Vidar stood on the pedals, pushing them with all his might. Strong winds may craft strong warriors but were a freezing hell to cycle through, even when wearing the sturdiest shoes in history. 

For the occasion, and mainly for his own safety, he had polished the leather and replaced the laces. Though a millennium old, the shoes were as good as new, more comfortable than any sneaker crafted in the last fifty years, and would knock out Lange Wapper with one well-placed kick, if he had to.

He had other options too.

A porcelain figure of the Virgin Mary clunked against the bottle of wine at the bottom of his backpack. One look at the figurine and the shape-shifting giant would crumble to his knees and surrender to his arrest, or so the book he had read during dinner said. He would soon find out what was real and what was fiction.

The bike path ignored the bend in the river, following the industrial railroad instead. He passed a complex of factories and warehouses, between them an abundance of pipes, steel constructions and fields on which only the toughest weeds grew.

While in the city, shops closed and humans plopped down on their couch or entered the bars, the wheels of the petroleum industry kept turning. All for more, faster, cheaper, better, but mostly to keep the rat race alive.

Scooters flitted around him, and cars raced by, splashing up water from the cracks in the road.

Vidar grumbled. For once, couldn't he get out of his house without getting drenched?

A quiet side-road led him back to the river, then the bike path suddenly stopped. He continued along the cobblestones, bouncing, the frame clattering, the Virgin Mary rattling in his backpack.

He was almost there. Copses of oak and birch trees dotted the landscape. On the other bank chimed the church bells of Burcht. Within a hundred acres, history, modernity, and nature crossed. 

The cobblestones flattened as the road narrowed into a freshly paved sidewalk that ran between the river and the polder forest.

To find a bike station, he cycled around the park and into a maze of middle-class mansions and three-storey apartment buildings. Then, at the heart of the suburban area, in front of an aluminium school building, once a temporary solution but now an intrinsic part of the community, he clicked the bike into a free slot and ended his Velo session. 

Twenty-nine minutes and forty seconds. Zero euros spent.

Powered by the magic of the Nine Realms, he strutted down the street. From now on, he would wear his shoes more often. They deserved more than to gather dust in an old box in the attic.

While the other parks in the city were usually well-maintained, the polder of Hoboken was a wilderness of high grass and nettles once one left the gravel path. Undoubtedly, Lange Wapper's presence had something to do with it. He was a trickster, able to manipulate nature and undo weeks of intensive forest mowing and woodcutting with a snap of his fingers.

More a nuisance than a real criminal, but he was the only creature Vidar could think of that had any motive. According to the stories, Lange Wapper had a difficult relationship with Antwerp. The humans had learnt the giant hated the image of the Virgin Mary, so they attached small shrines to the facades and on street corners, so he would run away and leave him alone. One tale mentioned Lange Wapper fell into the river and supposedly drowned.

That he turned into a fish was more likely, but probably too fantastical for the humans to understand.

Vidar opened his backpack. As he feared, the porcelain figure had crumbled to a dozen pieces. Not his brightest move, and as painful as his failing memory. Luckily, he still had the bottle of wine to lure Lange Wapper.

The shapeshifter supposedly hated the smell of alcohol. If Kludde and Lange Wapper were ever in the same room, it would take less than a second before one flew to the other's throat. According to one of the stories, and this was an event that Vidar vaguely remembered, Lange Wapper had once grabbed a ship's mast and thrown it as far as he could, sinking the cargo of ten thousand bottles of brandy to the bottom of the sea.

Caution was key.

Vidar popped the cork and took a good gulp, then spilt some wine over his clothes and allowed the wind to carry his scent.

For a while, he waited, expecting a cackle or a devilish grin to appear through the trees. A shadow in the night, first no bigger than an alverman, then its legs rising until his beardless chin blocked the moonlight.

When nothing came, he drank some more and paced around. He ended up in a sandy meadow that stretched out into a lake or overgrown pond. 

Noises came from the wooden hut that had been built at the end of a short jetty. Someone or something was sobbing.

"Dead, again. A day it lives and then it dies—I liked it so much." The voice was bawling. There came a series of clunking noises. "I wanna see the colours, hear the music. Don't be dead."

Lange Wapper or a human who had forgotten to go home?

Vidar inched closer. A gust of wind blew straight through him.

"Who's there?"

Vidar kept quiet.

"Don't make me come out. I can smell you, you booze... boozehound."

"I'm no threat," Vidar said. He laid the bottle of wine down in the grass and approached, his hands held up. Thin, spindly legs stuck out of the hut.

The creature whimpered. "You smell like a dog."

"Unfortunate side-effect from a few nights ago."

"And now?"

"I'm not a human," Vidar assured him.

"You could pass for one."

"So do you, if you want to—I heard."

"It's all about survival," Lange Wapper hissed. "What do you want from me, wolf who walks among men?"

"I want to talk."

"About?"

"Just talk," Vidar said. 

He walked up the jetty, his footsteps heavy and booming. 

Despite the long legs, Lange Wapper was underwhelmingly small for a giant, practically the size of a human. Sunken, damp cheeks flanked his prominent nose. He had a head full of ratty hair and gnawed clothes. In his hand, a cracked black box reflected the moonlight.

"What do you have there?" Vidar asked.

"Rainbow music maker," Lange Wapper said, almost child-like. "Finders, keepers."

Upon closer inspection, Vidar realised what the box was: a phone.

The giant sobbed. "I had a row of yellow candies, but then everything went black. I killed it."

"I killed mine too," Vidar said softly.

"They die so quickly. I had an old one, with a snake that went beep-beep, had it for a month. Come on, don't be dead." He smacked the phone against the bench, bits of plastic flying everywhere, including the water. "Play the funny sound. That la-la-la..."

More smacking. The screen cracked.

Vidar flinched. That phone was beyond saving now.

"Perhaps you and I can play?" Vidar suggested.

"I have no games. The cards don't like water." 

Lange Wapper dropped the phone to the ground. He reached into his shoe and fished out a crumpled ball of paper. Ink dripped down on the jetty. 

Vidar frowned. This was no trickster; he was a mischievous child at best. A clueless one, too. Not someone up for eloquent schemes. If Lange Wapper had something to do with the case, he was being used by someone else.

"We can play questions and answer—won't need cards or a plastic brick for that."

"What's that?"

"I ask a question, and you tell me all you know."

Lange Wapper shuffled his legs closer to his body. Unless Vidar's eyes betrayed him, the shapeshifter was shrinking. "What if I say something wrong?"

"You can't."

He stopped shrinking and leapt up. "Okay."

"Have you heard what happened in the city?"

"City-things," he said with full confidence.

Vidar snapped his finger and pointed it at the creature. "Yes!" he yelled with the fake enthusiasm that worked on human toddlers.

Lange Wapper clapped his hands.

"Good, and more precisely, did you hear what happened to Antigone?"

The shapeshifter shrunk towards the ground.

"No is a correct answer too," Vidar said. 

Lange Wapper shot up. "Then, no."

"The statue of Antigone disappeared."

He opened his mouth in a stretched 'o' shape. "The city is big and evil, full of mean eyes everywhere. Nobody to play with."

"Have you been to Antwerp lately?"

"No, sir Wolf. I swim in the Schelde, keep the fishes safe from the ships, but never get out of the water on Antwerp soil."

"And beyond the city?"

"I come here. The trash is full of snacks."

Vidar hummed. "Do you also protect the mermaids?"

"Oh, bad news, sir Wolf." Lange Wapper curled his bottom lip. "The mermaids no longer sing their songs, haven't for a long time. The Schelde is too dirty, too smelly."

"And have you seen one that doesn't sing?"

The creature leant forward, a constipated look on his face. His voice rose as his body moved closer to his feet. "I don't understand the question. I have lost the game."

"No, you're doing great." Vidar picked up the phone and showed it to the shapeshifter. "Have you seen one like your rainbow music maker?"

"Dead?"

He nodded.

"That would make me very sad."

So a no. 

"When is it my turn to ask questions?" Lange Wapper asked.

"Soon," Vidar said. "Do you ever visit others like you?"

"Giants?" The creature's legs sprouted up.

"Non-humans."

"I always stay here or in the Schelde. I met Reynaert when the moon was waxing. He said he would come to play around the full moon, but it's waning now, and he still hasn't come."

"You understand Reynaert?"

"I talk to fishes too, but they don't say much in return. The fox lies, but I like his tales. And now he hasn't shown, and Antigone disappeared. Should I worry, sir Wolf?"

"Perhaps." 

The two had to be connected. If he found Reynaert, he might find Antigone too. Vidar looked down at his shoes, a silly overreaction now that he had encountered Lange Wapper. The naïve, frolicsome creature was no perpetrator, not even an accomplice.

The jetty shook beneath Vidar's feet as Lange Wapper leapt up and down. "Is it my turn now?"

"Sure."

The giant placed his finger on his beardless chin and poked his skin, his lips puffed, then he started sucking like a fish. He grimaced, taking a breath, then swallowed what he had been thinking of.

"Finding a good question is hard," he told Vidar.

"It is."

He poked his cheeks, appearing more focused on the croaking sounds that they made than on Vidar. Patience was wearing as thin as his coat.

Vidar shivered.

"Do you want to go home?" Lange Wapper asked.

"Yeah."

"Oh, in that case, I do have one question for you, Sir Wolf." He lowered to Vidar's height. "Will you come back?"

Vidar chuckled, surprised by the request. He scratched the itch at the back of his neck. "Sure, yeah... I don't see why not."

"That makes me happy."

The grin on Lange Wapper's face wasn't mischievous, but pure delight.

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