"I think," Gwen said dreamily, staring up at the azure sky, "Autumn is my very favourite out of all the seasons."
"I like summer the best," Owen said. "I like swimming, and wearing hardly any clothes."
"Owen!" his sister reproved him.
"Clothes are a nuisance, Leigh," he said. "They just get in the way of everything you want to do."
"Be thankful you aren't a girl, then," Leigh said. "We have to wear even more than you boys, no matter what the season."
"Oh, I am," Owen assured her. "I would hate to be a girl."
"What's your favourite season, Leigh?" Jack asked quickly.
"Winter," she said at once. "I like how quiet and peaceful it is."
Within moments, the other cousins rattled off their favourite seasons, too. Lee and Jack both favoured spring; Jo agreed with Owen about summer; and Phil said he liked parts of all of them.
"What about you, Uncle Shirley?" Gwen asked, not wanting him to feel left out.
Her uncle smiled over his shoulder as he drove the hay wagon on. "Oh, I'm with Phil, I suppose. There are things I like about each season, and things I don't like. An autumn day like this one is certainly hard to beat, I have to say."
It was, indeed. Uncle Shirley had borrowed one of his neighbours' hay wagons to take the cousins on an apple-picking expedition. There were plenty of orchards where they were welcome right in the Glen—the old Bryant homestead near the House of Dreams was famous for its fruit trees—but Uncle Shirley decided that "the kids" could use a real adventure, and so had gotten permission from an over-harbour farmer to pick as many apples as they wanted from his orchard.
"Strip it clean, for all I care," he said laconically. "I've already got all the apples I can use. Rather you take 'em than the local boys steal 'em."
There weren't many chances for apple-picking in Kingsport, so the four Blake children were especially interested. Jack, Owen and Leigh picked every year, but it was still one of their favourite parts of harvest.
"It doesn't feel like work, you see," Gwen overheard Owen explain confidentially to Jo, who nodded wisely.
Lee, with her long hair pulled into a neat braid (thanks to Lynde's nimble fingers) that curled at the end, was riding beside Uncle Shirley, beaming over the honour. Leigh was next to her, much calmer about it. Jo and Owen had their arms slung around each other's shoulders and were dangling their feet off the end of the wagon. Phil, Jack, and Gwen lay sprawled in the body of the wagon itself, watching the blue sky and the puffy white clouds overhead, enjoying a rare free Saturday with no homework or extra-curricular activities.
"It would have been fun to bring the Owls along," Jack said lazily, "But I think it's even more fun with just the cousins."
"We don't do much like this anymore, not now that school has begun," Phil agreed.
"Mmm," Gwen said, her eyes closing sleepily. She had been working very hard, between homework and track, and even with the jolting of the wagon over the rough roads, she thought she could doze off quite easily. The sun was shining warmly, even though the air was crisp and the leaves were a glorious cacophony of crimsons and golds, and in her navy sweater and grey tweed skirt Gwen felt snug and secure.
Phil began to tickle her ribs. "No sleep for you, Gwen! There is work ahead of us! Don't think you can slack off by taking a nap and leave all the hard labour to us!"
Gwen shrieked and laughed, coming fully awake and shying away from his merciless fingers.
"I'm awake! I'm awake!" she cried.
"Good," he said with a grin. "See to it that you stay that way."
"Cheeky blighter," Jack said with a laugh.
James Arnold was a good farmer, and a genial man, though he had no appreciation or understanding of any but practical matters. He liked Uncle Shirley for his quiet competence, and Aunt Persis for her animal skills, but he couldn't understand why they lived in a place with such a foolish little name. He stared in mute incomprehension as Jack paused in picking apples once in a while to scribble down a line or two of poetry, and when Jo started telling Lee a fairy story, he shook his head.
"Those kids are too old for such nonsense," he said gruffly to Uncle Shirley. "Why don't you tell them it isn't true?"
"Who says it isn't?" Uncle Shirley asked with his quiet smile, and Mr. Arnold shook his head again.
"You Blythes! You'd be a right match for my nephew, you would. Always wandering around with his head in the clouds, he is, and it's all I can do to keep him from infecting his sister with the same nonsense. His mother doesn't help, either."
"How is Mrs. Ahlberg?" Uncle Shirley asked. Gwen was nearby, and curiously stopped picking at the unusual name.
Mr. Arnold shrugged his massive shoulders. "The same. She'd get better if she just pulled up her bootstraps and tried, but she says she ain't got the energy left to try. She spends all day on that couch of hers, and she's training the little one to be just as lazy."
"Jem says that Anja has a delicate constitution," Uncle Shirley said.
Mr. Arnold grunted. "Well, we don't make her sleep outside in the rain and snow, do we? All I ask is that she and my sister help the missus out with some chores once in a while! It's not too much to expect, is it, after we took them in after that shiftless man of hers died?"
Uncle Shirley pinched his lips together in the same manner as Grandmother did occasionally, when she wanted to say too much, and went to stop Owen and Jo from eating more apples than they put in the basket.
Gwen began picking again, but slowly, her mind constructing a romance around the scrap of conversation she'd heard. Mrs. Ahlberg would be beautiful, with ivory skin and raven hair, dying of a broken heart after being abandoned by her handsome and selfish husband. The little girl—what had Uncle Shirley called her? Anna?—would have long, heavy gold curls, and big blue eyes, with overly-rosy cheeks, and she was dying of consumption. The boy was small and slight, with his mother's black hair and the black eyes of his treacherous father, and he was trying to save his family, while his mother and uncle couldn't bear to look at him for his resemblance to the man who had broken his mother's heart …
"Hello."
Gwen jumped. She had been so lost in her fantasy that she hadn't even noticed a boy coming toward her.
"My uncle said to come give you folks a hand," he said. "Do you mind?"
"Not at all," Gwen said, studying him covertly. He did not at all resemble the romantic hero of her dream, and she decided that this was one story which would never make it onto paper.
This boy was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing mud-spattered overalls and a checked shirt. His hair was so light it shone almost white in the noon sun, and his eyes were the brightest blue Gwen had ever seen. He had large, capable hands with calluses on them, a friendly grin, and did not in any way appear someone with his head in the clouds. Gwen wondered if Mr. Arnold had another nephew somewhere.
"I'm Gwen," she said, recalling her manners. She held out her hand. "Gwen Blake."
He shook her hand in a straight-forward fashion. "Tryg Ahlberg."
"Tryg?" she asked, testing the odd sound on her tongue.
He laughed. "My dad's family was Norse. It's short for Trygve, which is even more impossible to pronounce."
"I like it," Gwen decided. "It's more interesting than most names."
"I like Gwen," he said, reaching up into the limbs of the tree and beginning to pluck. "It sounds like something out of an Arthurian legend. Hullo, Jack."
"How are you, Tryg?" Jack asked, ducking a low branch as he came around the trunk. "Didn't see you much this summer."
"I was working odd jobs as much as possible," Tryg said. "Setting money aside for Anja's school. My little sister Anja has the voice of an angel," he explained to Gwen. "Uncle doesn't see the need for her to have an education beyond High School, so I'm saving up what I can now to send her to a music school when she's older."
"I see," Gwen said, impressed with his dedication. "How old is she now?"
"Nine," he said. "Which is good, because it gives me plenty of time to save!"
"Hullo, Tryg!" Owen shouted, spotting the older boy. He came racing over, Jo in pursuit. "Where's Balder?"
"Oh, he's around," Tryg said, waving a hand. "You're welcome to go find him."
"C'mon, Jo," Owen said at once, and the two boys vanished.
"So much for getting any more work out of them," Jack commented.
Gwen laughed. "Who's Balder?"
"My dog," Tryg said. He grinned deprecatingly. "I'm a bit of a nut about legends and mythologies, especially the Norse ones. Balder was the fairest god in Norse mythology."
"'Balder their joy, so bright, so loved a god,'" Jack quoted. "It's a poem," he said to Gwen.
"Let me guess," she said. "Balder the dog is … a golden retriever?"
"Right in one," Tryg said approvingly. "If he'd been a black lab I would have named him Hoder, who was Balder's brother and god of the night." He looked around and saw his uncle and Uncle Shirley approaching. "Shh," he cautioned. "Uncle doesn't like to hear me talking about myths and the like. He thinks they're nonsense, only fit for babies."
Jack snorted, and Gwen burned with indignation, but they obediently talked about other matters while the men were near.
Gwen found out that Tryg was a senior, attending the over-harbour school, which was how she'd never met him before.
"What are your plans for after High School?" she asked.
Some of the brightness in his face dimmed over, but he answered cheerfully enough. "Stay here and work on the farm, of course. Uncle has promised that as long as I work with him, he will take the money he would have spent on hiring a hand and put it toward Anja's schooling, even though he thinks it foolishness."
"That's right, my boy," Mr. Arnold said approvingly. "A fair trade."
It wasn't fair at all, Gwen wanted to say indignantly. Tryg was young, and obviously not a farmer at heart. Why should he have to sacrifice his dreams just because his uncle was too mean to pay for school?
Still, she did have to admit, for a man who didn't believe in higher education at all, even to agree to a bargain like that was something. Many men, she knew, would have just made their nephew work for them and never bothered with wages. Had she heard about such an accommodation in the abstract, she might very well have approved of it. Seeing Tryg in person, though, it seemed horribly cruel.
They spent the rest of the day picking, and then Uncle Shirley said they really ought to be getting back. Mr. Arnold invited them to stay for supper, but Uncle Shirley explained that Lynde was waiting for them.
"Say, Uncle Shirley, can't Tryg come back to supper with us, since he did as much work as we did with the apples?" Jack suggested.
Uncle Shirley was willing, but Mr. Arnold shook his head. "Tryg's got chores to do here. Sorry, lad."
Jack shrugged, disappointed, and Gwen was sorry as well. She would have liked the chance to get to know this hard-working, interesting boy a bit better.
"Oh, Jack," Tryg said right before they left. "I've got those poems you were asking about last spring—the ones about the Norse gods? I found them for a song at an old bookstore out in Camden. Do you still want to borrow them?"
"You bet," Jack said with alacrity, springing out of the wagon. He paused right before following Tryg into the house. "Coming, Gwen?"
She followed him without question; into the house; past the kitchen with the pinched, sour-faced woman bending over the stove; past the parlour with a small, sweet lady with greying hair and faded blue eyes lying on the sofa (so much for the raven-haired beauty with the broken heart!); up the stairs; up another flight of stairs; and into the garret.
"This is where I keep my junk," Tryg explained. Gwen looked curiously at the piles and stacks of books, the papers everywhere, the pens and pencils scattered over an old desk. She moved closer to the desk while Tryg rooted through one stack of books to find the poetry for Jack.
The topmost piece of paper on the desk contained a simple image of an old ship with a carved dragon's head on the front. A lone man (even Gwen could tell he was a Viking by the horns on his helmet) stood aboard the ship, one hand grasping the lines, gazing out over the rolling sea with a sad and stern expression. His face was Tryg's.
"Did you draw this?" she asked in astonishment, marvelling at the exquisite detail and life of the piece.
He actually blushed. "Oh—that. That's just a bit of nonsense." He moved to crumple it up, but Jack snatched it up before he could.
"That's amazing," Jack said bluntly, studying it. "You have a real gift, my friend. It would be a crime to waste it, you know."
"Can't be helped," Tryg shrugged. "There's no way I can make enough for both Anja and me to go to college. Besides, I couldn't leave Mother behind."
"So instead you'll be a farmer all your life?"
Tryg raised his chin at the harsh note in Jack's question. "It's a noble life, isn't it?"
"Sure, but it's not you. You're an artist, my friend. It would be like asking me to be a doctor like Dad, or expecting Gwen here to be content to settle down as a housewife. It doesn't matter how noble a career or life it is, if it isn't you."
"Can't be helped," Tryg said again. "We don't all get to choose the path we take."
"Yes, we can," Jack said earnestly.
He would have said more, but Owen hollered up the stairs then that Lynde would tan their hides if they ruined her dinner by being late, and they had to leave, Jack shaking his head the entire way.
"It's a waste," he said, just once, on the way home. Phil looked at him curiously, but didn't ask any questions.
"Isn't there anything we can do to help him?" Gwen asked, already scheming.
"He wouldn't take help if we offered," Jack said bitterly. "He's got pride as well as ambition, and a sense of duty that would choke most fellows. Catch me giving up my dreams like that!"
"You would," Gwen said softly. "If you had to."
Jack's anger softened and he gave her a sheepish look. "I know. I think that's what bothers me, though—that I don't have to. Why do I get to be Dr. Blythe's son, with all the privileges, and not Tryg? What did he ever do to deserve wasting away there on his uncle's farm?"
"Maybe it isn't a waste," Uncle Shirley said over his shoulder. "We don't know all of God's ways, Jack. All we can do is trust they are perfect."
"But what if they aren't?" Jack said, and not even Phil said anything about such a heretical question.
They all knew how he felt.
That night, before going to bed, Gwen started work on an outline for a new story. This one wasn't going to be a fairy story. This was going to be about a young Norseman working his family farm, dreaming of joining the Vikings, until one day the god Balder gave him a special quest to carry out alone accompanied only by his faithful hound (or whatever dogs they had in those days). If he succeeded, he would become a Viking; if he failed, he would spend the rest of his days drudging on the farm. Of course the hero would succeed, and win glory and fame for himself.
His name was Trygve.