Blitzen was not deterred. He whipped out his sewing implements and got to work. It took him a few hours to slap together new clothes from odds and ends in the bowling alley’s gift shop. Then he took Grum into the bathroom for a proper spa treatment. When they emerged, Grum’s eyebrows had been waxed. His beard and hair were trimmed neater than the most metrosexual hipster’s. He wore a shimmery gold bowling shirt with GRUM stitched across the front, along with silvery pants and matching bowling shoes. The giant ladies swooned. The giant dudes edged away from him, intimidated by his star power. Grum crawled back under the bar and started to snore.
“I can’t fix bad habits!” Blitz said. “But you saw him. Did I beat the challenge or what?”
There was a lot of muttering, but no one dared to argue. Even magically enhanced ugliness was no match for a dwarven degree in fashion design.
Utgard-Loki leaned toward me and murmured, “You’re doing very well! I’ll have to make this last challenge really hard so you have a high chance of dying. That should solidify my liege men’s respect.”
“Wait, what?”
The helpful king raised his hands to the crowd. “Ladies and jotunmen! Truly we have some interesting guests, but never fear! We will have our revenge! Two guests remain. As fate would have it, that’s the perfect number for a doubles bowling challenge. Since bowling is the reason we are here today, let’s have our last two visitors face off against our defending champions from Tiny’s Turkey Bowlers!”
The giants hollered and whooped. Tiny looked over at me and made the finger-across-the-throat sign—which I was getting really tired of seeing.
“The winners will take the usual prize,” Utgard-Loki announced, “which is, of course, the losers’ heads!”
I glanced at Alex Fierro and realized we were now a team.
“I suppose this is a bad time to tell you,” Alex said, “I’ve never bowled.”
Our opponents from Tiny’s Turkey Bowlers were brothers with the delightful names of Herg and Blerg. It was difficult to tell them apart. In addition to being identical twins, they wore matching gray shirts and football helmets—the latter probably to keep us from throwing axes at their faces. The only differences I could see were their bowling balls. Herg’s was airbrushed with the face of Prince. (Maybe he had provided the bar’s playlist.) His brother Blerg had a red ball with Kurt Cobain’s face on it. Blerg kept looking back and forth between me and the ball like he was trying to imagine me without the choppy haircut.
“All right, my friends!” Utgard-Loki announced. “We’ll be playing an abbreviated game of three frames!”
Alex leaned toward me. “What’s a frame?”
“Shh,” I told her. In fact, I was trying to remember the rules of bowling. It had been years since I’d played. There was an alley in Hotel Valhalla, but since the einherjar did most everything to the death, I hadn’t been anxious to check it out.
“A very simple contest!” Utgard-Loki continued. “Highest score wins. First team up: the Insignificant Mortals!”
Nobody cheered as Alex and I walked to our ball return.
“What do you think?” Alex whispered.
“Basically,” I said, “you’re supposed to roll the ball down the lane and knock over the pins.”
She glared at me, her pale eye twice as bright and angry as her dark one. “I know that much. But we’re supposed to break the rules, right? What’s the illusion here? You think Herg and Blerg are minor gods?”
I glanced back at Sam, Blitz, and Hearth, who’d been forced to watch from behind the railing. Their expressions told me nothing I didn’t already know: we were in serious trouble.
I wrapped my fingers around my pendant and thought: Hey, Jack, any advice?
Jack hummed sleepily, as he tends to do in pendant form. No.
Thanks, I thought. Huge assist from the magic sword.
“Insignificant Mortals!” Utgard-Loki called. “Is there a problem? Do you wish to forfeit?”
“No!” I said. “No, we’re good.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay, Alex, we’ve got three frames. Uh, three rounds of play. Let’s just see how the first frame goes. Maybe it’ll give us some ideas. Watch how I bowl.”
That’s a statement I never thought I would utter. Bowling was not one of my superpowers. Nevertheless, I stepped into the approach with my pink fuzzy-dice-themed bowling ball. (Hey, it was the only one that fit my fingers.) I tried to remember the pointers my shop teacher, Mr. Gent, had given us when we had our middle school orientation party at the Lucky Strike Lanes. I reached the line, aimed, and threw with all my einherji might.
The ball rolled slowly, sluggishly, and stopped halfway down the lane.
The giants howled with laughter.
I retrieved the ball and walked back, my face burning. As I passed Alex, she grumbled, “Thanks, that was very instructive.”
I returned to my seat. Behind the railing, Sam looked grim. Hearthstone signed his most helpful advice: Do better. Blitzen grinned and gave me two thumbs up, which made me wonder if he understood the rules of bowling.
Alex came to the line. She did a granny roll, hefting the ball between her legs and chucking it down the lane. The dark blue sphere bounced once, twice, then rolled a little farther than mine had before toppling into the gutter.
More laughter from the jotun crowd. A few high-fived each other. Gold coins exchanged hands.
“Time for the Turkey Bowlers!” Utgard-Loki shouted.
A roar of applause as Herg stepped to the next lane over.
“Hold up,” I said. “Aren’t they supposed to use the same lane as us?”
Tiny pushed through the crowd, his eyes wide with mock innocence. “Oh, but the king didn’t say anything about that! He just said ‘highest score wins.’ Go ahead, boys!”
Herg threw Prince’s head. It rolled straight down the middle at lightning speed and crashed into the pins with a sound like an exploding marimba.
Giants cheered and pumped their fists. Herg turned, grinning behind the face mask of his helmet. He patted Blerg on the shoulder and they exchanged a few words.
“I need to figure out what they’re saying,” Alex said. “I’ll be back.”
“But—”
“I NEED TO PEE!” Alex yelled.
Some of the giants frowned at this interruption, but generally when someone yells I need to pee in a crowd, people let them go pee. The other options are not great.
Alex disappeared into the little giant girls’ room. Meanwhile, Blerg came to the approach. He hefted his Kurt Cobain ball and rolled it down the lane, Cobain’s face flashing in and out of sight, saying hello, hello, hello, until it crashed into the pins and sent them flying with lots of rocker spirit.
“Another strike!” Tiny yelled.
Cheering and mead-drinking all around—except among me and my friends.
Blerg and Herg rendezvoused at the ball return, snickering and glancing in my direction. While the crowd was still celebrating and making new bets, Alex returned from the restroom.
“I HAVE FINISHED PEEING!” she announced.
She hurried over and grabbed my arm. “I just heard Herg and Blerg talking,” she whispered.
“How?”
“I eavesdropped. I do this thing where I turn into a horsefly.”
“Oh.” I glanced at Sam, who was frowning severely. “I’m familiar with the horsefly thing.”
“Their lane is a normal bowling lane,” Alex reported. “But ours…I dunno. I heard Herg say, ‘Good luck to them, hitting the White Mountains.’”
“The White Mountains,” I repeated. “In New Hampshire?”
Alex shrugged. “Unless they have White Mountains in Jotunheim, too. Either way, those aren’t bowling pins.”
I squinted at the end of our lane, but the pins still looked like pins, not mountains. Then again, Little Billy hadn’t looked like Fear…until he did.
I shook my head. “How is it possible…?”
“No clue,” Alex said.
“But if our bowling balls are rolling toward a mountain range on a different world—”
“We’ll never reach the end of the lane. We definitely won’t be able to knock down any pins. How do we undo the hex?”
“Come on, Insignificant Mortals!” Tiny yelled. “Stop stalling!”
It was hard to think with a crowd of giants yelling at me. “I—I’m not sure,” I told Alex. “I need more time. Right now, the best thing I can think of is to sabotage their lane.”
It was impulsive, I’ll admit. But I charged the foul line and threw my pink dice bowling ball overhand with all my strength, straight into Herg and Blerg’s lane. The ball landed with such force it cracked the hardwood floor, ricocheted backward into the crowd, and felled one of the spectators, who squawked like a startled chicken.
“OHHHH!” the onlookers yelled.
“What was that?” Tiny bellowed. “You brained Eustis!”
Utgard-Loki scowled and rose from his throne. “Tiny is right, mortal. You can’t cross-bowl. Once you’ve chosen a lane, you must stick to it.”
“Nobody said that,” I protested.
“Well, I’m saying it now! Continue the frame!”
A giant in the audience rolled my dice ball back to me.
I looked at Alex, but I had no advice to offer her. How do you bowl when your target is a distant mountain range?
Alex muttered something under her breath. As she made her approach, she changed into a full-size grizzly bear. She waddled on her back legs, the bowling ball clutched in her front paws. She reached the foul line and came down on all fours, hurling the ball forward with three hundred pounds of pure force. The ball almost made it to the first pin before stalling.
A collective sigh of relief went up from the giants.
“Now it’s our turn!” Tiny rubbed his palms eagerly. “Go on, boys!”
“But, boss!” Herg said. “Our lane has a big dent in it.”
“Just move over a lane,” Tiny said.
“Oh, no,” I said. “You heard the king: once you’ve chosen a lane, you must stick to it.”
Tiny growled. Even the Elvis tattoo on his arm looked angry. “Fine! Herg, Blerg, just do your best. You already have an unbeatable lead!”
Herg and Blerg didn’t look happy, but they bowled their second frame. They managed to avoid the dent in the lane, but both of them rolled gutter balls, adding no points to their score.
“That’s all right!” Tiny assured them. He sneered at Alex and me. “I was tempted to step on you two in the forest, but now I’m glad I didn’t. Unless you bowl a perfect last frame, you can’t even tie their score. Let’s see what you’ve got, mortals. I can’t wait to cut off your heads!”