The Viking Witch Cozy Mysteries

Chapter 5-2

I nodded, wishing I had brought a notebook.

"So Fe is the first cow, what does that suggest to you?" he asked.

"Milk?" I guessed. "Wait, didn"t her milk make the Milky Way?"

"Yes, but forget Audhumbla for a moment. What does an ordinary cow represent to a family?"

My hands twitched. I was so much better at answering these sorts of questions if I could just let my mind go and draw, then look at my drawing later. But if I drew a family with their cow, or cows maybe, what would that mean?

"Wealth?" I said, very tentatively. "Milk and butter and cheese from one cow can keep a family alive. From a lot of cows, a family could make more than a living."

"And what can you do with money?" he asked.

"Spend it," I said. He just looked at me, and I realized he wanted me to say more. "Save it, I guess. Or invest it."

"And how do you get money in the first place?"

I was starting to warm up to this. "Earn it, like with a job, or inherit it. Like land."

"Or like cattle," he agreed, nodding. "The proper nature of money is to be always in motion. Earned or spent, saved or invested, but always moving through society. Through my hands or through yours. It"s like energy, always on the move."

"Okay," I said. "So cows are money."

"Not just money," he said with a little wave of his hand. "Money is only part of it. There is another thing that"s more important. Do you know the word hamingja?"

I had heard it, but I had never quite understood it. "Like karma?" I said lamely.

"Similar," he said. "But karma concerns just one soul. It extends across one"s previous life and current one and future ones, but still it"s just one soul. Hamingja is similar, but it"s like a soul that belongs to an entire family line."

"Like how my grandmother is a volva and I will be too one day?" I asked.

He made a little tipping motion of his head, and I knew he only partially agreed with that assessment. "It"s not the same as a calling, although sometimes that"s part of it. It"s more like luck, a luck you inherit based on the good and noble deeds of your ancestors. You inherit some amount, and you can either increase it throughout your life through good and noble deeds, or diminish it through weak or dishonorable ones. Then, when you die, whatever amount you possessed passes on to your descendants."

"I guess like money," I said. "If I inherit a fortune and squander it, there"s nothing left for my offspring."

"Or if you inherit nothing but amass a fortune, that is where they will start," Haraldr said.

"I"m not sure I like that idea," I said after thinking it over for a moment.

"Why not?" he asked, completely unoffended.

"Well, it doesn"t seem fair," I said. "I mean, life"s not fair, sure, but that seems particularly unfair. Some people are born luckier than others? I mean, weren"t they already lucky just to be born to lucky parents?"

particularly"Ah, you"re already getting it," he said with a wide smile. "Everything in life is easier when luck is on your side."

"But still," I said. "It feels like it should be spread around more equally." Although how I thought that was going to happen, I had no idea.

It wasn"t like I quite believed these gods were real. I knew the magic was, and I knew trolls were real, but Odin and Thor and the rest? It was a pretty big leap for my mind to make.

"If you don"t like what you started life out with, it"s within your power to change it," Haraldr said. "And when you do change it, you make life better for those that follow you. Of course you don"t really have to worry. Your family line is one of the strongest we know. Perhaps the strongest."

theI squirmed on my stool. Somehow, knowing the world was unfair, but I was benefiting from it just made me feel worse about everything.

"Isn"t there anything we can do about the people who are born unlucky?" I asked.

"They must do it themselves or it means nothing," Haraldr said. "A person born into such a family will have to understand how their low hamingja influences how others see them, certainly. But there is no reason for them to feel trapped by those circumstances. Our gods more than most love an underdog."

"I suppose," I said. It seemed best not to speak my earlier thought out loud, about not really believing in these gods as real. Although I was pretty sure Haraldr guessed it from how he was looking at me just then.

"Here," he said, getting up from his stool and going back to that cabinet. He put the leather pouch away, then scrounged around again until he had a stiff square of plain cardboard in his hand. He then went to the cold fireplace and jabbed a finger into the ash pile. Then he scrawled the Fe shape onto the card with that sooty fingertip before handing it to me. "Take this home. Meditate on it. See what you discover."

"I will," I promised, looking at the dark, gritty shape on the card. If I put it in my pocket, it would surely smear. I kept it in my hand.

"Oh, one word of warning," he said as he opened the door back out to the hallway. "This will be true with all the runes, so mark me well. We"ll progress through them one at a time, and as we go, you"ll learn how to bond with them more quickly and surely. But when you first start meditating on them, it"s not unusual to start seeing their shape everywhere in the world around you. This is a very positive rune, so you might not find that alarming, but keep it in mind for when we get to some of the others. This will just be your mind being too focused on one rune at the expense of all the others. It"s not a true omen of any sort."

"I"ll remember," I promised.

"I"m sure you will," he said, nodding as he spoke, but it felt like he was agreeing with himself. Like I was already out of his mind.

"When should I call again?" I asked.

"Hmm?" he looked up at me as if surprised to see me still standing there. I was about to repeat my question when he spoke again. "Oh, tomorrow morning will be fine. Meditate on that rune. And I"m sure you"ll dream about it, whether you want to or not. Then, in the morning, we"ll talk about your impressions."

Then he shut the library door before I could say another word.

I looked down at the card in my hands. I had gotten some vague homework assignments in my day, but this one just might take the cake. It almost made me miss my grandmother"s freestyling teaching.

Almost.

I held the card in my teeth while I got back into all my winter gear, then trudged home to see what I could do with a Fe rune.