“O Large and Beige Hrungnir,” I said, “we seek the location of Kvasir’s Mead!”
Hrungnir scowled, his rocky eyebrows furrowing, his brick-like lips forming a segmental arch. “Well, well. Playing Odin’s thievery game, are you? The old Bolverk trick?”
“Uh…maybe.”
Hrungnir chuckled. “I could give you that information. I was with Baugi and Suttung when they sequestered the mead in its new hiding place.”
“Right.” I silently added Baugi and Suttung to my mental list of Things I Am Clueless About. “That’s what we have come to bargain for. The location of the mead!”
I realized I had already said that. “What is your price, O Beige One?”
Hrungnir stroked his beard, causing rubble and dust to sift down the front of his tunic. “For me to consider such a trade, your deaths would have to be very entertaining.” He studied T.J., then me. His eyes came to rest on Alex Fierro. “Ah. This one smells of clay! You have the necessary skills, do you not?”
I glanced at Alex. “Necessary skills?”
“Eep,” Alex said.
“Excellent!” Hrungnir boomed. “It’s been centuries since the stone giants found a worthy opponent for a traditional two-on-two duel! A fight to the death! Shall we say tomorrow at dawn?”
“Whoa,” I said. “Couldn’t we do a healing contest?”
“Or bingo,” T.J. offered. “Bingo is good.”
“No!” Hrungnir cried. “My very name means brawler, little einherji. You won’t cheat me out of a good fight! We will follow the ancient rules of combat. Me versus…Hmm.”
I didn’t want to volunteer, but I’d seen Jack take down bigger giants than this guy before. I raised my hand. “Very well, I—”
“No, you’re too scrawny.” Hrungnir pointed to T.J. “I challenge him!”
“I ACCEPT!” T.J. yelled.
Then he blinked, as if thinking Thanks a lot, Dad.
“Good, good,” the giant said. “And my second will fight your second, who will be made by her!”
Alex staggered back as if she’d been pushed. “I—I can’t. I’ve never—”
“Or I can just kill all three of you now,” Hrungnir said. “Then you’ll have no chance of finding Kvasir’s Mead.”
My mouth felt as dusty as the giant’s beard. “Alex, what’s he talking about? What are you supposed to make?”
By the trapped look in her eyes, I could tell she understood Hrungnir’s demand. I’d only seen her this panicked once before—on her first day in Valhalla, when she thought she might be stuck in one gender for the rest of eternity.
“I—” She licked her lips. “All right. I’ll do it.”
“That’s the spirit!” Hrungnir said. “As for the little blond guy here, I guess he can be your water boy or something. Well, I’m off to make my second. You should do the same. I will meet you tomorrow, at dawn, at Konungsgurtha!”
The giant turned and strode through the streets of York, pedestrians moving out of his way as if he were a veering bus.
I turned to Alex. “Explain. What did you just agree to?”
The contrast between her heterochromatic eyes seemed even greater than usual, as if the gold and the brown were separating, pooling to the left and right.
“We need to find a pottery studio,” she said. “Fast.”
YOU DON’T hear heroes say that a lot.
Quick, Boy Wonder! To the pottery studio!
But Alex’s tone left no doubt it was a matter of life and death. The nearest ceramics workshop—a place called the Earthery—turned out to be on my favorite street, the Shambles. I didn’t see that as a good omen. While T.J. and I waited outside, Alex spent a few minutes talking with the proprietor, who at last emerged, grinning and holding a large wad of multicolored money. “Have fun, lads!” he said as he hurried down the street. “Brilliant! Ta!”
“Thank you!” T.J. waved. “And thanks for not getting involved in our Civil War!”
We headed inside, where Alex was taking inventory—worktables, potter’s wheels, metal shelves lined with half-finished pots, tubs filled with tools, a cabinet stacked with slabs of wet clay in plastic bags. In the back of the studio, one door led to a small bathroom, another to what looked like a storage room.
“This might work,” Alex muttered. “Maybe.”
“Did you buy this place?” I asked.
“Don’t be silly. I just paid the owner for twenty-four hours’ exclusive use. But I paid well.”
“In British pounds,” I noted. “Where’d you get so much local cash?”
She shrugged, her attention on counting bags of clay. “It’s called preparation, Chase. I figured we’d be traveling through the UK and Scandinavia. I brought euros, kronor, kroner, and pounds. Compliments of my family. And by compliments, I mean I stole it.”
I remembered my dream of Alex in front of her house, the way she’d snarled I don’t want your money. Maybe she’d meant she only wanted it on her terms. I could respect that. But how she’d gotten so many different currencies, I couldn’t guess.
“Stop gawping and help me,” she ordered.
“I’m not—I wasn’t gawping.”
“We need to push these tables together,” she said. “T.J., go see if there’s more clay in the back. We need a lot more.”
“On it!” T.J. dashed to the supply room.
Alex and I moved four tables together, making a work surface big enough to play Ping-Pong on. T.J. hauled out extra bags of clay until I estimated we had an adequate amount to make a ceramic Volkswagen.
Alex looked back and forth between the clay and the potter’s wheels. She tapped her thumbnail nervously against her teeth. “Not enough time,” she muttered. “Drying, glazing, firing—”
“Alex,” I said. “If you want us to help you, you’re going to have to explain what we’re doing.”
T.J. edged away from me, in case Alex brought out the garrote.
She just glared at me. “You would know what I’m doing if you’d taken Pottery 101 in Valhalla with me like I asked you.”
“I—I had a scheduling conflict.” In fact, I hadn’t liked the idea of pottery to the death, especially if it involved getting thrown in a fiery kiln.
“Stone giants have a tradition called tveirvigi,” said Alex. “Double combat.”
“It’s like Viking single combat, einvigi,” T.J. added. “Except with tveir instead of ein.”
“Fascinating,” I said.
“I know! I read about it in—”
“Please don’t say a travel guide.”
T.J. looked at the floor.
Alex picked up a box of assorted wooden tools. “Honestly, Chase, we don’t have time to bring you up to speed. T.J. fights Hrungnir. I make a ceramic warrior who fights the giant’s ceramic warrior. You play water boy, or heal, or whatever. It’s pretty straightforward.”
I stared at the bags of clay. “A ceramic warrior. As in magic pottery?”
“Pottery 101,” Alex repeated, like that was obvious. “T.J., would you start cutting those slabs? I need slices one inch thick, about sixty or seventy of them.”
“Sure! Do I get to use your garrote?”
Alex laughed long and hard. “Absolutely not. There should be a cutter in that gray tub.”
T.J. sulked off to find a regular clay cutter.
“And you,” Alex told me, “you’re going to be making coils.”
“Coils.”
“I know you can roll clay into coils. It’s just like making snakes out of Play-Doh.”
I wondered how she knew my dark secret—that I had enjoyed Play-Doh as a kid. (And when I say kid, I mean up to, like, age eleven.) I grudgingly admitted that this was within my scope of talents. “And you?”
“The hardest part is using the wheel,” she said. “The most important components have to be thrown.”
By thrown, I knew she meant shaped on the wheel, not thrown across the room, though with Alex the two activities often went together.