Now, the waterfall was frozen and ice ran from the crags down to the basin in twisted ropes and great clear icicles.
“It’s a waterfall,” said Odd. “We used to come out here. And when the water came down and the sun was shining brightly, you could see a rainbow, like a huge circle, all around the waterfall.”
“No water,” said the fox. “No water, no rainbow.”
“There’s water,” said Odd. “But it’s ice.”
He took the axe from his belt, pushed his crutch beneath his arm as he got down from the bear’s back and walked over the ice until he stood before the frozen waterfall. He used the crutch to hold himself in position as best he could. Then he began to swing the axe. The noise of the blade hitting the thick icicle cracked off the hills around them, making echoes that sounded as if an entire army of men was hammering on the ice…
There was a crash, and an icicle as large as Odd smashed down to the surface of the frozen pool.
“Clever,” said the bear, in the kind of tone of voice that meant that it wasn’t clever at all. “You broke it.”
“Yes,” said Odd. He inspected the shards of ice on the ground, picked up the biggest, most cleanly broken piece he could find, then took it to the side of the frozen pool, and put it on a rock, and stared at it.
“It’s a lump of ice,” said the fox. “If you ask me.”
“Yes,” said Odd. “I think the rainbows are imprisoned in the ice when the water freezes.”
The boy took out his knife and began to trace outlines on the ice block with the blade, going back and forth with it, scoring it as best he could.
The eagle circled high above them, almost invisible in the midwinter sun.
“He’s been up there a long time,” said the bear. “Do you think he’s looking for something?”
The fox said, “I worry about him. It must be hard to be an eagle. He could get lost in there. When I was a horse…”
“A mare, you mean,” said the bear with a grunt.
The fox tossed its head and walked away. Odd put his knife down and took out his axe once more. “I’ve seen rainbows on the snow sometimes,” said Odd, loud enough for the fox to hear, “and on the side of buildings, when the sun shone through the icicles. And I thought, Ice is only water, so it must have rainbows in it too. When the water freezes, the rainbows are trapped in it, like fish in a shallow pool. And the sunlight sets them free.”
Odd knelt on the frozen pond. He hit the big lump of ice with his axe. This did nothing—the axe just glanced off the ice and nearly cut into his leg.
“Do that again and you’ll break the axe,” said the fox. “Hold on.”
He nosed along the bank of the frozen pool for several minutes. Then he began scrabbling at the snow. “Here,” he said. “This is what you need.” He put his paw on a grey rock he had revealed.
Odd pulled at the stone, which came up easily from the ground, and it proved to be a flint. Part of it was grey, but the other part, the translucent part of the flint, was a deep salmon-pink color, and it seemed to have been chipped.
“Don’t touch the edges,” said the fox. “It’ll be sharp. Really sharp. They didn’t mess about when they made those things, and they don’t blunt easily if you make them well.”
“What is it?”
“A hand axe. They used to do sacrifices here, on that big rock over there, and they used tools like this to slice up the animal and to part the flesh from the bones.”
“How do you know?” asked Odd.
There was satisfaction and pride in the fox’s voice as it said, “Who do you think they were making sacrifices to?”
Odd brought the tool over to the lump of ice. He ran his hands over the ice, slippery as a fish, then he began to attack the ice with the flint. The rock felt warm in his hands. Hot, even.
“It’s hot,” said Odd.
“Is it?” said the fox, sounding pleased with itself.
The ice fell away under the flint axe, just as Odd had wanted it to. He hacked it into a shape that was almost triangular, thicker on one side than on the other.
The fox and the bear stood nearby watching. The eagle descended to see what was going on, landed in the leafless branches of a tree and was still as a statue.
Odd took his ice triangle and placed it so that the sunlight shone through it onto the white snow that drifted on the frozen pool. Nothing happened. He twisted it, tilted it, moved it around and…
A puddle of light appeared on the snow, all the colors of the rainbow…
“How is that?” asked Odd.
“But it’s on the ground,” said the bear doubtfully. “It should be in the air. I mean, how can
The puddle of color splashed…and
.
Scarlet fell softly about them and everything was outlined in greens and blues and the world was raspberry-colored and leaf-colored and golden-colored and fire-colored and blueberry-colored and wine-colored. Odd’s world was colors, and, despite his crutch, he could feel himself falling forward, tumbling into the rainbow…
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
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, “Asgard!”
CHAPTER 5
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
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.
The world was comfortable and quiet and warm. He was safe, and everything was enclosed by the dark…
When he opened his eyes once more, he was cold, and he was alone, and the moon was huge and white and high in the sky.
At the water’s edge he crouched down, made a cup from his hand, scooped up water, and drank. The water was icy cold, but as he drank he felt warmed and safe and comfortable.
The figures in the water dissolved and reformed.
“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.”
On the water’s surface he saw reflections. His father, in the winter, playing with him and his mother—a silly game of blindman’s buff that left them all giggling and helpless on the ground…
He saw a huge creature, with icicles in its beard and hair like the pattern the frost makes on the leaves and on the ice early in the morning, sitting beside a huge wall, scanning the horizon restlessly.
He saw his mother sitting in a corner of the great hall, sewing up Fat Elfred’s worn jerkin, and her eyes were red with tears.
He saw the cold plains where the Frost Giants live, saw Frost Giants hauling rocks, and feasting on great horned elk, and dancing beneath the moon.
He saw his father, sitting in the woodcutter’s hut he had so recently left himself. His father had a knife in one hand, a lump of wood in the other. He began to carve, a strange, distant smile on his face. Odd knew that smile…
He saw his father as a young man, leaping from the longship into the sea and running up a craggy beach. Odd knew that this was Scotland, that soon his father would meet his mother…