Over the Underworld Read online

  “Mom, did you hear her?” Pru said when they’d walked a little way down the hall. “That was so embarrassing.”

  “I heard, honey. And I don’t like it, either. But there’s nothing to be done about it now. I’m sure it will blow over once the year starts.”

  Pru didn’t say anything. She just looked back. ABE did, too. Mr. Jeffries and Mrs. Edleman were standing close together, talking. He saw Mrs. Edleman point in their direction—he was sure she had pointed at Pru. Mr. Jeffries frowned.

  When ABE looked back at Pru, her face was still as red as her hair. He sighed.

  Cell Block E might not be as easy to escape as they had hoped.

  The air outside the ice-cream parlor smelled of a delicious combination of pine trees and the shop’s special homemade hot fudge. ABE, his dad, and Pru’s mom settled into a picnic table behind the store. Pru had gone back inside for napkins.

  ABE looked up at the colored pennants that lined the picnic area. They flapped in the evening breeze. Gazing beyond the flags, ABE was disappointed to see clouds rolling in. He had hoped for a view of the stars.

  “Why does the air always seem to smell so much better in the summer?” Pru’s mother asked, inhaling deeply.

  “Actually, it doesn’t just seem to,” ABE said. “It really does. I read an article about how odor molecules don’t travel so well when it’s cold, so there’s not as much to smell.”

  “ABE, you are a marvel!” Pru’s mother pointed her spoon at him. “You have so much knowledge floating around in that head of yours. Gavin, you must be so proud.”

  ABE looked at his dad, who blinked. “Yeah, he’s a smart kid all right. Certainly doesn’t get it from me. When I was his age all I cared about were sports and cars.”

  “He’s been a good influence on Pru, that’s for sure. I think she read more this summer than she has in the past . . . well, eleven years. Who’d have guessed she’d like mythology so much? Speaking of Pru . . .” Her mother paused to look around. “Where’s she gotten to? How hard is it to find napkins?”

  “I’m sure she’ll be right out,” ABE said.

  “Yeah. It’s an ice-cream parlor. How much trouble could she get into?” Pru’s mother’s eyes crinkled in a smile. “Then again, this is Pru we’re talking about. We might want to have the National Guard standing by.”

  She and his dad laughed. Even ABE smiled.

  “Maybe I should go check on her,” Pru’s mom said, setting her cup of ice cream on the table.

  “I’ll go,” ABE said, glancing at his dad. “I, uh, want to use the bathroom anyway.”

  As he walked around the building to the front entrance, he wondered if he should he have said restroom instead. Was the word bathroom impolite? What was proper etiquette when it came to lavatory terminology? Lavatory! Maybe he should have said that.

  He was so lost in thought that he nearly walked right into Pru as she barreled around the corner.

  “ABE,” she said, pulling him aside. “You’ll never guess what I just overheard! I was eavesdropping on a couple of teenagers—”

  “You were eavesdropping on teenagers?”

  Pru rolled her eyes. “Fine. I wasn’t actually eavesdropping. I was just interested in what they were talking about, so I stood someplace where I could be sure to accidentally overhear what they said. Okay?”

  ABE wanted to point out that he hadn’t been objecting to eavesdropping. He’d just been surprised. But Pru seemed excited, so he stayed quiet.

  “The point is, one of the teenagers has been working at Winterhaven House this summer. He was saying how crazy today had been up at the mansion because . . .”

  Pru took a deep breath. She gripped his shoulders.

  “Because they’re getting ready for Old Man Grimnir’s return tomorrow. ABE, Odin is coming back!”

  CHAPTER 4

  ABE woke up the next day to a sky the color of mourning. The book he’d been reading when he fell asleep—a collection of Norse myths—lay closed on his bedside table. He guessed that his mom had placed it there after she came home. She always checked in on him when she worked a late shift.

  He dressed and paused outside his parents’ room on his way downstairs, wondering if they were up and if he had time to say hi to his mom before going to meet Pru. He was about to knock when he heard his father’s voice on the other side of the door.

  “It was fine, I guess. A little dull. What can you expect? It’s school. But I’ll tell you, Maddie, I’m worried about the boy. Last night, one kid laughed at him and his old teacher called him the wrong name. ABE didn’t say or do anything. It’s like the kid doesn’t even know how to stand up for himself. It was painful to watch.”

  ABE pulled his hand back from the door. It hung in the air a moment before he lowered it to his side and went downstairs. He’d leave them a note. They were used to him and Pru spending the day together.

  As ABE passed the front door, he heard an urgent rapping that announced Pru’s early arrival.

  “Are you ready?” she asked when he opened the door.

  “Just about.” He sat on the bottom step of the staircase and wiggled one foot into a sneaker, pulling on the heel flap when it got squished into the shoe. He had new sneakers in a box in his bedroom. But those were for the first day of school. He didn’t feel right about wearing them before then.

  Pru paced back and forth outside the screen door. She rubbed her hands together with glee.

  “Can you believe it, ABE? Odin is here in Middleton again! I wonder what brought him back.”

  “You don’t think he wants the Eye of Odin back, do you? It was his actual eye, after all. Maybe he’s mad we hid it.”

  Pru paused. She chewed her lower lip. It was a new habit. Her hair had grown in the past year. It no longer fell in a bob around her chin, so it wasn’t as easily accessible for chewing.

  “No,” she said, resuming her pacing. “He went centuries without his eye. I bet he doesn’t even miss it anymore. And besides, we didn’t hide the Eye. Mister Fox did. If Odin wants to be mad at Mister Fox, then that’s fine with me. He can get in line.”

  After a quick dash to grab a granola bar from the kitchen, ABE opened the door to join Pru on the porch. Glancing at the leaden sky, he went back in to grab an umbrella.

  “Anything else you want to do before we go?” Pru asked.

  “Ah, no. I’m good,” he said, following Pru as she set off. He tried to match her brisk pace. “Um, Pru, what do you think is going to happen when we get there? I mean, it’s exciting that Odin is back. But we don’t even know if he’ll want to see us.”

  Pru didn’t say anything at first. Instead, she chewed her lip again.

  “I know,” she said. “But at least his being back is something. You know? He has to see us.”

  Pru quickened their pace even more as the sky began a slow leak. ABE opened his umbrella. Around them, tear-shaped drops of rain fell from the clouds above, completing ABE’s sense of foreboding about what they might find when they finally reached Winterhaven House.

  They needn’t have worried about getting in to see Odin. Two sights greeted them at the mansion’s iron gates. The first was a sign announcing that the building and grounds were temporarily closed while the museum underwent renovations.

  That might have presented a problem if not for the second sight. A broad-shouldered woman with a long blonde braid stood on the other side of the gate. She appeared to be waiting for them, unbothered by the rain.

  “Hilde!” Pru called as she broke into a run.

  Odin’s assistant reached down and unlocked the gate. She swung it open to admit Pru and ABE.

  “Hello, children.”

  “Hi, Hilde,” ABE said, catching up and holding his umbrella up higher to try to cover everyone. “Why are you standing out in the rain?”

  “I’m waiting for you, of course.” A hint of a smile showed on Hilde’s usually stern face.

  “Waiting for us?” Pru repeated. “Why? How? Wait! Don’t tell me. Is ‘Mr. Grimnir’ expecting us again?”

  Hilde’s smile slipped from her face as though washed off by the falling rain.

  “This is not a time for jokes, children. Come with me. Odin is expecting you. But he does not wait with good news.”

  “What’s wrong?” ABE asked.

  “That is for Odin to say.”

  They walked in silence across the gravel drive and through Winterhaven’s halls, where ABE’s eyes followed the frozen march of the Viking warriors carved into the towering stone walls of the mansion. He watched them disappear down corridors not taken.

  Hilde led them to the same room where they’d had their first audience with Odin. It was empty this time, though. Hilde said she would return with “the others” shortly and left them with instructions to wait as she exited through a different door.

  Pru threw her arms out wide as soon as Hilde had closed the door behind her. “We’re back!” she exclaimed, clearly not fazed by Hilde’s somber mood.

  “Six chairs,” ABE said, walking around the long table that ran the length of the room.

  “What?” Pru asked.

  “There are six chairs.” ABE gestured to the setup. He recognized one of the chairs, a high-backed and intricately carved wooden seat at the head of the table. It was the chair Odin had sat in on their last visit.

  “There’s the two of us plus Odin and Hilde,” Pru said, considering. “That’s four.”

  “Hilde said she’d be back with ‘the others.’ I wonder who the last two chairs are for.”

  “Maybe Thor’s back, too.”

  “Maybe. I kind of hope not, though.”

  “What? Are you crazy? Thor’s awesome!”

  “No, I know. It’s not that I don’t want to see him. I do. Thor saved our liv
es. He’s great!”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  ABE turned to one of the narrow windows that lined the wall. “It’s the rain. Last night, I noticed that clouds had rolled in. I didn’t think anything of it at first. Then you found out Odin was back.”

  “And you wondered if maybe Thor was back, too.” Pru frowned. She’d been practically dancing through the room. Now she slowed down. ABE guessed she was arriving at the same conclusion he’d reached.

  “We know that the weather can reflect Thor’s mood, right?” he said. “We got all those clouds last year because Thor was mad about being locked up. But, even with everything that happened then, it never rained. The clouds today remind me of the clouds last time. With the rain, though, and Hilde’s mood . . . everything seems . . . I don’t know. Sad.”

  Pru opened her mouth as if to argue. But she closed it again without saying anything and joined ABE at the window. A chill filled the room, despite the fire that burned in the hearth and the flaming torches that lined the walls.

  ABE had wondered about the torches last time. Now, knowing what he did about Mythics and their incompatibility with technology, he supposed that torches made sense for a room where gods gathered and held council.

  “What do you think has happened?” Pru asked. She drew her finger across the glass of the window. Beads of moisture gathered on her fingertip.

  “I don’t know . . . but I think we might be about to find out,” he said as Thor’s booming voice reached them from behind the door through which Hilde had left.

  “And so they must carry the weight of our inaction?” Thor demanded of someone.

  The door burst open and the god of thunder stormed into the room. His presence charged the air with a current of anger and tension that raised the hairs on ABE’s arms.

  “Thor!” Pru exclaimed, taking a step toward him. She stopped in her tracks as Thor turned his fierce glare in their direction.

  Seeing them, the god’s brow smoothed a bit.

  “Children, forgive me. Hilde mentioned you had arrived. It is good to see you again.” Thor’s mustache and beard parted in what looked like an attempt at a smile. He took a deep breath. The atmosphere in the room lightened a little, but Thor’s clenched fists and the corded muscles of his arms betrayed his tense emotion.

  “What’s wrong?” Pru asked.

  “A great many things.” Thor glanced back at the door. The wood along the upper hinge had splintered, and the door hung limply in its frame. Thor closed his eyes and took another deep breath. “All of which we shall discuss, and soon. First, though, I have yet to greet the brave lad who recovered the Eye of Odin from the field of battle during our last meeting.”

  Thor approached ABE and gripped his shoulder. ABE’s eyes widened and he clenched his jaw shut to keep from crying out. Thor’s grip was iron! Why did he even bother carrying a hammer around? His pinkie could probably drive a railroad stake through the ground!

  “Yup. He’s the brave lad, all right,” Pru said, her eyes dancing. Thor’s arrival had restored at least some of her good humor. “Did you know his name—Aloysius—means ‘famous warrior’?”

  “A fine name for such a . . . strapping young lad!”

  ABE looked down at his scrawny frame. “That’s, ah, very nice, sir. But ABE’s fine. Really.”

  “But your true name has such strong meaning, lad! And it fits someone with the courage to charge into a field of frost giants. You should embrace your fierce nature!”

  Pru started nodding vigorously.

  “Yes. Yes, ABE, that is exactly what you should be doing. I am always telling him to embrace his fierce nature,” she confided to Thor.

  ABE cast a sidelong glance at Pru. She responded with a look of innocence. At least ABE assumed she was trying to look innocent. Not having had a lot of practice actually being innocent, she wasn’t pulling it off too well.

  “Blustering oaf,” a voice muttered, interrupting the exchange.

  A bent old man entered the room, carefully navigating through the damaged door. ABE turned to Pru in amazement when he recognized the newcomer. Her dropped jaw reflected the surprise he knew must show on his own face.

  Odin, Allfather of the gods of the North, god of wisdom and war, shuffled into the room. He leaned heavily on a long wooden walking stick. A blue cloak lay across his stooped shoulders. Every few steps, Odin reached out with one hand to gather the cloak at his neck as if it were a shawl. The wide, broad-brimmed hat atop his head bobbed up and down as unsteady steps carried him across the room.

  “Go, children,” Thor whispered. “Stand behind your seats. Sit after he does. Speak when addressed and do not test my father’s patience. I have already lost my temper with him once this morning and I should not have done so. These are troubled times.”

  ABE followed Thor’s directions. Odin hadn’t seemed this weak and old the last time he and Pru saw him. What had happened?

  The Allfather made his way to the seat at the head of the table, and Thor moved to stand behind the chair to his father’s right. Hilde returned to the room and stood across from ABE and next to Thor. ABE glanced at the empty seat at the foot of the table.

  Odin’s chair slid across the floor and the god dropped into it, muttering. He removed his hat and hung it off the back of his throne-like seat.

  ABE, Pru, and the others also sat.

  “We are here because of betrayal,” Odin wheezed, looking at everyone around the table. “We are here because of trickery! We are here . . . because of death.”

  ABE’s stomach sank with dread.

  “My son is dead!” Odin’s declaration came in a hoarse gasp. “Baldur, the best of us, is dead.”

  ABE clutched the table to steady himself. The room swayed in the flickering torchlight. Everything seemed suddenly less stable and less sure.

  “Oh no!” Pru said. “I’m so sorry.”

  ABE heard empathy in her voice, the empathy of someone who had also lost a loved one. But she didn’t really understand. She hadn’t read and reread the Norse myths like he had. If she had, she wouldn’t be sad.

  She’d be terrified.

  “That’s it, then?” ABE said, forgetting Thor’s instructions not to speak. “It’s started?”

  “What’s started?” Pru asked.

  “Ragnarok,” ABE said, looking at her. “Ragnarok has started, Pru. It’s the end of the world.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “What are you talking about?” Pru demanded of ABE. She turned to Odin. “What’s he talking about? What does he mean, Ragnarok has started?”

  “Let your friend tell you,” Odin said. “Like you, he seems unable to hold his tongue, even when instructed to do so.”

  ABE flinched at the reprimand, but he didn’t let that stop him from answering. He spoke quickly as his words tried to keep pace with the fear building inside him.

  “You know how the Norse myths work,” he began. “Some of them are stories about things that have happened. But because Odin drank from the Well of Wisdom and gained the ability to see the future, some Norse myths are stories about things that haven’t happened yet but will. They’re stories that came from what Odin saw in his visions. One of those myths is of Ragnarok, the end of all things.”

  “I know all that. But what makes you think Ragnarok has started?”

  “Because Ragnarok doesn’t just end in death. It starts with death, too. Baldur’s death. Loki kills Baldur, the favorite of the gods. Then Loki runs away from Asgard. Thor finds him and brings him back to be judged and imprisoned. Loki eventually breaks free and all the giants join him to fight the gods. And everyone on Asgard and on our world dies in that war. Everyone! That’s how the stories go.”

  Pru nodded, her lower lip tucked under her front teeth. “I remember now. But can’t we do something? I mean, I knew Ragnarok was coming . . . someday—but not now! Can’t we change what’s going to happen?”

  “The fates hold us tight, child,” Thor said. “But—”

  “Change what is going to happen?” Odin interrupted. He leaned forward. “We cannot change the future. We should not want to! Your clever friend is wrong. Not everyone dies. Tell the story true, boy.”