Weave a Circle Round

by Kari Maaren

  “They have a thing about fame,” said Josiah. “Try not to think of them as being in the past. Right now, they’re not. Yeah, they do, and he helps formalise it.” He nodded towards Bragi. “Eventually. He’s got hidden talents. No one respects him for them yet because they haven’t come into play.”

  Freddy’s head was going strange again. “I don’t get it.”

  “You’ll see,” said Josiah.

  Bragi waved at them as they went past, but they didn’t stop at his table. Josiah steered Freddy all the way down the hall. Though people turned to watch as they passed, no one approached them.

  Heimdallr was seated near the end of the high table. He looked harassed. Beside him was an enormous man with a braided beard and chunky gold rings on every finger. He was leaning towards Heimdallr, bellowing happily at him through mouthfuls of food. It seemed the meal had begun already. People were helping themselves from dishes ranged along the tables. Glancing around the hall, Freddy could see no women at all seated at the lower tables, though there were several serving girls. Three women sat at the high table. She figured one of them was the Jarl’s wife, and one could have been his daughter. The Jarl himself was at the centre of everything, unexpectedly quiet as he drank thoughtfully from a jewelled cup. He was about half the size of the man having a one-sided conversation with Heimdallr.

  As Freddy struggled against the urge to cough the smoke out of her lungs, Josiah pointed to the third woman, a girl of Freddy’s age who was pressed firmly against the arm of a man in his twenties. “That’s the girl who caused the raid. Ingifríthr Rauthsdóttir,” said Josiah. “Silly girl. The Jarl’s idiot son is even sillier. They fell in lust a couple of days ago and nearly caused a war. Now they’re to be married. They’ll hate each other before the year is out.”

  The Jarl had noticed them. Freddy saw him hesitate, then jerk a nod at Josiah, who nodded back and towed Freddy over to the end of the high table. “We have a strange status here,” he explained. “Everyone is sure we’re gods in terribly transparent disguises, but it doesn’t do to mention it. The fact that there are currently two of me isn’t bothering them as much as the fact that I’m here at all. Loki’s caused some strange problems. They think I’m here to keep him under control, so they leave a seat for me at the high table and otherwise ignore me. They haven’t the faintest idea what to make of you. They’re uneasy that we’re both disguised as thralls.”

  “As what?” said Freddy, sliding onto the bench.

  “Slaves,” said Josiah.

  She stared at him.

  “The short hair,” he said. “Only thralls wear their hair this short here.”

  “But … slaves?”

  “Integral part of their society.” Josiah picked up what looked suspiciously like an entire pig rib. “We won’t be here long enough for it to offend your twenty-first-century sensibilities. Eat something. I’m not sure when we’re going to get our next chance at food.”

  Freddy narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you know something I don’t?”

  “I know any number of things you don’t,” said Josiah.

  There was no use protesting any of this. Still fighting the headache and the cough tickling the back of her throat, Freddy copied the other people at the table, who were picking up food in their hands. She thought she remembered that people in the Middle Ages hadn’t known about forks. It seemed to mean that eating was about making as big a mess as possible. She nibbled at her own pig rib and watched the men cover themselves with grease as they dipped their hands into and out of the piles of meat. Someone served her some sort of drink in a cup. When she sipped it, it turned out to be bitter and sweet simultaneously. She knew what beer tasted like; this had the same alcoholic twist but a different basic flavour. She didn’t think she liked it much. Her brain started trying to think about the whole situation. She told it to leave her alone.

  The feast dragged on. Nobody bothered her. Even Josiah was concentrating on the food. Eventually, the men in the hall stopped bouncing back and forth across the floor and settled down to some serious eating. The Jarl interrupted once with what seemed to be a long speech, but no one paid him much attention except to shout what sounded like “Hai!” and pound on the tables at intervals. No one ever clapped for anything; there was table pounding, foot stomping, and occasionally knee slapping instead. Muzzily, she wondered where and when clapping had been invented.

  Her sore head made events blur together. At some point, she noticed a man with a musical instrument doing a kind of chanting thing in the middle of the hall. As with the Jarl’s speech, no one was listening to him. It wasn’t proper singing, but it had a rhythm to it. “What’s that thing he’s playing?” asked Freddy.

  “A kind of lyre,” said Josiah. “He would call it a harp. It’s a bawdy song everybody’s supposed to sing together, but he’s out of favour, and the thegns know the Jarl wants him ignored. Any minute now—ah, there they go.” Someone had just thrown a hard chunk of bread at the singer. Freddy had noticed people using these chunks of bread as plates; she had one, too.

  The harper stopped playing and protected his head with his hands as he was assaulted by a shower of bread, cheese, and bones. Many people laughed. Freddy noticed Ingifríthr giggling. Freddy didn’t think she liked Ingifríthr very much. The girl reminded her a bit too much of Cathy.

  The harper was trying to play again, but the men were shouting him down. It was all kind of chaotic. I wonder where Loki is, thought Freddy, and then, I wonder why I wondered that. Her brain had moved straight from the chaos in the hall to Loki. She was pretty sure it was trying to tell her something, though she hadn’t yet put together what it was.

  “I seem to remember,” said Josiah, “right about now…”

  The doors of the hall opened with a crash. Though they were big, heavy doors and shouldn’t have come open easily, they were somehow flung back against the wall. Icy wind tumbled into the hall, and the fire on the central hearth leapt towards the ceiling. A man was standing in the doorway, too far away for Freddy to see anything of him but a dim outline. She did think she recognised the voice that rang out in the sudden near-silence, though she couldn’t be sure, as she had rarely heard Loki speak anything other than English.

  “He says, ‘Hello, cretins. What sort of stupidity are you all up to tonight?’” Josiah translated helpfully.

  He had apparently been expecting this. No one else had. Heimdallr had hunched down on his bench and was carefully hitting himself on the forehead with a fist. The others in the hall were sitting there with their mouths hanging open.

  “They seem like the kind of people who insult each other a lot, though,” said Freddy.

  “Among friends,” whispered Josiah. “This is a bit more formal. And public. And includes the Jarl, which is, in your vernacular, not cool.”

  Freddy thought it was likely someone would jump up to confront Loki, but it seemed not. There was some throat clearing and nervous fiddling with knives. People were exchanging glances. The thralls had melted away; Freddy couldn’t see a serving girl anywhere in the hall.

  Loki moved farther inside, rather unsteadily, and continued to speak. “Well done,” Josiah translated, “flinging trenchers at your incompetent little poet. You people haven’t got the artistic sensibility of diseased reindeer. Oh, and the wedding? What’s the point? She’s a flake, and he’s got no brain at all. Very compatible, but a pity they’re both such a tragic waste of space. It’s nice you’re willing to pretend they’ll be faithful to each other for more than three or four days.”

  There was an odd tension forming in the hall. Freddy thought it was because someone should have been challenging Loki, and no one was. It didn’t seem right for these men, who were noisy and cheerful and waved weapons around a lot. Freddy glanced at Josiah. “Why aren’t they…?”

  He nodded towards the centre of the hall. Freddy looked harder.

  The doors had swung closed again, cutting off the wind. Nonetheless, something was happening to the fire. As
Freddy watched, tendrils of flame snaked upward in patterns. Three of them were wrapping around and around each other, almost braiding themselves together. Others were pulsing rhythmically to Loki’s footsteps as he paced the length of the hall, moving slowly towards the high table.

  “Fire appeals to him,” said Josiah. “It’s unpredictable. They all know it. They won’t stand up against a god, especially a god who seems to have gone off and got wasted.”

  “I thought that was your job,” said Freddy.

  Josiah looked at Heimdallr, who was muttering viciously to himself. “His job, not mine. He’s working himself up to it.”

  Loki spoke again. “Oh, hello, Jarl,” Josiah translated. “What a lovely party this is. Weren’t you and this idiot’s father trying to kill each other a few hours ago? I love the way you’ve managed to convince yourself there’s honour involved here somewhere. Well done, you. Let’s all tear a cooked pig to pieces and shout hurrah!”

  Heimdallr stood up. To Freddy’s surprise, Josiah reached out and latched on to his arm, tugging him back down onto the bench. Heimdallr opened his mouth, probably to protest, but Josiah shook his head. He said something in Heimdallr’s language, then added in Freddy’s, “Wait.”

  The tongues of flame had escaped the hearth entirely now, slipping through the air to wreath Loki. He wasn’t a silhouette any more; the flames lit him clearly. Confused, Freddy saw that despite the fire, Loki was soaking wet from head to toe. He smiled up at Heimdallr in anticipation. She could understand, in a way, why Josiah had made Heimdallr sit down. Loki wanted a confrontation. When it came, he was going to tear the hall to pieces. There didn’t seem to be any real feeling or purpose involved. It was just … chaos.

  Half the people in the hall were looking at Loki. The other half were looking at Heimdallr. The next man who spoke was neither of these. It was so unexpected that it took a moment for everyone to register what had happened. By the time people started to turn towards Bragi, he had already moved up behind Loki.

  “You have the manners of a disappointed mother-in-law,” translated Josiah, “and no right to speak of honour.”

  The hall had gone silent. Loki, smiling merrily, turned to face Bragi. Josiah whispered to Freddy, “The interesting bit is that Bragi is speaking in exquisite alliterative verse. You won’t be able to tell, but everyone else can.”

  Fascinated despite herself, Freddy whispered back, “Why is he? Do people do that a lot here?”

  “Not yet,” said Josiah.

  What happened next was so rapid that Freddy found it hard to follow, especially as Josiah was having to translate both sides of the conversation. As far as she could work out, however, the exchange went something like this:

  “Brave talk of honour from an unblooded boy,” said Loki.

  “Better unblooded than a wearer of women’s clothing,” said Bragi.

  “They’re warmer,” said Loki, “you cowardly master of a rusted sword.”

  “A rusted sword,” said Bragi, “but a tongue sharper than a knife, thief of necklaces.”

  “People shouldn’t leave them lying about … on their necks … at midnight,” said Loki. “Your tongue won’t do you much good in battle.”

  “My tongue will win wars,” said Bragi. “Yours will only cause them.”

  “Causing wars allows opportunities for winning rings and honour,” said Loki. “You’ll be singing bravely to yourself under the mead bench all the while.”

  “I’ll be composing a song to spur the warriors to battle,” said Bragi. “Where will you be? Seducing another horse?”

  “That was for a good cause,” said Loki, “shirker of swordplay.”

  “I would rather use swords than play with them,” said Bragi, “father of serpents.”

  Josiah gave up on the translation at this point. Freddy could see why. The exchange had been getting swifter and swifter, with one man beginning the instant the other stopped, and it must now have been almost too fast for even the others in the hall to follow. “It’s called ‘flyting,’” Josiah commented. “It wasn’t really a tradition in this culture until … well, about two minutes ago.”

  Freddy blinked at him. “You said he—Bragi—would be famous. It’s because of this?”

  “Yes. He’s the first skald,” said Josiah. “A kind of court poet. This is where it begins.”

  She felt her eyes narrow. Down below, the flyting was continuing. No one had tried to stop it. The fire was still coiling around Loki, but Bragi was standing his ground. The exchange of insults was rhythmic, like a song or a poem. “It’s not a coincidence that we’re here,” said Freddy.

  Josiah hesitated, then said slowly, “It’s a coincidence that we’re here at this moment. It’s not a coincidence that we’re here.”

  Bragi spoke again. Freddy saw he was smiling. Then she bumped down, hard, into the sunlit grass. Josiah, crouching beside her, added, “Here either,” and dragged her behind a rock. There were voices nearby, speaking a language that Freddy didn’t know at all but that sounded vaguely Asian to her. Two tiny birds darted across the sky. Freddy tried to convince herself she had felt a brief winter chill for just a moment after the change, but she knew she really hadn’t.

  9

  The paralysis that had been keeping Freddy calm for the better part of a day broke.

  She hitched herself up onto her knees, turned to Josiah, wrapped her hands around his neck, and slammed him against the rock as hard as she could. It was more than a little satisfying to see the shock on his face.

  Freddy said, “What have you done to me?”

  He reached up and pried away her hands. “Shut … up. They’ll notice us—”

  “Oh,” said Freddy, “will they? Who are they?” Her head was thumping again, not as badly as before.

  The voices had stopped. There had been three or four of them, Freddy thought, over past the rock. She moved her hands to Josiah’s shoulders and slammed him against the rock again.

  “Cut it out,” he said, trying to squirm away from her. Normally, he would have been able to. Normally, she wouldn’t have been quite this transcendently furious.

  “No,” said Freddy. “You explain what’s going on right now. This is not supposed to be happening—”

  “Nothing is supposed to be happening,” said Josiah.

  She dug her fingernails into his shoulders. “Stop trying to weasel out of it. You’ve lived forever, and I’m travelling through time with you, and I have no idea why.”

  “Why do you have to choose this particular moment to grow a backbone?” Josiah hissed.

  Freddy said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I think it should be obvious.” He was trying to escape again. She pressed him back against the rock. “Ow! You’re not the world’s most assertive person, are you? You just let everything happen to you.”

  “That’s not true,” said Freddy. “Today in school, I even got in trouble—”

  “It wasn’t today. It was five thousand years in the future,” said Josiah. “What … you mean you being sent to the office? That was just you being influenced by me.”

  She opened her mouth to disagree. She shut her mouth again. She couldn’t think of any examples to back up her point.

  “You see?” said Josiah. “Even your fight with Roland was wimpy. You were going on about being allowed to make friends with whomever you liked, but you never really made friends with me, did you? You just let me insinuate myself into your life. Every once in a while, you did the duckling act, but that was as aggressive as it ever got.”

  “I’m being aggressive now,” said Freddy, crushing his shoulders with her palms.

  “Ow. I noticed. You’ve lost your mind. This is not the moment,” said Josiah.

  Something he’d said a minute or so ago was only just registering. “Five thousand years?”

  “Give or take a few centuries,” said Josiah. “I recognise this place. I also know what’s about to happen, so will you please let go of me now?”
/>   “What if I don’t?” snarled Freddy.

  “Well,” said Josiah, “these gentlemen are just bemused by us at the moment, but I expect they’ll start poking holes in us any second now.”

  Belatedly, Freddy turned and looked up into the eyes of the first of four roughly dressed men who were standing around them in a half circle. They had quite a few weapons with them, too.

  * * *

  “I said I was sorry,” said Freddy.

  Josiah glared at her. Both of them had been tied up and added to the string of captives the men were leading through the woods. The others in the string were two old men, a middle-aged woman, and another version of Josiah. Josiah had told her his name was Ji. Ji and Josiah had already exchanged resigned looks and had an incomprehensible conversation that involved a lot of eye rolling and jerking of chins in Freddy’s direction. The men had tried to shut them up, unsuccessfully.

  “How lovely for you,” said Josiah coldly. “I really hate being tied up.”

  One of their captors—there were seven in all—jerked on the rope that bound them together. Freddy couldn’t quite figure these men out. She thought they might be bandits of some sort. All of them carried spears with stone tips, and a few also seemed to have little stone knives bound to their belts. Two had pieces of what she thought had to be bone, but they were the wrong shape for weapons. They may have been spades. There was no metal. If it was really five thousand years before her time, that wasn’t surprising.

  Ji said something to one of the men. Knowing Josiah, it was a prehistoric Chinese insult.

  She thought they were in China. It was surprisingly hard to tell. The people had an Asian look to them, and Ji’s name sounded kind of Chinese to her, but considering when it was, she had no cultural references by which to measure these people. The men were dressed in rough tunics and leggings made of undyed skin and cloth. They wore their hair at least as long as the Vikings had, but they had tied theirs back in ponytails. Four of the young men had thin beards. The other three were still in their mid-teens. The old men had white beards reaching halfway down their chests. The one woman was dressed almost like the men, except that her tunic was longer, and she wore it over a woven skirt. There were no colours or decorations.