by Leela Ash
Alrek turned the device over, examining it closely, and to his shock, it vibrated and lit up like a torch. No, not like a torch. Not like anything Alrek had ever seen. The flat front of the object was glowing with some uncanny light, colorful symbols drifting across it. He couldn’t even have begun to guess the source of this light, or even what it was for.
Banki glanced suspiciously from the rectangle to the woman.
“What magic is this?” he muttered, glaring at her suspiciously. Giving him a frightened look, the woman started digging in her bag again, this time coming out with a folded leather pouch. This, she gave to Alrek as well.
There didn’t seem to be anything usual about it at first— it was just a folded leather pouch, stitched neatly at the sides. Then Alrek flipped it open. A tiny picture of the woman herself, more accurate than any drawing could ever be, stared out at him. She’s smiling. Quite unlike the face she was making now, he thought, glancing up at her. More of those strange runes surrounded the picture, and it gleamed with iridescence in the evening light.
Fiddling with the pouch in his hands, Alrek discovered it was like a book—several leaves of leather stitched together, containing small chips of a strange rigid material. A central pouch held foreign coins and some pieces of paper.
She must think we’re here to rob her, Alrek thought. She’s trying to give me her valuables.
“I’d put that down, if I were you,” Banki said. “It’s unnatural. It must be some object meant to cast a spell on you.”
Alrek frowned, looking up at the stranger. Women attempting to lay curses usually didn’t look that terrified. She was still searching her bag, dropping objects on the ground as she went.
The next thing she produced was a small, thick tube made of dark metal. Evidently, she didn’t think this was important enough to offer as a gift, because she dropped it to the grass along with everything else. It landed on one end with a loud click, and an impossibly bright light began to pour out of it. The men jumped, yelling as the beam of white fire cut across them.
“Alrek, you can’t tell me that hasn’t got some dark trick about it,” Banki said angrily. “No man can make a light like that.”
Everyone else seemed to agree. Growls went up around the circle, and more than a few men started to inch forward, axes and spears at the ready. Alrek’s eyes went from his angered men to the frightened woman. She was frozen in place, not seeming to understand what they were so angry about. The look on her face chilled him to the bone.
That was the look of a woman who thought she was about to die.
They were all inching forward now, closing in on her. If Alrek didn’t do something soon, they’d run her through. To his confusion, the idea made him uncomfortable. He’d seen many women die. Some of them, he’d even killed himself. This woman, he did not want to die. He wanted to see what her eyes looked like when she wasn’t scared for her life.
Stepping forward, Alrek began to speak.
Chapter 3
Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god.
They were closing in on her. She was going to die. No, she would probably be raped first, then killed. Or killed, then raped. Would they eat her? These people must be from some kind of insane cult. They had looked at her phone like they’d never even heard of one before. Crazy, axe-wielding cultists who hid from the world would probably eat people.
In any case, Natalie was about to die.
Then the taller man stepped forward— he was the handsome one, the one who’d been looking at her when she woke up. Natalie assumed he was their leader, since the others all seemed to listen to him. Glaring around at the group, he began to speak.
At first, it sounded like gibberish, but as Natalie listened, patterns began to emerge. She recognized words here and there. Words she had learned at university, studying for her Scandinavian History class.
Oh my god. He’s speaking Old Norse.
“- - - - Fools. - - - - you bring - - - anger upon us? - - - Woman - - be - - powerful priestess, lost - - - people. We must - - - hospitality, lest we - - - destroyed when - - - - men return - - - her.”
Natalie could barely understand anything he was saying, but she understood enough. He was telling them not to kill her. Even if he wasn’t handsome, Natalie would have thought he was the most wonderful man in the world at that moment.
The band of men grumbled, and reluctantly, moved away from her. As the men trudged toward the buildings in the distance, still looking suspiciously back at her, Natalie realized this might be her chance. All the men were now between her and the settlement. There was nobody to stop her from making a break for the woods—except for the leader, who walked up and grabbed her firmly by the arm.
“- - - - way,” he said. He pulled her toward the buildings, not roughly, but Natalie could tell that if she tried to run, he could easily drag her. She knew better than to try.
Besides, she thought, he wanted to keep me alive. He’s probably not going to take me home to kill me.
The settlement the man pulled her through was small, consisting of a large central building, surrounded by a handful of smaller houses. A well had been dug, and a garden was planted close by. The man pulled her toward the smallest of the buildings, immediately next to the central hall.
It was a private dwelling, Natalie realized as they entered. She would have called it a hut, but it was a pleasant hut. There was a fireplace at the end of the single-room building, with some wood stacked nearby. A couple of chests stood against the wall, with decorative metal fittings, and a narrow bed covered in furs and wool blankets. There was even a small table and chair.
There was a wooden thunk. The man had closed the door. Instantly, her heart started pounding. She was stuck in here with him now, in his bedroom. Sure, it didn’t seem like he was going to kill her, but what else was he planning?
As if reading her thoughts, the man started circling her, looking her up and down with an evaluating stare. Natalie thought it wouldn’t have been nearly as frightening if his eyes weren’t so piercing. It felt like he was staring right through her, seeing everything under her clothes and then right out the other side. Natalie looked down and wrapped both hands around the strap of her bag, trembling.
The man said nothing as he walked. Natalie could faintly hear other men in the large hall next door, but the silence in this single room was unbearable. It didn’t seem like her captor had any intentions of communicating with her.
With a start, Natalie realized he didn’t know she even spoke Norse. He’d only heard her speak English. Her mind raced, trying to come up with something to say.
Well, might as well start with the basics.
“My name is Natalie.”
The man nearly jumped out of his skin. He leapt backwards, staring at her with wide eyes. Natalie stared back, fear starting to crawl up her back again. All she’d done was startle him. After blinking several times, the man spoke.
“You - - - - - speak Norse?” he demanded. Natalie held up her hands and shook her head.
“Please speak slowly. I don’t understand you,” she said.
The man blinked again, thinking.
“You speak Norse?” he said, enunciating every word carefully.
“A little.” Natalie hesitated, then quietly said, “Thank you.”
“For what?” The man frowned at her.
“For not letting them kill me.”
***
Alrek had to stop himself from staring at her again. It clearly made her anxious. He had been expecting her to cower. That was the usual behavior of someone captured by Norsemen. He hadn’t been expecting her to introduce herself, in very bad Norse, then look straight at him and thank him for not killing her. He really hadn’t been expecting her words to send a flicker of warmth rising up from his toes.
This woman already puzzled him. Everything about her was strange, from the clothing she wore to the language she spoke, and gods help him, she was beautiful. Her flaxen hair was pulled back behind her head, rev
ealing the shape of her face, and her trembling lips were full and sensuous. But the most captivating thing about her was her eyes, those stunningly blue eyes.
All this loveliness was counteracted by those awful clothes. She was wearing trousers, topped with a short-sleeved under tunic and some kind of sleeveless, quilted tunic over that. The end result was that she looked like a tube with legs. A tube covered in mud. Still, no matter what she looked like, she was here and had to be dealt with.
“What did you say your name was?” Alrek asked.
“Natalie.”
Strange name.
“Natal…lee,” he said slowly. Natalie nodded. “I am Alrek. I lead this settlement.”
Natalie nodded again, evidently waiting for him to say more. At least she seemed to understand her place. Alrek pulled his chair away from the table and sat down, arms folded. He wanted to keep her intimidated. For now.
“Where did you come from?” he asked.
Natalie thought for a long time. The look of puzzlement on her face was impressive, and Alrek began to get impatient. How hard was it to explain that you’d been left behind from a group of travelers?
“There is tomorrow,” she said suddenly. Alrek looked at her, mouth open.
“…Yes?”
“And there is tomorrow after tomorrow,” Natalie continued.
“Yes. I do not see what this has to do with where you came from,” Alrek said, raising an eyebrow in warning.
“And there is a year after this year. I came…” she paused, taking a deep breath, “…from many, many years after this year. Hundreds. Eleven hundreds.”
Alrek’s mouth dropped open again.
“You’re telling me,” he said, “that you came from eleven hundred years in the future?”
Natalie stared at him blankly, and Alrek cursed to himself. He had spoken too quickly.
“You say you came from the future.” he said, more sedately. She shook her head.
“I do not understand this word “future”,” she said.
“It is the tomorrow after tomorrow.”
Natalie’s eyes lit up with understanding, and she smiled. “Yes. Future.”
Alrek was so distracted by the way she smiled that he almost didn’t notice the absurdity of what she was saying. Taking a deep breath, he shook his head. I’ve picked up a madwoman, he thought grimly. At least she was a pretty madwoman.
“Sit down.”
Natalie look around for another chair before she realized he meant on the floor. Looking rather subdued again, she sat on the compressed earth floor beside the hearth, and Alrek tried to decide what to do.
He’d intended to keep her around for a while, but if she was mad, that wouldn’t work very well. And then there were those bizarre objects she kept giving him. He couldn’t deny that there was something unearthly about those.
Alrek pulled the rectangle out of his pocket, the one that had lit up. It lit up again, displaying more strange characters as he moved it. Alrek turned it over and over in his hand, trying to figure out how it worked, or at least, what it was for.
“I can show how it works.” Looking up, he discovered that Natalie was watching him closely. Alrek hesitated a moment before nodding. She stood, walking over to his chair, and leaned over his shoulder. A strangely delicious, sweet, fruity smell seemed to radiate from her, tickling his nose.
“This is the front,” she said, turning it in his hand so the translucent side faced up. “Then press this button.” She pressed her finger on a nub on the side on the rectangle, and it lit up more brightly than before. “Now - - - - - to right.”
“What?” Alrek turned to look at her. Natalie had started talking in that strange tongue of hers. She made a face as she realized what she’d done.
“Scratch it?” she suggested.
Alrek put his finger to the rectangle and started scratching. Natalie lunged over his shoulder, practically jumping into his lap to grab his hand away.
“Not with the nail!” she said, almost angrily. “With the soft part.”
Natalie took his index finger in her hand and pressed the pad to the glass, softly drawing it to the side. The screen lit up even more, with little symbols that were completely meaningless to Alrek.
He didn’t care, though. He was torn between demanding who the hell she thought she was, yelling at him and telling him what to do, and being distracted by her chest pressing into his shoulder. She was surprisingly soft under that shapeless, quilted tunic.
Alrek twisted, hooking one arm around Natalie’s waist, and pulled her into his lap. She yelped, freezing up stiffer than an icicle, and stared at him with round, frightened eyes. This woman was so strange, overly direct one moment and completely timid the next. That sweet scent wafted past him again, and Alrek realized it was coming from her hair. Frowning, he leaned over and sniffed, loose hairs just tickling his nose. Natalie flinched.
“What is that smell?” Alrek asked, still leaning into her.
“Soap. Smelled soap,” she said. Her voice was shaking.
Leaning forward just a little bit more, Alrek pressed his nose into her hair. What kind of place did she come from, where soap smelled like that? It made his mouth water. Reaching up, he pulled away the band restraining her hair. To his confusion, it was stretchy. He tugged on it again, harder.
“Ow!” Natalie winced, giving him a dirty look. Alrek wound up grabbing her hair with one hand behind the band and pulling it off with the other. He threw the stretchy band across the room, and she snickered at him. Alrek scowled. Her hair was free, but the moment was ruined.
“Show me how it works,” he said, putting the rectangle into her hands. Natalie pressed the nub on the side again, and rubbed her finger on it. Alrek stared as she wagged her fingers around, shapes and symbols flashing on the screen, like…
Magic.
“What is it?” Alrek breathed.
“It is…” Natalie stopped and shook her head. “Here, it is a toy, and nothing else.”
“A toy?” He couldn’t believe a device like that was a mere toy. She must have come from some other world.
Frowning, Natalie quickly moved symbols on the device around, and the whole surface changed color. Symbols flashed up, and the rectangle began to play perky music. Taking Alrek’s hand again, she made him hold the rectangle sideways.
“Scratch the vegetable. Do not scratch black ones,” she said. After showing him a couple of times, he seemed to figure it out.
Natalie sat still. She was probably going to wake up soon. There was no possible way she could actually be sitting in a Viking’s lap while he played Vegetable Samurai on her phone. But if it was real…
She was alone. The cell phone proved it. There was no signal. No wireless, no 4G, no GPS, no nothing. There was no connection. There was nothing to connect to.
“It stopped,” Alrek said.
“You lost.” The tone of Natalie’s voice made him look up. There were tears rolling down her cheeks. Alrek dropped the rectangle, his mouth falling open. All thoughts of trying to be intimidating disappeared as the strange woman in his lap melted into tears. He put his arms around her, not sure what to do, but certain he didn’t want her to cry.
“What’s wrong?” he asked softly. “Nobody is going to hurt you.”
Natalie shook her head.
“It is not that, it is the - - - - -.” She pointed at the device, still on the floor where he had dropped it. “That - - - - - is not only a toy. In my homeland, everyone has a - - - - -. You use it to talk to other people from a long way away. If I was home, I would be able to talk to people with it, or use the - - - - - - or something, but there’s nothing. I’m really alone here.”
“That… phone,” Alrek said, slowly sounding out the foreign word, “is like a letter?”
“Yes. No. It is a letter you do not have to mail. You write a message and it appears on your friend’s phone, and your friend sends a message to your phone from theirs.”
“That sounds like magic.” Al
rek said. Natalie huffed.
“It is not magic, it is— it is not important. The important thing is I am stuck here, sitting in a - - - - - -’s lap, and there is no way I am ever going home.”
More tears made their escape, and Natalie roughly wiped at her eyes, trying to think. This is ridiculous. You’re a grown woman. Get a hold of yourself. So what if your fiancé dumped you. So what if you time traveled 1100 years into the past. So what if you’re being harassed by a hot Viking. There’s nothing to cry about.
Alrek pulled her head down to rest on his shoulder, stroking her hair. Natalie stiffened, but when he continued to pet her, she slowly relaxed. To her surprise, he actually smelled quite nice, like wood smoke and leather. She had been expecting stale sweat. Taking a deep breath, Natalie sighed and snuggled into his grip. She’d never needed a hug more badly in her life, and Alrek was warm and comfortable and big enough to wrap her right up. If she had to get hugs from a Viking, so be it.
They sat there in silence for a long time, until Natalie had stopped crying entirely. Alrek let her rest with a patience that surprised even himself.
“You must think I’m a child,” she said quietly.
“I think you are very frightened and very confused,” Alrek replied. “It is obvious you don’t know how you got here, and you must have people you wish to return to. A husband, perhaps?”
He glanced downward, watching her reaction. Unfortunately, her reaction was to start crying again. Natalie shook her head violently.
“A few… A few hours ago, my betrothed rejected me. He broke our engagement,” she said bitterly. Wiggling around, she dug her engagement ring out of her pocket, glaring at it. Alrek was stunned to see her produce a bright gold ring, set with sparkling gems, and even more stunned when she threw it into the fireplace.
“That seems a waste.” he said.
“I do not want anything to do with that - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - .”