#fey aspects

“You claim to be from the future?” he asked quietly, his grin immediately dipping out of sight. The fire stood out like a live thing reflected in his stare. His eyes fixed on her while his posture appeared still, as if he wouldn’t take his next breath until he had riddled the puzzle that she was.

“Yes,” she nodded, holding his gaze.

“How?” he put to her. His expression was at once laced with a coating of cynicism, though, once settled into his question Molly recognized a gleam in his eye that gave her courage enough to believe in that questing wisdom she was relying on.

Recognizing this moment for what it was, she swallowed, gulping past her nerves as her fingers inched their way to her elbows where she held herself tightly. Only a beat of hesitation marked the moment when Molly Hatch decided to bridge the chasm that had yawned beneath her feet for so many years; to extend her hand and let somebody in. It somehow didn’t bother her that it was the Viking she was reaching for. During the past twenty-four hours he had lost his moniker and gained the identity of his person. He was Ragnar Lothbrok, a man she had a precarious history with, but the one who presently sat across from her willing to listen.

“I was on the shore,” she began, her voice thick, “in Scotland. You don’t that country because it hasn’t been formed yet, but it’s the land where you first found me.”

His head tilted as his narrowed eyes smoothed into a more pensive expression. He took his first breath.

“The rain had abated somewhat, and I don’t remember being concerned over lightning,” she continued. “My friends were waiting for me up in our rooms. There were three of them: Cathy, Ellie, and Gracie,” she said, taking care to say their names slowly, as if to savor the memory of what had once been a daily curl of her tongue. “We were visiting from our home - from America.”

She paused again, furrowing her brow as she tried to remember dates. “Do you know a Lief Erikson? Or perhaps know of him?” she wondered. She briefly remembered learning that that Viking had been one of the first, or maybe the only Northman to make it to North America before Christopher Colombus in 1492.

“I know many Lief’s,” he obliged, though looking uncertain of the question. “Why do you ask?”

“It is only that Lief Erikson will be a well-known explorer. He discovers North America. It’s the land that will eventually be my home,” she elaborated when she detected a hitch to his brow. “Do you know him?” she repeated.

“No, I cannot say that I do,” he answered. The ghost of his grin reappeared, hidden somewhat by his beard. And if Molly knew him better, knew all the quirks of his features and the glance of his expressions she would understand that the intensity of his stare was not mere focus, that the slight cant of his head no mere intrigue — but a growing triumph.

“It may be that he is after your time,” she shrugged a little disappointedly. She’d hoped that she’d unearthed a link that could be used to her advantage, unaware of the already shifting dynamic occurring between them in her favor. Molly believed that hers would be an uphill battle, trying to convince him of something she herself wouldn’t have believed in prior to experiencing it. In spite of her immersion with the culture of the time, she could not abandon the skepticism that belonged to her own culture, nor help apply it to what others would think of her story.

“This noorth umairika, you say it is the land you hail from? Where is it?” Ragnar wondered, drawing his good leg up and resting his elbow on it. He was leaning a little closer.

“Far from here,” she said, drawing her own knees up, though in a more protective stance as she hugged them to her chest. “It lies across the sea.”

“Which sea?”

“The Atlantic.”

Ragnar’s eyes narrowed again. “There is land beyond the Atlantic?”

Molly nodded, adding, “quite a lot of it. You Europeans think you’re the center of the world until the 1500’s. Or sometime around there. I was never good in history class,” she went on to explain, no doubt nonsensically to him.

“What other lands are there besides your home?” he continued with his inquiries, causing Molly to grimace slightly. She had wanted to sweeten the pot initially with these snippets of facts, but steadily she could feel her impatience mounting as the momentum she had gained for her own history was waning.

“There are many; too many to name presently, though I will tell you that there are three Americas. There is the North, Central, and South Americas and each is made up of countries . . . er, that is, a form of kingdom.”

“When does this Leif Erikson discover these lands?” he asked, already forgetting her ignorance on the dates.

“I told you, I don’t know. It must be after this time though as I’m sure you would’ve heard about him. And besides, he only landed on North America. He likely wasn’t aware of the expansiveness of the land.”

“What is the distance? How long will it take to reach your land?”

Molly blinked. “I don’t know! Months and months I’d assume.”

Ragnar’s brow furrowed. “How can you not know when you say you journeyed from that land?” His glance turned suspicious. Yet Molly could only indulge in a rueful smile as she envisioned a plane flying over his head as explanation.

“Travel does not remain the way you know it to be, Ragnar. Between the thousand years that mark your time to mine many things evolve into creations beyond imagining. I do not think you would understand even if I told you how I traveled to this island, for nothing of its kind exists today, save perhaps the winged beasts.”

Ragnar jerked his head back, his mouth wavering between that uncertain smirk and that curious frown as his eyes flicked to the mouth of the cave and back.

“You can fly?” he posed to her, clearly not believing. And Molly was glad to be able to shake her head.

“No, I cannot fly. But men have made machines that can.” And before he could ask another question, she ploughed on. “Whatever you wish to know, I will tell you - to the best of my knowledge,” she said, her voice deliberately low so that he would be inclined to listen and not speak. “I will tell you about America and all the countries that will be new to you. I will tell you of the plane, train, and automobile; how people can travel across the world in a day; how we can speak to those far, far away and hear their voices in our ear. I will tell you about Neil Armstrong and his famous footprint on the moon. I will tell you all this and more – but, first . . . first I need to tell you a story. My story.”

And she did.

Of that day she told him everything. It was either say it all, or maintain her silence – she could not imagine an in-between. As an outpouring, long bottled and static with energy waiting to be released, Molly found that the words she had mentally tripped over, prior to her decision of telling Ragnar, poured fluidly from her mouth and into his sponge-like mind – absorbing everything with ardor.

Occasionally, when her eyes would flick to his, she would watch him, noting his stillness that marked his absolute focus. He did not interrupt her again, not even to inquire over words she knew he couldn’t understand – words she couldn’t translate, though she did her best to explain. He was her audience, and as any good auditor, he knew what was required of him. When she paused to recollect a moment, or had to turn her face away to hide unbidden emotions, she was not hurried to continue.

In lieu of that courtesy, she indulged in speaking of events leading up to the trip, of bidding her parents a teary farewell at the airport; of her and her friends accidentally insulting one of the flight attendants by referring to them as English when they had, in fact, been Scottish; of landing in Heathrow and waiting over an hour for Gracie’s duffle bag. She spoke of a thousand and one things she had forgotten, lost somewhere in the hazy limbo of her interrupted life, but which now sprang forth as if resurrected.

While she spoke the night wearied, falling into shade and quiet. Hour followed hour, yet her soft tones did not dim in the presence of the watchful night. The only other companion to her voice was the snapping flames beneath the long-forgotten tea that bubbled in its neglect. It was only when the brew spilled passed the sides of the cauldron, hissing immediately at the contact with the flames, that attention was returned to it. Molly jerked out of her compact position, rising to her feet as she grabbed a fistful of her skirts to lift the cauldron from its perch, hissing herself at the heat. Quickly, she set it near the fire, releasing her grip and rubbing her hands together.

“I’m afraid it’s a bit burnt,” she told him, looking up from inspecting the brew. She swished it only to see the herbs shriveled and black.

“It is of no matter,” he said, unconcerned. “I would hear the rest of your story before soothing any stomach aches.”

From where she stood, Molly looked down at him, aware that a small smile tugged at her lips. A fanciful vision of a monk dressed as a nursemaid coming to serve out a stretched out Ragnar, undone by a serious tummy ache, distracted her momentarily as she remembered that the monk’s brew was for easing digestion. Her smile grew wider and threatened to morph into a chuckle.

Her heart was lighter. The burden of carrying her secret for so long no longer weighed on her even though she had yet to conclude her narrative. Yet, already she felt the ease of old manners returning to her as she remembered her old self. Intangible as it was, there was a certain amount of happiness that existed in simply being able to talk about her old life to another human being.

So as she resumed her seat, a tad closer to Ragnar than before, there was no pause or hesitation when she picked up the threads of her tale and continued.

“We were making a tour of the United Kingdom and Ireland, as I said, but I was always most excited to see Scotland. I’d dreamt of the Highlands and the heather, of the whiskey and kilts, of all the romantic associations with the place; my father even noted that I had an unhealthy interest in the pipes and drums.” She did stop then, only for a moment as she found what peace she could in the phantoms she’d summoned. She sighed. “I’m sure it’s best that I never got to see it in the end; it might not have lived up to my expectations.” Tentatively , she offered her companion — the one of flesh and blood, and the only one who could hear her — a glimpse of a smile that told a completely different story to the one that had just preceded it, and which forgot in that moment that he wouldn’t understand her silver-lining humor, as paltry as it was.

His eyes may be keen, either fixed as they were on her face or hovering just around her; brilliant in their intensity and strength yet, at that moment, lacking the spark of any recognition for anything she had just said.

Her face drooped suddenly, exposed as it was to the rawness of the many strong emotions required this night.

The relief that had belonged to the minute before was gone, usurped by the realization of reality. No matter the chances of ever getting close to anyone – and so far this Viking was the nearest to a heart-to-heart she’d had in six years – the nuances of her time would forever remain the property of its time; locked away behind the secrets of its knowledge that would always remain a barrier between her and others. The comfort of remembering home was hers; just not the comfort of home.

In a whirl of contained emotion, never flickering past the internal storm of her mind, Molly at once wanted to throw herself at Ragnar, cling to his chest and just be held as she sobbed and felt sorry for herself; yet in that same brand of impulsiveness she wanted to run – to run in a pointless direction, but one that took her far from the cave, far from him, and far from everything that resembled anything that had been her familiar for the past half-decade.

Swallowing, she steadied herself. Her thumbs were busy picking at each other’s nails, scoring her skin in a pattern of crescents.

She told him of the beach.

Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she told him of that landmark whose grey skies had blackened the water and appeared as the shores of superstition, serving as a portal that had opened for her unwilling passage.

The years spent serving Lady, then Lord Cyneric had been kind in one regard: never had she known her mind as well as she presently did. Despite her duties and chores, they claimed nothing of her time as the convenience of modern technology had. Days regularly burst at the seams with work, thoughts, and sometimes, even play. Boredom was no longer a constant in her vocabulary; indeed, she regularly forgot the word with how little she thought of it. What she did think of, however, and what had occupied her thoughts during her more menial tasks was the day in which she had stood on that shore. The tide had been low, and even then — ignorant as she had been — she had mused over thoughts of in-between places; crossroads, dusk, dawn, and of course that strip of sand, appearing only at its designated hours when the sea was low, so that that in-between area was not quite of the land, nor yet of the sea.

And that, she believed, had been her portal.

All this she told him; explaining her reasoning that found grounding in the very nature of the mystic land.

“There are stories – legends and myths, though, I don’t know their names in this speech – that tell of unwary travelers who find mischief done to them; the wanderer who does not heed the natural warnings of nature and find themselves in, what would be called, a fix. These stories are not so ancient as they once were to me, their narrative has more meaning as I now know that there is power in their messages,” she said, drawing her legs to her chest. She rested her hands atop her knees, picking at the fabric. “My sole regret is that I couldn’t have known that their significance endured even while my culture’s credence of them waned. I would not have stood on that shore otherwise.”

“Do people of your time not tell stories then?” Ragnar asked, speaking for the first time in many hours. He looked dubious, as if he was ready to argue her statements by using what he learned about her journal against her. Molly recognized it also as an admission. Despite his first hint of skepticism ere she began, and despite the natural aversion of Man’s to being fooled by seemingly impossible phenomenons, Molly had opened herself to him in a way that exposed her heart, showing him something precious and protected by unraveling her fabricated life.

Also – he had listened.

“For we have many that do much to warn the little ones away from danger,” he continued. “Maybe you did not listen as a child,” he said, pointing a finger at her nose in a playful, tsking manner. She resisted the urge to reach over and swat his hand back to his lap.

“Your people then have precautionary tales of traveling through time?” she said instead, partially rhetorical as she didn’t believe that the Norse did; though, also a little curious in case of the possibility.

Ragnar let his hand drop, adopting a rueful smile as he eyed her from under his brows. His quirked mouth turned thoughtful, however, and he gazed at her straight-on. She saw him only by the faint, ruddy glow of the now dwindled fire; more ember and ash then flame.

“You truly are from another time?” he asked quietly, almost marveling. His eyes were the only point of light on his face; two pricks of focus that somehow carried more expression than a torrent of voiced wonder.

“I am,” she answered simply. She wondered if he saw the same in her; two points of light staring back at him. The lights were disturbed when he blinked, turning his head away, looking forward as he had at the beginning. She could almost hear the wheels turning in his mind, the formulating questions, and the now deepened curiosity that she must undeniably hold.

“Well,” he said with a grunt, adjusting his position so that he sat straighter against the wall. He returned his gaze to hers. “I suppose I must concede to your claim – you have traveled farther than me.”

“Yes,” she chuckled, “my adventurous desire of walking in the rain in a foreign country has inadvertently seen me outpace the ambitions of any Northman seeking new land.”

Molly only just caught his smile as he leaned forward, taking up one of the sticks to jab at the fire. A ripple of warmth spread suddenly, tempering the chill air of the night and reminding her that she was hugging herself tightly in defense against the cold.

“Have you ever tried to return?” Ragnar asked, keeping his eyes on his work.

“Once,” she replied after a pause. “A week after arriving in that town you and your men had sacked,” she interrupted herself in order to deliver a long-in-the-making glare. The Viking at least had sense enough to remain quiet. “I found my way back to that beach. I stayed out there until I couldn’t bear the hunger any longer. I don’t remember how many days, but nothing happened. The road that had vanished didn’t reappear, and when I returned to the village I found it immediately. It hadn’t worked.” Molly often wondered if it would if she could reach it on the anniversary date of her arrival. But as of yet, she’d never been able to make it.

“It sounds temperamental,” he remarked, uselessly twiddling the stick between his palms, working a hole through the fire.

“Extremely temperamental!” she heartily agreed. “At least with you – well, you are very consistent; I always know what to expect from you.”

“Do you think it is so? That you will always know what to expect from me,” he stopped his fiddling to stare up at her, a queer look in his eye. Molly visibly swallowed as she held herself tighter. She felt the mood turn in an instant; dangerous and intimidating.

“You said you wouldn’t force me,” she reminded him, doing her best to keep her voice steady. The knife he had given her was still somewhere near her.

“Aye, I did,” he nodded, resuming his work, and the tension lifted somewhat, “and if that is where your mind has gone it has done so on its own for I have made no mention of lying with you. I would not speak against such a proposition, but I have not suggested it,” he said, flicking his eyes up to hers once more. She felt her heart stutter.

“Then what was all that about with your, ‘do you think you’ll always know what to expect from me?’” she questioned, altering her voice to imitate his low timber.

Ragnar tossed the stick aside and rubbed his palms together, brushing away the soot and ash. His movements were leisurely, almost deliberately so, which only annoyed Molly further when she was already feeling embarrassed by his presumption that her mind had been in the gutters.

“Well?” she pressed.

Ragnar shrugged, incorporating his hands as well as his face in the movement. “Is it not the truth? Who can claim that they know another so completely that they will always know what the other will do? As, uh, sweet as our meetings have been,” he smiled at her scowl, “they have been brief. Do you really think you know me as well as you think you do?”

She opened her mouth to give a remark about first impressions or something of that nature, when she hesitated. Her own first impressions were swiftly being supplanted by more amenable notions of her . . . not friend . . . companion. Her posture loosened slightly and, guilelessly, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear unaware of the way it drew his eye.

“I feel I must know you enough to trust you with the truth,” she admitted. “You’re the first person to know . . . any of this,” she said, initially searching for a word that could encompass her facts of life. “I don’t understand it, but you’re the first person that I felt I could share it with; no one else would’ve have understood, but you, somehow, seem to.” She quirked her brows, appreciatively curios.

Through the gloom and dull, red glow a gleam of benign teeth glinted as he smiled at her. “I always knew you were something more than you appeared,” he said, sounding vindicated. “I knew there was a reason for my safe-guarding your book – for you to be present in my mind, even when time continued and the possibility of ever finding you diminished; you never left me.”

Molly looked away, running her hands up her arms to hug her shoulders. She did not care to admit that she had experienced the same magnetizing thoughts towards him, though far less complimentary. Though, she supposed it was natural to have looked back on him; their first encounter was one of the most frightening moments of her life.

Cautiously, she turned back to him and was immediately confronted with the urge to yawn as she saw him indulging in his own. He did not miss her joining him.

“The hour is late,” he relented, sounding almost bitter by the fact. “You should get some sleep,” he advised her. Night had been with them for many hours, yet they seemed only now to be aware of the time.

“What about you? You have not slept since waking this morning.”

“I may shut my eyes, but don’t concern yourself. I am used to this more than you. Besides, you will need the rest for tomorrow; I have a number of questions I would ask you.”

“And I will do my best to answer them, but at present, you are the one with an injury and I am not. I’ll watch for now. I do not mind,” she added when she saw him preparing to counter. She reasoned that the likelihood of either of them finding much sleep was slim, but the few hours remaining to the night promised quiet introspection which she yearned for ere the next round of revelations began.

Molly stood, intent on switching places with Ragnar, and showing no signs of hesitance in taking his hands to help him up as she had originally. Again he stumbled, but only slightly, regaining his balance in the next second. She released her grip on him, though when he moved to step past her, she automatically brought a hand up to stop him, just grazing his chest before she dropped it again.

“I – uh, I just want to thank you,” with an effort, she managed to bring her eyes up to his, meeting them and reading in them a softness she had not thought him capable of achieving. She swallowed, suddenly very aware that her last vestiges of fear were leaving her as a new, even more frightening, emotion took its place. He was not touching her, as he promised he would not, but his gaze may as well have been a caress for the warmth she felt under its gaze. She cleared her throat. “You listened to me when I know no one else would have. You can’t know what that means to me,” she confessed. “You returned to me a part of myself I’d forgotten about and I must thank you for that.”

In response, Ragnar leaned down, bringing his face level with hers, their noses inches apart. Molly thought for a moment that he would break his word, yet she found herself too curious to back away.

“Does this mean I’m forgiven?” he posed to her instead.

Molly broke out into a wide grin, her teeth now the ones to gleam as she shook her head in amusement.

“Yes Ragnar Lothbrok, I suppose this means I must forgive you now – so long as you don’t try it again,” she added.

“Mmm,” he playfully groused, “that is a cruel thing to hold me to when you have made yourself even more valuable to me. You had better not smile too much,” he warned, “for I am want to lose all reason and do what I please should I see your smiling face near a boat.”

“You would have to tie me to the masthead for we both know I can swim,” she teased back.

“Don’t give me ideas. Where are you going?” he suddenly called when she abruptly turned to leave their cave.

“I thought I would search for the fairies and see if they know how I could return home.” At his arch brow she chuckled and told him truthfully that she had to relieve herself. When she returned, he was still standing, waiting. Without a word he limped past her and was swallowed by the night, likely to take care of a similar errand.

When he returned, she was already sitting, holding her legs close so that he could get by with as little difficulty as possible. From the darkened corners of the rear of the cave Molly heard his grunts, scuffles, and ultimate sighs as he lowered himself to the ground.

“Are you alright?” she felt compelled to ask.

“Fine,” he said, unconcerned.

A moment passed.

“Do you have songs from your time?” Ragnar’s voice came out from the gloom, contemplative, yet accommodating of a certain mischievous quality.

“I’m not going to sing one,” she replied immediately, not even bothering to look at him. She could, however, see his head perk up out of the corner of her eye.

“I did not ask you to,” a smile in his tone.

“You didn’t have to; I knew what you were leading to.”

“But you do have songs?” he urged, not giving up altogether.

“Of course we have songs,” she smiled at the ridiculousness. “A great many songs that would likely make you wish you were deaf. Music has evolved since the folk tune,” she told him wryly.

“You are not fond of music then?”

“On the contrary, I love music; in fact I used to love watching classic musicals with my mother. My father hated them!” she smiled, remembering. “He would walk in the room, hear Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire for a second, and make an about face. I think the only musical we ever managed to get him to sit down to was My Fair Lady. He knew Rex Harrison was in it and thought it would be a ‘decent’ movie as he termed it. He didn’t even get to ‘Wouldn’t it be Loverly’.”

Lost in her own memories once again, and not to mention the shadows that now enveloped Ragnar, Molly missed his puzzled expression. “You excel at saying much while revealing little.”

Molly laughed softly, understanding his plight. “My apologies, but it is difficult to translate something that hasn’t been invented yet.”

“I imagine it would be,” he considered, then added, “I envy you your knowledge; to know what will come after once all this is gone; once we here have all played our parts and are done.”

A brief silence stretched between them. In the distance, an owl screeched.

“Don’t envy me, Ragnar,” Molly quietly said at last. “You have the comfort of your time, even if you don’t appreciate it, while I often am adrift with only the cold comfort of memory to sooth me. My fate is not something to yearn for.”

Another, shorter, silence ensued, concluded this time by Ragnar.

“I will do my best to heed your warning Molly Hatch,” he said, a curious note to his voice. An unspoken sentiment hung in the air, trailing from Ragnar’s words, and without meaning to Molly waited for its release. It came as sigh of the wind, soft and coaxing. “But it would be easier if you were to stay with me,” he whispered.

Molly looked over her shoulder, seeking his gaze, but not even those pinpricks could be seen now in the gloom. Looking forward, Molly rubbed her arms.