“I saw the flash of metal,” Alea said.
“So did I.” Gar frowned. “You don’t suppose it was one of Herkimer’s little copper trade wedges, do you?”
“It seems likely,” Alea said. “I suppose these people even have a way of collecting to help their poor.”
“A good thought,” Gar said, “but I don’t see any poor—unless you want to count them all, but if they’re poor, they certainly don’t realize it.”
“A religious offering?” Alea guessed.
“That makes sense.” Gar nodded, brooding. “Drat it! That’s going to plague me until I know the answer for certain now!”
“Maybe we can ask over dinner,” Alea suggested. “I’ll see if I can work it into the conversation.”
“Good luck,” Gar said dryly. Then he let his face relax into the very picture of good-natured idiocy. “Here come customers.”
Alea looked up and saw half a dozen children running toward her. She smiled and sat, spreading her skirts, and gesturing to them to do likewise. Beside her, Gar started playing his flute.
The children came to a halt, wide-eyed and curious. The biggest girl said, “Could you tell us a story?”
“I’d be glad to,” Alea said, and gestured at the grass. “Sit down, then, and listen.”
The children sat. Two women and a man looked up and saw, and came strolling over to listen, too. “Long ago and far away,” Alea began, as tradition dictated, “there was a land watched over by gods who lived in a magical kingdom in the sky, called Asgard. The king of those gods was called Odin, and … yes?” One of the children had raised a hand. Now she asked, “What’s a king?”
6
Well…” Alea paused, taken aback, then said, “A king is a man who gives orders to everyone else.”
“Why?” one of the children asked.
Alea tried to think of a good reason, but could only say, “Because he doesn’t have anything else to do. Besides, all the other gods were Odin’s children, so they paid attention to what he said.”
“Oh,” the child said, thinking it over. Then, “Did he have a lot of children?”
“Lots and lots,” Alea said. “But this story is about one of his sons, the thunder god, and his name was Thor—and Thor had a friend named Loki.”
The adults frowned, and one of the children said, “Three boy gods? Isn’t that too many?”
“Why, how many should there be?” Alea asked in surprise.
“Well, one boy god in the sky and one girl god in the earth is enough,” the child answered, and the adults nodded.
“Oh,” Alea said, and thought fast. “Well, this story was made up a long, long time ago, before people realized that. They still thought there were lots and lots of gods and goddesses. Anyway, one morning, Thor woke up and…”
“Didn’t Thor have a mommy?” asked one little girl. “A mother?” Alea asked, startled. “Well, of course he did—Odin’s wife, Freya. But she isn’t part of this story.”
“Why not?” asked a big boy. “Mothers are important!”
“Why, so they are, and I know other stories about Freya and the goddesses of Asgard,” Alea said, surprised. “Would you rather hear one of those?”
“What’s this story about?” asked a five-year-old. “It’s about Thor’s visit to Jotunheim, the land of the giants,” Alea said.
A chorus of “ooohs” answered her, and several voices said, “Let’s hear about the giants!”
“Well, then.” Alea recovered her composure. “One morning, Thor woke up and found his magic hammer, Mjollnir, missing. He asked all around, but nobody had seen it. The watchman of the gods, though, had seen a giant sneaking around, and that’s how they realized that one of the giants had stolen Mjollnir.”
“What’s ‘stolen’ mean?” asked a little girl.
Alea stared a moment, then said, “Taking something that belongs to someone else, without asking.”
“Oooooh!” said several voices, and, “That was naughty!” said another.
“Naughty indeed.” One of the parents frowned. “Surely the other people who lived in this Asgard banded together to make the giant give back the hammer!”
“No,” said Alea, “because he lived with the other giants, in their own land. They were people of completely different nations, not just a different village.”
“Even so! The giant villagers would have made the thief give it back!”
“No,” said the grandmother. “Perhaps they didn’t know one of their number had taken it.”
“Oh, they knew,” Alea said rashly, “and were proud of it.”
“Well! I never!” a mother huffed. Alea realized that was probably true.
“What horrid people, to be proud of such a thing! ” said a father.
“What monstrous sort of people were these giants, who would applaud a thief?” asked a third parent. Alea saw a mother glancing with concern at her children and caught her feelings of apprehension. The man beside her was looking at her and Gar as though wondering whether or not to run them out of town. Could this story really be so controversial that the parents thought it was dangerous for their children?
Yes—if they had never heard of stealing, and if all villages were friendly with one another. Who would want the ideas of theft and war introduced where they hadn’t been?
“But what difference did it make?” asked an older man in a reasonable tone. “Couldn’t this Thor have just shrugged and made himself another hammer?”
“Well, it was a magical hammer,” Alea said. “Anytime he threw it”—she barely managed to keep herself from saying “at somebody”—“it came flying back to him.”
The children ooohed again, eyes round with wonder, but one of the fathers asked. “Why would he need a hammer that came back to him? Was he so lazy that he couldn’t go pick it up? And why would he want to throw it, anyway?”
Alea started to tell him the hammer was a weapon of battle, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Gar shake his head a centimeter, and Alea remembered that these people might not have heard of war. She glanced at the other parents; she had learned enough of telepathy to be able to perceive their growing unease at such an unfit tale, so she made some quick changes. “It was a special hammer, for hunting,” she said, making it up on the spot. “His people thought it was more merciful to knock animals senseless than to let them feel the pain of arrows or spears.”
“How kind!” a woman exclaimed, and the men nodded judiciously. One said, “A hammer that came back could be very useful in the forest, where a tool could easily be lost in the underbrush.”
“Or fallen into a lake, if you were shooting geese,” another man agreed. “Yes, that could be quite valuable. Odd thing for a hunt, though.”
Another man shrugged. “We use boomerangs for much the same purpose. Was his hammer some sort of boomerang, lass?”
“Something like that,” Alea said, relieved. “The gods valued it highly, so Odin sent Loki and Thor to make the giants give back Mjollnir.”
The older woman shook her head in disapproval. “To think that he could give orders to another adult!”
“A fool,” one of the men opined. “When a child’s grown, he should still consider his elder’s words carefully, but that doesn’t mean he has to obey them if he doesn’t think them wise.”
“Odin had no business trying to give orders to another adult,” said another, and there was a general chorus of agreement.
“Odin was Thor’s father,” Alea reminded.
One of the younger mothers frowned at her. “Do you come from a land where the parents think they can go on bossing their children all their lives?”
Yes, Alea thought, remembering her neighbors but she remembered her own gentle parents, too, whom the neighbors scolded for not laying down the law to Alea, and how deeply she missed them now that they were dead. She choked back the tears and said only, “It was their custom.”