Sky Wolves (27 page)

Aunty Dot stood up.

‘These beasts will accompany you to your new home in the Elysian fields,’ she said, and Orion gasped. ‘There, with your soul at rest in the land of endless delight, the stars in your constellation will emit more benign rays of peace and harmony upon the earth, and man will never again be at
war with the animal world. When you reach the Elysian fields you must blow your horn finally, one last time, then the new era can begin. Go now and be at peace.’

Just for a moment, Orion blazed with joy, as bright as any constellation, illuminating the whole of the underworld. The Furies flapped off squawking, then perched behind a ridge of rock and covered their faces with their wings.

‘I can never thank you enough!’ he cried. ‘Pico, little dog, great heart – I will never forget you!’

‘WOOF!’ said Pico, looking quite emotional.

Orion turned and, buoyed along by all the animals, made his way to where the road left the asphodel fields and divided, one way going down into Tartarus and the other, broad and shining, to Elysium.

‘Now,’ said Aunty Dot, ‘we’re all together at last.’

The five dogs looked at one another.

‘Not quite all,’ Pico said, and he stared up at the great, greyish being that was Aunty Dot.

‘Aunty Dot,’ he said earnestly, ‘do you know what has happened to Jenny?’

Aunty Dot looked down at him kindly. ‘I cannot know that,’ she said. ‘I can only hope that she has fulfilled her part of the quest. If she has, she will have returned to your world, which is where we must go now. There is work to do.’

‘What –
more
work?’ said Gentleman Jim.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Aunty Dot. ‘Have you forgotten Ragnarok?’

And at that dread word, all the caverns of the underworld quivered.

‘All those wolves have fallen to earth. It‘ll be a terrible
shock for everyone when they land. And the forces of Hel may still burst from the abyss. When the third cock crows, the gods will go to war, the seas will boil and the heavens will be rent asunder. Fenrir may already have swallowed the sun and moon. And Berry here is the only one who can fight him. Berry, my angel – will you take us out of here?’

She patted the neck of the monstrous hound and he wagged his terrible tail.

‘
YOU KNOW I WILL
,’
he said adoringly.

‘That’s my boy,’ said Aunty Dot approvingly. ‘Climb up, everyone!’

‘What – on that?’ said Gentleman Jim, appalled.

‘Certainly,’ said Aunty Dot. ‘Berry here will take us wherever we want to go. You do want to get out of here, don’t you?’

Gentleman Jim did of course want to get out, but he couldn’t help looking dubious. However, Aunty Dot patted Cerberus’s back encouragingly and said things like ‘Come on!’ and ‘Up you get!’ and ‘You do want to see Jenny again, don’t you?’

So, one by one, the dogs all clambered on to the great hound’s back, Checkers taking good care not to be near the tail that had done him such damage before. Besides, the experience of sniffing the rear end of the Hound of Hades was not one he was likely to forget.

Once they were all on his back, Cerberus bounded away with ever-lengthening strides, straight through the River Lethe and the River Styx, so that water splashed up around them on all sides, and Charon stared after them, too astonished even to shake his fist.

‘I don’t know,’
he muttered.
‘What’s the point? What is the point of being the ferryman when people just come and go as they please? Come on in – all of you.’

He waved at the souls clustering anxiously on the banks of the river.
‘Don’t mind me – just come on in!’

Now rainbows, as you probably know, are bridges between the worlds. Which is why, whenever you see a rainbow, you can never really tell where it ends. It ends in another world. The rumour that there is a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow was started by trolls in order to lure beings from all the different dimensions into their own, where they would promptly mug them – thus creating their own pot of gold. Jenny had heard the rumours about rainbows and was sensibly wary. However, when she saw Sam, she was so astonished and delighted that she ran to him at once, temporarily forgetting her sorrows, and wagging her tail so hard that it could hardly be seen.

‘Sam!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing here?’

Sam fell to his knees and scooped her up, squeezing her so tightly that she found it hard to breathe. ‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ he whispered, and she licked his face.

‘How did you get here?’ she managed to ask, when he had stopped squeezing.

‘Dunno,’ said Sam, looking rather dazed. ‘I think I must be dreaming. It must be a dream or I wouldn’t be wearing this,’ he went on, plucking in disgust at the baggy, shapeless
jumper that almost reached to the floor. Then he said, ‘Hey – you can talk! Cool!’

He ruffled the fur behind her ears, and she jumped and wriggled and licked his hands enthusiastically. In her pain at losing Baldur, she had forgotten that she could love again.

‘But what happened?’ she asked.

‘Well, I woke up,’ Sam said, wrinkling his brow, ‘and went downstairs, looking for you. Then I saw this light outside the back door. So I opened it – and there was this rainbow! And somehow I knew it’d take me to you. So I followed it, of course.’

Jenny was so pleased to see Sam that she forgot to give him a cautionary lecture about the dangers of following strange rainbows. Besides, it did look as if this rainbow was the only way out of Niflheim, and she no longer had any desire to return, not even to try to find her beloved master on the shore of corpses.

‘Where are we anyway?’ said Sam, looking around.

‘Niflheim,’ said Jenny.

‘Where?’

Jenny sighed. There was so much that Sam didn’t know.

‘Niflheim,’ she said, ‘the far northern region of darkness and cold, where the bitter winter of despair breathes icy fogs of desolation. Niflheim, containing Helheim, realm of death, and Nastrond, shore of corpses.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Sam. ‘I thought it was a bit nippy. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad I’ve got this jumper.’

Together they gazed at the black bridge, on the other side of which the corpses had gathered silently.

‘Er – what’s on the other side of that, then? Are we going to explore?’ Sam asked.

‘No,’ said Jenny, shuddering slightly. ‘That is Nastrond, shore of corpses. And on the other side of that is Helheim, where Hel herself, queen of the monsters of the abyss, greatest of the giantesses, awaits the final battle, so that she can burst forth and bring destruction to the earth.’

Sam shook his head. ‘Just say that again, will you?’

As briefly as she could, Jenny told her tale. About coming from another world, where Baldur had been her master, and running away with the mistletoe twig, and Fenrir coming to find it, because with it he could rule, Lord of Ragnarok, over the nine worlds.

‘Nine worlds?’ said Sam.

‘Yes,’ said Jenny. ‘There are nine worlds, connected by a single tree. This tree,’ she said, indicating the great root.

Sam stared at the tree. He opened his mouth, but shut it again. Then he opened it once more. ‘So – what’s in the other worlds?’

‘I do not know them all,’ said Jenny. ‘Your world is one and the world I came from another. Boris and Checkers, Gentleman Jim and Pico have gone to a different world, to fight the Guardian of the Darkest Way and return with the greatest hunter of all time.’

‘Why?’ asked Sam.

Jenny did her best to explain. But even as she spoke, she was remembering her friends and the terrible danger they were in.

‘There is no time,’ she said urgently. ‘Ragnarok is coming. We have to return to your world now, Sam, before Hel breaks loose.’

‘But I was just getting used to it here,’ said Sam, peering over her shoulder to where the thick mists of Niflheim swirled ominously. ‘Aren’t we going to explore?’

‘No,’ said Jenny, shuddering again. ‘If we explore we will meet Hel. Trust me,’ she said, ‘we do not want to do that.’

‘Are we going back, then?’ said Sam, trying not to sound disappointed.

‘Yes,’ said Jenny, trotting towards the rainbow bridge. ‘We must return to fight in the final battle at the end of the world!’

‘Cool!’ said Sam, hurrying to catch up with her. ‘This is a great dream – I hope I don’t wake up! My dreams are usually dead boring!’

But even as he spoke, there was a rumbling, grinding noise and the ground beneath them lurched, flinging them both to one side. Great jagged lines appeared in the stony earth and the rainbow bridge itself began to split.

‘What’s happening?’ cried Sam, trying and failing to pick himself up as the ground shook beneath him.

Jenny scrambled towards the rainbow bridge, but she slid backwards in a shower of small stones. The bridge was disintegrating before her eyes.

‘Jenny!’ cried Sam. ‘What is it? What’s going on?’

Jenny rolled over as the earth shook again and another split appeared. She gazed in despair at the disintegrating bridge, and then, through all the noise, both Jenny and Sam heard plainly the sound of a cock crowing.

‘Ragnarok!’ she said.

Meanwhile, back on earth, strange things were happening. The cold had intensified overnight and snow had fallen until all the traffic was brought to a halt. Children were sledging in the middle of the roads and some enterprising people were skiing to work. Cars slewed into one another and piled up. Somewhere outside of time, a cockerel crowed loudly enough to wake the dead. Then wild yowling noises seared through the wind as the wolves fell.

Irma Nail, who lived next door to Gordon, was setting off as usual for her morning paper. She was not one to be easily distracted from her routine, even by the Apocalypse. She stepped out of her house in her purple wellies, muttering about the freakish weather, and glanced up at the sky just as a wolf fell from it.

‘Outrageous!’ she snorted, as it lay stunned at her feet. ‘I’ve heard of raining cats and dogs, but this is ridiculous!’ She then stepped over the stricken beast, putting her umbrella up in case more wolves should tumble, uninvited, from the sky.

Myrtle Sowerbutts was worried about Flo. She opened her front door and stood on her doorstep in the fresh air for the first time in years. She lifted her arms in a gesture
of helplessness and surprise at the huge flakes of snow falling all around, just in time for an enormous wolf to fall into them.

‘GRRRRR!’ said Skoll.

Myrtle shrieked like a steam engine and dropped him, running back indoors.

As for Maureen, she was flattened by a falling wolf while on her way to Gordon’s house.

All over the city chaos reigned as more wolves fell from the sky, hitting the roofs of cars and rolling off. The streets exploded with people running for their lives, screaming as they were pursued by howling wolves. Then, as the different worlds collided, primordial light spewed into the sky and matter exploded.

Bin men raced past Mr and Mrs Finnegan’s house, pursued by an army of dustbins. Seconds later, a lamppost uprooted itself and marched purposefully along the street. The walls of the dogs’ home bulged and collapsed, and all the dogs ran out, barking and yowling, to fight the wolves. A lonely policeman who fled back to his station gabbling about wolves and walking lampposts was made to sit down while his sergeant brewed him a cup of tea.

After that, things got seriously weird. Sea creatures that looked as though they belonged in the bottom of the ocean, where no one could see them, stormed out of the sky. Sam’s mum opened her curtains, only to scream as one of them slapped up against the window.

Then, with a noise that tore the sky apart, the earth itself started to split open, smoke and flame belching out of it.

And at exactly that moment Aunty Dot, Flo, Boris, Checkers, Gentleman Jim and Pico burst through the walls
of the underworld on the back of Cerberus, the enormous three-headed Hound of Hades with a dragon’s tail and snakes along his neck. The lollipop lady at the corner of the main road opened her mouth wide enough to swallow her own lollipop as they thundered past, followed by other monstrous creatures from the same world, Harpies and Furies and Gorgons, centaurs and nymphs.

A reporter from the
Daily News
who had run on to the street to catch the story quietly passed out.

‘Everyone, dismount!’ cried Aunty Dot, who was now looking like Aunty Dot again.

The dogs didn’t need telling twice. They leapt from his back in relief, only to be surrounded by snarling wolves.

Cerberus ran at the hell hounds, who scattered, yelping.

‘Never mind them!’ yelled Aunty Dot. ‘It’s Fenrir you want! You’ve got to stop him swallowing the sun and the moon!’

Cerberus raised his massive heads. And in that same moment, darkness descended on the face of the earth.

‘Oh, no!’ cried Aunty Dot. ‘He’s done it! He’s swallowed the sun! Get him, Cerberus!’

Cerberus crouched down low. Then, with a terrific bound, he leapt into the sky.

‘Go, Cerberus!’ yelled Aunty Dot, and the great hound soared gracefully into the utter blackness of night.

Up and up flew the monstrous beast, guided by hunting instincts he’d forgotten he had. Without the sun, the night air grew bitterly cold, but still he hurtled upwards, through all the layers of the earth’s atmosphere, and out into the unimaginable reaches of space.

∗

Fenrir was having a hard time trying to digest the sun. It was giving him terrible heartburn. Flames licked his bowels and his entire body felt as though it might combust. He was just wondering whether he’d have room for the moon as well, when the giant three-headed Hound of Hades landed right on his back.

‘
WHHOOOOMMMMPPPHHH
!’ said Fenrir, and coughed up the sun.

Flames shot from his nostrils, and both wolf and hound tumbled backwards, dazzled by the glare.

Fenrir bucked and thrashed in agony, but Cerberus gripped him with all three jaws and the next moment both hounds were plummeting earthwards, towards the abyss that gaped open to receive them.