Ragnar

by Joanna Bell

  "I'm not lying," I told her. "I promise you I'm not –"

  "What the fuck, Emma!" She shouted, rolling over to face me again and sitting up. "Do you think this is funny? You've been gone for A MONTH! Mum and dad are – I wasn't kidding when I said this whole thing has made them crazy. It has. And me too! Only I haven't been able to show it, because I've been too busy being strong for them. And now you come back and tell me you were time-traveling? Don't even say anything else. OK? Just don't."

  I lay back and said nothing for a few minutes. It was good that Katie was angry at me – anything was better than that look I knew I'd given Paige, the one that said I was going to listen, but I no longer thought she was sane.

  "What do you think happened?" I asked a short time later. "There were no clues, right? Even the police didn't have anything? Not even an idea? There was no signs of –"

  "The police thought you murdered Paige Renner and killed yourself," Katie replied frostily.

  "Yeah but I obviously didn't, did I? And I bet they didn't have any evidence of any of that, did they? They didn't, because there isn't any – because none of that happened. I spent most of the past month with Paige – and her baby, and her dad and her new husband. She was the one who showed me how to get there – to the past. She's been going there since –"

  "SHUT UP!" Katie yelled. "Shut up, Emma! Just – this is so stupid! I don't want to hear –"

  But I'd started explaining. And I was damn well going to finish. "I met someone there," I continued, ignoring her huffing and puffing. "His name is Ragnar. He says he loves me – and I think he does. I left him there, because I didn't want you and mum and dad to spend the rest of your lives worrying about me. I didn't want –" I stopped to compose myself and continued in a wobbly voice – "I didn't want you to have to go to sleep every night imagining that I'd been hurt or killed or that I was suffering somewhere in some psychopath's basement. And now I'm never going to see him again and – and –"

  I broke down again, burying my face in my hands and sobbing for the Viking Jarl who I knew was back in the Kingdom of the East Angles at that very moment, wondering where I was, wondering why I'd left him just as our two souls seemed to have begun twining themselves together into one.

  My sister was looking at me the way you would look at your cat if it suddenly started reciting poetry – like she saw how upset I was, and how I seemed to believe what I was saying at the same time as she knew it wasn't believable. Not as far as she knew, anyway.

  "I got a crazy idea that you might be the one to tell," I continued when I saw that she was still too baffled to speak. "Katie and her ghosts and her tea leaves and her palm readers – you always seemed to be a little more open-minded about things like – well, like this. I thought if anyone's going to believe me, Katie will."

  "So is this what you're going to tell the police?" She asked finally, after a few minutes of uncharacteristic silence.

  "No," I shook my head. "Of course it isn't. They put Paige Renner in the madhouse for saying she forgot what happened – not even for telling the truth! What do you think they'll do with me if I start talking about time-travel and Viking jarls?"

  "Viking whats?"

  "Jarls. It just means leader. Their leaders are called jarls. And forget the police, what will mum and dad say? They'll think I've been brainwashed or lost my mind or something. You know they will."

  Katie nodded. "Yeah. They will. I mean – Em, I kind of do. Like, half of me is pretty sure there's a hidden camera in the room right now, OK? You – you time-traveled? That's where you've been? The ninth century? You know that sounds totally bonkers, right?"

  I nodded. "Yeah, I do know. I literally do. Paige told me about it months ago, before she went back. And I didn't believe her. She didn't seem nuts, either, but I definitely didn't even consider believing her. Until she took me back there and –"

  "Well can you take me back there?"

  I looked up at my sister to check for a smile but there wasn't one. "What – like right now?" I asked, incredulous about how risky that was until I remembered that to Katie it wasn't real so of course there was no risk involved.

  She nodded. "Yeah, right now. Not to stay, but just to show me it's real?"

  I laughed in spite of myself. "I can't just go there anytime I want. I mean, not just from anywhere. I have to be –" I stopped before I revealed the location of the tree. Katie would never do anything to hurt me, but there was no reason to think she wouldn't tell anyone what I was saying, especially if she decided I was nuts and she needed to let my parents know.

  "You have to be what?" She asked, speaking more quickly now, quizzing me.

  "Where." I replied. "Not what – where. And I'm not going to tell you where, especially if you keep talking to me in that snippy tone, like I've got to prove this to you. Believe me or don't, Katie, it happened. It actually happened."

  "Hey," she said gently, reaching out and patting my arm. "Em, it's OK. I'm not trying to be snippy, I'm just – well, I don't know what to think, to be perfectly honest. It's late. What I think we should do is try to get some sleep and talk about this – all of it – in the morning. You need to rest."

  She was right, I did need to rest. I was actually very tired, but the adrenaline that came with revealing such a risky secret to another person was keeping me awake.

  I nodded. "Yeah, OK. You don't, uh, Katie – you're not saying you believe me, I get it. But you're not saying you definitely don't believe me either, right?"

  "No," she replied, "I'm not saying I definitely don't believe you. But I'm also not –"

  "OK," I stopped her, before she could say anything else. "That's fine, that's good – that's all I needed to hear."

  23

  Emma

  There was no time for my sister and I to talk in the morning. My parents and my lawyer called us downstairs for coffee pretty early, and then my mum wouldn't let me out of her sight, constantly hugging me and kissing my cheeks.

  "Why is the –" I started, noticing that the curtains were pulled across the floor-to-ceiling windows that faced the lake.

  "The media are out there on boats," Michael Rappini replied, understanding what I was asking about before I could actually do so. "You can't stay here, Emma. The local police are overwhelmed, all their officers are out here dealing with this and the road outside is blocked with media vans, the locals are getting upset. It's just going to get worse if you stay."

  "Well where should I go?" I asked. "I can't go back to my flat at –"

  "Oh you definitely can't go back there," he agreed, glancing at my parents as a cue.

  "We thought you might come back to Norwich with us," my dad said gently. "Not for good, we understand you probably want to finish your degree at Grand Northeastern, but just for a few months until this dies down a little. You'll obviously have to talk to the police before –"

  "I don't want to talk to the police," I said before he could finish, which triggered an exchange of concerned glances.

  My mum took me by the shoulders and looked me in the eye. She looked worried and that made me feel bad, but I knew she was a lot less worried than she had been before I came back. "Emma," she said, "we know you've probably been through a lot. We're not pressuring you to talk about it just yet, there's going to be time for you to go at your own pace. But you do need to speak to the police –"

  "Why?" I asked, turning to Michael. "Am I under arrest? I'm not, am I? So why do I have to talk to them? I don't want to. I just want to get the hell out of here. Take me home, take me wherever, but get me away from all those people outside."

  Michael looked at my mother and raised his eyebrows and I saw that they'd already discussed how to deal with me in the best way possible.

  "Em," she said, stroking my hair. "You don't have to tell us anything right now but you do – darling, you do need to talk to the police before we leave. Your friend is still missing, and even if you have no idea what happened to her I think you can understand why it looks to
the police like you might have some information on –"

  "It will also help with the media," Michael added. "If they find out you're leaving without talking to law enforcement it's just going to throw fuel on some of the crazier theories out there. Sitting down with the police – and I'll be there with you when you do – will give the impression that you're doing everything you can to help find Paige Renner. And that will go a long way to helping shape the narrative of –"

  "Shape the narrative?" I asked, smiling at the odd, PR-ish language being used. "You mean shape the narrative as in make it seem less like I'm the one who killed her? I didn't, you know. I didn't kill Paige Renner. She's not even dead! She's fine! She –" I stopped myself short, then, as eyebrows shot up.

  "You," my dad started, "Emma – you know where Paige Renner –"

  "No!" I wailed, wishing I was alone so I could kick myself for blabbering so carelessly. "I mean – no. No, I do not know where Paige Renner is. I only know she's – actually I don't even know that, either. Please. I'm just tired. Can we get back to talking about that other thing? About going back home?"

  It was Michael Rappini's turn. He gave me a small, concerned smile and patted the back of my hand. "I can see you're upset, Emma, and that's fine. Everyone here understands that. But it's important you tell us – even just one of us, if that would make you feel more comfortable – if you have any information about Paige Renner. You're going to need to sit down with the FBI again, and if I go in there without all the information, I won't be able to do my job properly. I won't be able to –"

  I was about to lose it. The reunion with my family – the simple relief of seeing their simple relief – was turning out to be a lot more fraught and complicated than I had hoped it would be. Yes, they knew I was safe and that was still the most important thing. But it didn't look like I was going to be able to fly back to the UK and spend the next few weeks ensconced in the safe warmth of the family home, unperturbed by reporters or police or crazies. Not without talking to a whole bunch of people I really didn't want to talk to, anyway. I rubbed the bridge of my nose and listened to the sound of my heart beating in my chest, as fast and nervous as a hunted deer.

  "Alright," Katie suddenly spoke up from where she'd been hanging back at the periphery, observing. "Let's – uh, let's leave this for later. I think Emma needs to sleep for a little longer – don't you Em? Come with me, I'll take you back to bed and we can deal with this a little –"

  "I'm sorry," my dad said, and when I looked up I could see that he really was sorry, and that he wasn't enjoying this any more than I was. "I'm sorry Emma, but we don't have a lot of time. More and more people keep arriving, and the police have asked us to leave. If we don't leave soon, I get the feeling they're going to stop asking and start ordering and I just don't want to put anyone – especially you – through that right now."

  Katie wrapped a protective arm around my shoulder and I could have wept for gratitude. "OK," she addressed the people in the room. "She understands. But we need a few minutes, a half hour or an hour maybe, alright? If you can get things organized to leave, that's fine. If she needs to talk to the police tell them we can talk about that. But right now, Emma needs to be safe."

  "Right," my mother agreed. "Michael, can you tell the man from the FBI that we need Emma to be safe and comfortable before we even begin to talk about –"

  "Mrs. Willis," Michael responded. "It's not a good idea to leave here without –"

  "Mr. Rappini!" My father snapped and my sister, before I could hear anything more, ushered me out of the kitchen and back to the bedroom as the bickering voices of my parents and my lawyer faded out of earshot.

  "This is so messed up," I whispered when she'd shut the door behind us. "Oh my God, Katie, this is such a mess. I shouldn't have come back. I should have – I don't know, sent a message or written a letter or something to let you know I was OK, but I shouldn't have some back. I don't think I can deal with –"

  "You can send letters from the past?" Katie asked suddenly, which made me chuckle in spite of the shit-storm swirling around us. She was always doing that – asking tangentially related questions in the middle of conversations about other things.

  I slumped down on the bed. "No. Well – yeah, no. But I could have left a letter by the, uh – in the woods by the – never mind. I could have done it, maybe."

  "Why don't you just tell the police you don't remember?" She prompted and I gave her a look.

  "Because you saw what happened to Paige – and you heard what the lawyer said – it'll just be pouring fuel onto a fire. And what will mum and dad think? That something so awful happened to me that I blocked it out? Besides, I basically just admitted I know where Paige is, in front of them."

  "You can just say you were confused," my sister told me. "It's only a day since you came back, they'll buy that."

  "So – what?" I asked, as we sat there postponing the inevitable, which was leaving the lake-house and going somewhere – anywhere – else in the full glare of the media and police presence outside. "Do you believe me now?"

  Katie laughed a little. "Christ, Emma. You do know how you would have reacted if it was me telling you a story about time-traveling and Viking boyfriends, don't you? You wouldn't even have taken it seriously, you wouldn't have told me to get help – you'd just have told mum and dad and then the three of you would have commenced taking the piss out of me for it for the next, I don't know, four decades?"

  She wasn't wrong. "Yeah," I replied, because there was no point in denying it. "You're right. I've acted like an asshole to you over that stuff, Katie – the ghost, the tea-leaves. I still don't even know if I believe in ghosts or tea leaf reading, if you care, but I can tell you with certainty that I no longer think my own beliefs are the final word on – well, on anything."

  My sister fished a sweater out of one of her bags and tossed it to me. "Here," she said. "Put this on, it's cold out there. And I don't know if I believe you, Em. You don't seem crazy to me – you just seem like Emma. And I have to admit that none of the other theories really make any more sense. I know you. I know you'd be acting differently if you didn't think you knew your best friend was OK. I know you'd want to talk to the police, to help them find her. And I also know that soppy look you get when you talk about some boy you fancy. That's how you looked when you talked about Rans – Ram –"

  "Ragnar."

  "Yeah, Ragnar. What an odd name. But yeah, you had that look when you talked about him. You've got it again, now."

  I looked away, embarrassed. Even though we were both grown women in our twenties, my older sister was still more than capable of making me feel like a bashful little kid.

  Just over an hour later, we left. All of us – me, my parents, Katie and Michael Rappini. Newly hired security guards surrounded me and hustled me to a waiting car with blacked-out windows, which I thought to myself would have been pretty cool if the situation wasn't so serious and scary.

  Not that having their view of me blocked stopped the ravenous reporters from swarming like angry wasps – or from photographing my family and Michael. They shouted questions at all of us, some of them so offensive they took my breath away.

  "Did your daughter kill Paige Renner?! Sir! Ma'am! Mr. Willis! Did Emma murder Paige Renner?"

  "Emma! Were you having a sexual relationship with Paige? Were you two sleeping together?"

  "Why won't you talk to the police, Emma? Why won't you answer our questions? What are you hiding? Do you have something to hide, Emma? Do you know how it looks to refuse to talk to the police? Emma! Emma! Emma!"

  I hunched down in the back seat of the car, Katie on one side of me and my mum on the other – my dad and Michael Rappini were behind us in a second car – and they both put their arms around my shoulders and glared as cameras flashed and equipment bumped against the darkened windows as the press tried to jostle their way into position to keep trying to get a clear photo of me.

  A few minutes later, when I felt the car had got
ten up speed and there was no more yelling, Katie tapped my back.

  "OK," she said. "They're gone. The police didn't let them follow us."

  My sister sounded out of breath, like she'd been running – even though she hadn't. And when I looked up I saw that her and my mum both had identical expressions on their faces – wide eyes, open mouths.

  "My goodness," my mother whispered, opening her purse and taking out a small container of headache pills, one of which she popped into her mouth. "That was ridiculous. That was –"

  "Crazy," Katie finished for her. "That was crazy. They've never been that intense before. You and dad have to hire more security."

  The car sped down the road and I watched the tall, slender shadows of the leafless winter birch trees whizzing by outside the window. The further we got from the lake-house and the media and law-enforcement siege there, the more relaxed I began to feel. Not relaxed, mind you – just more relaxed than a hunted animal. And just when I felt myself beginning to doze off, a familiar sound filled my ears and jerked me back to a state of hyper-alertness. The helicopter. It was back.

  "Fuck!" Katie wailed, peering up and out of the window. The situation was so dire at that point that mum forgot to comment disapprovingly on her swearing. "Mum! Tell the police to call it off – call that lawyer, tell him to –"

  "He can't," my mother replied grimly. "He already told us that – the police don't get to tell the media they can't use their helicopters – that's why they had to put a no-fly zone over the lake-house. They can't declare a no-fly zone over the entire state. That's what Mr. Rappini said."

  The next few hours were up there with the worst of my life. A hotel had been booked in the largest town within driving distance of River Falls, but my dad called from the car behind us to let us know Michael had just received a call informing him that the media were already massing there, awaiting our arrival. Someone had leaked our booking. Instead of heading for the hotel, then, the cars just drove around, trying to keep ahead of the baying mob that pursued us until we could come up with another plan.