Although deathless and ageless, the gods too were once young—carefree and high-spirited, with a somewhat adolescent fondness for pranks and jokes.

When the earth itself was still vigorous and whole, when the seasons still held their place and humans were yet under their sway, Eros followed spring about the globe, while Token stayed out the northern winter to defend the welfare of those who would not survive the harsh season without the aid of luck.

Sad was their parting at the autumnal equinox and joyful their reunion with the spring, but in those days neither god traveled alone. The nature spirits had been driven out of the bigger towns but still held for their own the streams, forests and meadows of the living world. In the South, the nymphs and satyrs followed dancing in Eros’ footsteps, for all of the natural world reverenced his power. In the North, the elves, pucks, brownies and sprites saluted Token as he passed and occasionally joined him in his adventures.

So long as the roads remained unpaved, the nature spirits could wander freely at night through all but the biggest settlements, meting out rewards, punishments, or random pranks to town-dwellers who thought they could shut out nature with their barred doors and windows. Never since Jove seduced humankind with his two evil gifts of sex and power had humans lived in harmony with nature, but in those days they still respected and feared its untamed powers. Few knew Token’s name, but many had experienced his power for better, for worse, or for a good laugh.

There was no doubting what the boy was up to—barefoot, dressed only in a ragged shirt and breeches, his eyes staring with fear and exertion. After darting a look behind, he had the sense to slow down to a stumbling trot as he caught up with an almost equally ragged wanderer. Because he was a natural gentleman as well as a runaway serf, he gave a courteous greeting, though it might have been wiser to pass in silence.

“Good day and God’s blessing to you, sir.”

“Good day and good luck to you, for I believe you will need it,” answered Token.

It would have been much wiser to pass without a word, the serf thought to himself regretfully. The wanderer, despite his crippled gait, easily matched the young serf’s quick step and now began to chat easily about—about the strangest things the boy had ever heard. Faery tale things, only stranger. About the nature spirits who inhabited the forest around them, and about fallen gods who walked the earth, where they all came from and what powers they held. How happy he would have been to listen to such fantastic tales if he were safe at home! It was his love of stories, after all, that had first filled him with such a longing for freedom. But now he had no home and he was not safe. He was too distracted—listening for sounds of the pursuit he feared—to catch more than a few disjointed phrases.

Suddenly the wanderer grabbed him in a powerful hold and pulled him under his cloak, just as two men in the baron’s livery galloped past.

“As I was saying,” continued Token smoothly, still holding the serf under his broad cloak, “the safer course—and by far the more comfortable—is to walk away, not run. You should try to remember that.”

They arrived at a crossroads. Token showed the serf the road he should take to a distant town, where he would be safe from pursuit, then handed him the cloak.

“Wear my cloak and you’ll be safe enough. No one will even notice you are there.”

“It’s an invisibility cloak,” gasped the boy, “like in the stories!”

“What? No, I’m afraid it’s a perfectly ordinary cloak,” said Token with a gentle laugh. “And that is how no one will notice you. It is too threadbare to be respected, but not so much as to be suspected. You will pass both high and low without notice and no one will recall seeing you.”

Token turned back down the road towards the great manor house. As he went he began to grow shorter, slighter, younger and more timid in appearance, and to look quite a bit like a runaway serf.

Enough so to draw the attention of the steward who was riding through the estates.

“It’s that runaway serf—get him!” A servant ran Token down easily enough and tossed him, bound, over the crupper of his horse.

As they passed into the courtyard of the great manor house, Token looked up at his captors with a cheerfully mocking grin.

“Do you think this is a game?” roared the steward in a rage.

“It is a game,” replied Token, “and the name of the game is Topsy Turvy—Tails Are Heads and Heads Are Tails.” With that he broke his bonds and leapt to the ground.

“After him!” shouted the steward, but in his passion failed to notice that no one obeyed his order. Token ran towards the castle with the steward just behind him. As they past through the formal garden, a mud fight broke out between the under-gardeners and the master gardeners and the steward himself was bespattered with filth.

Token seemed to get smaller, shorter and rounder as he ran. He did not merely run, but turned cartwheels and somersaults with such dazzling rapidity that he seemed to be a whirling, tumbling disk. And wherever he whirled and tumbled, madness broke loose.

He rushed through the guardroom, where the steward thought he had him cornered. Except the guards unaccountably missed the runaway and brought their truncheons down on the steward. Blinded by fury and bewildered by pain, he stumbled through a double gauntlet of blows and abuse. He saw Token make for the kitchen and went after him.

The scullery boys menaced the chief cook with their ladles and knives, then they all turned instead on a gentleman usher when he entered to call for the next course to be served. Several dozen capons rose up from the cauldrons and pecked angrily at their tormentors, splattering them with hot broth. Then they all thought—though this could not be true—that they heard a snort from the boar turning on the spit and saw his bloody eye open in rage. No one stayed behind to investigate.

The steward chased Token into the great hall, where the baron and baroness sat at table with their retainers and guests. The indignant baron rose to confront the steward.

“Get out of my way, you frog-faced fool!” shouted the steward as he planted a hand on the baron’s fat chin and shoved hard.

Perhaps the servants were just so startled that they splashed wine all over the ladies, but it did seem as though an entire flask was emptied over the head of the baroness. Someone tugged at the tablecloth until hot chafing dishes and lit candles went sailing right into the laps of the guests. A footboy pulled the baron’s elder daughter behind the arras, where he handled her in a way she highly resented, though she neglected to scream.

In the uproar, no one heard Token’s merry laugh as he walked out of the manor and back to the road, after first selecting a suitable cloak for his journey.

In the end it was all ascribed to devils and spirits. The abbot himself came to perform the exorcism, then stayed for dinner. The baron and baroness thought it prudent to pretend that they did not know who tossed the wine or fondled their daughter. Some breaches could not be ignored, however, particularly since the baron did look very much like a frog. The steward was dismissed.

Meanwhile, the serf, who could not quite restrain himself from taking a very fast pace despite Token’s wise warning, had paused with hopeless longing outside a roadside tavern. He was nearly ill with hunger and thirst. As he drew up the hem of the cloak to wipe the dust from his face, he heard a pleasant jingling. A hidden pocket full of money! Not gold or silver, true, but a mass of copper pennies that seemed like a fortune to the boy. He jubilantly bought a loaf of bread and a pot of strong brown ale, which left him so hazily happy with the world that he fell asleep in a ditch, wrapped in Token’s surprisingly warm cloak.

When he awoke and took his way again, his happiness was troubled by worries, not of pursuit, for he was far enough away by now, but of his indebtedness to the kind wanderer who had inadvertently given him his fortune as well as his cloak. It was risky and futile to return to the crossroads, since he did not know which road the other had taken. Perhaps he might meet him again some day? But then he would have to repay the money he had already spent—and the money he knew he would spend.

Lost in his troubled thoughts, he was very much taken back, and a little bit frightened, when a mendicant friar joined him along the way. The boy’s shy and nervous silence did not at all displease the friar, since he only wanted an audience, however humble, on which to practice his sermon. He discoursed smoothly and piously of many things, of the lives of saints, the great miracles they performed and the terrible martyrdoms they suffered. His were not as entertaining as the wanderer’s stories, but they were still stories, and the boy was now calm enough to listen and to enjoy them. When at last the friar began to speak of the holy deeds of the friars and the heavenly blessings due to those who give them alms, the boy came to himself with a start. It was a sign! Now he knew what he must do!

The friar was momentarily startled when the boy thrust a large fistful of pence into his hands, then fled down the road. He knew well the power of his own eloquence, however, and was only surprised that the boy should have had so much in his pocket.

Far ahead of him, along a narrow lane through woods and fields, Token saw a slight, wiry man struggling along with a heavy sack on his shoulder and a bundle under his arm. Leaning on his staff, the crippled god easily caught up with the man, intending to keep him company on the way, and calling out a greeting as he approached.

“You move marvelously quick, sir,” said the man, pausing to shift his burden, “I looked down the road just a mo-mo-mo-mo be-be-be-be-be f-f-f-fore.” As he glanced sideways at Token, the poor man fell into a terrible spasm of stuttering.

Token raised his staff and the spasm ceased, but the man fell to his knees before Token in great terror, moving his lips soundlessly.

“Do not be afraid,” said Token softly. “Because you have truly seen and recognized me, I will be your friend.” At Token’s smile and touch, the man's terror left him. In its place he was filled with awe and a sudden, painful surge of joy.

“A stutterer. That is interesting. You see strange shadows in the forest, don’t you? And dim figures dancing in the meadows, or along the river banks, in the twilight?”

The man, realizing it was futile to try to speak, nodded.

“Your stuttering comes and goes, doesn’t it?” Another nod.

“You’ve never realized why the stutter comes, have you?” The man shook his head. “It comes, most often, when you try to tell anyone about what you see in the forest and meadows, or how it makes you feel. You are faery blessed and faery blasted.”

“Faery blessed and faery blasted,” Token repeated thoughtfully. “There must be a blessing. You look to be a ploughman. I will guess that your crops never fail, not for pestilence or drought or any other cause—is that right?”

The man nodded vigorously, gulping and gaping, wanting badly to speak but being unable.

“You can speak now if you like. Just walk ahead of me and don’t glance back. And don’t try to tell me what you see in the woods. I know well enough what it is you see. I am not one of them, but I am akin to them, and may speak to them as well as see them.”

They were now in the shadow of a copse of ancient oaks. Token paused, raised his staff and moved his lips, then listened, with a slight smile, for a voiceless response.

“Walk on,” Token told the ploughman, “and speak your mind!”

It was several moments after his tongue was released that the ploughman found what it was he most wanted to say.

“They call me a simpleton. They laugh at me.”

“You are a wise fool and so their superior. But tell me where you are going now and why with so heavy a burden.•

“It is true that my crops are the best and never fail, but that is to little avail if I cannot harvest them.” And here the ploughman opened his bundle to show a broken scythe. “It broke early in the harvest so that the wife and I had to cut our wheat with knives. What slow, stooping labor that was! No one would loan me a scythe for I am cursed in this way. Every season I am going back to the smith with a broken pruning hook or spade or now the scythe. Sometimes he curses me and can hardly be prevailed upon to do the work. Other times he laughs and says I am a great strong brute and must be more careful.

“Once, when the coulter shattered into bits, he said that he would do the work for a song, providing it was a bawdy one. So I tried to sing a rude rhyme I had heard from a peddler, only I fell into a violent fit of stuttering. Fortunately, that made the smith laugh all the harder and so all was right.

“But why did I stutter over the song?” the ploughman asked, nearly forgetting and turning to look at Token.

“You are nature’s innocent. Just as you cannot tell the truth that you have glimpsed in the forest and meadows, so also you cannot tell a lie. The song you sing or the joke or story you tell must have something true at its core, or it will freeze on your lips.”

“This time again we have not a penny to pay the smith, so I’ve brought a sack of our best wheat, which we owe to the baron, and what we will do when his men come to claim it, I do not know. My wife says, if I can only make the smith laugh, with a story or a stutter, then perhaps he will once again do the work without pay.”

“The spirits who bless you with good harvests hate the iron and steel that has cut down their groves and ploughed up their sacred ground. But I will teach you a story for the smith, and I will teach the smith, if he is capable, how to make you a scythe that will not fail. Now walk on, and listen carefully to my story, since you must repeat it without a stutter or mistake if the smith is to do the work for you.”

The smith was hammering mightily at his anvil and it was some minutes before the ploughman could get his attention.

“Oh, it’s you, is it!” the blacksmith bellowed, with wrath or high spirits or both at once. “What have you broken this time? What, the scythe! Blast you, it was good work, I made it well. Are you swinging it at the wheat or the trees, you fool! What have you done to my good scythe!”

As the blacksmith reached his huge hands to grab the flustered ploughman, he saw Token standing at the threshold, and halted, vaguely puzzled by his presence.

“I have a story to tell you,” announced the ploughman, and without hesitation he began to chant a long-forgotten hymn to an almost unknown god:

“Sing, clear-voiced Muses, of Token, the crafty smith, famed for inventions. He taught men glorious gifts throughout the world—men who before used to dwell in caves in the mountains like wild beasts. But now that they have learned crafts through Token, the famed worker of bronze, easily they live a peaceful life in their own houses the whole year round. Cunning Token, who is skilled in crafts more than all the other of the first born ....”

And the ploughman recited, just as he had been taught, all the wonderful inventions of the greatest of smiths. How Token crafted the winged shoes that brought the earth gods to the heavens, to force a truce with the envious sky gods. Then he brought gifts to mankind to better their savage lives: nets to catch fish, bows to hunt game, and fire to cook the food and to warm themselves. How he taught them also the arts of brewing and bronze-working. Then, in mankind’s behalf, he defied the envious sky gods once more, but this time was overthrown and fell to the earth, still divine, but now a cripple.

A cripple! With a sudden realization the ploughman unwisely turned his head to look at Token and went into another fit of stuttering.

The smith could not stand it and leapt up, pulling the poor ploughman off his feet and shaking him in the air. “The ending, curse you, the ending—how does it end?”

A shower of coins came tumbling from the ploughman’s pockets. The astonished blacksmith kept shaking the equally astonished ploughman until his pockets were empty, then he gently put him down.

There were ordinary pence among them but many strange copper coins as well, of shapes and devices unknown in that country, intricate in design and skillfully cast. Some showed on their face a two-headed man, gazing left and right, with the lintel of a temple on the obverse. Others bore the figure of a naked youth with winged feet rising up into the clouds on one side, then tumbling down from them on the other. The smith picked up a couple of coins and turned them slowly between his fingers, marveling at the work.

“Can you do bronze work, smith?” Startled, the smith looked up. He had forgotten all about the stranger who waited at the threshold. The noonday sun blazed so bright at the open door, all of a sudden, that the blacksmith had to shade his eyes to look at him.

“My granddad could,” said the smith, “and he taught me. But there’s no demand for it and it’s been many years that I’ve only been doing the ironwork and the steel.

“Granddad told me of a crippled smith who was the master of all smiths. He didn’t know the whole story, only a bit of it. And now I will never hear the rest, for that poor fool over there, I know, has forgotten it, even if he could find his tongue, poor bastard.” And the smith took a couple of steps toward the ploughman, half-wrathfully and half-sorrowing.

“Never mind that,” said Token with a wave of his hand, and the smith never minded, forgetting instantly most of the hymn he had just heard. “I want you to make a bronze scythe for this man. Add one or two of the antique coins to the alloy. They are pure Cyprean copper and will lend hardness and beauty to the blade. Do the same to make him a new ploughshare and coulter. Keep the pence as your payment, though the work itself will be a joy to you.”

The blacksmith blinked in the light but managed a nod. He understood that he was going to make something beautiful, useful and lasting. He was not angry any longer.

“F-f-farewell,” whispered the ploughman at the door, as Token, moving rapidly despite his crippled gait, disappeared from view. “And thank you.”

The smith was musing over some of the odd bits of bronze left behind in the shop from his grandfather’s days—an ornate hinge, an intricately detailed belt buckle, an ingenious lock and key. Those were the days! People cared, back then, about quality!

“Since you’ve nothing better to do,” came a voice at the door, “you can shoe my horse.” It was the miller with his slow, clumsy mill horse, which he saddled and rode, as if he were a nobleman, when the stream was running high and fast enough to power the mill.

“I am doing something better. But I will shoe that worn-out workhorse for you, if it gets you out of my shop.” The smith did not dare be as surly to the rich miller as he was to the poor ploughman. But he did his best to ensure that the miller felt disliked and unwelcome—not that the miller cared. In fact, the miller would have suspected anyone who spoke to him in any other way.

“You poor swaybacked jade, have you ever had a mouthful of green pasture in your life—or even a nosebag of the grain he steals?” said the blacksmith as he inspected the hooves and the shoes. The horse was nearly foundering. Carrying the big miller on his back was harsher duty than turning the mill.

The miller wandered through the shop while the blacksmith was in his yard shoeing the horse. He idly picked up the bronze hinge and buckle—worthless, old-fashioned trinkets. He examined the lock and key and wondered if they would do for his strongbox, but decided the hasp would shatter with one or two hard blows from a pickaxe—more stupid rubbish! Then he spotted the antique coins still piled on the blacksmith’s bench.

They were only copper, not gold, but they attracted him. So he took one. Why not? Anyone foolish enough to leave money lying in plain view deserved to be robbed. In fact, all men were fools, in the miller’s judgment, and all fools deserved to be robbed. The miller’s robberies consisted mostly in taking a triple toll of the grain brought to his mill, but he was not adverse to picking up a few unregarded trifles. As he paid the blacksmith the few pence due to him, he slipped the antique coin into his purse, which he carefully put away.

Being dishonest himself, the miller suspected all others. Therefore he carried his money under his tunic, stuffed into the front of his breeches, where, he thought, no pickpocket could ever get at it. He had not gone more than a furlong, though, before he noticed an oddly warm sensation in his groin, then a decidedly hot sensation, and then—intolerable pain and burning!

So intolerable that the miller yanked desperately at his breeches, pulling out the moneybag, which then burned his hand. As he flung it from one hand to the other—doubly tormented by the physical pain of holding onto his moneybag and the mental agony of throwing it away, the stolen coin fell onto the withers of his horse, still burning as hot as a firebrand.

The poor old mill horse reared, flinging the miller on his back into a ditch near a roadside tavern, where an appreciative audience was delighted by the spectacle of the detested miller striking a series of contorted poses, first doubling over to clutch his groin, then straightening up to ease his bruised ribs, then bending over with another groan to caress his crotch. They were even more delighted to pick up the gold that had come tumbling from his open moneybag.

Unnoticed, the antique coin rolled down the road all the way to the blacksmith’s shop, where the smith, surprised to find it on the floor, picked it up and put it carefully away.

Token would never quite admit to Eros that he stayed the long northern winter for the sake of doing good and dispensing luck to those in need. He claimed instead to a fondness for good country ale, an undignified and ungodlike preference that earned Eros’ light scornful laughter, along with a learned discourse on the relative merits of various vineyards of Bordeaux and Burgundy.

Token did like a good ale. At a crossroads, he turned towards a simple roadside tavern—just an open half-door along the side of a cottage with a bench beside it—that he recalled fondly both for the strong brown ale itself and for the good people who brewed it.

“Will a penny buy a cup of that fine ale of yours, Mistress Brewer?”

“I’ll draw you a tankard, for the beer is not as good as it was, I’m afraid, and not worth more than a penny.”

“You’ve passed this way before, I remember, and you tell good stories,” said the woman as she watched the crippled wanderer politely drink what was indeed a sour, insipid small ale. “In truth, this beer isn’t even worth a penny. But if you’ll tell me another one of your tales, I will bring out a cup of our last good ale.”

The widow sent her son to the cellar for the ale. If the boy was surprised that his mother would give away their best brew, fit for the baron’s own table, to a ragged wanderer, he was careful not to show it.

“It’s the last that we brewed before the barm went bad. Neither the priest nor the wise woman, neither herbs nor prayers, have been able to put it right. It’s just lucky for us that we brewed so much last year and the ale kept so well, or we’d have nothing to take to market.”

“Can you not renew your yeast with another brewer’s barm?”

“We went to the monks to ask for the foam of their brew to ferment ours, but they refused to give or sell it to us.”

“And they stole their barm from us to begin with!” said her son, who had just returned with the ale.

“We don’t know that for sure,” said the widow, “Only it is a fact that their first few brews looked and tasted very much like ours. And now they have most of the custom to themselves. We sell only to a few travelers like yourself and on market day, while they supply the baron’s household and the principal burghers of the town.”

Token held up his cup appreciatively and began his story, chanting it like an ancient lay. He told how, in the beginning, there was only the great foaming water, its foam filled with life, fermenting like the head of this good ale. From the elemental spume came first one godlike form, then others after him. The elder born claimed the skies for their realm, then, envious of the others, threw salt into the sea to poison it and prevent it from conceiving more life. But the gods left behind took the foam and kneaded it and kneaded it until it became an earthen mass that grew a hundred-thousand fold. Then they shaped it into a vast land, with mountains and valleys to collect the fresh water needed to sustain life. The earth gods also saved some of the water’s yeasty foam, from which they brewed a divine nectar.

“And so we all come from the primal foam, and bear a trace of it still, according to the order of our birth. And all true noble brews, like this one in my hand, are descended from the gods’ own nectar,” said Token, concluding his story.

As she listened the widow felt a warm, cheerful confusion that she supposed to be the result of the good strong ale, for she had taken a cup herself. She had understood very little of Token’s story, except his final words, but all the same she laughed happily, “I suppose if I had some of that sea foam for myself, I’d never again have trouble with the beer, would I?”

“You never again will have trouble with your brewing if you will take my counsel. I’ve wandered far and seen much, and I can tell you how to set your barm right. Clean all your vessels as best you can to get the bad barm out of them. Then use the foam of this very ale you gave me to drink, the lees in my cup, to ferment your next brew. Although it is not much in quantity, you’ll find it will do the work.”

This required no divine omniscience, for Token was among the first born and still bore the traces of the primordial yeast on his feet, hands and lips. He pressed the widow’s hand in parting and insisted she take his penny in payment.

“And if the monks come back to taste your ale and try to make away with the barm, let them,” he said to the boy. “It will do them no good, for the barm will only work for you.” Token laughed loudly, for he foresaw what would happen, then left upon his way.

With the god’s merry laugh still ringing in their ears, the widow and her son set to work on a new brew. Although the foam left in the wanderer’s cup seemed ridiculously slight for the task, the wort readily fermented, with a wholesome and tantalizing smell.

Even green, the ale was a fine one. The widow hastened to the market with it, for she badly needed money to pay tithes to the church and taxes to the baron. All in all, she had a very profitable market day, and word of her superior ale soon reached the monastery.

The two monks who stopped at her roadside tavern could not have been friendlier. They praised the ale and admired how her son (who scowled at them) had grown up into a strong young man. While one monk chattered about the lives of saints and insisted on blessing her kegs to protect them from evil sprites, the other surreptitiously poured a large sample of ale into a bladder concealed under his robe. With a somewhat hasty parting benediction, they then took their way back to the monastery.

There it was bake day as well as brew day, and the cook insisted on skimming the widow’s ale for yeast to make the fine bolted wheat bread for the abbot’s table. But as soon he began to knead the dough, it bubbled and seethed as if possessed. The frightened cook stood back and watched as the dough doubled and trebled in size and then doubled and trebled again, spilling off the table and onto the floor and out the door. Screaming incoherently about devils and witches, he ran from the kitchen.

Meanwhile, in the brew house, as soon as the monks pitched the widow’s barm in the wort it too began to seethe and grow until it spilled out of the vat and onto the floor, still seething and foaming as it spread.

Monks ran madly back and forth, uttering prayers and curses, tossing buckets of water on the two fermenting masses as if they were on fire, but the water did not seem to slow or dilute the ferment. Only when the two foamy pools spilled together in the courtyard did the ferment finally cease with a long, slow, bubbling hiss.

It was quite a long time, the interval filled with prayers and penitential lashings, before the monks dared to brew or bake again. Nor did the townspeople show any of their former enthusiasm for the abbey ale, having heard stories of malevolent spirits haunting the monastery brew house and perhaps possessing its ale.

Token’s kindly smile, though not as beautiful as Eros’, had a divinity about it, lifting the spirits of those who were burdened with care or fear. His benevolent, merry laugh filled every good heart with joy. But Token’s grin was dangerous, spreading madness and confusion in its wake.

“Then I shall be careful not to beg,” said Token.

“No offense intended, brother, I’m sure. Only you hardly look to be at the top of Fortune’s wheel.”

“If I am not Fortune’s favorite,” answered Token, “then I do not know who could be.”

This response left the friar momentarily at a loss, as it would anyone who compared the two men: the one a deformed cripple, though strong and steady in his pace, wearing a dusty, threadbare, almost ragged cloak; the other a glossy, plump but well-built man in his prime—and, though he wore the habit of a humble Augustinian friar, with a cloak that was well lined against the cold.

The friar, recovering from his surprise, met the remark with a glib piety: “So all true Christians should feel. For we know that Christ our Savior, who died for our sins, has won for us all a place in Paradise.”

“Perhaps they should. But they don’t.”

The friar, though still all fraternal good cheer, was irritated. He did not like being bested in a conversation with a ragged cripple who was entirely unworthy of his attention. But the friar prided himself on his ability to charm offerings from those who could least afford it—impoverished widows, humble ploughmen or beggarly wanderers—and he had intended to practice on Token before making his sermon in the town. After another conversational gambit was similarly checked, he walked on in brooding silence until he parted from Token at the town gates and proceeded on his own to the church rectory.

There he showed his papal bull and demanded the right to preach to the congregation and to make a collection. Although the parson may well have doubted the bull’s authenticity, he yielded his pulpit to the friar.

All the townspeople who were not sick in their beds were at the mass—some for true piety but most to avoid the risk of fines for non-attendance. They were pleased to see a jolly, manly-looking friar step up to take the place of their parson, a frail, somber, dispirited man who mumbled. Even if the sermon were neither better nor shorter, it would at least be different.

The friar started off with his own folksy retelling of the Fall of Man, featuring a flattering serpent, a vain and demanding Eve, and a browbeaten Adam who only reluctantly goes along with the apple eating. Then, describing the weeping couple cast out from Paradise, the friar abruptly changed from comedy to tragedy. He invoked the suffering of all their descendants, the men compelled to earn their bread with the sweat of their brow, the women condemned to bear their children in pain and to obey their husband as their master. For if only Eve had done so, we would all live joyously and deathlessly in perpetual spring—without winter, without hardship, without sickness or grieving.

“Did our all-knowing and all-powerful Creator err in fashioning from the clay a man and a woman so frail and prone to sin as our first parents?” the friar asked. “No! For God knew from eternity that Adam and Eve would so sin. And He knew from eternity that you”—here the friar peered sternly at his auditors—“that you, John, would be a blasphemous lecher, that you, Margaret, would be a lazy ill-tempered wench, that you, Peter, would steal from your master!”

This was good stuff—“How did the friar know that about John?” “I always said Peter took the spoon!”—the congregation murmured appreciatively.

“We would all be predestined to sin and damnation. But almighty God, in his mercy, has offered us his grace to heal our wicked hearts, to turn us from the path of sin and damnation to his heavenly service.”

“And how can we know whether we are predestined to grace or predestined to eternal damnation?” the friar asked. He was about to proceed to the point of his sermon: men show to one and all that their hearts have been healed by God’s absolving grace when they give generously to the holy friars.

Only at that moment, the friar suddenly spotted the crippled wanderer sitting right in the front pew, grinning up at him. It was a knowing grin that went right through him, summed him up and tossed him aside. “You are a lying rascal and a thief,” the grin said, “You believe only in your own comfort and your superiority to these good people here.”

“And how can we know whether we are predestined to grace or predestined to eternal damnation?” the friar asked again. Flustered, he grinned reflexively without knowing it. He had nearly lost his place in the sermon! He would not look at that odious beggar again—but then he did look, and plunged still deeper into confusion and embarrassment, grinning like a village idiot.

“And how can we know whether we are predestined to grace or predestined to eternal damnation?” the wildly grinning friar asked a third time. His audience stirred and murmured uncomfortably, wondering what had gotten into the man. And then at last the answer came from the friar—an answer that was certainly not his own.

“We know that we are predestined to grace, when we give up our anger, when we turn away from arrogance, when we are generous to those who are unfortunate, when we greet our neighbor with a brotherly kiss—then we know we have God’s blessing, when we have given it to others.”

A husband who had struck his wife that morning for burning the porridge turned sheepishly and gave her a contrite kiss. The wife reddened and sniffled. Other couples embraced awkwardly. With an embarrassed titter an adulteress hugged the wife she had wronged, who, though horrified, hugged her back. Neighbors who couldn’t stand each other shook hands much too heartily. Throughout it all, no one could quite keep back a nervous grin.

The parson, thoroughly scandalized, pushed the friar from the pulpit and uttered a hasty benediction. The parishioners, still grinning and nodding at each other with an idiotic but uncontrollable benevolence, filed out of the church as quickly as they could make it through the doors (for they all felt compelled to bow and to curtsy and to offer a polite “no, after you” to their social inferiors), then fled to their homes.

In his solitary wanderings over the face of the earth, Token sometimes took the guise of a prosperous if travel-worn burgher, sometimes that of a lean and ragged beggar, sometimes a runaway serf or apprentice. Only at the insistence of Eros, who was rather a clotheshorse, did Token ever take a care for his appearance. Rarely would he indulge himself in the outward trappings of divinity, except for his staff and a pair of really good shoes.

They were really good shoes. The shoemaker, who had just stepped out of his shop for a breath of fresh air, saw that immediately.

“Good morning,” said the shoemaker to the stranger. “I see you have no need of my craft.”

“The shoemaker who made these shoes is not of this earth,” replied Token.

“Then whether he is dead or Saint Crispin in Heaven, patron of all us shoemakers here below, he would not mind my taking a look at his pattern. Would you, sir, be so good as to let me admire your shoe?”

Token smiled and obliged. The shoemaker, running his hand all over the shoe, inside and out, was baffled and amazed. The seams were so tight and well waxed as to be almost invisible—well, in fact, they were invisible. Perfect as the shoe seemed, he thought he spied a pale feathery wisp—perhaps a pulled thread?—floating loose at the heel. But the harder he peered, the less he saw.

Then the shoemaker did something quite inspired: he twisted his head sideways until he could just glimpse the shoe from the corner of his eye. What he saw—or thought he saw—caused him to drop the shoe in shock and to gape incredulously at the god before him.

Token laughed loud and merrily. At the sound, the shoemaker forgot the beautiful but terrifying thing he had just glimpsed. He suddenly felt very happy and joined in the laughter without caring what it was about.

“So that is how you spend your day, laughing at coarse jokes with vagabonds?” These words came from a small man, richly but primly dressed, who looked haughtily up and down at Token’s worn, almost ragged cloak. “Ah, Master Clerk,” said the shoemaker, half angrily and half contritely, for the little man was spiteful. “Your shoes are on the last and sewn, with only the soles to do. You are not the only one who wants new shoes for the festival, so you must be patient a little longer.”

“I cannot appear before the baron and the abbot with such miserable slipshod, broken-down shoes as these!” The clerk took off a shoe and waggled it accusingly in the shoemaker’s face. “If you don’t finish my new shoes at once, everyone will hear how you spend your time in the streets listening to crippled gypsies tell bawdy stories!”

“Then come back tomorrow. Your shoes will be ready.”

The shoemaker sighed heavily, his good humor gone. “He would speak ill of me to all the principal citizens if I did not appease him. But it will take much gluing, nailing and hammering—and probably half the night—to finish his shoes. That vain little man wants heels a full inch higher than ordinary, such as is almost beyond my craft to make.”

“Not so long or so hard as that,” said Token, “if you have the right tools. Come along to your bench. Take up my shoe again and use it as your hammer. And I’ll tell you a good story to pass the time.”

“You could make it a bawdy one,” laughed the shoemaker, “and save the clerk from telling a lie.”

At the shoemaker’s bench, Token chanted an ancient lay, one unknown in that land of saints and superstition, the story of the beginning of the cosmos, of the gods who rose up out of the spume of the waters, of the envy and pride of the elder born who seized the heavens for their kingdom, of how the gods left behind yoked together the yeasty foam into an earthen mass, to give a dwelling place to the humans and animals who rose up next from the sea foam. How the elder sky gods, in their envy, then poured salt into the waters so that they were barren and gave forth no more life. But the earth gods made themselves marvelous winged shoes and rose up to the heavens in the earth’s defense, forcing the sky gods to a truce so that they would not destroy the living.

The shoemaker, fascinated, struck the clerk’s sole with the heel of Token’s shoe in time with the rhythm of the god’s chant, hardly knowing what he was doing. When Token had finished his lay, the shoes were perfect—well shaped and firmly soled beyond any the shoemaker had yet crafted.

Even the clerk could find no fault with them, though he would not praise or thank the shoemaker. “I’ll leave these with you for repair,” said the clerk, discarding his old pair and putting on the new ones. It was insulting to expect a master shoemaker to cobble old shoes, but the shoemaker held himself back from replying, being glad enough to have the spiteful little man out of his shop.

The clerk was so pleased with his new shoes that, once out of the shoemaker’s sight, he could not resist a boyish urge to cut a caper and did so, leaping nimbly into the air and striking his heels together. And then he capered again, and again, and again. Every time his feet touched the ground, he was off again in another leap. People were beginning to notice and to laugh, for it was market day and the town was thronged with visitors.

The clerk bent over and grabbed his knees to tame his feet from their prancing, but his forward movement only caused him to fall into a lively country jig. More people gathered to point and marvel: amazing what a few pots of good market ale can do! Who would have thought the pompous little man had it in him!

The clerk lurched and lunged, trying to compel his feet to hold still, but only exceeded into making his rustic jig increasingly vulgar—gyrating his hips forward, then sticking his arse high up in the air. Roars of laughter accompanied these new dance steps. The humiliated clerk finally managed to pivot and pirouette up the road and out of sight of the crowd, who were too doubled over with laughter to pursue him in his rapid progress out of town.

“I want a pint of whatever he had!” shouted the blacksmith, and the crowd followed him to the widow brewer’s market stand. She wisely kept silent (the pretentious clerk drank only wine), as she pulled pint after pint of her excellent fresh ale for an appreciative clientele. It was all in all a very profitable market day for the widow.

When at last the poor clerk dropped exhausted under a hedgerow, the shoes came off his feet and went dancing down the road all by themselves. Waking up in the chill of the evening, the clerk suspected the shoemaker and the stranger with his mocking smile of having arranged his humiliation—but how? He was altogether too bewildered and ashamed to puzzle it out or to think of revenge. He wanted only to slink home and out of sight. It was too much to hope that his public disgrace might be forgotten, ever, but he dreaded being jeered at in the street.

But, quite as amazing as his strange adventure, the clerk soon discovered that he was now, for the first time in his life, almost popular. Many of the townsfolk who had disliked the clerk now clapped him on the shoulder and offered to buy him drinks, hoping to see him dance again. He never did, but there had been a wisdom in his madcap dance, and he was forever after noticeably less pompous, less righteous, less spiteful.

Later that same day, a runaway serf, nearly dead with fatigue and fear, found a beautiful pair of shoes abandoned by the side of the road. He looked up and down the lane; he hid nearby and waited a while, for he was no thief. When no one came for the shoes, he put them on his feet. His weariness left him and he walked on and on, until he was safely far away. Then the shoes left him for another.

Even now, today, someone wears the shoes. On the wrong feet, they will pivot and kick and gallop until they have worked themselves free. But untold generations of vagabonds, gypsies, hoboes, migrant workers and street people have left behind their weariness and despair after putting on the shoemaker’s perfect shoes.

Although the solstice festival did not start until noon, it fell upon a market day, so the town had been thronged with shoppers since daybreak. Only those with a license from the baron could set up a stall within the city gates, but peddlers were roaming the outskirts with their carts full of trinkets and second-hand goods. Acrobats and actors had set up their tents outside the walls and sent their criers through the market throngs urging people not to miss their one-time-only performances.

As soon as the town clock had struck the hour, the clerk stood up before the crowd, wearing his best finery with his old, comfortable, newly cobbled shoes. “Gentle neighbors and honorable visitors,” he said, “Lords and ladies, burghers and guildsmen, artisans and country folk, and all your good wives and lovely daughters,” he added, hoping he had left no one of importance out. “We come together once more to bring cheer to this, the shortest day of the year, which we brighten with our fellowship and our stories.

“For a well-told tale has the power to cast out the darkness and to warm the spirits, both of those with roaring hearth fires and rich furs”—here the clerk somewhat marred his speech by pausing to cast a simpering glance at the baron—“as well as those with only a woolen cloak and a smoldering peat fire to shield them from the elements.”

“The rules of the contest are known to you all. The order is determined by lots, and the stories will be judged by our noble and gracious baron, by the holy and learned abbot, and by my humble and unworthy self. The prize is a purse of gold to be awarded by the baron. Storytellers, take your places! And you in the crowd, mind you hold your peace until the story is done, or you’ll feel the beadle’s stick upon your backs.”

The first storyteller to take the stage was a very nervous tailor, who proceeded to stumble his way through the story of the brave little tailor who kills five flies with one blow, only everyone thinks he killed five giants, so then he has to go kill real giants. He climbs a tree and makes the giants angry by yelling insults and they fight until they are all dead. The tailor is not dead, though, but still alive, you see, and marries the king’s daughter and lives happily ever after. Of course, the only thing original about the tailor’s story was how badly it was told. His many mistakes got much laughter and some applause, so that the tailor thought he was a great success and sat down happily.

The tailor was followed by the friar, who was such a good orator and such a jolly fellow (when he chose to be) that everyone expected a clever well-told tale, with an appropriately pious moral tagged onto the end. To their disappointment, the friar told a lengthy and very dull story of the life of a saint. Now, if it is a saint who starts his career by making amends for some particularly interesting sins, or ends it with a gruesome martyrdom, even a saint’s life can be mildly entertaining, but the friar’s tale lacked even those standard embellishments. The shortest day of the year began to seem long to the bored audience.

The miller next got up. He had never told a story in his life, but he had told lies enough and thought there was no difference between the two. He had barely opened his mouth, intending to tell a series of lewd old jokes about a priest’s wife who hides her lover in various ill-conceived places—the bed, the oven, the cauldron, the belfry, the altar—when he spotted some hecklers from the tavern who pretended to be clutching their groins, bemoaning their cracked ribs, or chasing coins about the street. “I’ll get you!” he shouted, leaping from the platform, and was disqualified.

After the uproar had died down over what was the first real entertainment of the festival, the shoemaker stood up to a round of expectant applause. The shoemaker had written many ballads that were popular throughout the country, and the crowd naturally supposed that he had composed a new poem for the occasion. Instead, the shoemaker chose to recite, as faithfully as he dared, Token’s hymn of the ancient gods. Perhaps he put the accent wrong on a few syllables, marring the sense and giving the rhythm too much of the steady tap-tap-tap of a hammer striking leather. Or perhaps the prudent switch from “gods” to “saints” that the shoemaker made in the retelling did not succeed in making the poem any less foreign. For whatever reason, the tale failed to please.

Although a few people applauded fervently, the crowd was puzzled and disquieted by the shoemaker’s unfamiliar tale. A good story should be original, but not that original. “Too avant-garde,” whispered the clerk to the baron and abbot, who nodded pompously in agreement. The clerk pretended to himself that he was entirely objective and did not in the least wish to ruin the shoemaker’s chances.

A tanner, thinking he would impress the judges with an exotic setting, told how the Sultan of Russia, seeking a bride, threw a ball to which everyone was invited. The wicked stepfather would not let his beautiful and virtuous stepdaughter attend, lest she outshine his own ill-tempered and rather ugly daughters. But the lovely girl had a fairy godmother who dressed her in cloth of gold instead of rags and ashes, and sent her to the ball in a coach drawn by a team of six elephants. The judges were not impressed and the crowd was not fooled, but the tinkerer who stood up next was utterly confounded. He had planned to tell the same tale, only set in the kingdom of the Cyclops. He had already been a bit worried as to whether Cinderella should have two eyes, to make her beautiful, or one eye, to make her like everyone else—but now he realized he had better tell another tale altogether. He started the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, only in his jitters he forgot important details. The boisterous crowd began to call out cues—“He says ‘Fee Fi Fo Fum’”—which threw him out even worse, until finally the judges told him to step down.

The widow brewer had drawn the seventh and final spot. She stood up confidently enough, for listening to the stories of one customer and telling them to the next was part of the alewife’s trade—and, besides, she had had a quick nip before taking her place before the crowd.

“There was a poor widow woman with seven sons and seven daughters,” she began. The widow had only her one son, but seven was her lucky number that day and, anyway, it was just a story.

“This widow was a brewer, and a good one at that. Her strong brown ale was famous throughout the land and she sold enough to feed her seven sons and seven daughters—not on meat like a lord or a monk, mind you, but on wholesome brown bread like the good simple folk they were.”

Enter the villain of the story: Not the monks—for the widow was not so foolhardy as to tell a true story—but the miller. No one liked millers, and certainly no one appointed them judges of storytelling contests.

“This miller was also the baker, and his loaves were pure profit, made with the flour he stole from his customers. But as much as he made with milling, baking and stealing, it was not enough. He would be the brewer too, then no one could eat or drink without coming to him. The miller would be mightier than the king!”

This wicked miller not only stole the widow’s barm, but threw salt into her fermenting vat to kill her yeast. The poor widow, her seven sons and her seven daughters prayed to the Good Lord in Heaven, who sent down his angel with barm from the ale brewed by St. Peter himself for the apostles’ own table. When the wicked miller discovered that the poor widow’s ale was even better than before, he again stole her barm. But St. Peter’s barm would not obey the miller, and it foamed and fermented until it filled the whole mill and all its outbuildings, devouring not only the wort for the ale and the flour for the bread, but all the grain that had been brought to the mill. So great was the force of the foaming barm, that it even carried away the sacks of gold coins which the miller had hidden beneath the mill floor.

“And the barm passed straight out of the mill and down the millstream and into the sea, still foaming and fermenting. Far on the other side of the sea, it came to rest at last on dry land, where it formed mountains of fine wheaten bread and deep lakes of good brown ale. And the fortunate souls who live in that faraway land never have need of money or millers or brewers but can eat and drink their fill whenever they wish.”

The widow finished her tale to enthusiastic applause. It was less well received by the judges. The abbot, who knew well enough where the widow had gotten the inspiration for her story, whispered angrily to the baron that it was blasphemous to say the apostles are beer drinkers when the Holy Gospel clearly tells us they drank wine at the Last Supper. The baron, in turn, thought the widow’s remark about a miller being mightier than the king smacked of the jacquerie. The clerk had liked the story but did not dare hold an opinion contrary to the baron and abbot. After some more busy whispering, the clerk arose to announce the winner to be: the friar! Some in the crowd hissed and booed.

Token hated a fix. As the baron held aloft the slender purse of gold before awarding it to the victor, it burst, scattering coins everywhere.

Only there seemed to be many more coins than had been put in the purse for the prize, both great shimmering pieces of gold and humble copper pennies. And they didn’t simply scatter. Some seemed to rise up aloft, spinning over the heads of the crowd. Others traveled improbably long distances on their edges, darting this way and that to elude capture. But it was impossible, really, to know with certainty in the sudden frenzy that broke loose.

Many in the crowd ran forward to snatch at the gold. It wasn’t quite right, of course, but it was natural enough. Shockingly, the baron and abbot forgot their dignity and went running as madly after the coins as the poorest widow or beggar. Some say the baron punched the abbot in the eye as they struggled for a coin, and the abbot gave it right back to him—not the coin, that is, but the blow. The clerk danced back and forth in an excited flutter, without any provocation from his perfectly ordinary shoes, uncertain whether to try to restore peace or to dive after the coins himself. The beadles were no help. They were busy scrambling for their share of the gold.

The few who had managed to snatch up a gold coin lived it up for a while, until the money was gone. Then they bored their friends by talking about all the things they would have done or bought with the gold, had it only lasted a bit longer—and so were no better off than before.

But the ones who had found one of the pennies—or had been found by a penny, for in the confusion, some of the pennies leapt into the pockets of those too shy or too honest to join in the scramble—those who had gained one of Token’s lucky pennies lived, if not happily ever after, at least reasonably contented most of the time for the rest of their brief lives.

Penny God Home

The Penny Priestess Speaks

Penny Catechism

Ask the Penny Priestess