by Joanna Bell
Twenty minutes later, I am swimming out into a calm evening sea, gasping at the cold of the water and dragging a large, floating log behind me, onto which cling Willa and her three children, all nestled between her arms and bawling with fear. Willa is silent, but I see from the pallor of her skin that she, too, is terrified, and that she is only holding it together enough to contain her own screams so her kids don't have to hear them.
Their shrieks get louder, too, as I drag them further out, but I have to do that because the sand underneath my feet remains marshy and eager to suck my legs down into it for quite a distance. Once we are at about chest depth, I can swim freely.
It takes a long time. I knew it was going to. I knew there was no choice. But there are a couple of times during the swim that I wonder if I am going to have the strength to complete it. I can't go back to the land, because the land isn't solid, we'll drown there as sure as we'll drown out in the sea. I ask Willa to help, showing her with a little demonstration how to lift her legs up behind her, near the surface, and kick. She learns quickly, and that makes my job easier.
Soon, though, I am experiencing a kind of fatigue I have never felt before. It's the kind of tiredness you just know cannot be overcome by willpower or believing in yourself or any of that motivational talk. I am simply running out of gas, like a car – and when I do I'll be as much use as a car with an empty tank on the side of the road. I turn back towards the land as the sun slips below the horizon, and pray to the universe that when we reach it, it will be solid.
"Are we past the marsh?" Willa asks, her voice a whisper.
"Yes," I reply, because I have to believe that's the truth.
The children are silent as we close in on the dark shore, their teeth chattering now as their mother whimpers and frets and as I tentatively move to set my feet down beneath me and discover if my friend and I and her babies are going to drown in this cold sea, or if we might still have a chance.
I cry out, a raw sob of relief that rings through the night, when I feel pebbles under my feet. Willa lifts her drooping head. "Are we past it, Paige? Have we found the solid ground again?"
But I am too tired to respond. I just keep pulling the log, and the people attached to it, until the water is thigh-deep and Willa feels the ground for herself. She stands up and gathers the kids in her arms and we make our way through the final feet of water to the beach, saying nothing until we step onto it. And then we collapse, all five of us, into a heap of cold, wet, exhausted humanity. No one has the strength to weep or speak so we just lie there, unmoving, panting, for a half an hour – maybe longer. We're soaked, and all of our clothing is soaked.
"We need to get higher," I say finally. "We need to get to the grass or the dry sand at least – we need to dry off."
So Willa and I drag ourselves – and the children – up to the grass at the top of the pebble beach, and then we fall asleep.
I wake first, and it is still dark. The youngest of Willa's babies, a girl, sleeps with her body curled neatly around my bump. So as not to wake her, I don't move. We ate the rest of the bread before the swim, knowing it would be ruined by the water, and we only have three apples left. We need to find Caistley soon. As much as I want to let them sleep, we have to keep moving. I shake Willa gently.
By what feels like mid-morning, we are seriously flagging. My whole body aches with fatigue, muscle-strain and hunger. We're stopping every five or ten minutes now to rest, barely able to carry the smaller children. During one of these frequent rests, Willa looks up at me as she feeds a chunk of apple to Eadgar, her second-born son.
"I won't make it too much farther, Paige. Even you look weak, and I've never seen you look weak before. Promise me if I die that you'll keep going with the children. Eadgar and Aldred will be waiting, they'll be looking for me – for us."
"No one's going to die," I say, but both of us know, as we look grimly into each other's eyes, that it's just as likely to be a lie as it is the truth. "If you get too tired I'll go on, I'll find Eadgar and come back for you. But no one's going to die."
We keep going, trudging along, too tired to do anything but put one shaky foot in front of another. It's late afternoon, the sun just beginning to drop towards the horizon, when Rowyn stumbles to his knees and doesn't get up.
"Up!" Willa commands, and even as she tries to hide her fear from her babies I hear it there, the shaking in her voice. "Up, boy! We'll see your father soon – don't you want to see your father?"
But Rowyn does not get up. He doesn't raise his head. Something is wrong, and Willa and I both know it. My heart begins to pound as she kneels beside her son and lays him on his back. I see that he's barely conscious, his eyelids fluttering.
"Is he tired?" I ask, my breath coming short and quick. "Is that it? Does he need to sleep? He can sleep now, Willa. We can take a break now. Does he want some more apple?"
Rowyn is 6 now, the oldest of Willa's children, and he has been walking as much as his mother and I have on this journey, because neither of us has the strength to carry him.
I watch as Willa lifts him to his feet and lets go, her face contorted with fear. The boy's knees buckle and he lurches to the side like a drunk before falling over again and curling up into a fetal position. Willa screams.
"Is he dying, Paige? Is that it? What can I do? He's my first baby. My first! I can't – I can't –"
I lean over the child, terrified, but am soon close enough to hear his breath. I look up at Willa, who has her hands pressed tightly to her mouth as she tries to contain herself. "He's breathing," I whisper. "He's alive. We have to let him rest. Stay here with them, I'll go and find a stream."
I stumble off into the woods that lie just to our right, and wait until I'm far enough away so I won't be heard to crumple to the ground, sobbing. I look up at the sunlight as it peeks through the leaves, an image I have seen so many times before, and think of how happy I was in woods like this as a child. Now I'm no longer a child, and there is no happiness at all. Willa's son is not dead, but he will be soon and I don't need a medical degree to see it. We have less than a single apple left.
An image of Eirik's face enters my mind and, at the same time, I feel the fluttering sensation that is the growing child in my belly – his child. I have to keep going. There's no other choice. I force myself to my feet and stumble on, pausing every now and again to listen for the sound of water. And then, suddenly, I hear something. Not water. Voices. I'm on the ground before there's even time to think, trying to figure out which direction they're coming from. They're close. Too close. I move to scramble deeper into the undergrowth but then I hear them right there, feet away.
"Who is this trying to snuffle for acorns like a pig?" A male voice asks and I give up, knowing I don't have the strength to run or fight. I take a deep breath, put a submissive smile on my face, and turn around.
A man, clearly a peasant, carrying no weapons. He doesn't look threatening. Behind him, another man whose face I can't quite make out until he steps forward, into the sunlight, and I gasp.
"Eadgar!"
My childhood friend wears a dark, scraggly beard now, and something about his face his different, rougher. But it's him. He steps forward, narrowing his eyes.
"Paige?" He asks, stunned. "It can't be – am I seeing things? Is it you?"
He reaches out and pulls me to my feet and we fall into each other's arms.
"I thought I was never going to see you again," he says when we pull away to look at each other, still disbelieving. "We thought you married one of the King's men, but," he looks me up and down, taking in the state of me, "you don't look like you – Paige, what are you doing out here in the woods? And with a baby in your belly – where is your hus –"
"Come," I say, grabbing Eadgar's hand and gesturing to the other man, who I assume is Willa's husband. "I am with Willa and the children – they're resting right now but the oldest isn't well. I'll take you to them."
At the mention of their sister and wife, both men race o
n ahead of me as I go back to her, and then Eadgar and I stand back, watching, as the family is reunited. The children use the last of their strength to reach for their father and he scoops them up, all 3 of them, and holds them tightly.
"They need food," I say. "And water – that's what I was looking for when you found me. We've been walking for close to three days with only bread and apples. Rowyn is the weakest."
Willa and I, exhausted, sit back and watch as the children's father and uncle tend to them, pressing pieces of the bread to their mouths, giving them sips of water from their waterskins. I wait for a few minutes, until Rowyn manages to sit up on his own, and then I turn to Eadgar and speak quietly.
"Are we close to Caistley? I need to get back there very –"
"It's gone, Paige. Burned down by the Northmen – we've set up a smaller settlement close to it, though. it's just a little further –"
"I know," I whisper. "I just – I need to get back to Caistley anyway – the old Caistley. Is it close?"
Eadgar looks at me, confused by the urgency in my tone. "It's just down the coast," he says, pointing south, past a stretch of rocky shoreline to a beach that, now I see it properly, does look familiar. I get to my feet and Eadgar grabs my wrist.
"Wait! Paige we've only just found each other again – do you need to leave so soon? We need to hear what's happened in your life since we –"
Willa cuts in. "Let her go, Eadgar. She's got business with her own family, a husband with the fever and a healing plant in the woods outside the village. But before you go, Paige, we should arrange a meeting spot. I know you need to get back to your husband but just – just in case. In case something happens."
As Willa speaks it dawns on me, as it should have already, that this might be the last time I ever see my friends. Because I'm not going to Caistley for a plant, I'm going to get back to 2017, and when I return – if I return – I'll need to go straight north again, there'll be no time for anything else.
"The clearing in the woods," I say, my voice shaking. "Where we used to make crowns and bracelets of the yellow flowers. That will be the place."
Eadgar helps Willa to her feet and we wrap our arms around each other.
"The clearing," Eadgar says. "It's close to our new settlement, I'll check it every day Paige. Every day between the work in the fields and the evening meal. I promise."
And then it's goodbye. We all know it. Willa gives me her husband's name very quickly, and tells me he already knows mine, as she and Eadgar always talk about their old friend from the estate.
I've never been as close to being torn in two as I am at the moment of leaving, of actually turning my back to them and walking away. And even as I know every step brings me closer to the moment when I will no longer hear their voices, and probably never hear them again, Eirik pulls me forward, on towards Caistley in spite of my aching body and my empty stomach.
I cry almost the whole way there, walking along the coast alone with the warm breeze playing through my hair. When I get to the path that leads to Caistley – still in use but more overgrown than I remember it, I turn around and look back. All I see is coastline, trees, darks rocks, sea, sky. I do not see my friends anymore. I jog, then, down the path, out into the clearing where the remains of the village stand, and then into the woods.
The sun has just set when I get to the place I'm aiming for – the tree. I have only the loosest of plans – go home, get online, break into the pharmacy in River Forks, steal antibiotics, return to past, go north. I know, even as I kneel beside the great gnarled roots, that I should give it more thought. But there's no time. I take a deep breath and hold it, and then I lay my palms flat against the base of the tree's trunk.
Chapter 23
21st Century
The light hits me first, and my response is to cower for a second, maybe two, before I realize it's nothing. It's just the light of the town reflected against the cloudy sky, the light from the streetlights that run the length of the road just a short distance away. It looks so strange though, after so many months away – so other-worldly. There's noise, too. A single car speeding, roaring down the road. Only it's not speeding – or roaring. It's just driving. I blink as my eyes barely manage to follow it. My brain has forgotten how fast things move in 2017.
The house. You have to get into the house. You have to go online.
I make my way out of the trees and up across the backyard, eying the house. Once again that sensation of deep familiarity melds with another – equally strong – of deep strangeness. The house looks enormous, monumental even, despite it being a very ordinary dwelling, of the type almost everyone I know in River Forks grew up in.
There are no lights on. That's good. My father must be sleeping. I try the back door and it opens into the kitchen. The smell of home floods my nostrils – laundry detergent, dinner, and all of those unidentifiable things that make one house smell unlike any other – and I almost feel dizzy from the wave of memories that washes over me.
I step inside, bare feet on old linoleum, and close the door gently behind me. Then I make my way through the kitchen with ease, because just the light from outside is enough for me to be able to see exactly where I'm going, on my way to check that the door leading upstairs is closed. Halfway there my hip bumps against something and I cringe at the sound of a large stack of papers hitting the floor. I don't move for a full minute, waiting for the sound of my father stirring upstairs. None comes. I make it to the door – it's closed.
It's now or never. I go to the desk where my father keeps the ancient desktop computer and nudge the mouse. A second later the screen blinks to life and I lift my hand to my eyes, shielding them from the brightness. One-handed (because the screen is still too bright for me to look at directly), I type various search terms into Google and then write down the answers on one of the many pieces of paper stacked on the desk. Ten minutes later I have a list of medicines, only one of which I've ever heard of, and two of which I have underlined: Cephalexin and Amoxicillin.
Before leaving the house I do four main things. First, I raid the fridge, and wolf down the rest of a pasta casserole sitting on the top shelf. Next, I put as much food in the linen sack as I can fit, and as I think I can reasonably carry. Then I go into the laundry room and find a clean pair of my dad's sweatpants and a t-shirt, both of which I put on, and a pair of my own sneakers, sitting untouched for months beside the back door. If anyone sees me, I want to look at least semi-normal.
Lastly, just before leaving again, I grab another piece of paper off the pile sitting on the computer desk, intending to write my father a note. But the light from the computer screen is just about enough for me to see something I recognize on the paper, just before I flip it over to write the message. I hold it a little closer to the screen and then gasp audibly when I recognize what I'm looking at.
I'm looking at myself – a picture of me. Emma took it in the kitchen of our rented apartment towards the end of our freshman year. I'm smiling widely, saying something to Emma – I can't remember what. Someone has cropped out the background and the rest of my body and just used my face. Across the top of the piece of paper are 7 stark capital letters: 'MISSING.' Underneath are my details, my name, height, weight, date of birth, where I was last seen.
I brace myself against the edge of the desk. Don't sit down. You can't sit down, Paige. You have to go. You have to go right now.
The rest of the papers are all the same. My father is upstairs. I could go and wake him right now, I could end the torment he must be in.
No. You can't. He won't let you go. He'll want to call the police.
I grab a pen and write a note. My handwriting is messy because my hand is shaking – and because all the muscles I use to write with are out of practice.
"Dad –
I love you. I am safe. I am not hurt. I can't stay because someone I love needs me but I just want you to know that I love you so much and I'm OK. Say hello to the goblins in the woods for me, even the one with big
ears! I love you. I miss you so much. Paige."
The part about the goblins is a secret message of sorts – silly stories my dad used to talk about when I was very little. The goblins in the woods were friendly, if grumpy, and the one with big ears was the grumpiest. Nobody else except me and my dad will understand what that's about, and I want him to know that it's me, and that I'm not being forced to write something against my will, or lie about not being in danger if I am.
I fold the paper in half, and then again and put it beneath the empty casserole dish in the fridge, because I don't want to risk him waking up early and seeing it before I've had time to get back to Caistley. And then I leave, taking my bike out of the garage and stopping along the side of the road on the ride into town to pick up a large rock.
Main street is deserted, but brightly lit. I see Johnson's Pharmacy, sandwiched between the dollar store and the fast food restaurant and I have my second serious moment of doubt since leaving the Viking camp. Am I supposed to just walk up to that door, throw the rock through it, go inside, find the medicine and leave? And cross my fingers no one sees anything, no one hears anything? And even then, how long has it been since I left Eirik? Three days? He was sick when I left, already saying things that didn't make sense. What are the odds he's even still alive? So many things have to go right and it doesn't seem possible that they all will. I sit down on a bench for a few minutes, thinking, but it doesn't help because there's no plan B – there can't be. I either get the medications or I don't, and every second I delay the worse the odds of anything working out become. I take the rock out of the sack and approach the front door, looking around me all the way. Nobody appears. I look into the fluorescent-lit pharmacy – I guess I'll be able to read the packaging easily enough – and close my eyes briefly. Am I really doing this? I am really doing this. Because there's no other way.
