The proper value of things

“Sweet,” he said.

Farvid, his uncle and - if father only approved - mentor-to-be, smiled, his eyes a-glitter. “It isn’t called sweetleaf for nothing. Anything else?”

The meadow was humming with life before them, basking in a lazy summer sun. The air was heady with the alluring scent of flowers and the richness of warm soil. A legion of birds filled it with a many-voiced choral - hymns of joy to human ears, ferocious challenges for dominion to their own. 

Glim had his tunic undone, for even in the cool of the shadow of a stately maple, the day was warm. Farvid, on the other hand, was fully clothed, used as he was to another climate. The boy took another leaf, chewed it and rolled it around with his tongue, frowning.

“It’s also… well, not sour, but…”

“A little tart, perhaps?” Farvid supplied.

“Tart…” Glim tasted the word beside the leaf. “Yes, that’s it.”

“And does the tartness make it more or less sweet?”

The boy drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, as much a sigh at the neverending questions as to focus on the tastes. Then he took a third leaf, rolling it slightly in his fingers and feeling the gentle coarseness of it softening before putting it in his mouth.

“Maybe a little less,” he concluded.

“Very good. Now, I’d say you can taste still something more?”

Now his mouth was full enough of the taste that he needn’t take another leaf to tell.

“Green,” he said, then at Farvid’s raised eyebrow added. "I mean like grass smells, not like it looks. And before you ask, it does nothing to the sweetness.”

“Excellent,” Farvid noted, “So, if the tartness had not been there, how sweet would you say it was, if the sweetest you can imagine is a thousand?”

“The sweetest is a thousand?” Glim asked, non-plussed.

“Imagine,” Farvid continued, obviously prepared for the question, “that you take the honey jar and upend it over your mouth until it’s full. Then you keep it in your mouth for a minute. Can you imagine anything sweeter than that?”

The boy thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“So that sweetness is a thousand. Now where does that put the sweetness of the leaf?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Glim asked, vexed.

“You’re not supposed to know,” Farvid countered, “but to decide. I know how I’d rank it, but that wouldn’t be true for you. You know your numbers, don’t you?”

“Right,” Glim muttered, then took a fourth leaf and savoured it, frowning furiously. “Six hundreds,” he said at last.

“Ah, the sweetness of youth,” Farvid chuckled. “I’d put it at about five hundred and thirty-seven, myself.” He held up his hands, extending his left thumb and little finger and the little and ring finger on his right, apparently oblivious to the gesture being utterly lost on Glim. Then he sighed. “Perhaps it was sweeter to me when I was your age.”

“Or perhaps I simply don’t know how to put numbers to taste,” Glim bit back, an edge to his voice. “How did you come up with that number? Are you making it up just to show off?”

“By no means, my young friend,” his uncle retorted, “and you if anyone should know better than accusing someone of showing off.”

Glim looked down, blushing. Farvid was right. Glim was an unusually bright child, which was why Farvid, on returning from the far south, had suggested that he should take the boy as an apprentice in these strange Magus arts he had learnt. Here in the small world of the islands, being bright - and showing it - was considered showing off or bragging and frowned upon. Glim’s honest questions and remarks about the world were routinely met with sighs, groans and reprimands. Being the chief’s son did nothing to alleviate this - rather the opposite.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled distracting himself by pulling up tufts of grass, their tough straws leaving marks on his skin. “It just seems… outrageous, to be honest, putting a number like that to a taste.”

At that, Farvid laughed out loud. “It is outrageous, isn’t it?” Then he calmed down, but a contagious smile still played in the corners of his mouth and his eyes twinkled. “But it works. And that’s one of the cornerstones of the Magus art. Now, let’s try this.”

He handed the youth a little, yellow-brown lump. Glim took it gingerly, wrinkling his nose, and squeezed it. It was stripped of bark, yielding slightly, dry with a slight hint of juice, Then he closed his eyes and put it in his mouth. One heartbeat later, it flew back out again and Glim gagged.

“Ugh! Bitter!” he exclaimed, then spat and champed in a vain attempt to rid himself of the aftertaste. Farvid laughed, not unkindly.

“Some bitterness in life helps us appreciate the sweetness all the more,” he said sagely. “Now, if you could have brought yourself to keeping it in your mouth until you had gotten used to the bitterness, you would have noticed there is a sweetness to this root as well.”

“Thank you,” Glim replied acerbically, “but I’d rather stick to the sweetleaf. What was that?”

“Bitterroot,” Farvid said and shrugged with a wry grin, handing over another sweetleaf which the boy gratefully accepted. “The herb-lorists among our forebears were more practical than poetic when naming our plants. Don’t worry, I’ll not make you try it again. I just wanted to make a point. Now, how much do you value the sweetleaf?”

“Right now, very highly,” Glim said with passion as he chewed it intently to reduce the lingering bitterness of the root.”

“And before you had the bitterroot?” Farvid asked.

“Well…” Glim thought about it. “It was good, but…”

“Nothing you’d go out of your way to procure?” Farvid suggested. Glim nodded and reached for another leaf.

“So the value of the sweetleaf on its bush in the woods on a rainy day is a lot less than the sweetleaf near at hand after chewing bitterroot, even though the sweetness is exactly the same. Now, what would you be willing to give up to avoid eating bitterroot?”

Glim frowned. “Why would I have to do that?”

“Perhaps I neglected to mention,” Farvid said, winking, “that bitterroot is a good medicine against several ailments.”

“Oh…” Glim raised his eyebrows. “So if I were sick, I might value bitterroot high enough to eat it anyway?”

“Exactly. And if your child were sick, you might want it to eat bitterroot. But the child might be of another opinion. What, then, would you do?”

“Promise it sweetleaf afterwards, I guess,” said Glim. “Or honey.”

Farvid smiled affectionately. “I can see you’d make a good father. Now, as a Magus, you’ll have another option. Let’s say you have a sick child, you do have bitterroot but you’re flat out of honey, sweetleaf and all else that a child might be swayed with. Then you could try this.”

Farvid put a lump of bitterroot on his lap, then held his hand over it, concentrating. Again, he made that gesture with his hands, but then he moved his fingers, dexterously extending some and curling others in, while muttering something under his breath. After half a minute, he nodded, picked up the lump and offered it to Glim.

“Try it now. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of sweetleaf left. But you won’t need it.”

Suspiciously, Glim accepted the lump and slowly brought it to his mouth. Grimacing, he nibbled at a corner of it. Then his eyes widened and he bit off a piece, chewing it with obvious pleasure.

“It tastes just like sweetleaf!”

Farvid smiled beatifically. “That is what a Magus can do - we can bring about changes in the world. But to do it,” he said, raising a finger, his smile replaced by a grave mien, “we need to know the proper value of things. And that, my dear friend, is a learning fraught with many dangers.”

A gentle land breeze was cooling the backs of the two brothers, while the cliff they sat on, facing the firth to the north-west, still retained some of the day's heat. The pleasant contrast sent goosebumps racing across their skin, even on Farvid's, cloaked though he was. Stuer, on the other hand, had contented himself with merely tying his tunic close.

He had a straw of grass in his mouth and chewed it slowly, while his gaze was lost in the shimmering waters and the golden pink of the clouds over the newly set sun.The set of his jaw underneath his well-groomed, generous beard was the only thing that belied how his face reflected the serenity of the scene. It was enough for Farvid, who glanced at his brother with a fond smile.

“You look as if you’re keeping watch against enemy ships,” he said softly.

Stuer snapped out of his reverie and looked at his brother, returning the smile. “You know me. Always looking ahead.”

Farvid nodded slowly. “And what do you see ahead for Glim?”

Stuer pressed his lips firmly together and looked back across the water.

“Right now, mist over unknown waters,” he said after a moment. “Perhaps you can help clear them. He was quite excited at the evening meal. Apparently you had shown him some trick. This Magus art of yours.”

“You guard your tone well, my brother,” Farvid remarked, “but you needn’t hide your suspicion from me. I don’t mind. In fact, I’d be worried if you didn’t have your doubts about it. Yes, I showed him a trick, as you so aptly call it. What else did he say?”

“He said,” Stuer replied and cleared his throat, “that you’d teach him the proper value of things.”

“Provided his father agrees, yes,” Farvid confirmed. “And what are your thoughts?”

Stuer turned again to look his brother straight in the eyes. “I’m wondering about what you mean by the proper value. For example, what is the proper value of staying at home to care for your people, in your eyes?”

Farvid’s eyes squinted for a moment, but whether in mirth or pique, Stuer couldn’t say. 

“In my eyes,” Farvid said, “the proper value of it is great. It is one of the most important things for a human, to have your people cared for. Which is why I’m so grateful to have a brother who does it so well.”

Stuer scoffed, half-amused, and let his gaze return to the west. “Flattery will not avail you. If the value of it is so great, then why did you leave? Why stay away for so many years?” He bared his teeth for a fleeting moment before reining himself in, but his voice carried a hint of raspiness as he went on. “I needed you. I didn’t mind taking charge. But your advice…”

Farvid sighed, putting his hands on his brother’s shoulder and squeezing it. Stuer shrugged it off and Farvid hastily drew back, remembering he was back on the islands now, not in the far south. “I’m sorry. But trust me, my advice would have soured for both of us if I had stayed. Because - and heed me well now - because the proper value of widening your horizons is as great as that of staying at home for your people.”

“You can’t have both,” Stuer snapped.

“Not as a single person, no,” Farvid agreed. “Fortunately, we are not single persons. We are many. Between me and you, there’s two of us. And suddenly, we can have both.”

Stuer said nothing, which Farvid took as an absence of immediate disagreement, encouraging him to go on.

“The value of staying at home, to me personally, is not the same as its proper value. To me, the value of roaming is greater. And since the two stand against each other, the value of my staying at home became less than naught to me. It would have soured me and clouded my wit, rendering my advice less than useful.”

This time, there was a non-committal grunt from Stuer as he digested this.

“People are different from birth, don’t you agree?” Farvid continued. “And they do not always take after their parents. Sometimes the grandparents come back in the child. So some are born as homers, others as roamers. Some are flockers, some are loners.”

“Isn’t that the same difference?” Stuer asked.

“Oh, no!” Farvid said. “I’m a roamer, but certainly not a loner. I’ve missed you, you know! All of you.” He raised his hand again as if to put it on his brother’s back, then checked himself and let it sink back to the rock. But as Stuer turned to look at him he was surprised to see a hint of tears welling up in Farvid’s eyes. “And I’m happy to be home now, with the flock I left behind for so long,” he continued, then chuckled sombrely. “Just like I’ll miss the people I left behind in the south in a year’s time.”

He turned southward as if trying to see them across the leagues upon leagues. Then he shook himself and turned towards the firth. He drew in the scent of it, that peculiar blend of kelp and pine, woods and brine. Until now, he hadn’t known how much he had missed this, too.

“There are also what you might call safers and darers,” he continued, rousing himself. “What would you name yourself as?”

“I care for my people’s safety, you know that,” Stuer said without hesitation.

“Indeed,” Farvid agreed, “and for that you are willing to dare a lot, even your own life. That would give you away as a darer who knows the proper value of safety.”

Stuer nodded. “So the proper value is not the same as the sense of value you’re born with. And we’re all born with different senses of value. And we act on those values first, unless we have learnt a sense of the proper value telling us differently. Is that what you’re saying?”

This time, Farvid couldn’t resist thumping his brother’s back. That, at least, was acceptable even here.

“I knew you’d nail it down beautifully,” he exclaimed. “So where does that leave us with Glim?”

“Where indeed?” Stuer mused quietly. “He said you’d told him that learning the proper value was dangerous. How so?”

“Simple,” Farvid said. “It’s all too easy taking the value you’re born with for the proper value. You can use either value to wield the power of a Magus. Wielding power with confusion makes danger for everyone around.”

Stuer’s eyes squinted as he acknowledged the truth of that. “And what would bring confusion to my lad, then? I can see he was not born all the same as I. He is more of a kin with you.”

“He is neither, both and more,” Farvid said, then grew quiet. “Who is his mother? Nobody will tell me.”

Stuer smiled grimly. “That’s right,” he said, “nobody will.”

Farvid looked closely at him, no need to ask. Obviously he, the father, knew the mother but nobody else did. And he was not about to give up the secret.

“If I am to teach him,” Farvid explained quietly, “it might help me understand him better if I knew.”

Stuer hummed in response. “In that case, I might tell you. In due time.”

And that was the end of that. Farvid let the other question hang between them, leaving it up to his brother to answer it when he was done thinking.

“I’ve tried to teach him the proper value of things, though not in so many words,” Stuer said at last. “Perhaps he will heed you better and at less risk for confusion. I think I can rely on you to teach him the value of watching out for your people…”

“I think he knows it,” Farvid interjected, “but I’m not sure that the people understand the proper value of widening your horizons, even if you might.”

Stuer looked sharply at him, stung into silence for a moment.

“It’s just the way of the islands,” Farvid shrugged. “I blame none for it anymore, though I did when I left. Now I just wish it weren’t so. But that might be the reason that he never seems to listen.”

“Because we don’t listen to him, you mean,” Stuer said and sighed ruefully. “Aye, maybe you’re right.” Then he cleared his throat again. “I do reserve the right to call the whole thing off if I see cause for it, you understand.”

“You’re the chief,” Farvid stated simply and grinned. “So you’ll let me teach him?”

Stuer drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, blowing his doubts to the wind, feeling them flutter past the hairs of his beard and away. He nodded, once.

“So be it.”