Neil Gaiman - Odd and the Frost Giants

It was none of these things.

Before he took it out, Odd said, “My father met my mother when our village was raiding somewhere in Scotland. That’s far to the south of us. He discovered her trying to hide her father’s sheep in a cave, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. So he brought her, and the sheep, home. He would not even touch her until he had taught her enough of the way we speak to be able to tell her he wanted her for his wife. But he said that on the voyage home, she was so beautiful she lit up the world. And she did. She lit up his world, like the summer sun.”

“This was before you were born,” said the Frost Giant.

“True,” said Odd, “but I saw it.”

“How?”

Odd knew, without being told, that it would be very, very wrong to mention the pool in the forest to the Frost Giant, let alone the shapes that he had seen moving in the pool the night before. He lied, but it was the truth also. He said, “I saw it in my father’s eyes. He loved her, and a few years ago he started to make something for her, but he left it unfinished, and then he didn’t come back to finish it. So last night, I finished it for him. At first I didn’t know how it was meant to look, and then I saw her…I mean, it’s as I imagine her, my mother, when they had just met. Stolen from her people and her land, but brave and determined, and not ever going to give in to fear or grief or loneliness.”

The giant said nothing.

Odd said, “You came here for beauty, didn’t you? And you can’t go back empty-handed.”

He reached into his jerkin and he took out the thing that he had carved. His father’s carving, which he had finished. It was his mother, as she had looked before he was born. It was the finest thing that Odd had ever made, and it was beautiful.

The Frost Giant squinted at it, and then, just for a moment, smiled. He put the carved head into his pouch, and he said, “It is…remarkable. And lovely. Yes. I will take it back with me to Jotunheim, and it will brighten my hall.” The Frost Giant hesitated, then he said, a little wistfully, “Do you think I should say good-bye to Lady Freya?”

Odd said, “If you do, she’ll probably shout at you some more.”

“Or beg me to take her with me,” said the Frost Giant. Odd could have sworn that the Frost Giant shivered at that.

The Frost Giant took a step away from Odd, and as he moved away, he grew. He went from being the size of a high hill to being the size of a mountain. Then he reached an arm up into the grey of the winter sky. His hand vanished in the cloud…

“I think I need good weather to leave in,” said the giant. “Something to hide my tracks and to make me hard to follow.”

Odd could not see quite what the Frost Giant did, but when he lowered his hand, snow began to fall in huge white flakes that spun and tumbled and obscured the world. The giant began to lumber away into the blizzard.

“Hey!” called Odd. “I don’t know your name!”

But the figure did not hear him, or if it did, it did not answer, and in moments it was lost to sight.

THE EAGLE FOUND HIM, as he sat on the wall, in an area that he had kept as free of snow as he could. The great bird landed beside the boy.

“Good?” it said. It was twilight, and the snow was falling more gently now.

“I’m cold,” said Odd. “I nearly got blown off there a couple of times. I was getting worried I’d have to spend the rest of my life up on this wall. But, yes, I’m good.”

The eagle simply looked at him.

“The Frost Giant’s gone,” said Odd. “I made him go away.”

“How?” asked the eagle.

“Magic,” said Odd, and he smiled, and thought, If magic means letting things do what they wanted to do, or be what they wanted to be…

“Down,” said the eagle.

Odd eyed the snowy rocks that made the wall. “I can’t climb down that,” he said. “I’ll die.”

The eagle launched itself from the edge of the wall, circled downward. It soon returned, flapping heavily, carrying a worn-looking soft leather shoe, which it dropped on the wall beside Odd. Off again it went, into the snowy dusk, and came back with a shoe that was a twin to the first.

“They’re too big for me,” said Odd.

“Loki’s,” said the eagle.

“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 mrow ling…

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.