by Joanna Bell
A frisson of danger cut through the air like lightning. I had said too much. Everyone knew it. Not only had I said too much, but I'd done so in front of the men. When my father – red-faced and panting in front of me, almost beside himself with rage – regained his abilities to speak and act, I was likely, this time, to be killed. And the warriors, even as I saw in their faces that they sympathized with me, would not disobey their Jarl. I knew that. My father knew it.
The situation was clear, suddenly. The choice was upon me. If I didn't make it, I was going to die at the hands of my own people.
So I did make it. I turned and ran. As Asger and our men stood waiting for their Jarl to command them, I ran.
Into the sun-dappled forest, down a narrow path, over roots and rocks as they stood out of the bare earth, I ran. And soon, I heard that I was being pursued. The sound of weapons slapping against legs, of men's breaths coming hard and heavy, began to bear down on me. If it were not for the twists and turns in the path, I knew they would have spotted me already. And then, at the last second, as I was about to stop and face them with my sword in hand, a hand reached out and pulled me into the undergrowth.
Thinking it was one of my father's men, I began to fight, only to hear, to my great shock, a woman's voice in my ear.
"Stay down! Here – come here, there's a place – behind this tree. Come on!"
Chapter Seven
Heather
I got lost in the woods at the bottom of Bill and Brenda's backyard – the very same woods I had walked through multiple times that summer. I thought I was on the path, I could see the odd car passing by on the road in the distance, and then suddenly I felt dizzy and I couldn't quite work out where I was anymore, as I seemed to have stumbled into an area of thicker undergrowth.
After wandering uselessly around in the dark for about an hour, I grew tired and, given it was a warm evening, decided to nap on the soft earth and make my way to the gas station where I could use the pay phone in the morning, when I could better see where I was going.
And then in the morning, the woods on my aunt and uncle's property seemed darker and more impassable than I remembered. They felt different, too, although I couldn't quite put my finger on how. The air was different somehow, softer and quieter. I was also quite thirsty.
Damnit, I muttered, craning my neck to see if I could get my bearings and seeing nothing I recognized. I just needed to pick a direction and follow it – sooner or later I'd find myself somewhere recognizable. Even if it was Bill and Brenda's house, I could just head back through the woods, knowing that time where I was on the path.
I stopped and looked around, trying to decide which way to go. Beside me stood a huge tree, its leaves so thick they almost blocked out the sunlight entirely. I leaned against its trunk and suddenly found myself dizzy again. Not just dizzy – I couldn't breathe. And as soon as I realized I couldn't breathe, and felt a jagged spike of panic rising up inside me, it was over.
It was over and I was suddenly back where I thought I'd been in the first place – in the middle of the woods on Bill and Brenda Renner's property. Puzzled, I glanced around. I was beside a large tree – but not the same one I had been beside mere seconds before. I reached for one of the thick roots, meaning to use it to help pull myself to my feet again, and fell back into a dark, breathless dizziness.
I shook my head and looked up, blinking. Was I dreaming? What was happening? And then, before I could pinch myself to see if I was actually conscious or not, I heard voices. Male voices. Was it my uncle? Was it the police? Had Brenda called the cops? It wasn't totally beyond the realm of possibility that she would do something like that. I scrambled into some thick bushes – again, thicker than I thought I'd ever seen on the Renner property – and crept forward on my hands and knees.
And what I saw in front of me was enough to have me sighing with relief – I was definitely dreaming. It was the most realistic dream I could remember having, complete with the realistic smell of – well, I didn't know what it was, but it was bad. A few feet in front of me stood a group of people – grown men and children. They were not like any people I had ever seen before in my life. The children were ragged, filthy, their feet bare and their knees scabbed. The men were huge and dressed strangely in leather, their hair worn long and braided. Someone was being yelled at. It was one of the children, slumped down against a – what was that? A hut of some kind? A shed? There were no sheds in the woods, were there?
You're dreaming.
Yes, I was dreaming. One of the least dreamlike dreams of my life, but a dream all the same. What else could it have been?
And then suddenly the child looked up and I saw that it was no child at all but a man – a very small, thin man with a wizened face and straggly gray hair falling about his shoulders. One of the bigger men in leather was questioning him, asking him which was his. Which what was his? The old man was refusing to answer.
And then the angry man yanked one of the kids towards him by the hair, causing the little one to yelp with fear, and held the blade of a sword to his neck.
I wanted to wake up. I wanted to wake up very badly. There was a pit in my stomach, a feeling of dread hanging over the whole scene which was not lessened by the fact that it all seemed so real.
Before I could crawl back the way I had come, back into the undergrowth, the man who clutched the tiny child in his hand suddenly raised a sword above his head and I squeezed my eyes shut tight.
They flew open again at the sound of metal clashing with metal. Another man had stepped forward, presumably to save the child, and now the two fought. Well, one of them fought – the angry one, who had fat cheeks and a look in his eyes that I instinctively did not like. The other, if anything slightly larger than his attacker, did nothing more than deflect the blows and dodge out of their way with a deftness I didn't usually associate with someone of his size.
I watched them dance around each other as the blades of the swords clashed again and again. I could hear the heavy breaths of the fighting men, and see the strange apprehension in the eyes of those who stood watching. I'd seen a few fistfights by that point in my life, and I was familiar with the usual air of aggressive excitement that can seize the spectators. There was none of that in the woods that day – some of the watchers, I could tell, wanted nothing more than to look away.
What kind of a dream was this, that felt so similar – and yet also so different – to real life? The thin branches of the bushes pressed against me, the leaves brushed my face, and I did not have time to contemplate dreams versus reality because suddenly another man – older, and dressed in heavier, finer clothing – appeared from behind the hut and the pit of dread in my stomach grew.
The gas station. I had to get to the gas station to call Judy. I had to get away from this odd confrontation in the woods. I had to – if I was sleeping – wake up. The man who had just appeared looked angry. Not at the man who had just threatened to cut a child's throat open, but at the one who had stopped him. There was something in the air now – something ugly. The soldiers – for that is what they looked like, dressed alike in their leather clothes and with the obedient looks of soldiers on their faces – gazed down at the bare earth upon which they stood. A great feeling of foreboding, one I did not know the source of, filled my heart. And along with it came a strong desire to get the hell out of there.
So I did. Slowly, carefully, I braced my hands in the dirt and pushed my body backwards, being very careful not to move too quickly and give my location away. And as soon as I was far enough away to safely stand up, I did so.
The gas station. I had to get there. But to get there, I had to find the road that passed the Renner property on the other side of the fields and the woods from the house. And from where I was standing I couldn't see any fields – I couldn't see anything except more woods. I looked down at my left forearm, running my fingers over it lightly, looking again for signs it was all a dream. And when none came, I dug my fingers into my own flesh, pinching h
ard enough to make myself whimper. Nothing. What the hell was going on?!
Footsteps. Running footsteps, approaching fast. I jerked my head up quickly as a tingle of fear coursed through my veins. I spotted him through a gap in the trees – the fighting man. Not the man who had held his sword to the child's throat, but the one who had stopped it. He was running. He wasn't just running – he was being chased. And he was almost upon me.
I wasn't conscious of making a decision. All I knew was that just as he reached me he turned and grabbed for his sword to confront his pursuers and I, remembering his bravery in saving the child, suddenly reached up and clutched at his hand, exhorting him to follow me into the undergrowth.
In response, I got a glancing blow to my cheek. The man thought I was his enemy.
"Come here!" I whispered desperately, pulling him from the path and blinking at the stinging pain in my face. My eyes searched for a hiding place as the footsteps of many men bore down on us, and spotted a huge, upturned tree stump. "Behind this tree! Here!"
We dove into the shallow depression behind the tree stump and held our breath. The pursuers hadn't seen us. They ran past – and there must have been a lot of them because it took awhile for the forest to fall quiet again. When it did, the man and I finally turned to look at each other.
He was gorgeous. Seriously. That's the actual first thought that popped into my head. Not 'are we safe?' and not 'why is he dressed like he's in a movie?' No. The very first thing my brain saw fit to take an opinion on was the green-gold depths of his eyes, fringed as they were with long, dark lashes and set, like an action movie hero's, above broad cheekbones.
"Uh – hey," I said, because I couldn't think of anything else. "I'm, uh – I'm Heather."
"Heather," the man with the eyes you could drown in said back to me, as if he'd never heard it before. "Hea-ther. I am Magnus."
Magnus. What a name. It suited him.
I lifted a hand to my cheek, more aware of the pain there now that the danger seemed to have passed, and winced as my fingers brushed against it.
"I hit you," Magnus said, apparently only then recalling that he had. "I – I didn't – I thought you were my brother – or one of his men. I did not intend to –"
"It's OK," I replied, even though I could already see, in the bottom of my field of vision, that the place where the blow had landed was beginning to swell. "I know you thought I was – your brother? Is that who was chasing you?"
"Yes, it was. My brother, and my father, and all the men. Even my own, the ingrates! No matter, Heather, we must find a healing leaf for your face before your eye swells shut."
Before my eye swelled shut? Just how hard had I been hit? "What's a healing leaf?" I asked, surprised to hear such odd talk coming from such a huge man. Because Magnus was not just gorgeous – he was big. Unfeasibly big. Even sitting down, he towered over me, and just the shoulder next to mine seemed almost as broad as the entire width of me. I opened my mouth to ask if he was a bodybuilder and then remembered what he'd just said. "Your brother?" I asked instead. "That was your brother? And your dad? What's going on – why were they chasing you? Is this – are you playing a game or something?"
Magnus shrugged his weighty shoulders. "It's anything but a game. I lifted my sword against my brother – twice in two days – and he is the Jarl-to-be. By rights, either one of them can kill me now. I can never go home."
I did not understand what he was talking about, but it was impossible not to feel compassion at the real sadness in his eyes.
"What?" I asked, smiling tentatively because – surely he was joking? Fighting with your brother meant your father could kill you? And what the hell was a 'Jarl,' anyway? "Your father was trying to – to kill you?"
Magnus turned to me, a pained look in his eyes as they slipped down to my swollen cheek. "It is our way in the North. Asger is the firstborn son. After my father, he will be Jarl. It is my duty to obey not just my fath–"
"What's a Jarl?"
"Each part of the North has its own Jarl – it's not like here, where you have one king for one kingdom –"
"A king?" I repeated, chuckling. "We don't have a king!"
The man beside me narrowed his eyes and, for the first time, seemed to take in more of me than my face. His gaze moved down my body – and he made no attempt to disguise it. And I found, where often a man's gaze on my body could feel like a threat, Magnus' did not.
"Are you – foreign?" He asked a few moments later, reaching down to run his fingers along the cuff of my Jordache jeans. "What are these dressings – these are not a woman's dressings. These are not like any dressings I have ever seen before."
To my left, a small bird with jet black feathers alighted on a branch and tilted its head towards us, as if listening intently.
"Look at him," Magnus commented, gesturing towards our feathered companion. "He wonders where you come from, as well."
"I actually come from California," I told him. "I was only supposed to stay for a little while, but now I think – ugh, it's a long story. I need to get to the gas station on the way into town so I can call Ju–"
"The what?"
I felt my brows knitting themselves into an expression of confusion. "The what – what?"
"Where is it you said you were heading? Are you staying at an estate near –"
"The gas station," I told him again. "I need to use the payphone to –"
"The payphone?"
I couldn't help but laugh. Was he deaf? I didn't wonder it in a cruel way, I just wasn't sure what his difficulty was with understanding that I needed to get to the gas station to use the payphone. "Yes," I smiled. "I need to use the payphone at the gas station. So, um –"
Magnus mirrored, on his handsome face, the bafflement that was surely already written across my own. And as we sat beside each other, it occurred to me that nothing that had happened since I'd come across the men shouting at each other in the woods had made any sense. One of them had been holding a sword – a sword! – to a child's neck. And it hadn't been three or four men, either, it had been at least thirty. What were thirty men, dressed in odd leather clothes, doing threatening a bunch of raggedy children in the woods on the Renner's land?
"What is it?" Magnus asked, reaching out suddenly towards my swollen cheek. I flinched away, half from sensing that even the lightest touch would cause pain and half from the growing understanding that something profoundly weird was going on.
"I am sorry about your cheek, girl," he said quietly – and even that was odd. Not 'I'm sorry about your cheek' – like a normal person would say. But 'I'm sorry about your cheek, girl' – it was just a strange way to word a sentence. "I did not even realize that I lashed out when you –"
"Where are we?"
Magnus stopped talking when I interrupted him, and then it was his turn to look as if he were suppressing a chuckle. "Where are we? Do you not know?"
But I was not trying to be funny. I was asking because I really needed to know. I looked up at him and asked again: "Where are we?"
"We're in the Kingdom of the East Angles," he replied, seeing that I was serious. "How is it that you don't know where –"
"We're – we're where?" I asked, totally uncomprehending now. "The Kingdom of the whats?"
"The Kingdom of the East Angles. For a time you were ruled by Mercia, but your King Aethelstan saw to their defeat not ten winters ago when –"
I knew most of the words Magnus was saying. I hadn't lost the ability to understand language. But none of it meant anything. I'd never once in my life heard any of the names he used – for places or people.
Seeing my complete confusion, Magnus once again asked if I was foreign.
"No!" I snapped, frustrated, before biting my tongue. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to yell at you. I just –"
"How did you come here?" He continued, and there was something tender in his manner that I found I liked. It was easier to calm down with him next to me, his size somehow lending the interaction an air of safety
rather than of threat.
I smiled, because surely there was an explanation for all this, and one that would make us both laugh. "I live here," I replied. "With my aunt and uncle – this is their land – their house is –"
"This is Aethelstan's land," Magnus told me. "This is the King's land, girl. Perhaps your aunt and uncle live close-by on one of the estates? If you like, I could help you find their dwelling – Gods know, I will not be returning to the ships with the men. You helped me back then, when I ran for my life. I will see you to safety with your family."
I stared. For a moment, I couldn’t think what to say. One of us was crazy. There were two of us having that conversation, and neither, to my mind, were showing obvious signs of psychosis. Still, it was like gazing up at a blue sky next to a man who insisted it was red.
"No," I began slowly, certain of my own sanity. "This is Bill and Brenda Renner's land. Their house is just up the hill behind us, and the gas station is –"
"Show it to me, then."
"The gas station?"
Magnus shook his head, eying me as if I were some exotic species found in an unexpected location, like a tiger at a skating rink. "I do not know what that thing is, Heather. Take me to your aunt and uncle's dwelling, if you say it is close."
So I got up, questioning myself again as to whether or not I might be dreaming, because everything seemed to have the strangeness of a dream even as my five senses seemed to be working perfectly normally. We made our way back to the narrow path and already I could see, as I had seen earlier, before coming across Magnus and his brother fighting, that the woods looked different. Thicker. Darker.
Still, I was confident that once I got my bearings, I would be able to find Bill and Brenda's house. The stand of trees on their property was not even big enough to call a forest, and no matter what side I came out on, I would immediately know where I was. Not wanting to show indecisiveness and make it look like I didn't know exactly where I was going, I turned left and began to follow the path.