"Men and Dwarfs, we are all riddles," he said. "We are puzzles to our friends, puzzles to ourselves. Who finds joy in riddling, pleasure in the patient stalking of the hidden truth, that man knows how to live."
But what do you think happens, my Sif, when truth becomes the hunter, man becomes the hunted? To me, it seems that the man stalked by a truth becomes a brother to the wolf-haunted moon.
--Nancy Varian Berberick, from Shadow of the Seventh Moon
Berberick's narrator is Garroc, dwarf, soldier and skald. Berberick's tale is a historical fantasy set in 7th-century Britain, amidst the wars of Saxons and Britains and Welsh, a tale paying tribute to Old English poetry and poets. Garroc is one of the last generation of dwarfs, a race now cursed with infertility and thereby extinction for attempting to steal the goddess Idun's apples of immortality. In the passage above, Garroc's reflections have a more personal flavor, a more specific context, and yet the lines on riddling, on hunting and being hunted, ring true in this life, for life in general.
One can know too too much. Or, to put it another way, the man (or dwarf) hunted by a truth may need to flee, may need to stand, and who outside that pursuit can truly judge? Or, whatever the judgment, the passage speaks both to the joy of the hunt and to the desperation, the haunting, of being hunted by a truth. Garroc is haunted by a pack of truths in the tale, until . . . .
I'll repeat my favorite portion of the passage: "Who finds joy in riddling, pleasure in the patient stalking of the hidden truth, that man knows how to live."
And woman, too.
Berberick's adopting the older style of pronoun use to match the older times, the older English, in which she has set her tale. Sif, Garroc's human foster-daughter, is a respected character, Garroc's confidant and our narrative conduit.
