Odd and the Frost Giants

On the floor he found a lump of wood, slightly bigger than his fist. He was going to throw it on the fire, but his fingers felt carving on the small wooden block, and so he put it to one side, to look at when it was light. He gathered snow in a small pan, and melted it over the fire, and he ate smoked fish and hot berry-water.

It was good. There were blankets in the corner still, and a straw-stuffed mattress, and he could imagine that the little room smelled of his father, and nobody hit him or called him a cripple or an idiot, and so, after building the fire high enough that it would still be burning in the morning, he went to sleep quite happy.

CHAPTER 2

THE FOX, THE EAGLE AND THE BEAR

ODD WAS WOKEN BY something scratching against the hut. He pulled himself up to his feet, thought briefly about tales of trolls and monsters, hoped that it wasn’t a bear, then opened the door. It was daylight outside, which meant it was late in the morning, and a fox was staring up at him, insolently, from the snow.

Its muzzle was narrow, its ears were pricked and sharp and its expression was calculating and sly. When it saw that Odd was watching, it jumped into the air, as if it were trying to show off, and retreated a little way and then stopped. It was red-orange, like flame, and it took a dancing step or two towards Odd, and turned away, then looked back at Odd as if it were inviting him to follow.

It was, Odd concluded, an animal with a plan. He had no plans, other than a general determination never to return to the village. And it was not every day that you got to follow a fox.

So he did.

It moved like a flame, always ahead of him. If Odd slowed down, if the terrain was too difficult, if the boy got tired, then the fox would simply wait patiently at the top of the nearest rise until Odd was ready, and then its tail would go up, and it would flicker forward into the snow.

Odd pressed on.

There was a bird circling high overhead. A hawk, Odd thought, and then it landed in a dead tree, and he realized how big it was and knew it was an eagle. Its head was cocked oddly to one side, and Odd was convinced it was watching him.

He followed the fox up a hill and down another (down was harder than up for Odd, in the snow, with one bad foot and a crutch, and several times he fell) and then halfway up another, to a place where a dead pine tree stuck out from the hill like a rotten tooth. A silver birch tree grew close beside the dead pine. And it was here that the fox stopped.

A mournful bellow greeted them.

The dead tree had a hole in one side, the kind that bees sometimes inhabit and fill with honeycomb. The people in Odd’s village would make the honey into the alcoholic mead they drank to celebrate the safe return of their Vikings, and the midwinter, and any other excuse they needed to celebrate.

An enormous brown bear had its front paw caught in the hollow of the pine tree.

Odd smiled grimly. It was obvious what had happened.

In order to get at the pine tree hollow, the bear had leaned its weight against the birch tree, bending it down and moving it out of the way. But the moment the bear had pushed its paw into the hole, it had taken its weight off the birch, which had snapped back, and now the bear was profoundly trapped.

The animal bellowed once more, a deeply grumpy bellow. It looked miserable, but not as if it were about to attack.

Warily Odd walked towards the tree.

Above them, the eagle circled.

Odd unhooked his axe from his belt and walked around the pine tree. He cut a piece of wood about six inches long and used it to prop the two trees apart; he did not want to crush the bear’s paw. Then, with clean, economical blows, he swung the blade of his axe against the birch. The wood was hard, but he kept swinging, and he had soon come close to cutting it through.

Odd looked at the bear. The bear looked at Odd with big brown eyes. Odd spoke aloud. “I can’t run,” he said to the bear. “So if you want to eat me, you’ll find me easy prey. But I should have worried about that before, shouldn’t I? Too late now.”

He took a deep breath and swung the axe one last time. The birch tree tipped and fell away from the bear, who blinked and pulled its paw from the hollow in the pine tree. The paw was dripping with honey.

The bear licked its paw with a startlingly pink tongue. Odd, who was hungry, picked a lump of honeycomb from the edge of the hole, and ate it, wax and all. The honey oozed down his throat and made him cough.

The bear made a snuffling noise. It reached into the tree, pulled out a huge lump of comb and finished it off in a couple of bites. Then it stood up on its hind legs and it roared.

Odd wondered if he was going to die now, if the honey had just been an appetizer, but the bear got down on all fours once more and continued, single-mindedly, to empty the tree of honey.

It was getting dark.

Odd knew it was time for him to head for home. He started down the hill, and was almost at the bottom when he realized that he had absolutely no idea where his hut was. He had followed the fox to get here, but the fox was not going to lead him back. He tried to hurry, and he stumbled on a patch of ice, and his crutch went flying. He landed face-first in the hard snow.

He crawled towards his crutch, and as he did so, he felt hot breath on the back of his neck.

“Hello, bear,” said Odd, cheerfully. “You had better eat me. I’ll be more use as bear food than I will be frozen to death on the ice.”

The bear did not seem to want to eat Odd. It sat down on the ice in front of him, and gestured with its paw.

“You mean it?” said Odd. “You aren’t going to eat me?”

The bear made a rumbling sort of noise in the back of its throat. But it was a gloomy noise, and not a hungry noise, and Odd decided to chance his luck. The day could not get stranger, after all.

He clambered onto the bear’s back, holding his crutch with his left hand and clutching the bear’s fur with his right. The bear stood up slowly, making sure the boy was on, then set off at a fast lope through the twilight.

As the bear sped up, the cold went through Odd’s clothes and chilled him to the bone.

The fox dashed ahead of them, the eagle flew above them and Odd thought crazily, happily, I’m just like one of the brave lords in my mother’s ballads. Only without the horse, the dog and the falcon.

And he thought, I can never tell anyone about this, because they won’t believe it. Because even I wouldn’t believe it.

Snow fell from branches as they brushed past and stung his face, but he laughed as they went. The moon rose, pale and huge, and cold, cold, but Odd laughed some more, because his hut was waiting for him, and he was an impossible lord riding a bear, and because he was Odd.

The bear stopped in front of Odd’s hut, and Odd half climbed, half fell from the beast’s back. He pulled himself up with his crutch, and then he said, “Thank you.” He thought the bear nodded its head in the moonlight, but perhaps he imagined it.

There was a crash of wings, and the eagle landed on the snow a few feet from Odd. It tipped its head on one side to stare at Odd with an eye the color of honey. There was nothing but darkness where its other eye should have been.

He walked up to his door. The fox was already waiting there, sitting like a dog. The bear padded up to the hut behind him.

Odd looked from one animal to the other. “What?” he said testily, although it was obvious what they wanted.