Read Online Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson by Greg Bear, Gardner Dozois - Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t leering at Alianna while he talked. Alianora sighed as she picked up a loaf of brown bread. It wasn’t of the freshest—not expecting company, she’d baked day before yesterday—but it would serve.
    She got out earthenware bowls, spoons shaped from horn, and one, for Holger today, of silver. That was another gift from Theodo, part of the family wealth and, even in these quiet times, a ward against werewolves. Not long ago, Holger had told of the one they’d tracked through Lourville, the town to the east. In those days, with the Middle World waxing strong, anyone even slightly susceptible to shapeshifting was likely to go were. Not so now. Still, silver kept virtues beyond value and beauty.
    One more taste. Alianora nodded again. “Yes, we’re ready,” she said to herself, and walked to the door. “Can we stop the yarns long enough to eat?”
    Trying to hold her sons back would have been harder. Stomachs with legs, that was what they were. Who was the king in fable who’d tried to hold back the tide? She couldn’t remember if that was Canute or Louis XIV. Whoever he was, he wouldn’t have had much luck with Einhard and Nithard, either.
    Holger raised an eyebrow when she handed him the silver spoon with his bowl. His forehead corrugated. Yes, the years had scored him, as they’d marked Alianora—as they marked everyone. “You’ve done well for yourselves,” he remarked: of course he’d understand what the precious metal meant.
    “Oh, tolerable. Tolerable,” Theodo said. He might be a smith, but he had a peasant’s dread of admitting success, much less boasting about it. You threw your luck away when you did anything so foolish.
    “Heh.” Holger’s single syllable said he understood that thinking down to the ground. He ladled porridge into the bowl and tore off a chunk of bread. Alianna had set out the honeypot beside the loaf. Holger grinned. “This is a feast!”
    “Pretty good, all right,” Einhard said. He was trying to eat and talk at the same time, and swallowed wrong.
    His father thumped him on the back till he quit coughing. “Greedy like a hog, you are,” Theodo said, but he couldn’t make himself sound as angry as he might have wanted to.
    Alianna said, “Sir Holger, you’ll have seen riches beside which a silver spoon will seem as nothing.”
    “If you own your wealth, that’s not so bad,” Holger answered with a shrug. “If it owns you, that’s not so good. I never had it in me to chase after gold or jewels or any of that nonsense. The treasure I was after—” He stopped short and upended his mug.
    A considerable silence followed. Alianora unhappily considered it. At last, picking his words with obvious care, Theodo said, “For whatever it may be worth to you, you have my sympathy.”
    “Sympathy? It’s worth its weight in gold,” Holger said. Theodo started to beam, then frowned a sudden, stormy frown instead. How much would a word weigh? But Holger held up his hand. “Peace, please. Just a smart-mouthed crack. I know your words were kindly meant.”
    After another, briefer, pause, Theodo dipped his head. “Aye, let it go.”
    “Thanks.” Holger ate a couple of more spoonsful of porridge. Then he said, perhaps as much to himself as to his companions, “It’s funny, you know, when you spend so long looking for somebody who’s all you ever wanted, and then you go and find her, and you see she’s already got everything she ever wanted, and it isn’t you.”
    A house, not one of the smallest and meanest in the village but not one of the finest, either? A garden plot? Chickens and ducks and pigs and a cow? Enough to eat, except at the end of the worst winters? Is this all I ever wanted? Alianora wondered.
    But that wasn’t what Holger was talking about, was it? A good, solid man with whom she’d made a life. Three children well on their way to turning into good, solid people themselves. A place where she belonged, where she fit in, if not perfectly, then