by Lucy Coats
There was a squeak, and outside the bars appeared the furry red figure of the squirrel, Ratatosk. Demon felt a great wave of relief crash over him.
“Oh, thank Zeus!” he said. “I thought nobody was ever going to find me down here.”
“Ratatosk was clever,” said the squirrel. “Ratatosk saw you go off with the wicked Loki fox and followed.”
“Well, I’m glad you did, Ratatosk,” Demon said gratefully. “You are definitely the cleverest squirrel in the whole world. Now, can you get me out of here?”
The squirrel shook his head. “Ratatosk can’t open elf locks. They bite.”
Demon felt his excitement drain away, but then he had an idea. “Well, if you can’t open the lock, could you find me a bit of fire? Maybe a torch or something?”
The squirrel cocked his head to one side. “Maybe,” he said. “Ratatosk will try.” And with that, he scampered off.
Demon paced around the dungeon while he waited, stamping his feet to keep warm. It was so cold now that his breath was freezing into tiny cloud crystals in front of his face. Sooner than he’d hoped, he heard the patter of paws again. Ratatosk was back and, even better, he held in his paws a flickering torch that trailed foul-smelling black smoke.
“Ratatosk stole the fire!” he chattered. “It nearly burned his tail!”
“Can you pass it through the bars without touching them?” Demon asked. He didn’t want Ratatosk to be hurt.
Eventually, with great care and a few near misses, Demon held the torch in his hands. He crouched down, looking into Ratatosk’s inquisitive black eyes.
“Will you do one more thing for me?” he asked. “Will you go and tell Thrud what’s happened and where I am? Maybe if I can’t get out by myself, Thor could come and rescue me when he’s back from fighting giants.”
The squirrel’s ears drooped. “Thrud doesn’t like Ratatosk,” he said. “She won’t believe him.”
Demon thought for a minute, then leaned the torch carefully against the wall and pulled out the scrap of parchment and the charcoal from his pouch.
“Yes, she will,” he said, scrubbing out his notes and drawing a series of pictures on the smeary surface. He slipped it under the bars. “Give her this.”
As the squirrel scampered off again, Demon could only hope that Thrud would be able to interpret his scrawls. He hadn’t dared write anything, in case she couldn’t understand it.
Carefully he built his tiny fire again and set light to it. Once it was ablaze, he threw in the precious gold-and-red feather.
“Phoenix!” he cried. “Come to my aid!”
There was a great whoosh of flame that lit up the dark dungeon. The sickly green glow of the walls turned blue and began to glitter strangely, and then, with a high, sweet burst of song, the phoenix was there, and the fire disappeared, leaving behind a pleasant fragrance in the air.
“How can I help, O protector of the phoenix?” it said in its beautiful voice.
Demon explained about Loki and how Goldbristle had been poisoned.
“And now I need to get an ice diamond, and find this dragon Fafnir, and get a drop of his blood,” he said, all in a rush. “Oh, and also some spit from a wolf called Fenrir. But before I do any of that, I have to get out of here.”
The phoenix looked at him. “That’s quite some task, young healer. Getting out of here won’t be easy, and if I know Fafnir, he won’t be too eager to give you his blood. But the ice diamond I can help with. There are plenty here.”
“Where?” Demon asked, but the bird was already pecking at one of the strange glitters in the walls.
Just as the phoenix dropped a sparkly white pebble at his feet, Demon became aware of harsh shouts outside, and the sound of running feet.
“Oh no!” he said, picking up the pebble, which felt like a drop of pure frost in his hand, and putting it in his pouch. “The dark elves are coming!”
“Then hold on to my tail, Pandemonius, and don’t let go, whatever you do!”
Demon grabbed the phoenix’s long, fiery tail and hoped that he wouldn’t get burnt. Though the flames licked and curled around his hands and arms, it just felt pleasantly warm.
“How do we—” he started, but the bird was already flying straight upward toward the ceiling.
“Wha—”
His voice cut out as the phoenix flew into the stone, pulling Demon behind it. It was the oddest sensation of Demon’s life. He could literally feel himself flowing through the stone as if it were water. After what seemed like a very long time, there was a pop, and they exited the spire of a tall ice mountain.
“I’ll take you to Fafnir,” called the phoenix. “You’ll need me to protect you from the poison around his lair.”
Demon was too busy clinging on and checking if all his body parts were still there to answer.
A full moon shone overhead, lighting up the white ice below, and the stars blazed across the sky like a string of crystal jewels. Demon was just thinking how beautiful it was, when the ice suddenly became gray and cracked, with smoke rising from it. Pools of stagnant water with what looked like sticky black fungus at their edges lay here and there, and occasionally they made loud slurping blop noises. The gray stretched as far as his eyes could see, eventually rising into a gigantic black mountain wreathed in plumes of noxious steam. Demon had a nasty feeling he knew where they were headed.
As they descended toward a jagged cave entrance, the phoenix began to glow, emitting a pale rose-colored mist that twined around Demon, who had begun to cough and splutter as the fumes hit his lungs. Immediately he felt better.
“Stay within my mist,” the phoenix called as they landed. “It will protect you. And let me do the talking.”
The first thing Demon noticed was the terrible smell. The second thing he noticed was the glittering heap of gold and gems, which slid and crunched beneath his feet like autumn leaves on a frozen pond.
Unfortunately, the third thing he noticed was the pair of eyes high above him. The eyes were huge and round as millstones, and green, with a golden slit right in the middle.
“Who dares to disturb Fafnir?” came a great grumble of a voice.
“I am the phoenix of the Mountains of Burning Sand,” it said. “And I bring my companion, Pandemonius of Olympus, to ask a boon!”
“A boon?” Fafnir bellowed. “You lie! You are robbers and thieves, come to steal my hoard!” A gout of pure white flame roared out of its mouth, surrounding both the phoenix and Demon. Demon ducked, but the fire just bounced off the pink mist, to his great relief.
“We already have the only jewel we need,” said the phoenix. “But with your help, this young man can save all of Asgard from darkness.”
“How so?” asked Fafnir, sounding intrigued, and Demon remembered that Trixietoes had called the dragon a collector of stories.
“My companion will explain.”
So Demon cleared his throat and told the story of Goldbristle and Loki once more. As soon as he got to the part about Loki, Fafnir roared again, so that the very rocks around them shook.
“That thief, that renegade, that black-hearted weasel-tosser of a god! So he’s responsible for the darkness, is he? How dare he?”
More white flames shot out, toward the ceiling this time, which sprouted smoking icicles as big as stalactites. The dragon lowered its pale spiked head, stretching out its neck toward Demon, who tried not to breathe, or to look at the shreds of rotten meat caught in the beast’s arm-length teeth.
“Very well,” said the dragon. “What do you need from me, youngling?”
“Just one drop of your blood on this ice diamond, O wise and mighty Fafnir,” said Demon, pulling it from his pouch and holding it out.
Delicately for such a huge creature, Fafnir lifted one gigantic foreleg, extended one long curved talon, and pierced his other leg. A stream of steaming blood ran out, hissing as it hit the gold beneath. Demon willed his hand not to tremble as the talon hovered over his fingers, one drop of scarlet gore hanging fro
m its tip. It fell, hitting the ice diamond square in the middle, sinking in immediately, and turning the jewel as red as fire. Quickly, Demon stowed it in his pouch again.
“Thank you, great one,” he said, bowing low. “Now all I have to get is some spit from Fenrir, and Goldbristle can be cured.”
Fafnir let out a bellow of dragonish laughter.
“Drool from the mad wolf?” he roared. “I wish you luck with that, my young friend. Be careful you do not suffer the same fate as poor Tyr One-Hand. Now, go. I feel a hunger coming upon me. I wouldn’t want to mistake you for dinner.”
Demon didn’t wait to be told twice. He grabbed the phoenix’s tail again, and soon they were soaring through the air toward Asgard.
“I will have to leave you now,” the phoenix called, swooping down to land outside Goldbristle’s stable. “I must return to my mountains and sing the fire devils their nightly lullaby.”
“Thank you for saving me,” Demon said. But his only answer was a second phoenix feather swirling down to land at his feet. He picked it up and stowed it carefully against his chest, where it made a small comforting warmth against his heart.
CHAPTER 9
THE MAD WOLF
Almost as soon as he had landed, Thrud came skidding around the corner.
“Where have you been?” she yelled. “Ratatosk just told me some parcel of lies about you being kept prisoner down in Svartalfheim. And what does this mean?” She waved the bit of parchment at him.
“Ratatosk wasn’t telling a parcel of lies,” Demon said, suddenly angry. “You should give him some credit. And that,” he said, grabbing the piece of parchment, “was me trying to ask your dad to come and rescue me. But don’t worry. I got out, anyway, no thanks to you.”
He turned to go into Goldbristle’s stable, seething.
The boar was lying on its side, its light almost gone, and Demon’s anger evaporated as quickly as it had come. He ran over to the enormous creature and reached up to stroke its bristly head.
“Don’t worry, old chap,” he said. “I’ve nearly got a cure. I just have to get some Fenrir spit, and you’ll be right as rain in no time.”
He heard a tiny cough behind him and turned to see Thrud standing there, looking a bit sheepish.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said. “But I was just so worried when you disappeared. I’ve been all alone since everyone went off to fight the giants. And I’m sorry I didn’t believe Ratatosk. Were you really captured by Loki and the dark elves? How on earth did you get out?”
Demon told Thrud the whole story. By the end, her mouth had turned into a big round O, and if her eyes had gotten any bigger, they would have popped out of her head.
“You went to see Fafnir?” she gasped. “How are you even still alive?”
“Well, it was all because of the phoenix, really,” Demon said modestly. He looked at her and sighed. “But now I have to find Fenrir. Do you know where he is?”
Thrud nodded slowly. “I do,” she said. “Ever since the beast bit off Uncle Tyr’s hand, he’s been chained up on an island in the middle of our lake. Dad says that the wolf is quite mad—and I’m forbidden to go anywhere near him. But I know how to get there.”
Even though there was nobody around, she lowered her voice. “You know how I was telling you about having to do a brave deed to prove myself worthy of being a shield-maiden? Well, I’m thinking that if I row you out to Fenrir’s island, that would count as one, wouldn’t it?”
“I should think so,” said Demon. “Though I wonder if he really is mad. Perhaps it’s just that he’s been left tied up and alone.”
Thrud gave him a long look. “Trust me,” she said. “He’s mad. Odin loves wolves, and he only tied Fenrir up because Fenrir’s meant to kill him. Now, come along, hurry up.” She cocked an ear, listening. “Everyone will be coming back from fighting the giants soon. We need to steal a boat right now. With any luck they’ll all be either feasting or asleep by the time we get back.”
Thrud, it turned out, was almost as good at sneaking around Asgard as the white fox had been. The difference was, though, that this time Demon knew he wasn’t going to be kidnapped.
Soon they were creeping onto a long pier, jutting out into a lake so big that Demon couldn’t even guess where the far shore was in the darkness. A series of long, low boats with high prows were tied up alongside.
“Come on,” said Thrud, climbing into a boat made of some kind of pale wood and shaped like a swan. “Let’s take this one. It belongs to Idunn. She’ll never notice. That goddess of yours—Demeter—has got her working in that big greenhouse, trying to make her apple trees come into fruit.”
Demon rather hoped Demeter wouldn’t notice them, either. He didn’t want her reporting back any trouble to Zeus—though she hadn’t exactly taken any notice of anything he’d done so far. But since getting the spit from Fenrir was a key part of getting Goldbristle better, he thought he’d probably be forgiven.
“Get comfortable and keep quiet,” Thrud ordered him. “We don’t want the lake serpents to hear us.” She pushed off and started to row, with long, steady strokes that hardly broke the surface of the still water. Demon lay there, looking up at the stars and wondering why they were so different from the ones that shone above Olympus. Then he let out a small gasp. On the far horizon, waves of color were dancing—billowing curtains of pale green and pink and blue moving across the sky. Thrud saw him looking.
“The Nimble Dancers,” she whispered very quietly. “Some say they’ve been up there since before the All-Father himself.” Then, all at once, she let out a muffled scream and shook her oars, making the boat rock dangerously. Demon saw a ripple in the water, and a dozen slimy heads broke the surface on each side. They twined around the oar blades, biting and snapping with their sharp needle teeth.
“Lake serpents,” Thrud said, her voice slightly desperate. “They never give up till they’ve eaten their prey. I’ll try to fight them off.” She pulled out a small dagger from her belt and bent toward the beasts on the left-hand side.
But Demon had already pulled out his dad’s pipes. He put them to his lips and started to play. Immediately, all the serpents went limp and slid off the oars, slipping back into the water and disappearing below.
“Phew!” he said. “I wasn’t sure these were going to work up here.”
After what seemed like hours had passed, the island loomed up before them. Thrud beached the boat on a small point of frozen sand.
“This way,” she said, unsheathing her dagger again. “And whatever you do, don’t get anywhere near his jaws.”
“No stabbing,” said Demon sternly. He wasn’t allowing any beast to be hurt on his watch. “I’ll use my pipes again if I have to, but I have to get near enough to collect some of his drool, or there’s no point in us being here.”
Thrud rolled her eyes. “I said I would do a brave deed, not a stupid one. I promise I won’t stab him unless I have to, though,” she said, and Demon had to be content with that.
The path wound up and up through the rocky cliffs, and Demon was out of breath by the time they reached the top. When he got there, he saw a gigantic round boulder set into the earth, with what looked like a ghostly greenish-gold silk ribbon wound around and around it, and anchored to a tall stone post that had been driven right through the middle of it. Attached to the other end of the ribbon was the biggest wolf he’d ever seen, fast asleep and curled around the boulder as if it were a tiny pebble.
“How on earth does that little ribbon hold such a big creature?” he whispered with no more than a breath of sound in Thrud’s ear.
“It’s stronger than it looks,” she whispered back. “Fenrir broke three huge chains before they tried this one. Dad says the dwarfs made it out of six things: the sound of a cat’s paws, a giantess’s beard, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and bird spit.”
Demon wasn’t sure most of those things even existed, but as he himself had had to captur
e a maiden’s sigh and the high and low notes from a lyre to cure Hades’s pet three-headed dog, Cerberus, he wasn’t going to argue. He didn’t like the fact that Fenrir was tied up at all, though, and when they got closer, he started to get really angry. He seized Thrud by the arm.
“What did they do that for?” he whispered, pointing. The poor beast’s jaws were pinned open with a long golden sword, so that his tongue rolled out onto the ground. Demon could see that there would be no trouble collecting drool—streams of it were running out of Fenrir’s mouth and dribbling onto the ground with a sound like a trickling drain.
“To stop him from biting, I suppose,” Thrud replied. “But it doesn’t look very nice, does it?”
“It does not. And I’m going to get it out.”
Before Thrud could do more than hiss a frantic no at him, Demon strode forward, ready to help the poor creature or die trying. But as he did so, his foot landed on a pile of dry heather and sank into it with a sharp crack.
Fenrir was awake immediately, leaping up with a long, wavering arroooo, and lunging at them, his eyes fiery red. His jaws flung drool and foam around in bloody red strings. Although Demon could understand every beast alive, he couldn’t make head or tail of what Fenrir was saying. It just sounded like insane gibberish, apart from two words: “Kill Odin.”
Then he started to choke as the green-gold ribbon seemed to tighten around his throat, and the words and gibberish were cut off into a kind of strangled gargle.
“Quick!” shouted Thrud. “Play your pipes.”
Demon already had them in his hand, and jamming them against his lips, he played his dad’s special emergency twiddle.
Nothing happened at first, and then, very, very slowly, the great wolf collapsed. His eyes closed, and he lay utterly still.
“Oh, poor thing,” Demon said, his voice all choked up. “Poor, poor Fenrir.” Slowly, he walked over to the huge sleeping body and tried to pry the gaping jaws farther open so that he could get the sword free. But he couldn’t do it by himself.
“Help me,” he begged Thrud, and with her assistance, he eased out the sword and threw it as far away as he could. It hit the frozen ground with a mournful clang that echoed the one in Demon’s heart. The moment he’d laid his hands on the beast, he’d felt the wrongness in him, like veins of poisonous red and black hate invisible to the eye. For the first time in his life, he knew there was nothing he could do to cure this creature. Fenrir was truly, completely lost to madness.
