He opened the trunk and began filling his pockets with gold. After a moment he stopped, looked curiously at Tyr, and said, “Well? Aren’t you going to try and stop me, like you always do?”
“No,” said Tyr. “They are.”
He cocked a thumb at Jón’s window.
“Who?” said Jón, and he looked out to see Blood-Axe and Bjarni Bjarnason at his gate, talking with several of his bodyguards. “What are they doing here?”
“It looks as if they’re giving instructions,” said Tyr.
“By what authority!” said Jón. “Those are my bodyguards!”
Out the window he saw Bjarni hand each of them a purse of coins. The bodyguards were nodding.
“Not anymore,” said Tyr.
“Nonsense!” said Jón. “I’ll pay them twice as much! I’m the richest man in Iceland, after all!”
“That may be, but you have no power.”
“Yes I have!” Jón shouted. “I’ll buy an army and flatten this whole rotten town!”
He kicked over his dressing stand and punched the wall, then stood quietly for a time, massaging his hurt knuckles and watching out the window. The guards had let Blood-Axe through the gate, and now he was leading them toward the house.
Tyr laid a hand gently on Jón’s shoulder. “You’re a prisoner,” he said. “A very wealthy prisoner, but a prisoner nonetheless. And you’ll have to do as you’re told.”
Slowly, Jón raised his eyes from the floor and looked at him. “Why have you come here tonight?” he said. “To watch the seeds of misery you sowed blossom? Well, I hope you’re enjoying your handiwork. Three times I tried to quit, and three times you refused to let me — and now look what’s happened!”
“I didn’t force you to do anything. And I don’t take any pleasure from your misfortune, Jón Jónsson, I truly don’t.”
“Then why are you here?” Jón demanded.
“I thought perhaps there’s something you’d want to give me.”
“Yes, a fat lip!” said Jón, and he swung his fist at Tyr.
Tyr dodged it easily—casually, even—then smiled. “No, something else.”
Jón stared at him blankly for a moment, then realized what Tyr meant.
“The boxes.”
“Yes.”
There was a loud bang on the bedroom door. “Jón Jónsson!” shouted Blood-Axe from the hall. “Come out at once. I want to talk with you!”
In a sudden rush, Jón dove under his bed and pulled out the obsidian boxes. “Without these, I’m of no use at all!” he said. “They can’t force me to do anything!”
“Precisely,” said Tyr.
“Will you keep them safe for me?” Jón asked him.
“Have no doubt,” Tyr said.
There was more banging at the door. “Don’t make me break it down, Jón Jónsson!”
“Then take them,” said Jón, pressing the boxes into Tyr’s hands.
“What about your gold?” said Tyr. “When they find out you don’t have their sunlight, they’ll surely confiscate it. Perhaps I should keep that safe for you, too.”
“But how will you carry it?” said Jón.
“Let me worry about that,” said Tyr.
“That’s it, Jón, I warned you!” shouted Blood-Axe, and there was a thud as the door shuddered in its frame.
“All right, just hurry!” Jón said to Tyr.
Tyr took off his gray cloak and threw it over the chest of gold. “Good-bye, Jón Jónsson!” he said with a smile, and then he, the chest of gold, and the obsidian boxes all disappeared in a great puff of smoke.
A moment later, the door came flying off its hinges.
Blood-Axe stumbled into the room with two guards.
“Thank goodness you’re still here!” said Blood-Axe. “This man overheard you threatening to leave town!”
“Arrest me if you will, Blood-Axe, it won’t make any difference,” said Jón. “You’ll never get another ray of my sunlight!”
“Why should I arrest you?” said Blood-Axe. “I just want to talk. Not that you’re an easy man to talk to—I had to bribe your guards just to let me through the gate!”
“Well? What do you want?” said Jón.
“After you stormed out of the meeting, we had a change of heart,” said Blood-Axe. “It was wrong of us to ask you to shoulder all the burden, Jón Jónsson, and we’re ready to compromise.”
“What? You mean . . . you’re not making me your prisoner?”
“Are you feeling all right, friend? Where are you getting these outlandish ideas?”
In a flush of panic, Jón excused himself and ran out of the house to search for Tyr. All that night and the next day, he looked everywhere—every inch of the town, behind every rock in the lava field, even in the distant highlands—but the strange man was nowhere to be found. Jón realized he’d been had. Tyr had lied to him, and now both his fortune and the boxes that had helped him make it were gone.
Jón knew he could never show his face in Egilsstaðir again. He snuck away in the dead of night, disgraced and humiliated, with only his horse and the gold he had stuffed in his pockets.
He rode and rode, crossing the whole frozen country, until he arrived in the valley where he’d grown up.
No one recognized him. He told them his name was Einar Eriksson. Using the gold he had left, he bought back the house his parents had built, and there he stayed for the rest of his days, earning his living as a shoemaker. He never again used his talent.
The town Jón Jónsson left behind was forever changed. Two days after he left, the last rays of sun over Egilsstaðir petered out, and the whole populace, rich and poor alike, were cast into darkness. They had not even the light of the moon to help them see, and when they eventually ran out of torches and candles and firewood, they had no way of seeing at all, and wandered the streets calling “Hey! Watch out!” and feeling blindly with their hands. No one could tell poor from rich any longer, and the townspeople were forced to band together in order to survive. Everyone in jail was pardoned. When they slept, the whole town crammed into the town hall so that their combined warmth kept them from freezing. Weeks later, when the sun appeared above the horizon at last, the people of Egilsstaðir had forgiven one another and agreed never to speak of Jón Jónsson or his cursed sunlight ever again.
That summer a crew of workers were clearing a road through the lava field when they happened upon three strange, black boxes hidden beneath a boulder. Curious, they opened them, and the heat that poured forth melted the men into puddles and spilled so much light into the sky that the sun did not set in the north of Iceland for the rest of June and much of July—nor the next summer, nor the next, and so it remains to this day. So it was Jón Jónsson, you see, who took the winter’s sun and gave it to the summer.
Near the end of Jón Jónsson’s life, when he was a very old man, Tyr appeared to him again.
Jón was nearly blind by this time and did not recognize him.
“Are you Jón Jónsson?” asked Tyr.
“I haven’t gone by that name in many years,” Jón said. “And who might you be?”
“Why, it’s your old friend, Tyr!” he said. “I have something for you!”
“I’m not interested,” said Jón.
“Even if it might make you very rich?”
“Especially if it might make me rich,” said Jón.
“Don’t be daft!” said Tyr. “I owe you a debt, Jón Jónsson. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the gold I said I’d keep for you.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” said Jón. “The debt is forgiven.”
The moment he spoke those words, Tyr disappeared in a puff of smoke. Jón never saw him again, and he lived the rest of his days a free and happy man.