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Last Sunday my eight-year-old watched me pour mead on the offering stump and asked, very reasonably, why we give good mead to nobody. I told her it isn't nobody. It's the land-wights, the ancestors, the gods, depending on the day. But mostly I told her about gifts. The Hávamál says a gift always looks for a gift in return. Our whole way is built on that: you give, they give, you give again, and over the years it becomes a friendship. She thought about it, then poured a little of her apple juice next to the mead. 'In case the small ones don't like alcohol.' Fifteen years I've been doing this and it never once occurred to me to offer the small ones juice. We do now.