The Boy Who Raced Thought

Thjalfi's hunger left him at the worst possible moment.

For five days it had walked at his side. It had kept him awake in the glove and sent his hand to the bigger half of the fish. It had run the race with him. Now the meat came at last, and the hunger went quietly away and did not come back.

The giants made room on the right bench by shoving along it with their shoulders. One with a beard down to his belt picked Roskva up under the arms. He set her on the planks as easily as a man sets down a full bucket.

Then he did the same to Thjalfi. The bench was wider than his bed at home and so high that his bare feet hung in the air above the rushes. Thor climbed up by himself, and Loki was already there, looking pleased about it.

The food came on boards, two giants to a board. There were ribs, and a haunch with the fat still spitting, and loaves as round as cart wheels, and ale in bowls Thjalfi could have bathed in. The giant beside him tore off a rib and put it into his hands. It was longer than his forearm and hot enough to sting.

He held it. It smelled of smoke and fat, and his mouth stayed dry.

Roskva ate with both hands and her eyes shut, and the grease ran down to her wrists. On her far side Thor ate steadily, one rib and then the next, and said nothing to anyone. His brows stayed low. Shamed or not, Thor was hungry.

Thjalfi bit. He chewed until the bite was nothing, and in the end he swallowed it because there was nowhere else for it to go. He did not take another.

Roskva opened her eyes and looked at the rib in his hands. Then she looked at him, still chewing, and shut them again.

Across the hall, on the left bench, Logi was eating everything in reach, and nobody turned to watch him now. Hugi sat beside him with his hands loose on his knees. The boards went past him, and no one set meat in front of him. He did not seem to mind. He was looking at the fire.

"Are you going to eat that," said Loki at his elbow, "or only hold it until it's cold?"

Thjalfi held it out. Loki took it.

"Shame to waste it." He ate it clean and tossed the bone over his shoulder. "I've had a disappointing afternoon."

Up in the high seat Utgard-Loki turned his cup and watched his guests eat. Each time Thor reached for more, the king smiled.

"Eat well," he said. "It's a long road west."

The fire pits burned down to red. The giants slept where they sat, heads back against the wall, and the hall filled with their slow breathing, high up in the dark. Roskva fell asleep against Thjalfi's arm with her hand on her spindle. Thor lay along the end of the bench on his back, the hammer on his chest and both hands folded over its short handle. His eyes were shut.

Thjalfi lay awake. His legs would not keep still. Each time he closed his eyes he saw the frost under Hugi's shoes, white and whole, with the needles standing up round them.

It's hard there, he had told her. It's frozen.

He eased his arm out from under Roskva's head and slid to the edge of the bench. He hung there by his hands, the way he hung from the byre loft at home, and let go. The rushes took him without a sound. He sat in them and put his shoes on, and this time he tied each thong only once.

The hall door stood open a crack to let the smoke out. The crack was as wide as a cart. He went through it into the yard, where the paving struck cold through his worn soles, and crossed to the gate.

It was shut again. He turned sideways and went between the bars, as he had at noon. Nothing caught this time. The bag was back on the bench.

Outside, the plain lay white to the end of the dark.

At home the screes took half the sky. Here nothing took any of it. The stars came all the way down to the flat rim of the land and stopped there. There were more of them than Thjalfi had known there were. Their light lay on the frost until the whole plain shone faintly grey, like the inside of a shell.

The start line was frozen hard now, the mud gone stiff in ridges and boot holes. He stepped over the scratch. Past the mud the frost began, and in the frost were his feet.

Near the gate the marks were crowded, one over another, shoe and bare foot, out and back. Further on they thinned until he could pick them apart. There were the shoe prints from the first heat, the right heel smeared each time the shoe had slipped. There were the bare ones from the second and third, toes dug in deep, the strides longer than he would have believed. Fine new frost had grown in the bottom of each mark, thin as hair, but they still showed dark.

He walked beside them for a long time. Then he came to a place where the long bare strides ended. After it the marks were short and close together, and they turned back toward the gate. He stood in them for a moment. Here he had stopped.

From there on, the marks of only two heats ran on to the stick, out and back. The stick stood up out of the plain, peeled white, with its knot. He put his hand on it, and the wood was cold and smooth. Round its foot the frost was broken in a ring of dark marks, scuffed and skidded. He had made every one of them going round.

He looked for the others. He walked a whole circle round the stick, bent nearly double. He went back down the far side of the course, where Hugi had passed wide in the last heat, and then back up the middle. All along his own track the frost lay white and unbroken on either side, every needle upright in the starlight. It lay like that from the stick all the way back to the gate.

Hugi had run here three times. In the first heat he had passed close enough for Thjalfi to feel the cold wind of him.

Thjalfi stepped off his own track onto the white, onto the ground where Hugi's feet must have gone, and put his weight down.

The frost broke. His shoe sank in, and when he lifted it there was a dark print, the same as all the others.

It was not hard there. It was frost, the same as everywhere, and it broke for anybody.

She had said so. He had told her to go back to Thor.

He stood beside the print he had made, and found that his hands had shut.

Frost crunched behind him, heavy and slow, the steps a long way apart. He turned. Thor was coming down the course with the hammer in his hand, walking in nobody's tracks, and his boots went in deep.

"You're a long way from the bench," said Thor.

"I came to look."

Thor stopped beside him. He looked down at the dark print. Then he looked along the course at the one set of marks running back toward the gate, with the white on either side. He looked for a long time. His brows drew together, as they had at the start line before the first heat.

"There's only mine," said Thjalfi. "All the way out, and all round the stick. Roskva said. She said it at the start, and I told her it was frost." His voice had gone thin, and he made it go on. "He went round, though. He must have. I saw him come back."

Thor grunted. He did not say what he thought Thjalfi had seen.

Thjalfi looked down at his shoes. The question came out before he could stop it, as his feet had always gone before his father's Go.

"Are you sending us home? Because I lost. Because they laughed at you, and it was me."

Thor turned his head and looked down at him. It was a long way down, and Thor took his time over it.

"You're going where I'm going," he said. "Bilskirnir. My hall." He pulled at his beard with his free hand. "Five hundred and forty rooms in it. Biggest house anyone ever put a roof on."

Thjalfi thought of the longhouse at home. It had one.

"It's a long way from one end to the other," said Thor. "You'll want to be quick in it." He considered. "Somebody has to fetch things."

"I can fetch," said Thjalfi.

Thor did not answer that, and he said nothing about the race. He turned and looked back at Utgard. The wall stood black against the stars, so high that the stars only began above it. Along the top a single torch was moving. It went a short way, and stopped, and went on again.

Thor watched it until it stopped once more.

"He's frightened of something, that king," he said, low.

He started back toward the gate. Thjalfi went after him, but he did not walk in his own old marks. He walked in Thor's. Each one was deep enough that his whole shoe fitted inside it, with room left over all round.