Chapter 3
“What do you reckon’s up there?” Loki asked as they made their way towards the mountain, after wrapping up the jars of Sploosh.
“I don’t know,” Thor shrugged. “Maybe a giant freezer?”
“Good,” Loki grinned. “I could use a hot fudge sundae.”
“Hey,” Thor grinned, suddenly. “Think about how fit this Mary Lou must have looked in a bikini.”
Loki laughed and then groaned. “Oh, no!”
“What?”
“Now I’m thinking about how fit Georgiana would look in a bikini!”
They both laughed.
“She doesn’t have a sister, does she?” Thor joked. “Or a cousin? I’m not fussy.”
“I’ll ask,” Loki smiled.
The climb wasn’t exactly easy, but little by little they managed, finding the safer areas of rock that wouldn’t send them slipping or plunging to their deaths, helping one another when they got into difficulties.
“We’d better get to the top before dark,” Thor muttered when they were about halfway up, “otherwise there’s no way we’ll be able to climb.”
Loki nodded, thoughtfully. “Give me some words.”
Thor grinned. “R-O-C-K-S.”
“Rocks.”
“D-E-S-E-R-T.”
Loki muttered “D-E-S...desert.”
“Right,” Thor grinned. “How about G-E-O-R-G-I-A-N-A?”
“Say that one again slowly,” Loki said. Thor repeated it more slowly and Loki thought for a second before smiling, tiredly. “Georgiana.”
“Yeah, keep thinking about her,” Thor encouraged.
Loki slowed as they neared the top. “Can we stop a sec?”
Thor looked at him, worriedly, and then nodded. “Yeah, let’s, but just for a bit. It’ll be dark soon.”
“Well, we can’t have much more left to climb,” Loki replied, breathlessly.
They both sank down onto the flat surface of the rock they had come to, Thor sitting, Loki almost lying, and stared out across the surface of the desert below them. It was amazing, Thor noted, how much ground could be covered in just one day.
Panting, Loki glanced up at him before bringing himself up into a sitting position and leaning against the rock they had yet to climb over. “Thor,” he muttered, closing his eyes, “I’ve got to tell you something.”
“What?” Thor asked. Loki didn’t reply. Thor leaned over and gave him a prod. “Loki? Come on, now.” Loki didn’t move, although Thor could tell from the rise and fall of his chest that he had just passed out. He took a deep breath. “Alright, if I have to carry you, I’ll carry you, but one way or another, Loki Laufeyson, we’re getting up this mountain.”
XXX
They sky was almost completely dark by the time Thor reached the top, with Loki on his back, and there were a few flies buzzing around, trying to land on him. He swatted them away in annoyance.
“Wait a minute,” he muttered, “if there’s flies, then there must be...water...”
He saw it then, the stream cascading down the mountain, natural, pure, clean water flowing in front of him. With a gasp of delight, Thor began to hurry towards it. “Loki, wake up!” Loki didn’t stir, however, as Thor put him down and dived straight into the stream, sipping water from cupped hands before throwing it at Loki with a laugh of “Wake up, Loki!”
Loki jumped as the cold water hit him and woke up at once. “What did you do that for?” he exclaimed, indignantly, and then realised where they were.
“We made it!” Thor shouted, grabbing Loki and pulling him into the water. Loki laughed as they both landed on their knees, the mud soaking their overalls, but neither of them cared as they drank the cool, clear water. Then, Thor noticed something in the ground and gave it a pull. It was an onion. Eagerly, he bit into it and then held it out to Loki. “Here, try this.”
Loki frowned. “Why?”
“Because it’s a hot fudge sundae; just eat it.”
Loki did so. “That’s the sweetest onion I’ve ever tasted.”
Thor flopped back into the water and began to sing the lullaby his ancestor had been taught.
“If only, if only” the woodpecker sighs,
“the bark on the tree was as soft as the skies.”
“While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely,
“he cries to the moon
“If only, if only...”
Everything felt right with the world all of a sudden, the hopeful feeling of a turn of luck, a different hand dealt, a throw of the dice, and somewhere above them, Farbauti Laufeyson finally smiled.
XXX
“Rise and shine, Loki!” Thor called the next morning.
Loki was asleep, curled up against a rock, but he stirred when Thor called him. “What’d you wake me for?” he asked, groggily. “I was in the middle of a great dream.”
“About your Georgiana?” Thor grinned.
“We were on a beach somewhere,” Loki agreed, stretching.
“Here.” Thor offered him an onion and sat down opposite him. “I filled the canteens.”
Loki took the onion, but didn’t eat it. “Thor, I’ve got to tell you something.”
“What?” Thor asked.
Loki took a deep breath. “It’s my fault you were sent to Camp Greenlake. I stole the shoes.”
Thor stared at him in surprise. “Wait...so you were the one who threw them at me?”
“I thought I was about to get caught,” Loki replied. Thor still looked startled, so he explained. “I told you, living on the streets you rely on homeless shelters sometimes, to help you out.”
“Clyde Livingstone said he’d donated them a homeless shelter,” Thor remembered.
“Exactly. My shoes were wearing through. I thought they were just there for the taking.”
Of course, Thor realised, Loki wouldn’t have been able to read the card next to them stating that they were famous shoes.
“Hang on, though, if you threw them at me, how’d you end up at camp?” Thor asked.
Loki smiled, thinly. “I tried taking a pair from a store. Like I said, mine were falling apart.” He nodded to the shoes on his feet. “These were given to me by Pendanski, they’re actually a size too big.”
Thor thought over what he had just been told and then smiled. “I’m glad you did that.”
“What?”
“I’m glad you stole the shoes and threw them at my head.”
Loki blinked at him. “Alright, not quite the reaction I expected, but-”
“No, hear me out,” Thor insisted. “If you hadn’t, then none of this would have happened. I mean, I thought I’d been sent here because of my family’s curse. But we’re not even at the camp now, we’re on God’s Thumb.” He glanced up at the sky. “I’ve just got this weird feeling...everything’s cool.”
Loki thought about it and then nodded. “Me too.”
“Same feeling?”
“Same feeling.”
“It’s a good one,” Thor agreed, and then he grinned. “Loki? I feel lucky.”
Loki began to laugh. “It’s the onions. They’ve gone to your head.”
“What do say we dig one more hole?” Thor asked.
XXX
They waited until early afternoon before climbing back down the mountain, and by the time they got to the bottom, it was beginning to get dark. With onions, water and two jars of Sploosh in their make-shift bags, they hurried under the cover of growing darkness over to where Thor had found the lipstick tube, he could remember the spot because of a large stone he had placed nearby that looked like a woman’s head.
“We’re going to need another shovel,” Loki worked out.
“Alright,” Thor replied, “but be careful.”
Loki gave him a look. “Trust me, Thor.”
Thor watched him run off towards the camp before he leapt into the hole and began to dig. Loki was soon back with another shovel, which Thor knew he had stolen from the shed where they were kept, and together they dug deeper into the hole.
“We should make it wider,” Thor said, beginning to work on the sides.
“I don’t think even Kissing Kate Barlow would bury treasure this deep,” Loki replied. “And how do we know that one of her lot didn’t come back and dig it up already?”
“We don’t,” Thor replied, scraping around the edges of the hole with the shovel. Then, the shovel hit something solid with a thump and they both jumped, before looking at one another. Thor tried again and the same thump resounded about the hole. Together they began to work frantically at freeing the object, eventually unearthing it and holding it between them. It was a large and rather heavy wooden chest.
“This is it!” Loki realised. “This is what they’ve been looking for.”
Thor grinned at him, but their celebrations were cut short as suddenly a light was shone in their faces and they looked up in alarm to see the Warden, Mr Sir and Dr Pendanski all standing over them.
“Thank you, boys, you’ve been a big help,” the Warden smiled.
Something moved on the trunk and Thor glanced down, seeing it was, not one, but a whole family of Yellow Spotted Lizards. He and Loki both yelped in unison and then froze as the lizards began to clamber over them.
“Get in there and pull it out,” the Warden muttered to Mr Sir.
“You get in there and pull it out,” Mr Sir retorted.
“Well, it won’t take long,” the Warden decided. “I waited all these years, I can wait a few more minutes.”
“Hey, Thor, guess what?” Dr Pendanski asked. “You’re innocent. Your lawyer came by to collect you this morning. Too bad you weren’t there.”
“Don’t listen to them, Thor,” Loki muttered, trying hard to ignore the lizard that was staring him in the face.
“Well, now we’ve got a body to give her,” Mr Sir muttered.
“What about Frost?” Dr Pendanski asked.
“He was never here, remember?” the Warden stated. “We’ve got lots of holes to choose from. Do you boys know how long I’ve been waiting for this moment? My granddaddy owned the whole lake until it dried up, before he was wronged by Kate Barlow. She chose a labourer over him, a black guy, and when my granddaddy killed him, the whole lake dried up.”
“And that’s why she became Kissing Kate Barlow?” Thor realised.
“Yeah. He drove himself crazy digging holes out here. Made me dig too. Even on Christmas.”
The lizards still hadn’t bitten them yet, Thor realised, that was strange, surely. Everyone at Camp Greenlake seemed to be under the impression that they attacked on sight.
Well, he thought, if I have to die tonight, I shouldn’t have to be standing up for it.
Slowly, he lowered the chest and sat down, the lizards jumping around him but never attacking as he did so. Loki sat down opposite him and they both glanced up their captors. Something told them it was going to be a long night.
XXX
Come early morning, everyone was still wide awake, and the lizards still hadn’t attacked yet. If anything, they seemed rather docile now, pet-like almost.
“I just don’t get it,” the Warden muttered. “Maybe we should just shoot them.”
“The lizards or the kids?” Dr Pendanski asked.
“You don’t want to shoot into those lizards,” Mr Sir said. “They’ll start leaping all over the place.”
The Warden glanced over his shoulder and exclaimed “Oh, for Pete’s sake, that can’t be her already!”
Thor glanced up at her, but Loki ignored her, intent on reading something on the trunk.
“Thor,” he muttered, “didn’t you say you were named after your ancestor, the one who almost died out here?”
“Yeah,” Thor muttered, focused on what the adults were saying. The Warden had just told Dr Pendanski to go and hold the other boys in the dining hall and warn them not to talk to the people who had just showed up. Thor suspected they were with the police. Then, they heard a yelp which sounded like Dr Pendanski falling into one of the holes, and both he and Loki began to laugh.
“I just don’t get it,” Mr Sir muttered, of the lizards. “Nothing seems to make sense ‘round here anymore.”
Thor and Loki sobered up as they heard Dr Pendanski coming back with someone, a woman, and from the sound of her voice, a lawyer. Thor felt a ray of hope at last, and then realised he could hear more footsteps, there were other people with her. Glancing up, he saw that they were official looking men in business suits, fellow attorneys, maybe?
“Oh, my God,” the female attorney exclaimed, seeing the lizards. “Haven’t you tried to get them out?”
“Just what would you suggest, exactly?” the Warden asked.
“Well, this wouldn’t have happened if you had released him to me yesterday.”
“Excuse me, this wouldn’t have happened if he weren’t a thief.”
“A thief?” Thor repeated, and he clambered to his feet. “That’s a lie!”
“I caught him running out of my cabin with my trunk,” the Warden stated.
“Thor didn’t steal anything,” Loki insisted, picking up the trunk and shoving it up out of the hole before clambering out after it. The Warden immediately pounced on it, but Loki pulled it out of her reach. “What are you doing? It’s Thor’s!”
“Listen, I could send Thor right back to jail for theft if I press charges, however in view of the circumstances, I think I’ll just take-”
“It has his name on it!” Loki interrupted her, and then he shoved it towards the attorney and her friends. “See? Thor Burison!”
“My great grandfather?” Thor began to laugh.
“That’s not possible...”the Warden whispered in disbelief.
“Thor, I’m taking you out of here,” his attorney stated. “Let’s go.”
“Come on, Loki,” Thor grinned as one of the suited men picked up the trunk. “We’re getting out of here.”
XXX
“Now,” stated Odin Borson, Thor’s Father, as they got ready to open the trunk around the kitchen table, “whatever happens, whatever’s in this box, we are still family.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. After some insistence that he wouldn’t leave Camp Greenlake without Loki, Thor’s attorney and her friends, who had turned out to be plain clothes officers, had managed to secure their release and they had driven back to Thor’s house. Of course, none of the other inmates could believe they had made it through several days in the desert and were still alive, and their reception had been exceedingly friendly. Axel even seemed to have forgotten that his feud with Thor several days earlier, hugging him tightly and then asking him if he could call his mother for him when he got back home “and tell her Volstagg said he was sorry.”
The Warden, Mr Sir and Dr Pendanski had all been arrested, and it looked like Camp Greenlake would soon be closed down, so the other young offenders would be free too, and sent to real Counsellors. And then it had rained, for the first time in Camp Greenlake for years.
“You be careful out there in the real world,” Fighter had told them before they left. “Not everyone’s as friendly as us.”
Now there was just the matter of the trunk, and if it did contain riches, whether some of them could be used to help Loki out.
Everyone around the table crossed their fingers for good luck and then Odin pried open the box.
“Oh, my, Odin, you’ve still got it,” Frigga, his wife, complimented.
Odin grinned and then they opened the trunk...revealing an assortment of ancient treasures inside. Amid all the murmurings of “Oh, my goodness,” from his family, Thor grabbed a very surprised Loki for a hug before going to investigate the contents of the chest.
“Hang on,” he said, “before we do anything, I think it’s only fair that half of whatever’s in this box goes to my best friend, Loki Laufeyson.”
Loki looked at him in surprise. “To hire a team of private investigators with?”
Odin smiled, kindly. “I think that can be arranged, Thor.”
“Did you say Laufeyson?” Bor asked.
“Yeah,” Loki replied, and then looked even more surprised when the old man embraced him too.
In the end, it turned out there was more than enough to be divided in half, and certainly enough for Loki to hire some private investigators, with plenty of excess left over. Odin and Frigga helped out there, getting in touch with all the right people and waiting by the phone for the day they brought good news as to the whereabouts of Georgiana. After a week, though, Loki began to worry.
“What if they can’t find her, Thor?” he asked one evening as they sat in the living room, watching the news.
“They will,” Thor insisted, and when Loki still looked depressed, he leaned over and gave his friend a soft punch on the arm. “Hey, these people know what they’re doing, remember?”
Even as he said it, the phone rang and Odin answered it. Both boys strained their ears to listen. It sounded like Odin was talking to one of the investigators. They exchanged a glance, Thor’s hopeful, Loki’s apprehensive. Eventually, Odin hung up and walked into the room.
Loki got to his feet. “Have they found something?”
Odin smiled, gently. “They’ve found her, Loki.”
Thor jumped up and caught hold of Loki, who looked like he was about to fall over in shock.
“Is she alright?” Loki managed to say. “How is she?”
“From what they can ascertain, she was on her way back to you that day with food but there was an accident, on the road, between a bus and a lorry and several passersby got hurt as well as passengers. Georgiana was one of them. She got taken to hospital, but she’s alright now,” he added, when Loki looked alarmed. “Survived with a few broken bones and some bruises, and she was desperate to get back to you, but by the time she did, everyone had already moved on and you’d been arrested.”
“Hospital,” Loki muttered, running a shaking hand through his hair. “Why didn’t I think to look there?”
“Be fair,” Thor grinned. “They probably wouldn’t have let someone homeless in.”
Loki managed a smile.
“They’ll be bringing her over tonight,” Odin added, “although I’d rather not let them see the place in this state, so they’ve arranged for her to meet you at the bus station.”
“Let’s go, then,” Thor said, grabbing a coat.
The three of them made their way over to the empty station and Odin stood outside in the cold to keep watch whilst the boys sat inside in the warm. Loki was so nervous he couldn’t keep still.
“What if she hates me for not trying hard enough?” he asked.
“She won’t,” Thor insisted. “If she still loves you as much as you love her, she’ll just be happy to see you again.”
Loki nodded and they waited in silence until they caught a signal from Odin outside that someone was coming. They ran over to the window to see a car with tinted windows pulling up. The driver got out to talk to Odin, and someone else got out too, a girl. She was thin but very beautiful, her hair blonde and wavy and her eyes brown and curious as she glanced about the place. Before Thor even had a chance to blink, Loki shot out of the building and hurtled towards her. The girl saw him in the same instant and flew towards him, clinging to him as Loki gave her a hug that picked her up off her feet.
Thor smiled as he stepped outside, watching the two hug, hearing them both whisper “I love you,” before parting and then sharing a kiss. Casually, he strode over to them and waited until Loki noticed he was there and turned to him.
“This is my friend Thor,” he told the girl. “Thor, this is my Georgiana.”
“I feel like I know you already,” Thor replied, reaching to shake her hand.
Georgiana smiled, politely. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You’re coming back with us,” Thor informed her. “Just until you two get yourselves settled.”
Loki smiled as he slipped an arm around Georgiana’s waist and kissed her forehead. “I’ve got so much to tell you,” he murmured.
XXX
And that is how the great grandson of Buri Aesirson and the great great grandson of Farbauti Laufeyson became next door neighbours.
Both boys, with a little help from Odin, Frigga and Bor, used what was in the trunk belonging to Thor Burison to buy adjoining houses, and Loki and Georgiana were able to track down some of their homeless friends from the streets to come and live with them. Thor often joked, though, that maybe they should just knock down the wall that separated the two houses and turn it into one big house for all of them, since both families overlapped into each other’s lives so much anyway.
And their friends from Cabin D were regular visitors to both. After having regular meetings with their Counsellors, they were all beginning to get back on their feet. They were even losing their nicknames and going by their regular names, Sif, Fandral, Volstagg and Hogun.
“Hey, have you guys heard?” Sif asked one day as they lounged by the pool outside Thor’s. “Camp Greenlake’s reopening, but as a Girl Scout camp.”
“No way!” Fandral, Volstagg and Hogun chorused.
“Well, they’ll be alright,” Thor grinned, “as long as the girls eat plenty of-”
“Onions,” he and Loki finished in unison and then laughed. It had turned out that that was why the lizards hadn’t attacked them that day, because of all the onions they had eaten up on God’s Thumb.
Georgiana came out into the garden then, and Loki smiled over at her. Thor nudged him. “Whoa, she does look fit in a bikini,” he teased.
“Hands off, I saw her first,” Loki grinned and Thor laughed.
Georgiana hurried up to them, a sarong wrapped around her lower half like a skirt. “Thor, your Dad says the commercial’s starting!”
Everyone promptly got to their feet and hurried towards the house. As Frigga had predicted, Odin had had a breakthrough with his foot odour cure whilst Thor had been at Camp Greenlake, or rather whilst he and Loki had been sitting on top of God’s Thumb drinking stream water and eating onions. He had discovered that a combination of peaches and onions was the secret, and now he had managed to market the formula, under the name Sploosh, after hearing Loki use the word to describe the spiced peaches he and Thor had shared underneath the Mary Lou. It had become so popular with the company that bought it that they had commissioned none other than Clyde Livingstone, aka Sweetfeet, himself to appear in the advert.
Thor glanced around the room as they watched it, smiling to see Loki and Georgiana getting cuddly on the sofa together, looking so incredibly happy just to be with one another again, and to see his friends happily as far away from Camp Greenlake as they could get, and to see his parents happily living a better life than before, with his Grandfather and him.
Yes, it was like that feeling he and Loki had experienced on top of God’s Thumb. Everything was cool.
I guess you just have to fill in the rest of the holes yourself...