The Boy Who Raced Thought

Roskva's fingers were still curled. They had held the back of her brother's tunic through the whole of the eating, and now there was nothing in them, and they had not noticed yet.

She looked at them. Then she put them on her spindle, where they could be some use.

Thjalfi stood at the foot of the high seat with the young man beside him. Hugi was more than a head taller than her brother, which made him small for this hall, and he stood with his hands loose at his sides and looked down at Thjalfi with a friendly face.

Thjalfi was looking up at him. His chin had come up. Roskva knew that chin. It came up on the high scree whenever a goat went somewhere he had been told not to follow it.

"Out, then," said Utgard-Loki. He rose from the high seat, and went on rising for some time. "There's no room for legs in here. Bring the guests."

The benches emptied. Giants stepped down into the rushes all along both sides of the hall, and the smoke swirled round them, and the floor took their weight with a long creak. Roskva stood close to Thor's leg and let them go by. She came up to their boot tops. One of them looked down, saw her, and stepped carefully over her, and his heel came down where she had been standing a breath before.

She looked up at Thor.

He had not moved since Thjalfi stepped out. His hand was still on the hammer handle, and his face was turned down toward the back of Thjalfi's head.

She had expected the brows. At the farm she had watched them sink over his eyes and had waited for the roof to fall in. They were not down now. They were drawn together, and his mouth was shut hard in the red-brown beard, and she could not tell what he meant by it.

Then Thjalfi went past him toward the door with Hugi at his side, and Thor took his hand off the hammer. As her brother went by, Thor put that hand on his shoulder. It stayed there for one step. Then it came away.

Thjalfi did not look round. Either he had not felt it, or he had felt it and thought it was a giant's elbow. He was watching Hugi.

Roskva had seen it, though. She held the spindle a little tighter and went after them.

The gate stood open. Two giants had swung it back on its black timbers without seeming to try, and Roskva walked through the gap upright, the way a person ought to go through a gate. Behind her Loki said, "Oh, so it opens," to nobody.

The course lay on the plain beyond the wall. Someone had scratched a line across the pale ground in front of the gate for a start. From it the course ran away east, straight as a furrow behind a good ox, until it was too far to see well. At the far end a stick stood up out of the ground. From here it looked no bigger than a pin in a dress.

Giants had gone out ahead of them and lined both sides. They stood shoulder to shoulder in two rows that ran all the way down toward the stick, tall and close together, a forest that had come up out of the plain to watch. The light came between them in narrow grey strips. Near the start they stood thickest. There the ground was still soft from the night's frost, and their boots had trodden it into dark mud.

Utgard-Loki stood at the line with his ringed hands folded in front of him. "Out to the stick," he said. "Round it. Back to this line. We'll run it more than once, I think. Anyone can be lucky once."

"And twice?" said Loki.

"Three times, I think," said Utgard-Loki pleasantly. "Twice can be luck too."

Thjalfi went to the line. He shook his legs out one at a time, as he did at the bottom of the scree, and blew on his hands. He was talking under his breath, short quick words she could not hear. She knew he was counting the goats. He always counted the goats before a climb.

Hugi came and stood beside him at the line. He did not shake his legs out. He stood with his hands loose and his pale hair lifting in the wind off the plain, and he looked down the course toward the stick with interest, as though it were something pleasant he had been promised.

Roskva watched his mouth.

She had not meant to. It was Skrymir's fault. All the way from the oak she had kept seeing that great mouth opening over the pines in the frost, with nothing coming out of it, and since then she had looked at every mouth she passed.

Thor's breath came out of his beard in short grey puffs. Loki's came out in long thin streams, because he was talking. Thjalfi's went up in a cloud round his ears. High overhead, the giants' breath hung above the rows in a long low haze, and the wind pulled at it and could not take it away.

Hugi's lips were parted. He was smiling at something down the course. Nothing came out of his mouth at all.

She looked down, because she did not want to look at his face any more.

Thjalfi had pressed two dark marks into the soft ground at the line, one for each foot, and as he shifted his weight he pressed two more. All round them the mud was trodden to porridge by the giants' boots. Under Hugi the frost lay white. It was whole. She could see the separate needles of it standing up round the edges of his shoes.

She looked away, at the wall, and back again. The frost was still whole. Hugi moved one foot, easily, to settle it, and set it down a little further over. The frost in the new place was whole too.

Her hands had gone tight on the spindle, and her throat had gone tight as well. She had not said a word to anyone since the morning they left the farm. She had said nothing to Thor or to Loki, and nothing to her brother in the dark under the oak. Every word she had kept since then was still in her mouth, and there were a great many giants.

She would have to say it out loud, in front of all of them.

She went forward. She went past Thor's knee and Loki's elbow and took hold of Thjalfi's sleeve, and he looked down at her, surprised.

"He doesn't leave marks," she said.

It came out small and rough, like a door that had not been opened all winter. Nobody seemed to hear it but Thjalfi, and he only frowned. So she said it again, and this time she made it come out properly.

"Look at his feet. Your feet go into the ground. His don't. There's nothing under him at all."

That they heard. Along the nearest row, faces turned down toward her. Somebody up there laughed, and stopped.

Thjalfi looked down at Hugi's feet. He looked for perhaps one breath. "It's hard there," he said. "The ground's harder where he is, that's all. It's frozen." He pulled his sleeve gently out of her hand. "Go back to Thor, Roskva."

"It isn't hard. It's frost. You can see the frost."

"Well, then, he's light," said Thjalfi. "He's thin. Go on."

Loki laughed. It was a pleasant laugh, and it went on a little too long.

"She speaks," he said. "Five days without a word, and now she has opinions about feet." He bent down to her, smiling, with his hands on his knees. "You'll have to get used to that sort of thing out here, little one. Giants can show your eye what isn't there, and hide what is. It's half the fun they have. You could go mad looking for it." He straightened up and brushed off his knees. "I shouldn't bother. It's frost. Frost does all sorts of things." He turned away to watch the course.

Roskva stood where he had left her. Giants can show your eye what isn't there, and hide what is. She said it over once without a sound, every word, so she would keep it. He had said it as lightly as a man telling a child not to touch the pot, and then he had gone on to something else.

When she looked up, Utgard-Loki was looking at her. He had not turned his head. He still faced the course with his hands folded, but his eyes had come round and down, past Thjalfi and past Hugi, and found her. Nobody in Utgard had looked at her before.

He looked for a long moment. Then he smiled with all his even white teeth and looked away. He said nothing at all. Her stomach went cold and small, and stayed that way.

She went back to Thor, because there was nowhere else to go, and stood by his leg. After a while she felt him look down. She looked up. For once he was looking right at her, and not at the place where she happened to be standing. She did not think he had done that before.

He did not say anything. He looked from her to the ground under Hugi, and he looked at it for a long time with his brows drawn together. She could not tell whether he saw what she saw, or only saw ground.

Then he looked back at the course and said, "Hm."

That was all. It was more than he had said to anyone since the oak.

At the line, Thjalfi bent forward with his hands on his knees and straightened again. He shook out his arms. Roskva could see the back of his neck under the hacked-short hair, and his ears gone red with cold. She thought about him taking the bigger piece of fish under the oak. She found that she did not mind about it any more, not now, and she was angry about that too.

Hugi turned his head and looked down at Thjalfi, and smiled. It was a kind smile, the kindest Roskva had seen since they left home, warm all the way through. It was the smile of someone who was glad to be racing you and wished you well. Thjalfi smiled back up at him with his chipped tooth showing. He had never been able to help it when someone smiled at him.

Roskva wished he had not.

Utgard-Loki lifted one hand. Along both rows the giants leaned in, and their breath hung over the course in a single long cloud. Under Hugi the frost lay white and whole.

"Run," said Utgard-Loki.