Rising Hammer (eBook)

Rob Neuteboom (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
314 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-3628-5 (ISBN)

Infos

In this final installment of Ask's adventure, all is revealed from the dead ground of Asgard as past, present, and future converge.

---

In the wake of his mother's death, Ask immerses himself in searching for a young woman presented to him in a vision. Ask's search reveals disturbing secrets about his quest, Mjolnir's loyalty, and his own misguided desires. These desires are further complicated when the young woman's identity is revealed, and the hammer chooses a new champion. Uncertain of the future, Ask finds himself isolated from friends, challenged by a past he can't escape, and confounded by runes on scrolls that refuse to reveal a prophecy he believes will bring his parents back to life. Will Ask decipher the ruins in time to fulfill his destiny? Will that destiny return his family to him?In this final installment of Ask's adventure, all is revealed at the base of a tree that emerges from the dead ground of Asgard, where past, present, and future converge.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

Adrift

Another night of fruitless searching ended in frustration. Ask dawdled down the dirt road to a house now two years devoid of his parents. First, his father and then his mother had joined their life force with a hammer that had once belonged to the great Norse god Thor, its power incomparable and unconquerable. This same hammer now rested inertly in Ask’s grasp, a silent reminder of all he loved and lost. Some strand of that hammer had once been an ax that transformed Ask into a powerful Viking lumberjack and whispered memories to him for guidance and purpose.

He pondered the word “purpose” for some time, deciding to settle into his rocking chair on the front porch rather than go inside to the sort of painful memories he wished to forget. Those thoughts always led him to a plethora of “if onlys,” “I should haves,” and “what ifs.” Invariably, these musings urged him backward to track the missteps of his clumsy decisions, searching for the one that would have changed everything, the one to right the ship, turn the tide, save his mother. But time flows like water, and the past is a phantom whose breath dries our backs. The ax, Ask considered, disentangled the past, waded upstream, and reanimated people and places as dead and desolate as Asgard left barren in the wake of Ragnarök. Bjornen created continuity and connection between present and past, Asgard and Earth, between father and son. That is what he longed for–connection–like when he had walked in dream the memories of his father. Purpose, he concluded, made meaning through connection.

Ask set Mjölnir down on the porch. The first couple of months, Ask had urged the hammer to speak with him. He had at one time spoken to Mjölnir as he would have a man of flesh and blood when he pleaded with the hammer’s energy to spare his mother’s life. Of course, Mjölnir could not reverse the blow Ask had landed to extricate Freyand from his mother’s body. Mjölnir compromised with Ask instead, promising to absorb his mother’s essence as the ax once had his father. Perhaps Ask had expected Mjölnir to speak to him often after that compromise by becoming the companion Bjornen had been, so it panged him deeply that Mjölnir remained as silent as, well, a hammer. Ask was met with that silence when he implored to speak to his mother. Given his experience with Bjornen, Ask knew Mjölnir had the power and knowledge to create such an opportunity. This made the hammer’s silence even more maddening.

Moreover, to add insult to injury, Mjölnir had shown Ask a vision and planted within his heart a singular mission–to find a scraggly-haired, green-eyed teenage girl–but hadn’t given him any direction, only a vague sense of purpose. There he was again, back to the word that had prompted his musings, as well as his frustration. Too often, his journeys brought him right back where he started. Only now, he found himself with a purpose devoid of connection.

The door creaked open, and Orla emerged from the house, a glass of ice water in hand. “I thought I heard you sulking out here. Any luck?”

Ask huffed. “Frankly, I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

“It will come. In time,” Orla encouraged, her eons of life giving perspective to the angst of his teenage impatience. “For now, we need to get you and Deonte to graduation. It’s a big day.”

Big day, thought Ask, more like big deal. The milestone of high school graduation seemed insignificant compared to battling giants and wielding a magical weapon. Truth be told, since the ax and spear merged, Ask’s mind had been further enlivened to the extent that he remembered everything he heard, a sort of eidetic condition, compounded by an ability to connect information quickly. He found his intellection leaps and bounds ahead of his classmates. At times, it seemed as if answers simply appeared in his mind. The short of it was that school no longer posed a challenge. As a result, it bored him nearly to tears. The worst part is that even though he entirely disengaged, nobody was the wiser because he aced all his tests. He was a ship sinking in a harbor, where the harbormaster assumes the cleated vessel is safe and never raises an alarm.

“Will you rest before we go?” Orla asked.

Ask shrugged. He rarely slept anymore. No instructive dreams awaited him, and the hammer had endowed him with a nearly inexhaustible amount of energy. What was sleep but a chance for the past to sear his mind and trample his heart? “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m not tired.”

“Nor last night or the night before,” Orla chided. After a pause, she added, “It’s your turn to get Deonte up.”

Orla’s reference to Deonte was as direct a reference as either made to their friend, who had taken to having a drink or a six-pack every night. Drinking had been Deonte’s response to the monotony of the past two years after defeating Hyrrokkin. Ask stared at cans and bottles lying in disarray on what used to be his mother’s pristine porch. He sighed. Ask hadn’t handled things any better, but the drinking and the cans were overt reminders to them all of an increasing sense of futility. Before he could force himself to wake his friend, Deonte pushed open the screen door and stumbled out onto the porch. He squinted at the light spreading across the fields. “Big day,” he repeated what Orla had said, working his mouth as if it were full of cotton.

“Big deal,” Ask said aloud this time.

“This is it, big shot,” Deonte added, “your chance to make something of yourself.” The irony and the implication lingered between them for a few moments. “Anyway. At least we have summer to look forward to.” Deonte inhaled deeply, breathing in fresh morning air.

Ask thought of the last days of school he and Deonte had shared over the past decade or more. He always felt as if they stood at a threshold to something marvelous, the closing of a door that represented the less pleasant past, the trials of living, and the opening of new possibilities, not yet jaded by events that shaped their reality. He sadly realized that he would never have that sensation again. That perceived threshold now consisted only of doors slamming in perpetuity before him, and not even a ray of hope could penetrate the insistent dark, the heaviness of that past.

Orla stood. “I suppose we should get ready. An email said you must be in your seats by ten o’clock. It’s 8:15 now.”

“Let’s not go,” Ask suddenly blurted. “Look, it’s over. We served our time. There’s no obligation any longer.”

“I like where this is going,” Deonte said.

Orla hesitated; Ask could see her deliberating over something, her icy stare frozen on a nail protruding from a deck board. She shook her head. “No, I don’t think we ought to miss this.” Again, a hesitation, that careful deliberation. “Your mother,” she began and then amended, “Your mothers would have wanted you to attend.”

“Oh man, Mom’s not even here, and she’s still telling me what to do,” Deonte huffed. “Whatever. It’s like, what, a couple of hours?” Deonte tested beer cans, hefting them until he found a full one. He pressed the tab and quickly drank the suds that bubbled above the smile bead. “A couple of these, and I’ll be right as rain.” He pointed his finger at Ask. “And this time, it’s your turn.”

Ask’s heart lurched in his chest. He shook his head and turned toward Orla. “No way. You’ve got to be his aunt this time.” He didn’t think he could bear Orla taking the form of his mother again.

“I’m afraid Deonte’s right,” Orla said. “It makes more sense that your mother would attend than Deonte’s aunt, Ask. She’ll be expected.”

“But,” he began, only to give up before he uttered a single counterargument. What could he say? “Every time you transform into my mother, it confuses the hell out of me.” That was part of it. The rest, he didn’t have the courage to tell Orla, or himself. How could he make sense out of carrying his mother’s essence in a hammer, a weapon responsible for her death? When Orla took Idun’s form, Ask felt the presence of ghosts intent on dredging up and chaining him to the past. How could he ever move forward when the visage of his most painful loss kept him tethered to that moment, always on replay in his mind? The swing of the ax, the impact of the poll, the bruise darkening her chest, the energy leaving her lifeless body—these were the images that accompanied Orla’s transformation. But Ask hadn’t the strength to try to explain. “I’ll go change.”

Heim watched Ask from the bed, ears perked as if sensing something was amiss. Ask spoke partly to himself and partly to Heim as he buttoned up a fresh shirt. “It’s such a waste of time. I should be out turning over stones looking for, well, whoever the hell she is. What is high school anyway? A weigh station on the road to nowhere, that’s what. Graduation is a meaningless gesture at the end of a pointless journey.” What he didn’t voice aloud was this peculiar hesitancy that manifested like a painful hiccup in his chest whenever he thought about life after graduation. Did he honestly believe, as he’d once naively told Deonte,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.1.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-3628-5 / 9798350936285