He crawled towards his crutch, and as he did so, he felt hot breath on the back of his neck.

“Hello, bear,” said Odd, cheerfully. “You had better eat me. I’ll be more use as bear food than I will be frozen to death on the ice.”

The bear did not seem to want to eat Odd. It sat down on the ice in front of him, and gestured with its paw.

“You mean it?” said Odd. “You aren’t going to eat me?”

The bear made a rumbling sort of noise in the back of its throat. But it was a gloomy noise, and not a hungry noise, and Odd decided to chance his luck. The day could not get stranger, after all.

He clambered onto the bear’s back, holding his crutch with his left hand and clutching the bear’s fur with his right. The bear stood up slowly, making sure the boy was on, then set off at a fast lope through the twilight.

As the bear sped up, the cold went through Odd’s clothes and chilled him to the bone.

The fox dashed ahead of them, the eagle flew above them and Odd thought crazily, happily, I’m just like one of the brave lords in my mother’s ballads. Only without the horse, the dog and the falcon.

And he thought, I can never tell anyone about this, because they won’t believe it. Because even I wouldn’t believe it.

Snow fell from branches as they brushed past and stung his face, but he laughed as they went. The moon rose, pale and huge, and cold, cold, but Odd laughed some more, because his hut was waiting for him, and he was an impossible lord riding a bear, and because he was Odd.

The bear stopped in front of Odd’s hut, and Odd half climbed, half fell from the beast’s back. He pulled himself up with his crutch, and then he said, “Thank you.” He thought the bear nodded its head in the moonlight, but perhaps he imagined it.

There was a crash of wings, and the eagle landed on the snow a few feet from Odd. It tipped its head on one side to stare at Odd with an eye the color of honey. There was nothing but darkness where its other eye should have been.