Summerland

To make the jump to the Summerlands, Thor pictures his home team’s field on a sunny spring day when the sky is clear and the breeze clean. Despite this, Thor’s inexperience gets them stuck in the nothingness between worlds, and they start to lose altitude over “[t]he mightiest Nothing there is” (155). With help from Jennifer T., Thor gets back on track, and they break through into the green of the Summerlands. Cinquefoil recognizes the area and plots a course toward where the four worlds meet at the well. Before they can get far, however, a giant hand plucks them out of the sky.

The hand belongs to a giant, who Cinquefoil recognizes as one of the 18 brothers of the Summerlands. Cinquefoil tries to convince the giant to let them go, but the giant doesn’t care about their mission and decides to eat them instead. From reading about mythology, Ethan remembers that giants are gamblers, and he offers a wager: If Ethan can catch three of the giant’s fastballs, the giant will let them go. Ethan doesn’t know how he’ll do that, since he just started catching, and Cinquefoil suggests “why don’t ya look in yer book?” (169).