Oh come on, he told his feet, his good one and the one that was broken and twisted, the one that hurt all the time. You’ve got magical flying shoes on. Just walk out into the air, and you’ll be fine.
But his feet and his legs ignored him, and he stood where he was. He turned to the eagle, who was wheeling above Odd’s head impatiently. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I’ve tried and I can’t.”
The eagle gave a screech, flapped its wings hard, and rose into the snowy air.
Another screech. Odd looked around. The eagle was heading straight for him, wings outstretched, hooked beak open wide, talons out, single eye aflame…
Odd took an involuntary step backwards, and the eagle’s claws missed him by less than the width of a feather…
“What was that for?” he shouted after the bird.
Then he looked down and saw the ground that wasn’t under his feet. He was a very long way up, standing unsupported on the air.
“Oh,” said Odd. Then he smiled, and he slid down the sky like a boy going down a hill, shouting as he did so something that sounded remarkably like “Whee!” and he landed as lightly as a snowflake.
Odd pushed himself back up into the air and began to jump, ten, twenty, thirty feet at a time…
He moved towards the cluster of wooden buildings that were Asgard, and did not stop until he heard the sound of cats, mewing and mrowling…
The Goddess Freya was nowhere near as scary as Odd had imagined from the Frost Giant’s description. True, she was beautiful, and her hair was golden, and her eyes were the blue of the summer sky, but it was her smile that Odd warmed to—amused, and gentle, and forgiving. It was safe, that smile, and he told her everything, or almost.
When she understood who the three animals really were, her smile became wider.
“Well, well, well,” she said. And then she said, “Boys!” They were in the great mead hall now. It was empty and no fire burned in the hearth. The Goddess reached out her right arm.
The eagle, which had been sitting on the ornately carved back of the highest chair, flapped over and landed awkwardly on her wrist. Its talons gripped her pale flesh so hard that crimson beads of blood welled up, yet she did not appear to notice this, or to be in any visible discomfort.
She scratched the back of the bird’s neck with her fingernail, and it preened against her.
“Odin All-father,” she said. “Wisest of the Aesir. One-eyed Battle God. You who drank the water of wisdom from Mimir’s Well…return to us.” And then, with her left hand, she began to reshape the bird, to push at it, to change it…
A tall, grey-bearded man, with a cruel, wise face stood before them. He was naked, something he seemed scarcely to notice. He walked over to the tall chair, picked up a large grey cloak, and an ancient floppy-brimmed hat—which Odd could have sworn had not been there the last time he looked—and he put them on.
“I was far away,” he told Freya absently. “And getting farther away with every moment that passed. Good job.”
But Freya had already put her attention on the bear, and was kneading at it with both hands, pushing and shaping, like a mother bear licking her cubs into shape. Beneath her fair hands the bear changed. He was red-bearded and covered in hair, and his upper arms looked as knotted and as powerful as ancient trees. He was the biggest man, who was not a giant, that Odd had ever seen. He looked friendly, and he winked at Odd, which made the boy feel strangely proud.
Odin tossed Thor a tunic, and he walked into the shadows to get dressed. Then he paused, and turned back.
“I need my hammer,” Thor said. “I need Mjollnir.”
“I know where it is,” said Odd. “It was hidden as a boulder. I can show you, if you like.”
“When we’ve finished the important business at hand, perhaps?” said the fox. “Me next.”
Freya looked at the animal, amused. “You know,” she said, “many people will find you much easier to cope with in that shape. Are you sure you don’t want me to leave you?”
The fox growled, then the growl became a choked cough, and the fox said, “Fair Freya, you joke with me. But do not the bards sing:
“‘A woman both fair and just and compassionate
“‘Only she can be compared to glorious Freya’?”
“Loki, you caused all this,” she said. “All of it.”
“Yes,” he said. “I admit it. But I found the boy as well. You can’t just focus on the bad stuff.”
“One day,” said Freya softly, “I will regret this.” But she smiled to herself, and she reached a hand out and touched the black tip of the fox’s muzzle, then ran her finger up between its ears and along its spine and all the way up to the very tip of its tail.
A shimmer—then a man stood in front of them, beardless, flame-haired, as pale of skin as Freya herself. Eyes like green chips of ice. Odd wondered if Loki had a fox’s eyes still, or if the fox had always had Loki’s eyes.
Thor threw Loki some clothes. “Cover yourself,” he said bluntly.
Now Freya turned her attention to Odd. Her gentle smile filled his world. “Your turn,” she said.
“I look like this anyway,” said Odd.
“I know,” said Freya. She knelt down beside him, reached out a hand towards his injured leg. “May I?”
“Um. If you want to.”
She picked him up as if he was light as a leaf, and put him down on the great feasting table of the Gods. She reached down to his right foot and deftly unhooked it at the knee. She ran a nail across the shin and the flesh parted. Freya looked at the bone, and her face fell. “It was crushed,” she said, “so much that not even I can repair it.’ And then she said, “But I can help.”
She pushed her hand into the inside of Odd’s leg, kneading the smashed bones, pulling together the fragments from inside the leg, smoothing them together. Then she opened the flesh of the foot and repeated the same operation, putting the pieces of foot bone and toe bone back where they were meant to be. And then she encased the skeletal leg and foot in flesh once more, sealed it up, and the Goddess Freya reattached Odd’s leg to Odd, and it was as if it had always been there.
“Sorry,” she said. “I did the best I could do. It’s better, but it’s not right, yet.” She seemed lost in thought, then she said brightly, “Why don’t I replace it entirely? What about a cat’s rear leg? Or a chicken’s?”
Odd smiled, and shook his head. “My leg is fine,” he said.
Odd stood up cautiously, put his weight on his right leg, trying to pretend he had not just seen his leg unhooked at the knee. It did not hurt. Not really. Not like it used to.
“Give it time,” said Freya.
A huge hand came down and clapped Odd on the shoulder, sending him flying.
“Now, laddie,” boomed Thor. “Tell us just how you defeated the might of the Frost Giants.” He seemed much more cheerful than when he had been a bear.
“There was only one of them,” said Odd.
“When I tell the story,” said Thor, “there will be at least a dozen.”
“I want my shoes back,” said Loki.
There was a feast that night in the great mead hall of the Gods. Odin sat at the end of the table, in the magnificent, carved chair, saying almost as little as he had when he was an eagle. Thor, on his left side, boomed enthusiastically. Loki, who had to sit down at the far end of the table, was pleasant enough to everyone until he got drunk, and then, like a candle suddenly blowing out, he became unpleasant, and he said mean, foolish, unrepeatable things, and he leered at the Goddesses, and soon enough Thor and a large man with one hand, who Odd thought might have been called Tyr, were carrying Loki from the hall.
“He doesn’t learn,” said Odd.
He thought he had said it to himself, in his head, but Freya, who was sitting beside him, said, “No. He doesn’t learn. None of them do. And they don’t change, either. They can’t. It’s all part of being a God.”
Odd nodded. He thought he understood, a little.
Then Freya said, “Have you eaten enough? Have you drunk your fill?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Odd.
Old Odin left his chair, and walked towards them. He wiped the goose grease from his mouth with his sleeve, smearing even more grease all over his grey beard. He said, quietly, into Odd’s ear, “Do you know what spring it was you drank from, boy? Where the water came from? Do you know what it cost me to drink there, many years ago? You didn’t think you defeated the Frost Giants alone, did you?”
Odd said only, “Thank you.”
“No,” said Odin. “Thank you.” The All-father was leaning on a staff carved with faces—dogs and horses and men and birds, skulls and reindeer and mice and women—all of them wrapped around Odin’s stick. You could look at it for hours and still not see every detail on that stick. Odin pushed the staff towards Odd and said, “This is for you.”
Odd said, “But…”
The old God looked at him gravely through his one good eye. “It is never wise to refuse the gifts of the Gods, boy.”
Odd said, “Well, thank you.” And he took the staff. It was comfortable. It felt as though he could walk a long way, as long as he was leaning on that staff.
Odin dipped his hand into a pitcher, brought it out holding a small globe of water no larger than a man’s eyeball. He placed the water ball in front of a candle flame. “Look into this,” he said.
Odd looked into the ball of water, and his world became a rainbow, and then it went dark.
When he opened his eyes, he was home.
CHAPTER 8
AFTERWARDS
ODD LEANED HIS WEIGHT on the staff and looked down at the village. Then he began to walk the path that would take him home. He was still limping, a little. His right foot would never be as strong as his left. But it did not hurt, and he was grateful to Freya for that.
As he headed down the path to the village, he heard a rushing noise. It was the sound of snow melting, of new water trying to find its way to lower ground. Sometimes he heard a clump as snow fell from a tree onto the ground beneath, sometimes the deep thrum thrum thrum, followed by a harsh cracking sound, as the ice that had covered the edge of the bay through this eternal winter began to cleave and to break up.
In a few days, Odd thought, this will all be mud. In a few weeks it will be a riot of greenery.
Odd reached the village. For a moment he wondered if he had come to the wrong place, for nothing looked as he remembered it looking when he had left, less than a week before. He remembered how the animals had grown, when they reached Asgard, and then, how they seemed, later, to have shrunk.
He wondered if it was the air of Asgard that did it, or if it had happened when he drank the water of the pool.
He reached Fat Elfred’s door and he rapped upon it sharply with his staff.
“Who is it?” called a voice.
“It’s me. Odd,” he said.
There was a noise inside the hut, an urgent whispering, then people talking in low voices. Odd could hear the loudest of the voices as it grumbled about good-for-nothings who stole a side of salmon, and how it was high time for someone to be taught a lesson he would never forget. He heard the sound of a door being unbarred.
The door opened and Fat Elfred looked out. He stared at Odd, confused.
“I’m sorry,” he said, in a most un-sorry tone of voice. “I thought my runaway stepson was here.”
Odd looked down at the man. Then he smiled and he said, “It is him. I mean, it’s me. I’m him. I’m Odd.”
Fat Elfred said nothing. The heads of his various sons and daughters appeared around him. They looked up at Odd nervously.
“Is my mother here?” asked Odd.
Fat Elfred coughed. “You grew,” he said. “If that is you.”
Odd just smiled—a smile so irritating that it had to be him.
The smallest of Fat Elfred’s children said, “They got into fights after you went away. She said we had to go and look for you and that it was Dad’s fault you’d run off, and he said it wasn’t and he wouldn’t and good riddance to bad rubbish and she said right then, and she went back to your father’s old house on the other side of town.”
“It is him. I mean, it’s me. I’m him. I’m Odd.”
Odd winked down at the boy, as Thor had once winked at him, and turned around and, leaning on his carved staff, limped through the village, which already seemed much too small for him and not just because he had grown so much since he had left. Soon the ice would melt and longships would be sailing. He did not imagine anyone would refuse him a berth on a ship. Not now that he was big. They would need a good pair of hands on the oars, after all. Nor would they argue if he chose to bring a passenger…
He reached down and knocked on the door of the house in which he had been born. And when his mother opened the door, before she could hug him, before she could cry and laugh and cry once more, before she could offer him food and exclaim over how big he had grown and how fast children do spring up when they are out of your sight, before any of these things could happen, Odd said, “Hello, Mother. How would you like to go back to Scotland? For a while, at least.”