THIRTY-ONE
Go Smelly or Go Home
I’d never been scared of boats until I saw Harald’s.
Painted on the prow was HARALD’S DEEP-SEA EXCURSIONS AND DEATH WISHES, which seemed like a lot of verbiage for a twenty-foot-long dinghy. The deck was a mess of ropes, buckets and tackle boxes. Nets and buoys festooned the sides like Christmas decorations. The hull had once been green but had faded to the colour of well-chewed spearmint gum.
Nearby on the dock sat Harald himself, in splattered yellow overalls and a T-shirt so grungy, my donation-box Wiggles shirt would’ve been an upgrade. He was a sumo-size guy with arms as thick as the rotating meat spits back at Fadlan’s Falafel. (Yes, I was still thinking about food.)
The weirdest thing about him was his hair. His shaggy locks, his beard, even his fuzzy forearms glistened whitish blue, as if he’d been caught outside overnight and glazed with frost.
As we approached, he looked up from the rope he was coiling. ‘Well, now. A dwarf, an elf and two humans walk onto my pier … Sounds like the beginning of a joke.’
‘I hope not,’ I said. ‘We want to rent your boat for a fishing expedition. We’ll need the special bait.’
Harald snorted. ‘You four on one of my expeditions? I don’t think so.’
‘Big Boy sent us.’
Harald furrowed his brow, causing light snow to fall across his cheeks. ‘Big Boy, eh? What does he want with the likes of you?’
Sam stepped forward. ‘None of your concern.’ From her coat pocket she pulled a large coin and tossed it to Harald. ‘One red gold now; five more when we finish. Will you rent us the boat or not?’
I leaned towards her. ‘What is red gold?’
‘The currency of Asgard and Valhalla,’ she said. ‘Widely accepted in the other realms.’
Harald sniffed the coin. Its gold surface glowed so warmly it seemed to be on fire. ‘You have giantish blood, girl? I can see it in your eyes.’
‘That’s also none of your concern.’
‘Humph. The payment is sufficient, but my boat is small. Two passengers maximum. I’ll take you and the human boy, but the dwarf and the elf – forget it.’
Blitzen cracked his knuckles inside his leather gloves. ‘Look here, Frosty –’
‘HUR! Never call a frost giant Frosty. We hate that. Besides, you look half petrified already, dwarf. I don’t need another anchor. As for elves, they are creatures of air and light. They’re useless aboard a ship. Two passengers only. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.’
I glanced at my friends. ‘Guys, sidebar please.’
I led them down the dock, out of earshot from Harald. ‘That dude is a frost giant?’
Hearthstone signed, Icy hair. Ugly. Big. Yes.
‘But … I mean, he’s large, but he’s not giant.’
Sam’s expression made me suspect she was not the most patient geometry tutor. ‘Magnus, giants aren’t necessarily enormous. Some are. Some can grow to enormous size if they feel like it. But they’re even more varied than humans. Many look like regular people. Some can change shape into eagles or pigeons or almost anything.’
‘But what’s a frost giant doing on the docks in Boston? Can we trust him?’
‘First answer,’ Blitzen said, ‘frost giants are all over the place, especially in the north of Midgard. As for trusting him – absolutely not. He might take you two straight to Jotunheim and throw you in a dungeon, or he might use you for bait. You have to insist that Hearth and I go with you.’
Hearth tapped Blitz’s shoulder.
Giant is right, he signed. I told you – too much daylight. You are turning to stone. Too stubborn to admit.
‘Nah, I’m fine.’
Hearth looked around the dock. He spotted a metal pail, picked it up and slammed it over Blitz’s head. Blitz didn’t react, but the pail crumpled into the shape of his skull.
‘Okay,’ Blitz admitted, ‘maybe I’m petrifying a little, but –’
‘Get out of the light for a while,’ I told him. ‘We’ll be fine. Hearth, can you find him a nice underground lair or something?’
Hearth nodded. We will try to find out more about Fenris and his chains. Meet you tonight. Back at library?
‘Sounds good,’ I said. ‘Sam, let’s go fishing.’
We returned to Harald, who was fashioning his rope into a lovely noose.
‘Okay,’ I told him, ‘two passengers. We need to fish as far out in Massachusetts Bay as possible, and we need the special bait.’
Harald gave me a twisted grin. His teeth might have been cut from the same fuzzy brown cord he was coiling. ‘By all means, little human.’ He pointed to a sliding door on the side of the warehouse. ‘Pick your own bait … if you can carry it.’
When Sam and I opened the door, I almost passed out from the stench.
Sam gagged. ‘Odin’s Eye, I’ve smelled battlefields that smell better than this.’
Inside the storage room, hanging from meat hooks, was an impressive collection of rotting carcasses. The smallest was a five-foot-long shrimp. The largest was a severed bull’s head the size of a Fiat.
I covered my nose with my jacket sleeve. That didn’t help. I felt like somebody had filled a grenade with rotten egg, rusty metal and raw onion, then tossed it into my sinus cavity.
‘It hurts to breathe,’ I said. ‘Which of these tasty morsels do you think is the special bait?’
Sam pointed at the bull’s head. ‘Go big or go home?’
‘She said to the homeless kid.’ I forced myself to study the bull’s head – its curved black horns, its lolling pink tongue like a hairy air mattress, its white steaming fur and the glistening slime craters of its nostrils. ‘How is it possible that a bull grew that large?’
‘It’s probably from Jotunheim,’ Sam said. ‘Their cattle get pretty big.’
‘You don’t say. Any idea what we’re supposed to be fishing for?’
‘There are lots of sea monsters in the deep. As long as it’s not …’ A shadow crossed her face. ‘Never mind. Probably just a sea monster.’
‘Just a sea monster,’ I said. ‘That’s a relief.’
I was tempted to take the jumbo shrimp and get out of there, but I had a feeling we’d need bigger bait if we were going to cause a ruckus that would attract a sea goddess.
‘The bull’s head it is,’ I decided.
Sam hefted her axe. ‘I’m not sure it’ll even fit on Harald’s boat, but …’
She threw her axe at the meat-hook chain, which broke with a snap. The bull’s head crashed to the floor like a large, disgusting piñata. The axe flew back to Sam’s hand.
Together we gripped the meat hook and dragged the bull’s head out of the storage locker. Even with help, I shouldn’t have been able to move it, but my einherji strength was up to the task.
Die painfully. Go to Valhalla. Gain the ability to drag rancid, colossal severed heads across a dock. Hooray.
When we got to the boat, I yanked the chain with all my strength. The bull’s head toppled off the pier and smashed onto the deck. The S.S. Harald almost capsized, but somehow it stayed afloat. The bull’s head took up the back half of the ship. Its tongue hung over the stern. Its left eye rolled up in its head so it looked seasick.
Harald rose from his bait bucket. If he was at all surprised or annoyed that I’d dropped a five-hundred-pound cow head on his boat, he didn’t show it.
‘An ambitious choice of bait.’ Harald gazed across the harbour. The sky was darkening. Light sleet needled the surface of the water. ‘Let’s get going, then. Lovely afternoon to fish.’