He walked up to his door. The fox was already waiting there, sitting like a dog. The bear padded up to the hut behind him.
Odd looked from one animal to the other. “What?” he said testily, although it was obvious what they wanted.
And then, “I suppose you had better come in,” he said. He opened the door.
And they came in.
CHAPTER 3
THE NIGHT CONVERSATION
ODD HAD IMAGINED THAT the side of salmon would feed him for a week or more. But bears and foxes and eagles all, he discovered, eat salmon, and he felt that feeding them was the least he could do to thank them for seeing him home. They ate until it was all gone, but only Odd and the eagle seemed satisfied. The fox and the bear both looked like they were still hungry.
“We’ll find more food tomorrow,” said Odd. “Sleep now.”
The animals stared at him. He walked over to the straw mattress and climbed onto it, placing the crutch carefully against the wall, to pull himself up with when he woke. The bed didn’t smell like his father at all, he realized, as he lay down. It just smelled like straw. Odd closed his eyes, and he was asleep.
Dreams of darkness, of flashes, of moments—nothing he could hold on to, nothing that comforted him. And then into the dream came a booming gloomy voice that said, “It wasn’t my fault.”
A higher voice, bitterly amused, said, “Oh, right. I told you not to go pushing that tree down. You just didn’t listen.”
“I was hungry. I could smell the honey. You don’t know what it was like, smelling that honey. It was better than mead. Better than roasted goose.” And then, the gloomy voice, so bass it made Odd’s stomach vibrate, changed its tone. “And you, of all people, don’t need to go blaming anyone else. It’s because of you we’re in this mess.”