Fenris & Mott, page 1
Dedication
For Lisa Will, my loving bearer of shield and sword
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Greg van Eekhout
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
MOTT WAS RECORDING A ROOT BEER review video in the alley behind the Mi-T-Mart when she found the puppy.
Holding her phone in one hand and an open bottle of root beer in the other, she put on a big smile and thumbed the Record button.
“Hi, fellow Bubble Heads, it’s another episode of the Mott and Amanda Root Beer Show! As you can see, the show’s a little different today. For one thing, I’m flying solo since Amanda’s on vacation with her family in Germany and they wouldn’t spring for an expensive phone plan, so she can’t do videos right now. In fact, she’s hardly even messaging me. That’s right, I haven’t heard from my best friend in more than a week. But that’s okay! I’m doing fine on my own! Another difference is that I’m not even in Pennsylvania anymore on account of me and my mom moving all the way out to Culver City, California. That’s near Los Angeles, literally thousands of miles from Amanda. So I’m not recording this in Amanda’s kitchen like you’re used to seeing, with the restaurant-quality stove and the good lighting and the quiet neighbors. It’s just me, by myself, in an alley with traffic noise and pigeons. And a sort of rancid odor, and . . . and . . . this is just pathetic.”
She pressed the Stop button and deleted the video without even watching it. This was her third attempt at recording a review on her own, each one worse than the last. She’d tried inside the new apartment, but you could hear the neighbors’ loud music because the walls were thin, and the lighting in the kitchen was terrible. And outside wasn’t working any better.
She stood in the alley and guzzled the root beer, a Reitmann’s Old Style. It opened with a strong sizzle on the gums, continuing with a cinnamon presence, and faded with a subtle vanilla flavor. Not bad, she judged. Three and a half out of five bubbles on the Mott and Amanda Bubble Scale.
Draining the bottle, she dropped it into the blue recycle bin. And that’s when she heard something go “mweep.”
After the mweep came the distinct sound of nails scrabbling against cardboard.
Something was alive in there.
Probably a rat.
Mott didn’t have anything against rats. Elmer was a rat. He’d lived in a roomy cage in Mott’s fifth-grade class back in Pennsylvania, and he was friendly and clean, the kind of rat you could feed a carrot to and he wouldn’t bite and give you a disease. Good old Elmer. Los Angeles garbage rats were probably entirely different. They were probably bitey.
Well, if a rat had gotten into the recycling on its own, it could get itself out.
Unless it couldn’t.
Unless it was too small.
Or it was hurt.
“Mweep.”
Mott tiptoed as close to the bin as she dared and stretched to peer inside. A flash of white fur appeared beneath a shifting piece of cardboard. Not a rat.
Mott looked up and down the alley in hopes of finding someone else to deal with this. Maybe an adult. Maybe another kid who looked like an animal lover or was practiced in the art of rodent combat.
But there was only her.
Holding her breath, she flicked the piece of cardboard aside and gasped.
Sitting amid discarded cans and bottles and boxes was a ball of white fluff with big triangular ears and a moist button nose. It blinked at her with eyes as blue as the ocean on a world map.
“Puppy!” Mott squeaked.
“Mweep,” the puppy squeaked back.
Without another thought, Mott reached into the bin, lifted the puppy with both hands, and nuzzled him to her chest.
His fur was so soft, like petting air. Clean scents of pine and mountain snow wafted into Mott’s nose. Since he didn’t stink, he couldn’t have been in the bin very long. And he was too small to have climbed in on his own, which meant someone had thrown him away as if he were garbage.
Anger rose like lava from Mott’s belly and boiled in her head. Who would do such a thing to a tiny animal?
A massive, awful, disgusting jerk, that’s who.
But did the puppy belong to the jerk? Maybe someone had dognapped him and then decided they didn’t want him after all. Or maybe he was a stray. He had no collar, no tags.
“What do you think I should do?” Mott asked the pup.
He gave her a very serious look. “Mweep.”
Mott stared into his blue eyes, and he stared back, and she knew what he wanted, and she knew what he needed.
“I promise—” Mott started to say, but stopped.
A promise was more than words that spilled from your lips. A promise was an action. And when you broke a promise, you broke a lot of things. You broke a trust. You could break a heart. She knew this because people she trusted had promised her things and then broken those promises.
She thought it over.
Then, knowing the full weight of her next words, she completed them. “I promise I’m going to take care of you.”
“Mweep,” said the pup.
“You are one hundred percent correct: Whoever threw you in the recycling is gross. And I know you don’t speak English and I don’t speak pup, but I’m going to pretend we’re both having a conversation, because otherwise I’m just talking to myself, and talking to you is better. Okay?”
The pup was too busy sniffing the air with his twitching nose to answer.
There was an animal shelter less than a mile walk down Overland Avenue, a squat brick building that announced its presence from blocks away with a chorus of barks and yips.
By the time Mott arrived on foot, huge love for the pup had bloomed in her heart. It wasn’t a completely welcome feeling. Especially not here at the shelter.
A week after arriving in Culver City, even before they’d unpacked all their belongings, her mom had taken her here to look at dogs. It was supposed to be compensation for having to move from Pennsylvania, to give her something to look forward to. To give her a friend. Mott had quickly fallen in love with a Chihuahua/terrier/Lab mix named Benson, and they put in an application, and it even got approved.
But then her mom’s new company had cutbacks, and her job disappeared. The rent on the nice, new apartment was too much, and they ended up moving again, to a smaller, less nice apartment. It would have been okay. Mott would have adjusted her expectations. She’d done it before. But this apartment had a no-dogs policy.
“Mweep,” said the pup with outrage.
Mott steeled herself and walked through the door.
Inside, a handful of people clacked on computers or talked on phones. The barking was even louder, and despite a lemony tinge of cleaning products, the place smelled strongly of dog. The pup shifted in Mott’s arms and fluttered with a growl. It was a very cute growl.
“Who’s this?” said the person at the desk, using the high-pitched voice people use when talking to small baby animals. He had silver-gray hair and big forearms and wore a powder blue polo shirt with the animal shelter name printed over the pocket.
“I don’t know. I found him in a recycling bin. Someone threw him away.”
The shelter guy didn’t seem shocked, just disappointed. Then he gave Mott a look of recognition.
“Weren’t you here before with your mom? You were going to adopt—”
“Benson.”
He made a sympathetic noise. “I’m sorry that didn’t work out. I know that must have been a gut punch.” Mott fought down a lump in her throat. Her eyes felt hot. “Benson found a good forever family,” he said. “I don’t know if that makes you feel better or worse.”
It made Mott feel both ways at the same time. She cleared her throat.
Shelter Guy scratched the dog’s chin. “No tags, huh?”
“No. But I figured he might have a microchip.”
“That was good thinking. Come on back.”
Shelter Guy led Mott into an office. Framed quotes by people Mott assumed were famous hung on the walls:
Some people talk to animals. Not many listen, though. That’s the problem. —A. A. Milne
Clearly, animals know more than we think, and think a great deal more than we know. —Irene M. Pepperberg
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read. —Groucho Marx
The shelter guy took a close look at pup’s eyes and ears and teeth. The pup didn’t seem to mind.
“Are you a veterinarian?” Mott asked.
“No, just a volunteer animal lover. Like you.” As he kept examining the pup, a frown formed on his face.
“What’s wrong?”
“He seems in good health,” he said. “It’s just . . .” The frown remained.
He got out an electronic device.
Mott put a protective hand on the pup’s back. “Will it hurt?”
Shelter Guy shook
“Okay, then. You can go ahead.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Oh, wait. I can’t pay you. I don’t have any money. I spent it on root beer.”
“I hope it was a good root beer.”
“Reitmann’s,” Mott volunteered. “It was pretty good. Three and a half bubbles.”
Shelter Guy ran the scanner over the pup’s front shoulders. Then under his front legs. Then down his back. Then over his hind legs and shoulders.
The scanner didn’t beep or buzz. It made no noise at all.
“Well?” Mott asked.
“No microchip, I’m afraid.”
Mott discovered she was actually happy about this. Maybe she didn’t have to hand the pup over. At least not right away.
“You found him in the recycling bin, you said?”
“Behind Mi-T-Mart. I was recycling my root beer bottle.
“Please don’t eat my hand, little scruff.” The pup was trying to get Shelter Guy’s entire hand in his jaws.
“Do you know what kind of dog he is?” Mott asked.
Shelter Guy’s frown dug even deeper. “Kid, this isn’t a dog. This is a wolf.”
2
A WOLF.
The pup was a wolf.
Mott had found a wolf. She’d rescued a wolf.
She could be a girl with a wolf, like some kind of cool fantasy character. Maybe she’d get a sword. Maybe she’d start a new video channel. Really, she didn’t know what she should do, but being a girl with a wolf was definitely going to be her thing. It was even better than root beer.
“You did good, kid,” the shelter guy said while the pup . . . the wolf . . . glared suspiciously at its own tail as if it had just discovered it.
“What should I feed him?” Mott asked. “Meat, right? I think we have some hamburger in the freezer at home.”
“He should be getting regurgitated meat and mother’s milk. Regurgitated means—”
“Barfed up. Ew. I bet they don’t sell meat barf in pet stores. Well, maybe I could get some moose or elk or deer at the supermarket and blend it up. . . .”
She imagined playing fetch with him in the park. Watching TV on the sofa with him curled up in her lap. Maybe at the end of summer when school began again, she could take him to class for show-and-tell. She wouldn’t be the new girl. She’d be the girl with the wolf. It would be awesome, a ten-out-of-five-bubbles situation. If nothing else, the wolf would be her friend.
And then reality crashed down on her like a dinosaur-killing asteroid.
“I can’t keep him.”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“He needs some kind of wolf-rescue organization,” she said. “So they can release him into the wild.”
Shelter Guy’s face became very kind. “A lot of people would have just left him in that bin, but you brought him to us, and now we can make sure he goes to people who know how to take care of him.”
With his tail in his mouth, the wolf made muffled growls.
“Will I be able to visit him?”
“I wouldn’t get my hopes up. The best thing for him is to be rehabilitated and released into the wild with a pack of his own. He needs to roam and hunt as far away from people as possible. He needs freedom.”
“Yeah,” Mott said, so quietly she could barely hear her own voice. “Okay.”
“I know a good organization,” he tried to reassure her. “They’re in Idaho. It’s really pretty up there.”
Mott believed him that the organization was good. She believed him that it was pretty. She believed him that it was best for the puppy. She also believed her heart was breaking.
With the matter apparently settled, Shelter Guy nodded. “I want to check him over a bit more. Would you like to help?”
“Okay,” Mott repeated desperately. If she had to say goodbye to the pup, she wanted to spend every last second with him she could.
“Let’s just get a leash on and walk him around to see how he moves.” He produced a leash from a drawer and approached the pup with the looped end.
The pup’s eyes narrowed. He flattened his ears against his head, and his tail shot out in straight and rigid line. His snarl was tiny, but his teeth looked like needles. With shocking speed, he leaped to the floor and shot out of the room.
“Puppy, stop!” Mott cried, following the pup down the short corridor to the lobby.
Another shelter worker sprung from behind her desk to block the pup’s path, but he easily darted around her.
“Look, everyone calm down,” Shelter Guy said. “You’re just freaking him out.” He still held the leash.
The pup didn’t slow down. Instead, he aimed himself straight for the exit.
Mott winced when he smashed headfirst into the glass door, which shattered in a gut-clenching crunch, blasting apart with hundreds of glittering square bits that clattered to the floor.
The pup kept going, out onto the sidewalk and away.
“Careful!” Shelter Guy warned. “Don’t cut yourself.”
Mott didn’t care about cutting herself. She only cared about the pup. What if he was hurt? What if he ran into traffic? What if she’d already broken her promise to take care of him?
Outside, he was nowhere in sight. How could he have gotten lost so fast? How had such a small animal been strong enough to break through the glass?
Shelter Guy joined Mott on the sidewalk. “Which way did he go?”
“I don’t know. I’ll go right; you go left.”
He handed her the leash. “If you find him, bring him back here, understand? He’s not a pet.”
Mott took the leash and started her search with a bitter taste in her mouth. She wasn’t the one who’d sent him into a panic by trying to leash him, so why was she the one getting lectured?
“Puppy?” she called. She checked around trees and under bushes. She peered beneath parked cars and even stopped to look in a couple of garbage cans and recycling bins, anywhere the pup might be hiding. “Fuzz ball? Little wolf?”
She reached the end of the block and heard a faint “Mweep?”
Around the corner she went, sprinting.
There was the pup, alive, with no blood or other marks on him.
He was not alone.
Held off the ground, he wriggled and squirmed between a pair of massive hands belonging to a gigantic man wearing a brown jacket sewn with leather cords as thick as Mott’s shoelaces and lined with animal fur. His pants were the same, tucked into fur boots. Brown hair tumbled over his broad shoulders, and a bushy beard fell over his chest.
He looked like a bear wearing another bear.
It must have been a costume. There were two movie studios in Culver City less than a mile from here, and the coffee shops were always full of studio workers and sometimes background actors. He was probably just an extra.
But he looked like he could flatten Mott like a bug.
“Put him down,” Mott said. “He doesn’t like the way you’re squeezing him.”
“I cannot.” The man’s voice was gentler than Mott expected. “He is too good at escaping.”
“Are you the one who put him in the recycling?”
“What is recycling?”
“The garbage? Behind Mi-T-Mart? Did you throw him in the garbage?”
The man shook his head. “No. That sounds cruel. I am Gorm the Vicious, not Gorm the Cruel. Now please, small girl, step out of my way.”
Mott planted her feet firmly on the sidewalk. “I said put him down.”
He smiled under his beard. “You are brave. Or stupid. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. But I am Tew’s bondsman, and my chieftain has given me a task.”
“Who’s Tew?”
Gorm gave her a look like she’d just asked what a shoe was. “If you don’t know already, you don’t want to. And now, brave one, you are wasting my time. This is your last warning. Move.”
Mott gulped. “I have a task, too. I’m taking care of this pup.”
“A pup?” He laughed, but not the kind of laugh people do when they think something’s funny. “He is not a pup.”
“I know. He’s a wolf.”
“Fenris is no ordinary wolf. He is the moon-eater. The Odin-slayer. The world-ender. He may be small on the outside, but his capacity for destruction is vast.”
“Are you from one of the studios?” Mott asked. “I mean, your dialogue. It’s . . . a lot.”
