The Hammer of Thor

“Gods.” I didn’t know what to do with all the anger inside me. My chest boiled at the same temperature as the cesspool. If I hadn’t hated Loki enough already, now I was determined to follow him to the ends of the Nine Worlds and…and do something really bad to him.

Like tie him down with his children’s guts? asked a little voice in my head. Put a venomous snake over his face? How did that sort of justice work out for the Aesir?

“So you did resist him,” I told the girls. “That’s good.”

Alex shrugged. “I told you, he can’t control me. Earlier, I was just acting so he wouldn’t get suspicious. But, Sam, yeah…that was a good first start. You stayed alive. You can’t expect complete resistance right away. We can work on it together—”

“He’s free, Alex!” Sam snapped. “We failed. I failed. If I’d been faster, if I’d realized—”

“Failed?” The thunder god loomed over us. “Nonsense, girl! You retrieved my hammer! You are heroes and will all receive trophies!”

I could see Sam gritting her teeth, trying not to yell at Thor. I was afraid she’d bust another capillary from the strain.

“I appreciate that, Lord Thor,” she said at last. “But Loki never cared about the hammer. It was all a smokescreen to get himself freed.”

Thor frowned and raised Mjolnir. “Oh, don’t you worry, lass. We’ll put Loki back in chains. And I promise you, he will care about this hammer when I ram it down his throat!”

Brave words, but when I looked around at my friends, I could tell that no one was reassured.

I stared at the letters on Thor’s Kevlar vest. “What is G-R-R-M, anyway?”

“It’s pronounced grrm,” Thor said. “An acronym for God Rapid Response Mobilization.”

“Rapid?” Alex snarled. “Are you kidding me? You guys took forever to get here!”

“Now, now.” Heimdall stepped in. “You were a moving target, weren’t you? We got into the tunnel at Bridal Veil Falls just fine! But then the whole moving-to-Loki’s-lair thing—that caught us off guard. We were sealed in at both ends with earth-giant-hardened stone. Digging after you…well, even with three gods, that was tough.”

Especially when one takes pictures and does not help, Vidar signed.

The other two gods ignored him, but Hearthstone signed back: They never listen, do they?

I know, signed the god. Hearing people. Silly.

I decided I liked Vidar. “Excuse me,” I asked him, signing as I spoke. “Are you the god of shoes? Or healing? Or…?”

Vidar smirked. He crooked both of his index fingers. He placed one under his eye, then tapped that finger with the other hooked one. I hadn’t seen that sign before, but I got it: Eye for an eye. Talons and hooks. “You’re the god of vengeance.”

That seemed odd to me, since he seemed so kind and was mute. Then again, he wore an expanding shoe that could stomp giant kings flat.

“Oh, Vidar is our go-to guy for emergencies!” Heimdall said. “That shoe of his is made from every shoe scrap that has ever been thrown away! It can…well, you saw what it can do. Hey, do you think we can get a group shot with everyone?”

“No,” said everyone.

Thor glared at the bridge guardian. “Vidar is also called the Silent One, which means he doesn’t talk. He also doesn’t take selfies constantly, which makes him good company.”

Mallory Keen sheathed her twin knives. “Well, that’s fascinating, I’m sure. But shouldn’t you Aesir be doing something productive now, like…oh, finding Loki and tying him up again?”

The girl is right, Vidar signed. Time is wasting.

“Listen to brave Vidar, girl,” said Thor. “Loki’s capture can wait for another day. Right now we should be celebrating the return of my hammer!”

That’s not what I said, Vidar signed.

“Besides,” Thor added, “I don’t need to search for the scoundrel. I know exactly where he’s going.”

“You do?” I asked. “Where?”

Thor pounded me on the back—fortunately with his hand and not his hammer. “We’ll talk all about it back at Valhalla. Dinner is on me!”

Squirrels in the Window May Be Larger Than They Appear

I LOVE IT when gods offer to pay for a dinner that’s already free.

Almost as much as I love assault squads that show up after the assault.

I never got the chance to complain about it, though. Once we got back to Valhalla—thanks to Thor’s very overcrowded chariot—we were given a celebration feast that was wild even by Viking standards. Thor paraded around the feast hall holding Mjolnir above his head, grinning and yelling “Death to our enemies!” and generally causing a commotion. Party horns were blown. Mead was guzzled. Piñatas were cracked open with the mighty Mjolnir and candy was eaten.

Only our little group sulked, clustered around our table and halfheartedly accepting the pats on the back and compliments from our fellow einherjar. They assured us we were heroes. Not only had we retrieved Thor’s hammer, we had destroyed an entire wedding party of evil, badly-dressed earth giants!

Nobody complained about Blitz and Hearth’s presence. Nobody paid much attention to our new friend Vidar, despite his strange footwear. The Silent One lived up to his name and sat with us silently, occasionally asking Hearthstone questions in a form of sign language I didn’t recognize.

Heimdall left early to get back to the Bifrost Bridge. There were important selfies to be taken. Meanwhile, Thor partied like a madman, bodysurfing over crowds of einherjar and Valkyries. Whatever he had wanted to tell us about Loki’s location, he seemed to have forgotten, and I wasn’t going to get anywhere near him in that mob.

My only consolation: some of the lords at the thanes’ table also looked uneasy. Every once in a while Helgi the manager would scowl at the crowd as if he wanted to scream what I was thinking: STOP CELEBRATING, YOU IDIOTS! LOKI IS FREE!

Maybe the einherj

ar were choosing not to worry about it. Maybe Thor had assured them, too, that it was a problem easily fixed. Or maybe they were celebrating because Ragnarok was near. That idea scared me the most.

As dinner ended, Thor rode off in his chariot without even acknowledging us. He bellowed to the assembled host that he had to hurry to the borders of Midgard and demonstrate his hammer’s power by blasting some giant armies to sizzly bits. The einherjar cheered and then began streaming out of the feast hall, no doubt heading to smaller but even wilder parties.

Vidar said his good-byes after a short conversation with Hearthstone in that strange language. Whatever he said, the elf chose not to share it with us. My hallmates offered to stay with me, but they had been invited to an after-party after-party, and I told them to go. They deserved some fun after the tedium of digging their way into Loki’s cavern.

Sam, Alex, Blitz, and Hearth accompanied me to the elevators. Before we got there, Helgi appeared and grabbed my arm.

“You and your friends need to come with me.”

The manager’s voice was grim. I got the feeling we would not be receiving trophies and coupons for our brave deeds.

Helgi led us through passageways I’d never seen before, up staircases into the far reaches of the hotel. I knew Valhalla was big, but each time I went exploring, I was newly amazed. The place went on forever—like Costco or a chemistry lecture.

At last we arrived at a heavy oaken door with a brass plaque that read MANAGER.

Helgi pushed open the door and we followed him inside to an office.

Three of the walls and the ceiling were paneled in spears—polished oak shafts tipped with gleaming silver points. Behind Helgi’s desk, the back wall was one huge plate glass window overlooking the endless swaying branches of the World Tree.

I’d seen a lot of different views from the windows of Valhalla. The hotel had access to each of the Nine Worlds. But I’d never seen a view straight into the tree. It made me feel disoriented, like we were floating in its branches—which, cosmically speaking, we were.

“Sit.” Helgi waved to a semicircle of chairs on the visitors’ side of the desk. Sam, Alex, Blitz, Hearth, and I got comfortable with lots of squeaking leather and creaking wood. Helgi plopped himself down behind his huge mahogany desk, which was empty except for one of those desk-toy thingies with the hanging silver ball bearings that you can knock back and forth.

Oh…and the ravens. At either front corner of the desk perched one of Odin’s twin ravens, both of them glaring at me as if trying to decide whether to assign me detention or feed me to the trolls.

Helgi leaned back and steepled his fingers. He would’ve looked intimidating if it weren’t for his roadkill explosion of hair and the leftover bits of feast beast in his beard.

Sam fiddled nervously with her ring of keys. “Sir, what happened in Loki’s cave…it wasn’t my friends’ fault. I take full responsibility—”

“The Helheim you do!” Alex snapped. “Sam did nothing wrong. If you’re going to punish anyone—”

“Stop!” Helgi ordered. “No one is getting punished.”

Blitzen exhaled with relief. “Well, that’s good. Because we didn’t have time to return this to Thor, but honestly we meant to.” Hearthstone produced Thor’s two-by-four hall-pass key and set it on the manager’s desk.

Helgi frowned. He slipped the pass into his desk drawer, which made me wonder how many others he had in there.

“You are here,” said the manager, “because Odin’s ravens asked for you.”

“Huginn and Muninn?” Thought and Memory, I recalled from the Hotel Valhalla Guide.

The birds made that weird croaking noise ravens love to make, as if regurgitating the souls of all the frogs they’d eaten over the centuries.

They were much larger than normal ravens—and creepier. Their eyes were like gateways into the void. Their feathers were a thousand different shades of ebony. When the light hit them, runes seemed to glisten in their plumage—dark words rising out of a sea of black ink.

Helgi tapped his desk toy. The balls started swinging and hitting each other with an annoying click, click, click.

“Odin would be here,” said the manager, “but he is tending to other matters. Huginn and Muninn represent him. As a bonus”—Helgi leaned forward and lowered his voice—“the ravens don’t show motivational PowerPoints.”

The birds squawked in agreement.