by Joan Holub
Skade gulped. “I’ll try not to.”
Odin’s words stayed with her throughout dinner. If she didn’t feel confident at times, could she pretend to? Then maybe her confidence would become real like Odin’s had. She was still wondering if she could do what Odin expected of her when she stepped outside with her podmates to head for Vingolf dorm.
Brrr. She shivered in the cold air and wrapped herself in her cloak more tightly. It was dark now, and a light snow was swirling. Abruptly, a flapping sound reached her ears.
“Look!” Sif called out. She pointed upward. Perhaps having already secured oaths from potential sources of harm close to the Valhallateria, Odin’s two ravens were now winging off to secure promises from beings and objects farther away. Skade’s mind boggled at the enormity of their task. Water, stone, fire, diseases, metals, berries, trees, animals. The list was seemingly endless! Yet oaths would have to be exacted from all.
The effort would be worth it, though. She truly was glad that a protective shield was being woven around Balder. And not just so that AA could successfully compete in the games. But also because he was the nicest boygod she knew!
6 Beanies
BY FRIDAY MORNING AFTER BREAKFAST, all nine ski team members plus Skade had packed their belongings into one bag each. (Except for Freya, who, as the girlgoddess of beauty, needed two bags to hold all her extra clothes and accessories.)
First off, they planned to travel via a system of magical slides within AA’s Heartwood Library. Then they’d walk the rest of the way to Jotunheim. This meant they’d be carrying their skis as well as their bags, which was quite an armload. They’d likely be exhausted by the time they arrived at the ski games, Skade realized as she juggled her stuff. Freya more than anyone.
When they gathered outside on a path halfway between the boys’ and girls’ dorms, Odin and a cheering group of AA students and teachers were there to see them off. Including Sif and Idun.
Odin spread his arms wide, beaming at them. “Team Asgard! We here at the academy wish you a swift and safe journey to Jotunheim this morning,” he began in his powerful voice. “Tomorrow, Ratatosk and his message acorns, as well as Nidhogg the dragon to the south and the eagle-eyed eagle to the north, will all help spread news of how the ski games are progressing.”
He paused a moment to adjust his eye patch, which had slid down a little, before going on. “I’ll be checking up on you with my Eye telescope from time to time, though I won’t interfere unless you’ve encountered the rare situation I feel you aren’t capable of handling. There is great excitement for this event throughout the worlds. I bid you good luck and know that you will make us proud. Which means play fair, make friends, and excel on the ski slopes!”
A thrill shot through Skade, lifting her spirits as more loud cheers went up. Even though she wouldn’t get to compete, she was proud to be going to the games.
She and her teammates had bent to grab their luggage, planning to troop down the fernway toward the library when a voice called out. They turned to see Ms. Frigg hurrying toward them. “Wait! I’m so glad I caught you before you left. I’ve made gifts for the ten of you,” she told them, smiling big.
Ymir’s knuckles! Skade and the other students on the team froze in place. Their eyes grew big and maybe even a little worried. Because although all of Asgard adored Ms. Frigg and cherished her gifts, they were kind of famous for being…quirky. Right now her teammates were probably all recalling some of the gifts Ms. Frigg had bestowed in the past, Skade figured. For instance, the vest she’d knitted for the school security guard, Heimdall. It had pink tassels all over it. Sooo not him. And the six-toed, flowered socks she’d knitted for Odin. Yikes!
The items Ms. Frigg held out to them now were made of a beautiful, strong yarn she was famous for spinning. But what were they? Skade wondered.
Smiling in delight, Ms. Frigg distributed her newest gifts among the team members. Then, taking a step back, she clasped her hands together. “Guess what they are!”
All ten of them examined their identical knitted gifts and then glanced at one another uncertainly. Unwilling to risk a guess that might hurt Ms. Frigg’s feelings, no one spoke up.
Skade would bet that not even Odin, nor any of the teachers and students in the crowd, had the faintest idea about what these gifts were meant to be. To her, they looked like bowls with two brown-fingered hands growing like roots from their bottoms. Surely, that couldn’t be right.
Before anyone had to guess, Ms. Frigg gleefully provided the answer. “They’re reindeer antler beanies! To protect you, warm you, and bring you luck in Jotunheim.”
What they would not do was inspire confidence, though, thought Skade. Hers took a nosedive as she stared at the beanie she held. Because these beanies were goofy. They would make the AA team members look weak to the other competitors. Their team was going to get teased if they wore the beanies. To increase their chances of winning, they needed to appear as fierce to the other teams in Jotunheim as Odin’s eye patch had made him to Asgard’s enemies. The stronger they looked, the more self-assured they’d feel. Which would help them to perform at their very best, right?
However, neither she nor anyone else on her team wanted to tell Ms. Frigg any of this. So instead, they all thanked her and quickly folded the beanies away in their pockets for “safekeeping.” Waving goodbye, the team moved off through the golden forest toward the school library.
Walking along in the cold, crisp air, Skade’s mood soon lightened again. She loved winter. Which was a good thing since it often snowed in eight of the Norse worlds. Only the terrible world of Muspelheim was said to be fiery hot and completely snowless. It was two rings below Asgard, but only one ring below Jotunheim. She’d never met an eyewitness who’d actually ever seen the land of the fire giants, though.
The team wove silently through tall blue spruces, rowan trees with red berries, and past holly bushes. Although there were many kinds of trees growing atop Yggdrasil’s enormous branches, they were like tiny twigs compared to Yggdrasil itself. The huge ash tree was like a gigantic, leafy umbrella with three humongous roots. Its trunk was so big that Skade and her podmates figured it would take someone an entire lifetime to walk all the way around it!
“This stuff is heavy,” Freya remarked after a bit, shifting the bags and skis she carried. “How about if I use my cart to fly to Jotunheim ahead of you guys? I can take all the ski equipment, plus all of our bags.”
Everyone was in favor of this idea. So once they reached a clearing, Freya quickly pulled her colorful cat’s-eye marble from its fist-size pouch, which hung from one of her necklaces. The marble had been a gift on her twelfth birthday from her twin brother, Frey, Skade knew.
Freya tossed it high. Plink! The marble landed on the snowy ground a short distance from the group. Instantly it transformed into two pony-size gray tabby cats, both hitched to pull a red cart. Meow! Meow!
After they all gratefully piled their skis and bags into the kittycart, Freya stepped inside and took its reins in her hands. “Looks like I’ve got room for one passenger,” she said after surveying the cart’s load. “It would help to have someone with me who knows the way to Jotunheim.”
She smiled at Skade in invitation, but before Skade could make a move, Angerboda called out, “Sure, I’ll go with you!” And she hopped into the cart beside Freya.
This was not at all how either Skade or Freya would have preferred things to go, of course. But after throwing Skade an apologetic glance, Freya called out to her magical cats. “Fly, kitty, kitty!” In a flash, she and Angerboda were off in the cart, zooming through the air in the direction of Jotunheim.
That left Skade and the other seven team members, Balder, Honir, Njord, Thor, Yanis, Malfrid, and Ull, to continue making their way to the library on foot. They soon entered a dense grove of thin birch trees, which led them right up to Yggdrasil’s trunk.
Each student used a fingertip to trace the words “Knowledge is power” on one of their palms. Then t
hey stepped forward, standing shoulder to shoulder while facing the tree with their noses and toes pressed against its bark.
Whoosh! Instantly the group found itself pulled inside to a hollowed-out space in the very center of the tree’s trunk. It took powerful magic to transport an entire team of students through tree bark all the way into the library hidden deep within the center of this tree. Yggdrasil magic!
7 To Jotunheim
THE LIBRARY’S CURVED INNER WALLS were lined with shelves of books filled with writing in the form of symbols called runes. These shelves extended as far downward as the eye could see. There were ladders on wheels that followed tracks here and there along the shelves. By climbing from one ladder to another, all the floors and their books could be reached.
A sign nearby read:
THE HEARTWOOD LIBRARY
Knowledge Is Power
Together, the eight students now stood on a round wooden floor. Approximately two hundred feet across, it had a large hole in its center, through which they could see numerous floors below them with similar holes. Several transparent tubular travel slides that ranged from about one to four feet in diameter corkscrewed up through the holes from deep below.
A column of bright blue water shot through one of the tubular slides to bubble up in a tall spout at eye level. Atop the spout a man’s head spun around and around. It was Mimir, the very brilliant head librarian!
“Welcome!” he greeted Skade and the others. Then he gestured toward a group of four-foot-wide tubes nearby. “I understand you are off to ski in Jotunheim. Any of these water slides will take you close to there. They all end in the Spring of Mimir, on the second world ring between Jotunheim and Darkalfheim.”
When the librarian bobbed his head, an assistant named Gullveig (who used to be Freya’s childhood nanny in Vanaheim) pushed a green wall switch. The water in those spouts, which had been flowing upward, immediately reversed to flow downward. One after the other, the students each jumped into a separate tube.
Skade went first, always eager for action. And besides, she’d taken a slide down to Jotunheim before, so she knew how much fun it could be. Caught in the downward flow, she shouted “Woo-hoo!” Swiftly she was whirled through the maze of transparent water slides, descending from floor to floor.
Over in other tubes she caught sight of her friends and waved as she swooshed down, down, down. Purposely, she did somersaults and funny poses inside her tube, making her teammates giggle. To go faster, she bodysurfed at times, or hugged her knees to her chest to tumble through the tube like a spinning top.
Often on her downward journey things became a blur outside her tube, but then some strange curiosity would pop into view. Like the glowing eyes that peeked out of a strange painting of salmon displayed on one shelf, for example. On another, a fanciful army of insects marched along. Snowflakes with real faces twirled out from among the pages of a book on yet another shelf, singing silly rhyming songs. Skade caught part of a lyric as she slid by:
“We love to sparkle in the sun.
Drifting down is so much fun.
Until we melt, and then we’re done!”
Abruptly their trips came to an end when the eight students shot out of the tubes. Splash! Splash! Splash! Splash! Splash! Splash! Splash! Splash! They landed sitting in the Spring of Mimir, the bubbling pool that nourished one of Yggdrasil’s three great roots.
“Brr! We’re all wet and it’s starting to snow. We’re going to freeze to death!” exclaimed Ull. As the boygod of snow, he would know about such things. However, there was one thing he didn’t know that Skade did.
“Don’t worry. The waters of this spring are charmed,” she told him. Grabbing onto a clump of bilberry bushes growing on the bank, she pulled herself out of the spring. Then she reached back to help the others out as well. Like magic, each of them immediately became totally dry once their boots touched land.
Snow-covered mountains stood to their left in the distance. Caves loomed to their right. Carved across the side of a craggy black peak among those caves were the words DARKALFHEIM: KEEP OUT!
Skade grinned, rolling her eyes at the peak. “Dwarfs. So welcoming, right?” The rest of the team laughed, knowing that the grumpy dwarfs in those caves chose to live there for a reason. They were secretive about their jewelry-making skills and didn’t want anyone to copy from them. Or even worse, to steal their hoard of gold! Once, they’d actually stolen Freya’s jewel, Brising, though. She’d bravely ignored the warning on the peak, gone to their caves, and reclaimed it. And she’d even returned a second time, with Sif. They’d spied on Loki after he cut off Sif’s magical golden hair and was forced to visit the dwarfs to ask for replacement hair and other gifts for the gods.
“Jotunheim’s this way,” said Skade. “C’mon, follow me.” Turning her back on the caves, she headed for the snow-capped mountains. As they all walked along, they chatted among themselves, growing more and more excited about the upcoming games.
“Ow. My boots are pinching my little toes,” Njord complained after walking on the trail awhile. “My old ones wore out, so I bought these yesterday at Midgard Mall. I haven’t broken them in yet.”
“You can switch to another pair when we get to Jotunheim,” said Skade. “It’s not that much farther, and Freya will have all your stuff there.”
“But I only brought one pair. That’s all I own,” Njord informed her.
“You only own one pair of boots?” Skade echoed in shock, glancing back at him.
“What’s wrong with that?” asked Ull. “I only own one pair.”
“Me too.” “Same here.” “So do I,” admitted the other three boys.
“I own four pairs,” piped up Yanis.
“I own five,” said Malfrid. They were walking directly behind Skade. The three of them were the only girls in the group now, since Freya and Angerboda had taken the kittycart.
The boys looked stunned at this information. “Howw manee d’yoo own?” Balder ask-yawned Skade.
“Counting the pair I’m wearing? Thirteen,” Skade replied easily.
The boys all gasped.
“That’s crazy!” said Thor. “You girls only have two feet. Why so many boots?”
“You’re right. We are crazy,” Skade agreed, turning to grin back at Yanis and Malfrid. “Crazy about boots, that is.”
“Yeah,” said Yanis, giggling and high-fiving her.
“Each pair I own has pros and cons but is special in its own way,” added Malfrid.
“Exactly!” Skade nodded in complete understanding. “I have speedy boots, lightweight boots, knee-highs, shorties, faux fur–lined ankle boots, and so on.”
“Oh brother,” said Njord, rolling his eyes.
“All the girls I know have at least two pairs,” said Yanis.
“Uh-huh,” said Malfrid. “Because what if your boots get wet? You need a dry pair.”
“That’s a good point,” said Balder. “I usually wind up walking around in wet boots half the time. Maybe these girls have the right idea.”
The three girls smiled at him. There was a reason everyone liked Balder. He really was super-duper nice!
Just then, they came to a fork in the snowy trail they were following. Whenever that happened, Skade’s companions looked to her for instruction. “This way,” she said, forging onward.
“I’m glad you’re on the team,” Balder said when they wound up walking side by side.
“Sort of on the team, you mean,” said Skade. “I’m only the alternate.”
Balder shook his head. “You’re an important member. And it’s great having you along. Since you and Angerboda are both from Jotunheim, you’ll be able to give us insider tips. So we don’t mistakenly do things that giants consider bad manners and stuff like that.”
Nearby, Skade felt Njord staring at them, listening. When she looked over at him, however, he glanced away. What was up with that guy, anyway?
As she had anticipated, their group arrived at Jotunheim around noon. By now,
she noticed that Njord was definitely limping. “I’d offer to lend you a pair of my boots, but I don’t think they’d fit you,” she told him kindly. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she braced for a snarky comeback.
But instead of saying something like Why would I want to wear your stinky boots? he merely replied, “That’s okay. Mine should be broken in by tomorrow.” He actually appeared confused and a little embarrassed by her kindness, probably because he’d never been very nice to her.
“Hey, there’s Freya’s kittycart,” said Ull, pointing. “Minus the kitties. She must’ve plinked them back into their marble after they landed.”
Skade followed his finger. Angerboda was inside the cart. She was digging through her belongings and looked up when the rest of the team reached her. Immediately, everyone stormed the cart and began sorting through their bags for the snacks they’d brought, which they quickly gobbled down. They were eager to hit the slopes!
“Freya and I have already skied down a couple of runs,” Angerboda said in greeting. “I came back to get my mittens and scarf. It’s getting colder. Come on, I’ll show you guys the way to the runs,” she offered while everyone grabbed their skis.
When Skade started to follow with the others, though, Angerboda called back to her. “Hey, Skade. Could you take all of our stuff from the cart and stow it in the dorms? The rest of us need this afternoon for doing practice runs on the slopes before our big day tomorrow.”
“Oh, um, sure. No problem.” Although disappointed not to get to ski with the group now and a bit hurt to be singled out as less important, Skade couldn’t really argue. Because what Angerboda suggested made sense. As alternate, Skade could spare the time to unload the cart more than any of the rest of them could.
