by Anna Ciddor
‘Wait!’ Thora was staring intently at the waterfall. Suddenly she grabbed the basket and cauldron and leapt to her feet. ‘I think there is a way past,’ she said.
Tripping and scrambling over the rocks, she reached the torrent of water and squinted her eyes against the spray.
‘Look!’ she called.
Oddo reached her side and peered over her shoulder. There, behind the tumbling water, they could see a ledge of rock leading to the other side of the fjord.
‘We can’t walk on that!’ said Oddo.
They both stared at the flood of water pouring down the cliff face and crashing over the rocks.
‘Do you want to catch up with Grimmr or not?’ demanded Thora.
Holding her breath, she stepped onto the ledge. It trembled with the violence of the waterfall, but the water shot over her head in a thundering curtain, and here behind it, she could feel only a fine shower of spray. It felt like a cave made of water. Carefully, she began to shuffle forward. One step . . . two steps . . . Suddenly, her foot slipped. She shrieked, twisted to regain her balance, and let go of the cauldron. It somersaulted through the pounding water. Thora stared in horror as it bumped down over the rocks and disappeared. She gulped.
‘That’s what’ll happen if I fall!’ she thought.
She pressed her face against the cliff and felt the pulse in her temple beating against the rock. Drops trickled down her face and she realised the fine spray of water was slowly drenching her hair and clothes. She could smell the waterfall – the wet earth and the slimy rocks.
‘I don’t want to move,’ she thought. ‘I don’t want to take another step.’
‘Thora!’
Awkwardly, she twisted her head to look. Oddo was beside her, his eyes black and frightened. And just behind him she could see Hairydog, her paws scrabbling for a grip on the rocks. Thora forced herself to smile.
‘I was just waiting for you,’ she yelled.
Somehow, she would have to make her legs move again. Biting hard on her lip, she slid one foot along the ledge. She paused and took a shuddering breath. Now for the other foot. Bit by bit she began to edge forward.
‘Don’t slip!’ she kept telling herself. ‘And don’t drop the basket!’ She gripped the handle tight, conscious of the precious silver inside it.
Oddo was so close behind that she could feel his quick, panting breaths. Every now and then his toes butted her heels. She wanted to scream at him to move back. Her own feet seemed huge and clumsy. She kept her eyes fixed on that slippery, narrow track. She kept seeing that cauldron twisting, bouncing down the waterfall, hitting the rocks and vanishing into the foam. The tunnel of grey rock and pounding water seemed to go on forever. Her hands were so numb they couldn’t grip properly any more. She was terrified she was going to drop the basket, or lose her hold on the cliff.
Suddenly, Oddo gave a hoot.
‘We’ve done it!’ he cried.
Thora had one glimpse of sunlight sparkling through the spray, before an excited Oddo cannoned into her back and sent her toppling forward. Tears of pain and shock sprang to her eyes, but there were dry rocks under her hands and warm sun on her back, and she began to laugh with relief. She lay where she’d fallen and listened to the waterfall thundering downwards – safely behind her. Then she sat up, wiped her stinging palms along her skirt, and turned to look.
‘We did it!’ she whispered.
She gazed with awe at the pouring water – and the far side of the fjord. She felt weak and shaky, but Oddo was dancing with impatience.
‘Come on!’ he called.
Reluctantly, Thora staggered to her feet.
A few minutes later, they found themselves on a track again.
‘Good!’ said Thora, ‘I’ve had enough of shortcuts!’
There was a sound of hoofbeats behind them, and a rider yelled at them to get out of his way.
Thora threw a startled glance at Oddo as they both turned.
It was Grimmr.
The flabbergasted look on his face when he caught sight of them made Thora giggle.
‘What the– How did– Where did you pop up from?!’ spluttered Grimmr. Then the old familiar roar was back again. ‘You’d better watch out!’ he warned. ‘Get in my way and I’ll squash you like a pair of mosquitoes!’
He whipped up his horse and charged towards them. A flying hoof caught Thora on the shoulder as she leapt out of the way. She sprawled, stunned, then sat up, rubbing at her bruise.
‘Crotchety crows!’ she exclaimed. She stared after him. He was still bellowing at the top of his voice as he rode off. A bow was slung across his back and his belt bristled with weapons.
Oddo grinned.
‘Gave him a bit of a surprise, hey?’
‘He was furious!’ said Thora.
‘Yeah, well, it’s going to muck up his plans when we get home before him, isn’t it?’
‘But we won’t! He’s got in front of us again.’ Thora glanced at Oddo and her heart sank. ‘Not another shortcut!’
Oddo was studying the track.‘Yes,’ he agreed,‘We’ve got to get away from these fjords. If we leave the coast, travel inland, and then turn north . . .’
‘But . . . there’s no path heading inland!’ wailed Thora.
Oddo grinned and drew out his dagger. ‘We’ll soon fix that!’ he said.
18
Stuck in a swamp
To Oddo’s relief, the forest soon thinned. A few spindly pines were scattered among tufts of heather, low clumps of bilberries and occasional juniper bushes.
‘Hey, this is easy!’ cried Oddo. He hurdled a bilberry plant and whirled his dagger arm through the air. ‘What a brilliant shortcut!’
He turned to grin at Thora. She smiled back, the sunlight bright on her face. From overhead came the sound of many wingbeats. Hairydog barked excitedly. Oddo tilted back his head and watched with awe as a flock of cranes – hundreds and hundreds of them – glided over, trumpeting a greeting. As they flew low above him, their wings, like widespread cloaks, blocked out the sky.
Oddo watched their progress as they sank lower and lower, finally landing in the distance.
‘There must be a lake over there,’ said Thora.
Their route lay in the same direction as the cranes, and as they drew closer Oddo could see glints of water between the mass of feathered bodies.
He sang as he walked, covering the ground with long, easy strides. Thora kept in step beside him, twirling a stalk and joining in the song.
Suddenly she gave a yell, and stopped.
At the same moment, Oddo felt his foot plunge into something cold and wet.
‘Yuck!’
They’d walked straight into a mossy bog. Oddo took another step. The mire sucked and gurgled. The moss sank downwards and water oozed up over his ankles.
Hairydog sniffed at it with interest, then danced off ahead of them, her paws sending up little splashes of water.
Oddo tried to follow, but his feet sank and slithered in the mud. He stopped trying to walk, and stared at the ground ahead. Moss spread before him as far as he could see, like a furry pelt of green, grey and brown, broken here and there by the longer hairs of sedge grass.
‘You don’t think that’s all bog, do you?’ he asked.
‘It couldn’t be,’ said Thora.
But with every step the solid-looking ground kept sinking beneath their feet. Their faces grew glummer and glummer.
‘We’ll never beat Grimmr at this rate,’ moaned Oddo.
On the shore of the lake the cranes were busy prodding for grubs and frogs among the sedges. As Oddo and Thora waded into sight, they raised their beaks and eyed the intruders with curious beady eyes. The surface of the water exploded upwards as hundreds of pink-footed geese rose in a noisy, splashing melee.
‘Hey,’ called Oddo, and held out his hand.
The geese swirled overhead, then turned back to the lake, skimming the surface and landing again. Oddo waited hopefully. One big gander honked lou
dly, dived under the water, then paddled towards him. Oddo reached out eagerly and a squirming silver fish was dropped into the palm of his hand.
‘Thank you!’ he called.
Proudly he displayed his trophy to Thora.
‘And just how are we supposed to cook it?’ she demanded.
‘Uuh . . .’ Oddo surveyed the waterlogged ground. Not the perfect place to light a fire. ‘We’ll just have to eat it raw,’ he said.
Thora gulped down her share, then squatted next to a plant with round red leaves. ‘Hey, a sundew! Come and look at this!’
Oddo squelched up beside her.
‘What am I looking at?’ he asked.
‘Wait and you’ll see.’
They waited without speaking. There was the plop of a frog nearby. A little black insect hummed in front of them, drawn by the drops of moisture glinting on the sundew leaves.
‘Watch,’ breathed Thora.
The insect landed. Tiny wings whirred frantically.
‘It can’t get off again!’ said Oddo, puzzled.
‘No,’ said Thora. ‘It’s trapped! That shiny stuff on the leaf is sticky.’
The leaf began to curl around and in a few moments the insect had disappeared inside it. Oddo stared.
‘Come on,’ said Thora, standing up.
‘But . . . what’s going to happen now?’
‘The sundew will eat the fly.’
‘What? Plants don’t eat insects.’
‘This one does!’
As they set off again, Oddo clenched his fists and willed his legs to work harder. But the faster he tried to walk, the more the mire seemed to cling. Would this bog never end? He was beginning to feel like an insect himself, with legs trapped in a sticky dew. He imagined his body sinking, and the feathery moss closing over his head, like the sundew leaf around the helpless fly.
‘If I don’t get out of this soon,’ he thought, ‘it won’t matter what Grimmr does. I won’t be home in time to light the needfire anyway!’
A stain of gold was spreading across the lake. It looked as if the sun was melting into the water. Oddo stared at it in dismay.
‘Sunset!’ he wailed. ‘We’ve been in this bog all day!’
He looked at Thora, hoping for reassurance, but her eyes reflected his own fears.
By the time they’d passed the lake, daylight was giving way to the shadows of evening. Oddo’s legs were so tired he could hardly lift them.
‘In a minute, I’ll have to call a halt,’ he thought.
The next step, his foot slammed against something hard, jarring his whole body. Instead of sinking into a pool, he was standing on solid earth. Hardly daring to believe it, he scanned ahead. In the twilight he could just make out a hint of rising ground and the shapes of trees. Had they reached the end of the bog – at last? Tentatively, he took another step. His wet shoes made a squishing noise, but the ground didn’t move.
A few minutes later the two friends were flopped down in front of a campfire. Hairydog writhed on her back, trying to get rid of the mud spattered all over her. Thora spread out her drenched skirt. Steam rose from the wet cloth, filling the air with the odour of warm, peaty water. Oddo yanked off his sodden shoes and grimaced at his feet, white and wrinkled from their long soaking. He lolled back, enjoying the feeling of lying on hard, dry rocks, and closed his eyes.
The next thing he knew, Hairydog’s smelly, matted fur was tickling his face. Oddo pushed the dog away and opened his eyes. In the clear morning light he could see the bog stretching endlessly behind him. And in front . . . He stared in disbelief. In front, the ground climbed upwards, steeply, relentlessly, to the peak of a snow-capped mountain! He groaned out loud. How on earth were they going to get past that?
Miserably, he clambered to his feet. Lumps of dried mud cascaded off his breeches. One of them bounced on Thora’s face. She blinked and sat up. Her hair hung like strands of rope and her kirtle was patterned with peat-coloured streaks. He watched apprehensively as she took in the sight of the mountain and the snow. To his astonishment, she snorted with laughter.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘A fjord, a bog, and now – a mountain! You certainly pick them!’ She stood up and shook out her skirt. ‘Well, we’d better get a move on, hadn’t we?’
19
Over the mountains
On the lower slopes there were scattered bushes, birches and pine trees. One of the bushes was loaded with berries – some hard and green, others black and juicy. Oddo plucked a few ripe ones and popped them onto his tongue. He heard Thora’s yelp of warning just as he closed his mouth.
‘Yuck!’
He spat repeatedly, berries spraying from his mouth, as he tried to get rid of the bitter taste. Thora doubled up, laughing.
‘You can’t eat juniper berries raw!’ she gurgled. ‘Here.’ She picked a sorrel leaf and held it out to him. ‘Eat this instead.’
Oddo eyed the leaf dubiously. It was full of holes and there was a caterpillar on it. He wondered if he was supposed to eat the caterpillar too. Deciding not, he flicked it off with his finger, and took a tentative bite. It was fresh and tangy and cleaned away the taste of the berries.
As they moved onto higher ground, the bushes thinned. Oddo and Thora walked briskly. At midday, they reached the tree-line. Oddo stepped from the shelter of the last few shrubs and felt a blast of icy wind blowing from the snow above. He lifted his face to the sky.
‘Give us a bit more sunshine!’ he called.
The slope was steeper now and they had to scramble, half crawling, across the bare rocks.
But the snow, when they reached it, was soft and slushy. Oddo realised too late that the sunshine he’d asked for was making it melt. He sank in right up to his knees.
‘You and your shortcuts!’ growled Thora, floundering beside him.
Oddo ploughed doggedly onwards. His hands and toes grew so numb he couldn’t feel them. After a few minutes he realised Thora was missing. He turned round to find her ripping the branches off a lone birch tree. By the time he’d struggled to her side to see what she was up to, she’d bent one branch into the shape of a fish and was weaving thin, pliable twigs across it.
‘Snow shoes!’ gasped Oddo. ‘Good idea!’
Soon the wide, flat snowshoes were ready for tying on their feet.
‘This is better!’ cried Oddo. ‘I’m not sinking any more!’
Now the ground rose even steeper, and large chunks of snow kept breaking away. Suddenly, Oddo found himself treading on air, and the next moment he was rolling and bouncing down the mountain. He crashed into a tree and came to a jarring halt, the breath knocked from his body.
Spreadeagled on the ground, feeling like a fool, he glared with frustration at the slope he’d have to climb all over again.
Then, as he clambered to his feet, he discovered that his snowshoes had been torn to pieces. Soon he was threshing around helplessly in the slushy snow again. He spied a reindeer watching him, a supercilious expression on its face, and he had a flash of inspiration.
‘Hey, you,’ he called, ‘don’t just stand there gawking at me. How about you come here and make yourself useful!’
The reindeer minced towards him on its long, elegant legs. Oddo grabbed an antler and hoisted himself onto its back.
‘Go on!’ he yelled, kicking his heels. ‘Get me out of here!’
The reindeer twisted its head around and nuzzled curiously at Oddo’s knee.
‘Go on,’ urged Oddo.
Thora was watching from above.
‘You’re crazy!’ she called. ‘That’s not a horse!’
Oddo gripped the antlers tight, leaned towards the creature’s ear, and spoke as sternly as he could. ‘Reindeer,’ he said, ‘you are going to take me to the top of this mountain!’
The beast took off and they sped up the slope, Oddo bouncing around as helpless as a bag of oats. From the corner of his eye, he spied a younger reindeer galloping beside him, and Hairydog racing to join them.
&nbs
p; ‘Wait!’ cried Oddo.
As his mount slowed to a standstill, Oddo gestured to the smaller deer.
‘Come here,’ he coaxed.
The animal regarded him, head on one side. Then, as if against its will, it edged towards him.
‘Thora, this one’s for you,’ said Oddo. He reached out and placed a hand on the reindeer’s neck. He could feel it trembling.
‘Sssh,’ he soothed.
As Thora sidled closer, he murmured a chant in its ear:
‘Just for once please kindly lend
Your strong back to help a friend.’
It rolled its eyes but stood still as Thora clambered on.
‘Hold tight!’ warned Oddo.
The two reindeers tossed their heads and an instant later they were thundering up the mountainside. Snow splattered from their pounding hooves. Hairydog capered and yelped with excitement. A pair of white-plumed willow grouse, invisible against the snow, scattered out of the way, scolding indignantly. Thora and Oddo whooped at the top of their voices.
At the crest of the mountain, the reindeers paused, hot breath steaming from their nostrils, black hooves planted in the sparkling snow. Through the cloth of his breeches Oddo could feel heat and sweat and the heaving of his reindeer’s strong, muscly chest.
‘I feel like I’ve been thrashed with a stick!’ panted Oddo, rolling his shoulders to relax his own tense muscles. ‘There must be bruises all down my legs!’
With one hand he let go of the antlers to massage his bottom. He could hear Thora panting beside him.
Below them the mountain fell away in a steep ravine, then rose again in another snow-capped peak. Without warning, Oddo’s steed gave a little skip, and plunged down the slope. Oddo threw his arms round the creature’s neck, lurching from side to side, as the reindeer leapt and slithered.
The valley sped towards them. Snow was giving way to the green of foliage. Now they were galloping into trees and overhanging branches, branches that scraped their legs and ripped at their hair. Oddo ducked and caught a glint of water at the bottom of the valley.
‘Help!’ he thought. ‘A river!’
