Secrets of Valhalla (13 page)

Buzz remembered the fingers of smoke grasping at the brave squirrel on the World Tree and how Loki had said that Ratatosk was now just a plaything for the dragon Nidhogg.

“I don't know how he is,” Buzz answered honestly. “He was in danger the last time I saw him. I really want him to be okay, but I don't know that he is.”

Kay did not reply. But what was there to say?

The bubble that encased Buzz and Mary finally bobbed out of the water and gently floated downstream. The landscape that Buzz could spot from inside the orb was immediately familiar. They were back in Tangley Woods. The bubble gently bumped up against the bank of Mornings Lake, and Buzz let out a breath of relief that he didn't even know he'd been holding. Saturn had said that the human realm would be in anarchy because it was stuck in the Saturday loop. Buzz had half expected the woods to be a pile of ash or dead stumps. But the forest looked much the same as it had when he'd left.

Kay grazed the bubble with one of his hooked tentacles and it burst, allowing Buzz and Mary to clamber onto the bank. Buzz enjoyed the feeling of having solid ground beneath his feet, and not a rainbow superhighway, a cloud, or an ocean bed.

“Thank you for bringing us home,” Buzz said.

Kay bowed his massive, spongy head, the Kraken's yellow eyes blinking rapidly in the light of the forest. “It was my pleasure. You gave me my freedom, and for that I will always be in your debt.”

“There is no debt here,” Mary insisted.

Kay held up a tentacle and wagged it disapprovingly. “I beg to differ. I owe you my freedom, and so my life. I hope I will be able to repay the favor one day.” Kay smiled. At least, Buzz thought it was a smile. It was difficult to tell the expression on the face of a giant squid thingy.

The Kraken closed its eyes and breathed in deeply. “I think Ratatosk is alive,” Kay said after a moment. “I can't know for sure, but the forest is telling me that he lives.”

Buzz felt a spark of hope.

“Good luck finding Jörmungandr,” Mary said.

“You'll find him,” Buzz said. “He's still in that loch in Scotland. Exactly where you left him. People call him the Loch Ness monster nowadays but I know he was sighted last on July sixteenth.”

“Thank you, Buzz.” Kay had gone pink all over again. “Thank you.” The Kraken held up a tentacle in farewell and dropped soundlessly back into the water of the lake. Buzz watched the dark shape disappear, pleased that Kay and Jörmungandr would be reunited once again.

True love always found a way.

M
ary was frowning at her watch.

“What's wrong?” Buzz asked.

“The date,” Mary replied. “We climbed the World Tree on Saturday, September fourteenth.”

“Yeah,” Buzz said. “It feels like a lifetime ago, right?”

“It wasn't quite a lifetime,” Mary murmured. “But my watch is saying that it was more than two weeks ago. It's now technically October first.”

“Two weeks? But how—” Buzz broke off, remembering what Young Janus had said. Time moved differently in Saturn's realm.

“Saturn,” he breathed.

“Good old Father Time,” Mary added.

“I can't believe we've been away for two weeks. My sister
and my uncle Mark will be going crazy.”
And
what about
the Prof?
the voice in his head asked.
Will he have been worrying about you as well?

“It's been two weeks of Saturdays, remember,” Mary corrected. “For them, for my grandmother, only a few hours will have passed since they saw us last.” She peered out through the trees. “The real worry is what Crowmarsh will be like. What does a world that's been worn away in a Saturday loop even look like?”

Buzz rotated his shoulder. His whole body ached. “It's time to find out. And we need to see if the runes stolen from Lady Pisces have gravitated back to Crowmarsh like Kay and Ratatosk said they would.”

“The guy who took the runes sounds like an utter crook,” Mary mused. “He was manipulating her from the word go.”

“Do you think he might have tried to sell the treasures from Atlantis, then?”

Mary wrinkled her nose. “It's a starting point. Let's see if the runes have surfaced online.” She tapped at the screen of her watch, trying to walk at the same time. She frowned. “There's no internet. I can't get a signal at all.”

“We're in the woods. Coverage can be a little patchy.”

Mary shook her head. “It worked before when we were here.”

Buzz felt the still unfamiliar sensation of his mind sorting through the reams and reams of information that had passed through him in the EarthWorm. “The 2038 quandary,” he said.

“2038?” Mary repeated.

“It's a bit like the millennium bug,” Buzz explained. “The theory is that computer systems are going to stop working in 2038 because they won't be able to recognize it is a year.” Buzz paused, trying to think of the easiest way to explain what was in his head. “When these systems were set up, they were never designed to cope with dates beyond the year 2037,” he continued. “Maybe a similar thing is happening here. Computers can't cope because the day is on a loop. All the dates are out of sync and don't make sense.”

“Sure, it's possible, I guess.” Mary was looking at him in amazement. “But how do you know about the 2038 bug?”

“Doesn't everyone know about it?” Buzz replied.

“No,” Mary said. “They don't.” She peered at him. “You're different, Buzz. You know stuff you didn't know before. Even the fact that you knew the date of when the Loch Ness monster had last been seen. Was that just coincidence? What's going on with you?”

Buzz opened his mouth to explain but he found that he couldn't. Jupiter's warning came back to him.
Remember: People are not always as they seem. History tells us that.

“You wouldn't understand,” he said instead.

“Try me,” Mary countered.

Buzz wanted to tell her about his strange transformation, but it was like the more he knew, the less he trusted. And he couldn't help wondering about what she'd seen in the time tunnel.
It had really rattled her
—
should I be worried?
Perhaps if he
knew, it might help him to share his own secret.

“Okay, I'll tell you my secret if you tell me what you saw in the time tunnel. That's the deal.”

“Deal?” Mary repeated, staring at him in disbelief. “We're friends, Buzz. I would gladly tell you what I saw in the time tunnel, I wanted to tell you what I saw, but I don't make
deals
with friends just so that I can get an honest answer. That's not how friendship works.”

Buzz felt his cheeks go hot. Mary was looking at him as if he was some kind of poisonous toad. “You lied to me before, Mary, in front of your grandmother and my godfather. Don't forget that.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “You can't blame me for being cautious.”

Mary's mouth opened and closed in surprise for a moment, as if she were a fish snatched out of water. Then she turned on her heel and stalked through the forest as a light drizzle began to fall. “I said I was sorry about that,” she shouted over her shoulder. “I thought you understood why I lied when your uncle Mark came round. I thought you trusted me now.”

Buzz hurried after her and was soon matching her step, stride for stride. “I do trust you. I've just got a lot going on in my head at the moment. I'm sorry.”

“Oh, forget about it,” Mary said. “Maybe you're being the smart one. Didn't Jupiter say that Odin didn't trust anyone a hundred percent?” She pushed her glasses farther up her nose, and Buzz noticed that one of the lenses was cracked.

“Hey, how did you break your glasses?”

Mary stopped, took off her glasses, and examined them. She looked really different without them, and for the first time Buzz noticed that one of her eyes was much darker than the other.

Mary gave a bark of laughter. “Now, let me see.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Maybe it was when I dove out of the way of a massive data-eating worm, or when I hit the sea after falling from a great height, or got dragged through a giant bubble.”

“Okay, silly question,” Buzz conceded.

“Perhaps, but it reminds me of the old Buzz. He was full of silly questions.”

“Mary,” Buzz began.

She held her hands up. “It's okay. I don't want to have another fight. We need to save our energy.”

“You're right,” Buzz said. “How are we going to find out whether the runes in the human realm have surfaced if we don't have the internet?”

“We'll just have to do our research the old-fashioned way.” Mary put her glasses back on. “Does your library have a microfilm reader?”

Buzz went to shake his head—but then he realized that this wasn't quite true. He'd heard his sister moaning about some kind of microfilm thingy a few months ago to the Prof.

“I think they still have one,” Buzz said. “And I know exactly the person who will be able to tell us for sure. What time is it?” he asked.

“Three p.m.,” Mary responded. “It's going to get dark soon.”

“My sister has a Saturday job at the library,” Buzz explained. “If we can get there, I'm sure she'll be able to help us.”

The Crowmarsh public library was an imposing Edwardian building, redbrick and narrow. The walls were normally impeccably clean, but graffiti was now scrawled all over the brickwork and it glistened from the rain that was lashing down.

“None of it matters,” Mary read. The words were painted in red, yellow, and green, and caged in a thick black outline. “They're right, you know,” she said, hugging herself to keep warm from the storm that was brewing.

“What?” Buzz's hand went to push the door, its broken windowpane like a jaw filled with ragged teeth.

“If we don't find the runes and reunite them with their true owners. None of it will matter.” Mary's voice was a whisper as her fingers traced the graffiti. “The world will end and everyone will die.”

Buzz felt the hairs on his arms stand on end. “Well, we're not going to let that happen, are we?”

Mary's fingers came away from the letters as if the paint were suddenly red hot. “No, of course not.”

Buzz pushed open the door, and the smell of old books assailed his nostrils. He loved that smell normally. It was pretty much the only thing he liked about his father's study. But today that book smell was almost overpowering. It smelled
like the books were rotting.

A lone figure sat at the entrance of the library, behind the counter. It was his sister. Her legs were crossed at the ankles and propped up on the desk, and Buzz noticed how scratched and muddy her calves looked. Like she'd walked through Tangley Woods and gotten caught in the brambles. Her hazel eyes looked glassy and bloodshot, and her bright red hair was matted and wild. The tea she'd been drinking had been knocked over and was dripping onto the floor, leaving a brown, sad-looking puddle that was soaking into the carpet.

Behind her, the normally immaculate library was in complete disarray. Books were torn and scattered across the floor. The windows were all open and sheets of newspapers whipped around the room like angry birds of prey, while rain flooded in, soaking furniture, hardcovers, and paperbacks alike.

“Seriously, would it have been that much of a bother to close the windows?” Mary asked Tia, coming up to the counter.

Buzz's sister ignored her. She just sat there looking out into space.

“Um, hello, Tia.” Mary waved a hand in front of the older girl's face.

“Go easy, okay?” Buzz said.

“Sorry, you're right. She's not herself.” Mary backed away sheepishly. “I'll leave you to it. Where do you think the microfilm reader might be, if it is here?”

“In one of the reading rooms. You go check, and I'll ask my sister and see if she says any different.” Mary nodded, and
Buzz watched her go. “Tia,” Buzz whispered. “Tia,” he said again more loudly.

Tia gave a start. “How can I help you?” she croaked, sitting upright in her chair. Her throat sounded sore, and her lips were so cracked that they bled.

She was staring right at him, but Buzz knew that she wasn't really seeing him.

“It's me. Buzz,” he said.

“Buzz?” Tia stared at him. “Buzz,” she said again, as if searching for a memory. Recognition entered her bleary eyes. “Where have you been?”

He was surprised that she'd noticed he'd been gone. He opened his mouth to tell her about Sunna and Loki. Ratatosk and the time tunnel. Janus and Saturn and Jupiter and the EarthWorm. The Kraken, Neptune, and Lady Pisces. But Tia was not really interested in his answer; she just kept on talking.

“I was all by myself at breakfast this morning,” she complained. “Dad wasn't there, either.” She twirled one of her matted curls. “It's Saturday, you know. He's supposed to make pancakes. That was the deal with Mum gone. For us to at least pretend that things could be normal.”

Buzz's lips twitched upward. Tia sounded completely outraged. She almost sounded like herself again.

His sister's shoulders slumped. “But I guess none of it matters. Not really.” Her finger was now yanking at her curl rather than twirling it. “I made the pancakes myself and they tasted
funny, but it doesn't matter. None of it matters.”

An image from the time tunnel dropped into Buzz's head. It was of Tia eating pancakes that were old and rancid. The future he'd seen was coming true.

“Tia, I'm going to help you,” Buzz promised. “But first I've got some really important research to do.”

“The internet isn't working, I'm afraid,” Tia interrupted as if on autopilot. “And I can't really check out any books because the computers are acting up.” She flung back the hatched lid of the library desk so violently that Buzz only just managed to leap back and save his fingers from being crushed. “Just take what you need. Everyone else is. I'm going home.” His sister strode past him and out the door without even a backward glance.

“Hey, wait.” Buzz went to follow her, but Mary appeared at his side and grabbed his arm.

“If you want to help her, the best way is to find the runes,” she said.

Buzz tried to pull away. “I can't just let her walk out into a storm. She's not herself and she always looks out for me.”

“It's just another Saturday for her,” Mary insisted. “And it will start all over again tomorrow if we don't gather the six runes together and find those sleeping gods. Come on, I think I've found something on the microfilm.”

Buzz allowed himself to be dragged away.
Our house isn't too far from here,
he told himself.
And the safest place for Tia is tucked up in bed.

Mary led him to an ancient-looking machine in the corner of one of the reading rooms. A newspaper article was captured there. “Here, read this,” she said. “I think you're going to be pleased.”

Buzz scanned the page of the article.

“Hey, this is about my uncle Mark,” Buzz said. “It says that he was the undercover agent in a sting operation to take down a ring of antique thieves.” His finger went to the screen. “‘Among the haul was a collection of stone carvings that many are saying are ancient and rare runes.'”

“Kay and Ratatosk were right,” Mary said. “The runes have a will of their own, and they've tried to find their way back to the tree. To Crowmarsh.”

“We need to get to the police station,” Buzz said. “Uncle Mark will know where the runes are now.”

Mary nodded.

They raced for the door and spilled out into chaos.