The Caged Viking

by Sandra Hill

  It was barely past dawn when Kirsten gave up the ghost, so to speak.

  With sleep being impossible, she got up, brushed her teeth, pulled her long blonde hair into a pony tail, and went downstairs, still in her Snoopy sleepshirt covered by a terry cloth robe. In the pantry, a coffeemaker, on an automatic timer, was bubbling away. Pouring herself a mug and putting in a spoonful of sugar, she walked barefooted out onto the back porch where she found her father. Magnus Ericsson had always been an early riser, since the days when he’d been what he called “a simple farmer” back in the “old country” of Norway.

  “Good morning, sweetling,” he said. “You’re up early.”

  “Couldn’t sleep,” she replied.

  “Excited about your birthday celebration tonight?”

  “Please! What woman welcomes a thirty-fifth birthday?”

  He grinned, knowing that age didn’t matter much to her. Not yet, anyway. She was too busy with her professional life.

  Glancing pointedly at the rare blue amber in a white gold filigree setting that she wore on a chain around her neck, he asked, “Do you like your birthday gift?”

  “I love it! I’ve never seen amber this color before.”

  “’Tis rare. In the old days when I did a bit of amber harvesting in the Baltics, after my crops were planted and before harvest, we found a few pieces of that color. Mostly shades of rust, but there was the occasional blue or green or red. I gave Madrene a red stone one time, called Dragon’s Blood. Methinks her husband, that miscreant Karl, took it with the divorce.”

  Madrene’s first husband, Karl, had divorced her because she was barren. Not so barren now, though. Obviously it had been Karl who’d been sterile.

  Not wanting to get her father started on the subject of Karl and his misdeeds, Kirstin asked, “Do you miss amber harvesting?”

  “Nay!” He shook his head for added emphasis. “I am a farmer at heart, and raising grapes satisfies that yearning. ‘Tis important for a man to be satisfied with his work.”

  And a woman, too. That’s why I’m a professor, and not a wife and mother. Although…no, that’s another subject to avoid with my father.

  They sat on cushioned wicker chairs facing the rail of a wide wraparound porch that overlooked the neat rows of Blue Dragon Vineyard grapevines. For a while, they just sipped at their coffees and admired the view.

  It was that special time of the year, a fleeting week or two in mid-Spring called “Bloom” when the developing flowers got fertilized, and the air was redolent with subtle but tantalizing aromas of the goodness to come. This was not a heady scent like that in an orange grove or a peach orchard. It was more elusive. Fresher, because of its understatement. Like the first slice of a Honeycrisp apple, or the skin of a pear still on the limb, or an ice-cold melon cracked open and oozing sweetness on a hot summer day. She must have read that description somewhere.

  Inhaling deeply, she noticed her father doing the same, his eyes closed to enhance the sense of smell. She understood how he felt.

  She lived in Los Angeles, and was home only for the weekend family gathering for Easter Sunday, which fell this year the day after her birthday, that all important one, a turning point for most women. She would rather not have a fussy party or anything, but it was no hardship coming home. In fact, she looked forward to her time at Blue Dragon, which managed to stay the same in a world changing too fast.

  It wasn’t just the property that was comforting, she noted as she glanced around, but the old Victorian style house, too. A mansion, really. Her family had moved here more than twenty years ago when their father had married Angela Abruzzi, who stemmed from a long line of California vintners.

  And a good thing it was that the house had been so big, Kirsten reflected. Magnus had eleven children, including Kirsten, when he’d arrived in America; twelve, after he’d married Angela. To say that her father was a “very virile Viking” would be a vast understatement. Or very busy, to say the least, she quipped to herself with a smile. Enough on that subject!

  Still, it was ironic that her father had probably had ten children by the time he was her age, and she not even one. Nor did she have a prospective mate on hand, or even a sperm donor, not that she was thinking of anything like that. Yes, she’d had that on again/off again relationship with Navy SEAL Jacob Alvarez Mendozo, JAM, but it had ended last year, amicably from both sides. Turned out that it was not the perfect match they’d thought it would be. Part of the reason for that breakup and others was her not wanting any children of her own, ever. Not that she didn’t like babies—other people’s babies—just not for her.

  She knew why her mind was veering in that direction, though. “The blasted man came to me again last night,” she blurted out, before she had a chance to bite her tongue. Then, in for a penny, in for a pound, she elaborated, “I can barely sleep anymore with these nocturnal visits.”

  “A man came to you last night? Here? At Blue Dragon? Was it one of my workers?” Her father started to rise with paternal indignation. She wouldn’t be surprised if he went off to get his sword from the hall umbrella stand. Thirty-five years old, and Daddy was going to protect her virtue!

  She laughed and put up a halting hand. “No, no! I didn’t mean in the physical sense. This guy could hardly do me any harm. Nope. My Viking is in a cage, for heaven’s sake!”

  “A Viking? Did you say a Viking? In a cage? Impossible!”

  Kirsten rolled her eyes at the vanity of a Viking. Truly, you could take the man out of the Norselands, but he would always be a Viking.

  Her father, who was close to sixty, wore his gray-threaded, light brown hair in a long single braid. Hard manual labor in the vineyards kept his large body fit. He still wore etched arm rings on his upper arms. Despite the jeans and Blue Dragon T-shirt and athletic shoes, he was Viking to the bone, and always would be.

  “Not only is My Viking…that’s what I call him…in a cage, but he’s about a thousand years old,” she told him with a laugh, then added, “Like us.”

  Her father gasped, knowing exactly what she referred to. More than twenty years ago, her family had, unbelievably, traveled from 1000 AD Norway, best known as Hordaland back then, to modern day Hollywood, California. They’d melded into this society and rarely spoke of their experience. A miracle, something ordained by God, or the gods, had been the consensus back then, and still was today. There was no scientific explanation. Besides, if they told anyone about it, they would be deemed crazy. The whole family might end up in some secret facility for scientific experiments. Considering the secrecy and shenanigans of some government agencies, that prospect wasn’t as far-fetched as it might first seem.

  “Another time traveler? And he came to you here…but, no, you said he was in a cage.” Her father frowned with confusion.

  “It’s a dream. Sort of. And I think it takes place in a Saxon castle, probably a royal one, about the time of King Aethelred.”

  “That idiot! He was called ‘Aethelred the Unready’ back in the day. More like ‘Aethelred the Dunderhead’ if you ask me. Hey, that rhymed.” Her father grinned at his own wit, then took a long sip of his coffee, before asking, “How could you tell?”

  “Daddy! I’m an expert on that time period. I’ve written books on the subject. Don’t you think I would recognize the architecture, the tapestries, the furnishings, even the weapons?”

  “Sorry, sweetling. I meant no insult. It’s just…a Viking in a cage?”

  “I know, but that’s what I’m seeing.”

  “I have to admit, it’s the kind of thing Aethelred would have done,” he conceded. “Remember what we learned about the St. Brice’s Day Massacre after we left? An outrage, it was! You probably know more about that event than I do.”

  She nodded. “Wait here a sec. I want to show you something.” She went into the house and came back with a pad and pencil. Quickly, she sketched a design of writhing birds, one beak nipping at the tail feathers of the other in a circle. “The man in my dreams has arm ring
s with this raven design on them.”

  “Those aren’t ravens. They’re hawks, and I know who your Viking Man must be. Hauk Thorsson…spelled H A U K. in Old Norse, not H A W K. He was from Haukshire in the northern sector of the Norselands, farther north even than our farmstead. He was known as Hauk the Handsome.”

  “It can’t be the same guy because my Viking is far from handsome.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “No,” she admitted. “You know how the halls were then. Dark, smoky, and my Viking has a lot of facial hair. He probably hasn’t trimmed his beard or mustache in a long time, let alone shaved.” She shrugged.

  “Your Viking. I do not like the sound of that.”

  They would have said more on the subject, but the sound of an engine could be heard from out front, probably a pickup truck by the loudness. Within minutes, her brother Torolf, a Navy SEAL, came sprinting around the house and up the back steps.

  “You’re early,” her father remarked.

  “I was up all night with Katla. She’s teething; so, I came on ahead of Helga and the other kids.” He sank down into another of the wicker chairs. Dressed in a U.S. Navy T-shirt and running shorts, he extended his long, bare legs out to rest his boondockers on the porch rail. “I figure I can help you with some of the first mowing around the vines.” He turned to Kirsten then and grinned. “Still an old maid, huh? And you now hitting the Big Three-Five. Uh-oh! Pretty soon you’ll be living with a herd of cats and getting all crotchety. Maybe even turn to other women, if you get my meaning.” Amusement flickered in his expressive eyes. Torolf loved to tease. All her brothers did. “No? Well, my offer’s still open, sis. I can fix you up with one of my buddies.”

  “Oh, you! As if we need another SEAL in the family!” Her younger brother Hamr, a former NFL football player, was a SEAL, too. Not to mention her brother-in-law Ian, a SEAL commander. And then there was her recently ended affair with JAM. “Suffice it to say, we have enough arrogant, conceited, violent, chauvinistic, hairy apes in this family.” She slapped him on the arm with her tablet.

  “Suffice it to say, la de da!” Torolf often mimicked what he called her high brow vocabulary

  “Do you consider me a hairy ape?” her father asked.

  “You’re the exception,” she lied and gave Torolf a dirty look.

  “And what is this ‘other women’ business, Torolf? Do you mean her stepmother Angela, or her half-sisters Madrene or Dagny, or Lida, or Marie, or the various sisters-by-marriage in this family?”

  “Um…uh…,” Torolf stammered.

  Their father was a modern man in many ways, but back in the Dark Ages in others.

  “He means that I might become a lesbian,” Kirsten explained bluntly before her brother could come up with some half-baked story to cover his ass.

  “Traitor!” Torolf hissed at Kirsten.

  “Torolf!” his father said at the same time. Then to Kirsten, he inquired, “You wouldn’t, would you?”

  “No, Daddy, I’m not gay. Not that homosexuality is bad. In fact, in some ways I wish I leaned in that direction, but it’s not my thing!”

  Her father breathed a visible sigh of relief and said, “Get your brother a coffee, sweetling.”

  “Why can’t Torolf get his own coffee?”

  “We have man things to discuss. Like what to do about your Viking.”

  “Man things?” Kirsten gritted her teeth. “Did I happen to mention chauvinism?”

  “Kirsten has a Viking?” Torolf sat up straighter. “Hoo-yah!”

  Was Dr. Phil of Norse descent?...

  By late that afternoon, when the rest of her family showed up, everyone…mostly her brothers…had an opinion on Kirsten’s “Viking Man.” Any one of them could have prospered with their own newspaper advice columns, or blogs on the Internet.

  Most people thought that the term busybody referred to women. Hah! They didn’t know Norsemen! Seriously, a day in the life of the Magnusson clan was like a bad reality TV show.

  The only one missing was Jogeir who was working on some experimental farm in Iceland. Everyone assumed that someday Jogeir, who had dirt in his blood just like their father, would come home to take over Blue Dragon after his father retired, if he ever did. Kirstin missed Jogeir, who had been lame with a club foot as a child back in the Norselands, but had had a surgery to correct the issue once in this country, and even went on to be an Olympic runner at one point. She hadn’t seen Jogeir, who had become somewhat of a hermit, in years.

  At the moment, a group of her family sat around the patio, drinking vast quantities of mead (beer) as they waited for the roast boar (pork ribs) that was cooking on the barbecue. Her stepmother Angela was inside working on the sides with Marie, who was studying to be a chef at some fancy culinary arts school. They would probably be having something like Truffled Potato Salad or wine-infused asparagus with black garlic croutons. You never knew when Marie was around.

  Lida, an aspiring Broadway actress, who sometimes stayed in Kirsten’s LA apartment when on the West Coast, was in the kitchen, too, but she was probably just observing, not wanting to mar the admittedly spectacular French manicure that she’d splurged on at some hoity-toity Manhattan spa. In fact, after she’d arrived in LA yesterday in order to drive up to the vineyard with Kirsten, she’d insisted on painting Kirsten’s toenails with a crimson gel enamel from a sample the spa had given her, named “Hot Blood.” Kirsten had refused to let her do her fingernails which she kept a clear gloss, or occasionally a pale pink, in keeping with her professorship role. Hot-blooded Lady/Professor was not the image she was going for when teaching “Sexual Attitudes in Viking Society” to outspoken, no-filter young people.

  Among the first to give his opinion on Kirsten’s Viking was Ragnor, her oldest brother, a highly intelligent computer guru of some kind. He was married to Alison MacLean, a physician who worked with the SEALs on the naval base at Coronado. Their combined IQ was probably about five hundred. You’d think they would have intellectual suggestions.

  Instead, Ragnor commented, “It’s springtime, her sap is rising, and only a Viking man has the cure.” And he was serious.

  “No, it’s her maternal clock ticking,” observed Alison. “Mama wants to build a nest.” Meanwhile, Alison was rocking an infant, an only child, so far. Alison was hugely pregnant with twins which she expected this summer. Meanwhile, masses of other children ran around the yard like little hoodlums chasing their cousins. An Easter egg hunt would be held that afternoon.

  In Kirsten’s opinion, the sap was rising too much in too many of the male Magnusson trees, and a few female clocks needed to be smashed to smithereens.

  “Yeah, but this guy’s in a cage, not a nest,” pointed out Torolf, the blabbermouth who’d told the family about her dreams.

  Her older sister, Madrene, known for her sharp tongue and no-nonsense opinions, said, “You’re a moron, Ragnor, always thinking with your dick. Modern women do not need a man to fulfill themselves. On the other hand…” She glanced over to her husband, Commander Ian MacLean, who was helping their three pre-teen children set up a sound system for later dancing on the patio. (Yes, Vikings dancing! It had to be seen to be believed!) Madrene gave her balding, forty-something husband a full body survey in his T-shirt and shorts, and grinned. “On the other hand, Dickie makes a nice play toy for a woman with a little creativity.” She winked at Kirsten and Alison, “Do you agree, ladies?”

  Neither of them could speak for their laughter.

  “Madrene!” their father exclaimed. “Betimes you go too far! Play toy, indeed!”

  “Pfff! Says the man whose toy has been played with by more women than he has hairs on his…other toys, as in balls! Twelve children! Tsk-tsk-tsk!”

  “You are not too old for me to put you over my knee and paddle your ample arse,” their father said.

  “Ian is the only one who paddles my behind, Daddy. Isn’t that right, honey?”

  Ian had just come up, overheard his wife’s words, went
beet red, and walked back the way he’d come, without comment.

  “How does this look so far?” Her younger sister Dagny joined the group, showing her a sketchpad with a penciled drawing of the man Kirsten had described. Dagny was an artist who worked for the FBI in forensic facial reconstruction, even as she was an accomplished painter in her own right.

  Her composite was good, but not quite right. “I think the cheekbones are more defined and the chin a little less square.”

  Her brother Storvald, a wood and metal sculptor who worked at Rosestead, their Uncle Rolf’s reconstructed Viking village in Maine, was more interested in the arm rings her father had told them about and Kirsten’s rough sketch from this morning. Using charcoal and her tablet, he’d gotten the etched jewelry down exactly and was excited about casting some of the pieces for sale on his Internet website.

  “Bottom line,” Torolf told the group, “I think this calls for a military intervention.”

  Kirsten groaned.

  “I’m in,” interjected Hamr, who’d no doubt been hit on the head one too many times in football or in SEAL operations.

  “A military intervention? Like what?” scoffed Njal, who had been one of the most mischievous of her brothers as a child, but was now a high-ranking, way-too-serious officer in the traditional Navy, not the SEALs, a source of consternation among some in the family. “You want us all to grab broadswords and battle axes and rush back a thousand years to rescue the guy? Earth to clueless Magnussons? It’s impossible.”

  “I wouldn’t say impossible,” her father said, looking toward Torolf who’d actually done it one time. And managed to return. With a bride, no less. It was a subject they rarely discussed.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it, but I know from personal experience that it can be done,” Torolf elaborated. “The problem is, there’s no control over the year you would land in, how to travel back, or even if you’d be able to return.”

  “Face it, this is a God issue,” said her brother Kolbein, a priest. Yes, a Viking priest. He got a kick out of the plaque he had hanging on the wall of his church office, a play on that old Saxon refrain from when everyone feared the invading pagans in longships, “From the fury of the Northmen, oh, Lord, deliver us.”