Chapter 1My Uncle Makes a Great Discovery

Looking back at everything that's happened to me since that crazy day, I can barely believe it's real. My adventures were seriously wild, and I'm still kinda blown away thinking about them.

My uncle was German; he’s my mom’s sister’s husband, an Englishwoman. He was super attached to me, being an only nephew, so he invited me to study with him in Germany.

His place was in a big town, and he was a professor - like, philosophy, chemistry, geology, mineralogy, and a ton of other "-ologies."

One day, I’d been hanging out in the lab - my uncle was out - and I suddenly felt famished. I was about to wake up our old French cook when my uncle, Professor Von Hardwigg, burst in through the front door and ran upstairs.

Professor Hardwigg, my uncle, isn't a bad guy, really. But he’s got a temper and he's totally original. Dealing with him means doing exactly what he says. Barely had his heavy footsteps echoed through the house than he yelled for me. "Harry - Harry - Harry - "

I rushed to obey, but before I could get to his room, practically leaping down the stairs, he was stomping his foot on the landing.

"Harry!" he shouted, all frantic. "Are you coming up?"

To be honest, at that moment, I was way more focused on what we were having for dinner than any science problem. Soup sounded better than soda, an omelette was more tempting than math, and an artichoke was worth more than any amount of asbestos.

But my uncle wasn’t the type to be kept waiting, so I put aside all the smaller stuff and showed up.

He was seriously smart. Most people who know a lot share their knowledge, like vendors selling goods, to help others and benefit society. Not my awesome uncle, Professor Hardwigg. He studied, burned the midnight oil, and dug into massive books just to keep all that knowledge to himself.

There was a good reason why my uncle didn't show off his smarts much: he stammered. When he was trying to explain stuff about space, he's get stuck and talk about the sun, moon, and stars in a way nobody could understand.

Honestly, when the right word didn't come to him, he’s just use a really strong adjective.

Science has tons of names that are super hard to say - they sound like Welsh town names. And my uncle loved using them, so his stammering got even worse. Sometimes he’s just give up and wash down his frustration with a glass of water.

Like I said, my uncle, Professor Hardwigg, was a total genius, and a really great relative. I was close to him, both because I loved him and because I had a stake in his life. I was super invested in everything he did, and I hoped to be almost as smart one day. I rarely missed his lectures.

Like him, I was into mineralogy more than anything else. My goal was to really understand the earth. Geology and mineralogy were our whole thing, and we smashed tons of rocks, chalk, and metal with our hammers.

We usually had lab stuff - steel rods, magnets, glass tubes, and bottles of acid - around more than food. My Uncle Hardwigg was known to sort six hundred different rocks by how heavy they were, how hard, how easily they melted, the sounds they made, their taste, and even their smell.

He was always writing to the big shots in science. So, I was basically always getting letters from Sir Humphry Davy, Captain Franklin, and other seriously impressive guys.

But before I get into what my uncle wanted to talk to me about, let me tell you a bit about what he looked like. You’re gonna see a totally different picture of him later, after everything crazy that happens.

My uncle was fifty; tall, skinny, and wiry. Big glasses hid his huge, round eyes, and his nose? People joked it looked like a file. Seriously, a compass would go haywire just being near him.

The real deal? Tobacco was the only thing that was really drawn to his nose.

He also had this habit of taking steps like a yard at a time, clenching his fists like he was about to punch you, and when he was in one of his moods, he wasnn't the easiest person to be around.

Oh, and he lived in a really nice house, on a really nice street - the Konigstrasse in Hamburg. Even though it was in the middle of town, it felt super rural - half wood, half brick, with old-fashioned gables. It was one of the few buildings that survived the big fire back in eighteen forty-two.

I mean a really nice house - old, kinda shaky, and not exactly cozy by today’s standards. A house leaning a bit and practically daring to fall into the canal. Seriously, the perfect spot for an artist to paint.

You could barely even see it for all the ivy and this huge, awesome tree over the doorway.

My uncle was loaded; his house was totally his, plus he had a serious private income. But honestly, the best thing he owned was my cousin, Gretchen. And there was the old cook, me, the young lady, and the Professor - we were the only ones living there.

I was obsessed with rocks and minerals - seriously, nothing beat a good pebble. If my uncle hadn’t been so stressed out, we’d have been the happiest family ever.

Seriously, to show how impatient Hardwigg was, I swear he’s get up at four AM every morning to yank leaves off the plants in the drawing room to make them grow faster!

Okay, so I’m done describing my uncle. Now, let’s talk about what happened when I met him.

He was waiting for me in his study - it was like a museum, packed with every natural thing you could imagine. Mostly rocks, though. I knew every single one, 'cause I'm the one who cataloged them. My uncle, though, seemed totally lost in a book.

He was a huge fan of old editions, giant copies, and one-of-a-kind stuff.

"Amazing!" he shouted, tapping his forehead. "Amazing - amazing!"

It was one of those yellowed-page books you hardly ever see anymore. To me, it didn’t seem that special. But my uncle was totally hyped about it.

He loved the cover, how clear the letters were, and how easy it was to hold open. He repeated out loud, like, a bunch of times, that it was really, really old.

To me, he was totally stressing over nothing, but it wasn't really my place to say so. Instead, I acted super interested and asked what it was all about.

"It's the Heims-Kringla by Snorre Tarleson," he said, "the famous Icelandic writer from the twelfth century - it's a legit and accurate story about the Norwegian princes who ruled Iceland." I asked what language it was in.

I was hoping it was translated into German, at least. My uncle got super offended by the thought and said he wouldn’t spend a single penny on a translation.

He was stoked to have found the original in Icelandic, which he called one of the most amazing and straightforward languages ever - even though its grammar was the most complex anyone had seen.

"Like, as hard as German?" I asked, trying to be subtle. My uncle just shrugged.

"At least the letters are kinda hard to read," I said.

"It’s a Runic manuscript, the language of Iceland's original people, invented by Odin himself!"

my uncle exclaimed, annoyed that I didn’t know. I was about to make a silly joke when a tiny piece of parchment fell out of the pages. Like someone starving grabbing a piece of bread, the Professor snatched it. It was about five inches by three and covered in the most bizarre writing.

The lines shown here are an exact copy of what was written on the ancient parchment - and they're seriously important because they got my uncle to go on the wildest series of adventures ever. My uncle stared at the document for a bit and then said it was Runic.

The letters looked like the ones in the book, but what did they actually mean? That’s exactly what I wanted to know.

I was pretty sure the Runic alphabet and dialect were just made up to confuse people, so I was stoked to find out my uncle knew just as much about it as I did - which was basically nothing. Seriously. The way his fingers were shaking made me think that, though.

"Still," he mumbled to himself, "it's old Icelandic, I'm sure of it."

And he totally should have known, because he was like a walking, talking dictionary. He didn’t brag like some know-it-all, claiming to speak two thousand languages and four thousand idioms from all over the world, but he did know the important ones.

I'm honestly wondering how far my uncle's intensity might have taken him, if the clock hadn't struck two, and our old French cook hadn't called out that dinner was ready.

"Ugh, dinner!" my uncle groaned.

But I was starving, so I headed to the dining room and grabbed my usual spot. I waited three minutes out of politeness, but no sign of my uncle, the Professor. I was totally surprised. He's usually all about a good meal.

It was peak German luxury - parsley soup, a ham omelette with sorrel, veal stewed with prunes and oysters, amazing fruit, and bubbly Moselle. He skipped our feast to obsess over that dusty old parchment. To clear my conscience, I ate for both of us.

The old cook and housekeeper was freaking out. After all that effort, it was a total letdown that my uncle wasn't at dinner. Watching me demolish the food, she started to get worried. What if my uncle showed up later?

Suddenly, just as I finished the last apple and the last glass of wine, I heard a crazy voice in the distance. It was my uncle, totally yelling for me to come over. I practically jumped - his voice was so loud and intense.