Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman Read Free Book Online

falling more gently now.
    “I’m cold,” said Odd. “I nearly got blown off there a couple of times. I was getting worried I’d have to spend the rest of my life up on this wall.But, yes, I’m good.”

    The great bird landed beside the boy.
    The eagle simply looked at him.
    “The Frost Giant’s gone,” said Odd. “I made him go away.”
    “How?” asked the eagle.
    “Magic,” said Odd, and he smiled, and thought, If magic means letting things do what they wanted to do, or be what they wanted to be…
    “Down,” said the eagle.
    Odd eyed the snowy rocks that made the wall. “I can’t climb down that,” he said. “I’ll die.”
    The eagle launched itself from the edge of the wall, circled downward. It soon returned, flapping heavily, carrying a worn-looking soft leather shoe, which it dropped on the wall beside Odd. Off again it went, into the snowy dusk, and came back with a shoe that was a twin to the first.
    “They’re too big for me,” said Odd.
    “Loki’s,” said the eagle.
    “Oh,” said Odd, remembering the shoes from Loki’s story, the ones that walked in the sky. He pulled them on. Then, warily, heart pounding, Odd limped to the edge of the wall, and when he got to the edge, he stopped.
    He tried to jump, and nothing happened. He didn’t move a muscle.
    Oh come on, he told his feet, his good one and the one that was broken and twisted, the one that hurt all the time. You’ve got magical flying shoes on. Just walk out into the air, and you’ll be fine.
    But his feet and his legs ignored him, and he stood where he was. He turned to the eagle, who was wheeling above Odd’s head impatiently. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I’ve tried and I can’t.”
    The eagle gave a screech, flapped its wingshard, and rose into the snowy air.
    Another screech. Odd looked around. The eagle was heading straight for him, wings outstretched, hooked beak open wide, talons out, single eye aflame…
    Odd took an involuntary step backwards, and the eagle’s claws missed him by less than the width of a feather…
    “What was that for?” he shouted after the bird.
    Then he looked down and saw the ground that wasn’t under his feet. He was a very long way up, standing unsupported on the air.
    “Oh,” said Odd. Then he smiled, and he slid down the sky like a boy going down a hill, shouting as he did so something that sounded remarkably like “Whee!” and he landed as lightly as a snowflake.
    Odd pushed himself back up into the air and began to jump, ten, twenty, thirty feet at a time…
    He moved towards the cluster of wooden buildings that were Asgard, and did not stop until he heard the sound of cats, mewing and mrow ling…
     
    The Goddess Freya was nowhere near as scary as Odd had imagined from the Frost Giant’s description. True, she was beautiful, and her hair was golden, and her eyes were the blue of the summer sky, but it was her smile that Odd warmed to—amused, and gentle, and forgiving. It was safe, that smile, and he told her everything, or almost.
    When she understood who the three animals really were, her smile became wider.
    “Well, well, well,” she said. And then she said, “Boys!” They were in the great mead hall now. It was empty and no fire burned in the hearth.The Goddess reached out her right arm.
    The eagle, which had been sitting on the ornately carved back of the highest chair, flapped over and landed awkwardly on her wrist. Its talons gripped her pale flesh so hard that crimson beads of blood welled up, yet she did not appear to notice this, or to be in any visible discomfort.
    She scratched the back of the bird’s neck with her fingernail, and it preened against her.
    “Odin All-father,” she said. “Wisest of the Aesir. One-eyed Battle God. You who drank the water of wisdom from Mimir’s Well…return to us.” And then, with her left hand, she began to reshape the bird, to push at it, to change it…
    A tall, grey-bearded man, with a cruel, wise face stood