The Boy Who Raced Thought

"Is it coming?" said Thor.

Thjalfi did not have to look again. He could feel it through his knees. Somewhere behind him the ground took a weight, groaned under it and let it go, and the grit by Thor's face gave a small jump.

"Yes."

"Then get back up the hill, boy."

Thor's eye was on him, hard, as it had been on the whole household the morning after the bone. His right glove tightened on the hammer until the plates creaked. The arm stayed flat on the stones. Under that foot he could not lift it a finger's height. He could not even turn his head far enough to see what he was telling Thjalfi to run from.

The hill was right there. Thjalfi could see the chariot on its top, small against the red sky, and the two goats in the traces. Tanngrisnir had not moved. Its yellow eyes were still on him. From up there, everything down here would look a long way off.

He turned round on his knees instead and looked at the clay man.

Mokkurkalfi had come one more step. He stood over the far end of Hrungnir now. Thjalfi had to lean back on his heels to find the top of him. He was shedding as he came.

Flakes slid off his shoulders and burst on the stones. Wet clay ran in brown threads down his legs. The thumb holes in his face pointed at the two of them, because the whole body pointed that way. The body was all he had to turn with.

He was shaking. Thjalfi had seen him shake at a rolling stone twelve nights ago, and again this morning at the red light. This was worse. The shaking went down the clay legs and into the ground.

Thjalfi knew that shaking. He had held it in his arms every spring.

A kid would go out along a ledge it could not get back from, and he would have to climb out and carry it down. You came up to it slowly, and still it would throw itself any way at all, out over the drop as soon as back to you. It never chose. Fear chose for it.

The builder had said it, down there in the steam. Nothing in all Jotunheim with a heart big enough, and the mare's the biggest they could find.

So that was what stood over Thor. Whatever the clay was, the thing inside it was a mare, and she had been frightened since before it was light. She did not know where she was going. She would put that foot down wherever the fear sent it, and Thor was lying on the ground.

He got up.

"Boy," said Thor, into the stones.

Thjalfi did not answer. He ran out across the flat, away from Thor and away from the hill. He went past the giant's open hand and on into the open grey, where there was nothing between him and the clay man at all. The grit crunched and slid under his shoes. Thirty strides out he stopped and turned, right in front of the thumb-hole eyes, where anything with eyes would have to see him.

He pulled the pin out of his cloak and swung the cloak off his shoulders. Then he put his head back and gave the call he used on the high screes when the goats went the wrong way. It carried all the way down the valley to the byre.

"Hai! Hai-yah!"

Behind the crack in the clay chest, the heart jumped.

The whole of Mokkurkalfi jerked with it. Then he came round. He came round slowly, from the feet up, the way a loaded sledge comes round on a slope. The foot that had been lifting toward Thor swung away through the air and came down on the open flat instead, a long way from anybody. The ground bounced under Thjalfi's shoes.

"Hai!" He flapped the cloak out wide. "Here! This way!"

The clay man took another step toward him, and another. Thjalfi backed away in front of him, shouting, and every step he took drew the great feet further from Thor.

He went backward across the whole flat, toward the foot of the long slope he had come down that morning. Each time a foot came down he felt it in his shins, and grit rained off the clay above him.

The legs were slow. They lifted as if the clay at the knees had stiffened in the cold, and swung, and came down hard. Each time the body leaned on ahead of them, too far, and dragged them after it.

At the bottom of the scree he stopped, because the clay man had stopped. He stood right over Thjalfi now, and Thjalfi had to put his head all the way back to see the chest. The crack was straight above him. It had opened wider since morning. Its edges had dried and curled back like a mud puddle at the end of summer, and through it he could see right in.

The heart was small.

He had not expected that. In all that clay it was no bigger than a lamb curled up asleep. It was dark red and wet. It hung in a hollow somebody had smoothed out for it by hand, and the marks of the fingers were still in the grey.

It was going so fast that there was no beat left in it, only a quiver, like the skin on a pail of milk when a cart goes by. Every quiver ran out through the clay around it in rings. The whole great chest was shaking because that one small heart was.

It wanted a way out. It had wanted one all day, ever since the builders had pressed it in there and smoothed the clay over it. Then give it one, he thought.

He ran at it. He went straight in under the clay man with the cloak flying out from his fist, yelling with all the breath he had. The heart bolted. He saw it go, a hard jerk sideways in its hollow, and the body threw itself after it. Mokkurkalfi lurched away to the right, one leg swinging wide, and the scree under that foot slid.

Thjalfi was already gone the other way. He cut back under the chest, across the front of the legs. A flake as big as a door came down behind him and burst.

He came out on the left side shouting and flapping. The heart bolted the other way. The body wrenched round after it. The clay at its waist cracked like a green branch, and the feet were still pointing where they had been.

He went in again, and again, in and out under it, never where it had last seen him. A clay foot came down where he had just been, and then another, each one late. His chest burned and his legs did not care.

It was the oldest thing he knew. On the screes at home, chasing a frightened animal from behind only drove it on. You got in front of it and turned it, and turned it back, until it did not know which way the hill went.

The clay man did not know. Each time the heart bolted, the great body swung after it, and each time the legs came round late. Stones ran out from under the clay feet in long grey fans. Mokkurkalfi was on the slope now, half of each foot on the loose stuff, and the slope was going down and taking him with it.

Thjalfi cut back one last time, right under the chest, and threw the cloak up at it with both hands. The heart went wild. Mokkurkalfi reared. He went up on his heels with his arms flung up and back, like a mare up on her hind legs at a strange dog in the yard, and for one long moment he stood like that, high over the slope, with the red sky behind him.

Then the scree went out from under both his feet at once.

Thjalfi's foot went into loose grit, as it had that morning. This time the ankle turned. It went right over under him with a crack he felt all the way up his leg. He was down on his side on the stones before the hurt arrived. When it came, it was so hard and white that for a breath he could not see.

He heard the clay man fall. It began as a slither, the whole slope going at once. Then came one great crash, and after it a long run of smaller ones that went on and on. Stones came bouncing down past him. Something heavy struck the scree a few strides off, and the ground jumped, and he put his arms over his head and stayed there.

When it was over he looked. The giants' champion had sat down. He had sat down hard on the scree with his legs straight out in front of him, like a child who has missed the bench. Then he had gone over backward and broken.

He lay up the slope in pieces. One leg had come off at the knee. The chest had split across the middle, and the broken edges were dark and wet inside and steamed a little in the cold.

Behind the broken clay the red quiver went on. Thjalfi watched it. It went slower, and slower again, until it was a beat once more and he could have counted it. Then he could not see it any more.

The dust drifted down the slope and thinned. Far off on the eastern hills, the row of small dark shapes stood a while longer. Then one turned away, and then the rest, and they went down over the ridge toward their own country and did not come back.

Thjalfi lay on the stones and breathed. His ankle had a heartbeat of its own now. He did not look at it. His cloak lay a little way up the slope, half under a piece of clay arm, and he left it there.

He got onto his knees. The ankle took some of his weight and then told him plainly how much more it would take. It was hurt. It would hold him, if he did not ask too much of it.

Across the flat, a long way off now, Thor lay where he had been. The grey leg was still over him and the hammer still in his glove. His beard had been pushed round a little on the grit, as if he had tried to turn his head and got that far. Thjalfi had told him he would get that foot off him.

He got up and went back across the flat, over the grey grit and past the giant's open hand, a step and a hitch, a step and a hitch, faster than anyone would have thought, like the lame goat.