“I didn’t, at first. I heard you laugh, and looked toward the sound. And there you were.”
“Ah. Of course. I shouldn’t have laughed. But you likened him to a crow, and I know what he thinks of them. And rightly, in my view, though the crows would disagree. Hmh! And you saw me! Well. Individuals differ, whether man or tomttu—or even the winged folk, in spite of all their hive mind. And you were able to come through a gate, after all. Assumin’ you’ve been truthful with us.”
Macurdy shrugged. “You two seem to trust each other. You just need to stretch your trust to include me.”
“Ah,” said Blue Wing, “but neither of us is human. And the tomttus’ experience is that humans are much less reliable.”
“Humans and ylver,” added the tomttu, “or so the stories have it. But humans are said to be more cruel.”
Well, Macurdy, Macurdy thought to himself, they’ve got us pegged.
For nearly two weeks, the three of them met each midday, Macurdy giving up his naps to talk with them. He learned a lot about the country, and about the language, for Blue Wing used big words, and both he and Maikel sometimes used long involved sentences. And both would pause to explain, when they lost his understanding.
The great ravens, Macurdy learned, were a sparse breed, gathering only in their rookeries to raise young. Their sole passion in life was knowledge. As far as Macurdy could learn, they didn’t use it for anything in particular. In a sense they were like crows, but instead of collecting shiny things or smooth round things, they collected odd bits of knowledge, with no real interest in what use they might be to them.
The tomttu, on the other hand, were essentially farmers and gardeners, and herders of miniature sheep. From time out of mind they’d lived almost entirely in dwarvish kingdoms, where mostly they were safe from human predation. The dwarves, in turn, traded with the tomttu for some of their foodstuffs.
Some tomttu got the wanderlust. Maikel was one. It wasn’t so much an urge to see new places, he said, though that was part of it. It was more a desire to be free of the strictures and formalities of Tomttu life, and learn new things. And any tomttu who’d reached puberty could pick a living in the forest from tubers and nuts, snails and slugs and tree frogs, seeds and fleshy roots. Their magic helped them find what they needed. Some such wanderers returned home in winter, this requiring a family willing to feed one who hadn’t worked. Otherwise one found a good den for winter, defended it by spells, stored as much food as he could before the weather turned bad, then slept a lot. Maikel was bound for his home in the Diamond Mountains, some thirty miles west. He’d been gone three years, and was ready to settle down.
From Maikel, Macurdy learned about dwarves and tomttus; and from Blue Wing, geography, humans, ylver and the Sisterhood. The viewpoint and evaluations were considerably different than a human’s would have been, but they were valuable, particularly the information that the Sisterhood now was lodged far to the east, in the Kingdom of the Dwarves in Silver Mountain. How this came to be, Blue Wing had no idea; his concepts of formal treaties, politics, and even commerce were rudimentary.
Each spoke of other creatures, as well. Macurdy learned there were jaguars, catamounts, wolves and bears in the forests. And rare but savage night-stalking trolls. Rarer yet were the great boars, large as cart ponies. Sixty stone or more, Maikel guessed; probably more. (Blue Wing’s notions of weight were vague and useless.) Maikel claimed to weigh about two stone, and judged Macurdy at fifteen, so Macurdy figured a stone would be roughly fifteen pounds.
According to that, a great boar would weigh half a ton They were uncannily clever, the two agreed, and had magic of their own. For men to succeed in killing one was unheard of. If one of the great boars became sufficiently offended by them, it could lay waste a farmstead, killing the livestock, destroying the fences, and rending whoever got in its way.