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.
And then, “I suppose you had better come in,” he said. He opened the door.
And they came in.
CHAPTER 3
THE NIGHT CONVERSATION
ODD HAD IMAGINED THAT the side of salmon would feed him for a week or more. But bears and foxes and eagles all, he discovered, eat salmon, and he felt that feeding them was the least he could do to thank them for seeing him home. They ate until it was all gone, but only Odd and the eagle seemed satisfied. The fox and the bear both looked like they were still hungry.
“We’ll find more food tomorrow,” said Odd. “Sleep now.”
The animals stared at him. He walked over to the straw mattress and climbed onto it, placing the crutch carefully against the wall, to pull himself up with when he woke. The bed didn’t smell like his father at all, he realized, as he lay down. It just smelled like straw. Odd closed his eyes, and he was asleep.
Dreams of darkness, of flashes, of moments—nothing he could hold on to, nothing that comforted him. And then into the dream came a booming gloomy voice that said, “It wasn’t my fault.”
A higher voice, bitterly amused, said, “Oh, right. I told you not to go pushing that tree down. You just didn’t listen.”
“I was hungry. I could smell the honey. You don’t know what it was like, smelling that honey. It was better than mead. Better than roasted goose.” And then, the gloomy voice, so bass it made Odd’s stomach vibrate, changed its tone. “And you, of all people, don’t need to go blaming anyone else. It’s because of you we’re in this mess.”
“I thought we had a deal. I thought we weren’t going to keep harping on about a trivial little mistake…”
“You call this trivial?”
And then a third voice, high and raw, screeched, “Silence.”
There was silence. Odd rolled over. There was a glow from the fire embers, enough to see the inside of the hut, enough to confirm to Odd that there were not another three people in there with him. It was just him and the fox and the bear and the eagle…
“It’s because of you we’re in this mess.”
Whatever they are, thought Odd, they don’t seem to eat people.
He sat up, leaned against the wall. The bear and the eagle both ignored him. The fox darted him a green-eyed glance.
“You were talking,” said Odd.
The animals looked at Odd and at one another. If they did not actually say “Who? Us?” it was there in their expressions, in the way they held themselves.
“Somebody was talking,” said Odd, “and it wasn’t me. There isn’t anyone else in here. That means it was you lot. And there’s no point in arguing.”
“We weren’t arguing,” said the bear. “Because we can’t talk.” Then it said, “Oops.”
The fox and the eagle glared at the bear, who put a paw over its eyes and looked ashamed of itself.
Odd sighed. “Which one of you wants to explain what’s going on?” he said.
“Nothing’s going on,” said the fox brightly. “Just a few talking animals. Nothing to worry about. Happens every day. We’ll be out of your hair first thing in the morning.”
The eagle fixed Odd with its one good eye. Then it turned to the fox. “Tell!”
The fox shifted uncomfortably. “Why me?”
“Oh,” said the bear, “I don’t know. Possibly because it’s all your fault?”
“That’s a bit much,” replied the fox. “Blaming the whole thing on a chap like that. It wasn’t like I set out to do this. It could have happened to any of us.”
“What could?” asked Odd, exasperated. “And why can you talk?”
The bear pushed itself up onto all fours. It made a rumbling noise, then it said, “We can talk because, O mortal child—do not be afraid—beneath these animal disguises we wear…well, not actual disguises, I mean we are actually a bear and a fox and a big bird, which is a rotten sort of thing to happen, but where was I…?”
“Gods!” screeched the eagle.
“Gods?” said Odd.
“Aye. Gods,” said the bear. “I was just getting to that. I am great Thor, Lord of the Thunders. The eagle is Lord Odin, All-father, greatest of the Gods. And this runt-eared meddling fox is—”
“Loki,” said the fox smoothly. “Blood-brother to the Gods. Smartest, sharpest, most brilliant of all the inhabitants of Asgard, or so they say—”
“Brilliant?” snorted the bear.
“You would have fallen for it. Anyone would,” said the fox.
“Fallen for what?” said Odd.
A flash of green eyes, a sigh and the fox began. “I’ll tell you. And you’ll see. It could have happened to anyone. So, Asgard. Home of the mighty. In the middle of a plain, surrounded by an impregnable wall built for us by a Frost Giant. And it was due to me, I should add, that that wall did not cost us the Giant’s fee, which was unreasonably high.”
“Freya,” said the bear. “The Giant wanted Freya. Most lovely of the Goddesses—with, obviously, the exception of Sif, my own little love. And it wanted the Sun and the Moon.”
“If you interrupt me one more time,” said the fox, “one more time, I will not only stop talking, but I shall go off on my own and leave the two of you to fend for yourselves.”
The bear said, “Yes, but—”
“Not one word.”
The bear was silent.
The fox said, “In the great hall of Odin sat all the Gods, drinking mead, eating and telling stories. They drank and bragged and fought and boasted and drank, all through the night and well into the small hours. The women had gone to bed hours since, and now the fires in the hall burned low and most of the Gods slept where they sat, heads resting on the wooden tables. Even great Odin slept in his high chair, his single eye closed in sleep. And yet there was one among the Gods who had drunk and eaten more than any of the others and still was not sleepy. This was I, Loki, called Sky Walker, and I was neither sleepy nor yet drunk, not even a little…”
The bear made a noise, a small grumpy harrumph of disbelief. The fox looked at him sharply.
“I said one word…”
“That wasn’t a word,” said the bear. “I just made a noise. So. You weren’t drunk.”
“Right. I wasn’t. And not-drunkenly I wandered out from the hall, and I walked, with my shoes that step on air, up to the top of the wall around Asgard, and I looked out over the wall. In the moonlight, standing beneath the wall, staring up at me, I saw the most beautiful woman anyone has ever seen. Her flesh was creamy, her hair was golden, her lips, her shoulders…perfection. And in a voice like the striking of a harp string, she called out to me. ‘Hail, brave warrior,’ she said.
“‘Hail yourself,’ says I. ‘Hail, most beautiful of creatures,’ at which she laughed prettily and her eyes sparkled and I knew she liked me. ‘And what would a young lady of such loveliness be doing, a-wandering alone, and at night, with wolves and trolls and worse on the loose? Let me offer you hospitality—the hospitality of Loki, mightiest and wisest of all the lords of Asgard. I declare that I shall take you into my own house and care for you in every way that I can!’
“‘I cannot accept your offer, O brave and extremely good-looking one,’ she said to me, eyes shining like twin sapphires in the moonlight. ‘For although you are obviously tall and powerful and extremely attractive, I have promised my father—a king who lives far from here—that I will not give my heart or my lips to any but he who possesses one thing.’
“‘And that one thing is?’ says I, determined to bring her anything she named.
“‘Mjollnir,’ says the maiden. ‘The Hammer of Thor.’
“Hah! Pausing only to tell her not to go anywhere, my feet flew, and like the wind I rushed to the great hall. They were all asleep, or so drunk it made no never mind. There was Thor, sleeping in a drunken stupor, his face on the gravy-covered wooden trencher, and hanging from his side, his hammer. Only the nimble fingers of Loki, wiliest and cleverest, could have teased it from the belt without waking Thor—”
At this, the bear made a deep noise in the back of its throat. After glaring at it for a moment, the fox said, “Heavy it was, that hammer. Heavier than people dream. It weighed as much as a small mountain. Too heavy to carry, if you are not Thor. And yet, not too much for my genius. I took off my shoes, which, as I said, can walk on the air, and I tied them, one to the handle and one to the head. Then I snapped my fingers and the hammer followed me.
“This time I hurried to the gates of Asgard. I unbarred them and I walked through—followed, I do not need to tell you, by the hammer.
“The maiden was there. She was sitting on a boulder and she was weeping.
“‘Why the tears, O loveliness itself?’ I asked.
“At that, she looked up at me with a tear-stained face. ‘I weep because once I saw you, great and noble lord, I knew I could never love another. And yet I am doomed to give my heart and my caress only to he who lets me touch the Hammer of Thor.’
“I reached out a hand and touched her cold, wet cheek. ‘Dry your tears,’ I told her. ‘And behold…the Hammer of Thor!’
“She stopped crying then, and reached out her delicate hands and held the hammer tightly. I had reckoned I could have my fun with the lady and still get the hammer back into the hall before Thor woke up. But we would need to get a move on.
“‘Now,’ I said. ‘About that kiss.’
“For a moment I thought she had begun to cry once again, and then I knew that she was laughing. But the noise she made was not a sweet, tinkling, maidenly laugh. It was a deep, crashing noise, like an ice sheet grinding against a mountainside.
“The maiden pulled my shoes from the hammer and dropped them to the ground. She held the hammer as if it was a feather. A wave of cold engulfed me, and I found myself looking up at her, and to make matters worse she wasn’t even a she any longer.
“She was a man. Well, not a man. Male, yes. Yet big as a high hill, icicles hanging from his beard. And she—he, rather—said, ‘After so long, all it took was one drunken, lust-ridden oaf, and Asgard is ours.’ Then the Frost Giant peered down at me, and he gestured with the Hammer of Thor. ‘And you,’ he said in a deep and extremely satisfied voice, ‘you need to be something else.’
“I felt my back pushing up. I felt a tail pushing its way out from the base of my spine. My fingers shrank into paws and claws. It wasn’t the first time I had turned into animal form—I was a horse once, you know—but it was the first time it was imposed on me from the outside, and it wasn’t a nice feeling. Not a nice feeling at all.”
“It was worse for us,” said the bear. “One moment you are fast asleep, dreaming about thunderstorms, and the next you’re being scrunched into a bear. They turned the All-father into an eagle.”
The eagle screeched, startling Odd. “Rage!” it said.
“The giant laughed at us, waving my hammer around the while, and then he forced Heimdall to summon the Rainbow Bridge and exiled the three of us here to Midgard. There’s no more to tell.”
There was silence then in the tiny hut. Only the crackle and spit of a pine branch on the fire.
“Well,” said Odd, “Gods or not, I can’t keep feeding you, if this winter keeps going. I don’t think I can keep feeding me.”
“We won’t die,” said the bear, “because we can’t die here. But we’ll get hungry. And we’ll get more wild. More animal. It’s something that happens when you have taken on animal form. Stay in it too long and you become what you pretend to be. When Loki was a horse—”