the same person I was, either,” I said. “I’m not asking you to help me pass computer science. I get that you think this project is beneath you, but it’s important to me, and I’m not pulling some stupid prank just because you’ve been kind of a dick about it.”
Lee stared at Mikill and his dune buggy and swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “If you drop me in the dunes, I swear to God, I’ll never forgive you.”
I felt bad.
It was easy enough to say everyone had high school damage, but the truth was, hell-spawn or not, I’d gotten off light compared to Lee and his friends. No one had ever held me upside down in the bathroom, dunked my head into the toilet, and given me a swirly. It had happened to Lee, though, probably more than once. And I didn’t doubt that the shadow of that humiliation lingered.
“No one’s dropping anyone in the dunes, Lee,” I said to him, making my voice gentle. “I promise. Just don’t fall out. Because unlike the Tall Man’s ghost, Garm is real.”
“The hellhound?”
“Uh-huh.” I wedged myself into the narrow storage space behind the buggy’s two seats, wishing I’d thought about the logistics earlier. “You’ll find a loaf of bread on the floor at your feet. That’s the offering to Garm. Lee, you’re in charge of throwing it to him. Mikill”—I took a death grip on the roll bar—“drive carefully.”
As soon as Lee climbed gingerly into the front seat and buckled his seat belt, Mikill gunned the engine and headed out of town.
A mile north on the highway, he turned into Pemkowet Dune Rides, passing the stable where the fancy dune schooners were sitting idle for the night and roaring into the path beyond it.
I’d made this trip before, but it didn’t get any less frightening. Quite the opposite, considering I was squished into a cramped space without a seat belt and holding on to the roll bar for dear life.
And once we departed from the graded paths and set course for the massive, looming figure of Yggdrasil II, jouncing over the sand, it got worse. I narrowed my eyes against the stinging mist of ice pellets streaming from Mikill’s hair, searching the darkness in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of Garm before he spotted us.
No such luck. As we entered the sand basin from which Yggdrasil II emerged, somewhere off to the left, an ear-shattering howl split the darkness.
“The hound is nigh,” Mikill announced.
“Lee!” I shouted. “He’s coming! Get the bread ready!”
In the passenger seat, Lee struggled, the folds of his capacious leather duster caught on something. “I’m stuck!”
Directly in front of us, Garm bounded into the headlights, yellow eyes reflecting the beams. He was approximately twice the size of the dune buggy and his slavering maw was big enough to chomp me in half in a single bite.
“Lee!”
“Why the hell is he attacking us?” he said in a high, panicked voice. “Isn’t he on our side?”
“The hound is doing its duty,” Mikill said, swerving violently. The hellhound snapped as we veered around him, jaws closing with a click that sounded like the world’s biggest bear trap. “Throw the offering now, mortal!”
Lee yanked at his trapped coat. “But aren’t we past—”
A fast, heavy tread padded behind us, and then a vast figure darkened the emerging stars overhead as Garm leaped over the dune buggy, landing with a thud and turning to face us, growling low in his throat and wrinkling his muzzle to show his teeth.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Letting go of the roll bar with one hand, I leaned over to snatch the loaf of bread from Lee’s hand. Garm’s ears pricked up. He wagged his tail hopefully, strings of drool dangling from either side of his jaws. “Here you go, boy!” I threw the loaf as hard as I could. “Go get it!”
The hellhound bounded after his treat. In the front seat, Lee turned to give me an incredulous look.
“What?” I said to him. “You want to visit Little Niflheim, you bring a loaf of bread for Garm.”
“Um . . . why bread?” he asked in a faint voice.
“Because that’s the way it is,” I replied firmly. I’d asked the exact same questions on my first visit and gotten the exact same highly unsatisfying response. Somehow it felt better being on the other side of the equation.
Mikill gunned the buggy’s engine again. “Be sure to keep your limbs inside the vehicle during the descent.”