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

CHAPTER ONE

Airborne, or, The Mighty Pigeon

“Up, Jake! Into the sky! Give me a push now, and make it a good one! The more speed, the more lift!”

“You’re insane,” Jake
replied.

The
two boys stood on a windy cliff overlooking the waves far below. Incredible vistas encircled them: Green drop-away mountains ringed the glassy fjord.

As Jake
peered doubtfully over the edge of the sheer rock face, an upward gust of wind blew through his blond forelock. He tossed his hair out of his shrewd blue eyes and sent his cousin, Archie, a skeptical glance. “You’re sure about this?”

“Absolutely!”
the boy genius said with his usual dauntless cheer. His crazy dark hair was sticking out in all directions, thanks to the goggles on his head. He pulled them down, adjusting them over his eyes, then strode toward his wondrous flying machine. “Now’s the perfect time! Henry’s distracted, taking a walk with his lady friend. Miss Helena’s busy helping the girls unpack before the Welcome Dinner. When else will I get the chance?”

Jake’s stomach grumbled at the reminder
of the Welcome Dinner. At age twelve, it was safe to say he was always hungry.

Though he had never tried Norwegian food before, it had to be better
than watching his slightly younger cousin risk his neck off the side of a cliff.

“Besides
,” Archie continued, “that thunder we heard earlier seems to have stopped, so I shouldn’t get struck by lightning—”

“Shouldn’t?” Jake
exclaimed.

“Well, I’ve got to take the old girl out on a test run before
I unveil her to the scientific world, don’t I?” Archie countered. “Make sure she wasn’t damaged on the voyage over from England, what?”

“I’m sure
she was safe down in the cargo hold with Red.”

“Jake,
I’m not about to make a fool of myself in front of Mr. Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, to say nothing of Nik Tesla.”

“I suppose,” Jake said with a frown.
But considering he had only just been reunited with his peculiar relatives about a month ago, after spending most of his life as a penniless orphan scrapping to survive on the streets of London, he could not bear to think of anything happening to Archie.

R
isking his own safety was one thing, but the boy genius, for all his eccentricities, was the closest thing to a brother that Jake had ever had.

His final checks of whe
els and tail and wings completed, Archie vaulted into the cockpit and hunkered down in the seat of his marvelous contraption.

Jake watched uncertainly while his cousin fooled with the various knobs and switches on the little dashboard he had built.
The propellers tucked under the back end started turning—slowly at first, gathering speed, noisy as they whirled. Mysterious pipes puffed steam and exhaust.

Archie
moved levers to adjust the canvas sails, and the Pigeon’s light metal wings began to flap, like a giant pair of bat-winged kites. “Ha! There she is! Good girl!” He gave the wooden side of the Pigeon a proud slap. “Ready?”

Jake sighed. “Very well. But if you plunge to your death out there, don’t come haunting me. I’ll only say I told you so.”

“Nonsense. If I start to crash, just use your
Fernwirkung
to catch me.” His cousin waggled his fingers at him in a teasing imitation.

“That’s not how I do it,” Jake answered flatly. “Anyway, I don’t know if i
t even works from that far away.”

“D
on’t worry. Parachute’s packed if anything goes awry. But it won’t. I’ve tested this model a hundred times. Besides, I’m a genius, remember? That’s why we’re here.”

Jake snorted. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

Archie laughed and pulled on his driving gloves, then buckled the safety strap across his waist. He made a few final adjustments, then gripped the steering bar. “Righty-ho! Now give me a push, coz, and I’m off into the history books!”

“Lunatic,” Jake mumbled. Nevertheless, he braced his hands on the stern end of the flying machine and took a deep breath. “Here we go.” He pushed with all his might
, and the Pigeon began to roll.

It picked up speed, faster and faster, heading down the little path, barreling toward the cliff’s edge and the smooth boulder Archie h
ad chosen for his launch point.

Still pushing, Jake ran alongside the contraption. “Good luck!” he yelled. Nearing the cliff’s edge, he gave a final
shove, then stumbled to a halt.

“Woo hooooo!”
Archie whooped as the Pigeon leaped away from the rock and sailed out over the water.

Panting from his sprint, Jake visored his eyes with his hand; his cousin floated on the breeze hundreds
of yards above the waves. He shook his head, amazed.

It worked!

Well, of course it worked, he thought. Archie knew what he was doing. Jake shook his head, smiling ruefully. “You’re still a lunatic,” he whispered, pride in his brilliant cousin filling him as he watched the Pigeon climb on the currents of air, its odd wings flapping rhythmically. Blimey, what would that freckled madman think of next?

For a moment longer, he watched Archie’s invention soaring like an awkward white-winged bird on the clear
Nordic air.

The fjord below was a brilliant shade of peacock blue, a finger of ocean crooking into the rugged Norwegian mainland.

While the University of Oslo and its quaint little capital city nestled on the valley shores below, the mountains were wrapped in a green shawl of dense forests, crisscrossed with plunging streams that offered some of the finest salmon fishing in the world, Jake had heard.

It was a wild and beautiful plac
e, this homeland of the Vikings. Of course, Jake was still a city dweller at heart, and being left alone in the woods a fair distance from civilization suddenly started making him uneasy.

The silence was profound, any noises muffled by the thick blanket of pine needles underfoot.
Too quiet.
No rumbling carriages, no clip-clopping hoof beats. No fishwives screaming down the street, no newsboys hawking papers on the corner.

Even the birds seemed to have stopped tweeting, and then, all of a sudden—
BANG!

A giant boom like a mighty clap of thunder nearly knocked him off his fee
t.

Jake
steadied himself with a gasp, instantly thinking Archie had crashed or the Pigeon had exploded in midair.

But, no, thank goodness.

When he whirled around, heart pounding, there was his cousin in the distance, gliding smoothly through the sky.

Whew.
He clutched his chest in relief. Then, furrowing his brow, he wondered if one of the other scientists down at the University had exploded something. They were testing all sorts of weird things down there, showing off their latest discoveries to their colleagues.

Inventors had brought their oddball experiments from all around the worl
d for the Invention Convention.

Whatever had caused that mighty boom, its deep reverberations were still rumbling, the very ground vibrating a little beneath his feet, t
hough it was beginning to fade.

All of a sudden it dawned on him.
Earthquake!

Of co
urse! On the boat ride over from England, Henry DuVal, the boys’ tutor, had taught them that all of Scandinavia was dotted with ancient volcanoes, and these, in turn, could cause occasional earthquakes.

They had neither of those things in England,
so Jake could not be sure. The boy genius would have known, but up in the sky, Archie wouldn’t have felt the boom nor the shaking of the ground that followed.

But if it was just a passing earthquake, then why did he have this sudden, peculiar sensation of
danger lurking somewhere close?

Jake stared into the woods, but saw nothing out of the ordinary and could only conclude it was just his imagination. He shook off the strange, uneasy feeling with a scowl, ordering himself to
stick to the business at hand. The Pigeon would be landing in the fjord soon, switching into boat-mode.

Archie would need his help pulling it out of the water. With a last, uneasy glance o
ver the cliff to make sure his cousin was still in one piece, Jake set off jogging down the mountain path.

He’d had quite enough of all this Nature for the moment. He could hardly wait to get back to civilization.

“Ugh,” Snorri rumbled after a long moment.

He had finally finished falling, and the great
BANG
that had echoed across the forest had been him, of course, hitting the ground at last in a giant belly-flop.

The fall had knocked the wind out of him as he finally landed facedown in a high mountain meadow
.

He rolled onto
his back, stunned and blinking.

Fortunately, giants have very strong bones. He was bruised and a bit dazed from his long plunge out of Jugenheim, but as he lay on his back staring at the blue sky, he gi
ngerly wiggled his toes, then moved his arms around and was relieved to find he had nothing broken.

At last, he sat up and shook his head to clear it.
Where am I?

Glancing around, he saw
Yggdrasil in the misty distance of another mountaintop. He memorized where it was just before the magical mists closed and hid the vast, legendary Tree from view again.

He did not know if he would ever be able to get back up to Giant Land—or if he’d even want to. Maybe he could make a new life for h
imself here, wherever here was.

Good question.
Lumbering to his feet, Snorri noticed that the treetops were only as tall as he was.
That’s odd,
he thought with a frown. Then he saw some sheep grazing in one corner of the meadow.

They had stopped chewing to stare at him, but as he stared back, Snorri was e
ven more amazed than they were.

Why, they looked just like his dear little sheepies back home, only they were miniscule—as small as kittens.

I’m in Tinyville!
he thought. But then it dawned on him he must have landed in Midgarth, the world of men.
Well!
This isn’t so bad, then.
He’d miss Princess Kaia terribly, but at least he wouldn’t have to listen to Gorm mocking him anymore. He was free!

He
decided to have a look around and try to get his bearings. Who could say? Maybe he could start a new life for himself in this quaint little place. But when his stomach rumbled, loud and long, he clapped his hands to his round belly.

First things first. A
hungry giant had to eat.

H
e’d have to catch something for dinner—or a lot of little somethings—and build a cooking fire. “Hmmm,” he rumbled, musing to himself.

Glancing
around at the woods, he saw all he’d need for building traps. He snapped a few branches off some spruce trees and got to work building cages in which to catch his supper.

With any luck, he might soon
get the chance to find out if humans were as tasty as he’d heard.

CHAPTER TWO

A Gathering of Geniuses

Twenty minutes later, Jake burst out of the woods at the bottom of the trail, sweaty and breathing hard after his vertical sprint down the mountain. He felt a bit silly for letting himself get rattled over nothing—nevertheless, it was good to be back in civilization again.

People were in sight, thankfully, strolling
along the waterside Promenade. Nearby was the University of Oslo, which was hosting the Invention Convention. Beyond the campus lay the quaint Norwegian capital city—which wasn’t a city at all, by London’s sprawling standards, but a nice large town, tidy and green.

He propped his hands on
his waist, pulling for air as he walked on legs that still felt rubbery toward the genteel graveled path that edged the fjord. From there, he saw that Archie had landed the Pigeon safely in the water.

The young aviator’s feat had attracted the attention of an audience.
The people strolling along the Promenade were staring toward the waves; ladies with parasols and gentlemen in bowler hats were pointing at Archie’s strange invention with their walking sticks.

Some of the other scientists who had come from all around the world for the conference had also gathered at the water’s edge to cheer for Arc
hie’s successful demonstration.

“Bravo, Archimedes!”

“Good show, lad!” they cried.

But not everyone was impresse
d. Henry must have glimpsed the Pigeon in the sky while taking a stroll across the campus with his lady-archeologist friend. He came running, but stopped at the shore and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Archimedes James Bradford!” he bellowed across the water. “Bring that thing to land at once! I did not give you permission to take it out!”

Uh-oh.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, Mr. Henry DuVal, the boys’ tutor, was an easygoing scholar in a bowtie with a book tucked under his arm. It was the
other
one percent of the time that made Jake think twice about angering this particular teacher.

Henry and his twin sister,
Miss Helena, the girls’ governess, had talents that—well, suffice to say, made the DuVal twins a suitable choice as chaperones for children from an aristocratic family with magical powers.

“Jacob!” Henr
y turned to him just then, his wolfish, gray eyes narrowing in displeasure. “What were you thinking, letting him take the Pigeon out without asking permission first?”

“What, me?”
Jake paused, startled and offended that he should have to take Archie’s wigging simply because his cousin was out of range.

In truth, he was still not used to having adults tell him wha
t to do after all his years of fending for himself. He still didn’t like it, but what could you do. “Do you think I could’ve stopped ’im?” he mumbled.

“Don’t give me your cheek!” Henry bar
ked. “He could’ve been killed! Don’t you understand that? When people don’t follow the rules, it’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt!”

“And do you always follow the rules, Monsieur DuVal?” a teasing voice asked from behind them.

Henry looked over his shoulder at the tall, blond lady striding toward them. “Always,” he retorted.

She laughed. “What a pity!
”

Jake surmised this was Henry’s Norwegian
archeologist friend and penpal, Miss Astrid Langesund.

Archie had told hi
m Henry spent time with her at every annual science conference, and the two exchanged letters now and then throughout the year.

Miss
Langesund assisted her father, the famous archeologist, Professor Langesund, who also taught here at the University. The Langesunds were natives of Norway, and were particularly excited that the conference was taking place in their home city this year.

“That was quite a sprint,
sir,” Miss Langesund teased as she caught up to Henry. “Have you been training for a marathon?”

Jake liked her accent.

“Sorry, Astrid. I hate to cut our stroll short, but these boys do the dashedest things! That one may be a genius—” he nodded at Archie out on the water, “but sometimes I’d swear he’s got no common sense.”

“Ah, my father’s the same
way,” she said with a chuckle. “Geniuses usually are.”

“Now, now, y
ou’re just as much of a genius as anyone else here, and you know how to keep your head on straight!” he protested. “Then there’s this one,” he added, nodding at Jake. “The rebel.”

“Who, me?” Jake asked innocently.

“Yes, you! There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things, Jake. If people don’t behave in an orderly fashion, everything turns to chaos. Is that what you want?”

“Oh, don’t be so strict, Henry. They’re just boys.”
Miss Langesund sent Jake a sympathetic smile, but Henry scowled.

With a huff, he turned back toward the water and folded his arms across his chest, waiting for Archie t
o bring the Pigeon in to shore.

Miss
Langesund turned to Jake. “Since Mr. DuVal has sadly forgotten his manners, I’ll introduce myself. I’m Miss Astrid Langesund, and you must be Archie’s long-lost cousin, the young Lord Griffon, yes?”

“J
ust Jake, ma’am,” he answered with a slight, respectful bow, just like Henry had taught him. Though the title of Lord Griffon was, indeed, rightfully his, hearing it still made him think of his wicked Uncle Waldrick, who had stolen the title for a number of years, and had nearly succeeded in cheating Jake out of his entire inheritance. Not to mention his life.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you,
Just Jake.” She acknowledged him with a nod. “And welcome to Norway.”

“Thank you, Miss Langesund. Nice to meet you, too.”

When she turned back to Henry, the two adults resumed their own conversation; Jake studied her surreptitiously.

Being all of twelve, he was no expert on ladies, b
ut he suspected that with her true Viking blood, the lady scientist could have been a stunner if she weren’t such a quiz.

She had the tall, athletic figure, golden hair, and rosy-cheeked beauty of so many Scandinavian girls—Jake had definitely noticed
them everywhere since he’d stepped off the ship.

Unfortunately, Miss
Langesund had no more fashion sense than the rest of the rumpled geniuses at the convention. Her hairdo was a disaster, two braids wrapped like Danish pastries stuck on each side of her head. Black-rimmed spectacles nearly as thick as Archie’s goggles perched on the bridge of her pretty nose.

No doubt the lady scientist was too busy digging up old, dead bones with her famous father to gi
ve a fig for female fripperies.

She suddenly turned to
Jake. “Has Henry told you about the surprise that my father and I have to show you all?”

“Er, n
o,” Jake said with a curious glance at Henry.

“Miss
Langesund and her father recently made a great discovery from the Viking age,” Henry informed him. “She has kindly offered to give us a private tour of the exhibit. It’s housed right here at the University.”

“Brilliant!
What did you find?”

“You’ll see,” she said with a mysterious smile.

“Are you all right, Jake?” Henry asked all of a sudden, giving him a probing glance. “You seem a little… off.”

“I do?” Blimey, did he still look rattled after that unsettling episode in the woods? He did his be
st to shrug it off. “Just a little jolted, I guess, by that earthquake of a bit ago, that’s all. Never felt one of those before.”

“What earthquake?”
Henry asked.

“You didn’t feel
it?” Jake answered in surprise, glancing from one to the other.

They just looked at him.

“Maybe it wasn’t very strong down here by the fjord, but you could certainly feel it up in the mountains,” he informed them. “Nearly shook me off m’feet.”

Miss Langesund
furrowed her brow. “We didn’t have an earthquake, Jake.”

“Then what was that bang?” he exclaimed, but everyone forgo
t about him as Archie arrived on the shore.

“Cheerio, everybody!” The beaming boy inventor waved to his audience from the
cockpit of his flying machine.

Jake rolled his eyes as
the watching scientists gave Archie another round of doting applause.
Here we go again.

On the voyage o
ver from England, Jake couldn’t help but notice that Archie was quite the darling of the scientific world.

About a dozen other scientists and scholars from London had traveled over to Norway on the same ship on which they had sailed, and Jake had been surpri
sed to find that they all knew his cousin.

Apparently, Archie
had given his first lecture at one of these annual conferences two years ago, when he was only nine.

That explained it, then. But as Jake had watched Archie being greeted by one brilliant egghead after another, he had begun
feeling extremely out of place.

He had nothing to add to the conversation, nothing to offer as he sat in the gilded parlor of the luxury steam-liner, waiting in boredom while Archie talked scien
ce with the big-brained adults.

The boy genius had chatted like an old clubman with mathematicians and engineers, inventors and astronomers, physicists who could figure out
the weight of the earth, but couldn’t seem to manage to brush their hair.

Indeed, c
razy hair apparently came with each advanced degree, Jake had irreverently concluded. It seemed a fair gauge: the crazier the hair, the smarter the head beneath it.

In any case, as
Archie steered his contraption to shore, Henry went to scold him, and Jake followed to help his cousin pull the Pigeon out of the fjord.

The foreign scientists gathered around
, hailing their young mascot on his victory. One gave Archie a hand up from the cockpit.

“You could have killed yourself!” Henry started, but Archie’s fellow scientists p
ooh-poohed his tutor’s worries.

Miss Langesund kept the peace. “Why don’t you gentlemen come to the Exhibit Hall and get your first look at all the ot
her inventions?” she suggested.

“Goo
d idea. You go on ahead, Arch,” Jake said hastily. “I’ll put the Pigeon away for you.”

“Oh, would you?” Archie exclaimed. “Thanks, coz, if you don’t mind. Take good care of her for me!”

Jake nodded, glad to stay out of all that lofty scientific talk. “I’ll come and find you when I’m done,” he assured him.

“Thanks loads, Jake
! See you inside,” Archie said, then he went off with his crowd of adult admirers, quite the man of the hour.

Henry could barely ge
t close enough to scold him, which Miss Langesund seemed to find entirely amusing.

As the group headed for the Exhibit Hall, the heart of the Invention Convention, Jake got to work hauling the glider out of the fjord. Once he had it on soli
d ground, he dried it off with the towel stowed in the boot, then folded down the wings.

Finally, he
started wheeling the Pigeon off to the storage room, but he couldn’t help glancing back over his shoulder at the distant mountain. He scanned the forests warily, more confused than ever.

If that boom was not an earthquake,
then what the blazes had he heard?