Odd and the Frost Giants

by Neil Gaiman

for they made everything they could out of wood in those parts: wooden nails joined wooden boards to build wooden dwellings or wooden boats.

Odd didn’t understand the words of the songs she sang, but she would translate them after she had sung them, and his head would roil with fine lords riding out on their great horses, their noble falcons on their wrists, brave hounds always padding by their sides, off to get into all manner of trouble, fighting giants and rescuing maidens and freeing the oppressed from tyranny.

The snow was deep and treacherous, with a thick, shiny crust of ice. It would have been hard walking for a man with two good legs, but for a boy with one good leg, one very bad leg and a wooden crutch, every hill was a mountain.

It was, Odd concluded, an animal with a plan. He had no plans, other than a general determination never to return to the village. And it was not every day that you got to follow a fox. So he did.

“My father used to say that the carving was in the wood already. You just had to find out what the wood wanted to be, and then take your knife and remove everything that wasn’t that.”

the moon was huge and white and high in the sky. More than twice as big as the moon in Midgard, thought Odd, and he wondered if that was because Asgard was closer to the moon, or whether it had its own moon . . .

“What do you need to see?” asked a voice from behind Odd. Odd said nothing. “You have drunk from my spring,” said the voice. “Did I do something wrong?” asked Odd. There was silence. Then, “No,” said the voice. It sounded very old, so ancient Odd could not tell if it was a man’s voice or a woman’s. Then the voice said, “Look.”

One time, one of them wanted the Sun, the Moon and Lady Freya. The time before that, they wanted my hammer, Mjollnir, and the hand of Lady Freya. There was one time they wanted all the treasures of Asgard and Lady Freya . . .” “They must like Lady Freya a lot,” said Odd. “They do. She’s very pretty.”

“The wise man knows when to keep silent. Only the fool tells all he knows.”

Odd pushed himself to keep walking, one step at a time, remembering when he had walked with ease and never thought twice about the miracle of putting one foot in front of the other and pushing the world towards you.

The Frost Giant peered down at him. There were icicles in its eyebrows, and its eyes were the color of lake ice just before it cracks and drops you into freezing water.

“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.

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.

Odd wondered if Loki had a fox’s eyes still, or if the fox had always had Loki’s eyes.

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.

“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.”

The old God looked at him gravely through his one good eye. “It is never wise to refuse the gifts of the Gods, boy.”

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.