by Joanna Bell
Soon I lost track of time, unable to distinguish between one night and another, and never sure if I was awake or dreaming. I asked for Sophie when I could, my words slurring into each other so I sounded like a man who has taken too much dark ale at a feast, but no one seemed to listen.
Wherever I was, I was being guarded. I caught sight of the guard sometimes, standing outside the doorway to the bright room.
That's who I assumed it was when I awoke one night to a sound in the room.
"Who is –" I started, only to find myself shushed immediately.
"Be quiet, Jarl! I come to help you escape from this place, but you must not make any noise!"
It was a woman, unrecognizable in the blissful darkness that fell when my captors saw fit to turn out the blinding lights every evening. Was I dreaming again?
No. It wasn't a dream. The woman moved quickly and quietly, using a knife she brought out from under her dressings to cut the ties that held me down. I moved to sit up – to stand up – and found myself collapsing onto the cold, hard floor as my legs gave way underneath me.
"They've given me something," I whispered, "they've given me a tea to cause weakness! I – Voss!"
But the woman helped me to my feet, whispering urgently that we had to leave at once, that she would help me. And then she slid one of her spindly arms around my waist and we stumbled out through the doorway and into a long, narrow hall with many doors lining its sides. The guard who stood outside my room lay on the floor, a small pool of blood pooling around his head but still breathing.
"I'm Heather," the woman said as we made our way to a pair of doors at the end of the hall. I could see now, in the bright lights, that she was old. "I'm Sophie's friend. She wanted to come tonight but she couldn't – the police will suspect it was her, and there are cameras all over the hospital. She says they have ways now, ways to tell if someone has been somewhere, tests they can do. Well, I don't understand it myself but I said I would come instead of her."
Before I could ask what cameras were, or about Sophie's whereabouts, a shout came from behind us.
"Hey! Hey! Who is that?! Where are you – HEY! STOP!"
I may have been weakened, but I was not entirely helpless. As running footsteps approached from behind I spun around and backhanded the man who was shouting at us to the ground, knocking him unconscious with a single blow.
Heather began dragging me towards the door again and I leaned heavily against one of the walls as we went. Outside, she bundled me into one of the beasts I had assumed were wolves, upon my arrival into this new world, and I would have fought against it if I'd had the strength. Luckily, I did not.
"Ivar."
I recognized her voice before I even saw her, sitting there in the belly of the beast with me, her hands clasped around a wheel.
"Sophie," I whispered, reaching for her but missing and groaning with pain as my injured arm bumped against one of the hard walls that enclosed us. "Sophie. Sophie –"
"We have to go!" She said quickly, and I didn't even have time to respond before a great roar filled the air all around me and I – we – started to move.
I was almost thankful for the spell of weakness that had been cast over me at that time, because it surely dulled what may have been sheer terror as we – all three of us – began to fly. It seemed to be flying, as it happened. We stayed close to the ground, never rising higher than we were, but the speeds were such that I had only ever seen birds or insects travel. The motion was nauseating, too, and I soon found myself struggling, retching and heaving in my seat as we flew over the ground like demons in the night.
And then, suddenly, we came to a stop. I could feel the motion in body, as if we were still traveling, but when I looked outside everything was still. I bent forward and retched again, but there was nothing in my belly to bring up. My head spun, my stomach lurched, and then Sophie and Heather were reaching for me, pulling me out into the woods – the woods! I had no idea how grateful I would be for such a simple thing as the familiar feeling of being in the forest.
"Come inside," Sophie said, as I tried and failed to focus on her face.
"You need to rest," the older woman added. "We'll put you in bed and let you sleep it off."
When I woke up, in a room filled with sunlight, my experimental testing of my limbs seemed successful. The weakness, the fatigue, seemed to be gone. Mostly gone. My wounded arm ached and throbbed badly, but it had been so tightly bandaged that I could not even get a glimpse of what kind of damage I'd taken.
I sat up in bed, and then stood, waiting to see if my legs would take my weight. They did. I took a step forward, and then another. I was very, very hungry.
"Ivar."
And there she was. Sophie. The sole reason I was in this new world, this next world, whatever the place was. Her shiny hair fell down over her shoulders, moving with her body, and those lips that I had dreamed of kissing so many nights in the bright room stretched into a helpless smile when our eyes met.
Before she could speak again, I pulled her into my arms and lifted her off her feet, holding her tightly against me.
"I don't know where I am," I whispered into her sweet-smelling neck. "I don't even know if I'm alive. But I came for you, my love. I came for you and here you are."
A feeling of being suffused with life, with blood and power and the simple joy of being, came over me to feel Sophie in my arms once again. It was more than the sensation of waking from a dream – and she was more than any woman I had ever known.
When I held her away from me so I could look upon her face, her eyes glimmered with tears that, when they spilled down her creamy cheeks, I kissed away.
"You're not dead," she whispered, caressing my cheek in such a way as to make it seem that she almost doubted that I stood in front of her. "I don't know if I can explain where you are – but you're not dead."
But even as she told me I was not dead, the matter of my death – or my life – was ceasing already to matter, replaced already by something else. I needed her, and I needed her so much and so completely that I felt it in the marrow of my bones that nothing would have stopped me, in that moment, from being with her.
No words were necessary. Sophie sensed my need. Her eyes grew dark with the desire that lurked inside her always, and that I had already taken great pleasure in drawing up from her depths over and over as we traveled the Great Road north.
There is something between a man and a woman, some perfect complement, a call in a dark wood and then a reply. Sometimes it's faint, an echo of a memory, or a wish. And sometimes, it's clearer. With Sophie, that day, it was as it had never been for me before – or for her. She was like a flower slumbering through the chilly night, and I the lustful sun, warming her into blooming for me.
Because that's what she did for me that afternoon – she bloomed. Her lips, her arms, her body – all parts of her opened for me. And as she gazed at me with those dark eyes, filled with a kind of hopeful trust, her surrender drew the opposite force from within me. Where she was pliant, as soft and feminine as any woman has ever been, I felt the answering hardness, the narrow, pointed focus of masculinity rising in answer.
I groaned with pain when I forgot my injured arm, moving it to reach for her, to pull her to me, and she made a small noise.
"Your arm! Ivar, is it OK? Do you –"
I silenced her with a kiss, yanking the strange dressing she wore off over her head and then drinking her nakedness – the ripe curves of her breasts topped with their stiff little nipples and the exact spot where her waist curved outward into her hip – in. She shivered when I put my good hand on her body, squeezing, kneading, half-wishing myself a wolf so I could sink my teeth into her soft flesh and devour her whole.
My dressing, nothing but a flimsy tunic from the bright room, gave way easily when Sophie tugged at it, and the expression on her face when she saw what she was doing to me sent the flames in my loins leaping high. I had to make her mine. I had to possess her. I had to leave my mark on her, so for
the rest of her life her heart, her sex, would echo with the things I was about to do.
"Come here," I whispered thickly, laying back down on the bed and pulling Sophie down on top of me. Her skin was so soft, so smooth as to almost be indistinguishable from the summer air itself.
She smiled as she hovered over me, my full length so stiff, so perfectly sensitive I swear it almost ended right there as I watched her face when she lowered herself onto me. I dug my fingers into her hips, showing her just how slowly she needed to go to keep the wild horses of my lust at bay for long enough.
"Ivar," she whimpered, as her head fell back and one of her hands floated above me, clawing at the empty air until I took it one of my own. "Ivar, I – Ivar. Oh my –"
And when she was fully impaled I held her there, her slippery warmth enveloping me, her body waiting at my insistence to draw the one thing it needed out of me. I pulled her head down, still holding her in place, and slipped my tongue into her mouth as her hair brushed over my face and shoulders.
"You came," she stuttered, closing her eyes tightly as I cupped her breasts in my hands and ran my thumbs over her nipples until they stood up for me. "You came for – Ivar, you came back for me."
"I did," I breathed, as her insides fluttered, squeezing me, begging me even as I still could not allow her to move with me as she wanted. "I did, Sophie. What did you think? That I –" I broke off, moaning at another slippery little twitch inside her – "that I would just allow you to leave? That you're not – that you're not, ohh, voss, Sophie. Sophie, Sophie... Voss!"
She struggled sweetly against my restraining hand, and with a knowing smile playing on her lips, aware that I was not truly going to be able to hold her off.
"That I'm not what?" She asked, lowering her body against mine until I could feel her nipples brushing against my chest.
I couldn't stop myself, then. I lifted her hips up and thrust up to meet her as she came back down, moaning. It wasn't going to be much longer that I could hold myself back. The aggression was there, suddenly, in my heart, the urge to conquer, to take.
"That you're not mine," I growled into her little seashell ear, jerking my hips up hard and quick until she cried out and her hands balled into fists.
And that was it, that was the end of my restraint. I let go of her hips and let her ride me until her breasts bounced wildly and her sex began to pulse. The pleasure built quickly, concentrating itself in my manhood and then intensifying beyond me, beyond the boundaries of our bodies. I was on such a knife-edge when she peaked, moaning my name as her eyes rolled back in her head, that my body gave way at once, exploding into her as the blankness of pure pleasure wiped out all thought, all consciousness.
We wrung the bliss out of each other until every drop had been savored, every one of her sighs spent. And then we lay breathless beside each other, smiling, laughing weakly because we could not yet speak, or deal with everything that had just passed between us.
"I'm a husk," I told her moments later, when my eyelids weighed heavy on my eyes even though I had just woken from slumber. "You've drained everything out of me, woman. I will blow away with the slightest breeze now, like one of the ground-berry husks in the first winds of winter."
"Nonsense," Sophie giggled, resting her head on my chest. "I don't think there's any wind strong enough to carry you away. A tornado could rip this place off its foundations right now, and take me with it, and you wouldn't move an inch."
I didn't know what a tornado was, but I knew what she was saying. I knew she was expressing the thing that all men love to hear more than anything else, which is our woman's vision of us. She was telling me how I appeared to her – immoveable, strong, as solid and weighty as an oak. And I found, lying there with her as she sighed and smiled her esteem at me, that nothing in my life had ever felt better than to be the object of her awed regard.
When I awoke a second time, the light of the day had waned and the smell of food lifted me from slumber almost – almost – as efficiently as Sophie herself would have. It was a warm evening, and there were no dressings besides the useless tunic from the bright room, so I just wandered, naked, in the direction my nose led.
"Ivar!" She exclaimed when she saw me, although even as she scolded me in her sweet way I saw that she could not quite take her eyes away.
"There are no dressings, woman!" I replied, approaching the place where a large pot bubbled away on a cooking fire of some kind and leaning over, breathing in the smell of meat and vegetables. "How am I to cover myself if no one has brought me anything with which to cover myself?"
"Ah," she grinned, dipping a wooden spoon into the stew and passing it to me. "Here's the thing, Ivar. We don't have thralls here. We dress ourselves. Heather is out shopping for some clothes for you to wear, but if you think either of us is going to spend our time running around after you, serving you, I'm afraid you've got another thing coming."
I swallowed the mouthful of stew, sighing heavily as my belly woke up and demanded more. And then I leaned in close to Sophie's ear and whispered:
"Is that so, woman? You say you won't serve me? But you already serve, and so well. It seems a wrong to put a stop to it now."
She swiped at me but I jumped out of the way, laughing.
I wasn't dreaming. I was pretty sure I wasn't dead. But apart from Sophie, whose soft curves and girlish giggles seemed as real to me a anything ever had, I was still surrounded by a world I did not recognize. I leaned in closer to the fire, which seemed to burn in a perfect circle – and without flames – under the cooking pot.
"I've never seen anything like this," I said quietly, not really aware I was speaking, as I brought one of my fingers close to the glowing circle.
"Don't!" She yelled, when she saw what I was doing. "What are you doing? You'll burn yourself!"
It was hot, I could feel the heat rising in the air – and see the stew bubbling. But there were no flames. How could I be burned by a fire with no flames? How could there be a fire with no flames? The pot boiled with too much vigor to be driven by embers alone. I looked up at my surroundings. Sophie's people favored the glass-filled holes – windows, as the women in the bright room had called them – for they seemed to be everywhere in their dwellings. I saw objects I recognized – chairs, a table, walls, the knife that Sophie had presumably used to chop the meat and vegetables for the stew. But even the familiar was uncanny in that place, all of it unnaturally smooth, the surfaces rounded, glossy, perfectly proportioned as if fashioned by hands that did not belong to man.
"This must all seem so strange to you," Her voice came from behind, and her little hand touched my back reassuringly.
I turned to her, as unable to explain what was happening as I had been in the woods that day, when I had assumed the speeding creatures, one of which I had now ridden in the belly of, were wolves.
"What is this place?" I asked plainly. I wasn't afraid – there seemed to be no immediate danger – but I was utterly perplexed.
Sophie took two bowls – both of them too round, too smooth, too glossy – and filled them with stew. Then she gestured towards the table and set one down for me. I ate quickly, scorching the roof of my mouth in the process but too hungry to care, and then she filled my bowl again. When she did it a third time and I saw the pot was less than half-full then, I asked if she should not be saving any for her friend, or her child.
"Ashley is at her grandmother's," she replied, "and there's enough left for Heather. I'll just buy more beef tomorrow if you want more." She paused. "What I mean is, there's enough food – you don't need to worry about that."
In what kind of magical place did anyone – even a King – not need to worry about food? Sophie must have seen the look on my face because she reached out and took my hand.
"Do you want me to try to explain where you are? Because I think I have to, and I don't know if I'll do a very good job of it."
"I'm in your homeland," I told her, "I know that much. I see the way you move here, the way y
ou act – this is your place, this is where you feel comfortable. But I don't think I understand anything else."
She nodded. "Yes, this is my homeland. This is New York State, in the United States of America."
Of all the names she uttered, the only one I recognized was York, which I repeated back to her questioningly.
"Not York, New York. We're not in the Kingdom of the East Angles anymore, Ivar. We're not even close to it – we're west, across the ocean."
I smiled, because what else could I do? Nothing she was saying made any sense. The land across the sea, west of the Kingdoms, was Éire – the green isle. I'd been there twice, raiding monasteries as a younger man, and it was nothing like where I was now.
She saw that I did not understand and changed her tactics. "OK. So. You understand the past and the present, right? You understand that 80 years – 80 winters – ago, your grandparents were young, and you weren't born yet, right?"
"Yes," I replied, because of course I understood a simple thing like that. "Children understand these things, Sophie."
"I know. I know they do. But just – just hear me out. So, what if you could go back to that time, when your grandparents were young? What if you could go back to a time before they were even born? Do you know what I mean?"
"We have a god who can do these things," I told her, trying to remember the name that the gothi had spoken to me after one of our Yule voyages. "Sigvar or Siggurd or something similar. He exists outside of the time that binds men and beasts, and can travel back a hundred winters as easily as you or I can travel to the next village."
"A hundred winters?" Sophie smiled faintly. "And he can go forward, as well?"
I nodded, thinking even as she seemed to suggest what might have happened, that it wasn't possible. Gods did such things, not men. Even the gothis reassured us that the visions we had after taking the dark Yule teas were visions alone, the journeys spiritual. Although it may seem we traveled to new worlds under the influence of these potions, our bodies remained in the old. I'd seen it myself, seen other Jarls kneeling in the snowy woods, shouting and gesturing to unseen figures, their eyes open but blind to their actual surroundings. And like them, I had awakened in the midst of a northern forest after having, mere moments before, flown over the endless dunes of sand that were said to lie far to the south.
