Jake & The Giant (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 2) (17 page)

“Snorri,” Archie mumbled in exasperation. “Have you forgotten the way
back to Jugenheim?”

“There!” the giant suddenly said, pointing as the misty clouds parted. “Look! Yggdra
sil,” he said in a tone of awe.

There, on a distant mountaintop, a gigantic tree trunk as thick as a Norman tower rose from the crest of the mountain, up, up, into the gray clouds.

The boys stared at it, then looked at each other in amazement. Jake had never even heard of a tree that big.

“Jugenheim is up there somewhere
in its branches,” Snorri said. “Home.”

“You mean we have to cli
mb that thing?” Archie asked.

Snorri nodded. “C’mon.”

The giant started marching off with his usual enormous paces.
Boom-boom, boom-boom.

“Wait up!” Jake hollered.

“Huh?” Snorri stopped and turned around, then smiled sheepishly when he saw that he had nearly left them a quarter-mile behind. “Sorry,” he rumbled when they finally caught up to him.

“We have to stick t
ogether!” Jake chided, panting after running to catch up.

“Sorry,
I’m just eager to go home. But don’t worry, I can walk slower.”

“Good,” Archie muttered, giving Jake a reproachful glance—as if every mishap along the way was already
his fault.

Jake was too excited about the adventure before them to care. His eyes were shining and his steps were light as the four of them set out—together this time—for
the first leg of their journey, to reach the legendary Tree of the Universe.

Snorri led the w
ay with the Pigeon slung across his back. Jake and Archie followed, but they soon found that walking directly
behind
Snorri meant having to cross through each of his giant footprints, jumping down into the foot-shaped depression, climbing up the other side.

Since this was a waste of energy
for the long journey ahead, they moved up to walk beside him, one on either side. Red prowled along beside Jake, who, for his part, could not have been happier, to be heading out on an adventure.

It was a great day: This was what he had been born to do,
Jake thought, following in his parents’ footsteps.

He might never have known them, torn away from
them as a baby by the wicked schemes of Uncle Waldrick and the sea-witch, Fionnula Coralbroom, but in acting as a Lightrider, like they had been, Jake almost felt as if he knew them.

Marching through the tall grass of a
high, mountain meadow, he was invigorated for the quest ahead. The breeze tousled his blond forelock; beneath it, his eyes gleamed with anticipation.

He could barely wait to see Giant Land.

PART III

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Enchanted Wood

Hiking through the forest, the travelers glimpsed the azure sky now and then through the branches. Along the path, they passed fascinating rock formations like trolls turned to stone.

Occasionally, the trail broke
into sweeping views of distant emerald valleys and the sapphire fjord, where a whale breached with the simple joy of being alive. They shouted in amazement to see it splashing up into the air and crashing back down into the deep. When its great gray tail slipped below the water for the last time, they trekked on, through tranquil woods perfumed with the piney scent of Christmas trees.

To be sure,
Jake was many miles now from the grimy streets of London, coated in coal soot. But as much as he could appreciate spending a beautiful summer’s day roaming through the green mountains of Norway, he was impatient to get there, reach their destination.

Besides,
he was still a city kid at heart, and every now and then, he could not help feeling as though
things
in the forest were watching him.

T
hen they set foot on the base of the next mountain, and Jake grew nearly certain of it. Indeed, he could almost pinpoint the exact moment they crossed the border leaving the normal world and entered into magic-ruled territory.

He could feel
it in his bones, and he became uneasy.

This second mountain was the one at whose summit Snorri had spotted the mysterious Tree they’d have to climb to get to Giant Land.

As they started up the slope with Snorri in the lead, he recalled the odd rock formations they had passed and tried not to think about Miss Langesund’s earlier mention of trolls. Giants were obviously real, so why should trolls be any different?

He
didn’t mention this concern aloud, though. He didn’t want to scare Archie. If trolls were real, maybe they were afraid of giants, he reasoned. Maybe, seeing Snorri, the trolls would keep their distance, and if all else failed, at least they still had Red.

Recalling ho
w vicious the Gryphon could be—when the occasion called—helped to put his mind at ease.

Up the mountain path
they marched. His knapsack started to feel like twice its weight hanging off his shoulders. Jake was glad he’d worn good boots.

At least ther
e was plenty of time to discuss Isabelle’s tips for Snorri about how to woo the princess.

Snorri was a
s shocked as Jake had been when he’d first heard her strange advice. “Listen to her?” he echoed. “Make her laugh?”

“
I know. Weird, huh? But that’s what she said.” Jake wiped the sweat off his brow with a pass of his forearm, then stepped over a mossy log.

“But I already do all that!
” Snorri replied.

“Then maybe she already likes you
, and you just didn’t know it yet,” Archie chimed in from several feet behind them.

This
shocked Snorri even more. The giant paused in astonishment and turned around to gape at him. “Already likes me?” He abruptly frowned. “Say, little master, are you all right?”

“My leg’
s bleeding again,” he admitted.

Hearing this,
Jake also stopped and turned around in concern, only to find his cousin limping along and lagging farther behind on the trail than he had realized.

Blast it, he
had forgotten all about Archie’s hurt leg. He frowned and went back to him, thrusting away a flitter of fear as he hoped that nothing with fangs in the forest smelled the blood oozing through Archie’s bandage.

Wolves. Bears.
Trolls?

“Why don’t you ride on Red for a while?”

“I’ll be fine.” Archie picked up a suitable walking stick from among the fallen branches lying around. It split into a natural Y shape at the top, so he used it for a crutch. “There. Right as rain.”

“
Honestly, Red doesn’t mind—”

“I don’t need to be carried! I can pull my own weight,” the smaller boy
said defensively.

Jake suspected Archie’s
pride was still smarting from Dani O’Dell’s offer to protect him. Somehow Dani’s opinion on most things seemed to matter an awful lot to Archie, Jake had noticed.

“
Suit yourself,” he mumbled. “Just don’t overdo it, Arch. We’ve still got a long way to go.”

“
Actually, I think we’re almost there!” Snorri pointed in excitement. “I see a clearing. It’s not far!”

All Jake could see
was the dense forest surrounding them and the angled ground before them, covered in its uniform blanket of old brown pine needles and dead leaves.

Snorri
could see farther than they could from his vantage point, however, being five or six times taller than the boys. “Another mile at the most and we should be there, at the Tree,” the giant promised.

“Well,
that’s good news,” Archie murmured. Red pounced over to walk beside the boy genius the rest of the way in case he stumbled. Jake gave his Gryphon a discreet nod of gratitude for looking after his cousin.

T
hey labored on.

But
with every step closer to the summit and the Tree of legend, Yggdrasil, the more Jake’s sense of eeriness intensified. The forest shadows seemed to grow darker. The path became more difficult, a steep, rocky scrabble.

At one point, a rush of
stones rolled down the trail at them, as if the mountain itself were trying to drive them off. Fortunately, Snorri was at the front of the line and these were no more than pebbles to him. The giant quickly turned his back, put his feet together, and shielded the boys and Red from the brief rockslide.

“Whoa! Avalanche,” Jake exclaimed as the stones bounced past them on both sides.

“You two pips all right?” Snorri asked after the rocks had passed. The boys nodded and asked him the same. Snorri said he was quite unscathed, so they thanked him for his quick thinking and pressed on.

T
hen Jake noticed that the Gryphon also looked on full alert. Red’s small tufted ears were cocked, his golden eagle-eyes scanning the surrounding trees for any sign of a threat. It seemed he wasn’t the only one who sensed something strange about this mountain.

Red let out a low, unhappy growl.

“I know, boy,” Jake murmured to his pet. “I feel it, too. We’re not welcome here. Unfortunately, we’ve got no choice. It’s the only way to Yoo-gan-hime.”

The Gryphon snorted skeptically through his leathery beak
.

Then Jake noticed that h
is cousin was wearing a look of perplexity, like he was pondering some equation. “What is it, Arch?”

“
Oh, I was just thinking about the rockslide.”

“What about it?”

“Why it might’ve happened.”

“Something doesn’t want us here.”

“Nonsense. There’s obviously a logical explanation.”

“Oh?”

“Given the time of year, the melting snows and spring rains must have loosened the turf and freed the stones,” he mused aloud. “Then gravity takes over and the stones fall away from their places, following the path of least resistance—”

“Ow!” Jake
suddenly cried as an acorn beaned him in the head.

He looked up into the branches above him with a scowl while Archie
started laughing.

“Good shot, squirrel!”

“I didn’t see any squirrel,” Jake muttered, rubbing his noggin indignantly. “Did you see it?”

“No.” Archie
shook his head. “But what else would it be? Maybe the wind…”

“There is no wind,” Jake replied
.

Archie frown
ed, then they pressed on, until a moment later, another acorn struck—this time hitting Archie on the shoulder, while a third thunked Snorri in the back.

“
What is this? Somebody’s throwing acorns at us!”

“What kind of squirrel has that good of aim?” Jake demanded.

Snorri stopped and turned around, eyeing the boys as though he suspected them of playing a prank on him. “Was that you doing that?”

“No!” they exclaimed in unison.

Then a shower of acorns came down on them all at once.

They were too busy protecting their heads to see who or how or where it was coming from, but it would have taken an army of trained squirrels to unload on them like that.

Fortunately, the deluge of acorns pelting them was brief. When it had passed, they looked at each other in bafflement.

“Honestly,”
Archie murmured, frowning as he scanned the woods. “My weird-o-meter is going off.”

“You have a weird-o-meter?
” Jake asked in surprise. “Now there’s a useful invention!”

Archie
just looked at him. “It was a joke.”

“
Too bad. Maybe you should invent one. It would probably come in handy, given the lives we lead,” Jake muttered, then he shivered a little. “Is it getting colder?”

Archie nodded
. “Because of our elevation.”

“
Ah.” It was a fine thing, having a logical, science-minded person on hand under such circumstances, Jake reflected. But as they soldiered on toward the clearing that Snorri had seen ahead, things got even weirder, until not even Archie could explain the strange sounds the forest was making.

They moved into the gloomy shadow of the mountain, where t
he trees seemed to moan at them like spirits in a cemetery, creaking their branches and rattling bony twig-fingers as though trying to scare them away.

Just the breeze
, just the breeze,
Jake assured himself over and over as he glanced around.

He could have sworn some of those trees got up and walked a few steps, writhing on their roots somehow.

The vines seemed to slither over the thick boughs. The thorny brambles here and there seemed to reach for them to tear their skin, and from the corner of his eye, Jake kept seeing threatening faces in the gnarled bark of the old oak trees.

They passed strange,
knee-high mushrooms with polka-dotted umbrellas and smooth boulders covered in rich moss, like cozy little resting places made just for them.

But Jake knew a magical trap when he saw one, and n
one of them dared even pause.

All the while,
as they labored on up the steep path, an abnormally large wood moth followed them, wavering after them from tree to tree.

Each time it landed
on a tree-trunk to rest, the white markings on its ragged brown wings spied on them like big, strange eyes.

Stupid
bug,
Jake thought, resolving to ignore it—and to stick to cities from now on. Determined to ignore the eeriness of this forest, he concentrated on putting one foot after the other.

They were almost there.

“I really should see about buying one of those dirigible hover chairs,” Archie jested in the tense silence, panting with exertion.

“That would come in handy right about n
ow,” Jake agreed. “I’ll take one, too.”

“Aw, gnats!”
Ahead of them, Snorri suddenly began swatting at a cloud of gnats hovering over their path. “Ugh, I walked right into them. Didn’t—even—see them!” He was spitting them away from his mouth and blinking them out of his eyes and waving his arms around like a wind-mill come to life.

Jake and Archie looked at each other, both suppressing a laugh—until the
huge colony of gnats drifted lower and enveloped them, too.

They tried to hurry forward through the
cloud of insects, but the gnats followed them, drawn to their body heat and the moisture of their sweat.

Red
tried flapping his wings to shoo the tiny insects away from himself and the boys, but this, too, proved useless.

They
kept trying to get past them until the tiny creatures’ assault halted all their progress. They couldn’t see, could barely breathe.

They
had to shut their eyes and mouths and cup their hands over their noses to block the curious insects from flying up their nostrils.

“What do we do?” Archie cried, quickly shutting his mouth again.

“I think I have an idea!” Snorri answered just as briefly. “But you have to hold your nose!”

Without
any other options, they did as he said. Jake had no idea what Snorri intended as he leaned forward from the waist, his homely face bunched up with a look of intense concentration.

All of a sudden, the giant let out the mighties
t fart the boys had ever heard.

The deep, long note reverberated through the mountains like an Alpine h
orn calling the shepherds home.

The whole cloud of gnats
instantly fell dead. Jake and Archie nearly did, too, when laughter made them gasp for air.