by Joanna Bell
"You're right," she smiled, reaching out and patting my hand where it gripped the steering wheel. "It is my money – which means I get to decide what to do with it. I understand you're shocked but if you just think about what I'm saying for a moment, I think you'll see that it makes a lot of sense. You could take care of your family, Sophie – of your mother and Ashley and –"
I shook my head, disbelieving. "Are you talking about giving me millions of dollars?" I asked, laughing because I wasn't sure what else to do. "What have I done to deserve that? Why would you even –"
Heather tucked a lock of silvered hair behind her ear. "Deserve?" She asked, grinning. "What's that got to do with anything? If we're going there, what have I done to deserve it?"
"You loved someone," I told her, suddenly serious. "You loved your husband, and he wanted to take care of you after he died. And now he is. It's your money."
"I loved someone, yes. And he loved me. He loved me very much. But no one ever put a price on it, girl. If loving and being loved is deserving of millions of dollars, well then most of us should be rich. And yes, as you say again, it is my money. It is up to me to spend it how I see fit. You're a wonderful young woman, Sophie, and you didn't need to help me as you did. Who can put a price on the help an old woman receives after she believes she'll be spending the rest of her days in servitude? I see your worries for your daughter and your mother. I see your anxiety that your boss might not choose to take you back after this leave. And now I have the power to take that worry away from you, as you did for me. Think of the worry you'll be saving your mother, and Ashley, as well as yourself. Don't you think –"
My hand reached for the door handle before I even realized what was happening, and I suddenly found myself on my hands and knees beside the car, puking. Heather jumped out and ran around to where I was, so she could yank my hair out of the way and rub my back.
"I'm sorry," I started, burning with embarrassment. "I'm –" I vomited again, and then took a few seconds to gather myself. "I guess I'm just not used to getting offered huge sums of –" I broke off once more as another wave of nausea washed over me.
"It's alright," Heather said gently. "Just let it happen, girl, don't fight it. I've got nowhere to be, I can stay here all afternoon and help you throw up if you like."
I laughed – a mistake – and then puked again. And then I stayed where I was, crouched close to the ground, panting, until the sickness seemed to pass a few moments later.
"What the hell?" I mumbled, as Heather helped me to my feet and brushed leaves and driveway debris off my shoulders. "I'm so not a puker! How are you feeling? OK? Did you eat that oatmeal for breakfast, too?"
She smiled and gave me a look. Not just any look. One of those looks that you give someone when you know something they don't.
"What is it?" I asked, wondering momentarily if I had not just imagined the whole conversation about the money from the dagger. But no, I hadn't imagined it. And even as my first instinct was to protest, as Heather had correctly surmised it would be, my mind began to think of what it would be like for Ashley to grow up knowing her education was paid for, should she wish to continue it after high school, or for my mom to finally get to take that vacation to the South Pacific that she's always dreamed of. It wasn't just vacations and college tuition, either. It was – it could be – the single-handed removal of one of life's greatest stresses. I didn't even know what my life would be like if I didn't have to worry about money all the time. Neither did my mom.
"You don't know it yet, do you?" Heather asked, interrupting my daydream as I stood beside the car trying to figure out if I could carry the groceries inside or if to do so was just going to make me sick again.
"Hm?" I asked, reaching into the car, alert for any sudden lurchings in my belly. "Don't know what? How much the dagger will –"
"You're pregnant, Sophie."
I stood up straight. I stood up very suddenly and very, very straight. I did not turn around to face Heather, because my mind had suddenly developed a processing error and I wasn't quite sure what was going on. I looked down, into one of the grocery bags, and spotted a pork roast. It was going to need to be marinated before being cooked. I thought about the marinade, the ingredients, whether or not I'd remembered to get garlic.
I did not, immediately, think about what had just been said. No, in that moment my mind was suddenly all about marinade. There was orange juice in the recipe and I thought to myself that that was an odd ingredient for a meat marinade. Had I read the recipe wrong? And if I had, was there some ingredient I'd forgotten when I grabbed the orange juice?
"Sophie?"
"Yes?" I replied, dazed. "What is it?"
"Did you hear –"
"Were we supposed to get orange juice? Is there really orange juice in that marinade? I thought –"
"Sophie," Heather chuckled and put an arm around my shoulder. Come sit down inside, I'll bring the groceries. Did you really not know it?"
"Know what?" I asked as I walked stiffly towards the cabin, with a vague feeling of having forgotten some very important thing.
She sat me down at the kitchen table, where I stared into space, and then brought the rest of the groceries inside. It was at least 5 minutes later when I seemed to regain the ability to think.
"Pregnant?" I said, as Heather put a dozen eggs into the fridge and it occurred to me that she was not psychic. "How do you – what makes you say that?"
She paused, a bag of carrots in one hand and a pound of butter in the other. "Sweetie, when was the last time you looked in the mirror? OK, I admit it's just something I'm very good at – spotting when a woman is pregnant, I mean. And you should go to the doctor and get a test, of course. But make no mistake, you're knocked up. I see it on your face – in your body – as plain as day."
I looked down at my body, and my mostly-flat stomach, which didn't appear to be any bigger than it usually did. "But –"
"Oh I don't mean you're showing yet! I just mean – you're all rounded now, your face is fuller, your boobs are bigger, you've just got that look about you. Trust me, girl, I can always tell."
Was Heather crazy? She could just 'tell?' I had 'that look' about me?
Still. I had just puked all over the driveway. And the last time I'd puked was when I was pregnant with Ashley. I'd also been having a lot of unprotected sex with a Viking. It was definitely possible that I was pregnant.
Admitting that – the possibility – was enough. It was more than enough, it was a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky. I shot up again and grabbed the car keys, and when Heather asked where I was going I just yelled back over my shoulder that I would be back in an hour or so.
And then I drove to the nearest pharmacy, intent on emptying their stock of pregnancy tests.
"What is it, woman? Why do you stare at me with that look on your face like I'm your long lost kitten come home?"
Ivar and I lay naked in each other's arms in bed later that night, as the warm evening air – some of the last of the year, I thought – came in through the windows and skimmed over our bare flesh.
"Is that how I look at you?" I asked, laughing. My thighs were still wet with the evidence of the Jarl's passion – and I knew something he didn't. "Like a little girl who's lost her kitten?"
"Perhaps," he replied, focusing more fully on my face, examining it. He did that a lot – breaking from a conversation or a small task to study me intently – and it always made my belly flip with happiness. His arm was nearly healed by then – in fact it was already healed enough to make returning to his people possible. I just hadn't found the right moment to tell him yet. "I cannot tell, but there's something in your eyes tonight – some mischief."
"Mischief?"
"Aye, I reckon so."
I lay my head back down on his chest as my heart pounded. He was going to leave. I knew he was going to leave. I also knew, although he had not said it out loud, that he thought he was going to be able to convince me to come with him.
And now there was going to be another child. A Viking's child, one that might grow as tall as Ivar himself, and come to tower over her – or his – mother and sister.
I looked up at Ivar again, and traced my finger down his jaw-line from the bottom of his ear to the dimple in the center of his chin. How was he going to react? Was he going to try to take me back with him by force? I thought it a possibility even before I knew I carried his child in my belly – and I thought it more of one now.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him. And it felt deeply wrong not to – but I didn't. Ashley was still spending the nights I was at the cabin at my mom's house, and I couldn't risk Ivar doing something that would take me from her. So I didn't tell him about his child. When he asked again why I looked so strange I reached up and touched his arm, where the stitches had mostly fallen out on their own and the wound was closed up, and told him that he was healed.
"Healed?" He asked, and the little note of sadness I heard in his tone, that I didn't even think he noticed, almost broke my heart. "But the arm is still difficult to use. It pains me to lift it above shoulder height. No, it's not healed yet. Not yet."
"The wound is healed," I replied. "It's not open anymore, there's no more risk of infection. It means, um – it means –"
I lay my cheek on his chest, which always seemed to be hot, and swallowed hard. "It means you can go back now. To Thetford. To your people."
He said nothing. We lay in silence for many long minutes, as the sound of an owl hooting outside came through the window, and the rustling of the dry leaves as they gathered on the ground. The warmth of the summer was draining away and the days would soon, like my heart, be filled with the bitter chill of winter.
"You must come with me, Sophie. I know you say you cannot come but you –"
"I cannot come."
His arm tightened around my back. "But you must, woman. Don't you see? Don't you feel –"
"I can't, Ivar. I'm not saying it so you'll beg, I'm not saying it as a test or to hurt you. I'm saying it because it's the truth. I can't."
"You won't, is what you mean. You won't come!"
He was getting angry, but once again his presumption just spurred me to anger as well, in spite of still being half afraid of what he might do. I pushed myself up on my arms and looked into the Viking's piercing blue eyes.
"And you won't stay! Will you? You won't –"
"Enough!" He cut me off, moving to push me off him but I grabbed his wrist and refused to look away.
"NO! You don't get to just dismiss me, Ivar! Damnit, it's true – I won't come with you – and you won't stay! Why are you the only one who feels the right to be angry about that?! Why don't I get to push you away and storm off? Why don't –"
"Voss, woman! What a trouble you are to me! If only I'd never –"
I began to cry in spite of myself – and I hate crying from rage, because it allows men to brush that rage aside, even if it's as legitimate as their own. "Go on!" I yelled, knowing full well what he had been about to say. "Say it! Say you wish you'd never met me! Say your life would be better if –"
The Jarl – who had been about to stand up and storm out of the room, as was his habit when the topic of my staying behind came up – suddenly slumped down on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands.
I didn't know what to do to see him despairing. I began to reach out with one hand and then pulled it back, instinctively aware that men didn't always wish to be comforted in such a situation, and sometimes lashed out if you tried.
"Why have the gods done this to me?" He mumbled a moment later, his voice anguished. "Why have they made me love a woman I cannot have? I haven't always been good, Sophie. I haven't always done what the gothi counseled – or what my mother or father counseled – but I've been a good son. I made my parents proud. I looked after my idiot brother. I brought silver and wheat and pigs by the shipload back to the North. Is this my reward? To find love only to have it snatched away for doing my duty? Is this what the gods choose for me?"
I couldn't stand it a second longer. As fearful of his anger as I was, I knew I was witnessing a man's heart breaking. And I knew I was no innocent bystander. I wrapped my arms around him from behind and lay my head against his back.
"You're not a bad son," I insisted, crying. "You're not a bad brother or a bad Jarl. You're good, Ivar. You've done right by everyone – even now you refuse to do wrong by your people, even as it costs you your own happiness. The gods will see fit to reward you. The gods will see what you've done – what you've sacrificed – and –"
"I don't want to sacrifice anything!" he whispered fiercely, turning to face me and taking me by my shoulders. "I don't want to sacrifice this, Sophie, my love! I don't want to return to Thetford! And yet I must."
"And I must –"
"I know. Your child. Your daughter. I see it now, you know. I see it with my heart's eye, what love can do. And if it's true what they say, and neither woman nor man ever loves anyone so much as they love their own child, then your love for her must be greater than any I can imagine. Who am I to tell you your love is not worth sacrifice, when I throw my own on the fire for duty? I only – Sophie," he took my face in his hands and brought it close to his own, so I could see his eyes shining with emotion, "I only wish it were not so. I wish I was no Jarl. I wish I was anything that would let me stay here with you."
I pulled the Viking close as we wept, and we clung to each other as if for our lives.
Twenty-Five
Ivar
Sophie and I went back to the woods not 2 days later, where I had first come into the new world. Although neither of us spoke of it, it did not go unnoticed that my sickness in the 'car' had abated. I had been at that point more than a moon cycle away from the Kingdom of the East Angles. Little by little, I was becoming accustomed to small things about Sophie's world, even as most of it remained as if run – and populated – by a race of gods. The car no longer sickened me. I was starting to react with the nonchalance of a native to the chirps and whirrs and flashes of light that went on endlessly throughout a day in that place, to let a person know the food was cooked or the dressings were cleaned.
None of it mattered. I felt, as we walked silently together to the spot where the tree would take me back to my people, that both of us waited for the other to put a stop to what seemed a kind of madness. I waited for her to throw her arms around me and cry that she was mistaken, that she had changed her mind and would join me in Thetford, but it didn't happen. And she waited for me to do the same, to declare that my love for her was greater than my duty.
I thought of it. I thought how easy it would be to turn away at the last moment and smile and tell her it had all been a ruse, that I was staying so we could marry and raise a family of our own in the new place. But if I stayed, I knew that Sophie would not be married to the Jarl of Jarls – she would be married to a man who shirked his responsibilities. A weak man. A man who chose the pleasures of the flesh and the heart over the hard work that he had sworn to do. And no woman of her kind would long be happy with such a man. It was better to be heartbroken than scorned. The former would be deeply unpleasant, I knew, but I could su
rvive. The latter would destroy me as surely as death.
The parting was awkward, as those kinds of things always seem to be when the moment is actually upon you. When I took her once more in my arms I felt that her whole body trembled like a leaf on a bough. It was as if I could feel my heart coming apart in my chest for leaving her alone in that state.
"Go," she said, crying, when I hesitated, longing for her to break, to give in and tell me she would join me the next hour, or the next day. "Ivar, go! I can't – I can't stand this."
"How do I do it?" I asked, reaching for a branch near my shoulder.
"No," she said, pointing to one of the roots of a much bigger tree. "It's this one. Only this one. And it's the same on the other side – only the one can bring you back here."
She, too, wished that I would change my mind and come back the next day.
I told her I loved her. She cried and told me she loved me. Neither of us wanted to let go but she said we had to, or we would both be drawn into the past together. A quick urge to do just that, to force her to join me, shot through my limbs, so I could almost feel her struggling already. But I couldn't take her. And she couldn't come with me. And I couldn't stay.
On the other side, after I fell through the darkness, I remained on my hands and knees for a long time, waiting. I waited so long the shadows began to grow long around me. The flesh of my back tingled to feel her hand on me, my ears pricked to hear her voice. But there was nothing but the sound of the woods.
I slept by the tree that night, telling myself it was too late to start my journey. The next morning I lingered until the day grew ripe. And then I finally walked away, finding my way to a nearby hamlet where I took an untended horse and drove it into a gallop on my way back to Thetford.
I was reckless during my ride – as reckless as I had ever been. Not usually a man for stupid risks, I rode through villages in broad daylight with no sword at my side, eying the men, daring them to challenge me. A fight would have done me well, as I seemed filled with an aggression that refused to dissipate – but no one took me up on the offer.