The Boy Who Raced Thought

Bilskirnir was dripping. It had dripped all night, off every roof high and low and out of every spout. Through the stall's warm back wall it sounded like a crowd of people whispering in the next room. By first light the yard was a brown pond with the last of the snow sitting in it in grey lumps.

Thjalfi carried the two buckets down the passage past the kitchens, slower than he used to. The cook saw him and did not shout. She had stopped shouting at him the day Thor came home, and he still could not decide if he liked it better.

In the stall both goats stood with their noses at the crack of the outer door, breathing the wet air that came under it. Tanngnjost stamped. Tanngrisnir only looked round at him, and for once the split ear was forward.

"Water first," Thjalfi told them.

He filled the trough and climbed the loft ladder for the hay. The ankle held him on the flags now and argued with him on the ladder. He went up with his good foot leading and threw the hay down instead of carrying it.

He laid the lame goat's share on the flags and stepped back. It ate. Every morning since the duel it had started a little sooner, and this morning he had hardly finished the step.

The salve crock hung on its peg by the door. There had been nothing to put it on for weeks. He took it down every morning anyway, looked at the leg, and hung it up again.

"Let them out," said Thor, from the yard.

The outer door had been drifted shut since Winter Nights. Thjalfi put his shoulder to it, and it opened on the yard with a long wet suck, and the light came in flat and white off the water.

Thor stood ankle-deep in the pond with a loaf in one fist. He had been standing there a while, by the look of his boots, with his face turned up to the sun. The stone sat above his right brow where it had sat since Grjottungard. In the light it was the dull grey of a wet pebble in a stream bed, and it did not seem to trouble him any more than his brows did.

Tanngnjost went straight out past him and across the yard in great splashing bounds. Tanngrisnir stopped in the doorway. It put its nose out first and smelled the air, and then it went too.

Behind the hall the south slope had come out of the snow in the night. It was green, a green so new it was nearly yellow, short as the nap on a good cloak, with steam lifting off it where the sun had been longest.

The lame goat crossed the pond in a spray, the stiff leg throwing water out sideways at every hitch, and went up the slope after its twin. They put their heads down in the green and did not lift them again. After a while Tanngrisnir lay down where it was, its stiff leg out straight behind it in the grass. It went on eating lying down, which Thjalfi had never in his life seen a goat do.

Thor watched them with his mouth full. "Fat by midsummer," he said, and went in.

Roskva came out at noon with his crust and sat beside him on the stall step in the sun. Her apron was wet to the waist from the scrubbing. She had the spindle out before she had sat all the way down.

"Does it hurt him?" Thjalfi said. "The stone."

"He says not. He says it itches when it's going to rain." She turned the spindle. "It nearly came out, you know."

He looked at her.

"You were asleep in the stall," she said. "Sif sent for the wise woman Groa, from over the hills. I held the lamp." She set the spindle going and kept her eyes on it, as she did when the words were long ones. "Groa put her hands on either side of his head, and she sang. Low, the same words, over and over. And the stone moved. I saw it come out the width of my fingernail. Thor felt it go, and he was so pleased he started talking."

"With his mouth full."

"With his mouth full. He told her he'd been up in the giants' country, and he'd come home carrying her husband in a basket on his back. Aurvandil, her husband's called. One of Aurvandil's toes stuck out of the basket and froze solid, so Thor broke it off and threw it up into the sky, and now it's a star." She dropped her voice and made it short and pleased. "'He'll be home any day now. Tell them to warm his bed.'"

"And?"

"And she was so glad she forgot the song. She sat there with her hands on his head and laughed and cried and asked him which star it was. And when she went to sing again, the words had gone right out of her. She tried for a long time." Roskva stopped the spindle with one finger. "The stone stayed where it was. It always will now."

"You had the words," said Thjalfi. "You'd have had every one."

"I had them. They wouldn't have worked from me. They were hers."

Up on the slope the lame goat rolled half over in the green and lay with its legs in the air, like a much younger goat.

"So now nobody in this house throws a whetstone across a floor," said Roskva. "Sif said it to the whole kitchen the next morning, with her keys in her hand. If a whetstone goes flying across a floor, the stone in his head moves. So you carry it over. You put it in somebody's hand."

Thjalfi thought of his father in the byre door in summer, flicking the scythe stone across to its peg every evening without looking, and never once missing. He would have to tell him.

"The goats came home without anybody," he said. "That day. What did you do?"

"Went to Asgard."

"Sif doesn't send anyone looking."

"I know," said Roskva. "So I went." She started the spindle again.

At supper the servants ate in the kitchen, as they always did, on the benches by the three fires, after the hall was served. The cook stood at the big pot with her ladle. She filled the first bowl off the fire, looked down the bench, and held it out to Thjalfi. Nobody said why. Two of the cook's girls looked at their knees.

He took it. It was full to the rim, with butter melting yellow in the middle of it, and the steam smelled of barley and onions. His stomach told him all about it.

He passed it down the bench to Roskva.

She looked at the bowl a long time, and then at him. "That's the big one."

"I know."

She ate it all, slowly, and did not say anything else, and he ate the second bowl and found it was plenty.

After dark he went back to the stall with the lamp. The goats had come in off the slope on their own, wet to the belly and smelling of grass, and lay against the warm wall. He set the lamp on its shelf and sat down in the straw with his back to it. He put the bad foot out in front of him, the way he had sat every night of the winter.

Tanngrisnir lifted its head.

It got up hind end first, as goats do, and stood a moment on its three good legs and the stiff one. Then it came across the straw toward him. It came slowly, with the hitch, its yellow eyes on his face. He did not move his hands. He did not breathe much either.

The goat stopped over him. Its beard was wet from the trough and dripped on his knee. Then it put its head down and pushed its hard forehead into his hands, between the curved horns. It kept on pushing until his hands were pressed flat against his own chest, and he could feel the goat breathing through them. It smelled of hay and new grass and goat.

He held its head. It let him.

The stall door creaked. Roskva stood in it with flour on her sleeves. She had seen. He could tell by how still she stood.

"At Utgard," she said. "Before the first heat. Thor put his hand on your shoulder. One step, and then he took it off. You didn't feel it. I saw it, and I kept it." She came in and sat down in the straw beside him, not too near the goat. "I'm still angry about the fish."

"I know."

"That's the only thing I'm still angry about." She looked at the goat's head in his hands. "I'm glad you're my brother. I meant to say it before you went to the duel, and it wouldn't come out. So I've said it now."

Thjalfi opened his mouth and found there was nothing in it. The goat pushed harder. He let it.

The lamp light went dark at the doorway. Thor stood there, stooping under the lintel, with a cold rib of mutton in one hand. He looked at the goat with its head in Thjalfi's hands for a long moment. Then he leaned in and put his other hand on Thjalfi's shoulder, heavy and warm, and left it there. This time Thjalfi felt it.

"When the roads dry," said Thor, "we go east again."

Roskva's spindle stopped. "Where?"

"East," said Thor, and bit the rib.

Thjalfi found his voice. "The lame one comes."

Thor looked down at the goat. "It'll bite you."

"Yes."

"Then it comes," said Thor.