Jake & The Giant (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 2) (11 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Not-So-Lucky Bowtie

B
y breakfast the next morning, Jake was groggy from the night’s adventure, and a bit nervous about the risk of getting caught with the stolen Lie Detector Goggles.

This, of course, did not dull his appeti
te.

Dani and Archie
sat across from him at their table once more in the banquet hall, staring at him like he was more of a wolf than Henry.

He paused in the middle of shoveling a forkful of scramble
d eggs into his mouth. “What?”

“How can you gorge your face at a time like this?” Dani asked, meaning of
course that Henry and Helena still had not returned.

He just shrugged and went on eating.

“Maybe he’s right,” Archie said with a sigh. “If today’s anything like yesterday, we’ll need to keep up our strength.”

Dani pushed her fruit salad around her plate unhappily. “I ca
n’t believe they’re not back yet. I was sure I’d wake up and find them here and everything back to normal.”

“Don’t worry,” Jake ordered, having swallowed his last bite. “We’ll get it all sorted soon. First order of business is Archie’s panel. Finish eating
, Arch, then I’ll walk you to your classroom. Dani can stay with Isabelle. I don’t want any of you wandering around alone.”

Archie took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “Blimey, I’ve got a headache coming on.”

Jake and Dani exchanged an amused look to hear him use their Cockney street slang.

But the boy genius forced himself to bri
ghten up. “Guess I’ve got to act normal in front of the crowd, though, what?”

“Are you nervous to speak in front of all
those geniuses?” Dani asked.

“Nah,
I’ve got my lucky bowtie on for the occasion!”

They laughed even though he was serious.

“I’m going to go fix a plate of food for Isabelle,” Dani announced, rising from her chair.

Archie leaned closer across the table after she had gone. “Do you see Loki anywh
ere in here?” he whispered.

“No, but that doesn’t mean he’s not here in some other form.”

“Too bad you can’t pull out the you-know-whats.”

“Right,” Jake wearily agreed. As much as he wanted to look around the busy cafeteria to see if Loki was present in some new disguise, he did not want to be seen using the Lie Detector Goggles—which he had stolen last night without too much difficulty.

On an impulse, he had also swiped Sir Francis Galton’s dog whistle. If it worked on ordinary dogs and cats, he hoped that maybe they could use it to summon the wolf and leopard back to campus.

After sneaking away from the Exhibit Hall last night with his contraband, he had run t
o the edge of the woods and blown the whistle several times. It made no sound that he could hear, but maybe it got the twins’ attention, wherever they were, out in the forest.

When Dani returned with Isabe
lle’s breakfast, the boys accompanied her back to their rooms. When they arrived, Isabelle shook her head sadly: still no sign of Henry and Helena. Then Archie collected his notes and papers for his discussion panel, and the boys left.

Jake walked Archie across the campus into one of the big university buildings full of lecture halls and classrooms. When they found the classroom where the panel was to take place, there were already dozens of scientists sitting in the rows of desks, waiting for the talk to begin.

With one thumb hooked in his vest pocket, Archie nodded cordially to his fellow panelist, the large, redheaded Scottish engineer.

Dr. Wu, the Chinese
physicist, their third panel member, had not yet arrived.

Archie turned to Jake. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to stay for this.”

He nodded in relief. It was not like he would understand a word of it, anyway. Besides, he had to check on Miss Langesund this morning and see if the local police had made any progress on finding her father. “Good luck,” he told Archie, giving him a firm clap on the shoulder. “I’ll come and meet you in the hallway after.”

Archie nodded, then Jake went on his way, privately in awe of his younger cousin. The boy genius took it all in stride, but if it were him having to give a speech to a bunch of
world-class geniuses—well, that was worse than facing Loki.

A
s he walked across the campus toward the Viking ship museum, he hoped Miss Langesund did not ask too many questions about how Henry and Helena were feeling this morning, if they had recovered yet from last night’s sudden illness.

Jake was wondering the same thing himself.
For all he knew, Henry might have turned back into a person out there in the woods somewhere, and might be making his way back to the campus right now. Helena, too.
Blimey,
I hope no one sees them before they can get to their clothes.

Awkward! But apparently this sort of mishap was a regular occurrence in the lives of shapeshifters.

Jake did not envy them as a species.

Reaching the Viking ship museum, he pushed open the heavy wooden door once again and
went in trying to look innocent—the place was bustling with policemen. And there sat Miss Langesund at her desk, red-eyed and disheveled, still in her golden dinner gown, but with her spectacles on once more.

Poor woman, she looked like she hadn’t slept a wink. A horrible thought stopped Jake in his tracks halfway to her.
I hope they haven’t found him dead.
His heart started pounding at the prospect of receiving much more terrible news than he had expected.

Only one way to find out.
He swallowed hard and forced himself to keep walking forward.

“Oh, hullo, Jacob,” the lady-archeologist said, perking up slightly when she saw him. “Is Henry better today? Will he be coming? And Helena, too, of course?”

“No, I’m afraid they’re even sicker today. Maybe by tomorrow. Any news?”

“Some.” She closed her eyes with
a dire look then blew her nose in her handkerchief. “I’m afraid the situation is even worse than we thought yesterday.”

“Have they found
him?” he asked in a low tone, bending down on one knee beside her desk in concern.

She shook her head. “Not a trace. But at least he’s not the only one.”

“What?” he exclaimed.

“In a way, I’m relieved about it. If they’ve been taken for their knowledge, they must still be alive.”

“What do you mean?”

“The police have been interviewing people all morning.” Miss
Langesund glanced around with a sniffle, as though not sure how much she was allowed to tell him. Then she lowered her voice and confided, “My father’s not the only scientist who’s gone missing. There are five more scientists unaccounted for this morning.”

“You mean—?” he whispered in shock.

She nodded. “Somebody’s kidnapping geniuses.”

Hands in pockets, Archie frowned as the last of his panel attendees left the classroom, as disappointed as he was. Dash it all, they’d had to postpone their presentation because Dr. Wu had never showed up.

Physicists! There was no living with them. Had the dolt forgotten to ask his assistant to wake him up on time?

In any case, everyone had left early. The panel had been rescheduled for four o’clock this afternoon.

Archie told himself that was for the best. That way, he’d get another shot to dazzle his colleagues with his latest thoughts on aerodynamics and still be back to the rooms by tea-time. Hopefully, by then, Henry and Helena would have returned, and everything would be fine.

As much as it sometimes bothered him to have to go through life chaperoned all the time, never roaming free like Jake, he was gnawed with continuous worry about the twins. They were like family
members after all these years.

Their running off
like this was unheard-of. He was trying his best to act brave in front of Jake, but in truth, he was really scared.

Cold fear was giving him a stomachache. Realizing he needed a distraction to take his mind off it all, naturally, his first thought was of the Pigeon. Working on his inventions always made him feel better, calmer, more like his usual self.

So, he headed for the warehouse where she was safely stored, tossed his trusty bag of tools into the cockpit, then rolled her back down the graveled path and out to the water’s edge, the same spot where he had steered her ashore yesterday after his test flight.

It was a beautiful view, and
it cheered him.

The day was bright, the surrounding forest swaying back and forth in the cool, lively wind.

The breeze drove the white-capped waves across the fjord and ran riot through Archie’s dark hair, rumpling it every which way. The peaceful setting made him smile.

He loosened his lucky bowtie, then took his safety goggles out of his leather tool-bag and strapped them onto his head.
He took a deep breath and let it out, feeling better already.

Time to get to work.

Absorbed in his tinkering, Archie was unaware of two large eyes watching him from the cover of the woods.

Crazy hair, bowtie, spectacles…

Check, check, check.

But that’s a puny one. Must be the runt of the litter,
thought Snorri. Still, the little one fit all the bird’s specifications, and the opportunity was too good to pass up. Besides, he might be on the small side, Snorri thought, but maybe his brain was extra-large.

He looked around, saw the coast was clear, and made his move with impressive stealth for a person of his size.

Boom-boom, boom-boom…

Archie let out a startled yelp as the ground began to shake and rattle and pound violently enough to break his concentration on his work. Egads
.

Earthquake!

But as he steadied himself, he frowned, for the slams came at regular intervals; it had a rhythm, and earthquakes didn’t do that.

The sound
was getting louder. Coming up behind him?

“What
the—?”

Squinting with c
onfusion, Archie turned around…looked up…and stared for a second in disbelief.

Then he
screamed.

CHAPTER SIX
TEEN

Put Me Down!

T
he moment Miss Langesund told him someone was abducting scientists, Jake bolted out of the Viking ship museum.

H
is first thought was of Archie.

Cursing himself for being paranoid,
he nevertheless raced back across campus to the building where he had left his cousin half an hour ago.

Though Archie’s panel discussion would still
be in progress, he decided he would just sit in the back of the classroom and wait until it was over. Whoever was kidnapping scientists wasn’t going to get anywhere near his cousin, he vowed. But striding down the hallway, Jake saw the door to Archie’s classroom hanging open ahead, and when he leaned in, nobody was there.

A
wave of panic started to wash through him until he read the announcement scrawled across the chalkboard.

Archie’s handwriting
:
Aerodynamics panel rescheduled for 4:00 this afternoon.

Relief made him clutch his chest and lean against the doorframe. Well! S
omething must have come up, Jake concluded.

He immediately wondered if one of the scientists on Archie’s panel had failed to appear. Might he be one of the missing?
This made the danger seem closer than ever.

He stepped
out into the hallway, wondering if Archie would have returned to their rooms for safety’s sake, or would he instead have gone to work on his experiments, simply out of habit?

Hesitating for a second, Jake realized Archie might’ve decided to sit in on one of the other lectures currently in progress. He walked down a few of the empty hallways, glancing into the other classrooms to see if his cousin had taken a seat inside
any of them.

He
passed an old janitor pushing a mop around, but paid him no mind—until the old man spoke after Jake had passed him.

“Looking for someone?”

Jake paused, arrested by that deep, gravelly voice with its rich Norwegian accent.

He
turned around, surprised that a humble janitor could speak to him in English. “Yes, actually, I am,” he answered with wary gratitude.

A
s he walked back toward the old man, he couldn’t help but sense the force of character in his steely gray eyes—or rather, eye. He only had one; the other was covered with an eye-patch.

The janitor wore faded coveralls and old, battered boots. H
e was a large-framed man with a shock of pewter hair and a sun-browned face like a weathered hunk of wood, as if he had spent most of his life outdoors.

Must be an old soldier,
Jake thought, judging by the missing eye and the way the janitor grasped his mop.

He held it like a weapon.

As Jake approached, the old man’s single eye searched him with a probing, piercing stare, as though he were taking his measure, testing his mettle.

Jake shook off a vague uneasiness about the old man.
“I’m trying to find my cousin, Archie Bradford. He’s about my age and would’ve been the only other boy in the building besides me. He has dark hair and freckles—”

“That way,” the janitor interrupted
gruffly, nodding toward the exit at the end of the hallway. “I’d check down by the fjord if I were you. Better hurry,” he added in a low rumble.

“Why?” Jake asked in alarm.

The janitor ignored the question and simply went back to pushing his mop.

B
ut when Jake rushed off at his warning, the mysterious old janitor watched him with a close eye and a faint, speculative smile.

Jake b
urst out of the classroom building a moment later and raced down the winding path to the water’s edge.

He could have kicked himself for not realizing sooner that, o
f course, there was only one place Archie would have gone when his panel was postponed: to tinker with the Pigeon!

Creature of habit that he was
, Archie would have likely gone back to the same spot where he’d landed his flying machine yesterday in boat mode.

Jake ran down the path toward the water’s edge, still a bit puzzled about ho
w that strange old janitor could have known where Archie went. But even before the fjord came into view, he suddenly stopped in his tracks.

Boom-boom, boom-boom…

There it was again!

T
hat same dull, deep, pounding noise that he had heard yesterday in the forest and had mistaken for an earthquake.

He still had no idea what i
t was, but if he could catch up to Archie before it faded, he had no doubt the boy genius would know.

In motion once more,
this time he ran even faster, barreling down the graveled path.

Jake rounded the bend and
came to the bottom of the hill where the campus path joined the waterside Promenade. But upon arriving, he skidded to a halt and gasped in shock.

T
he pounding sound continued in the distance as Jake stared in horror at the shore.

There
, at the water’s edge, lay the Pigeon—broken, floating on her side, bobbing like a dead thing in the waves.

“Archie!” he yelled. His
heart in his throat, he sprinted toward it. “Archie?!”

A
s he splashed out into the shallows and grasped the wing, he didn’t know if Archie had had an accident or what.

Taking hold
of the Pigeon, he heaved it over, terrified he was going to find his cousin pinned underneath it, drowned.

But
, no. As the Pigeon splashed upright onto its canoe bottom, water running off its sides, there was still no sign of Archie, and somehow, this was almost worse.

Jake waded out deeper into the cold, swirling waves in a panic,
diving in to search the water for his cousin. “Archie?! Where are you? Archie!” he screamed.

“Help!”
A thin cry reached him from the distance.

Jake whirled around just in time to see the trees shaking in one part of the forest. He
brushed the icy water out of his eyes and squinted in confusion.

It was as though
some large creature had just shoved the branches aside and was hurrying through the woods. The pounding noise seemed to be coming from that direction, too.

Instantly, Jake slogged out of the water. Dripping wet, he bolted across the pebbled beach,
racing toward the woods.

Boom-boom, boom-boom!
The noise grew louder as he followed Archie’s cry for help. It sounded like gigantic footsteps, but that didn’t make any sense.

Jake didn’t
know
what
to think or what was going on, but that did not stop him from following. He dashed into the green, shadowy woods—not his favorite place to start with—and paused, glancing in each direction, unsure which way to go.

The booming was so loud now it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, reverberating through the
very ground.

How could it be anything
but
an earthquake? he thought. But when he saw the treetops shaking up ahead, he immediately followed.

“Hold on, Arch, I’m coming!” he shouted, though he doubted his cousin could hear him over the clamor.

Jake ran, tearing through the underbrush, until a wall of bramble-bushes blocked his path. Protecting himself as best he could, he charged through the mass of thorn-tipped branches.

Woody needles pulled his hair and scratched him through his clothes, but he was undeterred, until finally, he burst out into a clearing on the other side.

Unfortunately, he was too late.

As he stood panting in the grove, it was impossible to say wh
ich way Archie had been taken. The pounding sound was fading in the distance.

“Archie!” Jake screamed, his hands cupped around his mouth. He took another breath to yell his cousin’s name in the other direction, but that was when he saw it, and the shout died on his tongue.

There in the grove before him, smashed into the soft brown soil, was the most enormous footprint he had ever seen.

He walked over to it in a daze.
“Impossible,” he whispered.

The footprint was about five feet long, heel to toe,
and made an indentation six inches deep in the forest turf.

Stepping down into the footp
rint, Jake turned around slowly in a circle, staring at it in disbelief. Miss Langesund’s tales of the old Norse legends echoed through his mind. “
Oh, we love our Norse giants and our trolls here in Norway…”

Giants?
Then came a darker thought.
Loki!

Impossible as it seemed,
in a flash, Jake was fairly sure that a giant had taken his cousin. And that meant that Loki was further ahead in his plans than anyone had guessed.

Heart pounding, Jake flipped his
wet hair out of his eyes, trying to think of what to do next. But he was at a loss. Even if he could somehow catch up to Archie’s kidnapper, what could he possibly do to stop a giant?

He was just a twelve-year-old kid.

But then, all of a sudden, a familiar war-cry like an eagle’s screech from above signaled that help was on the way.

“Caw!”

“Red!” Jake drew in his breath, looking skyward. “I’m down here, boy!” He waved his arms so that his fierce, feathered pet would quickly find him. But with his sharp eyes, the Gryphon had already spotted his young master.

The large
, dangerous creature depicted on Jake’s family’s coat-of-arms came diving out of the blue sky, angled through the trees, and swooped down into the clearing.

Red’s powerful, scarlet wings fluttered until his lion-paws touched down on a sun-dappled boulder.

“Am I glad to see you! Perfect timing.” Jake ran toward the not-so-mythical beast and instantly noticed Red looked agitated.

No wonder.

The Gryphon’s sole mission in life seemed to be to protect him, and danger was obviously near.

But wi
th the arrival of his fearless pet, Jake’s dismay turned almost magically into determination. “Someone’s taken Archie. I think it was a giant!”

“Caw!” A war-like glow filled the Gryphon’s go
lden eyes, as if he already knew.

“Did you see who took him, boy? Do you know where they went?”

The Gryphon tossed his head and whipped his tufted tail from side-to-side with anger.

“I’ll take that for a yes,” Jake mumbl
ed, climbing onto Red’s back, where he took hold of the beast’s sturdy collar. “Right! Let’s go save our genius.”

“C
aw!” Red agreed. Then the Gryphon jumped off the boulder and took a few running steps across the clearing, his broad, lion-paws silent over the forest floor.

Leaping into the air, Red unfolded his wings with a whoosh, then they we
re spiraling upward into the treetops. Jake held on tightly to the collar, his knees hooked in front of the Gryphon’s wing joints.

Within seconds, they were above the forest, gliding toward the summit of the hills.

Dense woods that could have hidden any number of unexpected creatures covered the dramatic contours of the Norwegian landscape; in the distance, the fjord was a deep, dazzling blue.

The Gryphon soar
ed higher so they could see farther in every direction. The breeze grew chillier as they ascended. Red’s head moved back and forth as he scanned the landscape with his eagle eyes.

Jake searched
as well. A flock of birds passed under them, flying in the opposite direction. Down on the water, countless boats meandered this way and that. Tiny people promenaded along the path or teetered along on high-wheeler bicycles like the one Loki had crashed in the Exhibit Hall.

On the hunt for Archie, Jake and Red skimmed across the brushy, greenish-blue tops of another stand of
towering Norway spruces. They passed the plunging cascade of the mountain waterfall so close that they felt the cold spray of the plume fleck their faces.

Then Red took him higher, over the cliff at the top of the waterfall. Beyond that were more rugged hills.

Jake was beginning to despair of ever finding them in this thick wilderness, when suddenly he noticed that the trees ahead were shaking. He pointed. “What’s that?”

Red made a small, uncertain noise and headed in that direction. Mighty conifers and massive oaks and elms were being pushed aside as something passed below.

Something big.

Their trunks swayed as if they were no more than blades of tall grass that shook when a badger hurried through the underbrush.

Obviously, this was no badger.

Jake murmured to Red not to get too close. He wanted to see for himself exactly who or what they were dealing with before th
ey allowed themselves to be spotted.