Fenris & Mott, page 5
“They have scissors in Asgard?”
“How else do you stab a dragon in the eye?” Thrudi stuffed her sword back in her bag. “Villager, tell us what has transpired here.”
“It happened so fast,” the woman blurted. “There was a whoosh and then . . .” She waved her arms around, gesturing at pretty much everything. “Maybe some kind of weird tornado or something.”
Mott and Thrudi exchanged a knowing look.
Mott got back on her bike. “It seems like he’s getting worse.”
“He’ll grow more destructive with every day, maybe every hour, just as the prophecy foretells.”
“Or maybe he’s just scared.”
“Maybe both.”
They resumed the search. There were more partially eaten trees, a parked car with a missing rear tire, a bus stop where Mott knew there ought to be a bench, but the trail of destruction ended after a few blocks.
“Do you think his stomach’s full?” Mott asked.
Thrudi made a grim noise. “His ability to consume is limitless, and once you are pulled into his toothy maw, there is no escape. No object is too massive, too heavy, too strong to avoid falling inside him. He warps the very laws of nature. No human or god can resist the tide of his hunger.”
“But he’s cute,” Mott felt the need to add in his defense.
“Oh, yes, he is adorable. And have you smelled him?”
“He smells great!”
“Like a mountain forest,” Thrudi readily agreed.
Mott thought for a few seconds. “I have an idea how to find him. He can’t just keep devouring parking meters and trees without people calling 911. I can check news and fire department reports on my phone.”
She started searching. Right away, she found a bulletin. “The water tower at the movie studio just went missing,” she told Thrudi. “The entire thing.”
“I don’t know what a movie studio is, but the way you use that device is marvelous. Is it magic? Are you a powerful sorcerer?”
Mott liked the idea of being a sorcerer. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am. I am a very powerful sorcerer.”
“Friend Mott, meeting you was good fortune.”
Mott also liked how Thrudi had called her “friend.” “Maybe . . . maybe we can hang out and do fun stuff if the world doesn’t end?”
“I would like that,” Thrudi said. “We could drink root beer. I could teach you sword combat, and you could teach me to use your magical device. Tell me, Mott, have you ever hunted wild boar?”
“I’m not sure I’d enjoy that? Have you ever ridden a roller coaster? It’s a cart that goes around curves really fast and sometimes upside down and makes you scream.
“That sounds frightening,” Thrudi said.
“I know! That’s why it’s fun.”
“I see. Much like getting gored by a boar tusk.”
Yes, it would be fun being Thrudi’s friend, Mott decided. They had a lot they could teach each other.
When they reached the movie studio, Thrudi regarded the tall, windowless buildings stretching down the block. “This is quite a fortress. How many warriors lie within?”
“It’s not a fortress. They film movies and TV shows in there.”
“What are those?”
“You know, stories acted out for entertainment? What’s entertainment like where you’re from?”
“Usually it’s just one person reciting a tale of heroism. But sometimes there’s a human sacrifice. Those are popular.”
“There’s no way my mom would let me watch a human sacrifice.”
“She sounds very strict.”
“I guess?”
“Can you use your device to fly us over the wall as birds? Or perhaps allow us to pass through it as though it were but insubstantial mist?”
“It’s really mostly just for looking stuff up. If this was a fortress, how would you get in?”
“I’d lead an overwhelming force of berserkers and slaughter anyone who stood in my way.”
“Thrudi, I’m serious, you cannot go around slaughtering people in my world. It’s considered wrong. You have to promise me. Zero slaughtering.”
Thrudi’s shoulders slumped. “Anyway, we lack an army of berserkers.”
“We won’t need them. I just came up with a plan.”
Down the block, a line of cars waited to enter the lot. One of them was a pickup truck with an open bed.
Mott leaned her bike against the wall.
She loved her bike, one of the most precious things she’d brought with her from Pennsylvania. Two years ago, her dad had promised to send her a bike for her birthday, and he’d actually kept that promise, only the bike that got delivered was for a little kid. It even had training wheels. It was like her dad didn’t know her at all. But Mott’s mom had made that bike go away, and one day Mott came home from school to find a new red bike in the kitchen. It wasn’t the most expensive bike, but it was hers. Mott knew it wasn’t magic that had made it appear, but her mom working overtime to make enough money to buy it.
“I guess I’ll have to leave it here,” she said. “It’ll probably get stolen.”
“The bonds of kinship among people break. It is foretold in the prophecy.”
Mott opened her notebook to the Ragnarok page and drew a question mark next to “The bonds of kinship break.” Could a stolen bike be part of the end of the world? If you couldn’t leave your bike without someone stealing it, maybe it meant the world hadn’t been right for a long time.
The pickup truck crept down the line of traffic, and it was a simple job to sneak up behind it, step on the rear bumper, and fall into the back. Mott pulled a paint-spattered tarp over them, and they lay quiet as the truck pulled up to the guard gate.
If Mott could have forgotten about Fenris being in trouble, and forgotten about the end of the world, this might have been fun. She’d never been on an adventure before.
The truck pulled forward past the gate. It continued at a slow pace, and Mott and Thrudi hopped out.
Golf carts puttered between old-timey office buildings and along clean grass-belted sidewalks with light posts that looked like gas lamps. Tourists followed a guide like a flock of ducklings as she pointed out buildings that had appeared in TV shows and movies. People went in and out of the buildings, most of them regular-looking office workers but a few in costumes: a cowboy, a woman in an astronaut space suit, a couple of clowns.
“Oh, look at that guy in the black armor,” Mott said. “He must be on a sci-fi show.”
“His armor looks thin and crackable,” Thrudi judged.
“Okay, how about her?” A woman in a beautiful ball gown and sneakers rushed by them.
“That is a lovely dress. Although not suited to weather or combat.”
“What about that guy?” Mott pointed to a man across a lawn. His costume was impressive, rusty chain mail splattered in very convincing dried blood. One arm was concealed under a cape of white fur, while his exposed arm rippled with muscle. And in a fist the size of a pumpkin, he gripped an ax big enough to fell a large tree with one blow.
He scanned the crowd, looking for . . . something.
Mott found she couldn’t keep her eyes on him for long without getting a bit of the Grand Canyon feeling.
“That’s Tew,” Thrudi rasped, her eyes wide, her flesh paper white. “A god of war.”
Slowly, like a rotating planet, he began turning his head in their direction.
Thrudi reached for her sword.
“Prop girl,” a man in a golf cart shouted. “Why aren’t you on set? Didn’t you hear about the water tower thing? We had to move the production to Soundstage Two. We’re about to shoot the final battle, and we need every sword!”
“Uh . . . ?” Thrudi said.
“We’re late, let’s go.” Mott shoved Thrudi into the back seat of the cart and piled in after her.
The cart lurched down the road.
Tew, the war god, wasn’t following. He was still back behind them, searching.
It was a short drive to a windowless concrete box of a building with a plaque over the door reading “Soundstage 2.” And next to the door, on the asphalt ground, sat a fuzzy white wolf pup.
Fenris was licking the building’s outer wall.
He was tasting it.
Mott leaped from the cart before it even came to a full stop. “Fenris, don’t you dare!”
Fenris turned with a startled mweep. Seeing Mott, he ran to her with his tail a wagging blur.
“You are naughty,” Mott scolded, scooping him up. “Did you eat those parking meters? And a tree? And a water tower?”
Fenris whined and tried to hide his face in Mott’s armpit.
“Mott.” Thrudi pointed down the road with her sword. “Tew is coming. We must either confront him or conceal ourselves.”
“I’m the animal wrangler,” Mott explained to the production assistant. “This dog is in the movie, and I am wrangling him.”
“Fine, whatever,” the assistant said. “Let’s go.”
The building was a single vast room, like a barn or an airplane hangar, with lights suspended from catwalks overhead. Technicians rushed around, moving more lights and huge cameras on wheels and microphones hanging from poles.
Mott took it all in, spellbound. She could only imagine the epic root beer reviews she could film with all this equipment and crew.
Someone with a megaphone was trying to organize a horde of barbarians in front of a bright green wall. The barbarians carried axes and spears and swords and wore spiky armor and horned helmets.
Thrudi laughed. “Those helmets are ridiculous.”
“They’re costume helmets,” Mott said. “All those guys are actors. The weapons aren’t real.”
“Ah, so they are making a story.”
“That’s right.”
“What’s the story about?”
“It’s about me!” boomed a voice. “Star Hammer: The Motion Picture, starring me as Star Hammer!” A tall grinning man strode across the soundstage, casually tossing and catching a massive hammer. He was dressed similarly to the other barbarians, with shiny blond hair cascading over his gleaming chrome shoulder plates.
Mott’s heart pounded with excitement. “That’s . . . that’s Chris Hevans!”
Thrudi tightened her grip on her sword. “Is he dangerous? Should I slay him?”
“No, he’s a movie star! My mom loves him! I wonder if I can get an autograph—”
“Puppy!” Chris Hevans’s bright blue eyes went wide. He rushed up to Fenris. “Oh, gosh, what a cute little thing. Is he real? Or is he a puppet? Can I hold him?”
Fenris drooled a little.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Mott said.
Chris Hevans’s face fell. “Doesn’t he like people?”
“He likes people,” said Thrudi. “He likes everything. Trees, vehicles, minions of Tew—”
“Chris,” the man with the megaphone called, “we’re ready for you.”
“That’s me,” he explained to Mott and Thrudi unnecessarily. “Chris Hevans, starring as Star Hammer, in Star Hammer: The Motion Picture!” He flexed his arms, threw his head back in a hearty laugh, and strode over to the green wall.
Mott scritched Fenris’s head. “Good boy for not eating an A-list movie star.”
Fenris sighed.
The man with the megaphone—the director, Mott assumed—was calling out instructions. “Okay, everyone, here’s how this is going to go. Chris, you stand there . . . no, a little right, good, good, brilliant. Barbarians, on ‘Action!’ you’re going to charge Chris. Then Chris is going to bring his hammer down. That’s the cue for the pyrotechnics.”
A woman in a baseball hat with “BOOM” printed on it raised her hand. She stood at a table before a black box with a bunch of complicated-looking controls and one big red switch.
“There’ll be flame and smoke and sparks,” the director continued. “The barbarians fall back, and then Chris—”
“Then Chris Hevans strikes his mighty pose!” said Chris Hevans, striking a mighty pose.
“Right,” the director went on. “Chris strikes the pose, and we cut. Everyone got it? Okay, quiet on set! Aaaaand . . . action!”
The barbarians roared and brandished their fake weapons and began their charge.
“Why do you still have the sword?” It was the production assistant, whispering angrily at Thrudi. “Why is the sword not on set?”
“It’s for the next scene,” Mott said.
“And you!” the production assistant whispered, a little louder, a little angrier. “Why aren’t you on set?”
He wasn’t talking to Mott.
She felt something. A presence. A cold sensation in her bones. A heavy sadness. A roar in her ears like people crying out in pain. She knew Tew was behind her even before she saw him.
“He’s in the next scene, too,” she said weakly.
Thrudi raised her blade, a grim, tight-lipped smile on her brave face. A strand of sweat traced a line down her neck.
“You had no hope of eluding me,” Tew said in a voice like cannon fire. “I am war itself, bringer of strife and glory.” He gestured at Fenris with his bloodstained ax. “And that beast is my weapon.”
“He’s just rehearsing,” Mott told the production assistant.
The production assistant shook his head and walked away, muttering, “I can’t believe they pay people to write this stuff.”
Tew lifted his ax. It shouldn’t have cast a shadow as big as it did. The light wasn’t right, and it wasn’t large enough, but it was as if the moon had eclipsed the sun.
Thrudi readied herself.
“Fenris, run!” Mott said.
Fenris took off like a shot. And even though Mott had no weapon, she moved between Tew and the pup. She didn’t do so without thinking. This was not instinct. It was a deliberate decision, and she was so terrified she thought she might barf up her own heart. But she’d promised to protect Fenris.
Tew didn’t even notice. He sidestepped her, ducked under Thrudi’s swinging sword, and gave pursuit.
Fenris aimed for the set where the barbarians were running toward Chris Hevans, who was still posing. It took Tew only two strides to cover the distance. He lifted his ax high above his head at the exact same time that Chris Hevans raised his hammer.
Fenris ran between the legs of the barbarians, tripping some, who fell into others, and soon there was a messy tangle of stumbling actors.
“Hey, what . . . ?” screamed the director. Confused camera operators and lighting and sound technicians and pretty much everyone on set looked like they had no idea what was going on and what they were supposed to do.
Fenris leaped into the air.
“Nooooo,” Mott screamed as the wolf stretched his jaws and fell upon Chris Hevans.
It was like a magic trick. Like a snake rapidly swallowing something bigger than itself. Chris Hevans’s head went in Fenris’s mouth. Then his broad shoulders. His massive chest. His entire torso, his waist, hips, legs, boots. By the time Fenris landed on his paws, Chris Hevans was gone.
But Tew was not.
His blade reflected the studio lights in a brilliant, bloody glare. The same glare shone in his eyes. He was going to get Fenris. He was going to use Fenris as a weapon to bring about chaos and destruction. And Mott had no doubt he would hurt Fenris in the process.
Thrudi surged to block Tew from getting to Fenris, but she wasn’t fast enough.
Mott would have to be faster.
She leaped to the table where the pyrotechnician in the “BOOM” hat was stationed. Mott reached across her and flipped the big red switch. A blast went off, right beneath Tew’s feet. He flew back in a ball of flame and smoke and sparks and crashed hard onto the studio floor.
Mott sprinted for Fenris, who, despite some smoke stains on his fur, was contentedly licking his chops.
Scooping him up, she leaped over Tew’s stunned and groaning form and raced out the soundstage door.
“Mweep?” Fenris said. He blinked with innocence.
8
“SOMEONE STOLE MY BIKE.”
Mott stared at the now empty space. Blinking away tears, she drew a big ugly checkmark next to “Men forget the bonds of kinship” on her Ragnarok list.
“I am sorry, Mott,” Thrudi said.
“It’s my fault. I should have found something to chain it to.”
“We shouldn’t need chains to make people behave.”
Fenris mweeped in agreement.
Mott’s phone played a few notes of the Urpshchmidt root beer jingle, signaling a text from her mom. It was their noontime check-in. Mott sniffed. “My mom’s asking me how I am. And where I am. And what I’m doing.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
“That I got chased by a war god with an ax in a movie studio?”
“Whenever I didn’t want my parents to know my whereabouts I’d tell them I almost drowned in the creek. Then I’d throw myself in the creek to make it convincing. This one time I got washed so far downstream I ended up in the land of frost giants. That part was hard to explain.”
“Doing okay,” Mott typed. “I’m outside. Thinking about Chris Hevans movies. Love you.”
All of which was nearly true.
Her mom texted back some hearts.
Thrudi glanced around, uneasy. “We should try to get some distance from Tew.”
“But he got blown up. Isn’t that going to at least slow him down?”
“One time I saw an entire ox fall on him and he paused only long enough to comb his hair.”
“I have questions.”
“The important question is how are we going to travel at speed without your bike. Perhaps we can find a steed. At home I have a horse named Slashhoof. That’s because she uses her hooves to slash. Why, this one time I was fighting a troll, and Slashhoof kicked him in the neck and his head came clean off.” She chuckled fondly at the memory.
“I don’t think there’re any horse stables around here,” Mott said with secret relief.
“It doesn’t have to be a horse. A large stag would do. Perhaps a sturdy goat.”
Mott checked her phone. “Sorry, no farms in this neighborhood either.”
Thrudi gestured at the passing cars. “What about one of those smoke-breathing four-wheeled chariots, then?”
