Odd and the Frost Giants

“Oh,” said Odd, remembering the shoes from Loki’s story, the ones that walked in the sky. He pulled them on. Then, warily, heart pounding, Odd limped to the edge of the wall, and when he got to the edge, he stopped.

He tried to jump, and nothing happened. He didn’t move a muscle.

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.”