Everything went dark. Odd’s eyes took moments to adjust, and when they did, above him was a velvet night sky, hung with a billion stars. A rainbow arced across it, and Odd was walking on the rainbow—no, not walking: his feet did not move. It felt as if he was being carried up the arch, going upwards, forwards, uncertain how fast he was travelling, only certain that he was somehow swept up in the colors and that it was the colors of the rainbow that were carrying him along.
He looked behind him, wondering if he would see the snowy world he had left, but he saw nothing but blackness, empty even of stars.
Odd’s stomach gave a sort of a lurch. He could feel himself dropping, and he turned his head to see the rainbow fading. Through the prism of colors he saw huge fir trees, foggy and purple and blue and red, and then the trees came into focus and found their own color—a cool bluish green—as Odd tumbled off the side of a fir tree and down into a drift of snow. The scent of bruised fir tree surrounded him.
It was daylight. He was wet, and cold, but unhurt.
He glanced up, but there was no sign of the Rainbow Bridge. Silently, across the thick snow, the fox and the bear were walking towards him. And then, with a rattle and a clatter, the eagle landed on a branch beside him, making the snow on the branch fall flump to the ground. The eagle looked less crazy now, thought Odd. And then, it looks bigger.
“Where is this place?” asked Odd, but he knew the answer, knew it even before the eagle threw back its head and screamed, with delight and with relish and with keen, dark joy,
CHAPTER FIVE
At Mimir’s Well
Really, truly, with all of his heart, Odd found that he wanted to believe that he was still in the world he had known all his life. That he was still in the country of the Norse folk, that he was in Midgard. Only he wasn’t, and he knew it. The world smelled different, for a start. It smelled alive. Everything he looked at looked sharper, more real, more there.
And if there was any doubt, then he only had to look at the animals.
“You got bigger,” he told them. “You’ve grown.”
And they had. The fox’s ears were now level with Odd’s chest. The eagle’s wingspan, when it preened in the sunshine, was as wide as a longship. The bear, which had not been small to begin with, was now the size of Odd’s father’s hut, enormous in its bulk and in its bearishness.
“We didn’t grow,” said the fox, its fur the vivid orange color of a blazing fire. “This is how big we are here. We’re normal-sized.”
Odd nodded. Then he said, “So this whole place is called Asgard, and the town we have to go to is also called Asgard, yes?”
“We named it after ourselves,” said the bear. “After the Aesir.”
“How far is it to your place?”
The fox sniffed the air, then it looked around them. There were mountains behind them, and a forest all about them. “A day’s travel. Maybe a little more. Once we get through this forest we reach the plain, and the town is in the center of the plain.”
Odd nodded. “I suppose we should get on with it, then.”
“There will be time,” said the bear. “Asgard is not going anywhere. And right now, I am hungry. I am going fishing. Why don’t you two build us a fire?” And without waiting to see what would happen, the great beast lumbered off into the darkness of the forest. The eagle flapped its wings, loud as a small thunderclap, and it took off, circling higher and higher, and then followed the bear.
Odd and the fox gathered wood, finding dry twigs and dead branches, then Odd heaped them high. He took out his knife and sliced a point on a hard stick, put the point against a piece of dry, soft wood, preparing to rotate the stick between his hands, to use the friction to make a fire.
The fox eyed him, unimpressed. “Why bother?” it said. “This is easier.” It put its muzzle against the heap of wood, breathed on the twigs. The air above the twigs wavered and shimmered, then, with a crackle, the sticks caught fire.
“How did you do that?”
“This is Asgard,” said the fox. “It’s less . . . solid . . . than the place you come from. The Gods—even transformed Gods—well, there is power in this place . . . you understand?”
“Not really. But not to worry.”
Odd sat beside the fire and he waited for the bear and the eagle to return. While he waited, he took out the piece of wood his father had started to carve. He inspected it, puzzling over the shape, familiar yet strange, wondering what it had been intended to be, and why it should bother him so. He ran his thumb over it, and it comforted him.
It was twilight by the time the bear brought back the largest trout Odd had ever seen. The boy gutted it with his knife (the fox devoured the raw guts enthusiastically), then he speared it through with a long stick, cut two forked sticks to make an improvised spit and he roasted it over the fire, turning it every few minutes to ensure it did not burn.
When the fish was cooked, the eagle took the head, and the other three divided the meat between them, the bear eating more than the other two put together.
The twilight edged imperceptibly into night, and a huge, dark-yellow moon began to rise on the horizon, achingly slowly.
When they had finished eating, the fox went to sleep beside the fire, and the eagle flapped heavily off into a dead pine to sleep. Odd took the leftover fish and pushed it into a drift of snow, to keep it fresh, as his mother had taught him.
The bear looked at Odd. Then it said casually, “You must be thirsty. Come on. Let’s look for some water.”
Odd climbed onto the bear’s broad back, and held tight as it lumbered off into the darkness of the forest.
It didn’t feel like they were looking for anything, though. It felt like the bear knew exactly where he was going, that he was heading somewhere. Up a ridge and down into a small gorge and through a copse of trees, magical in its stillness, and then they were pushing through scratchy gorse, and now they were in a small clearing, in the center of which was a pool of liquid water.
“Careful,” said the bear, quietly. “It goes down a long way.”
Odd stared. The yellow moonlight was deceptive, but still . . .
“There are shapes moving in the water,” he said.
“Nothing in there that will hurt you,” said the bear. “They’re just reflections, really. It’s safe to drink. I give you my word.”
Odd untied his wooden cup from his belt. He dipped it into the water, and he drank. The water was refreshing and strangely sweet. He had not realized how thirsty he had been, and he filled and emptied his wooden cup four times.
And then he yawned. “Feel so sleepy.”
“It’s all the travelling,” said the bear. “Here. Let me.” It pulled over several fallen fir branches at the edge of the clearing with its teeth. “Curl up on these.”
“But the others . . .” said Odd.
“I’ll tell them you fell asleep in the woods,” said the bear. “Just don’t go wandering off. For now, just rest.”
And the bear lay down on the branches, crushing them under its bulk. The boy lay beside the animal, smelling the deep bearish scent of it, pushing against the fur and feeling the softness and the warmth.