When they reached the valley, it was not as sparsely inhabited as Jón had been led to believe. There were about a dozen houses dotting a grassy basin two miles square. How would they react when Jón stripped away all their sunlight in the middle of a golden day?

He quickly found out: he’d only harvested an acre when people came running out of their houses, waving their arms in panic. Jón left off harvesting while Blood-Axe went to speak with them. At first there was shouting, but things soon calmed down—in part, Jón assumed, because Blood-Axe was a near-giant and carried an axe on each hip. After a few minutes, the people returned to their homes.

Blood-Axe walked back to where Jón sat astride his horse. “You may continue,” he said.

“What did you say to them?” Jón asked.

“Let’s just say they came away from our conversation a lot wiser and a little wealthier,” said Blood-Axe, cracking his knuckles.

Within a few hours, Jón’s boxes were nearly full. He had stripped the entire valley of its sunlight. Amid the gloom, the houses were visible now only by the hearth-flames that glinted orange in their windows; all else was black.

“We can’t leave them like this, can we?” said Jón.

Blood-Axe had already turned his horse toward Egilsstaðir. Jón sighed and began to join him, but before he could leave a woman came running up with a crying child in her arms.

“Sir, I beg you!”

Jón pulled his horse’s reins and looked down at her. “What’s the matter?” he said.

“It’s my boy, sir,” said the woman. “He’s terrified of the dark.”

The weeping child could not have been more than two. Though his mother rocked him and kissed his head, he would not be consoled. Jón’s heart—for he did have a small one—broke.

“Blood-Axe!”

Blood-Axe stopped to look back at him.

“Wait ten minutes for me.”

Blood-Axe crossed his arms and grumbled. Jón pulled the woman and child up onto his horse and took them home, where he took a big scoop of light from his box and spread it into every corner of their house, enough to keep it lit for a whole month.

Blood-Axe made fun of him all the way back to Egilsstaðir. “Are you looking for a wife?” he said, laughing. “That one’s married already!”

“I felt bad for them, that’s all,” said Jón.

“Well, don’t,” growled Blood-Axe. “You’ll never hear a word of pity from them when we farmers have a bad harvest. They look out for themselves, and so should we.”

• • •

Jón’s pile of money grew so long as the crops in Egilsstaðir did, but finally the growing season came to an end. The farmers thanked Jón for his excellent sunlight, and told him they looked forward to buying it again in the spring, when they planted a new crop.

“And I look forward to selling it to you!” said Jón.

“What’ll you do with all your free time until then?” Blood-Axe asked him.