“Not on your life,” Barbara said, laughing at the woman’s constant change of character. “I most certainly would be the talk of Jackson, if I ever wore something like that. Even in private,” she added, somewhat bitterly.
“But we are all one in this struggle,” the man interjected. “Don’t take the occasional odd reactions to heart. We know that you are a fellow warrior and accept you as such. It’s simply hard for some of us to grok your presence here.”
“Grok?” Barb said. “I feel as if half the time you’re speaking an alien language!”
“Well,” Janea said, laughing. “In this case, he was. It’s from a science fiction novel called Stranger in a Strange Land…”
“That’s from the Bible,” Barbara said, frowning.
“Many of Heinlein’s titles were,” Hjalmar said.
“I won’t get into the story,” Janea continued. “But, to grok means to understand something so completely that it is part of you. Reading Stranger was one of the things that made it easy for me to become a dancer.”
“I was wondering about that,” Barb said.
“I could sense your shock when Sharice told you,” Janea said, nodding. “You hid it well but part of my power is understanding and reading emotions that aren’t visible. But… well…” She paused and tried to figure out how to explain to this nice “church lady” why she did what she did. “There are several reasons that I’m a dancer. I’ve never even decided which is the most important. One reason, and the easiest to explain, is that it’s supplementary income to the Foundation. We get paid when we’re on assignment, but only then. So everyone has to have a ‘day job’ except the real pros like Otillia and Hertha, who are so busy it’s not funny. And it needs to be a day job you can take time off or simply walk away from. I’m a top dancer at several major clubs. When I tell the club owners ‘I’m going away for a couple of weeks on another assignment’ they don’t blink. And they don’t give me any hassle when I turn back up. And the money’s very good. I pull in a grand pretty much every night I’m working and more, sometimes quite a bit more, on some nights.”
“That’s a lot of money, but…” Barbara said.
“You’re worried about my soul,” Janea said, smiling. “Asatru does not hold the same things as sin that the White God holds as sin. My patron, Freya, can be seen as another face of Ishtar/Hathor, the God Mother, Aphrodite/Venus if you will, the All-Woman and Mother of Fertility. She is my patron and through my use of my body to bring pleasure, I worship her.”
“Okay,” Barb said, cocking her head and frowning. “Now, that I have a hard time with.”
“But can you accept it?” Janea asked.
“For you, perhaps,” Barbara said thoughtfully, after a long pause. “Not for me.”
“Of course not,” Janea said, nodding seriously. “Your White God would be most angry with you if you chose my path. But my path worships my goddess. I not only dance, I am a very expensive call-girl; a priestess of Freya should be paid through the nose as a form of worship. Men come into my hands, angry, upset, mad at their wives, having difficulty at work. I soothe them, I placate them, I bring them joy and teach them to bring themselves joy, and I don’t mean with their hand but with their spirit. When men come away from me, they take a mystical memory, but no sense of bonding. This, too, my goddess gives to me. And they return to their lives, to their mates, with a better sense of balance in the world.”
“Wait,” Barb said, closing her eyes and raising one hand. “You have sex with married men?”
“Very few unmarried men can afford me,” Janea said, laughing. “I’m neither cheap nor easy, honey,” she added in a credible Mae West imitation. “I adore the kindness of strangers. But I assure you I have saved far more marriages than I have broken,” she continued, seriously. “And those that I broke, needed to be broken. Parasitical marriages with one partner sucking the life from the other like a leech or an ugly succubus. I remember one partner I had, an older gentleman and quite sweet. His wife had died and he married a much younger woman. She was sucking him dry, emotionally, and giving him nothing, not even her body, in return. He came to me, suggested by a friend who knew me. And when he went away he divorced the little tramp and sent her packing.”
“Okay,” Barbara said. “Now that I can… grok.”
“Men who come to me are either very rich and in marriages where neither partner is truly bonded to the other,” Janea said, “or simply well-to-do and in dire straits. They pay through the nose for my time and in turn I give them… healing and understanding of where their hurts center. It is my gift. It was a gift I first practiced because of the dictates in Stranger, and other Heinlein novels, trying to be a ‘Heinlein Girl.’ But later I came to an understanding of my place in the world, and of my goddess. This gave it a spiritual dimension that had been… limited if not entirely lacking. And, in turn, it led me to this place, at this time, to explain this to you, who would make a wonderful hetaera. But I hope you never do, for your White God would surely turn his face from you.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Barbara said, shrugging. “He is merciful beyond reason or understanding. However, my own… upbringing would never allow me to be so… open…”
“Wanton?” Janea said, pouting theatrically, arching her back and stretching. “Sens-you-ous?” she added, raising an eyebrow and writhing in the chair.
“I’ll stick with… open,” Barb replied, grinning. “I can arch with the best of them, sweetheart! But, within me, if I felt it to be a sin, that would damage my relationship with God. I have enough demons to contend with; I don’t need more.”
“We none of us do,” Hjalmar said, nodding. “But, remember, they are different for the different creeds. Wicca is not so much different from Christianity as they would like. It is a constructed religion. Well, all neopagan religions are constructed religions. But Wicca is very much a constructed religion and they know it. And it was constructed in a very Christian environment and many of the ‘evils’ in Wicca are Christian evils, evils that never would have mattered to, say, the druids that they harken back to. Their demons are much like yours, the fear of anger and so on and so forth. But for the Asatru,” he said, standing up and flexing, “power is our highest calling. We are not a slave religion. Fear is our demon. Death in battle, our eyes red and staring, in anger so great it is transcendent, this is our calling,” he boomed, his face hard. He closed his eyes, suddenly, and breathed deep and long, his jaw flexing, until finally he relaxed, sighing.
“Thus easily does a god take one once you become fully open to your channel,” he said, sitting down, shakily. “I simply opened a channel to my inner aggression, to show you the true nature of Asatru, and Frey took me. I think, to take a look at you. But his warrior anger was filling me, calling me to battle even in this place of peace. Someday,” he said, wistfully, quietly. “Someday I will be called to a hopeless battle and my god will fill me and I will berserk into mine enemies and be slain. Then shall I be taken up upon the arms of the Valkyrie and ride with them to Valhalla for all eternity…”