Chapter 1
Puririri
Puririri
Natalie blinked. Her phone was ringing. It was three AM, and her phone was ringing. Rolling over, she snatched the phone from the floor and looked at the number.
It was Cedric.
Groaning, she flicked her thumb over the accept call button.
“Cedric, do you know what time it is right now in Ireland?” she growled.
“That’s what I called to talk about.”
The chill, serious tone of his voice cut through Natalie’s sleepy haze. Cedric only sounded like that when something was wrong.
“Natalie… I can’t do this anymore.”
Natalie’s mouth opened and closed, and she choked out, “Can’t do what?”
“This. This field work. Your career. If you’re going to be spending half of your time digging in pits on the other side of the world, I’m done. Either get a job in the US, or we end this.”
Natalie’s throat seemed to be closing like a clenched fist. She had to force herself to speak.
“Cedric, we talked about this. You knew I was going to be traveling.”
“I thought you were going to get this field work shit out of your head and settle down at a museum job, or at some university, not spend half your life galloping across oceans. I didn’t sign up for this.”
“But what about the wedding? We already sent the invitations.” Natalie said desperately, searching for a straw to grasp at. “We put a deposit on the venue.”
“We cancel it. I’m not going to shackle myself to a woman who’s not there half the time. That’s not a marriage, Natalie. It’s me or the job. Choose.”
Natalie sat on her bed in silence, just holding the phone to her ear. Her blood was roaring so loudly in her ears it sounded like she was going over a waterfall.
“Natalie?”
“The job.”
“…What?”
Natalie took a deep breath, and an explosion of words burst out of her. “Cedric, you’ve never supported me. When I went into the archaeology program, you told me to buy lottery tickets instead, because I was more likely to make money that way. Every time I get awarded a grant, or find something interesting, you act like I’m trying to read you an encyclopedia about encyclopedias. You have zero respect for me, or for anything I do, and this has been my dream since I was five. So yes, Cedric, I will choose my job over you, because dead Vikings, who’ve been underground for a thousand years, still treat me better than you do!”
Ending the call, Natalie dropped the phone on her bed. Then she very slowly fell over.
Well. That was a thing that had happened.
It had been building for a long time. Sometimes, Natalie didn’t know why she’d even said yes. She’d just been so caught up in the moment, she supposed. The whole scene seemed to sparkle at the time: the fancy dinner, Cedric going down on one knee, everyone in the room clapping—and then it had all just fallen apart. They argued about everything, whether it was wedding planning or career plans or what to have for dinner, invariably ending with Cedric making passive aggressive comments about every single thing she did. Natalie had actually been glad to cross the Atlantic Ocean and get away from him.
Taking a deep breath, she sighed loudly, trying not to cry. One of the other women in the hostel room sat up, glaring at her.
“Will you be quiet? The rest of us are trying to sleep, here.”
Natalie resisted the urge to throw a boot at her. Instead, she got out of bed and started dressing herself, using her phone as a flashlight. T-shirt, khaki pants, a quilted polyester vest for warmth, and boots. Throwing her phone into her bag, she pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail and stormed out the door.
The hostel she was staying in was only a short walk from the excavation site. A farmer had been digging the foundation for a barn in a disused field, and found a barrow, an ancient grave site. Reaching the dig, Natalie turned on a floodlight. Maybe she could clear her mind a little by trying to find something in this giant, mostly empty pit.
Natalie surveyed the hole without actually expecting to see anything— only the dark brown of fertile soil— but a glint caught her eye. Something golden peeked at her from a corner of the hole. Hopping down, she picked it up and put a rock in its place, so she could mark its location later. T
It was a necklace made of thin discs of gold and inscribed with words; it was too dirty to read. There was a large pendant in the center, easily twice as large as the discs surrounding it. Natalie set it down in front of the floodlight and rummaged around the supplies until she found a clean-ish cloth. Then she began gently rubbing away the soil. As she cleaned, the world began to spin.
Natalie paused.
That was odd. She felt fine, now. With a shrug, she went back to her cleaning, and when she revealed the face of the central pendant, the world went black.