Loki's Wolves (6 page)

“Fimbulwinter.”

Matt nodded, and it took a moment for him to realize his grandfather had gone still. When he saw the old man’s expression, his heart did a double-thump. He should be more careful. With the Elders, you couldn’t casually talk about dreams like that. Especially not dreams of Ragnarök.

“I was worried about my project,” Matt said. “It was just a dumb dream. You know, the kind where if you fail your project, the world ends.” He rolled his eyes. “Dumb.”

“What exactly did you see?”

Sweat beaded along Matt’s forehead. As he swiped at it, his hands trembled.

Granddad whispered, “It’s okay, Matty. I’m just curious. Tell me about it.”

Matt did. He didn’t have a choice. This wasn’t just his granddad talking—it was the mayor of Blackwell and the lawspeaker of the town.

When he finished, his grandfather nodded, as if…
pleased
. He looked pleased.

“It—it was only a dream,” Matt blurted. “I know you guys believe in that stuff, but it wasn’t like that. I didn’t mean to—”

Granddad cut him off by bending down, hands on Matt’s shoulders. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I was just curious. It’s always interesting to hear where inspiration comes from. I’m very proud of you. Always have been.”

Matt shifted, uncomfortable. “Mom and Dad are waiting….”

“Of course they are.” After another quick hug, Granddad said, “I’ve always known you were special, Matty. Soon everyone else will know it, too.”

He pulled back, thumped Matt on the back, and handed him the box. “You carry this, and I’ll take your papers. It’s windy out there. We don’t want them blowing away.”

Matt started across the gym, Granddad beside him. “I saw ice on the Norrström a few days ago. Is that why we’re having Vetrarblot so soon? Winter’s coming early?”

“Yes,” Granddad said. “I believe it is.”

A
fter the science fair, Granddad came to the house and took Matt’s parents for a walk. By the time they came back, Matt was heading off to bed—early wrestling practice—but they called him out to the living room and gave him a long speech about how proud they were of him for getting a B and an honorable mention. As a reward, they’d chip in the forty bucks he still needed to add to his lawn-cutting money so he could buy an iPod touch.

He knew they weren’t really proud of him. He’d still messed up. But his parents always did what Granddad said. Most people in Blackwell did. Anyway, he wouldn’t argue
about the money. Now he could start saving for a dirt bike, and maybe if he managed to win the state boxing finals, Granddad would guilt his parents into chipping in for that, too. Not likely—his mom hated dirt bikes almost as much as she hated boxing—but a guy could dream.

Vetrarblot. It wasn’t as cool as Sigrblot—because Sigrblot meant summer was coming, which meant school was ending—but it was a big deal. A really big deal this year, for Matt. He’d just turned thirteen, which meant he’d now be initiated into the
Thing
.

The
Thing
. What a dumb name. Sure, that’s what it had been called back in Viking days—the word
thing
meant assembly—but you’d think one of Blackwell’s founding fathers would have come up with a new name so the town meetings wouldn’t sound so stupid. They hadn’t.

In Viking times, the
Thing
was an assembly made up of all the adult men who weren’t thralls—what the Vikings called slaves. In Blackwell, women were members, too. And by all “adults,” they meant all Thorsens past their thirteenth birthday.

As for what exactly the assembly did, well, that was the not-so-exciting part. It was politics. They’d decide stuff. Then the town council—which was mostly Thorsens—would make it happen.

They discussed community issues, too—ones you couldn’t bring up in a town council, like “That Brekke kid is getting into trouble again” or, he imagined, “Matt Thorsen still can’t control his powers.” Which was why he’d rather not be sitting there listening.

And during Vetrarblot, he’d really rather not be there. They held the meeting just as the fair was starting. Cody and the rest of Matt’s friends had a nine-o’clock curfew, which meant he wasn’t even sure he’d get out of the
Thing
in time to join them. Which was totally unfair, but his parents wouldn’t be too happy if he began his journey into adulthood by whining about not getting to play milk-bottle games.

He’d already gotten a long talk from them that morning about how he was supposed to behave. Matt was pretty sure they were worried it would be a repeat of the disaster at Jolablot. That was the winter festival where they retold all the old stories, and Granddad had asked Matt to tell the one about Thor and Loki in the land of the giants, just like Josh and Jake had when they were twelve. His parents hadn’t wanted him to do it, but Matt insisted. He knew the myths better than his brothers did. A lot better. He’d make them proud of him. He’d really tried to—memorizing his piece and practicing in front of his friends. Then he got up on the stage and looked out at everyone and froze. Just froze. Granddad had to come to his rescue, and his parents weren’t
ever going to let him forget it. This festival, he’d just keep quiet, keep his head down and out of the spotlight, and do as he was told.

Between the parade and the
Thing
, there was food. Real food, not corn dogs and cotton candy. At that time, everyone who wasn’t a Thorsen went home or filled the local restaurants or carried picnic baskets to Sarek Park. The Thorsens took over the rec center. That’s when the feasting began. There was rakfisk, of course, and roast boar and elk and pancakes with lingonberries. Mead, too, but Matt didn’t get any of that.

Inside the rec center, there were a bunch of smaller rooms plus the main hall, which was where the feast took place. The hall would have looked like a gym, except for the mosaics on every wall. Matt’s granddad said they were nearly five hundred years old, brought over from some castle in Norway.

The mosaics showed scenes of Thor. Fight scenes mostly—when it came to myths about Thor, that’s what you got. Thor fought this giant, and then this giant, and then this giant. Oh, yeah, and a few dwarves, but they were really mean dwarves.

Back when Matt had signed up for boxing and wrestling, he’d pointed this out to his parents. Sure, people loved and respected Thor because he was a great guy, but more than a little of that came because he sent monsters packing. And he didn’t send them packing by asking nicely.

His parents hadn’t bought it. Physical strength was all very good—they certainly wouldn’t want a bookworm for a son—but the Thorsens weren’t like Thor. They had each other, so it was a team effort, and those skills were better developed through football.

Still, those mosaics were what Matt grew up with. Thor fighting Hrungnir. Thor fighting Geirrod. Thor fighting Thyrm. Thor fighting Hymir. And, finally, in a mosaic that took up the entire back wall, Thor’s greatest battle with his greatest enemy: the Midgard Serpent.

According to legend, Thor had defeated the serpent once but hadn’t killed it. He’d fished it out of the sea and thrown his hammer, MjÖlnir, at it, leaving it slinking off, dazed but alive. According to the myth, when Ragnarök came, the serpent would return for vengeance. The mosaic on the wall showed how the epic battle would play out, ending with Thor delivering the killing blow. As Thor turned his back, though, the dying serpent managed one last strike: it poisoned Thor. And the god staggered away to die.

Matt kept looking at the Midgard Serpent scene as he sat with his family at the head table. The hall was filled with wooden folding chairs and long tables set up for family-style feasting. A small stage stretched across the front of the room.

The Seer was already up there with her assistant. At first look, he always thought the Seer could be a grandmother,
but when he’d look again, he’d think she barely looked old enough to be a mother. She had that kind of face. For the festivals, the Seer and her assistant both dressed like women from Viking times, in long, plain white dresses with apronlike blue dresses overtop. White cloth covered their blond hair. Otherwise, they looked like a lot of women in Blackwell, and he was sure he passed them all the time on the streets and never even recognized them without their Viking dresses.

As the feasting went on, the Seer stood on her platform, throwing her runes and mumbling under her breath, making pronouncements that her assistant furiously jotted down. Matt noticed some of the younger members of the
Thing
had taken seats near her. They were hoping to hear something important. They weren’t allowed to talk to her. No one could. And they really, really weren’t allowed to ask her anything.

Divining the future through runes was a very serious matter, not to be confused with fortune-telling, a lesson Matt had learned when he’d bought a set of fake ones and charged kids two bucks to get their futures told. That scheme got him hauled in front of the
Thing
, and he’d had to miss the next festival. He should have known better. Okay, he
did
know better. But it was like pulling pranks—he knew he should just behave and make his parents proud, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. It was hard, doing the right
thing all the time, trying to live up to his brothers when he knew he never could—not really—and sometimes, he just got tired of trying.

As dinner wound down, more people moved to sit cross-legged around the Seer. Others shifted to the Tafl tables set up along the sides of the room. When Granddad asked Matt to play a match against him, it was no big deal—Matt played Tafl with his grandfather all the time. Maybe not at the festivals, but only because Granddad was usually too busy. As they walked to a table, though, Matt could hear a buzz snake around the room, people whispering and turning to look, some making their way over to watch.

Tafl—also known as Hnefatafl, but no one could pronounce
that
—was a Norse game of strategy, even older than chess. It was called the Viking game because that’s where it came from, and it was based on the idea of a raid, with each player getting two sets of pieces as his “ship” and the king and his defenders in the middle.

Matt wasn’t worried about people watching his match with Granddad. Tafl was like boxing: he knew he was good at it. Not good enough to win every time, but good enough that he wouldn’t embarrass his family.

He didn’t win that match. Didn’t lose, either. The game had to be called on account of time—kids were itching to get out to the fair before dark, and it was Granddad’s job to
officially end the feast. As Granddad did that and the kids took off to the fair, Mom led Matt over to the chairs that had been set up as the tables were cleared.

When Granddad stepped onto the stage, everyone went silent. Someone carried a podium up and set it in front of him. He nodded his thanks, cleared his throat, and looked out at the group.

“As some of you know,” he began, “this will be very different from our usual assemblies. No new business will be brought forward tonight. Instead, we will be discussing a matter that is of unparalleled importance to all of us.”

Some people shifted in their chairs. Were they worried about what Granddad was going to say? Or did they know something Matt didn’t, namely that
important
meant “you’re going to be stuck in those chairs for a very long time”?

Granddad continued, “As you know, our world has been plagued by natural disasters for years now, but recently the rate of these disasters has increased to the point where we barely have time to deal with one before we are hit with another.”

That was the truth. It seemed like every day there was a new school fund-raiser for a newly disaster-torn country. So far, Matt had helped out with two dances, a dunk tank, a bake sale, and now the charity boxing match… and it wasn’t even the end of September yet.

Was that what this was about? Raising money for disaster
relief? Or maybe looking at the town’s emergency plan? His parents had totally redone theirs after all those tornadoes went through in the spring.

Granddad was still talking. “Last week, a volcano erupted that scientists had sworn was dormant. Today, they closed down Yellowstone Park because the hot springs and cauldrons are boiling over, releasing deadly amounts of poisonous gas into the atmosphere.” His grandfather paced across the tiny stage. “Dragon’s Mouth is one of those. The Black Dragon’s Cauldron is another. Aptly named, as our history tells us, because what keeps those cauldrons bubbling—and what makes fire spew from the mouths of mountains—is the great dragon, Nidhogg, the corpse eater. For centuries, his destruction has been kept to a minimum because he is otherwise occupied with his task of gnawing at the roots of the world tree. But now he no longer seems distracted. We know what that means.”