Yet always the waters drew him most, above all the biggest lake thereabouts. As often as ever he could, he sought its banks and gazed over its shining reaches. When a wind ruffled it, something thrilled in him and the lap-lap of wavelets was a song. He would strip off his clothes, wade out through the reeds, and swim for hour after hour like an otter. In a dugout boat he kept there he could spend a whole day dreaming more than fishing. Besides a paddle, he used a mast and sail he had made, awkward though the rig was. He wondered mightily about the sea of which he had heard. Someday he would go seek it. The longing waxed as his body lengthened.
Otherwise his childhood with the thursir passed happily enough. It did not trouble him that they overtopped him so hugely. He took that for given. They were kind to him in their rough way, though when they got a little heedless he might be knocked three or four yards aside and blossom for a while in bruises. They shared much of their lore, tales and verses going back to the beginning of the worlds, their speech deep and hoarse and slow. Thus he picked up something of the Old Tongue from Jotunheim. Mostly, however, they spoke the speech of his folk when with him. It was better fitted to the things of Midgard.
They had their feast times during the year, which were not the feasts of men but remembered such happenings as the shaping and slaying of Ymir, the binding of Garm and Fenris, and, more merrily, Utgard-Loki’s fooling of Thor. Mirth came easily to them, for they were of simple heart.
Yet they could be terrible. When Vagnhöfdi was angry, he would bellow, fling boulders about that splintered the trees they hit, launch a landslide, or seek a bear to kill with his naked hands. Hardgreip, who had fondled and sung to and cared for Hadding in his babyhood, liked to run down a deer or an elk, slash it open, and wallow like a wolverine on its bloody carcass, ripping the raw meat with her teeth.
Hadding did not take to these ways. Braki had told him, aside, that they were not seemly for a man. Still, Hadding did not hold them against his fosterers. Mostly Hardgreip was more brash than mad. Seen from afar, so that she dwindled in sight, she was like a good-looking young woman, full bodied, heavy bosomed, her hair long and raven black, her face high in the cheekbones, curved in the nose, broad in the lips, with slant green eyes under thick brows. After Hadding turned from boy to youth, he often found himself a post from which he could watch her thus. It was best when she sought a pool to bathe in. He did not feel ashamed, for he knew she knew what she did, and she flashed him a grin.
Once, out alone on a winter night, he spied a band of light elves riding by. Starlight glittered on their helms and byrnies as it did on the snow; northlights danced on high like the banners that streamed from their spears. ‘White too were their horses, slim and wind-swift, bounding from worldedge to worldedge in a few heartbeats. Above them flew a great owl. They sped past in utter stillness, but as they left Hadding’s ken their leader sounded his horn. Those notes haunted him for years.
When he told this in the house, Vagnhöfdi scowled and rumbled that that had been no lucky sign. The light elves were too friendly with the gods. The swart elves sometimes did jotuns’ bidding, but one must beware of them too. They were as safe to deal with as wolves.
He also disliked the dwarves. Miners and craftsmen who had wrought many wondrous things, they were greedy, short-tempered, and apt to lay curses that worked through lifetime after lifetime. Vagnhöfdi called it good that none dwelt underground hereabouts.
Monsters formerly laired in these wilds, nicors lurking under meres in wait for beasts or men, trolls that liked human flesh best, hagbirds, a dragon. During his hundreds of years he had killed most of them after they made trouble for him, but it was still wise to shun some hills and lakes.
Other beings he could not fight. He and his steered clear of them: night-gangers, land-wights, the unrestful dead. Yet this was not altogether so. Hadding learned that when he went with Hardgreip on a trek of three days that ended in the dark.
Haflidi had been plowing her field. For this she needed no horse or ox, but pushed the ard herself. She turned up a slab of rock into which runes had been chiseled. When she brought it home to her mate and daughter, who had knowledge of such things, they were disquieted and muttered to one another. Already they had seen forebodings elsewhere. A cow gave birth to a calf without a head. One day the earth shuddered and boomed underfoot. One night the full moon was the hue of clotting blood. “Seek word from the drow,” Vagnhöfdi told Hardgreip. “You are better at a graveside than I am.”
She hung back for a heartbeat or two, then her mouth stiffened and she agreed. Having packed food to take along, she set forth at dawn. Hadding had boasted he would go too, and she said low that she would be glad of any fellowship.
On open ground he could not keep up with her strides unless he ran, but later they went through trackless, tangled brush, thorn and withe and twisty boughs knitted together like ringmail, with fallen logs and scummy green pools in among them. Even more than he must she push, squirm, fight her way step by step. Fog swirled and dripped. Snakes slithered, frogs croaked, carrion crows jeered in the offing. Where shadows lay thickest,
