Hammered

Town Name with Which You Can Win a Bar Bet Kirkjubæjarklaustur = Kir kyu BYE yar KLOW stur (Watch all the English speakers try to pronounce the j the way they’re used to; it’s a good time. If they get that right, they’ll still screw up the æ sound and pronounce it like a long a or long e instead of a long i . You can win a beer or two with this, guaranteed, and drink all night for free if the bar is full of suckers.)

Chapter 1
    According to popular imagination, squirrels are supposed to be adorable. As they scurry about on this tree branch or that trunk, people point at them and say, » Awww, how cuuuuute ! « with their voices turning sugary and spiraling up into falsetto ecstasy. But I’m here to tell you that they’re cute only so long as they’re small enough to step on. Once you’re facing a giant bloody squirrel the size of a cement truck, they lose the majority of their charm.
    I wasn’t especially surprised to be staring up at a set of choppers as tall as my fridge, twitching whiskers like bullwhips, and tractor-tire eyes staring me down like volcanic bubbles of India ink: I was simply horrified at being proven so spectacularly right.
    My apprentice, Granuaile, had argued I was imagining the impossible before I left her back in Arizona. » No, Atticus, « she’d said, » all the literature says the only way you can get into Asgard is the Bifrost Bridge. The Eddas , the skaldic poems, everything agrees that Bifrost is it. «
    » Of course that’s what the literature says , « I replied, » but that’s just the propaganda of the gods. The Eddas also tell you the truth of the matter if you read carefully. Ratatosk is the key to the back door of Asgard. «
    Granuaile gazed at me, bemused, unsure that she’d heard me correctly. » The squirrel that lives on the World Tree? « she asked.
    » Precisely. He manically scrambles back and forth between the eagle in the canopy and the great wyrm at the roots, ferrying messages of slander and vitriol between them, yadda yadda yadda. Now ask yourself how it is that he manages to do that. «
    Granuaile took a moment to think it through. » Well, according to what the literature says , there are two roots of Yggdrasil that drop below Asgard: One rests in the Well of Mimir in Jötunheim, and one falls to the Spring of Hvergelmir in Niflheim, beneath which the wyrm Nidhogg lies. So I assume he’s got himself a little squirrelly hole in there somewhere that he uses. « She shook her head, dismissing the point. » But you won’t be able to use that. «
    » I’ll bet you dinner I can. A nice homemade dinner, with wine and candles and fancy modern things like Caesar salad. «
    » Salad isn’t modern. «
    » It is on my personal time scale. Caesar salad was invented in 1924. «
    Granuaile’s eyes bugged. » How do you know these things? « She waved off the question as soon as she asked it. » No, you’re not going to distract me this time. You’re on; I bet you dinner. Now prove it or start cooking. «
    » The proof will have to come when I climb Yggdrasil’s root, but, « I said, raising a finger to forestall her objection, » I’ll dazzle you now with what I think so that I’ll seem fantastically prescient later. The way I figure it, Ratatosk has to be an utter badass. Consider: Eagles normally eat squirrels, and malevolent wyrms named Nidhogg are generally expected to eat anything—yet neither of them ever tries to take a bite of Ratatosk. They just talk to him, never give him any guff at all, but ask him nicely if he’d be so kind as to tell their enemy far, far away such-and-such. And they say, › Hey, Ratatosk, you don’t have to hurry. Take your time. Please .‹ «
    » Okay, so you’re saying he’s a burly squirrel. «
    » No, I’m saying he’s turbo-burly. Paul Bunyan proportions, because his size is proportionate to the World Tree. He’s bigger than you and I put together, big enough that Nidhogg thinks of him as an equal instead of as a snack. The only reason we’ve never heard of anyone climbing Yggdrasil’s roots to get to Asgard is because you’d have to be nuts to try it. «
    » Right, « she said with a smirk. » And Ratatosk eats nuts. «
    » That’s right. « I bobbed my head once with a sardonic grin of my own.
    » Well then, « Granuaile wondered aloud, » exactly where are the roots of Yggdrasil, anyway? I assume they’re somewhere in Scandinavia, but you’d think they would have shown up on satellite by now. «
    »