strength of a warrior. The strength of someone who had become independent, his own man.
His father must have sensed it, because he got to his feet, agitated, turned his back on Thor and began fiddling with his tools as if Thor didn’t exist.
“What then?” he snapped, not looking Thor’s way. “Because if you’re coming to ask my forgiveness, you won’t get it. The day you left, you lost a father. Unforgivable. I heard you barged your way into the Legion. Do you think that makes you a man? You stole your position. You got lucky. You didn’t deserve it. You might fancy yourself some sort of warrior. But you’re nothing. Do understand me?” he asked, turning red-faced, facing Thor in a rage.
Thor stood his place, beginning to well up with rage himself. He had seen this going so differently in his head. He had come here with plans to ask his father certain questions-but now, in the moment, those questions all fled from him. Instead, another question popped into his head.
“Why do you hate me?” Thor asked calmly, surprising himself that he had the courage to ask the question.
His father stopped and looked at him, stumped for the first time since he had known him. He narrowed his eyes at Thor.
“What kind of a question is that?” he asked. “Whoever said I hate you? Is that what they teach you in the Legion? I don’t hate you. Like I said, you are nothing to me now.”
“But you don’t love me,” Thor insisted.
“And why should I?” he retorted. “What have you ever done to deserve my love?”
“I’m your son,” Thor responded. “Isn’t that enough?”
His father looked down at him, long and intense, then finally turned away. Before he did, Thor detected a different expression, one he had never seen before. It was one of confusion.
“Sons don’t deserve love just by being sons,” his father said. “They must earn it. Everything must be earned in this world.”
“Do they?” Thor retorted, not letting it go this time. In the past he had always given in to his father’s arguments, his father’s abrupt way of ending a conversation, of getting in the last word and refusing to hear anymore. But not this time. “And what exactly must a son have to do to earn his father’s love?”
His father reddened, on the verge of exploding, clearly outwitted and fed up. He turned and charged towards Thor, reaching out to grab him by the shoulders with his strong, callused hands, as he had so many times in Thor’s life.
“What is it that you are doing here?” he screamed in Thor’s face. “What is it that you want from me?”
Thor could feel his father’s anger coursing from his hands and into his shoulders.
But Thor’s shoulders were bigger and wider now than when he had left, and his hands and forearms were more powerful, too, twice as strong as they had been. His father always thought he could end an argument by grabbing Thor’s shoulders, by shaking him, by infecting him with his anger-but not anymore. As soon as his father’s hands dug into his shoulders, Thor reached up, lifted his hands between them and knocked his father’s hands away; then, in the same motion, he shoved his father with the heel of his hands, right in his chest, hard enough to send his father stumbling back a good five feet, and sending him so off-balance that he nearly fell.
His father looked back to Thor, shocked, as if wondering who he was. He looked as if a snake had bit him. His face remained red with rage, but this time, he stayed his ground and kept a healthy distance and dared not approach Thor-for the first time in Thor’s life.
“Don’t you ever lay a hand on me again,” Thor said calmly and strongly. “It is not a warning.”
Thor was being genuine. Something inside him would not tolerate this treatment anymore; something inside him warned him that if his father ever laid a hand on him again, he wouldn’t be able to control his reaction.
Something unspoken passed between them, and his father seemed to understand. He stood there and lowered his shoulders just a bit, enough for Thor to realize that he wouldn’t attempt it again.
“Have you come here to harass me then?” his father asked, sounding broken, sounding old, in that moment.
“No,” Thor said, finally remembering. “I’ve come here for answers. Answers that only you can give me.”
His father stared back, and Thor took a deep breath.
“Who was my mother?” Thor asked. “My
“Your mother?” his father echoed, caught off guard. “And why would you want to know that?”
“Why
His father looked down to the ground, and his expression softened.
“Your mother died in childbirth with you. I told you that already.”
But he would not meet Thor’s eyes when he said it, and Thor sensed he was not being truthful. Thor was more sensitive now, he could feel things more deeply, and he could feel that his father was lying.
“I know what you told me,” Thor said, strong. “Now I want the truth.”
His father looked up at him, and Thor could see his expression change once again.
“Who have you spoken to?” his father asked. “What have they told you? Who has gotten to you?”
“I want the truth,” Thor demanded. “Once and for all. No more lies. Who was my mother? And why did you hide it from me?”
Thor’s father stared at him, long and hard, and finally, after several moments of thick silence, he gave in. His eyes drooped, and he looked like an old man.
“I guess there is no point in keeping it from you anymore,” he answered. “Your mother did not die in childbirth. It was a story I made up, to keep you from asking questions. Your mother is alive. She lives far from here.”
Thor felt energized. He knew it to be true, but hearing it from his own father made it real.
“In the land of the Druids?” Thor pressed.
His father’s eyes opened wide in surprise.
“Who told you?” he asked.
“She is a Druid, isn’t she?” Thor asked. “Which means I am half-Druid? I’m not entirely human?”
“Yes,” his father admitted. “It was not information I wanted spreading around this village.”
“And is that why you were always ashamed of me?” Thor asked. “Because my mother was of another race?”
His father looked away, frustrated.
“Tell me, then,” Thor pressed, “how did you know her? Why did you divorce her? Why was I not raised by her? Why was I raised by you?”
His father shook his head, again and again.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“Tell me!” Thor demanded, yelling, fists bunched in rage, using a fiercer voice with his father than he ever had in his life.
For the first time in his life, he saw his father afraid.
His father looked back, and finally, slowly, said:
“You are not mine.”
Thor looked back, trembling with rage, trying to understand his words.
“I am not your father,” he added. “I never was. I just raised you as my own.”
Thor’s heart pounded in his chest as the words sunk in, the words of this man whom he had once thought to be his father. His felt his world shaking all around him. And suddenly, it all made sense. For the first time in his life, it all made sense.
This man was not his father.
“Then who is?” Thor asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” he said. “I never met him. I only met your mother once. Briefly. She left you, as a baby, put you in my arms. I had been with the flock, at the top of the mountain. And she had appeared, holding you. She had said that I was to raise you. That you had a great destiny, and that I was destined to be your caretaker. She was the most beautiful and powerful woman I had ever laid eyes upon. She was not of this world. I went weak at the sight of her. I would have done anything she’d asked for. I took you in my arms. And then she disappeared.
“I was left holding you, alone on the mountaintop, and as soon as she’d left, I’d wondered why I had taken
