by Joanna Bell
"Remember what I told you," she said, leaning in very close before continuing. "You have to go back. You have to go back to the place that first brought you here, to the tree. You have –"
"Come on," Ivar stepped forward impatiently and wrapped his hand around one of my wrists. "Enough of this, both of you – do you think I have time to wait for you two to finish gossiping? Let's go. Now."
"Heather!" Eltha suddenly yelped, as the blood-spattered warrior led me away. "My name is Heather Renner!"
Heather. Heather Renner. Heather Renner?! I spun around, twisting my body away from Ivar as he dragged me off.
"Wait!" I screeched, trying to wrench myself free of his grip as my heart pounded and half of my brain insisted I hadn't just heard Eltha speaking the name I thought she had. "Please, Ivar! Wait! Let me talk to –"
He jerked me forward, growling his annoyance, and I knew I was helpless to stop him.
"I'm alive!" Eltha shouted, just before she was out of earshot. "Heather Renner is alive!"
And then I was being hauled through the ranks of men, back up to the front where Ivar's horse waited patiently.
Heather Renner. That's what the old lady said her name was. It couldn't be true – could it? As Ivar lifted me onto the horse I did some math in my head. Heather Renner, if she was still alive, would be in her late 50s. Eltha didn't look a day younger than 80.
But people who lived difficult lives aged faster, I knew that. If Heather Renner really did run away to be with a gang of technology-free savages in the woods in 1983, was it possible she could be the old woman? And if she wasn't, how did she even know the name? What reason could she have for saying she was Heather if she wasn't? All she'd asked was for me to let people know she was alive.
I latched onto that mystery – the one regarding Eltha's identity, and not the one regarding where the hell I was. And even as the rhythm of the horse walking and the sound of the leaves rustling in the warm summer breeze worked to calm my frayed nerves, I could not forget Eltha's words.
"You think you're in New York State right now? You think you're in America right now?"
I could not forget those questions because, as badly as I wanted them to be the manic ravings of a fantasist, they did happen to explain a few things. Like the fact that wherever I was, it certainly didn't feel like New York. It didn't feel like America, either. And if I wasn't in America, and I hadn't hopped onto a plane, or a boat, if I hadn't take a long car journey, if there was nothing about the place where I was that gave me reason to think I was in the midst of a particularly realistic and involved dream... then where the hell was I?
Another world.
That's what Eltha – or maybe it was Heather – said. No. I pushed the thought away, suddenly afraid that it might be me who was losing my mind, and not the old woman. Other worlds didn't exist. Some people believed there's another world after you die, but I wasn't dead.
"You're quiet," Ivar said, before I could tumble further down the rabbit hole in my mind.
I was grateful for his words, because the anger they brought up inside my chest made it so I could stop thinking about what Eltha had said.
"Yes," I replied. "It's normal, where I come from, for a person to be quiet after they see old men being killed with swords for no reason."
Instead of answering, Ivar scoffed. When I didn't continue – I got the distinct impression he expected me to do so – he glanced disdainfully over his burly shoulder at me.
"No reason. No reason?! Woman, we found enough silver in that monastery to feed the horses for ten winters. Food for our animal's bellies – or, if we choose to use it thus, a way to buy our way across the land rather than fighting. A bag of silver can be more convincing than a sword, to some men. Is all of this not worth it to you? Do you still think we had no reason?"
He reached back then, with one hand, and slipped it up under my tunic so he could stroke my thigh. I looked down at my leg, watching, cringing slightly, as he left a streak of the blood spattered across his hand on my own skin. And all the while, as the memories of the attack, of the dying men, stood out fresh in my mind, the feeling of that strong, heavy hand on my traitorous body still made me feel weak.
I wanted to push it away, to deny the contradictions in my own heart, but I knew that to do so would be to risk Ivar's ire.
"Of course I think feeding the animals is important," I replied. "But you can't just murder people because you don't have bread. You can't just kill them. It doesn't work like that! You have to –"
"Ah, but it does work like that. The whole world works like that, Sophie. Do you think you have never eaten a morsel that wasn't grown and tended by your own kin? Do you think you and your people have never benefited from plunder? If your child cried from hunger, would you not steal bread from someone weaker than yourself?"
"But you're not starving!" I answered heatedly. "None of you are starving. Neither are your horses. You killed those men for no reason – for nothing. Of course I would steal bread if my daughter was starving – I wouldn't fucking murder someone for it when she wasn't!"
"And what of the next day?" The warrior continued, still rubbing my thigh as we rode. "What of the day when you run out of bread? What of the winter, when provisions run low and the frozen ground accepts no seed? What of a conquering army that loses its horses to hunger?"
"You can ask me questions like this all day," I told him pertly. "None of it makes killing people OK."
"You think me a demon," Ivar mused, after falling silent for a few minutes. "I hear it in your voice, woman. Perhaps I am a demon? Did you see me kill the tall man, at the monastery? Took his head off with one blow from my sword – did you see?"
I shook my head miserably, thankful I hadn't seen what was being described.
"Valdir wanted to put his dagger in the man's belly. It can take days to die from a wound to the belly – it pleases Valdir to leave his enemies to suffer before they die."
"Are you going to tell me it was mercy, is that it? You cut off an old man's head out of mercy? And why do you say Valdir's enemies, as if the people you just killed were not your enemies, too?"
"Yes," Ivar replied plainly. "It was mercy. The old man was going to die, that was a certainty, but I –"
"But it wasn't a certainty! You –"
He turned and gave me a sharp glance. I shut my mouth.
"It was a certainty, Sophie. It was his day to leave this world. I made his leaving quick, when it could have been slow and agonizing. As for enemies, I fear you won't like what I'm about to say but I don't necessarily believe the people here – or anywhere where we raid or conquer – to be enemies. They've simply been born in one place, as one kind of person. And I've been born into another, as a different kind of person. It is as it is. What would you have me do? Put down my sword and sail home, bringing shame and poverty to my family?"
"I don't know what I'd have you do," I told him. "And it's not my decision anyway. You killed that man. You're responsible for his death. Stop trying to make it all sound like fate or destiny. You're responsible for the things you do."
"Is the little forest wildcat responsible for the mouse he tears to pieces?"
"You're not a wildcat."
Ivar turned around again, leaning his face back, close to my neck. And God help me, I did not wish to push him away. "But you are, aren't you? You seemed to be a wildcat last night, the way you sunk your little claws into my back."
I'd spent every night since that first one in his roundhouse with the 'Jarl of Jarls,' as his people sometimes addressed him. After Ashley's father, there had been a couple more men in my life, both very short term. I hadn't intended to drift into the nun-like existence I found myself living but in some ways it was simply easier not to deal with men and all the things they needed from me. Besides, I had Ashley then, and as many times as I was reassured that being a mother didn't have to mean the end of my social life, her birth did definitely mark the end of one stage of my life and the beginning of another. It
was about free time, sure, but it was also just about seriousness. You can't act like an irresponsible kid anymore, once you have a kid of your own.
A friend used to set me up on dates with men she knew when Ashley was still really little, and when I finally asked her to stop she'd accused me of being "22 going on 50." It didn't matter what people thought of me, though. The only thing that mattered was Ashley – and my mom, and Maria. Still, there hadn't been any men in my life for quite awhile. None in my bed, either. And most of the time, I was too busy to even sit down and think about whether or not I missed them being there.
Being with Ivar made me feel like a teenager again, like the only thing that mattered were my appetites – and his. For as busy as I had thought myself when Ashley was a baby, Ivar seemed busier. He was the leader of what I was coming to see was a surprisingly disciplined group of people – his men were more respectful, more conscious of hierarchy and following orders – than any cop I'd ever met. Before Eltha put the idea that I might not be in America in my head I'd just assumed Ivar and his men were ex-military, such was their efficiency.
I blushed when he called me a wildcat and he took my hand and pushed it up under his leathers, so I could feel the effect I was having on him.
"Look what you do," he chuckled. "You talk to me like an angry mother and then I see your cheeks blush pink like the dawn and this happens. Be careful, Sophie, or I'll have to stop everyone so I can drag you into the woods and have my way with you."
It was nice being wanted. It was more than nice – it was intoxicating. I leaned against Ivar's back, all mental repulsion at what I'd been witness to beaten back by lust, and reached around, gently wrapped my hand around his length. He shifted, and pushed his hips forward a little, but he didn't give any outward sign of what was happening. I began to stroke him, from the thick base of his cock all the way to the tip – which was soon slippery with pre-cum – and then back down again. With my other hand I dug my fingers helplessly into his back with the frustration of knowing I was going to have to wait, at least until night, to feel him inside me again.
He stiffened in my hand and began to rock his hips back and forth as I sped up.
"Voss," he whispered over his shoulder when I felt like I might lose it with how much I needed him. "You're going to finish me, woman. You're going to finish me right here on the back of this –"
His words caught in his throat and his whole body tightened. His fingers, clutching my thigh, sank deeply into my flesh and he let out of a long, low, strangled moan as I felt warmth spilling down over my hand.
At the next stream we crossed, Ivar ordered the people to stop to allow the horses to drink, and then dismounted the horse and walked downstream to urinate and clean himself up a little with some of the soft moss that grew next to the stream.
We made camp in the late afternoon, as we did every day of the journey inland. It was so warm that shelter wasn't needed, the people simply slept under the stars. If it rained, they stretched animal skins over their sleeping places and tied them to trees with ropes made of twisted straw.
The evening drew in and Ivar went to meet with some of the men I saw him with frequently – Uldric, Valdir, Jarl Ragnar and a few others. They were warier then, more aware of their vulnerability, as Ivar put it to me.
"We're in unknown territory now, woman. Sure, the people are still East Angles, but even within tribes, smaller groups can differ. One group of Angles may have a particularly peace-loving Lord, another a warlike one. We cannot transport walls and ramparts along the road with us, to set up every nightfall – all we have is our eyes and our ears to hear our enemies coming."
It was as if my mind had split in two. As if I had two different levels of knowing, after being for a week in a new place. On one level, and possibly in order to keep me from going insane, my mind could broach only the idea that I was lost, and that the people I traveled with and those we came across were an unknown band who had, for whatever reason, chosen to live outside of society. That part of my mind did not ask itself why none of them seemed to know what a police officer was – well, none of them except Eltha, who claimed to be a long-missing girl from River Falls although that, too, was another piece of information that was simply shunted aside – why technology seemed entirely non-existent to them, why a gun provoked none of the fearful cowering it did in the regular world.
The other part of my mind, dwelling in the places of emotion and instinct, accepted much of what my senses took in as true. When Ivar told me of his worry about attacks in the night, I did not dismiss his words as those of a role-playing freak. I had seen men being killed, I had seen many dead bodies. Whatever was happening, it was not a fantasy, not imaginary.
It was with this dilemma unresolved that I left the small shelter, built hastily of animal skins and saplings, where I was to spend the night with Ivar. I walked through the camp, where women returned from foraging with clutches of root vegetables or piles of dark purple berries held in their aprons and warriors sharpened weapons. Pots of boiling water sat over numerous small fires and from the delicious smells I could tell that some had been lucky enough to bag themselves a rabbit for dinner.
Eventually, I came to where the lowest of the people slept, at the back. It occurred to me, seeing them bereft even of cooking pots and animal skins to keep the rain off their heads, that the 'thralls' – as Ivar sometimes called them – were basically slaves. They weren't with Ivar and his people by choice, as far as I could tell – and they couldn't leave. It was two night ago that I'd overheard Valdir lamenting the lack of fighting, hoping for one of the thralls to attempt an escape so he could 'drive his sword through the escapee's lungs, and then watch him drown in his own blood.'
"You shouldn't have come!" Eltha said, as soon as she spotted me. "Sophie, if the Jarl finds you back here –"
"He's not going to find me back here," I replied. "He's off with his men. He's –"
Eltha shook her head. "You don't understand. You still don't understand. I suppose it makes sense, what with the Jarl taking you into his bed, into his protection. You probably feel safe with him. You aren't safe, let me tell you that before I tell you anything else. You aren't safe here and you certainly aren't safe with the Jarl of Jarls. Do you think that because he makes love to you at night that he would hesitate to put his dagger through your heart if you disobeyed one of his commands when the sun shines?"
I took the old woman's arm and led her away from the other thralls. "It doesn't matter what I think about any of that. I'm going to leave, probably tomorrow. If you are who you say you are, you must come with me. I told you I'm a police officer – I can help you. There's no need for you to live out here with these people for the rest of your life."
"You're going to leave, are you?" Eltha asked. "Just like that? With an old woman in tow?"
I pressed my lips together, frustrated. "I thought that's what you said I should do? I mean, you literally just told me how much danger I was in again. And now you think I should stay?"
She shook her head. "No. No, girl. I don't think you should stay. But you need to be smart about leaving. Do you think you'll be allowed to just walk away? You need to do it when Ivar and Ragnar and the warriors are distracted, you need to do it when there's a fight – it would have been the perfect time earlier today, at the monastery. And you must go alone – you can't take me, I'll just slow you down."
What? I couldn't take Eltha? She wasn't as quick on her feet as I was, but she was more than capable of walking – and apparently for great distances, as she was not amongst those who had been privileged with a horse. "Why are you telling me how dangerous it is to stay here and then refusing to come with me when I leave?" I asked.
After a quick glance over her shoulder, Eltha pulled me down to sit with her on a fallen log. The sun, soon to dip below the horizon, was sending its evening rays through the trees, illuminating individual leaves and branches with golden halos of light.
"I haven't been in River Falls since 1983," she
said quietly. "You see how life is here, don't you? Do you think it would be easy for me to go back after all this time? Do you think I could slip back into the world of cars and convenience stores?"
"No," I replied honestly, knowing how uncomfortable and alien Eltha's life was to me. "I don't. But how is this preferable? You have no freedom, no respect. You barely have enough food to eat!"
"It wasn't always like this," she said, her voice barely audible. "I used to have a husband, girl. A good husband, a good man. I left my life for him and he left his life for me and we lived in one of the villages next to the sea. Our Lord was not a tyrant. When my husband died, I was allowed to stay in the village and the Lord made sure I had enough to eat and a cottage of my own to sleep in. And then one day the Northmen came and took everyone they could get their hands on. The only reason they didn't kill me is because I have healing skills, I treated one of their warrior's wounds and they allowed me my life as a reward."
"This is a reward?" I asked, looking around. "This? You're – Eltha, you're barely more than a slave."
"Aye, you're right. But I'm old now – and you are not old. There are things you don't know yet, about people – about life. Is it really so strange to think that after – what, it must have been twenty years? – that a person would choose to remain where their life is made of familiar things? How can –"
"Wait," I whispered, stopping her. "Twenty years? What year do you think it is, Eltha?"
"Heather, dear. You can call me Heather. Even as I lecture you on the value of the familiar, part of me longs to be called by the name again. And as for the year, well," she trailed off, pursing her lips as she pondered. "If it was 1983, then – goodness, is it the 2000s already? It can't be. Can it? Is it 2003? It was all so long ago. So, so long ago."
Heather Renner apparently did not know the half of how long ago it was. I gave her a small smile and put my arm around her stooped shoulders and she seemed to sense I was trying to soften a blow about to be delivered.
"What?" She asked, looking up. "Why do you give me that look like I really am a crazy old fool – have I got the year wrong? I don't swear it's 2003, you know, it's not like I've kept track. It could be 2004, or 2005. Just tell me – don't keep me in suspense any longer!"
