Weave a Circle Round

by Kari Maaren

  “I live next door to her. I’ll take her home,” said Josiah. “But call her absentee mother, do.” Freddy’s hand snuck into her pocket and wrapped itself around her key. She had absolutely no idea why.

  There was another short lecture in which Josiah was informed, “You’re treading on thin ice, Mr. Lachance,” and Freddy was given a glass of water and another painkiller. Josiah had to steer her out of the office. She kept needing to squinch her eyes shut against the light, which got into her head and made the throbbing into stabbing.

  It was some time before three. Even so, Rochelle and a few of her friends were out at the side of the school. The friends were smoking; Rochelle wasn’t. Freddy knew, as she emerged from the side door and nearly walked right into them, that this was where the Murphy’s day had been headed all along. Rochelle had been working up to this moment for weeks.

  “Freddy,” she said. “I never thought you would turn out to be such a freak.”

  Freddy shrugged. If this had happened on the first day of school, she would have been clutching her key and wishing she were dead, but she had now known for ages that Rochelle was getting ready to blow her off publicly.

  And if Josiah had left it alone, that would likely have been that. Josiah was no more capable of leaving it alone than Cuerva Lachance was of paying attention to anything for more than five seconds at once. “In ten years,” he said, “you’re going to be working at Tim Hortons to support your three illegitimate children.”

  “You idiot,” said Freddy out of the corner of her mouth.

  Josiah glanced around, possibly noticing for the first time that Rochelle’s friends were quietly surrounding them. “I’ll distract them with my obvious difference,” said Josiah, “and you jog gently away.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Rochelle. “Did you know people are still going around calling you my friend, Freddy? Don’t you think they should stop that?”

  “Sure,” said Freddy. “Anything you say.” Rochelle hadn’t been like this in elementary school. Okay, maybe she’d liked to get her own way. It was possible she’d become sort of angry when she hadn’t. But … We used to play dress-up, for crying out loud. She always made up the best stories. I think she’s smarter than I am. Why does she have to act so … mean?

  Rochelle backed her up against the school. Freddy felt the lump on her head touch concrete. Her vision went strange. She could see Josiah off behind Rochelle’s shoulder, but he seemed to be standing inside a rainbow. “Don’t ever talk to me,” said Rochelle. “Stay away from Cathy. You’re not our friend any more. We’ll be making sure everyone knows what a freak you are.”

  “What,” said Freddy, “because I sometimes talk to someone you don’t like?”

  She didn’t understand what she had done to make Rochelle hate her so much. Yes, you do. You know you do. She’s afraid people will think she’s friends with you. And you’re friends with him. She hadn’t realised she was friends with Josiah. It had crept up on her, like Keith in PE. She didn’t think she was fading into the background any more.

  “You know why,” said Rochelle. She slammed Freddy’s head back against the wall.

  * * *

  “Are you properly conscious yet?” asked Josiah.

  He was sitting on her couch. So, it seemed, was she. She had no memory of walking home. “What?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” He propped his chin on his hand. “I think your good friend Rochelle is off hiding in her house, waiting for the cops to arrive.”

  She tried to focus on him. “You called the cops?”

  “No, but they ran as if I had. Passing out was the smartest thing you could have done back there, by the way.”

  “I still say we should call an ambulance,” said Mel, coming in with a glass of water and handing it to Freddy.

  It had to be at least ten after three, then. Where had the last hour gone? “Why didn’t you?” asked Freddy.

  “I just got here,” said Mel. “He said you were okay.”

  “She will be,” said Josiah.

  The headache wasn’t any better, but it wasn’t any worse, either. Freddy drank the water. “I don’t think I’m having a very good day,” she said when she was done.

  “I would tell you to go to bed,” said Mel, “but I don’t think you should. The nurse may have been wrong when she said you didn’t have a concussion.”

  “We could play a board game,” said Josiah, who may just have been the last person in the world Freddy would ever have imagined calmly playing Monopoly.

  Mel and Josiah were still arguing over who got the blue pieces in Settlers of Catan when the front door slammed open and Roland ran into the living room.

  He took in the situation at a glance. “I told you guys to stay away from him!”

  “But you never said why,” Mel pointed out in her most reasonable voice and doubtless her most reasonable gestures as well.

  “I didn’t have to say why. He needs to leave,” said Roland.

  It was too much. The anger surged once more, threatening to choke her. But for once, and finally, something gave way.

  Freddy said, “What’s your problem, anyway? He’s the only person in the whole school who doesn’t hate me. He helped me get home after Rochelle almost bashed my head in. You didn’t.”

  Roland blinked at her, clearly startled. She thought she knew why. She did snipe at him sometimes, but she mostly just backed down and simmered rather than confronting him directly. “I’m not psychic,” said Roland. “Rochelle what?”

  “You know, why don’t you just leave it? You can play the red settler if you join in now,” said Mel, waggling a handful of game pieces invitingly.

  Mel wasn’t very good at defusing situations. “I’m not playing, and neither are you,” said Roland, and he turned to Josiah. “Get out.”

  “Okay,” said Josiah, “you can play the blue settler.”

  Freddy said, “I never thought you were a bully.”

  She saw Roland’s eyes widen. “A bully?”

  “What else is it when you order people around and don’t say why?” said Freddy.

  “You could trust me,” said Roland.

  She stood up. The room spun around her, then steadied. “Why? Because you like me so much?”

  “You’re my stepsister,” said Roland. “I don’t have to like you.”

  “Oh dear,” said Mel in her best old lady voice, and began to clear up Settlers.

  “Thanks,” said Freddy. “Everybody else hates me now; you wouldn’t want to be different.”

  Roland took two slow, heavy steps into the room. “When have you ever given me any reason not to hate you? You’ve never wanted me here. You haven’t even bothered to learn to sign the stupid alphabet. Babies can sign the alphabet. I speak your language; why can’t you speak mine? And you’re horrified if I even just look at you at school.”

  “That’s school,” said Freddy. “Don’t you even understand how that works?”

  “What … you mean the way you slink around after your brainless friends and pretend everyone they don’t like has some kind of disease?”

  “Well, they don’t like me now, so you should be happy. Now you can look at me at school.”

  “I wouldn’t want to. You’re not even interesting. You’re the most boring person I’ve ever met.”

  “Excuse me for not wanting to fight half-goblins on the Festering Plains of Gloth every Sunday afternoon.”

  “You wouldn’t have to if you ever had an opinion about anything.”

  “Great,” said Freddy. “I should be just like you. I should sulk and mope and knock stuff over and shove myself in where nobody wants me. Why’d you ever have to come here … you and your dad? We were fine without you.”

  “You leave my dad out of this.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard. He’s never here.”

  “Your mum is? I see her about once a month.”

  “As fun as this is,” said Mel, “I think maybe you guys should—”

>   “No.” Freddy didn’t turn to look at her sister. She knew Mel would be signing, and she didn’t want to see that. Everything she’d wanted to say for a year now seemed to be spilling out of her. “I’m sick of him. He needs to stop telling me what to do. I’m allowed to make friends on my own without him butting in.”

  “I’m trying to stop you from doing something stupid, you boring, mindless, sniveling little brat!” Roland snarled.

  The pounding in her head was making it hard to think. “I wish you’d go blind as well as deaf.”

  Roland stood and looked at her. Freddy was dimly aware she had gone too far. The headache was getting right in behind her eyes.

  “Right, then,” said Roland. “Do whatever you want. See if I care. I hope you die.”

  “Right back at you,” said Freddy. Roland turned without another word and swept from the room.

  “Let’s go,” said Freddy to Josiah. He didn’t argue. Afterwards, she wondered if there might have been something a little frightening about her then.

  Mel said, “I’ll—”

  “No,” said Freddy with more force than she meant to. “You stay here. Stop following me. Everybody in this house is—just leave me alone.”

  She walked out through the kitchen, Josiah behind her. Her hand was wrapped around the key again; she hadn’t noticed until just now. “You can come over,” said Josiah, “but you know, Mel was just—”

  “I don’t care,” said Freddy.

  Her throat was tight. She didn’t know why. They moved past the bright red smoke bush and through the gate and into the lane and then the yard of the house on Grosvenor Street. Two crows were having an argument at the top of a spruce tree. You and me both, she thought.

  Josiah paused just before unlocking the door. “You’re going to want to apologise in an hour or so,” he said. “You know that, right?”

  “No,” said Freddy, “I won’t.”

  He shrugged and opened the door. She followed him through. She felt her right foot break through the crust of the snow, and she reached out to steady herself on a tree limb and missed. Freddy skidded to her knees in the middle of a snowy forest. Josiah was just ahead of her, his fists jammed into his pockets, his shoulders sagging in a resigned sort of way. When she turned to look at the yard behind her, she saw nothing but more trees and much, much more snow.

  7

  “Get up,” said Josiah. “Unless I miss my guess—”

  A silken whisper close to her left ear was followed by a thud and a noise that sounded very like boing. Freddy found herself gazing up at an arrow vibrating in the trunk of a tree. Small lumps of snow pattered from the branches, making holes in the white carpet that surrounded her.

  “—the battle’s over there,” said Josiah, and threw himself to the ground. “Also, maybe you should forget what I said about getting up.”

  He dragged himself behind the tree with the arrow in it. After the briefest pause, Freddy followed him.

  “Okay,” said Josiah, “if I’m remembering correctly, what happened here was that somebody’s daughter ran off with her father’s deadly enemy’s son, and Group A has set fire to Group B’s mead hall. We’re in Sweden.”

  “Oh,” said Freddy weakly. “Good.”

  “They weren’t aiming at us,” said Josiah, “I don’t think. Unusual of these guys to use arrows, anyway. They’re more of a sword-and-double-headed-axe kind of people.”

  “Are they?” said Freddy.

  “Look through there.” He leaned a bit around the tree and pointed. Freddy, the snow beginning to seep through her jeans and turn her legs numb, scooched around so she could peer past the trunk.

  She couldn’t see much. She thought they were near the edge of some sort of forest. There seemed to be a clear space starting maybe a hundred feet away. Through this space, people were running back and forth. She heard the occasional incoherent yell and the dull clash of metal on metal.

  “We’ll have to wait until they settle down before we try anything,” said Josiah. “It’s going to get a bit cold.”

  Freddy’s teeth were chattering. She thought it was already more than a bit cold. “Okay.”

  Josiah looked at her sidelong. “You’re not taking this well, are you?”

  She sat and stared, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly.

  “Ah,” said Josiah, “shock. Come on … it should be safe to get up now. We have to keep moving if you don’t want to freeze to death.”

  He clambered to his feet and held out a hand. After a moment, Freddy took it. Her head was pounding worse than ever. She wondered if concussions caused hallucinations and, if so, how detailed they got.

  “The thing is,” said Josiah as they started through the trees, “this was always going to happen. I normally don’t sit around and wait to be walloped upside the head by destiny, but this was already a fait accompli. My advice is to suck it up.”

  A brisk wind rattled the branches, sprinkling more snow on the forest floor. Freddy said, “I don’t know what I’m sucking up.”

  He stopped, faced her, and sighed. “Stop thinking of it as a dream. It isn’t.”

  “A hallucination?” asked Freddy hopefully.

  “Real life,” said Josiah. “It’s Cuerva Lachance’s fault. To be fair, she probably didn’t mean to do it. The house has been getting a little hazardous lately. I’ve tried to calm it down, but thanks to the last choice, she’s dominant at the moment. I’m suspecting she has no idea she’s turned the back door into a time portal. If she does know, she’ll forget immediately.”

  “Time portal,” said Freddy.

  “Yeah. We’ve landed around the turn of the ninth century.”

  “That’s impossible.” Freddy’s own voice sounded strangely polite to her. Stupidly, she looked at her watch. It showed the same date and almost the same time it had five minutes before.

  “Of course it’s impossible,” said Josiah. “That’s why it happened.”

  He set off through the woods again. Freddy hurried after him. “But I’ve got school tomorrow.”

  “No,” said Josiah, “you’ve got school in twelve hundred years.”

  She didn’t know if her headache was to blame for the growing feeling that she was teetering on the edge of a bottomless pit. “You’ve … done this before…?”

  “Never,” said Josiah. “First time.”

  “But you—” she started.

  “Listen,” said Josiah, “this isn’t possible. Do you understand? There is nothing about this situation that makes sense. Everything I do makes sense. This is an amusing little present from Cuerva Lachance. She time travels constantly. She does it because she can’t. Every so often, the insanity spills over into my life, and I find myself doing something I can’t be doing either.”

  “She does it,” said Freddy, “because she can’t?”

  “It’s her purpose in life.” Josiah’s voice was suffused with gloom. “She’s continually popping back to have tea with herself yesterday. Time travel is completely impossible,” he explained, holding a branch back so Freddy could nip through into a small clearing. “Can’t be done. I’m suspecting you people will spend centuries trying to perfect it, but you’ll fail in the end.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The general lack of time travellers,” said Josiah. “If it were possible, they would be bouncing around all through history, but they’re not. I’d have noticed.”

  “You’d have noticed them bouncing around all through history.”

  “I’ve seen most of it,” said Josiah in his best world-weary manner. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

  It was strange how calm she felt. The calmness was rimmed with knives, though. Freddy turned to face him again. “So we’ve travelled in time,” she said.

  “We’ve travelled in time,” said Josiah.

  “Which is impossible,” said Freddy.

  “Which is, in fact, impossible,” said Josiah.

  “Except we’ve done it anyway,” sai
d Freddy.

  He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Look … there are some things about Cuerva Lachance and me that we may have neglected to tell you.”

  “Are you aliens?” said Freddy.

  “What? No.”

  “Are you vampires?”

  “You seem to be experiencing some bizarre side effect of hysteria,” said Josiah. “We’re not vampires, either. Note that I am standing full in the sun as I say this. Maybe you should calm down a bit before we continue the conversation.”

  “Calm?” said Freddy. “I’m calm.”

  “You’re shouting.”

  “I can be shouting and still calm.”

  “We are standing five hundred feet from a Viking raiding party,” said Josiah. “Stop … shouting.”

  “Okay,” said Freddy, who thought she might as well. “Why a Viking raiding party? Why are we here?”

  Josiah hopped delicately over a snow-covered log. “Sheerest accident, almost. Since I’m involved, there’s a certain logic to where we ended up. Three will be around here somewhere.”

  “Three what?”

  “Just Three. It’s a person. This particular time around, his name is Bragi Boddason.”

  “That’s a name?”

  “You don’t even want to know what he would say about ‘Frédérique Duchamp.’”

  The yelling and clashing in the distance had died down. Freddy stood in a Scandinavian forest twelve hundred years before the date of her birth and struggled to accept the fact that she was doing that. This couldn’t be real. But it was cold, and she was knee-deep in snow, and the sun was making patterns on the ground as it beat through the branches, and this couldn’t not be real. Josiah was watching her. He didn’t look particularly cold. He was hard to see behind the red and black stains spreading across her vision.

  “All right,” said Freddy, and then the black swallowed everything up, and it stopped mattering what was and wasn’t real.

  * * *

  Josiah was the first person she saw when she opened her eyes. It was just too bad there were two of him.

  Freddy lay still and stared. She was in some kind of building, smoky and dark; she seemed to be covered in furs. Three people were in the room with her. One was a red-bearded man dressed in fur and leather. He was turned partially away from her, so she could see that his hair went down his back in a long braid with a curl at the end. He was sitting beside a sort of fireplace that didn’t really look like any kind she had ever seen before. It extended out into the room. There was some kind of cauldron or kettle hanging over the fire.