“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 EIGHT
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 left foot would never be as strong as his right. 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 a deep thrum thrum thrum, followed by a harsh cracking sound, as the ice that had covered the edge of the bay through this endless winter began to cleave and to break up.
In 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 up 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.”
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.