy and girl in front of her.
The boy was almost as tall as Miss Keegan but of a much broader build. He had small brown eyes through which he squinted at his new classmates, a large and crooked nose that looked like it had been broken at some stage and a strong, square jaw with hints of facial hair already sprouting along it. His black hair was shaved close to his head and he grimaced at them with an expression that said I’m bigger than you, so don’t test me. He had a backpack slung over one of his powerful shoulders and his brown school uniform was a couple of sizes too small for him, with the sleeves stopping well short of his wrists. Arthur doubted that they even made the Belmont uniform in his size.
