When Natalie awoke, the room was empty. A green over tunic had been placed beside the bed, along with a band-woven belt in yellow and red. A piece of flat bread sat on top of them. Groaning, she pulled the furs back over her head.
It would appear she was still in a 10tth century Viking settlement.
After opening and closing her eyes a few times, hoping that, eventually, she would find herself back in her bed at the hostel, she sat up. She might as well get on with it. Moving the piece of bread to the table, she picked up the tunic and pulled it on, then hitched both under and upper tunics up to belt them around her waist. The end result was rather puffy and undoubtedly far from flattering.
At least Alrek had provided her with clothes. Even after a night’s sleep, in which nothing had happened, she didn’t know what to make of him. She was dependent on his kindness for everything, and he was kind. It didn’t take years of study for her to realize Alrek wasn’t obligated to let her into the village at all, much less take her into his own home and put her in his own bed. Oh, he wanted to have sex with her, that was obvious enough, but he still behaved himself. Natalie wanted to trust him, not just because she needed to believe her rescuer was a good man, but because she wanted to enjoy his attention. He was a surprisingly good kisser.
Of course, she thought, this is just some kind of insane rebound relationship from breaking up with Cedric. Just… with a large man from the 10th century.
As Natalie began to put her shoes and socks on, Alrek stepped into the room.
“I see you’re awake. You’ve slept long. It is nearly noon,” he said, crossing his arms.
“Usually, I have an - - - - -.” Natalie didn’t look up from tying her shoes.
“A what?” Alrek asked blankly.
“A device that makes a noise to wake you up,” Natalie said.
“I see. So I must keep a rooster in the room, to crow at you.”
Natalie scowled at him. Shoes now tied, she stood up, and automatically began to neaten up the bed. Beds, at least, still needed to be made in the 10th century. Alrek watched her work for a moment before shaking his head.
“You look even more ridiculous with that overtunic on,” he said.
Natalie turned around, hands on her hips. “I’m sorry you find me so unattractive. I don’t have much choice in my clothing right now.”
To her consternation, Alrek just chuckled. Stepping forward, he took her chin again, and kissed her. This time, Natalie leaned into it. Sensing the shift in her manner, Alrek slipped a hand around her waist, moving the other from her chin to cup the back of her head. His tongue traced her lips, and after a moment’s hesitation, she returned the favor.
He leaned into the kiss, opening her mouth with his so he could taste her. Natalie sighed, rising on her toes to put her arms around his neck. Alrek was very good at kissing. He kept her there a moment, held tight against his chest before taking her by the arms and pushing her back. Once again, Natalie looked puzzled. And a little disappointed.
“I did not say you were unattractive. Just that those clothes are.” With that, Alrek released her and walked over to his chair. Silently, Natalie took her bread. Rather than sit on him again, she returned to the bed and perched on the edge while she ate.
Alrek picked up her phone, fiddling with it. She had shown him how to find the Vegetable Samurai app the previous night, and he was still fascinated by it. At this rate, he was going to suck her battery dry by nightfall.
“If you keep using it like that, it will die,” Natalie said quietly.
“It will die?” Alrek’s eyebrows flew up. “It’s alive?”
Natalie flopped back on the bed and rolled over, making a face.
“It is not alive. You must feed a fire with wood so it burns, yes? That object must be fed so it does not go out.”
“What must you feed it with?” Alrek turned it over in his hands. You could only have fit twigs too small even for kindling inside it, and he couldn’t even figure out where you’d put them.
Natalie thought for a long time before answering.
“You feed it lightning.”
“You feed it lightning?” Alrek repeated. “You are telling me that you have a, a toy, that eats lightning, and you are not a goddess.”
“If I was of the Æsir, do you think I would be sitting here in a man’s clothes, eating bread?” Natalie said caustically.
Alrek watched her for a moment, then sighed. “If you wish, we can get cloth from the Gaels for you to make clothes. Otherwise, you must wait. More Norsemen will be coming to our settlement soon, with women among them.”
Looking up at him, Natalie blushed. “I… I can sew, but I do not know how to cut the garments,” she said.
“What can you do, then?” Alrek asked, raising an eyebrow. The woman thought for a long time before answering.
“I can work in a garden. I can take care of chickens. I can milk a cow and ride a horse. I can wash clothes and clean a house. I can cook, but only the foods of my country. And I am very good at digging holes.”
“You can do these things, but you cannot make a tunic?” Alrek said blankly. Natalie silently shook her head. “Can you weave? Knit? Work leather? Make soap and salves? Preserve food?”
“I can knit,” Natalie offered, looking embarrassed. “I can spin wool, but not well.”
Alrek shook his head.
“What did you do in your country?” he asked.
“I am— I was a scholar,” she said, looking down. Her Ph.D. didn’t seem very impressive anymore. Alrek, on the other hand, was amazed.
“A scholar? But you’re a woman.”
Natalie cracked an unamused grin. “It is because I am a scholar that I speak your tongue,” she said. “I learned of your people in my schools.”
“You speak of Norsemen in your schools?” Alrek said disbelievingly.
“We speak of many, many things. In my world, we speak of Greeks and Romans, our clothes come from China, and man walks on the moon,” Natalie said. The bitterness in her voice made Alrek wonder if she was lying, but she had been honest with him thus far. Almost stupidly honest.
“I think you are an Æsir, and nothing you say will convince me otherwise,” he said, shaking his head. “No man could walk on the moon.”
“Think whatever you want. Unless you need someone to read and write and add numbers, I am useless to you.” Now she looked positively depressed.
“Such things are always useful,” Alrek said, trying to be reassuring. “And all else, you can learn when the women arrive.”
“You speak like I will be here the rest of my life,” Natalie said.
“Do you know how to go home?” he asked. She didn’t answer. “Do you?”
“No.”
“Well, I do not know how to take you home. Unless you want to live as a hermit or throw yourself on the mercy of the Gaels, you stay here. And if you stay here, you must work.”
Natalie nodded silently. She couldn’t argue with that.
“For now, I will take you to work with Geirr in the kitchens. That should not prove too hard.”
Once she had finished her bread, Alrek lead her out into the settlement. It was the first time Natalie had seen the place by daylight. Her nerves were quickly forgotten, academic curiosity drowning out everything else as she looked around, trying to absorb every detail into her mind. It was one thing to read speculation about Viking life in papers, and another entirely to witness it with your own eyes.
The larger part of the men were building, adding small single-room homes like Alrek’s to the tiny village. Some worked in the garden, and in the distance, she could see goats and sheep.
“Are there no cattle?” she asked, turning to Alrek. Cattle were the true wealth of Norsemen. It was odd not to see any.
Alrek shook his head. “Not yet. We bought some sheep and goats from the Gaels, but no cattle yet. Once we have more goods for trading, we’ll be able to get some cows and a bull.”
“You won’t simply take them?”
“We could. Quite easily, I imagine. But we want to live here afterwards, and my men would not appreciate me slaughtering their future in-laws for the sake of a few cows.”
Natalie looked at him with interest. The integration of Norsemen into the local populations had always been a topic of debate. “You intermarry with them, then?”
A smile tugged up the corner of Alrek’s mouth. “Not many men want to go their entire lives celibate, and not many fathers want their daughters being bedded without marriage vows. Very few women come down from the Northlands. We marry whoever comes along.” He gave Natalie a long look from the corner of his eye and she looked away, blushing. She couldn’t tell whether the idea of him bedding her or marrying her was stranger.
She wasn’t sure she disliked either.
Half a dozen dogs were tied up outside the main hall, large, thick-furred and curly-tailed spitz types. Alrek was forced to wait while Natalie made friends with all of the dogs, getting covered in wet licks for her efforts.
“Likes dogs, too, does she?” Banki had strolled up beside him. Alrek shrugged.
“They seem to like her well enough.” Indeed, she was surrounded, the dogs all wagging their tails frantically. “It’s usually a good sign when dogs like someone.”
Banki couldn’t disagree. Looking at the woman, now crouched on the ground and trying to scratch half a dozen dog’s heads at once, it was hard to imagine her being a threat to anyone.
“That’s enough. You can play with the dogs later,” Alrek finally said, pulling Natalie up by the arm. She scowled at him, which as usual, only made him laugh at her.
“This is the main hall. Most of us eat in here, and some sleep here as well.” The main hall wasn’t large by Natalie’s standards, but it was quite large by the standards of the village. Constructed of whole logs, the peaked roof was covered with thatch. “It’s not much to look at, now, but once we all have roofs over our heads, we’ll make a better one,” Alrek said firmly. Natalie could tell he was imagining the future version of this building, even larger and decorated with elaborate carvings.
“Ours stores are in the back, for now, and cooking takes place there as well.” He led her to the very back of the hall, where part of it had been walled off to contain barrels and sacks of various supplies, from turnips to candles.
The cook, Geirr, was a surprisingly skinny man for one of his profession. He sat next to the fire, slowly peeling turnips with a small knife, and looked up in curiosity when the pair entered.
“Natalie is going to help you in here for now,” Alrek said. “She said she knows how to cook, but I expect you will have to explain a few things.”
Geirr nodded, and looked to Natalie. She had instantly wandered over to the stockpiles, and was going through their food with delighted curiosity, mumbling to herself in her foreign tongue.
“Dried meats, dried fruits…” Natalie picked up a small, black, raisiny looking thing and sniffed it. “Blackberries. Dried blackberries. Carrots, parsnips, turnips… Cabbages! Of course, there’s cabbage. Onions. Leeks. Beans, oh, so many dried beans.”
Alrek and Geirr stared on, not understanding a word.
“Before you ask, no, I don’t know what she’s doing,” Alrek said, shaking his head. Stepping across the room, he interrupted Natalie as she rummaged through a bin of dried fish. “Natalie. You’re supposed to be helping.”
She jumped back, blushing sheepishly, and quickly went to stand by the fire. Geirr raised an eyebrow at her, but he seemed more amused than anything else.
“Well, for now, you can peel these turnips for me,” he said, handing her his knife and a sack. Natalie sighed and took them, sinking down onto a stool. All this Viking culture all around her, and she was peeling turnips.
After watching for a few minutes, as the pair quietly worked, Alrek went on his way.
***
When the day drew to a close, Alrek arrived at the main hall to discover that Natalie and Geirr had produced a root vegetable stew and bread. Natalie actually looked extremely pleased with herself. Men began to wander in, and she quickly provided them with food.
“How was she?” Alrek asked quietly, standing to the side with Geirr.
“Oh, she’s fine,” he said. “Sweet enough woman. She picks things up quickly, but I’m amazed she got to be this old without learning a damn thing. She wouldn’t know a rutabaga from a live cow.”
“She’s a scholar, apparently.”
“Last I heard, scholars still need to eat bread,” Geirr said with a snort.
“As long as she picks it up. I suspect she’s going to be here for a while,” Alrek said. Geirr gave him a look, as though daring him to say that circumstance was the only thing making him keep Natalie around. Alrek just shrugged and went to get his own meal.
Natalie was eating her own food, now seated at one of the long tables and surrounded by men.
“Do you practice seidr?” one of them asked, looking at her curiously. Most of the men seemed to have lost their suspicion of her upon finding her meekly preparing dinner. As a result, Natalie herself was more relaxed than Alrek had yet seen her.
She shook her head. “No. I would not know how to begin.”
“What about Gaelic magics, then? Witchcraft?” another asked.
“I know nothing of that, either.”
“What about - - - - - - - - - - -?” still another asked.
Natalie just frowned in confusion. “I’m sorry, I do not know what you just said.”
While the rest of the group questioned her, Api sat in the back glaring. He couldn’t believe that these men had simply accepted her presence, like it was normal for women to pop out of thunderbolts. His stare didn’t escape notice, and Alrek watched him closely while he ate his food.
After sitting in surly silence, Api pushed his bowl away. “Someone can take my share. I’ll not eat anything she prepared.”
Everyone stared in tense silence, except for Hattr, who reached over and snatched the bowl for himself. Natalie looked utterly crestfallen.
Banki raised an eyebrow. “You would insult Alrek’s woman?”
“Alrek is a fool, and so are the rest of you. I would not trust her if Thor himself told me she was the most goodly woman on earth.”
“It is fortunate for the rest of us, then,” Alrek said, his eyes flashing with anger, “that you do not make these decisions. Now hold your tongue or I’ll have it held for you.”
Api glowered and stood up, stalking out of the hall. The rest of the men went back to eating, but to Alrek’s concern, Natalie said nothing for the rest of the meal.