Inside the rec center, there were a bunch of smaller rooms plus the main hall, which was where the feast took place. The hall would have looked like a gym, except for the mosaics on every wall. Matt’s granddad said they were nearly five hundred years old, brought over from some castle in Norway.
The mosaics showed scenes of Thor. Fight scenes mostly—when it came to myths about Thor, that’s what you got. Thor fought this giant, and then this giant, and then this giant. Oh, yeah, and a few dwarves, but they were really mean dwarves.
Back when Matt had signed up for boxing and wrestling, he’d pointed this out to his parents. Sure, people loved and respected Thor because he was a great guy, but more than a little of that came because he sent monsters packing. And he didn’t send them packing by asking nicely.
His parents hadn’t bought it. Physical strength was all very good—they certainly wouldn’t want a bookworm for a son—but the Thorsens weren’t like Thor. They had each other, so it was a team effort, and those skills were better developed through football.
Still, those mosaics were what Matt grew up with. Thor fighting Hrungnir. Thor fighting Geirrod. Thor fighting Thyrm. Thor fighting Hymir. And, finally, in a mosaic that took up the entire back wall, Thor’s greatest battle with his greatest enemy: the Midgard Serpent.
According to legend, Thor had defeated the serpent once but hadn’t killed it. He’d fished it out of the sea and thrown his hammer, MjÖlnir, at it, leaving it slinking off, dazed but alive. According to the myth, when Ragnarök came, the serpent would return for vengeance. The mosaic on the wall showed how the epic battle would play out, ending with Thor delivering the killing blow. As Thor turned his back, though, the dying serpent managed one last strike: it poisoned Thor. And the god staggered away to die.
Matt kept looking at the Midgard Serpent scene as he sat with his family at the head table. The hall was filled with wooden folding chairs and long tables set up for family-style feasting. A small stage stretched across the front of the room.
The Seer was already up there with her assistant. At first look, he always thought the Seer could be a grandmother, but when he’d look again, he’d think she barely looked old enough to be a mother. She had that kind of face. For the festivals, the Seer and her assistant both dressed like women from Viking times, in long, plain white dresses with apronlike blue dresses overtop. White cloth covered their blond hair. Otherwise, they looked like a lot of women in Blackwell, and he was sure he passed them all the time on the streets and never even recognized them without their Viking dresses.
As the feasting went on, the Seer stood on her platform, throwing her runes and mumbling under her breath, making pronouncements that her assistant furiously jotted down. Matt noticed some of the younger members of the Thinghad taken seats near her. They were hoping to hear something important. They weren’t allowed to talk to her. No one could. And they really, really weren’t allowed to ask her anything.
Divining the future through runes was a very serious matter, not to be confused with fortune-telling, a lesson Matt had learned when he’d bought a set of fake ones and charged kids two bucks to get their futures told. That scheme got him hauled in front of the Thing, and he’d had to miss the next festival. He should have known better. Okay, he didknow better. But it was like pulling pranks—he knew he should just behave and make his parents proud, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. It was hard, doing the right thing all the time, trying to live up to his brothers when he knew he never could—not really—and sometimes, he just got tired of trying.
As dinner wound down, more people moved to sit cross-legged around the Seer. Others shifted to the Tafl tables set up along the sides of the room. When Granddad asked Matt to play a match against him, it was no big deal—Matt played Tafl with his grandfather all the time. Maybe not at the festivals, but only because Granddad was usually too busy. As they walked to a table, though, Matt could hear a buzz snake around the room, people whispering and turning to look, some making their way over to watch.
Tafl—also known as Hnefatafl, but no one could pronounce that—was a Norse game of strategy, even older than chess. It was called the Viking game because that’s where it came from, and it was based on the idea of a raid, with each player getting two sets of pieces as his “ship” and the king and his defenders in the middle.
Matt wasn’t worried about people watching his match with Granddad. Tafl was like boxing: he knew he was good at it. Not good enough to win every time, but good enough that he wouldn’t embarrass his family.
He didn’t win that match. Didn’t lose, either. The game had to be called on account of time—kids were itching to get out to the fair before dark, and it was Granddad’s job to officially end the feast. As Granddad did that and the kids took off to the fair, Mom led Matt over to the chairs that had been set up as the tables were cleared.
When Granddad stepped onto the stage, everyone went silent. Someone carried a podium up and set it in front of him. He nodded his thanks, cleared his throat, and looked out at the group.
“As some of you know,” he began, “this will be very different from our usual assemblies. No new business will be brought forward tonight. Instead, we will be discussing a matter that is of unparalleled importance to all of us.”
Some people shifted in their chairs. Were they worried about what Granddad was going to say? Or did they know something Matt didn’t, namely that importantmeant “you’re going to be stuck in those chairs for a very long time”?
Granddad continued, “As you know, our world has been plagued by natural disasters for years now, but recently the rate of these disasters has increased to the point where we barely have time to deal with one before we are hit with another.”
That was the truth. It seemed like every day there was a new school fund-raiser for a newly disaster-torn country. So far, Matt had helped out with two dances, a dunk tank, a bake sale, and now the charity boxing match… and it wasn’t even the end of September yet.
Was that what this was about? Raising money for disaster relief? Or maybe looking at the town’s emergency plan? His parents had totally redone theirs after all those tornadoes went through in the spring.
Granddad was still talking. “Last week, a volcano erupted that scientists had sworn was dormant. Today, they closed down Yellowstone Park because the hot springs and cauldrons are boiling over, releasing deadly amounts of poisonous gas into the atmosphere.” His grandfather paced across the tiny stage. “Dragon’s Mouth is one of those. The Black Dragon’s Cauldron is another. Aptly named, as our history tells us, because what keeps those cauldrons bubbling—and what makes fire spew from the mouths of mountains—is the great dragon, Nidhogg, the corpse eater. For centuries, his destruction has been kept to a minimum because he is otherwise occupied with his task of gnawing at the roots of the world tree. But now he no longer seems distracted. We know what that means.”
Matt felt icy fingers creep up his back.
This was his fault. He had the dream, and it was just a dream, but now his grandfather believed it, was using it to explain the bad things that were happening in the world.
“Nidhogg has almost bitten through the roots of the world tree. One of the first signs of Ragnarök.”
Matt gripped the sides of his chair to keep from flying up there and saying Granddad was wrong. He’d misunderstood. He’d trusted some stupid dream that was only a dream; Matt was only a kid, not a prophet, not a Seer.
“And we understand, too, the meaning of the tsunamis and tidal waves that have devastated coastal cities around the world. Not only has Nidhogg almost gnawed through the world tree, but the Midgard Serpent has broken free from its bonds. The seas roil as the serpent rises to the surface. To the final battle. To Ragnarök.”