The Boy Who Raced Thought

When Thor stood up, the morning came in where he had been sitting.

Roskva had watched his back all night. Every time the floor lifted, the back leaned forward over the hammer. Every time the floor dropped, it leaned back again. By morning she could have drawn it in the ashes with her eyes shut. Now there was only a grey gap where it had been, and cold air coming through, and the smell of pine.

Thjalfi was asleep beside her, sitting up, with his chin on the bag. He had held out until the floor went still, a little before dawn, and then he had folded over it all at once.

She had heard him go out into the hall for that bag. She had heard how long he was gone, and the scrape of his knees, and the breath he let go when he got back. He had said nothing about it, and neither had she. It was the first thing he had done in four days that she might have done herself. She was not going to tell him so.

She put her hand on his shoulder and pushed. He came awake with both arms locked round the bag, and looked at her, and she pointed at the gap.

"Morning, all," said Loki from the far end of the side room. He was stretching. "I slept beautifully. Did anyone else sleep? No? Pity."

By daylight the big hall was the color of old harness, brown going grey, and creased all over in long soft folds. The roof had a seam down the middle of it.

Roskva stopped under it and looked up. It was sewn. Each stitch was as thick as her wrist. They ran the whole length of the roof, as even as anything her mother had ever put into the hem of a dress. She did not know what to do with that, so she kept walking.

Outside, the frost had come down in the night. Every needle in the clearing was white, and it crunched under Thjalfi's shoes. He walked with his feet set wide, still braced for the ground to move. Thor stood at the edge of the trees with his back to them, looking at the hill. Roskva looked too.

It lay along the wood the way a sleeping dog lies along a wall. Its side was grey and shaggy, and the frost had whitened the shag, and the pines stood pressed against it. As she watched, it rose, slowly, higher than the trees behind it, and from somewhere along its length came a long rattling groan. Then it sank, and the groan sank with it, and there was a pause, and it began again.

Thor walked toward it. Thjalfi went after him, because Thjalfi always went, and Roskva went after Thjalfi, because the other choice was to stay behind with Loki. Loki came anyway, humming.

Close up, the hill had hair. It was coarse and grey-brown and grew thick as heather, and further along it turned into a beard that spread over the frosty ground like a field of dead bracken. Above the beard was a nose. It was the size of the byre at home, and it whistled.

Thor stopped. He threw back his cloak, and from under it, where it must have been wound round his body all the way from the farm, he unrolled a belt. It was broad, far broader than the one that carried his hammer and his iron gloves, and its buckle was dark and plain. He passed it round his waist over the other belt and pulled it tight.

"What's he doing?" Thjalfi whispered.

"Buckling on Megingjord," said Loki, low and pleased, as if he had made it himself. "His belt of strength. Whatever strength he has without it, put that on and he has more."

Roskva watched to see if it was true. Nothing about Thor got bigger. But his boots sank into the frost, a finger's depth, then two, as if the ground had gone soft under him, and when he shifted his feet the earth creaked.

He lifted the hammer. The nose stopped whistling. An eye opened above it, wet and grey as a pond in winter, and looked at them.

Roskva had seen Thor angry. At the farm she had seen his brows come down and his knuckles go white on that short handle. She had been sure then that the hammer was about to fall on somebody. She waited for it to fall now. It stayed up, and Thor stayed under it, and after a long moment he spoke.

"Who are you?"

In four days she had hardly heard him ask anybody anything. He told people things. She looked at him sideways and could not tell what had changed in him.

The hill sat up.

It came up out of the trees in one long slow heave, shedding frost in sheets. The pines that had leaned on it swung upright and stood there swaying. Where the hill had been, a man sat in the wood with his knees drawn up. His head was higher than the treetops. His shaggy shoulders blotted out half the sky.

He yawned. Roskva's breath was smoking in the cold, and Thor's came out of his beard in short grey puffs. The giant's mouth opened wide enough to drive a cart into, and stayed open, and closed again, and no cloud came out of it.

She breathed out hard to be sure. Her own breath smoked. His mouth stayed as clear as a window of ice.

"Skrymir," said the giant. His voice was slow and comfortable, a man talking from his bed. "That's what they call me. I needn't ask your name. You're Thor."

Skrymir looked at the raised hammer with mild interest, and then past it, over their heads, toward the clearing. "I dropped a glove last night. I don't suppose you've seen it?"

Roskva said the name over once, without a sound, so she would keep it. Then Skrymir reached past them. His arm went over the four of them like a roof going over, and his fingers went down into the clearing. When they came up again, they had the hall.

It rose out of the frost with needles pouring off it. For the first time Roskva saw the whole of it at once, from underneath. There was the wide open end where they had walked in, and the soft folds, and the seam down the back. Skrymir shook it, and pine needles rained down on them. Then he pushed his hand into the open end.

The hall filled. One after another, the long dark shapes along its far end swelled out and stood up stiff, four of them, and she understood that they were fingers. Last of all, the narrow room on the right filled out too, halfway along, sloping back and up, exactly where Thjalfi had found it in the dark.

Skrymir bent his thumb. The room where they had sat all night folded shut over it.

Roskva held on to her spindle. Beside her, Thjalfi made a small noise and did not seem to know he had made it. His face had gone the color of whey.

"Well," said Loki, a little too high. "That explains the smell."

Skrymir laughed. It rolled down out of the sky like a loaded cart going over stones, a long jolting rumble that went on and on. Frost shook off every branch round the clearing and came down on them like flour. Roskva did not cover her ears. She wanted to.

"And where are you going, little Thor?" he said, when he had finished.

"East," said Thor.

"So am I. We'll go together." Skrymir reached behind him into the trees and brought out a sack. It was already full, bulging at the sides, and bigger than the storehouse at home. "And we'll put our food in together, so nobody carries more than his share. That's fair. What have you got?"

Thor did not answer. He looked at Thjalfi.

Thjalfi's hand went to the strap, and Roskva watched it close there. He had snatched that bag off the bench before anyone could stop him. He had carried it down the valley and across the sea and through a whole day of forest, and gone out into the dark for it on his knees. She saw him decide to argue. She saw him look up at the giant, and decide not to.

He opened the neck of the bag and took out the cheese. It was their mother's last one, round and pale, a little flat on one side where it had sat on the storehouse shelf. He held it up. Skrymir took it between a finger and a thumb and set it in the middle of his palm, where it sat like a hailstone. Then it went into the sack, and Skrymir pulled the neck shut and tied it, knot over knot over knot, each knot as big as Thjalfi's head.

Thjalfi closed the empty bag and put the strap back over his shoulder. It hung flat against his side.

"Is that all?" said Skrymir. "Four of you, and one cheese?"

Loki held up both hands to show them empty. Thor said nothing.

The grey eye came round to Roskva and stopped.

Under the strap of her dress, against her ribs, the twist of rag was warm. She could smell the fish if she thought about it, so she did not think about it. Her hand wanted to go to it. She kept her hand on her spindle.

She had been saying nothing all her life. Her mother said she could do it louder than anyone in Steinsdal. She looked up into that eye, which was taller than she was, and said nothing at it, and went on saying it.

Out of the corner of her own eye she saw Thjalfi's glance drop to her dress strap and come away again, quickly. He had smelled the fish the morning they left. He knew. His mouth stayed shut.

After a while the eye moved on.

"One cheese, then," said Skrymir comfortably. He got to his feet. Standing, he was as far above the pines as the pines were above Roskva, and the glove hung from his hand like a mitten from a child's. He swung the sack onto his back. "I walk quickly. You'll keep up or you won't."

Thor looked at the sack for a long time. He looked at the knots. Then he looked at the hammer still raised in his hand. Roskva watched him as she watched the sky over the screes when weather was coming, to see which way it would break.

He hung the hammer back on his belt.

"We'll walk with you," he said.