The admiration flashed in his eyes—almost, she would have thought, worship. Then it was gone, masked, but only masked, she knew it was there, would always be there, and she sat shaken to the core, even though there had been nothing of desire in it.
“I don’t know you well enough to guess your weird,” he told her, “but I do think you have the courage and strength to try to move the world, if you had a lever long enough with a place to rest it—and the Norns have led you to a man who is considering doing just that.”
“What?” Alea asked, aghast. “Moving the world?”
“Changing it, at least,” Gar said, “changing it to a world of peace, in which no one will be allowed to debase another human being as these Wentods tried to debase you.” His eyes gleamed with admiration again, though he managed to mute it. “They would have failed, you know. No matter how long and how hard they tried, they would never have managed to break your spirit. You are too courageous, too determined—and, way down deep, you still respect yourself too highly.” Alea stared at him, feeling the blood drain from her face. “I’m not like that,” she whispered, “not like that at all. I’m only a woman.”
“What do you mean, ‘only’?” Gar asked, with a wry smile. “Every woman moves the world a fraction when she bears and rears strong children—and every woman has access to a depth of timeless power that men can only dream of, the power of the void, from which women bring forth Life.” Alea found reason for indignation; it gave her a hold on herself again. “Not all women are witches!”
“No, but all women are magical.” For a moment, Gar smiled into space, reminiscent, and Alea felt a stab of jealousy. She scolded herself for it on the instant—it was no concern of hers, which women he had enjoyed! She had no interest in him at all, other than as an aid to survival!
Then his gaze returned to her, and he became grave again. “There have been women who have changed the world far more directly, and as greatly as any man. When you say that you could not submit to degradation, you are also saying that you have integrity and strength of character. No one of such courage should have to submit to such exploitation. No one of any kind should.”
Her heart fluttered, but she hid it with a jibe. “Would that be part of this new world your peace would bring us?”
“I certainly hope so,” Gar replied.
She was startled by the notion, then regarded him narrowly. “You can’t change the whole world overnight, you know.”
“No, but I can make a start,” Gar told her, “though it will probably take a lifetime. Offhand, it seems to me that the dwarves, giants, and slaves have common cause.”
Alea frowned. “How so?” Then she stared. “You mean they all hate the Midgarders? No!”
“You don’t hate them?” Gar asked evenly.
“Well … yes, for what they’ve done to me, and more for what they would have done if I hadn’t run, or if they catch me,” Alea said slowly. “But as a giant would hate them? My own people? No!” However, she remembered how gentle, almost sympathetic, the giants had been to her, and felt a qualm of guilt.
“What of those who haven’t escaped?” Gar asked. “What of those who have been caught and brought back?”
“After the way they’ve been punished, they won’t have spirit enough left to hate anybody.” Alea shuddered at the thought of the lifelong punishments that awaited her if she were caught, then turned her mind away from the worst of them. She wouldn’t remember that, she would not! “Anyway, what matter if they did all hate the Normals? What good would it do?”
“Yes, what good,” Gar mused. “That is the question, isn’t it? After all, it’s one thing to hate, and another to do something about it.”
Alea looked up, shocked. “Do something about it? What?”
“Make a change, of course.” Gar smiled. “But for that, the dwarves, giants, and slaves will have to join together.”
“That’s impossible,” she said flatly. “How can they league when they’re leagues apart? The giants are in Jotunheim, to the west of Midgard, and, the dwarves are in Nibelheim, hundreds of miles to the east! The slaves are in between, sprinkled throughout Midgard, seldom out of hearing of their masters! How could the three nations even talk to one another? Besides, they wouldn’t if they could, for they fear and hate one another too much for any but the harshest speech.”
“There’s always a way.” Gar smiled as though he already knew of one, though he only said, “I have to admit I don’t know what it is yet, but there’s always a way to set people talking.”
“How can you say that when you don’t even know these people?” Alea cried.
“I can say it because I don’t know them,” Gar replied. “I’ll have to learn much more about them before I’m willing to admit there’s no way to set up dialogues between them—and I suspect that once I do know them, I’ll be able to think of a way to induce them to band together.”
Exasperated, she scoffed, “You think you can do anything you want, don’t you?”
Gar turned grave. “No. There are many, many things I can’t do, and I know it. They’re the things that ordinary people do every day and don’t even think about. Sometimes they don’t even realize how much satisfaction those mundane, common things give them.”
Alea stared at him, at the sudden bleakness of his face, and felt the guilt rise, and with it a surge of tenderness that surprised her, a yearning to fill that inner void that she suddenly sensed in him, to comfort this huge, capable man who seemed all at once to be powerless, defenseless, tossed about by the gales of chance.
But that sudden rush of feeling scared her, shocked her; she forced her heart to hardness, so that it wouldn’t be hurt. “If I can’t do those everyday, human things, though,” Gar told her, “I’ll do the odd things I can—and some of them are very odd indeed.”
Fear of her own tide of feeling made Alea’s voice harsh. “How will you do them?”
“I won’t know until I’ve talked with people of all three nations,” Gar said.
“What then?” Alea challenged him. “Even if you can make them talk with one another, what can you do?”
“Yes, that is the question, isn’t it?” Gar stood up, shouldering his pack. “After all, there’s no point in trying to make a change if you don’t know what change you want to make, is there?”
Alea stood up too. “What change do you mean?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Gar told her, “to ask them. Let’s find a dwarf, shall we?”
One morning when they pitched camp, Alea frowned up at the graying sky and said, “It feels as though we’ve only been walking half the night—but we’ve been hiking northward for six weeks now, and the nights should be growing longer again.”
“Nights become shorter as you go farther north,” Gar told her. “We’ve come more than three hundred miles, so we’ve lost an hour or two of darkness.”
Alea transferred her frown to his. “You must have traveled a great deal, to know that.” Envy sharpen her tone.
“Oh, yes,” Gar said, intent on the fire he was lighting. “A very great deal.”
The tilt of his head couldn’t hide the bleakness in his face, and Alea’s heart went out to him as she realized the cause of his traveling. What could have happened to make so huge a man lose his home?
Any number of things. She had begun to realize just how ingenious people could be when it came to meanness and cruelty. She spoke a bit more gently. “If we’ve lost darkness, at least we’ve lost people, too. It’s been ten days since we’ve seen a Midgarder band, and eight since we’ve seen a giant.”
He had been fishing in a stream, quietly and alone, but they had heard a deep voice from a nearby grove calling in a mother’s tones, with a lighter voice, a mere baritone, answering. Even so, Gar and Alea had stepped farther back into the shadows of the trees before they moved past, as silently as they could.