Or You Could Just Glow a Lot. That Works, Too

SOME PEOPLE like energy drinks. Me? I find that the threat of imminent beheading wakes me up just fine.

Panicked, I looked back at my friends. Hearthstone signed: F-R-E-Y.

Yes, Hearth, I thought, he is my father.

But how that helped me, I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like the god of summer was going to appear in a blaze of glory and knock down the White Mountains for me. He was the god of the outdoors. He wouldn’t be caught dead in a bowling alley….

An idea started trickling through my brain like maple syrup. Outdoors. The White Mountains. Frey’s power. Sumarbrander, Frey’s sword, which could cut openings between the worlds. And something Utgard-Loki had said earlier: Even the best illusions have their limits.

“Insignificant Mortals!” Utgard-Loki called. “Do you forfeit?”

“No!” I yelled. “Just a second.”

“Do you need to pee?”

“No! I just…I need to confer with my teammate before we are brutally decapitated.”

Utgard-Loki shrugged. “That seems fair. Proceed.”

Alex leaned in. “Please tell me you have an idea.”

“You said you’ve been to Bridal Veil Falls. You’ve gone camping in the White Mountains a lot?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Is there any way those bowling pins could actually be the White Mountains?”

She frowned. “No. I can’t believe anybody would be powerful enough to teleport an entire mountain range into a bowling alley.”

“I agree. My theory is…those pins are just bowling pins. The giants couldn’t bring a mountain range into a bowling alley, but they can send our bowling balls out of the alley. There’s some kind of portal between the worlds right in the middle of our lane. It’s hidden by illusions or whatever, but it’s sending our bowling balls to New Hampshire.”

Alex stared at the end of the lane. “Well if that’s the case, why did my ball come back in the ball return?”

“I don’t know! Maybe they loaded an identical ball into the ball return so you wouldn’t notice.”

Alex gritted her teeth. “Those cheating meinfretrs. What do we do about it?”

“You know the White Mountains,” I said. “So do I. I want you to look down the lane and concentrate on seeing those mountains. If we both do it at the same time, we might be able to make the portal visible. And then, maybe, I can dispel it.”

“You mean by changing our perception?” Alex asked. “Sort of like…the mind healing you did with Amir?”

“I guess….” I wished I had more confidence in my own plan. The way Alex described it made me sound like a New Age guru. “But, look, it would work better if I held your hand. And…I can’t promise I won’t, you know, sense stuff about your life.”

I could see her wavering, weighing the options.

“So I can either lose my head or have you in my head,” she grumbled. “Tough choice.” She grabbed my hand. “Let’s do it.”

I studied the far end of the lane. I imagined a portal between us and the pins—a window looking out on the White Mountains. I remembered how excited I used to get on those weekend drives with my mom when she first spotted the mountains on the horizon: Look, Magnus, we’re getting close!

I drew on the power of Frey. Warmth radiated through me. My hand in Alex Fierro’s began to steam. A brilliant gold light surrounded us both—like the midsummer sun burning away fog and destroying shadows.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw giants wincing and shielding their faces. “Stop that!” Tiny cried. “You’re blinding us!”

I stayed focused on the bowling pins. The light grew brighter. Random thoughts from Alex Fierro whisked through my mind—her fatal fight with the wolves; a dark-haired man in tennis clothes towering over her, screaming that she should get out and stay out; a group of teenagers standing around ten-year-old Alex and kicking her, calling her a freak as she curled into a ball, trying to protect herself, too panicked and terrified to shape-shift.

Anger burned in my chest. I wasn’t sure if it was my emotion or Alex’s, but we’d both had enough of illusions and pretending.

“There,” Alex said.

In the middle of the lane, a shimmering rift appeared, like the ones Jack cut between the worlds. On the other side, in the distance, was the snow-marbled summit of Mount Washington. Then the portal burned away. The golden light faded around us, leaving a regular lane with bowling pins at the end, just as it had looked before.

Alex pulled her hand away. She quickly wiped away a tear. “Did we do it?”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Insignificant Mortals!” Utgard-Loki interrupted. “What was that? Do you always confer with each other by generating a blinding light?”

“Sorry!” I yelled to the crowd. “We’re ready now!”

At least I hoped we were ready. Maybe we’d succeeded in burning away the illusion and closing the portal. Or maybe Utgard-Loki was just allowing me to think I’d dispelled his trick. It could be an illusion within an illusion. I decided there was no point overtaxing my brain in the last few minutes it might be on my neck.

I raised my bowling ball. I stepped to the foul line and rolled that stupid pink fuzzy-dice ball straight down the middle.

I have to tell you, the sound of the pins falling was the most beautiful thing I’d heard all day. (Sorry, Prince. You were a close second.)

Blitzen screamed, “Strike!”

Samirah and Hearthstone hugged each other, which wasn’t something either of them tended to do.

Alex’s eyes widened. “It worked? It worked!”

I grinned at her. “Now all you have to do is knock down all your pins and we tie. Do you have any shape-shifting form that could—?”

“Oh, don’t worry.” Her wicked smile was one hundred percent from her mother, Loki. “I’ve got it covered.”

She grew to immense size, her arms morphing into thick forelegs, her skin turning wrinkled gray, her nose elongating into a twenty-foot trunk.

Alex was now an African bush elephant, though one confused giant in the back of the room screamed, “She’s a cat!”

Alex picked up the bowling ball with her trunk. She stormed the foul line and hurled the ball, stomping with all her weight and shaking the entire alley. Not only did her bowling ball knock down the pins, the force of her stomping obliterated the pins in all twelve lanes, making Alex the first elephant in history, as far I knew, to score a perfect 300, twelve strikes, with only one throw.

I may have jumped up and down and clapped like a five-year-old girl who had just gotten a pony. (What did I say about not judging?) Sam, Hearth, and Blitz rushed us and tackled us in a big group hug while the crowd of giants looked on sourly.

Herg and Blerg threw down their football helmets.

“We can’t beat that score!” Herg wailed. “Just take our heads!”

“The mortals are cheaters!” Tiny complained. “First they shrunk my bag and insulted Elvis! Now they’ve dishonored the Turkey Bowlers!”

The giants began to advance on us.

“Hold!” Utgard-Loki raised his arms. “This is my still bowling alley, and these competitors have won…uh, squarely, if not fairly.” He turned to us. “The normal prize is yours. Would you like the severed heads of Herg and Blerg?”

Alex and I looked at each other. We tacitly agreed that severed heads really wouldn’t go with the décor in our hotel rooms.

“Utgard-Loki,” I said, “all we want is the information you promised.”

The king faced the crowd. He spread his palms like what ya gonna do? “My friends, you must admit these mortals have spunk. As much as we tried to humiliate them, they humiliated us instead. And is there anything we mountain giants respect more than the ability to humiliate one’s enemies?”

The other giants murmured in reluctant agreement.

“I wish to help them!” Utgard-Loki announced. “I believe they have proven their worth. How much time will you give me?”

I didn’t quite understand the question, but the giants muttered among themselves. Tiny stepped forward. “I say five minutes. All in favor?”

“Aye!” shouted the crowd.

Utgard-Loki bowed. “More than fair. Come, my guests, let’s talk outside.”

As he steered us through the bar and out the front doors, I said, “Uh, what happens after five minutes?”

“Hmm?” Utgard-Loki smiled. “Oh, then my liege men are free to chase you down and kill you. You did humiliate them, after all.”