The four Vikings are gone. All that’s left is the whispering word, and I can’t tell whether the whisper is in the air around me or just filling my own head.
Dróttning. Dróttning. Dróttning.
***
I don’t sleep for the rest of the night. That’s the truth.
I’d like to say I dozed. That would mean that the vision of the four Viking men could just blend in with the rest of my dreams, could be written off as one of the strange hypnotic states that exists between sleeping and waking.
But the truth is that I lie under the covers for a long time, my knees pulled up to my chest, my whole body trembling. It takes maybe an hour for my breath to go back to normal.
Eventually I work up the courage to get up and pee. A tiny part of my mind - the part that isn’t completely given over to electrified fear - wonders if the four Vikings would come back when I’m sitting on the toilet. Catch you in your most vulnerable state, the inner voice quips.
I force the tiniest giggle out of my mouth. It helps.
I switch on the bathroom light, and the space floods with the fluorescent glow of reality. I examine my own face in the bathroom mirror. I’m pale - paler than I’ve ever seen myself before - and my hair is damp with sweat. I focus on the little things that make me feel more awake - the little stray smudges of mascara under my eyes, my undeniable bird’s nest of bedhead. I brush my teeth to taste the chemical mint, run cold water on my hands, splash my face.
It all helps. I feel more like myself, less like some terrified little animal.
But the truth is that I barely close my eyes until morning, and by morning something has changed.
I don’t try to wrap myself up in the blanket of routine in the same way as I always have. I get dressed slowly. I walk a different route to work, and for the first time in years I don’t bother with the Starbucks. I amuse myself with wondering whether my barista will think I’ve been kidnapped.
I walk slowly, noticing the sensation of my weight transferring with each step. Every time I meet someone in the street I’m careful to look them straight in the eye. It’s as if the terror of the night has washed away all my comforting denial, and I begin to see things clearly.
I’ve always kept my head down. Never really got close to anyone. My small handful of girlfriends - not close friends, just adults who used to be the kids I hung out with at school - always tease me about not letting my guard down. I hide behind all the usual clichés. I’m too busy. I don’t want to get hurt. I’m just not interested.
But the truth is, it isn’t just men that I keep at arm’s length. It’s everyone. I’ve always carried around this weird, disconcerting feeling that the people around me aren’t real, that I’m the one trapped in a dream and everyone else is…well, nothing more than a hologram.
That’s what terrified me about the Viking men. It wasn’t that I’d never seen anyone like them before. I was that I had.
Sometimes the people on the street - the people around me - seem to flicker in the corner of my eye, becoming transparent. I’d never mentioned it when I was a kid - you accept all sorts of stuff as normal when you’re a kid - and so it became a secret as I grew up, without me every exactly deciding that it was going to be one. I got my eyes tested loads of times, and always been disappointed with the diagnosis of 20/20 vision.
Maybe that’s why I became a medium. I always fob people off by claiming that the money’s good (it isn’t), that I like the theatre of it (I do), but the truth is that I like to control the way that I interact with people. I like the fact that they come to me looking for answers, and I give them and then they go away. It helps with the feeling that I have the rest of the time, the feeling that everyone else is simply a projection that will disappear out of the corner of my eye.
Those Viking men looked like the same projection - yet the truth is that they also looked more real than anyone I’d ever seen before. When one of them turned his head to look me in the eye, I felt this flash of something - stronger than deja vu, stronger than memory itself.
It wasn’t just in my head that I felt it. My heart, my breath, my whole body, all seemed attuned to that look.
If nothing else, this whole debacle has made me pay more attention to the things around me. I start to listen to my clients more carefully, too.
I hold their wrists carefully, paying attention to the thrum of blood in their veins to make sure they’re real. I look deep into their eyes. I breathe. I listen. And then the truth comes pouring out of me, though I have no idea where it’s come from.
“You’ve had some bad news today,” I say to one man. He blinks, and then his eyes fill with tears.
“My father has dementia,” he says simply.
He didn’t have to confirm for me to know it was true. I knew it. I have no idea how, but I did. There was nothing in his manner to tell me that anything was wrong. He’d made an appointment because he was scared that he was going to be made redundant (he wasn’t - I knew that with a clarity that I could not explain). I tell him that the time ahead is going to be hard, but that he still has a father left and he should treasure the moments they still have together.
He goes away, head bowed, and I remain sitting in my chair, hardly able to move. The word sings again in my ears.
Dróttning.
I say it out loud again. It doesn’t feel like it’s doing its best to escape me this time. I can control it. I say it slowly, turning it over in my mouth as if examining an ancient artefact. And just for a fraction of a second, I see them and I’m not afraid.
The meaning of the word starts to creep up on me, just like the insight into my customer’s life crept up. I know, just as intuitively, that the full meaning will come to me when I am ready. For now I need to wait, I need to listen, I need to let it happen.
This day passes and another comes. As I begin to listen more deeply, as I begin to breathe, the Vikings appear to me more often. Again, it’s not frightening. It’s almost as if I know that they’re coming. It’s almost as if I ordered them to come.
As the days go by I am able to summon them more easily. When we look at each other, I feel seen by each of them, as if all of their beings are attuned to me. Sometimes I see scenes play out. Scenes of a younger me, a happier me. A younger them, a happier them. They tell me that I can’t climb so high, to slow down. They tell me they’re there for my protection and I shrug, climb higher and faster, giggling as I create distance between us. And when I fall, I don’t fall far because one of them is there to protect me. They all promise that they always will. That we’re destined to be together and my cheeks redden at the words. I am smitten, I know that much is true, but I am too naïve to accept how much of an effect they have on me. And those are all words, of course, they can be flung around without thought or hesitation. What strikes me the most is the way they look at me, the desire that shines bright in their eyes.
Sometimes I try to ask them questions. I ask them who they are. I ask them who I am. I ask them if mediums are real.
They don’t seem to understand me. They certainly don’t reply, anyway. They just look at me sadly. I reach out to touch them and then they disappear.
It’s been two weeks, and I’ve made the Vikings come to me every day. I have started to know their faces and the difference between them. Their bodies are all tall, strong, battle-hardened, as if made from the same mold of warfare. But their faces are different. One is stern to the point of angry, one gentler. One has a look in his blue eyes that would be a twinkle if it weren’t so transparent, one has a look in his eyes like the blue fire at the very center of a flame.
I want to talk to them. I want to ask them questions and have them answer me. Most of all, I want to reach out and touch them. I started out terrified of these strange figures, but over time they have become companions to me. I want them to be real. I want to feel them by my side. I want to know what it’s like to have their lips against mine, their tongues gliding over mine. I want them to hold me close the way the h
old me close in those scenes that play out in a faded hologram.
“What do I need to do?” I ask them, one by one.
I know what the answer is but I don’t want to admit it to myself. In my mind I dismiss the four men, and they fade away into nothing, the way they always do.
I know I have to go back to the woman in the caravan, Ysulte. I know that she has the answers, but this time I have to be prepared to listen to what they’re saying.
When I’m getting ready to go, I have the weirdest sensation of packing for a long journey, even though I’m carrying nothing, and dressed only in jeans and a zipped sweatshirt. I gather all my courage, staring into the mirror at my resolute face.
***
When I get to the caravan, she’s sitting in exactly the same place she was the last time, on a low stool by the smoking embers of a fire. She looks up as I approach, and I see a look of joy and recognition form across her face.
“Dróttning,” she says. “My queen.” “I’ve come…’ I start to say the words, but my voice cracks. I try again. “I’ve come to listen. I want to know what you have to say.”
Ysulte smiles. She takes my hand in one of hers and strokes it very gently with the other.
“I knew you’d come back,” she says. I feel like saying ‘classic medium response’, but I bite the words back. I’ve decided that whatever she has to say to me, I’m just going to listen. I’m not going to try to be smart or defensive or to immediately try to tell her all the reasons why she’s wrong. Whatever this woman wants and whoever she is, something deep inside me tells me that she has something to tell me that I need to hear.
Which means it’s time for me to shut up and listen.
She gestures at the stool next to hers, smiling softly.
“Please sit, my queen,” she says.
Almost before I’ve sat down, the first question bubbles up inside me, the one that I feel I’ll burst if I don’t have an answer to soon.
“What does dróttning mean?”
She looks at me with those piercing blue eyes. They look like woodsmoke curling into a clear sky. “Dróttning is you,” she says simply. “It is the word that we use to address our queen.”
“Who’s we?”
She pauses, as if considering how to best explain things to me. “We are the people of this land, the land that we are in now,” she begins slowly. “But our motherland is what I believe you would now call Sweden.” That faint trace of an accent that I noticed in her when we first spoke re-emerges in the harshness of her consonants and the strangeness of her vowels.
“You’re Swedish?”
“Not exactly. We had different words for things then. It is difficult to translate the past into the present. We are of Britain, but we are also of the countries to the North. We came over the sea, you see, on long ships. Our people fought valiantly. But what matters, my queen, what matters most of all, is that all of these divided kingdoms belong to you.”
I bite back the urge to make a joke, and keep listening instead.
“So… if I’m your… your queen - what am I doing here?”
She looks at me, her eyes filling with sadness.
“It was never meant to be this way,” she replies simply. “There is much to tell you. So much, in fact…” she reaches into a pocket of her rough cloak, and withdraws a handful of herbs. “…That I think it’s best if I show you.”
I have no idea what she means, but I decide it’s best just to nod. She throws the handful of herbs onto the gently smoking fire.
Abruptly, the flames rear up and turn a deep, bloody orange. She smiles, and takes my hand, as if she’s about to lead me down a path.
“It begins, my queen, a very long time ago… Your father’s name was Axarko. He was a man, but he was also more than a man. The way that we understand gods in our lands is very different to the way that you see them here, and to us, your father was a god. A magnificent warrior, a great strategist, a canny magician. He ruled over our great kingdom for dozens of years, and was both loved and feared by all.”
In the flames in front of us, the carbon-black of the ashes seem to form into fluid drops, like ink running down a page. These black patches wriggle, and start to arrange themselves into the figure of a man, as if he’d been drawn in pen and ink. The figure dances within the flames. Far away, as if it were on the other side of the forest, I almost think I can hear some music start to play - deep, rich music, horns and drums, thrumming to the same beat as my pounding heart.
“Now your father married your mother, the daughter of another god, when she was very young. They were deeply in love. Ballads were sung about them, epic sagas were written in their honor. Your mother was beautiful- just as you are - eyes like a pair of stars.” The flames shift and change, and another figure appears - the figure of a young girl. She seems to dance in and out of the flames as if they are the scenery on her stage, and eventually reaches out to take the hand of the picture-king.
“Your mother became pregnant with you, and there was much rejoicing across the kingdom. A sage predicted that this girl-child would rule over the kingdom and bring fertility and fine harvests to our lands.”
“A girl could rule?” I ask, surprised. Even though her whole story is beyond belief, it seems a particularly surprising detail that in this story it is not only men who could have power. Ysulte bows her head.
“Naturally, my queen. Our people have the deepest respect and admiration for the sacred strength of the female. You count a great many mighty queens among your ancestors.”
The fire shifts again. A woman’s face seems to look out at me. It is beautiful, but it is also more than beautiful. It is a powerful face - high cheekbones, eyes that seem to see for a hundred miles, hair swept away from the face and arranged like a crown.
Despite the oddness of the situation, I smile. If this was the story that I could tell myself about where I came from, then I was starting to like it.
“The eldest girl in the family is favored to inherit the kingdom. Your father was the only child of his mother, so the people accepted that there would be a king for a time, but we were eager to restore the line of queens to the throne.
“However, it is only the eldest girl that is looked upon with such favor. Before you were born your parents wanted only one daughter, upon whom they could lavish all their love and fill with the wisdom of how to rule a kingdom. But I am sorry to say, my queen, that your mother left this world on the very same day that you came into it.”
Despite the fact that I have not even yet let myself think about whether I dare believe her story, I feel an unfathomable pang of sadness. It rises from deep within me, from the same place as the strange knowledge that I have started to gain, without knowing how, in the last few days and weeks.
“Your father was desolate. He loved your mother more than any man ever loved any woman. He mourned her for a time, but among our people it is a king’s duty to be married, to set an example as a husband. He married again, to a beautiful young woman from the north of the kingdom, who bore him another daughter. The daughter’s name - your sister’s name - was Shar.”
Somehow that single syllable seems to hit me like an unexpected blow. I feel I know the name as well as I know myself, even though I’ve never heard it before. Silently I mouth the word - Shar.
Ysulte waves her hand, and the images in the fire change. Now there are two little girls running through the orange flames, their long hair streaming behind them, one slightly taller than the other. A noise fills my ears that I have heard every night of my life - the sound of two sets of little feet pattering down a stone hallway, the giggles of two little sisters absorbed in their own little world.
I nod. Yes, Shar. My sister.
“As the younger daughter, Shar was destined to be little more than a slave to her family. This is the way with younger daughters in our culture, my queen. It may seem unfair to you, but there is a reason to it. In ancient times there was a prophesy that the greatest war our people would ever
fight would not be across the seas, not with other lands and other peoples, but with ourselves. The sage foretold that two daughters of a king would rise up against one another, in a terrible war that would claim a great many lives.”
The fire burns even brighter than before, and in its shapes I can see two smoky armies, marching toward one another.
“We had, before this time, enjoyed many hundreds of years of peace in our kingdom, unharmed by power struggles. This was because of our custom of raising the eldest of the royal children to be brave, educated, warlike, whilst keeping any of the younger children in their place. We did not want any younger sisters to believe themselves more capable than their elder sisters, and so we have always kept them humble. It is our way, and for a long time it worked.”
I nod, but I feel the sting of unfairness, even though in Ysulte’s story I am the older sister. I can see the logic of it, but it still seems heartless.
“However, your father was unable to keep to this custom. Despite all our laws, he loved his two daughters equally, and wanted to treat them equally in all things. As such, he raised you together, educated you together, played with you together, and trained you equally in our arts of war. Because of this transgression, he decided that the only way to keep his secret safe was to never let either of you leave the castle walls. He could not risk Shar’s upbringing being known by everyone, or otherwise there might have been a rebellion against his rule.”
Don’t step in the patches of light. The game has always lived with me, far more real than my own childhood. The dream-sister always called out the rules, made the rules and enforced them. I’m always worse at the game - her feet are like little birds, seeming completely weightless.
I nod again. Despite my generally skeptical nature, it doesn’t even occur to me to not believe every word that Ysulte is saying.
“The two of you grew up together. Sometimes you played happily together, and sometimes you fought, like all sisters do. Always you knew one another better than anyone else in the world. You might have wanted to kill each other sometimes, but you would always have died for one another.”
Viking Queen Page 3