Jake & The Giant (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 2) (20 page)

They could find veins of gold in the earth
, which was why they had been hunted nearly to extinction. Jake was also excited to meet the crew of dwarves who worked in his goldmine. He had never seen a dwarf, but he was told they were honest, hard workers, with excellent singing voices.

In any case, gold coins were heavy to ca
rry, so he hadn’t brought much with him on their journey.

Archie, meanwhile, was worried that the Norns might want him to give u
p one of his beloved gadgets as an offering, and certainly not his tiny, new-fangled camera. “Yes, what sorts of things?” he echoed Snorri’s question. “Personal effects?”

“No, no.
Yggdrasil doesn’t care about those things. What matters to him is how much the offering matters to
you
. Take Odin, for example,” the mother Norn explained, glancing toward the water. “When Odin came here as a young warrior-god wanting to drink from our Well of Wisdom, even he had to make a sacrifice.”

“
Really? What did Odin give?” Archie asked.

“His
eye,” she said.

Their mouths fell open.

“I’m going to need both of mine,” Jake blurted out.

“You can give whatever you like,
it’s up to you. But it has to be in equal measure to whatever you want in return.” Verdandi shrugged. “Odin wanted enough wisdom to become a worthy king of the gods. To him, his eye was a fair trade. Though it was rather bloody when he stood here and gouged it out with his dagger. Not a pleasant thing to witness, I can tell you.”

Jake shuddered.
“We just want to get to Jugenheim.”

“Quite
so,” she answered with a smile. “An eyeball seems excessive.” She paused. “You know, we have noticed over the years that our dear Yggdrasil does have certain preferences.”

“Like what?”
Jake asked.

“
Secrets, dreams, hopes. Ambitions. Things like…oh, your unspoken heartaches. Or your worst fear.”

They stared at her.

“Or a kiss!” the girl-witch suggested with a flirtatious little smile at Jake.

He blanched.

While Verdandi scolded her for being forward, wise old Granny Wyrd leaned closer. “Listen to me, young heroes. What Yggdrasil likes most of all for an offering is your greatest sorrow. Either your worst mistake, for example, or the worst thing that has ever happened to you.”

The
y absorbed this dire revelation in wonder.

“
W-why is that?” Archie stammered.

“
Because those are the things that usually teach people the most about life, if they’re willing to learn from them. Don’t forget, your offering will be added to the Well of Wisdom, from which we draw the water for the tree. Nothing adds to wisdom like suffering. That’s why your biggest mistakes, if you learn from them, are some of the most precious things you possess. Yggdrasil would appreciate that.”

“
How…?” Jake asked, mystified, but he should have known the answer was, of course, by magic.

Granny
Wyrd handed them each a tiny silk sack tied with ribbons. “You must whisper your chosen secret into one of my little notions bags.”

As he
accepted one of the tiny pastel-colored bags, Jake recalled that ‘notions’ did not just mean ideas. It was also the term that ladies used for their sewing equipment, like buttons and bits of lace and things.

He knew this because he had made the mistake of knocking over
Great-Great Aunt Ramona’s notions basket once and having to clean up everything he had spilled.

Archie
accepted one of the dainty little notions bag from Granny Wyrd, too. His was yellow. Jake’s was light blue, and Snorri’s was green.

“So you just…talk into it
?” Jake murmured uneasily.

Granny
Wyrd nodded. “No one else need hear. It’s between you and Yggrasil. Whisper your secret into the bag, then tie the ribbons tightly, and throw it in the well.” She nodded toward the water where the swans floated.

The boys looked at each
other uncertainly.

So far, Jake thought, this adventure was not at all going the way he had imagined. Sitting
here having tea with some ladies was not exactly the stuff of warriors and heroes, but, oh-bloody-well.

He
got up from the table and walked away to be alone so he could reflect on which of his sorrows to use. There were certainly plenty to choose from.

While Jake,
Archie, and Snorri pondered it, Red had no trouble deciding on what
his
offering should be, so he, too, would be allowed to pass. He reached around with his beak and plucked a crimson feather from one of his wings, then dropped it on the table in front of the mother-witch.

His feathers
were very precious; each one contained powerful magic.

Verdandi took it and admired it for a moment while the boys were still thinking.
“Thank you, Gryphon.” She put his feather in a notions bag, too.

The mood in the meadow had changed as they contemplated the worst, saddest, most fearful moments of their lives.

Jake finally decided which one to sacrifice. It was no eyeball, but hopefully, it would satisfy the mysterious Tree. He turned away from the others, lifted the silk bag up to his mouth, and whispered his secret into it.

He quickly tied the ribbons to keep it shut, then brought it back uncertainly toward the table.

“Now, go and throw it in the pool,” Granny Wyrd instructed.

Jake nodded and headed for it. The girl-witch, Skuld, fell into step beside him. Archie and Snorri weren’t far behind as they,
too, finished the same process.

When he came to the edge of the tranquil stone pool, he listened for a moment to the babbling music of the stream feeding into it on one side and flowing out the other in a little waterfall.

Then Jake glanced at Skuld. “What’s going to happen when I throw it in?”

“You’ll see.”

“Should I be worried?”

She just smiled. “Don’t hit the swans. Go
on, unless you lack the courage?”

That was all she
needed to say. He frowned in answer to her impertinent challenge, then hoping for the best, tossed the dainty fabric sack into the Well of Wisdom.

It plopped in with a splash and, to Jake’s surprise, instantly sank like a stone, even though it was empty.

Archie and the giant looked on, having joined him.

The swans honked as the water began to bubble and fizz.

“Ohh, you must’ve picked a good one,” Skuld murmured. “Lots of bubbles!”

The two older Norns had remained at the table but had turned in their chairs to watch the proceedings.

“Now,” the girl-witch ordered one of the swans, gesturing toward the pool. The bird dove in and disappeared under the water.

“What’s he doing?” Archie asked.

She didn’t answer, staring over the edge of the pool into the deepest part of the well. They all peered in, waiting for they-knew-not-what.

“Here he comes!” Jake exclaimed when the white outline of the swan became visible through the water.
As the bird glided closer, they could see he was holding something in his beak.

A moment later, the swan burst up to the surface again, carrying the blue notions bag that Jake had thrown in.

This time, the bag held a small bulge that told him obviously something was inside it. How strange! Jake thought. The swan flew over to the railing of the platform, where Granny Wyrd took the notions bag from his beak. The swan and Red exchanged a hiss as the boys ran over to see what had materialized inside the bag.

Lo and behold, Granny
Wyrd lifted a spool of peculiar-colored thread out of the bag. “Ahh, yes!” she murmured to herself, lifting it up. “This should do nicely.”

When she held up her embroidery needle, the end of the
magical thread flew out from the spool and darted through the eye of the needle, threading itself. Granny Wyrd didn’t even have to touch the enchanted sewing needle; she merely held up her embroidery hoop and it did all the work.

Jake could hardly
believe what he was seeing. By some mysterious enchantment, his whispered pain had turned into thread and was now busily weaving itself into the Norns’ endless Tapestry of Fate.

He
watched the needle duck and fly through the cloth, pulling the magical colored thread with it, filling in more of the picture.

Skuld looked askance at him. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?
”

“I guess not,” he mumbled, though he did feel strangely expos
ed by having his secret sorrow—being separated from his parents—turned into a thread that everyone could see.

“Sorrows and mistakes make wisdom for the well,” Verdandi explained. “
It turns to thread, which we weave into the tapestry, where it can help others face their fates with what you’ve learned through
your
experience. Hopefully, as time moves on and wisdom gets absorbed, humanity will grow smarter.”

“Progress?” Archie echoed, a favo
rite word among the scientists.

“There’s more to intelligence than building new inventions,” the Norn replied. She looked askance at Snorri. “Your turn.”

The giant followed suit, then Archie concluded the same process. The pool bubbled; the swans retrieved the notions bags; and the magical thread popped out to weave itself into the ever-expanding Tapestry of Fate.

Soon, the three travelers
all were feeling the same vague embarrassment at having their secrets exposed, even if no one looking at the tapestry could easily tell what they had whispered into the bags. But the mother-witch glanced at them with a knowing eye.

“If it didn’t hurt a little, it wouldn’t be a sacrifice,” she said.
“Just ask Odin.”

Red’s offering was the last to go into the Well of Wisdom, and when the thread came out, it was especially magnificent: scarlet with a sheen of golden sparkles to it, just like his feathers.

“There,” Granny Wyrd whispered when the magical needle stopped. No sooner had she held up the tapestry to admire the newly filled-in sections of the picture, than all of a sudden, they heard a loud click from the direction of the Tree.

The mother-witch smiled broadly, and the girl-witch laughed. “
There you go!” She pointed to Yggdrasil.

The travelers
turned to look. Jake’s eyes widened as a large door popped open at the ground level of the mighty tree-trunk.

Verdandi nodded toward it. “Go on. Yggdrasil has accepted your offerings. You may pass.”

“Farewell, young heroes,” Granny Wyrd said. “May Thor grant you a fair wind and safe travels.”

“Goodbye,” they said. “And thank you.”

Skuld walked them over to the tree-trunk. Jake and Archie peered through the opening. “Go on. What are you waiting for? Step in. The giant will have to duck his head down,” she added with a dubious glance at Snorri.

Jake and Archie exchang
ed a look of astonishment, but they shrugged their knapsacks back onto the shoulders and stepped into the creaky brass-and-iron elevator hidden inside the Tree.

“Come on, Red,” Jake called. The Gryphon ran to him, prowling in to huddle by Jake’s s
ide. Red let out an unhappy sound, glancing around inside the dark hollow of the Tree.

“Am I going to fit in there
?” Snorri asked, still outside the trunk.

“Sure.
It’s as big as a freight elevator in here,” Archie reported.

But Snorri was still nervous. “I hope it can carry my weight.”

“You’re not the first giant to pass through here, you know,” Skuld replied. “Though, of course, it’s been centuries since the last time a giant stood on Midgarth soil…. Never mind, you’ll be fine.”

S
norri bent down, ducking his head under the doorway in the tree-trunk to step gingerly into the massive cylindrical elevator, a handsome cage of steel and brass.

“How do you
Norns know about hydraulics, anyway?” Archie asked, looking around at it.

“Oh, y
ou’d be surprised at the things we can see through the eye Odin left behind for us.” Granny Norn reached into her sewing basket with a ruthless little smile and held up a blue human eye.

As
the boys shrieked and grimaced at this gruesome prop, the girl-witch laughed and rolled the iron grate of the elevator’s door closed. “Going up!”

She pressed a button made to resemble a knot in the wood
, and the wooden tree-trunk door slammed shut.

Robbed of dayl
ight, they could barely see one another, and at once, a deep, mechanical rumbling sounded from nearby—as if the elevator’s working parts were hidden in the roots.

“
Hold on!” Archie warned.