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Obviously the legend must be made up. An anaconda? What bologna. An anaconda is a boa constrictor that is found in the Amazon, where it lives off of huge water voles and such, not here deep beneath Oslo, where there aren’t any water voles at all. Apart from the one, that is. Attila contemplated this briefly.
    And while the water vole was thinking, something moved toward Attila. It was huge, like an inflatable swim ring, surrounded by jagged teeth the size of ice-cream cones, and it was hissing and had such bad breath that the rest of the sewer smelled like a flower bed in comparison.
    It was so frightening that Attila quite simply squeezed its eyes shut.
    When the vole opened them again, something was dripping and dripping all around. And it was excessively dark. Just as if Attila weren’t sitting ina sewer pipe but inside something that was even darker. And it was as if the walls were moving, pulling in closer and slithering. As if the water vole were already inside the stomach of … of …
    Attila screamed at least as loud as that fat little boy he had bitten so long ago.

Nilly Does Simple Math
    WHEN LISA WALKED out the door the next morning, Nilly was standing across the street with his backpack on, kicking rocks.
    â€œWhat are you waiting for?” Lisa asked.
    Nilly shrugged and said, “To see if anyone walks by who’s going the same way as me.”
    â€œNo one’s going to come by,” Lisa said. “This is a dead-end street and we live at the end of it.”
    â€œWell then,” Nilly said, and they started walking down Cannon Avenue together.
    â€œProctor invited us to come over after school for the Last Big Powder Test,” Nilly said. “Are you coming?”
    â€œOf course,” Lisa said. “Are you excited?”
    â€œAs excited as a little kid,” said Nilly.
    When they’d made it almost all the way down to the main road, Lisa stopped and pointed at the house at the bottom of Cannon Avenue.
    â€œThat’s where Truls and Trym live,” she said. “If I see them come out, I usually wait here until they’re gone. If I don’t see them, I run quickly past. Come on …”
    Lisa took Nilly’s hand and was about to run, but Nilly held her back.
    â€œI don’t want to run,” he said. “And I don’t want to wait, either.”
    â€œBut …,” Lisa began.
    â€œRemember, there’s two of us,” Nilly said. “There’s just as many of us as Truls and Trym. At least. It’s simple math.”
    So they walked past Truls and Trym’s house. Nilly was walking really, really slowly, Lisa thought. She could still tell that he was a little scared, though, because he was constantly looking over at the house. But luckily neither Truls nor Trym came out, and Lisa looked at her watch and realized they must have gone to school already.
    â€œDo you know what time it is?” she exclaimed in alarm, because she was a good girl and wasn’t used to being late.
    â€œI don’t have a watch,” Nilly said.
    â€œMrs. Strobe is going to be super pissed. Hurry!”
    â€œAye, aye, boss,” Nilly said.
    And they ran so fast that they got there in the time it took you to read from the beginning of this chapter to here.
    UNFORTUNATELY, TIME DIDN’T pass as quickly the rest of the day. Nilly was so impatient to get home for the Last Big Powder Test that he sat there in the classroom counting the seconds as he watched Mrs. Strobe’s mouth moving. He wasn’t paying attention, so when he suddenly realized that Mrs. Strobe was pointing at him and that everyone else in class was looking at him, Nilly figured that Mrs. Strobe had probably asked him a question.
    â€œTwo thousand six hundred and eighty-one,” Nilly said.
    Mrs. Strobe wrinkled her brow and asked, “Is that supposed to be the answer to my question?”
    â€œNot necessarily,” Nilly said. “But