by Joanna Bell
"Organic?"
"Yeah. It just means it was grown without chemicals or, um, it means it was grown the way your people grow things. Sort of. But the point is some of the other moms can afford this expensive food and if you can't, they look down on you. They think you're a bad mother."
Ivar raised an eyebrow. "A bad mother? Does your child have a full belly?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Does the roof above her bed allow the snow to fall upon her head?"
"No."
"Then you are not a bad mother, Sophie."
I chuckled in spite of my previous annoyance, which I knew had nothing to do with Ivar himself. A full belly and a roof over their heads. How times – and attitudes – had changed when it came to raising kids. None of the Viking children had their afternoons packed with organized sports or their evenings with homework, and as far as I'd been able to discern they mostly seemed both happier and more well behaved than modern children.
Not that I was considering bringing Ashley back to the past with me – Paige Renner had made her decision and it was one I accepted and even understood, but there was no way I was taking my daughter anywhere where a small cut and the lack of hospitals could kill her before she grew into a woman.
"What do you think of?" Jarl Ivar asked when his carsickness had passed again and we were once again driving back to the cabin. "You are quiet. Usually you are not this quiet."
"Are you saying I talk too much?" I asked, grinning.
I was happy to be with the Viking. If I ignored whole parts of my memory, I could almost believe we were just a man and a woman, a girlfriend and boyfriend in the first hot, joyful rush of a new relationship, enthralled with each other and with even the simple running of errands together. I did feel those things. So did he. I could see it in his blue eyes, the way they crinkled up at the corners whenever he smiled at me – and he smiled at me a lot. But Ivar and I were not just girlfriend and boyfriend – if we were even that.
"There are reasons to be quiet," I continued, when he seemed to expect me to do so.
"What do you mean?"
"What do I mean?" I asked. "Jarl, you and I are a thousand years apart, even as we sit here next to each other! You're leaving, you're going back there to your people when your arm heals."
He was going back, and I knew it because he'd stated it repeatedly. The only thing I ever saw Ivar express real anxiety about was his need to get back to the people he had sworn to lead and protect. It made my heart swell with admiration. It also made me terribly jealous. And I only repeated that he was leaving because I hoped, deep down, that he might have changed his mind.
He had not.
"And when I go back, Sophie, you and your daughter will come with me. We will marry in Thetford, before the winter snows blow in from the –"
"No!" I cut him off, angry and upset that he continued to dismiss my vows that I could not possibly go back with him. "No I'm not coming back with you! Even if I wanted to – and there is a part of me that wants to, believe me, and a bigger part than you know – I can't! My whole family is here. My daughter, my mother, my friends. Heather is here now, and she needs me. My life is here. All of the things that pull you back to the Kingdom of the East Angles are the same for me! They pull me just as hard as they pull you!"
"They are not the same, woman," he intoned darkly, swallowing as the carsickness began to return. "They are not the same. Why must you be so stubborn? You know I can take you back if I want, don't you? Do you think you can fight me off, do you think you can stop me?"
Anger flared up in my chest. Who was this person – this man – to tell me that his responsibilities weighed more heavily on his shoulders than my own did on mine?
He must have seen it because he put one of his huge hands on my thigh, in an attempt to appease me. I pushed it off.
"No. Don't. Who are you to tell me that it's perfectly OK for me to neglect my own responsibilities, but not for you to do the same?" I asked, surprised by the emotion in my voice. "Why is your life more important than mine? Why are you speaking of me abandoning my whole life, as if it's nothing, and not of you doing the same? Can you just tell me why?"
"It's not as you say!" He protested. "Woman, you are searching for reasons to be angry with me because you wish to push me away from your heart before I go, so you will not be so wounded! Not once have I spoken of my own life as being worth more than yours, where do you get such things?!"
"And I can stop you," I continued, ignoring his point about me searching for reasons to be angry, because I was afraid it might be partially right. "You can't just take people here, Ivar. You can't just steal people like they're pigs. Besides, you already know you can't take me, I see it in your eyes right now. You know it would just make me hate you."
"It would make you hate me, would it?" He demanded, as we began to unload the groceries after arriving back at the cabin. "Are you so certain of this, woman?"
The Viking grabbed my wrist, easily taking the grocery bag away from me, and held me against the side of the car, pushing his body against mine. I couldn't think when he was that close to me. I could hardly even breath. He was so big, so certain of what he was doing as he looked down at me, eyes flashing.
"Ivar," I breathed, trying to turn away but somehow finding myself unable to do so.
"What is it?" He chuckled, seeing the way I softened.
"You can't just fuck your way out of this, you know!" I squeaked, summoning the last of my rapidly diminishing forces of resistance. "You can't – um – ohh..."
It may or may not have been true, what I said. But the truth of my words didn't matter as I found my mouth opening itself not to speak further but to welcome Ivar's tongue. He was hard, I could feel it against my belly, and I couldn't stop the reaction in my body when I felt the proof of how much he wanted me.
"Wait," I mumbled as he carried me into the cabin. "Wait. There's – Ivar, there's frozen yoghurt in the – um, in the – we need to –"
"You only need one thing," he whispered, unbuttoning my jeans and turning me around so I was facing the kitchen sink.
And then I forgot all about the frozen yoghurt. And the argument. I forgot about everything but the way the afternoon air felt against my bare sex when the Jarl yanked my jeans and my panties down to my ankles and then hardly gave me enough time to arch my hips back to him before filling me with his every sweet inch.
"Oh my God!" I gasped, as he slid his hands up under my shirt and cupped my breasts. "Oh my – oh –!"
"Stop talking, woman." He panted in my ear, grasping my hip with one hand and jerking me back against him. "Stop talking. You think you can solve this with words but you can't. You're coming with me. You belong to me, Sophie – you're mine."
Maria had a boyfriend once, a couple of years after high school. His name was Bennett and he wore red Wayfarers and I couldn't understand why my friend seemed so taken with him. When asked, all she would do is relay the fact that her preppy boyfriend had a 'magic dick.'
And although I never admitted it to anyone, I didn't really know what a magic dick was. Until I met the Ivar, that is. It wasn't that he somehow managed to change my rational mind that afternoon in the kitchen, when he bent me over the sink and fucked me until I thought I might weep from lust – it was that he made my rational mind disappear. He made me into an animal, a creature that was nothing but carnal desires and acute need.
When he told me I was his, it was true. In that moment, with my body taut with the necessity of giving itself to him, it was true. I was his. He made me his.
"Say it," he growled a few minutes later when he heard my helpless little sighs beginning to rise in pitch, and my heartbeat starting to flutter in my neck as he rained kisses along it. "Say it, Sophie. Tell me you're mine. Tell me!"
"I –" I stammered, because the possibility of not telling Ivar that I was his did not exist. "I –!" My sex tightened around him, sending a first wave, a harbinger of bliss, ringing through me.
"Say
it!"
He flattened one of his palms on my lower back, just above my ass, and guided me back onto him, positioning me so he could get as far inside me as possible, and it was that gesture alone, even before I felt him sinking into me again, that did it. I gasped and scrunched my eyes closed.
"I'm yours. Ivar, I'm yours. I'm – I'm –"
But that was all I could say before he drove himself into me one more time and my entire being began to convulse around his cock, squeezing and pulling and pleading until he got there with me.
I stood there, pants and panties around my ankles, breathless and bent over the sink, for quite a few minutes. I couldn't move. My knees felt shaky, like they might give way if I attempted to walk, or to pull my pants back up. My heart hammered in my chest and my breaths came quick and deep.
The Viking placed a final, well-aimed and proprietary slap on my bare ass before casually putting his pants on again and heading back out to the car for the rest of the groceries while I recovered.
Later that night, after Heather had returned from foraging in the woods – an activity she said calmed her, even if it was technically unnecessary, she and I changed the dressings on Jarl Ivar's wounded arm.
"It's healing quickly!" She exclaimed, before turning to me and noting the disappointment I'd foolishly thought I was hiding. "What is it, Sophie? Don't you think it's –"
"She wishes me to stay injured," Ivar spoke up, failing once again to beat around the bush. "She wishes me to stay in this place forever, while my people struggle alone in Thetford."
Heather scoffed softly, although even that was more than she ever would have done to a Jarl in the past. "Men say women are dramatic," she smiled at me, "but I've never met one so dramatic as a man. Really Jarl – alone? You must know that your people are not truly alone? They have 4 other Jarls to leads them – 4! The Angles are subdued, the storehouses are almost full and the leaves begin to change their colors – what danger do you imagine stalks your people now?"
I sat back, eyes wide as I witnessed Heather – not long a free woman after a period as a thrall to the Northmen – walk right up to the line of accusing Jarl Ivar of speaking from ego without quite managing to step over it.
"Voss, woman!" The Viking snapped, whipping around and lifting his good arm to slap the older woman.
Only Heather did not cower. She did not laugh, either, or make light of Ivar's anger. She simply waited to see what he would do.
"I do not mean to anger you, Jarl," she continued when he declined to deliver the blow. "But what I say is true, is it not? The Northern people have 4 Jarls to protect them and keep them through the –"
"You do not understand." Ivar spoke gruffly. "You are a woman, how can you understand a thing like duty? How can you –"
"Duty?" Heather cut in, raising her voice. "Duty?! You speak of this thing as if it's the sole province of men, but what do you think is keeping Sophie here from going back through the tree with you to Thetford, if not duty? A mother's duty, a daughter's duty. You push her away with your foolish notion that only a man can feel what you do, that only a man can understand. It's not so, Jarl, and right now you are in a world where most know it."
Ivar jerked his arm away before we could reapply fresh bandages, and Heather gave me a look and shook her head when he stormed off. "Let him go, girl. He's young – and like all young men, he's got a hot head. It's what drives them into battle – and what drives us mad! He'll be back, give him some time to think and we can replace the rest of the bandages later."
I sat back on the sofa, wringing my hands. "You're right, you know – what you said. He doesn't understand why I can't just come with him. He's so arrogant, he thinks I should just give everything up and –"
"Oh he understands, girl," Heather interrupted me gently. "He understands. Men understand a lot more of us than they let on – but sometimes it's easier for them to pretend that they don't. Perhaps he will go on pretending, right up until the moment comes that he goes back through the tree to his people."
Tears sprang up in my eyes, too copious to be blinked away, and I swiped them away with my hand. "So you think he's going back?" I asked, although it was without any real hope in my heart.
Heather shrugged in response, though, which surprised me. "I cannot counsel you to get your hopes up, girl – he is the Jarl of Jarls, after all, and the Northmen raise their sons to do their duty above all else – but there's no saying what a young man won't do for love."
"He's almost 30," I told her, trying to hide the fact that my heart was suddenly filled with a dangerous hope. "And I don't think he loves me."
"Almost 30!" She laughed. "Only the young think 30 is the end of youth. And of course he loves you. See how he storms off at the mere thought of being without you!"
I roasted both the chickens for dinner that night, having learned just how much food Ivar could put away at a single sitting, and Heather helped me prepare the vegetables. We left the heavy subject of my relationship with the Viking Jarl behind in favor of chatter about the many differences, some not so obvious as it would seem, between the 9th century and the 21st. It was in the midst of this discussion, as Heather pronounced modern carrots 'utterly tasteless,' that my phone chimed.
"Damn!" She cried, jumping and then breaking into a grin when she realized what it was. "I swear it, girl, all of these beeps and blips and flashing lights are going to give me a heart attack before I even have time to settle in here!"
And I was about to respond when I looked down at my phone and saw the name on the screen:
Professor Foxwell.
I still hadn't told Heather about the possible worth of the dagger, because I didn't want to get her hopes up – my own were quite enough – so I told her I needed to take the call outside and stepped out into the driveway, where the deep blue blanket of twilight had begun to settle over the land.
"Hello? Professor Foxwell?"
"Yes – er, yes, Sophie, it's me."
Right away, I could tell something was up. The professor's voice sounded stilted and he was out of breath, like he'd just come in from a brisk walk.
"Do you," he continued, "have a moment? Or – uh, could you come into the office maybe, uh, maybe tomorrow? I suppose it doesn't matter, there's no reason I need to see you face to face although of course it might make it easier."
I'd never heard him so flustered. And as far as I knew there was only one reason for the professor to be flustered after our last conversation – the dagger.
"I can come in," I said, "but is it necessary? I feel like I already know what you're going to – "
"Sophie! I'm sorry, I apologize for acting like a crazy person right now but I – to tell the truth I can't quite get my head around the news. It's real – the dagger you brought in – it's real! Where did you – I mean, how did you –"
I'd already come up with a story to explain how I came to have an authentic Viking dagger in my possession. It wasn't a particularly good story, but it was better than time travel and neither Heather nor I had been able to think of anything better.
"It's my mom's," I said calmly, as if having priceless historical objects laying around in my mom's house was totally normal. "It, uh, it got passed down to her from her grandfather."
"It's an heirloom?" Professor Foxwell replied, baffled. "You have a pristine Viking dagger as a family heirloom, Sophie? I – I mean – is your family Scandinavian?"
"I think so," I replied, shifting my weight from one foot to the other with the discomfort of lying to someone I respected. "Yes, one of my grandparents, or, um, my great-grandparents – I think. One of them was from... Scandinavia. So it's real, then? It's authentic?"
"Oh it's authentic. It's the best example of a Viking dagger – of a Viking anything – that I've ever seen. That anyone has ever seen. I don't know if you understand, Sophie, but this is an incredibly important piece. This is – this is –"
"How much do you think it's worth?" I asked, as Professor Foxwell spluttered and tripped
over his words like a teenage boy talking to a pretty girl.
"Worth? How much do I think it's worth? Why? Are you thinking of –"
"Selling it? Yes. My mother says it's mine now and I would like to sell it."
It took another few minutes but I finally got a coherent comment out of the professor after telling him I wanted to sell the dagger. He was going to contact the great auction houses in London and New York, to see what kind of arrangements could be made to auction it off – if I didn't want to donate it to a museum – which I unfortunately did not, because Heather needed a house and she needed enough money to live the rest of her life without the job she was never going to be able to get with her 1983-based skill-set. And although he obviously could not give me a specific number, even the lowest end of the range of possible selling prices Professor Foxwell had given me would be enough to keep my time-traveling friend in the best of circumstances for many, many more years.
I tried to contain myself. I tried to act normal. Heather and I finished cooking dinner together and Ivar appeared, as if by magic, just as we were laying out the chickens. If I hadn't been bursting with the news of the dagger's worth, I may have said something about it not being cool, in 2018, to storm off in a rage and then just saunter back in without an apology just as dinner was served. But I didn't want to fight in front of Heather and make her uncomfortable, so I mostly restrained myself – well, except for a few aggrieved sighs – when the Viking helped himself to an entire chicken.
And then later, while Heather and I rinsed dishes and cleaned up, she slammed a plate down on the counter, finally, and looked me in the eye.
"What?" I asked, unable to keep a smile off my face as I looked away.
"What?" Heather repeated back to me. "What?! What's gotten into you, girl? You haven't stopped smiling since you took that phone call earlier. Are you pregnant?"
