“WHAT ARE YOU? A GOD? A TROLL? SOME KIND OF WALKING CORPSE?”
“I’m a boy,” yelled Odd, and he smiled again.
“AND WHAT IN YMIR’S NAME ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
It is a strange sensation, talking to a being who could crush you like a man could crush a baby mouse. And, thought Odd, at least mice can run.
“I’m here to drive the Frost Giants from Asgard,” explained Odd. Then he smiled at the giant, a big, happy, irritating smile.
It was the smile that did it. If Odd had not smiled, the giant would simply have picked him up and crushed the life from him, or squashed him against the boulder, or bitten his head off and kept him to snack on later. But that smile, a smile that said that Odd knew more than he was saying . . .
“No, you won’t,” said the Frost Giant. “You can’t.”
“’Fraid so,” said Odd.
“I outwitted Loki,” said the Frost Giant portentously. “I bested Thor. I banished Odin. All of Asgard is pacified and under my rule. Even now, my brothers march from Jotunheim, as reinforcements.” He darted a look towards the horizon, to the north. “The Gods are my slaves. I am betrothed to the lovely Freya. And you honestly think you can go up against me?”
Odd just shrugged and continued to smile. It was his broadest, most irritating smile, and at home, it had always gotten him hit. Even the giant wanted to hurt him, to wipe that smile off his face. But nobody had smiled at the giant like that before, and it bothered him.
“I RULE ASGARD!” boomed the giant.
“Why?” asked Odd.
“WHY?”
“I can hear you fine without you shouting,” said Odd, when the reverberations had died away. And then he said, pitching his voice just a little quieter, so the giant had to lean in to listen, “Why do you want to rule Asgard? Why did you take it over?”
The Frost Giant raised himself from the huge boulder. Then he jerked a thumb behind him. “See that wall?” he said.
You couldn’t avoid seeing it. It filled the world. Every stone in the wall was bigger than the houses in Odd’s village.
“My brother built that wall. He made a deal with the Gods—to build them a wall inside six months, or he would take no payment. And on the last day, as he was just about to complete it . . . on the last hour of the last day, they cheated him.”
“How?”
“A mare, the most beautiful animal anyone had ever seen, ran across the plain and lured away the stallion who was hauling the stones for my brother. It used womanish wiles. The stallion broke its bonds, and the horses ran off into the woods together and were gone. And then, just when my poor brother had nerved himself up to complain about how he was being treated, Thor returned from his travels and killed him with his damnable hammer. That’s how every tale of the Gods and the Frost Giants ends—with Thor killing Giants. Well, not this time.”
“Obviously not,” said Odd, who was beginning to have his suspicions about who the mare had been. “So, what did your brother want for payment?”
“Nothing really,” said the giant, shifting from foot to foot. “Just stuff.”
He sat down again on the boulder. Where the air touched the Frost Giant, it seemed to steam. Odd had seen the water in the fjord steam in winter, when the air was colder than the water. He wondered how cold the Frost Giant was.
“He wanted the Sun,” said the giant, “the Moon. And Freya. All things that I now control, for Asgard is mine!”
“Yes. You said that.”
There was a pause. The Frost Giant looked tired, Odd thought. Then Odd said, again, “Why? Why did he want those things?”
The Frost Giant took a deep breath.
he roared, and Odd felt the earth shake beneath him. He leaned on his crutch to keep his balance as icy winds blew past him. Odd didn’t say anything. He just smiled some more.
The giant said, “Would you mind if I picked you up? It would make it easier to talk if we were face-to-face.”
“So long as you’re careful,” said Odd.
The giant reached down and laid his hand flat on the ground, palm up, and Odd clambered awkwardly onto it. Then the giant cupped his hand and lifted Odd up, so the boy was on a level with his mouth, and the giant whispered, in a voice like the howl of a winter wind, “Beauty.”
“Beauty?”
“The three most beautiful things there are. The Sun, the Moon, and Freya the lovely. It’s not beautiful, really, in Jotunheim. There’s just rocks and crags and . . . Well, they can be beautiful too, if you take them the right way. And we can see the Sun there, and the Moon. No Freya—nothing that beautiful. She’s beautiful. But she does have a tongue on her.”
“So you came here for beauty?”
“Beauty, and revenge for my brother. I told the other Frost Giants I’d do it, and they all laughed at me. But they aren’t laughing now, are they?”
“What about spring?”
“Spring?”
“Spring. In Midgard. Where I come from. It isn’t happening this year. And if the winter continues, then everyone will die. People. Animals. Plants.”
Frosty blue eyes bigger than windows stared at Odd. “Why should I care about that?” The Frost Giant put Odd down on the top of the wall around Asgard, the wall his brother had built. It was windy up there, and Odd leaned into his crutch, scared that a gust of wind would blow him away and down to his death. He glanced behind him, and was not surprised to see that the home of the Gods looked almost exactly like the village on the fjord from which he had come. Bigger, of course, but the same pattern—a feasting hall and smaller buildings all around.
Odd said, “You should care because you care about beauty. And there won’t be any. There will just be dead things.”
“Dead things can be beautiful,” said the Frost Giant. “Anyway, I won it. I beat them. I fooled them and I tricked them. I banished Thor and Odin and that miniature turncoat Loki.” And then he sighed.
Odd remembered what he had seen in the pool, the previous night. He said, “Do you really think your brothers are on the way?”
“Ah,” said the Frost Giant. “Um. They may be. I mean, they all said they would . . . if I did . . . It’s just that I don’t think that any of them actually expected me to conquer this place, and they all have things to do, farms and houses and children and wives. I don’t think that they really want to come down to the hot lands and play soldiers guarding a bunch of grumpy Gods.”
“And I suppose they can’t all be betrothed to lovely Freya.”
“Lucky them,” said the Frost Giant, darkly. “She’s beautiful. Oh yes. She’s beautiful. I’ll give you that.” He shook his head. Icicles fell from his hair and crashed, tinkling, on the rocks beneath. “She’s got a carriage pulled by cats, you know. I tried stroking them.” He held up the index finger of his right hand. It was covered in scratches and cuts. “She said it was my own fault. That I’d got them overexcited.
“She is beautiful,” he said, and sighed. “But she only comes up to the top of my foot. She shouts louder than a giantess when she’s angry. And she’s always angry.”