Odd and the Frost Giants (6 page)

O
DD 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.”

“That would be a fine thing,” she said.

And Odd smiled, and ducked his head to get through the door, and went inside.