Autumn Bones

We returned to my apartment and sat in awkward silence, Lee slouching on my futon.

“So . . . um . . . have you been in touch with any of your old friends since you’ve been back?” I asked, trying to remember the names of the two guys he’d hung out with in high school. Together, they’d been a sort of nerdy Three Musketeers. “Steve Geddes, or Ben, um . . . ?”

“Lewis,” Lee said shortly. “Ben Lewis. He’s in Afghanistan.”

“He is?” I blinked. “In the army?”

“Well, he’s not there on his honeymoon.”

“You don’t have to get sarcastic,” I said. “I’m just surprised I didn’t know.”

Lee shrugged. “I don’t know why you would.”

“It’s a small town,” I reminded him. “So I guess that means you’re still in touch with him?”

“Yeah.” His voice softened. “The character Dan Stanton in my first-person shooter was named after a buddy of his. Kind of a tribute. Ben’s the one who suggested it, even told me to use it as an alias. Said his buddy would have thought it was hilarious.”

“This is a buddy who . . . didn’t make it?” I asked. Lee nodded. I thought about that for a minute. Ben Lewis had been a short, stocky little guy in high school. Everyone called him the Hobbit. It was hard to imagine him in a war zone. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know.”

“How about Steve?” I couldn’t remember anything about Steve other than his name, which was sort of ironic; he’d been the kind of kid who made so little impression, he didn’t even have a nickname.

“He’s fine. He’s in New York.”

“Doing what?” I asked.

“Set design.” Lee regarded the toes of his Converse sneakers. “It was his major at NYU.”

“Huh. Good for him.” It felt strange to realize that two people I’d grown up with, however little I’d actually known them, had left Pemkowet to make such diverse lives for themselves elsewhere. Three, if you counted Lee. I wondered what had prompted him to return.

Before I could ask, Mikill and his dune buggy pulled into the alley beside my apartment, waiting patiently while Lee and I came down to meet him.

“Daisy Johanssen,” Mikill greeted me in a booming voice, raising his left hand. A spear-headed rune glimmered on his palm, indicating that he was one of Hel’s guards. “Your request for an audience has been granted.” Rivulets of meltwater dripped from the icicles in his hair and beard. Mikill was a frost giant, eight feet tall with pale blue frost-rimed skin and eyes the color of dirty slush.

Well, unless you happened to be mortal and of mundane birth. Then he just looked like a huge, hairy guy who was sweating profusely.

“Who the hell is that?” Lee asked, the words emerging in a squeak.

“Hi, Mikill.” I raised my left hand in reply, displaying my own rune. “He’s our escort,” I said to Lee. “He’s a frost giant.”

Lee glared at me. Whatever goodwill had been emerging between us evaporated. “Oh, very funny. Ha ha, you got me.”

“Look, I realize he doesn’t appear . . . Mikill, can you drop your glamour for a minute?” I asked.

The frost giant shook his ponderous head, sending droplets of water flying. “It is of Hel’s doing, Daisy Johanssen, that her servants might move freely aboveground at need. If it is your wish that the mortal accompany you, he will see clearly in Niflheim.”

I shrugged. “You’re just going to have to trust me on this one, Lee.”

Lee backed away. “No. Oh, hell, no! What were you going to do?” he asked grimly. “Drop me off in the middle of the dunes at night and let me walk home? Hell, don’t tell me! Is there someone else in on it? Maybe you’ve got some other big hairy guy out there pretending to be the Tall Man’s ghost?”

“Lee—”

“I’m not falling for it, Daisy! I put up with enough shit like that in high school—”

“Lee!” I raised my voice and dropped my hand to dauda-dagr’s hilt. Amazingly, he actually shut up. “Look, I know you’ve got high school damage, okay? Everyone does. You’ve made it very clear that you’re not the dorky nerd in high-waisted floods your mom bought for you anymore. You went away and made a ton of money and came back. . . . Why the hell did you come back, anyway?”

“My mom’s not well,” he said in a quieter tone. “Someone had to look after her.”

“Okay, well, I’m sorry to hear it. But I’m not the same person I was, either,” I said. “I’m not asking you to help me pass computer science. I get that you think this project is beneath you, but it’s important to me, and I’m not pulling some stupid prank just because you’ve been kind of a dick about it.”

Lee stared at Mikill and his dune buggy and swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “If you drop me in the dunes, I swear to God, I’ll never forgive you.”

I felt bad.

It was easy enough to say everyone had high school damage, but the truth was, hell-spawn or not, I’d gotten off light compared to Lee and his friends. No one had ever held me upside down in the bathroom, dunked my head into the toilet, and given me a swirly. It had happened to Lee, though, probably more than once. And I didn’t doubt that the shadow of that humiliation lingered.

“No one’s dropping anyone in the dunes, Lee,” I said to him, making my voice gentle. “I promise. Just don’t fall out. Because unlike the Tall Man’s ghost, Garm is real.”

“The hellhound?”

“Uh-huh.” I wedged myself into the narrow storage space behind the buggy’s two seats, wishing I’d thought about the logistics earlier. “You’ll find a loaf of bread on the floor at your feet. That’s the offering to Garm. Lee, you’re in charge of throwing it to him. Mikill”—I took a death grip on the roll bar—“drive carefully.”

As soon as Lee climbed gingerly into the front seat and buckled his seat belt, Mikill gunned the engine and headed out of town.

A mile north on the highway, he turned into Pemkowet Dune Rides, passing the stable where the fancy dune schooners were sitting idle for the night and roaring into the path beyond it.

I’d made this trip before, but it didn’t get any less frightening. Quite the opposite, considering I was squished into a cramped space without a seat belt and holding on to the roll bar for dear life.

And once we departed from the graded paths and set course for the massive, looming figure of Yggdrasil II, jouncing over the sand, it got worse. I narrowed my eyes against the stinging mist of ice pellets streaming from Mikill’s hair, searching the darkness in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of Garm before he spotted us.

No such luck. As we entered the sand basin from which Yggdrasil II emerged, somewhere off to the left, an ear-shattering howl split the darkness.

“The hound is nigh,” Mikill announced.

“Lee!” I shouted. “He’s coming! Get the bread ready!”

In the passenger seat, Lee struggled, the folds of his capacious leather duster caught on something. “I’m stuck!”

Directly in front of us, Garm bounded into the headlights, yellow eyes reflecting the beams. He was approximately twice the size of the dune buggy and his slavering maw was big enough to chomp me in half in a single bite.

“Lee!”

“Why the hell is he attacking us?” he said in a high, panicked voice. “Isn’t he on our side?”

“The hound is doing its duty,” Mikill said, swerving violently. The hellhound snapped as we veered around him, jaws closing with a click that sounded like the world’s biggest bear trap. “Throw the offering now, mortal!”

Lee yanked at his trapped coat. “But aren’t we past—”

A fast, heavy tread padded behind us, and then a vast figure darkened the emerging stars overhead as Garm leaped over the dune buggy, landing with a thud and turning to face us, growling low in his throat and wrinkling his muzzle to show his teeth.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Letting go of the roll bar with one hand, I leaned over to snatch the loaf of bread from Lee’s hand. Garm’s ears pricked up. He wagged his tail hopefully, strings of drool dangling from either side of his jaws. “Here you go, boy!” I threw the loaf as hard as I could. “Go get it!”