I’m not sure where she found the courage to speak. Maybe it was her head injury talking. Me, I was trying to decide if Jack had the power to kill a giant this big. Even if Jack managed to fly up the giant’s nose, I doubted his blade would do much more than cause a sneeze. And we didn’t want that.
The giant straightened and laughed. I wondered if his ears popped when he got that high in the stratosphere. “Hoo-hoo! The green-haired gnat is feisty! My name is Tiny!”
Now that I looked, I could see the name TINY embroidered on his bowling shirt like the distant letters of the Hollywood sign.
“Tiny,” I said.
I didn’t think he could possibly hear me any more than I could hear ants having an argument, but he grinned and nodded. “Yes, puny one. The other giants like to tease me, because, compared to most at Utgard-Loki’s palace, I am small.”
Blitzen dusted twigs from his blue jacket. “It’s got to be an illusion,” he muttered to us. “He can’t really be that big.”
Alex touched her bloody forehead. “This isn’t an illusion. That shoelace felt plenty real.”
The giant stretched. “Well, it’s a good thing you woke me from my nap. I suppose I should get going!”
“Hold on,” I yelled. “You said you were from Utgard-Loki’s palace?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes. Utgard Lanes! Would you be heading that way?”
“Uh, yeah!” I said. “We need to see the king!”
I was hoping Tiny might scoop us up and give us a ride. That seemed like the proper thing to do for travelers who’d just had a hit-and-run with your shoestring.
Tiny chuckled. “I don’t know how you’d fare at Utgard Lanes. We’re a little busy getting ready for the bowling tournament tomorrow. If you can’t even navigate around our shoestrings, you might get accidentally crushed.”
“We’ll do fine!” Alex said—again, with a lot more confidence than I could’ve mustered. “Where is the palace?”
“Just over yonder.” Tiny waved to his left, causing a new low-pressure front. “Easy two-minute walk.”
I tried to translate that from Giantese. I figured that meant the palace was about seven billion miles away.
“You couldn’t give us a lift, maybe?” I tried not to sound too pitiful.
“Well, now,” Tiny said, “I don’t really owe you any favors, do I? You’d have to make it over the threshold of the fortress to claim guest privileges. Then we’ll have to treat you right.”
“Here we go,” Blitzen grumbled.
I remembered how guest rights worked from our last time in Jotunheim. If you made it inside the house and claimed you were a guest, supposedly the host couldn’t kill you. Of course, when we’d tried that before, we ended up slaughtering an entire giant family after they attempted to squash us like bugs, but it had all been done with the utmost courtesy.
“Besides,” Tiny continued, “if you can’t make it to Utgard Lanes yourself, you really shouldn’t be there! Most giants are not as easygoing as I am. You need to be careful, little ones. My larger kin might take you for trespassers or termites or something! Really, I would stay away.”
I had a terrible vision of Sam and Hearthstone flying into the bowling alley and getting caught in the world’s largest bug zapper.
“We have to get there!” I shouted. “We’re meeting two friends.”
“Hmm.” Tiny raised his forearm, revealing a Mount Rushmore–size tattoo of Elvis Presley. The giant scratched his beard, and a single white whisker twirled down like an Apache helicopter and crashed nearby, sending up a mushroom cloud of snow. “Tell you what, then. You carry my bowling bag. That way everyone will know you’re a friend. Do me this small service, and I’ll vouch for you with Utgard-Loki. Try to keep up! But if you do fall behind, make sure you reach the castle by tomorrow morning. That’s when the tournament begins!”
He got to his feet and turned to leave. I had time to admire his scraggly gray man bun and read the giant yellow words embroidered across the back of his shirt: TINY’S TURKEY BOWLERS. I wondered if that was the name of his team or maybe his business. I pictured turkeys the size of cathedrals, and I knew they would be haunting my nightmares forever.
Then, in two steps, Tiny disappeared over the horizon.
I looked at my friends. “What did we just get ourselves into?”
“Well, good news,” Blitzen said. “I found the bag. Bad news…I found the bag.”
He pointed to a nearby mountain: a sheer dark cliff that rose five hundred feet to a wide plateau at the summit. But of course it wasn’t a mountain. It was a brown leather bowling bag.
Solving Problems with Extreme Fashion
AT THIS POINT, most people would have thrown themselves down on the ground and given up hope. And by most people, I mean me.
I sat in the snow and stared up at the towering cliffs of Mount Bowling Bag. TINY’S TURKEY BOWLERS was etched across the brown leather in black letters so faded they looked like random fault lines.
“There’s no way,” I said.
Alex’s forehead had stopped bleeding, but the skin around the cut had turned as green as her hair, which wasn’t a good sign. “I hate to agree with you, Maggie, but yeah. It’s impossible.”
“Please don’t call me Maggie,” I said. “Even Beantown is better than that.”
Alex looked like she was mentally filing away that information for later use. “What do you want to bet there’s a bowling ball in that bag? Probably weighs as much as an aircraft carrier.”
“Does it matter?” I asked. “Even empty, the bag is too big to move.”
Only Blitzen didn’t look defeated. He paced around the foot of the bag, running his fingers across the leather, muttering to himself as if running calculations.
“It has to be an illusion,” he said. “No bowling bag could be this big. No giant is that big.”
“They are called giants,” I noted. “Maybe if we had Hearthstone here he could do some rune magic, but—”
“Kid, work with me,” Blitz said. “I’m trying to problem-solve. This is a fashion accessory. It’s a bag. This is my specialty.”
I wanted to argue that bowling bags were about as far from fashion as Boston was from China. I didn’t see how one dwarf, no matter how talented, could solve this mountain of a problem with a few clever style choices. But I didn’t want to seem negative.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“Well, we can’t dispel the illusion outright,” Blitz murmured. “We have to work with what we have, not against it. I wonder…”
He put his ear to the leather as if listening. Then he began to grin.
“Uh, Blitz?” I said. “You make me nervous when you smile like that.”
“This bag was never finished. It has no name.”
“A name,” Alex said. “Like Hi, Bag. My name is Alex. What’s yours?”
Blitzen nodded. “Exactly. Dwarves always name their creations. No item is fully crafted until it has a name.”
“Yeah, but, Blitz,” I said, “this is a giant’s bag. Not a dwarf’s bag.”
“Ah, but it could be. Don’t you see? I could finish crafting it.”
Alex and I both stared at him.
He sighed. “Look, while I was hanging out with Hearthstone in the safe house, I got bored. I started thinking up new projects. One of them…well, you know Hearthstone’s personal rune, right? Perthro?”
“The empty cup,” I said. “Yeah, I remember.”
“The what?” Alex asked.
I drew the rune sign in the dirt:
“It means a cup waiting to be filled,” I said. “Or a person who’s been hollowed out, waiting for something to make his life meaningful.”
Alex frowned. “Gods, that is depressing.”
“The point is,” Blitz said, “I’ve been considering a perthro bag—a bag that can never be filled. The bag would always feel empty and light. Most importantly, it would be any size you wanted.”
I looked at Mount Bowling Bag. Its side
rose so high that birds wheeled against it in dismay. Or maybe they were just admiring its fine craftsmanship.
“Blitz,” I said, “I like your optimism. But I have to point out that this bag is roughly the size of Nantucket.”
“Yes, yes. It’s not ideal. I was hoping to make a prototype first. But if I can finish the bowling bag by naming it, stitching a little stylish embroidery into the leather, and giving it a command word, I might be able to channel its magic.” He patted his pockets until he found his sewing kit. “Hmm, I’ll need better tools.”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “That leather is probably five feet thick.”
“Ah,” Blitz said, “but we have the best sewing needle in the world!”
“Jack,” I guessed.
Blitz’s eyes sparkled. I hadn’t seen him this excited since he created the chain mail cummerbund.
“I’ll also require some magic ingredients,” he said. “You guys will have to pitch in. I’ll need to weave thread from special filaments—something with power, resilience, and magical growth properties. For instance, the hair of a son of Frey!”
I felt like he’d smacked me in the face with a shoestring. “Say what now?”
Alex laughed. “I love this plan. His hair needs a good cut. Like, what is this, 1993?”
“Hold up now,” I protested.
“Also…” Blitz scrutinized Alex. “The bag needs to change sizes, which means I’ll need to dye the thread with the blood of a shape-shifter.”