Loki's Wolves (9 page)

For a moment, Laurie didn’t react. She knew he’d stolen it, but she also knew he looked out for her.

The look on his face was nervous, and he pulled his arm away from her—but he still tried to sound like he wasn’t hurt when he said, “Come on, fish. Or are you afraid you’ll slip off the Ferris wheel?”

“Jerk.” She shoved him carefully. Hugs weirded him out, but a gentle shove, punch, or head-butt he was okay with. “I’m not afraid of anything… as long as you’re not.”

W
hen Matt saw the little girl racing into the rec center, he yelled at her to stop, but she kept running, bare feet slapping on the pavement, blond braids streaming behind. He flew through the entrance—only to see her running for the closed door into the private meeting his grandfather was having with the Elders.

Great. They choose me to stop Ragnarök, and what’s the first thing I do? Prove I can’t even stop a little girl from bursting into their meeting.

He could just turn around and walk away. Pretend he hadn’t seen where she was going. Or pretend he never met
her in the first place. The easy way out, which meant he’d never take it, even if he wished he could.

He raced across the main room as fast as he could. But the girl had stopped at the meeting-room door and was just standing there, waiting patiently as she watched him with those weirdly grown-up blue eyes.

“Now you hear,” she whispered. She pointed at the door. “Listen.”

He started to tell her they had to leave when he caught the word
Ragnarök
. Then his name.

He leaned toward the door. Yes, he shouldn’t eavesdrop. Totally disrespectful. But the conversation was about him, which kind of made it his business. If he was caught, well, he’d just chased this little girl inside so he could return her to her parents.
That’s champion-worthy behavior, isn’t it?

“… no need to tell the others yet. What I told them at the
Thing
is enough for now,” his grandfather was saying. “Those who need to know the truth already do. For the rest, it will come as a shock, and we must ease them into it.”

Was he talking about Matt being chosen as champion? That they had to tell the Thorsens who didn’t live in Blackwell? In Matt’s opinion, it was the ones who did live there—and
knew
him—who’d be the most shocked, and they’d already heard.

“We must begin a quiet campaign to convince them that Ragnarök is not the end of the world. It is a change. A
cleansing. Ultimately, it is an event that will benefit our people, present and future.”

He leaned closer.

“Ragnarök, as it is foretold in the myths, will not end the world. We must remind them of that. It will be a time of great turmoil and upheaval and a tragic loss of life, but the world will emerge the better for it. America is corrupt, from Wall Street to Washington, and it is the same in every country around the world. No politician or advocacy group can change that. Our world needs cleansing. Our world needs Ragnarök.”

The other Elders chimed in their agreement.

What? No. I’m hearing wrong. The champion is supposed to
stop
Ragnarök.

“We know how this must work. Matt must fight the serpent. Matt must defeat the serpent… but he must be defeated in turn. The champions of the gods must die, and the monsters must die, as the prophecy says, so the world can be reborn.”

Matt had stopped breathing.

They don’t want me to win.

His grandfather continued. “I do not take this lightly. I will be honest in saying that when I first realized Matt was the champion, I prayed that the runes would tell me I was mistaken. But I have come to realize that this is right. The boy is strong and he is good, and he is deserving of this
honor. That is how I must see this. My grandson is being honored in the highest fashion, and he will do us proud, and he will take his place in the halls of Valhalla as a champion with the long-dead gods. As a hero. Our hero.”

Matt stumbled away from the door.

They expect me to die. They want the ice age to come, the world to end. I’m not their champion. I’m their sacrifice.

Of course I am. That’s why they chose me. Because I’m guaranteed to screw this up.

He’d been planning to tell Granddad exactly that:
You made a mistake.
But there’d been a little bit of him that hoped he really was the champion, that he’d finally show his family and everyone else—

The little girl took his hand and tugged him across the room, and he was so dazed, he just followed. When they were at the door, she whispered, “You seek Odin.”

Odin? Why would I…?

Because Odin was the leader of the gods. The most powerful of them all. The father of Thor.

He stared at the little girl. Who was she?
What
was she? Not just a little girl—he was sure of that now.

“Odin will tell me how to fix this, right?” Matt said. “He’ll tell me how to defeat the Midgard Serpent and survive.”

Again, she looked confused. “I do not know. That is to come. That is not now. I know only—”

“You only know what is now. Yeah, I got that the first…” His gaze shifted to the mosaic on his left. A scene of Thor asking the Norns for advice.

The Norns. Three women who knew the destiny of gods and humans. In a lot of the old stories, Future was the youngest. But their tradition—and the mosaic—followed one from the old sagas. The oldest was Past. Then came Future. And finally, the youngest Norn—Present.

He turned to the little girl, and his heart started thumping again. By this point, he was pretty sure it was never going to beat at a normal rate again.

“Who are you?” he asked as the hairs on his neck prickled.

“You know.”

“One of the Norns. Present.”

She nodded. “I said you know.”

“And
you
don’t know anything except what’s happening now. Or what should be happening now. So where do I get the rest?”

“From Future. She waits.”

“Where will I find her?”

“I do not know. That is to come—”

“All right, all right. Where is she
now
?”

The little girl pointed. “Out there. She waits.”

Matt followed her finger to the door. “Where exactly out there?”

No answer. He turned. The girl was gone.

This time when Matt walked into the fair, he still didn’t notice the smells, the sights, the sounds, but only because he was focused on his task. Find the Norn.

Find the Norn? Are you crazy? A Norn? Like in the stories? That’s all they are, you know. Stories.

Earlier, when he’d thought of fighting the serpent, he’d tried not to focus on what he believed. It was easy when they were old stories, like Noah’s Ark. You could say, “Sure, that could happen.” But then you thought about it, really thought about it, and said, “Seriously? One boat with two of every animal on Earth? How does that work?” It was easier to just not think about it. Accept it. That’s what he’d done his whole life.

That’s what he had to do now. Accept it. Believe it. He was looking for a Norn.

Which would be a lot easier if he had any clue what she looked like. The mosaic wasn’t much help. In it, the youngest Norn had been about his age, and the only thing she had in common with the little girl who had actually appeared was her blond hair. Blond hair in Blackwell was as rare as fleas on a homeless mutt.

He weaved through the crowds. Normally, that would be easy. While people knew who he was, they wouldn’t do more than nod or smile. Now Thorsens would
stop mid-carnival-game to say something, and of course he had to be polite and respond.

With so many Thorsens talking to him, others noticed, and they said hi, too. Any other time, that would have been great. The center of attention. Can’t argue with that, especially when you’re usually only there if you’ve done something wrong. But right now, when he was on a mission, it was kind of inconvenient.

Finally, he spotted her. The Norn on the mosaic had been about his mom’s age, but this girl didn’t look older than Jake. She was dressed differently from the other girls at the fair, too. She wore a skirt of rough cloth, and her hair was piled up on top of her head in a heap of tiny braids. She sat on a bench, legs swinging as she watched kids on the merry-go-round.

So how did he know it was her? Because his amulet started vibrating. The same way it had right before he’d met the first Norn.

Still, he had to be sure. So he walked up as casually as he could and said, “Hey,” but she only smiled and said, “Hello.”

“Are you waiting for me?” he said.

She got that look of confusion, a mirror image of the little girl’s. “I do not know. That is—”

“The present. You only know the future. Got it.” And got the right girl, apparently. “Kind of feels like it should be Christmas, don’t you think?”

She tilted her head, frowning.

“Scrooge? The ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future?” He shook his head when she continued to frown. “Never mind. Okay, so I should be looking for Odin, because he’s going to tell me… what exactly?”

“How to defeat the Midgard Serpent.”

Matt exhaled as relief fluttered through him. “And stop Ragnarök? So things don’t need to happen the way they do in the myth, with all of us dying and the world ending?”

“Some parts cannot be changed. Some can. You must discover which is which.”

“But you can foresee the future, right?”

“There are many futures. I cannot tell which will come to pass. You will try to change what the myth foretells. You will succeed in some parts and fail in others.”

“Right. Except the whole die-defeating-the-serpent thing. I can definitely survive, despite what the myth says?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And if I do, the world doesn’t end?”

“It does not
end
, even if you fail,” she said carefully. “However, almost all life on it will perish.”

“Same thing. But if I defeat the serpent and survive, that doesn’t happen, right?”

“Correct.”

“Good. Now, where do I find him?” He paused again. “Is
it really Odin? I mean, the gods died, didn’t they? Did Odin survive?”

She smiled. “No, the gods are dead. The one you seek is like yourself: a descendant. He is Odin as you are Thor. Yet he is not Odin, as you are not Thor.”

Which made perfect sense.

“So he’s a kid then. Where is he?” Matt asked.

“I do not know. Where Odin is, that is present. I know only what is to come.”

Matt exhaled. They really weren’t making this easy. “I
will
find Odin, though. That’s a guarantee, which means I don’t need to look for him.”

“You may find him, or you may not.” She had a faraway look in her eyes as she spoke. “There is more than one future.”

Great.

Before he could try another tactic, the Norn said, “This is the best future. This is the one we wish for you: that you will find Odin, and you will find the others; that you will fight, and you will win.”

“The others? But they’ll come here, right? The
Thing
is going to gather them up.”

“They will gather possible champions, but they will not gather the right champions. That is your task.”

“And, let me guess, you have no idea where I’ll find anyone.”

“That is how. I do not know how. Only—”

“That I will or won’t,” he interrupted. “Do you know how completely useless that is? I’m thirteen. I can’t just hop in my car and let my magical god-descendant-finding GPS guide me.”

She looked at Matt blankly.

“Can I get one clue?” he said. “A bread crumb to start me on the trail? An e-mail address, maybe?”

“E-mail…?”

“Anything. I’ll do what you tell me, because while saving the world and all would be great, I’m not keen on the dying part, either. I’d like to live long enough to get out of middle school.”

She nodded. “That would be wise.”

“So, the other descendants. It’d be nice if I could find them all in Blackwell, but it’s only Thor and Loki here, isn’t it?”

“You will not find the others here.
Around
here, yes, but not here.”