Secrets of Valhalla

by Jasmine Richards

  But there is no other way. How could he enjoy his submersion into this amazing world of data if his own world were destroyed? EarthWorm was a virus, and Buzz was the antiviral software.

  His hand went to the buttons on the side of the watch. He’d seen which one Mary had pressed before to scan the mountainside for an entrance in Saturn’s realm. Now it was time to press the other one.

  His finger rested on the button that Mary had designed to burst water balloons. The button that was going to burst EarthWorm. She hadn’t tested it. But it would work. It had to work.

  He felt something bang into his side, and he saw Jupiter floating in the light and air, his eyes closed and his breathing shallow.

  It was time. He pressed the button, and a red light beamed out from the watch and hit the translucent side of the worm’s body.

  BOOM!

  The worm was gone, and Buzz was lying on the rainbow bridge, watching bits of code drift off into the ether.

  “Buzz?” Mary knelt down beside him. “Are you okay?”

  Buzz sat up. He felt better than okay. He felt amazing. Extraordinary, even. Something had changed in him. But he wasn’t quite ready to tell Mary that yet. Not until he understood properly what had happened. “I’m fine,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Much better now that I know you’re alive.” She tilted her head to one side. “How’d you do it, then, Sherlock? How’d you explode the worm?”

  Buzz unstrapped her watch from his wrist and handed it back to her. “Your water balloon exploder function.”

  Mary grinned. “It works!” The smile slipped off her face. “Hey, that was pretty stupid, Buzz. I told you I hadn’t tested it.”

  “Yeah, but I knew that it’d do the trick.”

  “How?”

  “Because I know you.”

  “You trusted my invention,” she whispered. “You trusted me. That’s never happened before.” She held out a hand and pulled him to his feet. “Listen, Buzz, I need to tell you what I saw in the time tun—”

  A low groan to their left interrupted her. Jupiter lay on the ground, his eyes still closed. They swiftly knelt by his side, and Mary gently touched the god’s shoulder.

  Jupiter’s eyes snapped open. He sat bolt upright.

  “Wow, what a trip!” he exclaimed. He looked up at them and jumped to his feet.

  He slapped a hand on Buzz’s shoulder. “You are the Homo sapiens who freed me. Why would you do that?”

  Buzz and Mary exchanged a glance.

  “We came for the runes,” Mary said.

  There was not a flicker of remembrance on the god’s face.

  “You have no idea who we are, do you?” Buzz questioned.

  “I have spent several days in the belly of a data-eating worm. I’m going to have an idea about almost everything now.”

  “What do you mean?” Mary asked.

  “Young lady, do you know what happened to Odin when he spent seven days and seven nights as a captive of the World Tree?” Jupiter asked.

  “Yes. He was given all the knowledge in the world.” The answer flew from Buzz’s mouth.

  Mary frowned at him. “How’d you know that?”

  He shrugged. “Must have heard the Prof say it at some point.”

  Jupiter smiled at him with knowing eyes. “Hanging on that tree was the hardest thing Odin had ever done. By doing it, he was given the secrets of the universe and immense power. But that knowledge came at a price. Odin became distrustful. His infinite knowledge told him that no one could ever be truly trusted. That we all have secrets.” Jupiter took two stones out of his pocket. They both had symbols carved into them. “Being inside that worm for all that time flooded me with knowledge. I know now what Odin felt.”

  He held out a closed palm to Buzz and Mary. “These are for you.” He opened his palm to reveal the runes. “I give you these willingly as a thank-you for saving my life.”

  Mary and Buzz both reached for the runes at the same time, their hands bumping in their eagerness.

  “Sorry.” Buzz smiled at his friend. “You have one and I’ll have the other.”

  Mary nodded, her eyes wide as she took Mani’s rune, which had a diamond symbol carved into it.

  Buzz took Sunna’s rune and tested the weight of it in his hand. It was surprisingly heavy for such a small pebble, and it felt perfectly smooth except for the grooves of Sunna’s lightning bolt insignia.

  “Thanks for this,” Buzz said, looking up at Jupiter. “Now we need the next two. They are with your brother Neptune.”

  “Say no more,” Jupiter said. “I’ll download you safely to his location.” He inclined his head. “Give Neptune my regards.”

  The god of the sky then clicked his fingers, and Buzz felt himself disintegrate into the air. His thoughts exploded like fireworks as his brain rapidly processed what was happening. He had been dematerialized and turned into a wave of energy. He could feel himself flowing downward, and as he rippled through the air he heard Jupiter’s voice.

  “The EarthWorm has given us both a gift.” The god’s words sparked like electricity behind Buzz’s eyes. “Don’t ignore what you are capable of, don’t ignore what others are capable of.”

  “I don’t understand,” Buzz said. “What am I capable of?”

  “So much. Let me help you see,” Jupiter replied. “Remember: People are not always as they seem. History tells us that.”

  With a crunch of molecules, Buzz felt himself materialize and become whole once more. Mary was there as well, right next to him. They were falling through the clouds, wind whistling past their ears. He looked down to see an immense stretch of blueness below them.

  “Buzz, why are we falling through the sky?” Mary sounded scared. “I thought we were being downloaded to Neptune’s kingdom.”

  Buzz realized that Mary had not been privy to Jupiter’s voice-over. “I think he is trying to test me,” he tried to explain. “He said something about showing me what I’m capable of.”

  “What do you mean, capable of?” Mary snapped. “We’re capable of dying if we hit the sea from this height. We’ll break every bone in our bodies.”

  Not if you break the surface tension of the water first. The thought popped into his head from a reservoir of knowledge that he never knew he had. If you break it, you might be able to pass right through. His hand tightened around the rune that was still in his grip.

  “Buzz!” He realized that Mary was screaming his name. “Buzz, why is Jupiter testing you?”

  Because he wanted me to see that my mind works differently now after the worm, Buzz thought. “It doesn’t matter now,” he shouted back. “I have an idea.” The sea was rushing to embrace them. “Before you hit the water, I want you to throw your rune downward. It will punch a hole through the surface. You just need to follow it through.”

  “It will never work,” Mary said. “Will it?”

  The ocean was incredibly close now, a blue mirror that was as beautiful as it was deadly.

  “Trust me,” Buzz said.

  “I do,” Mary said. “I really do.”

  Buzz nodded. “Then stay as upright as you can, cross your legs, point your toes, and throw the rune—NOW.”

  They hurled their runes in unison, and Buzz swiftly crossed his arms and anything else he could think of. The runes pierced the water like arrows and Buzz and Mary entered the sea straight behind them. Buzz squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath, waiting to hear the cracking of bones. But he didn’t. It worked.

  Buzz hurtled through the water like a torpedo. He waited for the downward momentum to slow so he could kick upward, take a breath, but it didn’t happen. It was as if he was caught in the jaws of the sea creature that was pulling him in one direction only. Down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Beneath the Surface

  Buzz opened his eyes. He was caught in a swirling whirlpool, created by the two runes that continued to race through the water. They were glowing, one with a white, ethereal gleam and t
he other with a sparkling amber light that reminded Buzz of Sunna’s eyes. He suddenly felt sorry he had let her down. Let everyone down. He was going to drown here in a sea far from home.

  He surrendered to the pull of the runes and their guiding light—what else could he do? The pressure in his chest was almost unbearable now, and he knew that nearly all the oxygen in his lungs had been used up. Yet still they were being pulled downward by the runes’ vortex, far from the surface. Far from air.

  He was in a world of silence.

  His consciousness shrank to a pinprick of amber and white light and his eyelids drooped.

  He would sleep.

  Buzz slammed against something solid and yet soft.

  He was awake again, his sight shifting from the pinprick of light to a panoramic view. With his last scrap of oxygen, he registered some kind of undulating dome with two rune-size holes punched into it. Then the whirlpool that had brought him this far pulled him through one of the wounds in the bubblelike shield, and he was no longer in water but in air. The pressure in his lungs was gone. The water in his nose and mouth vanished.

  The vortex dropped Buzz gently onto a sandy floor and then dissipated with a sigh.

  Buzz doubled over and took in a gasping breath, the air a balm to his aching lungs.

  He felt dizzy.

  A little bit sick.

  And so very pleased to be alive.

  I’m alive.

  But what about Mary?

  He forced himself to stand up straight and look around. Relief kept him standing, even though he still felt dizzy. He could see Mary just a few feet away, and he waved over at her. She was holding Mani’s rune in her hand and looking up at a building—a citadel encircled by seven pillars of white stone. Statues lay abandoned on the ground in front of it, still and watchful.

  The light in this dome was dim, but bright enough to see by. He realized that it was coming from several giant, luminous pearls that were scattered about on the seabed. Next to one of them was Sunna’s rune. It no longer shone with its amber light—it was just a smooth, gray stone with etched lines once more. He scooped it up.

  “Where are we?” Mary called out to him. Her voice echoed around the dome.

  “Atlantis,” a voice replied.

  A woman in a breastplate made of shells and a skirt of silver and gold coins appeared from inside the citadel. Her eyes were an amazing aqua green, and pinned to her glistening, seaweed-colored hair was an iridescent train of blue netting.

  “Now I have a question. Two, actually.” The woman’s mouth curved downward, and Buzz imagined it would take a lot to change that expression. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  Mary swiftly introduced them both. “And your name is?”

  The woman just stared back at them stonily.

  “We’ve not come to cause trouble,” Buzz rushed to assure her. “We just need to—”

  He trailed off. The woman was not listening. She was staring over his shoulder, her greenish lips pursed so tightly that they were blanching of all color.

  “Your kind are always trouble.” She sounded as bitter as burnt coffee and pointed with a webbed hand at the dome above. “And that’s rather troublesome as well.”

  Buzz turned and winced as he saw the two steady streams of water that were trickling in through the holes caused by the runes.

  Two tracks of tears. The thought popped into Buzz’s head, and he wondered if it was because this woman seemed so sad.

  She gave a high whistle, and a train of rather plump soldiers marched out of the citadel, led by an even chubbier general wearing a helmet fashioned of coral with a plume of sea anemones.

  “We have been breached, General Neale,” the woman said. “The dome is compromised. Have it patched up for now, and we will get the Beast to breathe us a new shield at the next full moon.”

  “Of course, Lady Pisces.” General Neale bowed so low that the plume of his helmet brushed the sandy floor. His back cracked loudly as he tried to stand straight once again.

  “Go get the repair kit,” the general told one of the soldiers, wheezing as he finally straightened up completely.

  Buzz couldn’t help but notice how red in the face the general looked. These soldiers are seriously out of shape, he decided.

  The general surreptitiously adjusted his helmet, which had fallen over one eye, shooting a glance at Lady Pisces as he did. But she paid him no attention. She was too busy pacing back and forth, looking up at the damage to the dome. Buzz tried to get her attention, but she just waved a hand at him dismissively. He was clearly going to have to wait until the dome was fixed before he could resume his conversation with Lady Pisces.

  Eventually, the soldier who had waddled into the citadel to get the repair kit reappeared with a small chest tucked under his arm.

  General Neale nodded at the soldiers who were lined up behind him, and they immediately began to climb onto one another’s shoulders. The air was filled with yelping and squeals of annoyance, but after some time there were two swaying towers of soldiers just high enough to begin the process of fixing the holes. Wide sheets of sticky webbing from the repair kit were passed up the balancing soldiers.

  They look like two huge, swaying jellies on a plate, Buzz thought. He was sure they’d get the holes fixed, but it was going to take a long time, as clumsy hands kept dropping the webbing, which would float to the floor before being passed back up the tower again.

  Lady Pisces muttered something rather rude under her breath, but she stopped pacing and barking instructions at the soldiers and came to stand in front of Buzz and Mary once more.

  “We’re really sorry about your dome.” Mary nodded her head at the two towers of soldiers. “But they’re doing a great job.”

  The lie hung in the air between them like a bad smell.

  “What do you want?” Lady Pisces snapped.

  “The Runes of Valhalla.” Buzz thought it best to get right to the point. They’d already wasted enough time watching the inept soldiers not fix the holes in the dome, and if what Saturn said was true, and Buzz’s world was in danger of dissolving because Saturday was on a loop, then time was of the essence.

  “Saturn told us that Neptune has two of the runes, Tyr’s and Odin’s,” Mary explained. “He was given them for safekeeping until the time they were needed. That time is now.”

  The woman’s sea-green skin paled, but she gave a toss of her head. “Dear Grandpapa,” she trilled. “He’s ever so old now, isn’t he? I’m not sure you can trust what he says. He gets so confused.”

  Buzz frowned. Lady Pisces was doing her best to cover it up, but her whole body thrummed with worry. “Jupiter didn’t say any different.” He crossed his arms. “He’s already given us the runes he had. Now we need the ones Neptune has been keeping safe.”

  “Right, I see. So you’ve already been to see Uncle Jupe, have you?” Lady Pisces fiddled with the netting that draped over her hair.

  “He was the person who sent us here.” Mary sniffed. “In his own unique way.”

  “Well, you have been busy. How very endeavoring of you.” She smiled at them, and Buzz was struck by how pretty she was when she didn’t look sad.

  He smiled back, relieved that she had cheered up. He’d thought for a moment that there was going to be a problem.

  “I’ll take you to see my father.” Lady Pisces strode forward. “If you’ll just follow me.”

  General Neale appeared at her side. “My lady, I should accompany you.”

  “Oh, there’s no need to do that,” Lady Pisces assured him. “I’m completely capable of dealing with our guests.”

  “As you wish, my lady.”

  Buzz noticed that the general was looking at Lady Pisces with a mixture of concern and full-blown lovesickness, but Neptune’s daughter did not seem to notice.

  Mary grinned as they followed behind Lady Pisces. “Poor General Neale. He’s got the biggest crush I’ve ever seen.”

  Buzz was about to reply, but Lady P
isces’s shrill voice cut him off.

  “Do keep up,” she said. “It is quite a distance to my father’s quarters.”

  They walked past beautiful lagoons and ruined temples rubbed smooth by the sea.

  “I assume you can swim,” Lady Pisces said, coming to a narrow, inky-blue pool that looked a little bit like a well sunk into the ground.

  She dropped into the water, and as she did, her legs fused and became a tail.

  Buzz and Mary tried not to stare, but it was difficult. The tail was ridged with beautiful iridescent scales that glinted in the low light of the pearls all around them.

  Lady Pisces looked up at them, her aqua eyes stormy. “Are you sure you need these runes?” she asked as Buzz and Mary stepped to the edge of the water. “All I know of the runes is that they are more trouble than they’re worth, and my father hates to be disturbed.” Her palms glided across the water and little bubbles came to rest on her hands, sparkling like diamonds. “Turn back now, and I will offer you a companion who will see you back to your home realm safely.”

  “The runes are the only things that can save our realm,” Buzz replied. “You might see them as trouble, but they’re our only hope.”

  He bent his legs and dived into the pool. He had expected it to be cold, but it was as warm as bathwater. He began to tread water.

  Lady Pisces swallowed hard and then inclined her head. “So be it. You’ll need to follow me downward.”

  Mary stood nervously on the edge of the pool. “Um, just a tiny question. How are we supposed to breathe? I mean, I assume you have gills or something, but we don’t. We need air to live.”

  “Gills?” Lady Pisces sounded outraged. “I am not a fish.” Her tail thrashed in the water, submerging Buzz in a wave. He emerged from it spluttering. “I am daughter of Neptune, one of the greatest gods to have ever existed and guardian to all merpeople.” She tilted her chin. “When my father saw that humankind were hunting merpeople instead of revering them—that humans no longer prayed to the great Neptune before sea journeys—he took steps to protect himself and his kin. He took Atlantis and made the merpeople a new realm in the deepest part of the ocean. He made sure that they were safe and had a dome and a supply of air whenever they needed it. Neptune’s subjects would never need to surface from the sea again.”