A Wizard in Midgard

3

Alea was just managing to begin to drowse when a crow of triumph jolted her awake, and the tree shook. She grabbed at the limb to her right in a panic, then remembered that she had tied herself to the trunk and couldn’t fall.

“Come down, my pretty!” a hoarse voice called, and the tree shook again.

Looking down, Alea saw two boys standing by the trunk and joining their strength to shake it.

“Come down and play!” one of them called. “Rokir and I are tired of our own games!”

Their games hadn’t been much fun, from the look of them. They were gaunt from short rations and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep.

“Pretty legs, Jorak!” Rokir said. “How would they feel?” His voice broke on the last word. Judging by the sound and by their pimples, they weren’t very far into adolescence. Alea tucked her skirts tight to hide her legs from below, trying to ignore the panic that hammered in her breast as she examined them more closely. As ordinary boys, they would have seemed well-proportioned and muscular, but as young giants, they were gangly and scrawny—and giants they were, for their heads reached above the branch she had had to jump to catch on her way up. That made them eight feet tall or more, definitely giants, but with a foot or two of growth yet to come.

“Pretty indeed!” Rokir answered. “I’ll touch and see!” He swung himself up on a limb—and it broke, spilling him to the ground.

Jorak guffawed. “You can’t go climbing as you used to, Rokir! It takes grandfathers of trees to hold us now!”

“All right, so I’ve a lot to learn.” Rokir scrambled to his feet, red-faced. “So have you, Jorak!”

They hadn’t been raised as giants, then, for if they had, they would have known what size of trees they could climb, and which were too small for their weight. That meant they were Midgarders, boys who had been cast out of their villages for being too tall, obviously on their way to becoming giants. In spite of her fright, Alea felt a rush of sympathy for them, even tenderness, for she was twice their age at least, and had just learned what they had learned—that the self-righteousness of the Midgarders hid an unbelievable intensity of cruelty. She wished she couldn’t believe it.

Then the boys shook the tree again. She hugged the branch to hold herself upright, but her skirts fell loose once more. Rokir whistled with an admiration that held a mocking echo, Jorak leered up at her, and the sympathy drowned under a flood of fear. Alea knew the sound, knew the expression, and was determined never to let a man catch her again, even if he was a fuzz-checked boy.

An eight-foot-tall, three-hundred-fifty-pound boy.

“Come down, pretty!” Jorak called. “Or I’ll shake you down!”

“You?” Rokir scoffed. “You wouldn’t know what to do with her if you had her!”

“Just what I’ve done before!” But Jorak’s voice struck an echo of uncertainty. “What would you know about it anyway, pie-face?”

“I’ll show you, as soon as she falls into our arms!” Rokir said with some heat—too much heat, Alea thought; it struck a false note.

Then the tree lashed about so wildly that Alea cried out, hugging the limb to her right, afraid the trunk would snap—but it didn’t. She thought frantically. If they had to egg each other on with jibes and insults, that meant they were really reluctant to try to grapple her…

“Do it like a whip! ”Jorak called. “One … two … three…” The tree abruptly lashed back, breaking Alea’s hold and spilling her off the limb. She cried out in panic, a cry that was choked off as her rope caught her with a painful pinch on the stomach. Her makeshift staff fell clattering, and its tether jerked painfully against her wrist. She dangled, kicking and flailing, trying desperately to get back on her perch.

“She tied herself on!” Jorak called in disappointment. “But what a pretty fruit she makes, doesn’t she, Rokir?”

“She does that.” Rokir was working hard to sound gloating, as he’d probably heard older boys do. “Let’s pluck that tasty plum!”

“How, if the branches won’t hold us?” Jorak said, then brightened. “Come to think of it, she’s not all that high up! Give me a boost, Jorak, and I’ll have her down!”

Alea pulled her staff up quickly, before they could think to pull on it. She held it in both hands, ready to strike and wishing she’d learned how to do it right.

“So, she’ll give us a drubbing!” Rokir hooted. “Not much good that’ll do her! Come on, Jorak, make a step.”

“Wish I’d thought of it first.” By his tone, Jorak was glad he hadn’t. He cupped his hands, and Rokir stepped into them, steadied himself on a limb, and climbed up to Jorak’s shoulders, where he reached up and snatched at Alea’s ankle. She jerked it out of reach and chopped at his knuckles with her staff. He yanked his hand out of the way in the nick of time, grinning. “So our plum has a thorny stem! But you can’t hit me when you’re swinging about like that, pretty plumkin!”

The rope was biting into Alea’s midriff so hard she could scarcely breathe, but the thought of falling into the boys’ hands galvanized her with fear. “I’ll learn,” she promised Rokir.

“It talks!” Rokir crowed. “Did you hear that, Jorak?”

“I heard,” Jorak grunted. “Hurry up and get her down! I can’t take your weight much longer!”

“Bear up,” Rokir told him. “Life’s gone sour, so I need something sweet.”

Alea’s thoughts raced. Their big talk showed that they feared sex as they desired it, shying from the unknown as much as craving the ecstasy, promised by the gossip of the older boys. If they hadn’t been hiding such reluctance, she probably would have been their victim already, even though she was high above them and armed with her staff. If they were still virgins, and as filled with misgivings as with eagerness, she should be able to talk them out of it.

“There’s no fun in taking what’s not given,” she told the boys. “I’ve seen it, and I know.”

“Seen it?” The boys stared, and she could see in their eyes that they were wondering if she had watched, or been part of it.

“Well, unless you enjoy hearing people scream,” Alea told them. “If you’re the kind of boy who thinks it’s fun to torture little furry animals, maybe you would think it’s fun.” She shuddered as she said it, remembering.

Rokir jumped down, wide-eyed and taken aback. Jorak groaned with relief, rubbing his shoulders, then grinned up at Alea. “Come on! You know you’d love it! All women do!”

“No we don’t,” Alea said sharply—or as sharply as she could with the rope digging into her. She caught as much of a breath as she could and told him, “Women hate being forced, young man. If we could get revenge on a man, we would—the very worst revenge we could take, I promise you!” She said it with such vehemence that both boys recoiled. Jorak’s eyes wide with surprise and apprehension: “But … but the big boys said…”

“They said what they thought others expected to hear!” Alea snapped. “Have you asked a woman? Believe me, even if we’re willing, there are precious few men who are good enough lovers to make it much of a pleasure to us!”

“You’re lying!” Rokir protested. “Everyone knows it’s fun, that the pleasure just happens!”

“It takes patience and skill,” Alea contradicted, “and that means years of learning—not that I’d have a chance to know!” The bitterness in her voice surprised even herself—not that it should have. That bitterness made the boys recoil again, though, wide-eyed and with guilt shadowing their faces.

Alea throttled back her anger—if they could feel badly about what they’d tried to do, they were good boys underneath. If she could reach that goodness …

“It’s true, lads,” she said, more gently. “Ask any woman. In fact, ask as many women as you can. You might do it well when you get the chance, that way.”

The boys glanced at each other, then looked away. Rokir sent a quick look at Alea, but couldn’t hold it and looked down at his toes.

“You can come down, then,” Jorak said gruffly. “We won’t hurt you.”

“Come down?” Alea couldn’t help smiling. “That’ll take a bit of work. Turn away, please.”

Jorak frowned. “Why?”

“Because I’m going to have to kick high to get a leg over that branch, if I’m going to get back up on it—and I have to, I can’t just untie myself while I’m hanging.”

The glint came back into Rokir’s eye, though it was faint. “Why should we turn away for that?”

“Would you want me looking up at you if you didn’t have your leggins on?” Alea asked, and at the looks of horror and embarrassment that crossed their faces, “No, I thought not. Be good lads, now, and turn away for a minute or two.”

Shame-faced, they shuffled around to face away from the tree.

Alea kicked high and managed to get a leg back up on the limb—she’d been hanging right next to it, after all. She managed to swing herself up, blessing her tomboy days, and clawed her way up the trunk until she was sitting again. She hugged the trunk, arms tense while the rest of her went limp with relief.

But she couldn’t afford to let the boys see her weakness. She pulled herself together, swung both feet up on the limb, and tucked her skirts around her. “All right, you can turn back now.”

They turned, then stared. “But you’re still up there!”

“I’ll come down when I’m feeling strong enough,” Alea told them. “Hanging from a tree wasn’t the worst fright I’ve ever had, but it was bad enough.”

“Why?” Rokir frowned, really not understanding. “Because the rope could have broken, or the knot could have worked loose,” Alea said, her tone tart, “and you two ungainly louts might not have been able to catch me!” Worse, they might have.

They winced at the rebuke, and she was instantly sorry. “I don’t really mean to be sharp, lads.” She mustn’t call them boys, not when they were beginning to think they were men. “It’s just that you gave me a bad scare.”

“I know,” Jorak said, surly but looking at the ground.

“You can come down,” Rokir told her. “We’ll be good.”

“I will, lads, when my heart slows down.” Alea knew that she would have to take the chance—you have to keep promises made to children, or they lose all faith in other people. The thought gave her a glow of strength. She was an adult, after all, and if they’d lived in the same village and she’d been their neighbor, these boys might have been put in her care now and again, only a year or two ago. They were children still, no matter their size. Boys that age still looked to their mothers for reassurance, though they didn’t like to admit it, and therefore to most older women, too—at least, if they’d had good mothers, and she guessed these two had. It must have been a cruel wrench indeed to have their own parents turn them out of the house—though she suspected the village had turned them out and shouted down the mothers’ weeping. “Are you both from the same village, lads?”

“Huh?”Jorak asked, surprised by the change of topic. Rokir, quicker to catch up, said, “No. We never met until a week ago.”

“Odd how strangers can become friends so quickly, isn’t it?” Alea asked, and added mentally, Especially when they’re lost and lonely, feeling their lives are ended. “I fled my village only two days ago.”

“Fled?” The boys stared, astounded that anyone could actually want to leave home.

“Ran away, yes.” Alea’s tone hardened again. “My parents died, and no boy had come courting because I was too tall. The baron’s man told the Council to take my parents’ house and lands and goods and give them to someone else, and give them me into the bargain.”

A sick look crept over the boys’ faces. They’d seen such things happen before and joined in the vindictive cries that the victim deserved it, for being suspiciously like a giant or a dwarf. It didn’t look so right and just now, though.

Rokir tried for bravado. “At least they didn’t cast you out for being a giant!”

“I’d rather they had,” Alea said, her tone grim. “Do you have any idea what people do to slaves? Or try to—especially women.”

The boys winced and looked at the ground, sullen again. They had heard, well enough. Jorak muttered, “There are good masters.”

“There are,” Alea agreed. “Mine weren’t among them. The baron’s man gave me to a family that had always hated my parents.”

Rokir shuddered at that, and Jorak grudgingly admitted, “No wonder you ran.”

“No wonder,” Alea echoed grimly.

“You can come down, miss,” Rokir told her. “We wouldn’t hurt someone who’s been through as bad as we have.”

“At least you realize it would have been hurting.” Alea frowned at a sudden doubt. “You do realize that, don’t you?”

“I’ve heard screams from houses where they kept slaves,” Rokir admitted. “I should have guessed.”

“We didn’t know you’d been a slave.” Jorak’s eyes were still downcast. “Thought you were one of them wild women they talk about.”

“Wild or not, it would have hurt just the same.” Alea still eyed them warily. “Do you promise?”

“Cross my heart.” Jorak actually drew an X over the left side of his chest.

Alea’s heart went out to them in spite of what they’d tried to do—or tried to work themselves into doing. They were still children inside, after all, and children who had been heart hurt very badly. But they were growing up fast.

She had to help them grow up right. “Very well, I’ll come down. Turn your backs again.”

The boys did, and Alea climbed down, staff still dangling from her wrist-she wasn’t about to let it go. She dropped from the lowest limb. “All right, you can look.”

The boys turned around as she slipped the loop off her wrist and leaned on the staff to look up at them. Heavens, they seemed huge! Almost two feet taller than she was, and already hulking with muscle. “You’ll have to learn to stand very straight,” she said automatically. “You don’t want to grow up hunching over.”

The boys straightened up on the instant, but Jorak frowned. “Who made you our mother?”

Something in Alea cringed at the thought, but she answered gamely, “It’s just that I’ve been down the road ahead of you, my lad. A girl as tall as I am starts hunching her shoulders forward and stooping a bit, so people don’t see how high she stands. My mother stopped me from that, or I’d be a hunchback by now. Stand straight! Stand tall! Be proud of your inches!”

“Proud?”Jorak stared, confounded.

“Proud!” Alea declared. “Half the reason they threw you out was jealousy, you know, and the other half was fear. They wished they could be as tall as you, and were afraid what you might do to your enemies when you were grown. What you are is grand, and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise!”

“She speaks truth,” rumbled a deep voice behind her. “I’ve never heard a Midgarder speak so honestly.”

Alea whirled in alarm and stared up—and up, and up. She’d thought the boys were huge, but she hadn’t known what size was. The giant towered four feet above her head and was so wide he seemed to fill the whole world. He wore the same tunic and leggins as the men of Midgard, with leather armor sewn with rings and plates. But there was so much of it! She wondered dizzily how many cows had gone to make his hauberk, how many sheep had been shorn to make his clothes.

“Nay, don’t be frightened, lass,” the giant said, his voice oddly gentle. “We’ll not hurt you.”

We? Alea glanced around him and saw half a dozen more, one or two even bigger than he! But the strands of gray in his hair showed him to be the oldest and most experienced, so it was he who spoke for them all.

Alea stood her ground, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin in defiance so the giants wouldn’t see the fear inside her. If Midgard women went to battle, she might have seen one of these behemoths before, but since they only went as nurses, half a mile behind the fighting, she never had.

“I’d best talk to her, Gorkin,” a lighter rumble of a voice said, and a shorter giant stepped up beside the leader. Alea took in the long hair flowing out from beneath the iron cap, the huge steel cups sewn to the leather of her armor, and realized with a shock that this second giant was a woman! She was scandalized—how dare the giants risk their women in battle? But hard on its heels came envy—this huge woman could share in the glory of war and had been trained to face its dangers. Most importantly of all, she could defend herself against attack! Alea wished sorely for some of that training now, when she had to face the world alone.

“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.”

“No, you go!” Alea cried, though the tears flowed freely now. “I’d hate myself forever if you lost your true chance because of my selfishness! Go, Jorak, and the gods smile on you!”

She turned away then, and managed to hold back the worst until a glance over her shoulder showed her that the giants had gone out of sight through the trees. Then she dropped down on the road and wept and wept, wondering if her heart would break—and wishing that it would.