“Aye, speak with her, Morag,” Gorkin agreed, and the giant woman actually smiled with sympathy as she looked down at Alea.
“What do you hear in the wasteland, lass?” Then she lifted her gaze to Rokir and Jorak. “And what do they?”
Alea glanced back and saw the boys huddling together. Tall they might be, but nowhere nearly as tall or massive as these grown giants. She could see that all the nursery tales they’d been told of horrible titans crunching on children’s bones, and the horror stories they’d’ heard from returning soldiers about the savagery and cruelty of the Jotuns, were storming their minds.
“Come, lads, it’s not wartime, and we won’t hurt you,” the giant woman said kindly. “You’re more our kind than theirs now, anyway.”
The boys stared wide-eyed, horrified at the idea.
“They’ve told you lies about us, haven’t they?”
“A rain of lies,” Alea said, her voice hard.
All the giants glanced at her with approval. Then Morag turned back to Jorak and Rokir. “Were you cast out, then?”
“We … we were,” Jorak stammered.
“The cruelty of it, casting out their own children!” Morag let her anger show, but the boys cringed back, and she smoothed her face.
Gorkin and the others didn’t, though.
“We’re one of many patrols who scour this no-man’s-land watching for Midgarder raiders and for outcasts like yourselves.” Morag glanced at Alea as she said it, including her in the term. “If you’re big enough, we take you home to grow up among your own kind.”
“But we’re not…” Rokir caught himself and gulped, his eyes filling.
“Nay, you are,” Morag said, all sympathy. “How old are you? Thirteen? Fourteen? You’ve a great deal of growing before you, my lads, and you’re giants for sure—but I warrant you’ll find us kinder than your own folk.” She spread her arms. “Come to us, then, and you’ll find you’ve a home once more!”
The boys stared, wavering.
Alea realized they needed a bit of encouragement. She let the envy show in her voice. “You lucky, lucky lads! A real home and a kind one, and you young enough to grow into it! Oh, if I had your chance, I’d sip every drop of it!”
That was all they needed, approval from a Midgarder. They both stumbled forward into Morag’s arms and let themselves lean against her. She folded her arms about them, saying, “Now, then, the nightmare’s over, you’ve waked into a hug, and you’ll always have folk who care about you for the rest of your lives!” She went on with other soothing murmurs, and little by little, the boys let themselves go limp. Alea heard a choking gasp from one, and knew they were letting the tears brim over as the fright and the horror sank down.
She looked up at Gorkin, her face hard, guarded. “Did I guess right? Is there no such chance for me?”
Gorkin’s gaze was all pity as he shook his head. “No, lass, I’m afraid you guessed right. How old are you? Twenty-five? Thirty?”
“Twenty-eight,” Alea said through stiff lips.
“Aye, that’s what I feared,” Gorkin said sadly. “You’ve grown all you’re likely to, and you’ll never be big enough to call a Jotun. You’re only a Midgarder to us, lass, like all the others.”
“But the Midgarders made me a slave because I was too big to be one of them!” Alea cried. “They beat me for every mistake and … and did worse things to me! I tried to submit, I tried not to protest or fight back, but I couldn’t help myself, and they beat me all the harder for it. I tried to accept my fate, to submit to the lot the Norns had spun me, to give myself to the weird that had found me, but I couldn’t help my anger at the injustice of it! I fled, I escaped, I ran, and I’m sure they’re on my trail with their hounds and their whips! Please, can’t you hide me?”
Morag’s face reflected every ounce of Alea’s pain, but she only said to the boys, quite severely, “Don’t you ever treat a woman like that! Giant, Midgarder, or dwarf, no lass should ever have to fear a man’s attentions! I’d be ashamed of you forever if you did!”
They both gulped and looked up wide-eyed, shaking their heads, but Jorak gave a guilty glance at Alea. She seethed, and the anger and hurt almost made her blurt out what they had tried to do—but they’d backed off when she rebuked them, and she couldn’t find it in her heart to take away from them the sanctuary for which she herself longed. She only said to Gorkin, “It’s not right!”
“It is not your weird,” he countered. “It doesn’t find you, lass—you find it. You must read your weird, and if it’s not to be a meek slave among the Midgarders, then that’s not what the Norns have spun for you. You were right to run—but we’re not your weird either. You must keep seeking until you find it.”
“But what if the Midgarders find me first?”
“Then escape again, and again and again as long as there’s breath in your body,” Gorkin told her. “Never give in, never give up!”
“Where am I to go?” Alea cried, near tears. “The real people make me their slave and their whore, and you won’t take me in! Where could I go?”
“We are real people, too.” Gorkin’s voice was very gentle again. He smiled at her shocked stare. “Aye, that surprises you, doesn’t it? But there’s not a giant alive whose grandmother or grandfather or ancestor somewhere wasn’t a Midgarder, lass, an ordinary person like any of them. How could their children be any less real? Nay, we have sorrows and joys like any of you, angers and delights, loves and hates, all of them, and we worship the same gods as the Midgarders and try to hold back the worst of our angers and hatreds. Oh, we’re real people too, right enough.”
Alea could only stare, stunned by the revelation. All the horror stories of her childhood seemed to echo inside her head, all lies, lies!
“But we can’t take you in, you see,” Gorkin said sadly. “You’ve said yourself that they didn’t cast you out—that you ran away, as you should have. You can see, though, that we can’t be sure you’re not a spy, that you might not slay your host in her bed and creep out to open the gates at night and let in a host of Midgarders to slay us all.” He raised a palm to forestall her protest. “No, I don’t accuse you of that, and I don’t really believe it for a second—but I can’t be sure, you see, and it’s possible.”
Alea couldn’t hold the tears in any longer; they began to trickle down her cheeks.
“Och, I’m sorry, lass,” Morag said, as though her heart were breaking. “If you’d been born to a pair of us, it would have been a different matter, but they’re the only small folk we can allow among us. If we let more Midgarders in, the day would come when there would be more of them than there would be of us—and you may be sure there would be spies among them. Oh, one or two of your folk might come among us and be glad and grateful, but if there were a hundred, the old fear and hatred of their cradle-songs and granny-stories would come boiling up, and we’d find ourselves fighting for our lives in our own towns. Nay, much though it grieves me, we can’t take you in!”
“We can wish you well, though,” Gorkin said, as kindly as he could. “Here, we can leave you drink, at least.” He took his aleskin from his belt and laid it on the road, then straightened and turned away. “Fare you well—and may the gods smile on you.”
“Fare you well.” Morag’s voice was thick with tears. “Here, take something to defend yourself!” She laid her belt knife by the wallet and aleskin, then turned away too, arms still around Jorak and Rokir. Jorak looked back, eyes swollen. “Goodbye—and thank you. I wish I could stay to keep you company, but I can’t, if I’m going with them.”