by Joanna Bell
"Why do you look at me that way?" He asked when he caught me. "As if you ponder what piece of me would make the juiciest roast?"
I laughed and opened my arms, pulling him back to me when the fire was re-stoked. "I was just thinking," I replied, "about what you would be doing if you came from the southeast, across the sea – where I'm from."
"What is it you mean? Are your people not in need of warriors, girl? Of jarls and kings?"
I mean, we did still need warriors in 2017 – leaders, too. But it was no longer anything like a given that a young man would enter the military, and leadership so often seemed to be about who had the most lust for power than it did about who cared the most about being a good leader. "We are," I told him. "But it's different. It's very different. I think maybe your talents would be wasted in the place I'm from. You'd still have those blue eyes, though, and those magnificent shoulders – so you'd still have packs of sorority girls chasing you. But I don't know if –"
"What girls?" he asked, and I couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of Ragnar at a frat party. He'd probably get kicked out as soon as the frat boys realized they weren't going to get any female attention at all with a real-life Viking in their midst.
"I just mean – young women. Women around my age."
"And what is that age, exactly? Sometimes I think you older than myself, with some of the things you say, some of the things you seem to know. But other times I catch a glimpse of those teeth or that skin, free of marks, and think you years younger."
"I'm twenty-two winters," I told him, correctly using winters as the replacement for years, the way the Vikings seemed to, but forgetting that they had a peculiar way of expressing numbers over ten. "I mean, ten and ten and two winters. How about you?"
"How old do you think?" He asked, running his thumb over one of my cheeks, and I found my dilemma almost the same as his. Ragnar didn't look older than 26. But he seemed so much wiser than the 20-something men I knew, so much more experienced in the ways of the world and other people.
"Ten and ten and, um, seven?" I guessed.
"Close," he came back. "I'm ten and ten and four."
I lay back and looked up at the small opening at the peak of the roundhouse, where the smoke from the fire escaped. Ragnar was 24 – the same age as one of the boys I'd briefly dated at grand Northeastern, whose main priorities in life seemed to be his hair styling routine and his weekend party schedule. How was that possible, that one of those men was leading a force of warriors, responsible for a tribe of people – keeping them safe and fed and sheltered – and the other would have balked at a single day's honest labor?
I snuggled into Ragnar's chest, smiling the self-satisfied smile of a girl who knows she's in the best man's bed.
His ease, his satisfaction – a good portion of which I took personal, prideful credit for – made me think of him as a contented lion. Although he lay on a bed of furs with me, he seemed in some other way to lie at the crest of a hill in the middle of some hot, windswept African veldt, surveying his territory, attended to by his lioness.
"Jarl Eirik tells me to keep you from my heart," he said suddenly, jerking me out of the sweet softness of pre-slumber in his arms.
"What?" I asked, rubbing my eyes and pushing myself up so I could look him in the eyes. "What did Eirik –"
"He says you're leaving. He says he can see it in you, the way he saw it in Paige. Does he speak the truth?"
I didn't want to talk about my leaving. I didn't want to think about it. All I wanted to do was keep it fenced off in one of the far corners of my mind so I could spend the night floating in the bliss that was being with Jarl Ragnar. I didn't want to disturb myself with thoughts of our inevitable parting.
But he was pained, I could see it, and at first it didn't even occur to me why, even with all the signs and hints that Ragnar was, almost inexplicably, interested in more than just sleeping with me before we got bored of each other.
"I – uh," I stammered. "I don't want to leave you."
"You don't want to leave me? Then don't. What steals you away from me before we've even begun, Emma? Do I –" he reached down and spread his fingers wide over my midsection – "need to put a baby in you? Will that make you stay? Perhaps it's done already, and a new life grows within you? Eirik admits – only to me, he says – that he is not sure Paige would have returned were it not for having their baby son in her arms. Is it the same way with you? Because if it is –"
Ragnar slipped one hand down between my legs, parting them, and I put my hand on his wrist, stopping him and sitting the rest of the way up.
"Wait," I said, as much to the rushing thoughts in my own mind as to Ragnar. "Wait. Hold on. Are you talking about a baby? Why would I –" I broke off, because I realized I was about to ask a very silly question. I was about to ask Ragnar why he thought I might already have a baby growing inside me – and the question answered itself before it could be spoken. I'd already slept with him, unprotected, multiple times. I could have a baby in my belly. I knew it before that first time, in the feasting hall. And so far, I'd managed to ignore it. It was as if part of me still didn't quite believe anything that was happening in the 9th century was real. As if any babies conceived in this time would turn out to be nothing more than figments of my own imagination once I returned to the future. Even with the living proof babbling in my best friend's lap to disabuse me of this dangerous notion, some part of me was still clinging to it.
I blinked, lost in my own thoughts, when Ragnar took my chin in his hands and turned me towards him. "You don't want a baby?" He asked, not making any effort to hide the worry in his eyes.
A baby?! I wanted to screech. A baby? We haven't even discussed if we're exclusive yet!
And for all my showy internal protestations, for all my raised eyebrows, there was also the knowledge that Ragnar – his body, his arms, his wide, cocky grin – felt like home. I couldn't reason it out, I couldn't make sense of it, it was just the truth. If I'd been with him a week, a day, an hour – it didn't matter. He knew it, and so did I. The difference was that it was nothing strange to him, nothing he didn't naturally just accept for what it was.
"I'm sorry I spoke of it before the morning," he said quietly. "It troubles you, and the last thing I want is to trouble you, Emma. I see a duality in your eyes, a protestation, one that I've already seen so many times in you. But I also see the other part, the part you're trying to hide from me, that you think I can't see. I won't push you any further tonight. Put your sweet little face against my neck, so I can fall asleep to your breathing."
I did as told, grateful for the temporary reprieve. But even as I drifted off, and as Ragnar's own breathing became slow and even, I knew in my bones that what was between us was something rare and precious. And that going home, which I unquestionably had to do, was going to mean leaving it behind forever.
"I feel like some kind of housewife," I laughed a couple of days later to Paige as she and I sat in the large and well-appointed roundhouse she shared with her husband and their son. "He leaves in the morning and then he comes back in the evenings, full of stories about what happened at 'work.'"
It was mid-afternoon, another day that was cold enough to keep almost everyone indoors, and my best friend and I were relaxing beside the fire-pit as she tried to teach me how to braid a series of slim, flat pieces of dried grasses together, eventually to be turned into a summer hat. It wasn't working at all, because I've never been good with my hands – especially when it comes to detail work.
"Ugh, Paige, I can't do it," I complained, throwing down my lumpy, misshapen braid next to her smooth, flat one. "And I'm dying for some chocolate. You and Eirik don't have any, do you? Hidden away from the little people?"
Paige laughed. "Unfortunately no, we don't. I really missed sweets at first. I guess I still do – but what use is thinking about cake if you can never have any?"
I shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know. Telling me I can never have something usually just has the effect o
f making me want it even more."
There was a rhythm to life in the Viking camp, just as there had been a rhythm to my life in 2017. I was no longer waking up to the loud beeping of my iPhone's alarm, or stumbling into the first class of the day with my hair still wet from the shower, or stopping off at the little grocery store on the corner near my flat, though. I slept, during those early days in Eirik's camp, as late as I wished. Ragnar usually woke me gently before he left just after dawn, so he could make sleepy, urgent morning love to me before tucking me in again and kissing my forehead as I drifted back into sleep. Hours later, I would get dressed in the warm roundhouse and then dash through the chilly air to the feasting hall to eat bread and cheese and dried fish that reminded me of kippers. During the afternoons I would sit with Paige and baby Eirik, chatting and exclaiming over the baby's every new talent.
It didn't need discussing – I knew why Paige had come back. It was obvious. Life was slower with the Vikings, people were more connected to what they did with their time and everyone's lives were interwoven in a way that almost made me resent what I had to go back to. Not that I ever wavered on going back. I could no more let my family suffer for the rest of their lives than I could fly to the moon under my own power. But it wasn't a wholly obvious choice, even then.
On the morning of the shortest day of the year – December 21st, although no one called it that – Jarl Ragnar gently shook me awake in the full darkness of the night.
I rolled over and opened my mouth to kiss him, smiling, assuming the reason for his attentions. But he wasn't waking me up because he needed to feel my body underneath him, he was waking me up for – what?
"It's still dark," I murmured, giggling as he kissed. "What are you doing? Why are –"
"Wake up, Emma," he whispered. "We must go to the beach to witness the death of the sun. Come on, get up, get up, it's going to take forever to get dressed."
I didn't know what he was talking about – the death of the sun? what? – and I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly, but I was too tired to protest. Fifteen minutes later I found myself stumbling down one of the paths that led to the beach, my hand clasped in Ragnar's and my cheeks flushed pink in the pre-dawn cold. It seemed most everyone else in camp was headed in the same direction, too.
"Ragnar," I whispered, as he pulled me along. "What are we –"
"Shhh," he replied, as we came to the beach, and I noticed a quiet had fallen – no one seemed to be talking, even as the sand was crowded with people.
"The sun is swallowed by the darkness on this day," he whispered to me when we'd found a spot next to Eirik and Paige at the front of the crowd. "But she gives birth to her daughter before she goes. That is what Yule is, beautiful Emma. We nurture the new sun, we welcome the new season and the passing out of the people from the grip of death and darkness."
I looked up at him, even though it was far too dark to see anything, but he didn't offer any more explanation. And before I could question him further, a voice – a shaky male voice, one I did not recognize and that seemed to belong to an old man – rose thinly in the winter air just as the first hints of light began to appear at the horizon.
"The gods slumber," the voice said, and there was a low murmur of agreement from the gathered crowd. "The gods slumber near death, the cycle of the seasons slumbers near death, the sun is come on her morning birth-bed to start the Yule period. Jarl Eirik, step forward! Jarl Ragnar, step forward!"
I clutched at Ragnar's hand, uneasy because I didn't understand what was going on or why we were all outside in the freezing wind when we should have been back in our beds, but he squeezed my fingers and left me where I was. Slowly, as the light began to leak into the sky, I could make out his figure next to Eirik's on the beach. A much shorter man stood in front of him, with his back to the waves. There was an object in his hands, one he held up as I watched, sensing a strange anticipation in the crowd around me.
When the first rays of the sun fully broke the horizon, I actually gasped out loud as the object in the old man's hands let a select few of them spill through a hole in its center, concentrating their intensity and illuminating the faces of Jarl Ragnar and Jarl Eirik. I looked around as the dawn came on in full, searching for a similar reaction to my own, but all the Vikings stood solemnly, staring out at their Jarl, and the first moments of the new season.
Moments later – and without warning – a great shout arose from the people. Arms were lifted into the air – I even spotted a few children raised above their parent's heads – and the pale light of the solstice's dawn was welcomed.
"The sun's daughter comes!" The old man on the beach intoned. "As weak and fragile as a newborn babe! If we take this period of Yule to nurture her, to sacrifice for her, to cast our minds to the seasons past and the seasons yet to come, and to set aside the darkness, she will warm the earth and us in turn!"
I've always felt a little silly at church ceremonies. Not that my family was truly religious – we went at Christmas, we went to weddings and christenings and funerals, but we needed the songbooks to remember the words to the hymns and it had always felt so anachronistic, such an ill-fit to the supermarkets and subways and billboards advertising mobile phone plans outside. But I didn't feel silly on the beach that day, as the morning light spread over everyone that had gathered to see it break. No one had to tell me it was a spiritual happening, either – I could feel it around me, manifesting as if from the Vikings themselves, or the air around us or maybe the weak winter sun herself, as the man on the beach seemed to be saying. He sang a song as we all stood huddled together, and then another. When it was time to leave, Paige came rushing through the crowd, her eyes bright despite the early hour, and took my hands in hers.
"Did you like it?" She asked. "I told Ragnar not to tell you anything, just to let you see it for what it was."
"I –" I started, and then stopped because I felt embarrassed, as if I couldn't say what the dawn ceremony had made me feel without looking stupid.
"It's OK," Paige told me, putting her arm around my shoulders and starting the walk back to camp. "I understand. The first thing I experienced like this was a funeral – one of Eirik's warriors was killed and they burned his body on a huge pyre at night. I'd never seen anything like it."
"Yeah," I nodded, because she was right – I'd never seen anything like what I'd just seen. More importantly, I'd never felt anything like it, either. It was almost as if I believed everything the old man had said. As if I had felt the movements of something profound and intrinsic, the ticking over of some earthly cycle whose sounds and effects were, back in 2017, muffled entirely by modern life. I turned back, briefly, and squinted up at the pale orb just beginning its daily journey across the sky and then clapped a hand over my mouth as I suddenly became emotional.
"It's –" I started, gulping and wiping my eyes. "I'm sorry, this is so dumb, but I felt it. I felt it."
Paige looked at me then, and she didn't have to say anything because she understood and I knew it. She squeezed her arm around me even tighter and leaned her head against my shoulder. "Come on, Emma. Let's go get some breakfast."
On the way to the feasting hall the old man from the beach walked by, attended by a small, mixed-sex group of younger people who held their heads at low, respectful angles. The man wasn't tall like the Jarls, nor was he broad. But he wore a tunic decorated with the most elaborate beadwork and embroidery I had seen since I came to the 9th century. Fine threads of leather hung from his cuffs, each with tiny stones and beads fastened at the ends, and they click-clacked against each other with every step the man took. He wore a lot of jewelry, too – gold rings on his fingers, leather bracelets – and his face had the expression of a person who wasn't thinking about mundane matters.
"The gothi," Paige said, when the man had passed. "They're sort of like priests – he only arrived a few weeks ago, after Eirik determined that the community here was now settled enough and big enough to warrant a spiritual leader. He spends a lot of time ou
tside of camp, gathering materials for rituals and – I don't even really know. Eirik says it's not something people talk about much."
When we were seated in the feasting hall with a few others – it was not a communal meal, it appeared – enough time had passed since waking that my stomach rumbled with hunger. A young servant placed a plate of bread – just bread, no cheese, no butter – in front of me but I didn't take a bite, assuming the cheese and butter would soon arrive. It did not.
"Get used to it," Paige said, biting into a piece of the sadly naked bread. "The feasting doesn't start for another couple of weeks."
"What?" I asked, hoping she was joking. "It's December 21st, right? Are you telling me that Christmas dinner here is going to be plain bread and ale?"
She shrugged, taking a sip from her own cup of ale to wash down the dry bread. "It's not just one big party season here," she told me. "Did you listen to what the gothi said? There is a period of sacrifice, of hunger and deprivation, before we can feast. Eirik says it's because the new sun would be jealous if we partied when she was still weak and young. We need to prove ourselves worthy."
I put my head in my hands, not entirely sure the beautiful ceremony on the beach was going to be worth two weeks of a rumbling belly.
"If it's any help," Paige said, "I've found these cultural rituals really beautiful – and useful. It's an interesting thing to go without, you know? To go without material things, I mean – food, comfort, sex. No one in the modern world would –"
"Wait!" I exclaimed, holding one hand up. "Sex? We have to go without sex?!"
"Not us," Paige grinned at my reaction. "Well, I mean, not the people. But the Jarls do, which I suppose means we do, too. Unless you feel like taking one of the warriors out into the woods. There are Yule-beds, too – which just means we're not allowed as many furs as –"