Asvald’s shuffling around the cabin woke me the next morning. I sat up groggily, my eyes swollen and heart heavy. Smoke curled into the cabin from outside. The twins were strapped to the mystic, who didn’t know the meaning of rest as he moved in and out of the cabin. He never stopped working to help us all.

Liev’s body was gone.

Uncurling from the two exhausted people, I stood and went to the door.

Asvald had built a pyre while the rest of us slept next to a small bonfire. Liev’s small body rested on top of it. Astonished by Asvald’s dedication, I watched him for a moment, suspecting I’d never be able to thank him enough for being who he was. I stepped out of the cabin and shivered.

“You need to rest,” I told him.

Asvald faced me. His eyes were rimmed with red, his features pale. “I wanted to give him a worthy sendoff first,” he replied.

One of the twins grumbled at his stillness, and he instinctively began to rock to put Freydis back to sleep.

I smiled. “Give me the twins,” I said. “You’ve done enough, Asvald.”

He unwrapped the two and helped me swaddle them to my body. “It is almost complete,” he said. “When I am done, we can wake the others.”

I nodded and moved away to feed the twins. No sooner had I finished than Asvald stood back from his creation. He rolled his shoulders back and sighed, gazing at the still body of the little boy on the pyre.

Uncertain what to say to help him feel better, I remained off to the side, shushing the twins and wishing I had the ability to time travel and take us all out of this endless winter.

“Do you still have the valuables?” Asvald asked, turning to me.

“They’re in my cloak.”

“We should send him off with one, in case he needs it.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him we were more likely to need it than Liev. “The bracelet belonged to his grandmother,” I said instead. “It was Ivar’s favorite.”

Asvald disappeared into the cabin and returned with the gold bracelet. He placed it on Liev’s chest, along with a cut of meat, a frozen, deboned fish, and a wooden cup.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

He nodded.

I entered the cabin and woke Sigrid and Bjorn. The two exited, looking as bad as I felt. Kolfinna trailed them. We gathered around the pyre. Asvald lit it, and we stood, watching the flames lick upward from the base of the three-foot pyre before they finally claimed the little boy. No one spoke, and no one left.

All of us cried but no one as hard as Bjorn.

The fire burned throughout the day and into the night. Sigrid brought us all food from among the cuts of meat we had cured.

The snow started in the middle of the night once more, driving us all inside the cabin. But we kept the door open. I sat with Bjorn, cradling him as I would one of my twins, while Sigrid and Asvald cared for Ulf and Freydis. Only when Bjorn fell asleep did I close the door. Asvald carried the youth to the fire and covered him with a fur before sitting down heavily.

“You need to sleep,” I told him quietly. “You haven’t rested at all in days.”

“We will not survive if I sleep,” Asvald said in a thin voice.

“Sigrid will hunt tomorrow. I’ll watch the kids and take care of the chores around the house,” I told him firmly. “You will rest, Asvald. If you fall ill or hurt yourself hunting because you’re tired, none of us will survive.”

“She is right, Asvald,” Sigrid added in her timid voice. “If anything happens to you, we are all dead. You must rest.”

His gaze lingered on me. I saw the resistance in his good eye before he finally nodded his assent.

“Then you’ll teach me to fight,” I added.

“I will teach you,” Bjorn said sleepily from the fire. “Ivar taught me. I must teach you and Wagon-sen.”

Asvald smiled. “Bjorn is a good warrior. Between the two of us, we will teach you, Yosee.”

“I would like that,” I said.

Bjorn’s breathing grew deep once more as he slid into sleep.

“Is he really able to fight?” I asked when certain he slumbered.

“He is,” Sigrid answered. “Ivar was very strict with him. He always said Bjorn would become a better warrior than him.”

“It will distract his mind from the loss of his mother and brothers,” Asvald added in a hushed tone. “We will let him teach you, Yosee.”

“I would be honored,” I murmured. As much as I’d been through, Bjorn had been through more. He had lost his entire family in a night. I wasn’t about to let him become the latest victim of my cursed existence.

Unable to shake my newfound guilt, or the desperate hope Carter never hurt the people in the cabin, I collected the twins from Sigrid and settled down to feed them before curling up with them to sleep.

* * *

Another blizzard started the following day. It extinguished the pyre by noon. Asvald had the gruesome duty of collecting Liev’s bones and gold bracelet and placing them in a tree for now. We couldn’t let the wild animals didn’t steal Liev’s remains before we could bury him properly in spring.

To my satisfaction, Asvald returned to the cabin and slept after securing the boy’s bones. Sigrid and I tiptoed around him and Bjorn, who slept either out of fatigue or depression. I didn’t know for sure, but I gave him his space.

Sigrid and I straightened up the cabin and prepared food and water, as we did every day.

The blizzard lasted two days.

Three.

A week.

It all but buried the cabin with snow, trapping us inside for another few days. By that point, our food was gone.

Asvald muscled his way out of the cabin a full ten days after the blizzard began in order to hunt. Sigrid and I cleared out a space in front of the cabin to cook whatever he caught while Bjorn cared for the twins.

I found myself thinking about the people in the cave. I was hungry, but I couldn’t imagine slaughtering and eating someone. Had they started out thinking this way, too, before realizing they would all die if they didn’t find a food source? Was that why there was no spit in their cave, because no one wanted to witness the extent they went to?

Any thought about that cave, or the one from the Wild West, left me feeling sick to my stomach. Except this time, I felt responsible for the deaths of the people Asvald killed. He had done it to protect us, because Carter told him to.

I wanted to demand how Carter, a man I had met for all of an hour, decided I was worth all of this. Worth keeping alive. Worth killing for. The Persian, a medieval blogger and time traveler I met in the Mongol Empire, had said Carter had never before obsessed over anyone the way he did me.

He also said Carter used to dump people in the past and leave them there.

This idea had terrified me at first, just as the thought I’d be stuck in the Viking Era for six years freaked me out when I arrived here.

As the days passed, though, I began to fear a different fate: leaving the Viking Era. I could never subject my children to time travel. I could never imagine uprooting them from their home at the whim of a madman to go who-knew-where.

Carter always had a reason for whatever he did. Why would he take us away from here at all? Why not abandon me here with my kids and call it a day? I wasn’t going to argue with him about where I was. I’d stay here happily despite the uncertainty of what happened come spring and not knowing how I’d care for my family at all.

I’d choose this fate over anything Carter had planned for me.

I wanted to think it was possible he’d leave me here, but …

A flicker of dread stirred whenever I thought too far ahead, or whenever I considered the life my twins would lead. Carter had worked too hard to place me in particular times and locations, under the watchful gazes of guardians willing to poison entire families to protect me. He wouldn’t be expending this amount of thought and energy if he didn’t have some greater purpose for me.

If I had no choice in my future, would my twins? Was Carter capable of sympathy? Would he listen to reason? Were they part of his plan, or was I alone involved in his scheming? He was as Machiavellian about his methods as Batu or Asvald about protecting me. There was nothing any of them would not do when it came to me and no hesitation in carrying out even the most heinous of crimes.

What had Carter meant when he said Freydis disappeared from the historical record?

Most days, I was too tired or too busy to think about any of this. Nights, however, were different. When the cabin was quiet, the chores done, and everyone else asleep, I stayed up thinking over every exchange I’d ever had with Carter, trying to understand his endgame. Or anything about his motivation to drag me through time. Or whether or not he wanted to involve my kids in his insanity.

I didn’t know any of those answers. I never would, until Carter wanted me to. Which left me back where I started: haunted by a sense of doom, by the knowledge that, in about five years, my life was going to change, whether or not I wanted it to.

I had no guarantee my children wouldn’t be viewed as expendable by the mastermind dragging me through history. This concern, above all, caused a panic attack every time I thought of it.

* * *

Two weeks after the storm passed, I began training with Bjorn in the small area we cleared out beside the cabin. The lanky teen was surprisingly sharp and agile. Any doubt I had about his ability to instruct me proficiently disappeared after our first lesson. He was despondent in the cabin. On the battlefield, he was confident and surefooted. He showed me how to hold a sword and knife with the patience born from showing his younger brother to fight as well.

He was also completely unfazed by the fact I couldn’t hit the side of the cabin with a sword. If anything, he took my incompetence as a personal challenge. Asvald was right about the task giving Bjorn a distraction. If ever there was someone who needed to have her hand held when it came to handling weapons, it was I.

Sigrid’s daughter, Kolfinna, tried to mirror my moves, armed with a stick Bjorn gave her. He humored her as well, helping her stand and hold her tiny weapon the right way.

Kolfinna and I trained with Bjorn every day, sometimes for more than two hours. We had no other outlet for activity, aside from the usual chores.

A month after Liev’s death, I accompanied Asvald to the village for a second time, this time with the intention of finding someone desperate enough to sell us grain or oats or any other kind of supplement to our diet of meat and fish. We brought the valuables I had dug up from Thora’s and something even better: a freshly roasted boar. The biggest Asvald could find. We took turns dragging it through the forest and down the road on a makeshift stretcher. The mouth-watering scent was certain to draw anyone within a hundred feet, which we were counting on. Our first journey to the village had failed miserably. Asvald hoped this approach, bringing something we knew the others needed, would help pull those with something to trade from the nooks and cracks where survivors hid.

To say I was sick of winter was an understatement. I was almost back to my normal strength and self, aside from the lean days when we had to ration our food.

How I had survived what Asvald did to me months ago, I would never know. One look at my pelvis area and I knew I’d never have more children. I doubted I’d ever have sex again. Unless the franken-stitching looked worse than it was. I was too afraid to examine my nether regions to see for certain if everything was still where it was supposed to be.

Asvald had hacked my lower body apart to save the twins and miraculously managed to put me back together in such a way I could use the bathroom and walk. I didn’t want to know the odds I survived let alone healed. I was lucky to be alive.

I would be forever grateful to him for saving my Ulf and Freydis when he realized they’d die, too, if I did.

We passed the turnoff to Thora’s home. Both of us paused. I didn’t know what Asvald experienced in that moment, but I felt sad. I missed the warm home with its huge kitchen and the bedroom where I’d spent two months on bed rest.

“Will we bring Liev here in spring?” I asked, unfamiliar with their burial rites.

“Yes, unless Bjorn knows of a different place where his grandfather was buried.”

We began walking again. It was Asvald’s turn to drag the boar.

When we reached the village, I gasped. Asvald dropped the wood handles of the stretcher. We stared in surprised silence.

One of the massive longships – called knarr – meant for long voyages listed in the middle of the fjord, frozen in place. Dark wood and splintered masts contrasted against the pristine snow and ice.

A small boat had cut a path through the ice, halfway between the shore to the ship. Four men were inside it, hacking at the ice in front of them as they attempted to reach the ship. Another three stood where the docks had once been, observing.

“There can’t be anyone on the ship,” I said, saddened when I thought of Ivar being lost at sea.

“There might be food or gold,” Asvald said. “They would have taken enough food to journey there and back. If the crew died before, it is possible the cold preserved grain or oats or even bread.”

He lifted the boar again and started towards the three, more energy in his stride than I had seen in a long time.

I followed, eyes on the ship.

Before we reached the men, one of them sniffed the air and turned. His eyes went to the boar, and he nudged the man beside him.

“Good morning,” Asvald said, head bowed. He lowered the boar and spoke in his creepy mystic voice.

I stood beside him. I didn’t recognize these men from our first visit to the village and glanced towards the makeshift cabin that had been at the edge of the village. It was in pieces. Rather than feel vindicated for the people who refused to share their bread, I felt sorry for them. Too many lives would be lost this winter.

“Good morning,” one of the men answered. He was vaguely familiar, and I sought to place him. While not much taller than I was, he nonetheless had the thick build of a warrior. “If you come to trade for food, you have more than we do.” He spoke with a smile rather than the cold indifference, or threat, of the others we had met.

“There is no grain at all?” Asvald asked.

“Not unless the ship has some.”

“You’re Ivar’s cousin,” I said. “Was this his ship?”

The speaker shook his head. “This is not the workmanship of anyone in our village. It is probably one of the many lost at sea during the fall, when the men are returning.” He studied me briefly. “Yosee. Ivar’s wife.” He bowed his head. “I was sorry to hear my cousin did not return to see his children born. How are they?”

“Healthy,” I replied.

The two men with him were eyeing the boar. They appeared far less friendly, and far hungrier, than Ivar’s cousin.

I nudged Asvald, who glanced at me before we simultaneously stepped away from the boar.

“You are welcome to our food,” Asvald said.

Ivar’s cousin remained where he was.

The other two all but dived towards the food. They dropped on their knees beside it. Upon closer look, I was able to identify why the men who appeared healthy were not likely to hunt well. One bore bite wounds in his arm that had caused it to swell in what I took to be an infection. The other limped, and blood stained the snow around his footsteps.

“We have had a wolf problem this winter,” Ivar’s cousin explained. “They have taken to hunting us while we hunt food. We were hiding on the bluff when we saw the ship.”

My pulse quickened at the mention of wolves. We had been fortunate thus far. No wolves or bears had bothered us, though we sometimes saw tracks near the cabin. Asvald, ever the brilliant survivor, left a bonfire burning many nights, when the snow allowed.

“Where are you living that you find such food?” Ivar’s cousin asked.

I opened my mouth to respond, but Asvald beat me to it.

“Half a day’s walk that way.” He pointed towards the north side of the village, not the east, which was the direction we came from.

My empathic memory chip was not warning me as it had in the cave. But I wasn’t about to question Asvald’s actions or judgment, not when he was the sole reason six of us were alive. He had a reason to mistrust strangers. After our experience in the cave, I understood why.

“No wolves?” Ivar’s cousin asked.

“Some. We keep a fire going to discourage them,” Asvald replied.

“Do you use your powers and visions to outsmart them?” asked one of the men ripping off strips of meat.

“My visions are gifts from the gods, who do not care if one man survives a wolf attack,” Asvald answered. “I wish Odin saw fit to warn me but he has not.”

Satisfied, the man returned to shoveling food into his mouth.

“How many people survived with you?” I asked.

“Five in addition to us. Two women, two children, and one old lady too tough to die.” Ivar’s cousin smiled. “She outhunts both these men. Odin himself could not find a more fearsome warrior.”

He had Ivar’s easygoing nature, and my instincts gave me no warning about him being a threat. If the men with him were hungry enough to gnaw on the leg of a boar, then they probably weren’t eating people.

Asvald shifted his attention to the ship. “Has no one tried walking to the ship across the ice?”

“We tried,” Ivar’s cousin replied. “Lost one man beneath the ice. We cannot afford to lose anyone else. I am the only one hunting right now.”

“If there is grain, would you be willing to sell some to us?” Asvald asked.

“It is not my grain to hoard. I will share it with you willingly.”

Asvald and I exchanged a look.

I liked this man. A lot.

“We can bring you a boar every few days in exchange.” Asvald’s voice had softened, taken on its more natural tone as opposed to the one he used to play up his part as a mystic. “You have too many people to feed with one hunter.”

Compared to these people, those of us in the cabin were living the good life. Asvald and Sigrid were sound hunters, and Bjorn was learning to hunt as well. We had shelter and enough gold to trade for something, if we needed to.

“Agreed,” Ivar’s cousin said with another smile. “If we were closer, we could work together to survive the winter.”

Asvald hesitated.

I didn’t. Not after all the shit I’d been through. Not with the added responsibility of my twins, Bjorn, and Kolfinna. I liked Ivar’s cousin, but I wasn’t going to trust anyone, or pull anyone else into the web of my life with a spider like Carter waiting to eat anyone who came too close to me.

“We are happy to share our food, but we can’t do more at this moment,” I said.

Ivar’s cousin studied me and then shrugged. “Very well. We are in need of meat. I am not in a position to negotiate.”

“I can bring a boar or stag to the village every three days,” Asvald offered. “Assuming there is no storm.”

“It would be appreciated. I hunt or fish daily and often return with nothing when the wolves start tracking me.”

All of us looked towards the ship. The men in the boat were halfway to it and making slow progress.

“We cannot stay long,” Asvald said to me.

“Go. If there is grain, I will leave some for you here,” Ivar’s cousin said. “Will you leave the boar?”

“It would be my honor,” Asvald replied.

We watched a minute longer and then turned away, heading towards the north side of the village. I followed Asvald’s lead and recognized the secondary road Thor and Kaarbjorn had taken when secreting me away from Asvald’s.

When we were far enough away, I looked up at Asvald. “You don’t trust him.”

“Do you?”

“No. But …” I glanced back.

All three men were bent over the boar, eating hungrily.

“We can’t trust desperate people, can we?” I murmured.

“No. Even if they are kin.”

Disappointed, I faced forward and walked with him up the road leading into the wilderness. “Do you think he will leave us grain?”

“I do not know. I want to believe he will, but I am as distrusting as you are,” Asvald responded, sounding frustrated. “We cannot put those we care about in danger by trusting the wrong person. If he is a man of his word, he will prove it.”

“I definitely don’t want to be eaten.” I shivered. “Can we spare the meat?”

“I will need Sigrid to hunt with me more often. Or Bjorn.”

“I’m happy to stay at the cabin.”

As we made our way back to the main road and home, I couldn’t help obsessing over the idea we could have bread this week. I had always eaten too much bread and sugar in my time without ever appreciating it. I’d kill for a Snickers bar or fresh loaf of bread from my favorite sandwich shop.

I’d kill for a lot of things. Espresso, a heater, running water, a real toilet, diapers.

With a sigh, I realized I’d never have those things again. Ever.

But I had my twins. Asvald, Sigrid, Bjorn, Kolfinna. I had gained a family, even if I lost all modern conveniences and medicine.

Although, my one regret was losing Batu. Unless Carter told him, he would never know about his twins and never see them grow up.

Will I?

I couldn’t answer this question. Whenever I considered it, I felt a familiar sense of fury ignite within me. It wasn’t fair that normal people could have children and stay with them or that normal parents didn’t have to fear the hidden agenda of a madman who was always in control.

One day at a time. If we didn’t make it through the winter, Carter’s agenda wouldn’t matter.

“I hope there’s grain on the ship,” I said wistfully.

“I do as well.” Asvald sounded amused. “You never experienced hunger or long winters in your home.”

“Never.”

“Your family was wealthy?”

How did I explain southern California? I had shared with him my Mongol experiences without revealing my true origins.

“Yes,” I said finally. “You could say we were very wealthy at one time. And then it all ended.”

“Gold is often fleeting. Family is not. Have they never looked for you?”

“They aren’t alive.” It was true, in a sense. My aunt and uncle and cousins, even my parents, hadn’t been born yet. They weren’t dead, just not alive.

“I am sorry to hear it,” he replied. “Mine are dead, too.”

“The fire?”

“Yes. It destroyed half the village.”

“But it was rebuilt. Can’t it be rebuilt again?”

“Most of the people survived the fire, and it occurred in summer. We had time and people to rebuild.”

I frowned. I wanted to be hopeful for something more than surviving the winter. I wanted to know there was something good waiting for me at the end of these brutal few months. A purpose to the suffering. Rebuilding was as good a reason as I could imagine, and I couldn’t think of anything else.

We were quiet as we trudged the rest of the distance home.

* * *

I accompanied Asvald again the next morning to the village for the sole purpose of seeing if Ivor’s cousin had left us grain.

“I would eat a loaf as big as I am,” I said, my pace quicker than usual. I was half a dozen feet ahead of the mystic, excited and hopeful about bread and the chance we had met someone who would work with us to survive.

“Does bread grow on trees where you are from?” he asked.

I laughed. Since the last blizzard, we had taken to stocking up on meat as much as we dared with the wild animals in the forest. The only good thing about winter: the meat froze after a few hours out in the cold. Asvald and I, or Asvald and Sigrid, would gut and haul the meat into a tree, a quarter mile from the cabin, and hang it from the highest branch we could reach. We had several meat trees at different distances from the cabin, in case a blizzard limited how far we could go. I alone laughed hysterically when I told everyone meat grew on trees. Asvald had given me herbs after to ensure I didn’t have a fever.

My humor was often lost on them, just as their stories of the gods baffled me most days.

Asvald dragged a smaller boar today. I slowed to ensure he could keep up but couldn’t help my nervous energy. I needed something to look forward to, even if it was the prospect of soggy grain that would be turned into dense bread with the consistency of sandpaper.

We passed the turn off to Thora’s farm and continued. The moment I stepped foot into the village, I saw it.

Grinning, I raced away from Asvald towards the ceramic urn and two small trunks positioned in the spot where we had stood with Ivor’s cousin the day before. I dropped to my knees beside the urn and lifted the lid.

I dug my hand into the interior. My fingers slid through clumps of frozen grain, and I laughed loudly.

Replacing the lid, I opened the trunk seated beside the urn to find a collection of silver coins, a golden knife the size of my finger, and a bear whittled out of wood.

Asvald reached me. I twisted to see him.

“He wasn’t lying!” I exclaimed. “He left us grain.”

Asvald lowered his hood. His broken smile was one of relief. He knelt beside me and opened the second wooden trunk, this one much smaller. He withdrew a frozen apple.

I gasped. Never in a million years did I think about the other kinds of food the warriors would have taken with them.

Both of us stared at the small, green apple, mesmerized by it.

“They left us four,” he whispered.

Four apples. I used to let half a dozen rot on my counter, along with bananas and other fruit I had every intention of eating but didn’t.

In a Viking winter, the fruit was worth more than all the silver and gold we could find.

“I can’t believe it!” I said, the first to recover.

“We will bring them another boar tomorrow,” Asvald said and replaced the apple. He opened the trunk I’d already inspected. “He left us a share of the loot from the raid.”

“Do you think we were hasty to reject his offer to live together?” I asked.

“I think we were cautious and should remain so,” Asvald replied firmly. “One day does not an ally make.”

He was right. Still, this was the happiest I had felt since … well, since discovering Ivar was gay and I wouldn’t be raped on my wedding night.

“If we hurry home, we can have bread tonight!” I exclaimed and rose. I grabbed the urn and hefted it, even more excited when I felt how heavy it was.

“Carry these,” Asvald said and held out the small trunks. “I will take that.”

I handed over the urn and accepted the much lighter boxes. Without waiting, I hugged the boxes to my chest and ran towards the road.

Asvald positioned the boar and covered it with cloth in an attempt to prevent any wildlife from reaching it before Ivor’s cousin did. Waiting impatiently, I tried to imagine what it would be like to take a bite of an apple after months of nothing but meat.

We left, both of us walking faster than usual.

That night, we had bread, thanks to Sigrid, who knew how to grind and form the loaf we shared. Terrible, gritty, dense, tasteless bread.

It was the best bread I’d ever eaten.

We unfroze one apple and split it among the five of us. I shared pieces with the twins, neither of which remotely approved of the foreign food. To me, it was heaven. Judging by the broad smiles on the faces of Sigrid, Asvald and Bjorn, they were also in heaven.

It was the best night of my life in a long time, and I was not the only person who seemed to think so.