Magnus

by Joanna Bell

And then Emma and Paige instructed the Jarls – for those two women seemed sometimes to be in the habit of instructing their husbands, as surprising as it was to me – to keep watch in both directions on the path.

  I found myself led into the undergrowth, then, and once again waiting for the laughter, the announcement that it was all a rather long-winded game. But neither of the women looked like they were joking.

  "We're here," Paige said suddenly, when we were not far off the trail. "We're – this is it. This is the tree."

  I looked around. We were surrounded by trees. One in particular seemed bigger than the others, but still no different to any others of its kind and proportions. I reached out to touch it, to ask if this was the tree she spoke of, and Emma blocked my hand with her arm. And then, to my utter shock, she disappeared.

  Emma disappeared. She did not fall to the side or hide in some bushes. She simply disappeared. Right in front of my eyes.

  "What –" I said, turning to Paige to see if she had just seen her friend cease to be right in front of her. And then, before I even had time to note the total lack of surprise on Paige's face, Emma reappeared. Right where she had been not a moment before. When she saw what must have been a look of great shock on my face, she smiled.

  "I thought you said you were ready to go to another world, in order to find the woman who might be your mother?"

  "I –" I said, stuttering, near-stupefied with what I'd just seen. "I – I am. I –"

  "That is how you get to it," Paige added gently, seeing how confused I was. "We told you it was a tree, didn't we? It is the tree that will take you to where she might be. Are you sure you're ready? Because if you are, we have some things to tell you before you go."

  "I'm ready," I said again, and my voice sounded much surer than my heart felt, at that moment. I'd never heard anyone speak of a tree that took you to other worlds. No gothi ever spoke of such a thing that I heard. And yet I'd just seen a Jarl's wife disappear and reappear in front of my eyes.

  Both women then joined in giving me advice on what to do when I arrived in the new place. They told me that instead of asking for Heather, I should ask anyone I encountered to bring me to 'Sophie Foster' – that this 'Sophie Foster' had been in our world, and would know how to find Heather. They also told me not to imagine I could fight my way out of any difficult situations I might find myself in – in fact they advised me not to fight at all, which sounded extremely risky, but which they were both insistent on.

  "It's just as real as here," Emma said, "where you're going. You're going to think it's not – it's what we both thought, when we came here. It took us both a long time to accept that this place was real, but you must accept it at once, if you are to find Heather. You must follow our advice, and you must trust that the things you see and hear that might frighten you or seem impossible are not impossible, or magical, or anything like that."

  "Give us your sword," Paige added, when the moment came and my heart pounded in my chest with the unknown future I was about to step into. "We will lay it here, in the bushes, off the path. If you return, it will be waiting for you."

  I handed over my sword and then stood in front of the tree, still not quite convinced it hadn't all been a trick, and feeling strangely naked without my blade in my hand.

  "If you return," she continued, "and you cannot find your people, find us. We will be in Thetford for a few more moons at least, but the Jarls intend to continue moving inland. Find us, and you will always have a place at our table, Magnus."

  And then she kissed me on the cheek, as did Emma, and I did as they had told me to do and lay both of my hands flat against the trunk of the tree.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Magnus*

  I fell forward, as if off a cliff, and felt myself tumbling through the air even as I had seen the solid earth and the woods and the tree in front of me not a moment before. When I turned to look for Paige and Emma, there was nothing but darkness, and it was suddenly hard to draw breath, as if smoke from an unseen fire filled my chest. I reached up to clutch at my throat, gasping, and then suddenly the world blinked back into existence. The earth was once again underneath my feet, the sun once again shining on my head.

  "What is –" I started, and then realized that I was alone. I turned around, looking for the Jarl's wives, and then around again. They were nowhere to be seen. The woods themselves looked different, the trees taller and set further apart, the thick undergrowth gone.

  Another world.

  That's what the women said. More than once – many times. Did I think them liars? No. It was the difference between hearing that there is another world and suddenly finding yourself in it. My heart beat fast in my chest, knocking against my ribs so hard I imagined anyone standing nearby could hear it.

  A sound unlike any I'd ever heard filled my ears, then, drowning out that of my own heartbeat, and as the instinct to fight or run kicked in I forced myself to stay where I was, to remember what Paige and Emma had said.

  You're going to hear things – and see things – you've never seen or heard before. They're going to be loud. Don't be afraid, they're not wild animals. It's just how the people in that world travel.

  I lifted my head in the direction of the roar and saw, just as I had been warned, a sight that made me close my eyes and then open them again. Something bright red, as bright as a summer poppy – brighter – traveling at a speed my eyes could not even keep up with. It was from this beast the roar was coming. And then, as soon as it was past, another one came after it, silver and glinting in the sunlight.

  Don't be afraid. They're not wild animals.

  Whatever they were, they didn't seem interested in me. They sailed past at a distance, across a field. Again I spun around, searching the woods with my gaze. There was no-one to be seen. I had to find someone to talk to, to ask where Sophie Foster was. I was in another world for a reason, and it wasn't to stand around staring at trees. To that end, I took a deep breath and began to walk out of the woods, and across the field.

  Very soon, I came to a road. Its surface was smooth, alien, unlike anything I'd ever seen. There was no mud, no marks of horses hooves. There was just this hard smoothness, that did not spring back when I tried to push my foot into it.

  Emma and Paige were right – the brightly colored, roaring beasts were transport of some kind, as they stayed entirely within the confines of the road. Most of them appeared headed in one direction, and so that is the direction in which I walked, too. It did not take long, after I started walking, for a loud, blaring note to sound, so loud it drove me into the bushes at the side of the road.

  And then someone was shouting at me.

  "Get off the fucking road, idiot! What are you doing?!"

  I looked up, bewildered. A man, inside one of the traveling contraptions, was shouting. At me. Why was he shouting at me?

  "Well?!" He yelled, when I didn't respond. "What are you, high? You're gonna get run over, asshole! Stay off the road!"

  And then a roar filled my ears and he was gone. Moments later, it happened again. That time it was a woman. And instead of continuing to yell at me when she saw how confused I was, she pulled over a little ahead of me and leaned out towards me.

  "Hey," she said, and something about the way the word sounded in her mouth reminded me of the way the Jarl's wives spoke. "Are you OK?"

  I ran up to where she also sat in one of the roaring creatures, looking out at me with concern.

  "I'm looking for Sophie Foster," I told her. "Can you – can you tell me where she lives?"

  The woman, whose age I could not quite discern from looking at her, smiled. "Who? Sophie who? I'm sorry I don't know who that is. Why are you wandering around in the middle of the road?"

  "I'm trying to – I'm looking for Sophie Foster. I need to find her. I –"

  "OK, I got that. But why are you walking down the middle of the road? Are you drunk?"

  I smiled back, then, and shook my head because I was about as far from drunk as
I had ever been. "No, I'm not drunk. And I – am I – I'm not allowed on the road?"

  The woman seemed pretty adamant that walking on the road was some kind of affront. And Paige and Emma had warned me not to cause any affront in their world.

  "No," came the slow response, as if she thought she might be talking to a dull-wit. "You're not allowed to be walking in the middle of the road. The road is for cars. You're going to get run over."

  As if to make her point, another of the roaring beasts – cars? – suddenly appeared behind the woman and filled the air with that same blaring sound I remembered from a few moments ago. And then it swung out and moved around us, as the man inside shouted angrily.

  "Listen," the woman said. "You have to get off the road, OK? Like, right now. You're going to get yourself killed. Are you going into River Falls? I can –"

  River Falls. Yes. I knew that name. That's where Paige and Emma said Sophie Foster would be. "Yes!" I replied. "River Falls – that's where I'm going!"

  "I can give you a ride if you want. Not that I should be picking up strange men on the road, but you remind me of my son. Michael Packer, graduated from River Falls High in 2016 – do you know him?"

  I did not know Michael Packer, and I told his mother as much. I didn't tell her anything else, though, because as soon as I was inside her car, the world began to pass by at such a rate that it became a blur. I became dizzy with it almost immediately.

  "Urgh," I groaned, as the dizziness became nausea. "Urgh, I –"

  We stopped suddenly and the woman – Angela, she said her name was – leapt out and only just made it around to my side to yank open my door in time before I vomited all over the ground.

  "Are you sure you haven't been drinking?" She asked disapprovingly as I retched. "Jesus, you almost puked all over my car. If that's going to happen again, warn me, OK?"

  "I'm sorry," I rasped, wiping my mouth. "I didn't – I didn't –"

  Twice more we had to stop so I could vomit in the ditch at the side of the road.

  "How do you see?" I asked Angela after the second time, when we were moving again and I was pretty sure I had nothing left in my belly to bring up. "How do you see anything? It's all going by so – fast."

  She turned in her seat to look at me, one eyebrow raised skeptically. "You might not have been drinking, young man, but you're as high as a kite, aren't you? I should take you straight to the police station, is what I should do."

  I didn't know what the police station was, but from the way Angela was threatening to take me there, it didn't sound like somewhere I wanted to go. "No," I said, looking down at my feet so I wouldn't have to watch the world speeding by anymore. "No, I – please, I just need to find Sophie Foster. It's really important. She's the only person who might know where my mother is."

  "Your mother?" Angela asked, visibly softening the way women often do over lost children – even the fully grown kind. "You're looking for your mom? Is she in River Falls?"

  "I don't know. I don't know where she is. All I know is that Sophie Foster might know."

  "Sophie Foster, huh? I can't say I know the name, but – OK, hold on."

  Angela moved the car off the road and reached into her pocket to take out a smooth, flat shiny object that she immediately began brushing her fingertips over.

  "I'll Google her. She's in River Falls, right?"

  But I didn't answer right away because I was too busy staring at the object in her hands.

  "River Falls," she repeated. "You said Sophie Foster is in River Falls? And what's your name?"

  I kept my eyes on the object in Angela's hands, as different colors and lights flashed across it like in a gothi's vision. "It's, uh," I said. "It's – Magnus. My name is Magnus."

  "OK Magnus, let's see if we can find this Sophie Foster. Ah – here we go, here's her Facebook page. It looks old. But – is this her?"

  She held the device out towards me and I shrank away, worried that it might burn me if I touched it. Things that bright were often hot, in my experience. But Angela was holding it just fine, so I took a quick peek. The image of a woman's face loomed on the flat surface. Not a likeness carved in wood or leather, but an exact image, no different from real life.

  "Well?" Angela asked gently. "Do you recognize her? Is that –"

  "I've never seen her before," I replied quickly, my voice thick with panic. "I don't know what she looks like. I don't know what –"

  It was then that my companion noticed just how baffled I was and reached out suddenly to rub my shoulder. "It's OK," she reassured me, assuming my worried reaction was about finding my mother, and not about the magical device she held in her hand. "We'll find her. Don't worry. I'll just, uh – oh, look! It says she's a police officer with the River Falls PD – well that's handy, isn't it? I just give them a call then, if that's alright?"

  I had absolutely no idea what Angela was talking about. But she seemed to think she was close to finding Sophie Foster so I just nodded quickly in response to her question.

  A moment later, she spoke again:

  "Hi – I'm looking for a Sophie Foster. Can you tell me if she still –"

  "What?" I replied, rubbing my head. "No, I'm looking for Sophie Fos–"

  Angela held her hand up to stop me talking and then continued talking to – whoever it was she was talking to, which did not appear to be me. Was it herself? Was I in the hands of a madwoman?

  She turned to me a short time later, smiling and having just said goodbye to an unseen person. "They can't give me her number – obviously – but they're going to call Sophie and give her my number, and hopefully she'll call back and you can talk to her. How about that? Why do you look so scared, this is good news!"

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Heather

  I had an enormous and wildly expensive range installed in my house in the country, when the windfall from my husband's dagger came in. Imported from France and built from cast iron and steel, almost certain to stand longer than the house around it, it was one of the few things in the future that seemed almost unchanged from the deep past. Of course it was not the same as a series of roaring fire-pits, or the stone ovens the Angles used to bake their bread, but it was still basically fire in service of cooking food. I loved it. The day that a person could come to my house and not find a huge pot of stew or a boiling vat of jam bubbling away on top of it was indeed a rare one.

  It was in front of that range, stirring one of those vats of jam – blackberry – that I was standing when the buzzer from my security gate went off.

  Who's that? I wondered, throwing the kitchen towel over one shoulder and making my way to the front door so I could look at the CCTV screen.

  Sophie had specifically said she wasn't coming by. Although she had been oddly insistent that I be home that evening. Were they planning something? It wasn't my birthday.

  I got to the security panel and peered at the screen. Someone was there. A man. A man who looked like –

  No. Heather, no. Stop it.

  Even after I came back to the United States, and the future, even years after the love of my life was lost, I would still, every now and again, seem to catch sight of him. Sometimes it was in an aisle at the grocery store, other times on the beach at the lake where Sophie bought a house. It seemed to happen almost everywhere, and each time it did, even as my brain knew it couldn't be him, my heart broke a little for that fleeting second of hope.

  So it wasn't Magnus at my gate that night, because it couldn't be. It was simply someone who looked a little like him. A lot like him, actually, although I did not quite trust myself to be able to make such judgments. I took a long, shaky breath and swallowed, and then pressed the button to talk.

  "Who is it?"

  I almost laughed out loud, then, as whoever it was at my gate jumped about three feet into the air and looked around comically, as if God himself had just spoken.

  I pressed the button again. "Hello?"

  Once again, the man looked around. And that
time, my heart nearly skipped another beat because there was – what was it? There was something about him, something about the particular cant of his shoulders as he turned – that almost made me burst into tears for how much it made me think of my husband. I pressed the back of my hand to my lips and blinked away a tear. And still, there was no reply.

  "I'm in the middle of making blackberry jam," I said a moment later, not bothering to keep a slight note of annoyance out of my voice when the man continued to respond with silence. "So if you don't mind stating your business, I'd like to get –"

  "Heather?"

  I barely heard him speak my name, because he was looking back towards the road and not facing the security camera, but I managed.

  "Yes?"

  "Heather?"

  "Yes, I'm Heather! You're talking to me right now! And if –"

  "I'm looking for Heather."

  I sighed. Who was this man? And why was he directing his questions into the early evening, and not the camera right in front of him?

  I wasn't worried or scared. Maybe I should have been, with all that money from the dagger. But I just – wasn't. River Falls wasn't that kind of place.

  "You're going to make me come down there?" I asked. "Aren't you? Didn't you hear me when I said I was in the middle of –"

  And then he climbed the gate. A nine foot cast iron security gate with stone walls of equal height on either side, and the man just climbed it like it was nothing.

  And even then, I wasn't scared. I was quite a bit more annoyed than I had been, though.

  "Damnit!" I yelled, throwing the kitchen towel down and turning the gas off before marching out the door to confront the impatient idiot who'd just scaled my gate.

  It was evening, then, but there was still enough light to see the figure approaching me up the gravel driveway. There was still enough light to make me do a gasping double-take when I saw him coming towards me, not squashed into the confines of the little CCTV security screen as he had been.