It took an entire day to recover from that feast. And on the next, Ragnar was up and gone early, off to confer with Eirik and both of their advisors, and I woke to the light of mid-day, as a girl topped up the fire-pit with fresh wood.

"Mmph," I said, rubbing my eyes and sensing her presence before I was fully awake. "What time is it?"

When there was no answer I asked again and saw, once I had opened my eyes, that she looked nervous.

"What?" I asked, not understanding. "Don't you know what – oh. Yeah. OK. Uh – it's fine. Thanks for the firewood."

"May I go?"

"Sure – yeah, of course!"

She scuttled out of the westerly roundhouse and I lay back on the furs as the new logs began to spit and crackle in the flames, reminding myself that the Vikings didn't seem to think of time the way modern people did. It made sense – no one had clocks or watches or any sense of what a second or an hour was. They seemed to speak mostly in terms of moon cycles, seasons, nights and days. When I asked how they knew what the first day of Yule was, Ragnar told me that the healers and the 'gothi' knew, that they had special carved stones they used to judge the angle of the sun's light and determine the shortest and longest days. I remembered learning about even more ancient civilizations of the British Isles in school, how many archeologists believed their stone circles and mysterious structures had been built according to the position of the sun in the sky at various times of the year.

"Hey, sleepyhead."

I looked up to Paige's face poking in the door of the roundhouse. "I wasn't sure if you were, um, busy with Ragnar or not."

"What, you think I've been getting laid all morning?" I replied, grinning. "No such luck, he left early today – before I was awake."

Paige came in and sat by the newly-stoked fire, not bothering to remove her fur cape. "Yeah, so did Eirik. He says more of them are coming – more Vikings. He says the Jarl's council – what does he call it? The 'thing' – in the Northlands has – "

"The thing?" I asked, not sure I was understanding. "What thing?"

Paige laughed. "Yeah, that's exactly what I said when Eirik told me about it. It's a meeting – the thing, I mean. That's what they call it. The 'thing.' But it's not like this meeting they're having right now, here. It's bigger. The Jarls and the free people from different clans, even warring clans, come together to discuss whatever business they have between them. Eirik says that at the last large 'thing' it was agreed to move beyond the pillage and invasions of this place – to begin settling the land and moving the Northmen and women here to live and marry and raise children. This encampment – and Jarl Ragnar's, and a few others that are already here – are just the beginning."

"I read about this, you know," I said then, thinking back to my studies of Viking Britain.

"So did I," Paige replied. "A little. I don't remember all of it now but I do remember that the Vikings will conquer parts of Britain and settle here – or they did settle here, I mean."

"You don't know what tense to use," I commented. "Past or present."

She smiled and shook her head. "You're right. Although that was mostly for your benefit. These days it's becoming easier and easier to think of this place as the real place, you know? Like, I understand that the future still exists, and cars and planes and the internet still exist, somewhere out there, but every day it feels more and more like a place I only know from a dream."

It made me feel uneasy to hear Paige talking like that. I wanted to grab her shoulders and get in her face and remind her that it wasn't a dream. That all of it still existed, as real and true as the Viking settlement around us. I didn't, because I didn't feel it was my right – if part of her needed to see where she came from as somehow unreal, I supposed that was her right. But it did make me slightly uncomfortable. Paige seemed to sense it, too, because she reached for my under-dress and tossed it onto the furs that covered me.

"Come on, then. We're going out to the woods to find holly and green boughs for Yule. And it's cold again so you better dress well."

Less than twenty minutes later Paige and myself were crunching across the frost-laden grasses, headed for the woods and trailed by four Viking warriors – not mere guards, but actual fighting men. Two belonged to Ragnar and two to Eirik, and I found the sound of their swords slapping against their leathers and furs as we left the camp to be rather reassuring.

A mist hung over the land that day, bringing with it a muffling effect that leant the proceedings a magical air.

"What are we looking for again?" I asked Paige, when we got into the woods. Other women were doing the same thing we were, and at times we could hear their voices, carried in strange ways on the fog.

"Holly," she said. "But other things, too. Eirik says the idea is to bring some of the greenery and smell of the outdoors into the drab winter roundhouses, to cheer up the dullest part of the year."

"So it's like Christmas lights?"

Paige laughed. "Yeah, I suppose it is."

We didn't talk very much as we made our way slowly through the trees, out feet rustling in the frost-crisp leaves that covered the ground and our cheeks glowing bright pink in the clear, cold air. At one point, a robin with a bright red breast alighted on a branch in front of us and Paige pulled a piece of dark Viking bread out of her leather pouch and scattered a few crumbs of it across her gloved palm. I watched, breathless, as she held her hand out towards the robin.

"The frost and snow covers the ground," she whispered, as the bird leapt onto her outstretched palm and pecked greedily at the breadcrumbs. "They get hungry."

"Can I try?" I asked, half-convinced Paige had acquired some ancient magical powers, and that no bird would ever hop willingly into my own hand.

But when I pulled one of my gloves off and Paige sprinkled some crumbs into my grasp the robin fluttered easily from her hand to my own. I gasped at the incredible lightness of the tiny, cold feet on my skin.

"Oh!" I whispered, shocked into near-speechlessness. "Look, Paige!"

We stood transfixed in the winter mist, watching the robin until he'd had his fill and taken his cheerful leave of us. And then we continued the search for holly and boughs, pinecones and fallen branches of a particularly pleasing look. After the encounter with the robin, I felt filled with awe, infused with that feeling I remembered from childhood Christmases, when the world seemed as if it was bursting with goodwill and possibility. It almost made me tear up, to think that I would never be able to share it with anyone back home, in the present – I wouldn't even be able to tell them about it.

"Here," Paige exclaimed, as we wandered to and fro, the tips of our noses getting pinker the longer we stayed out. "Holly!"

My arms were already heavy with fir boughs, tendrils of dark green ivy and other vegetation, but the holly was the one thing we'd wanted to find. Paige used the small knife she carried on her hip to take what we needed and piled it into my arms, laughing when one or the other of us got stabbed with a thorn.

"There," she said, when it seemed we couldn't carry anymore. "This will brighten everything up in the camp, won't it?"

It seemed such a simple thing to do, but the difference it made after my best friend and I raced back to camp and helped each other decorate our Jarl's roundhouses was amazing. I stood back at one moment in the westerly roundhouse, taking in the new scent of the place after Paige and I had hung and garlanded almost every spare surface with the fresh liveliness of the outdoors.

"This is crazy!" I said, breathing the scent of fir trees and frost and ivy deep into my lungs. "All of this was right here – just out in the woods! We have woods in 2017, you know."

"I know," she nodded.

"But I've never done this before in my life. I usually buy candles. You know, candles full of fake perfume, fake baking smells, fake Christmas tree smell. When I could just go and get the real things for free. That's bonkers!"

It was true. The westerly roundhouse, at that precise moment, on a cold night just before Yule in the 9th century, was the most breathtakingly Christmassy scene I have ever witnessed – and only two people in the whole camp would even have recognized the word 'Christmas.' The flickering flames from the candles lit everything with a soft glow, including the fat, red berries on the holly branches and the pink cheeks of the two woman who had just spent the afternoon in the cold winter woods. Whatever wonderful magic was afoot that evening, Paige felt it too. She turned to me, smiling, as we admired our work, and then she pulled me into her arms.

"I know you have to leave," she whispered as we held each other tight. "I know, Emma. But while you're here, let's enjoy this, OK? Let's suck every ounce of marrow out of this so we can go on with the rest of our lives with happy memories of this time – of all of it.

When she pulled away I saw that her eyes were glimmering, and in turn the candle-flames became hazy in my own vision as we both thought, although it remained unspoken, of the finite nature of our time together.

Ragnar walked in on us like that and, although I saw that he was about to make a jokey comment, checked himself when he saw my expression, and that of my friend.

"What is it?" He asked, slipping one of his strong arms around my waist. "What is it, my lovely girl? Has something happened? Paige – has –"

"No," I shook my head, leaning into his body. "No, nothing's happened. Paige and I gathered holly this afternoon – and boughs. Do you see?"

But Jarl Ragnar was already looking around, a smile spreading across his face. He closed his eyes a moment later and breathed deeply of the scented air.

"Are you two responsible for this?" He asked, turning back to me and pulling me into his arms, lifting me off my feet so he could kiss me.

"Mm-hm," I told him, proud as punch at his reaction.

Paige reached out, then, and tugged at my sleeve lightly. "I'll see you later, Em, OK?"

Our eyes met for a brief moment, the understanding passed between us – it was time for both of us to be with our men, but we would not forget the afternoon we had just spent together.

"OK, Paige. See you soon."

As soon as she was gone Ragnar set me down in front of him and took my face in his hands. "Look at this place!" He enthused, pausing to kiss my mouth once, and then again. "Emma, have I been wrong to think of you as a savage from a foreign land? A particularly beautiful savage, it must be admitted, but a savage nonetheless? You're not as wild as you seem, are you? Look at this place, as well-garlanded as if a true Viking wife had done it."

Jarl Ragnar was being deliberately effusive, but he wasn't making any of it up – I could see it in his eyes. I could see something else in his eyes, too, and feel something else from the way he pulled my body against his. He needed me again, and the plain fact of his need kindled the little flame inside me into a bright, roaring fire. I helped him pull off my woolen tunic, and the layers of linens underneath, and then I put my hands on his as he pressed them into my flesh and forgot about all the holly and the candles and the smell of fir branches and everything else in the world except one thing.

I lay back on the bed of furs and opened my legs for Ragnar and took him into me the way I opened my mouth to breathe, or curled onto my side to sleep at night. I didn't have to think, because it just happened between us, as naturally as taking breath. And as it seemed to be with us, he carried me along with him, stoking the fire in my loins with that in his own, and with the look in his eyes when he was close.

"Ragnar," I sighed into his shoulder when I came, my voice almost fading out before rising, sharply, into a helpless little scream as my fingernails sank into his back and my body arched up off the furs, offering itself up to him like a sacrifice, begging him to let me give him the pleasure he was giving me.

He drove himself into me and held himself there, his mouth open on mine so I could feel every panted breath as he throbbed and pulsed and emptied himself completely.

We stayed there, our naked limbs tangled together, until the fire needed more wood. Ragnar covered me in a fur and got up to take care of it and I lay back, watching him. There was no mistaking his utter gorgeousness there in the westerly roundhouse, as his battle-honed muscles and the solid, male contours of his face were on such display. I wondered, looking at him, what he would be doing if he had been born in the 1990s, like me.

"Why do you look at me that way?" He asked when he caught me. "As if you ponder what piece of me would make the juiciest roast?"

I laughed and opened my arms, pulling him back to me when the fire was re-stoked. "I was just thinking," I replied, "about what you would be doing if you came from the southeast, across the sea – where I'm from."

"What is it you mean? Are your people not in need of warriors, girl? Of jarls and kings?"

I mean, we did still need warriors in 2017 – leaders, too. But it was no longer anything like a given that a young man would enter the military, and leadership so often seemed to be about who had the most lust for power than it did about who cared the most about being a good leader. "We are," I told him. "But it's different. It's very different. I think maybe your talents would be wasted in the place I'm from. You'd still have those blue eyes, though, and those magnificent shoulders – so you'd still have packs of sorority girls chasing you. But I don't know if –"

"What girls?" he asked, and I couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of Ragnar at a frat party. He'd probably get kicked out as soon as the frat boys realized they weren't going to get any female attention at all with a real-life Viking in their midst.

"I just mean – young women. Women around my age."

"And what is that age, exactly? Sometimes I think you older than myself, with some of the things you say, some of the things you seem to know. But other times I catch a glimpse of those teeth or that skin, free of marks, and think you years younger."

"I'm twenty-two winters," I told him, correctly using winters as the replacement for years, the way the Vikings seemed to, but forgetting that they had a peculiar way of expressing numbers over ten. "I mean, ten and ten and two winters. How about you?"

"How old do you think?" He asked, running his thumb over one of my cheeks, and I found my dilemma almost the same as his. Ragnar didn't look older than 26. But he seemed so much wiser than the 20-something men I knew, so much more experienced in the ways of the world and other people.

"Ten and ten and, um, seven?" I guessed.

"Close," he came back. "I'm ten and ten and four."

I lay back and looked up at the small opening at the peak of the roundhouse, where the smoke from the fire escaped. Ragnar was 24 – the same age as one of the boys I'd briefly dated at grand Northeastern, whose main priorities in life seemed to be his hair styling routine and his weekend party schedule. How was that possible, that one of those men was leading a force of warriors, responsible for a tribe of people – keeping them safe and fed and sheltered – and the other would have balked at a single day's honest labor?

I snuggled into Ragnar's chest, smiling the self-satisfied smile of a girl who knows she's in the best man's bed.

His ease, his satisfaction – a good portion of which I took personal, prideful credit for – made me think of him as a contented lion. Although he lay on a bed of furs with me, he seemed in some other way to lie at the crest of a hill in the middle of some hot, windswept African veldt, surveying his territory, attended to by his lioness.

"Jarl Eirik tells me to keep you from my heart," he said suddenly, jerking me out of the sweet softness of pre-slumber in his arms.

"What?" I asked, rubbing my eyes and pushing myself up so I could look him in the eyes. "What did Eirik –"

"He says you're leaving. He says he can see it in you, the way he saw it in Paige. Does he speak the truth?"

I didn't want to talk about my leaving. I didn't want to think about it. All I wanted to do was keep it fenced off in one of the far corners of my mind so I could spend the night floating in the bliss that was being with Jarl Ragnar. I didn't want to disturb myself with thoughts of our inevitable parting.

But he was pained, I could see it, and at first it didn't even occur to me why, even with all the signs and hints that Ragnar was, almost inexplicably, interested in more than just sleeping with me before we got bored of each other.

"I – uh," I stammered. "I don't want to leave you."

"You don't want to leave me? Then don't. What steals you away from me before we've even begun, Emma? Do I –" he reached down and spread his fingers wide over my midsection – "need to put a baby in you? Will that make you stay? Perhaps it's done already, and a new life grows within you? Eirik admits – only to me, he says – that he is not sure Paige would have returned were it not for having their baby son in her arms. Is it the same way with you? Because if it is –"

Ragnar slipped one hand down between my legs, parting them, and I put my hand on his wrist, stopping him and sitting the rest of the way up.

"Wait," I said, as much to the rushing thoughts in my own mind as to Ragnar. "Wait. Hold on. Are you talking about a baby? Why would I –" I broke off, because I realized I was about to ask a very silly question. I was about to ask Ragnar why he thought I might already have a baby growing inside me – and the question answered itself before it could be spoken. I'd already slept with him, unprotected, multiple times. I could have a baby in my belly. I knew it before that first time, in the feasting hall. And so far, I'd managed to ignore it. It was as if part of me still didn't quite believe anything that was happening in the 9th century was real. As if any babies conceived in this time would turn out to be nothing more than figments of my own imagination once I returned to the future. Even with the living proof babbling in my best friend's lap to disabuse me of this dangerous notion, some part of me was still clinging to it.

I blinked, lost in my own thoughts, when Ragnar took my chin in his hands and turned me towards him. "You don't want a baby?" He asked, not making any effort to hide the worry in his eyes.

A baby?! I wanted to screech. A baby? We haven't even discussed if we're exclusive yet!

And for all my showy internal protestations, for all my raised eyebrows, there was also the knowledge that Ragnar – his body, his arms, his wide, cocky grin – felt like home. I couldn't reason it out, I couldn't make sense of it, it was just the truth. If I'd been with him a week, a day, an hour – it didn't matter. He knew it, and so did I. The difference was that it was nothing strange to him, nothing he didn't naturally just accept for what it was.

"I'm sorry I spoke of it before the morning," he said quietly. "It troubles you, and the last thing I want is to trouble you, Emma. I see a duality in your eyes, a protestation, one that I've already seen so many times in you. But I also see the other part, the part you're trying to hide from me, that you think I can't see. I won't push you any further tonight. Put your sweet little face against my neck, so I can fall asleep to your breathing."

I did as told, grateful for the temporary reprieve. But even as I drifted off, and as Ragnar's own breathing became slow and even, I knew in my bones that what was between us was something rare and precious. And that going home, which I unquestionably had to do, was going to mean leaving it behind forever.

* * *

"I feel like some kind of housewife," I laughed a couple of days later to Paige as she and I sat in the large and well-appointed roundhouse she shared with her husband and their son. "He leaves in the morning and then he comes back in the evenings, full of stories about what happened at 'work.'"

It was mid-afternoon, another day that was cold enough to keep almost everyone indoors, and my best friend and I were relaxing beside the fire-pit as she tried to teach me how to braid a series of slim, flat pieces of dried grasses together, eventually to be turned into a summer hat. It wasn't working at all, because I've never been good with my hands – especially when it comes to detail work.

"Ugh, Paige, I can't do it," I complained, throwing down my lumpy, misshapen braid next to her smooth, flat one. "And I'm dying for some chocolate. You and Eirik don't have any, do you? Hidden away from the little people?"

Paige laughed. "Unfortunately no, we don't. I really missed sweets at first. I guess I still do – but what use is thinking about cake if you can never have any?"

I shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know. Telling me I can never have something usually just has the effect of making me want it even more."

There was a rhythm to life in the Viking camp, just as there had been a rhythm to my life in 2017. I was no longer waking up to the loud beeping of my iPhone's alarm, or stumbling into the first class of the day with my hair still wet from the shower, or stopping off at the little grocery store on the corner near my flat, though. I slept, during those early days in Eirik's camp, as late as I wished. Ragnar usually woke me gently before he left just after dawn, so he could make sleepy, urgent morning love to me before tucking me in again and kissing my forehead as I drifted back into sleep. Hours later, I would get dressed in the warm roundhouse and then dash through the chilly air to the feasting hall to eat bread and cheese and dried fish that reminded me of kippers. During the afternoons I would sit with Paige and baby Eirik, chatting and exclaiming over the baby's every new talent.

It didn't need discussing – I knew why Paige had come back. It was obvious. Life was slower with the Vikings, people were more connected to what they did with their time and everyone's lives were interwoven in a way that almost made me resent what I had to go back to. Not that I ever wavered on going back. I could no more let my family suffer for the rest of their lives than I could fly to the moon under my own power. But it wasn't a wholly obvious choice, even then.

On the morning of the shortest day of the year – December 21st, although no one called it that – Jarl Ragnar gently shook me awake in the full darkness of the night.

I rolled over and opened my mouth to kiss him, smiling, assuming the reason for his attentions. But he wasn't waking me up because he needed to feel my body underneath him, he was waking me up for – what?

"It's still dark," I murmured, giggling as he kissed. "What are you doing? Why are –"

"Wake up, Emma," he whispered. "We must go to the beach to witness the death of the sun. Come on, get up, get up, it's going to take forever to get dressed."

I didn't know what he was talking about – the death of the sun? what? – and I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly, but I was too tired to protest. Fifteen minutes later I found myself stumbling down one of the paths that led to the beach, my hand clasped in Ragnar's and my cheeks flushed pink in the pre-dawn cold. It seemed most everyone else in camp was headed in the same direction, too.

"Ragnar," I whispered, as he pulled me along. "What are we –"

"Shhh," he replied, as we came to the beach, and I noticed a quiet had fallen – no one seemed to be talking, even as the sand was crowded with people.

"The sun is swallowed by the darkness on this day," he whispered to me when we'd found a spot next to Eirik and Paige at the front of the crowd. "But she gives birth to her daughter before she goes. That is what Yule is, beautiful Emma. We nurture the new sun, we welcome the new season and the passing out of the people from the grip of death and darkness."

I looked up at him, even though it was far too dark to see anything, but he didn't offer any more explanation. And before I could question him further, a voice – a shaky male voice, one I did not recognize and that seemed to belong to an old man – rose thinly in the winter air just as the first hints of light began to appear at the horizon.

"The gods slumber," the voice said, and there was a low murmur of agreement from the gathered crowd. "The gods slumber near death, the cycle of the seasons slumbers near death, the sun is come on her morning birth-bed to start the Yule period. Jarl Eirik, step forward! Jarl Ragnar, step forward!"

I clutched at Ragnar's hand, uneasy because I didn't understand what was going on or why we were all outside in the freezing wind when we should have been back in our beds, but he squeezed my fingers and left me where I was. Slowly, as the light began to leak into the sky, I could make out his figure next to Eirik's on the beach. A much shorter man stood in front of him, with his back to the waves. There was an object in his hands, one he held up as I watched, sensing a strange anticipation in the crowd around me.

When the first rays of the sun fully broke the horizon, I actually gasped out loud as the object in the old man's hands let a select few of them spill through a hole in its center, concentrating their intensity and illuminating the faces of Jarl Ragnar and Jarl Eirik. I looked around as the dawn came on in full, searching for a similar reaction to my own, but all the Vikings stood solemnly, staring out at their Jarl, and the first moments of the new season.

Moments later – and without warning – a great shout arose from the people. Arms were lifted into the air – I even spotted a few children raised above their parent's heads – and the pale light of the solstice's dawn was welcomed.

"The sun's daughter comes!" The old man on the beach intoned. "As weak and fragile as a newborn babe! If we take this period of Yule to nurture her, to sacrifice for her, to cast our minds to the seasons past and the seasons yet to come, and to set aside the darkness, she will warm the earth and us in turn!"

I've always felt a little silly at church ceremonies. Not that my family was truly religious – we went at Christmas, we went to weddings and christenings and funerals, but we needed the songbooks to remember the words to the hymns and it had always felt so anachronistic, such an ill-fit to the supermarkets and subways and billboards advertising mobile phone plans outside. But I didn't feel silly on the beach that day, as the morning light spread over everyone that had gathered to see it break. No one had to tell me it was a spiritual happening, either – I could feel it around me, manifesting as if from the Vikings themselves, or the air around us or maybe the weak winter sun herself, as the man on the beach seemed to be saying. He sang a song as we all stood huddled together, and then another. When it was time to leave, Paige came rushing through the crowd, her eyes bright despite the early hour, and took my hands in hers.

"Did you like it?" She asked. "I told Ragnar not to tell you anything, just to let you see it for what it was."

"I –" I started, and then stopped because I felt embarrassed, as if I couldn't say what the dawn ceremony had made me feel without looking stupid.

"It's OK," Paige told me, putting her arm around my shoulders and starting the walk back to camp. "I understand. The first thing I experienced like this was a funeral – one of Eirik's warriors was killed and they burned his body on a huge pyre at night. I'd never seen anything like it."

"Yeah," I nodded, because she was right – I'd never seen anything like what I'd just seen. More importantly, I'd never felt anything like it, either. It was almost as if I believed everything the old man had said. As if I had felt the movements of something profound and intrinsic, the ticking over of some earthly cycle whose sounds and effects were, back in 2017, muffled entirely by modern life. I turned back, briefly, and squinted up at the pale orb just beginning its daily journey across the sky and then clapped a hand over my mouth as I suddenly became emotional.

"It's –" I started, gulping and wiping my eyes. "I'm sorry, this is so dumb, but I felt it. I felt it."

Paige looked at me then, and she didn't have to say anything because she understood and I knew it. She squeezed her arm around me even tighter and leaned her head against my shoulder. "Come on, Emma. Let's go get some breakfast."

On the way to the feasting hall the old man from the beach walked by, attended by a small, mixed-sex group of younger people who held their heads at low, respectful angles. The man wasn't tall like the Jarls, nor was he broad. But he wore a tunic decorated with the most elaborate beadwork and embroidery I had seen since I came to the 9th century. Fine threads of leather hung from his cuffs, each with tiny stones and beads fastened at the ends, and they click-clacked against each other with every step the man took. He wore a lot of jewelry, too – gold rings on his fingers, leather bracelets – and his face had the expression of a person who wasn't thinking about mundane matters.

"The gothi," Paige said, when the man had passed. "They're sort of like priests – he only arrived a few weeks ago, after Eirik determined that the community here was now settled enough and big enough to warrant a spiritual leader. He spends a lot of time outside of camp, gathering materials for rituals and – I don't even really know. Eirik says it's not something people talk about much."

When we were seated in the feasting hall with a few others – it was not a communal meal, it appeared – enough time had passed since waking that my stomach rumbled with hunger. A young servant placed a plate of bread – just bread, no cheese, no butter – in front of me but I didn't take a bite, assuming the cheese and butter would soon arrive. It did not.

"Get used to it," Paige said, biting into a piece of the sadly naked bread. "The feasting doesn't start for another couple of weeks."

"What?" I asked, hoping she was joking. "It's December 21st, right? Are you telling me that Christmas dinner here is going to be plain bread and ale?"

She shrugged, taking a sip from her own cup of ale to wash down the dry bread. "It's not just one big party season here," she told me. "Did you listen to what the gothi said? There is a period of sacrifice, of hunger and deprivation, before we can feast. Eirik says it's because the new sun would be jealous if we partied when she was still weak and young. We need to prove ourselves worthy."

I put my head in my hands, not entirely sure the beautiful ceremony on the beach was going to be worth two weeks of a rumbling belly.

"If it's any help," Paige said, "I've found these cultural rituals really beautiful – and useful. It's an interesting thing to go without, you know? To go without material things, I mean – food, comfort, sex. No one in the modern world would –"

"Wait!" I exclaimed, holding one hand up. "Sex? We have to go without sex?!"

"Not us," Paige grinned at my reaction. "Well, I mean, not the people. But the Jarls do, which I suppose means we do, too. Unless you feel like taking one of the warriors out into the woods. There are Yule-beds, too – which just means we're not allowed as many furs as –"

"So you've done this before?"

"No, actually. As I said, this is the first Yule that Eirik has felt the people were ready to observe in full. He says now we have a gothi and more than enough provisions and the people are more settled here, it's time. He says the rituals keep the people together, keep everything coherent."

"No sex?!" I asked again, incredulous.

Paige shook her head. "Nope. Not until the first feast night of Yule."

"Ragnar won't be able to do it," I told her confidently. "He won't. I know he –"

"He has to," Paige replied. "It's not an option. He's a Jarl, he has to. So you better just get used to taking care of yourself, if you know what I mean."

"Are you being serious?" I asked, not entirely convinced Paige wasn't joking – about the no-sex part, anyway. "And if you are – why? Why no sex?"

She grinned. "That's exactly what I asked Eirik when he told me. It's not everyone – well, Eirik says it's supposed to be – but the only people who are really held to it are the Jarls, the gothis and people of very high rank. It seems to be one of those 'set an example' things."

"Yeah, OK," I said. "But that still doesn't explain why. Why ban sex in the first place – especially when it's this cold and there nothing else to do?"

I picked up a piece of dense, butter-less Viking bread and took a bite as Paige explained. "I asked Eirik about that, too. He said it's a 'quiet' time of the year. The days are dark and short, the food stores are often low – although that's not the case this year, with all the successful raids – he says it's a kind of enforced break from the usual routine, a time for people to go inwards, to look to themselves and what they wish for in the coming year, rather than eating and drinking and fucking themselves into oblivion before Yule."

"Mm-hm," I responded, thinking. I still didn't believe Ragnar and I were going to be able to keep our hands off each other, but I could see a kind of sense in what Paige was saying. It was like the old tradition of letting a field lie fallow for a season, to give the soil a 'rest.' Something about the idea of treating souls the same way – even if I didn't think I believed in souls – just felt appropriate and right.

"I thought it was silly at first," Paige continued. "But after thinking about it a little more, it kind of makes sense, don't you think?"

I nodded. "Actually, yes. A period of rest – what better time of year than this one? Even in our time everything slows down around Christmas, doesn't it?"

"Imagine how much better the feast nights – and the nights with our Jarls, after the feasts – will be after a period of deprivation beforehand? The Vikings are good at this kind of thing, they don't all fall apart and start whining the minute they don't get exactly what they want, exactly when they want it. I won't say it hasn't taken me time to adjust – and I'm still adjusting – but I feel like it's been good for me. Like it's made me more resilient in a way that all those years of therapy never did."

* * *

And so the first period of Yule began, and I found myself swept along on the tide of a tradition that felt at once alien and strangely soothing, even in its difficult early days. As it turned out, Ragnar and I weren't given the chance to try to keep our hands off each other because the two Jarls and their highest warriors were separated from their women during the nights. Paige and I, and the other women, slept in the roundhouses. Ragnar, Eirik and the warriors spent their nights outside the camp walls, sometimes with the gothi, sometimes alone, shivering in the snowy woods. When I asked Ragnar what it was about, he seemed more tight-lipped than usual, before explaining to me one evening, as we ate a supper of thin gruel and plain bread in the feasting hall, that it wasn't something he was meant to talk about. And then, when he saw that my curiosity was piqued rather than sated, he smiled and leaned in to whisper in my ear.

"Gods, Emma, the last thing I want is to go back to the forest tonight, where the gothi makes us drink foul teas and leads us on journeys between worlds. What I want is to come back to the roundhouse with you and pull all the dressings off –"

"Foul teas?" I asked, intrigued. "Journeys between worlds? What does –"

But Ragnar shook his head, and I watched as his eyes crawled slowly over my face and lingered on my lips. I wanted to know what was happening in the woods at night between the Jarls and their gothi. I wanted to know what ancient rituals were playing out under the moonlight. But in that moment, when I saw the look in Ragnar's eyes, a pull much more powerful than curiosity yanked me out of my imaginings and sent my arms around his muscled neck.

"Emma!" A female voice rang out immediately from the entranceway to the feasting hall. "Are you finished with your supper?"

We had chaperones during the first part of Yule – well, the men had chaperones. Young men and women in Hildy's service, and almost as annoyingly on top of things as she was. And this particular chaperone's task was to watch Jarl Ragnar that night, to make sure he didn't break the Yule tradition and take me right there on one of the feasting tables.

Ragnar looked at me for a moment before the girl came to lead him away, back to the gothi and the winter night and the spaces between worlds. His eyes were the same color as ever, even in the weak light of the feasting hall, but a darkness had passed over them, then, and for a brief moment I understood why sex was not permitted during that time. If your mind is focused on earthly pleasures, it can make it difficult – maybe impossible – to focus on other thoughts, other ways of being. Of course the gothi didn't want the Jarls and the warriors losing themselves in women and mead and roasted meat during that sacred time of the year, when the eyes of their souls were called to gaze elsewhere.

Not that my understanding lasted long, when Ragnar was led away and I found myself alone at the feasting table, aching for his body, his mouth on mine.

It wasn't just the men who spent their time in the midst of ritual and spirituality during Yule. The women, too, had work to do. The healers – as Paige referred to the small group of older women who tended the sick and delivered babies and womanly wisdom to the people – came to us periodically, to lead Paige and myself and the other Viking wives in the performance of some rite or another.

Part of me was aggrieved when I was led alone one morning to a hot-spring by one of the healers. She stripped me naked in the freezing air and, just as I was about to climb into the relief of the hot water, she produced a thin, flexible tree branch, still adorned with dried leaves, and ran it over my body, gently at first, and then increasingly not-gently as she began to hit me with it until almost every inch of me was pink and stinging. When she finally allowed me into the water, she left the branch and instructed me to get out every little while and hit myself with it, until my skin tingled with the cold and I couldn't stand it any longer.

It wasn't even the physical ordeal – the feeling of the hot water on my cold, sensitive skin was about as close to orgasmic as I've ever experienced without it being the real thing. No, it was not that that annoyed me. It was something the healer said about the purpose of the bath – that it would make me beautiful – for Jarl Ragnar.

Great, I wanted to say, when I sank for the first of many times into the hot ecstasy of the spring. So the men are off journeying between worlds, thinking higher thoughts, and I'm just here making myself pretty for one of them. Wonderful.

Not that I was annoyed enough to leave the spring, of course. But I did bring it up later that evening with Paige, as we sat in her roundhouse wrapped in clean, soft linens and utterly blissed-out after the hot-spring –naked in the snow/whipped with branches –hot-spring routine. She'd spent her day the same way, in one of the other pools in the spring, unseen by me.

"Doesn't that bother you?" I asked, as we sipped the light day-ale which was as much as we were allowed to have during the time of Yule austerity. "Ragnar and Eirik are out there having adventures and it's our job to just stay here and make ourselves pretty?"

Paige chuckled a little. "Yeah. I mean, I can't say I've never had those thoughts – men and women are definitely treated differently here – but, I don't know. Do you really want to be sleeping out in the woods tonight?"

"No," I shook my head. "But that's not the point. The point is the men are seen as these all-important people, their thoughts are important – ours don't matter. All that matters is we look good when they get back from their spiritual journeys with full balls."

"That's not it," Paige said, sitting up straighter so she could toss another log onto the fire and check on baby Eirik, who was asleep on the bed beside her. "It's not that their thoughts matter more than ours. I've thought about this, you know. I asked Eirik about it a few times and he just seemed to think I was crazy to even frame it that way. The way he explained it was that it's about necessity."

"Necessity?" I asked, confused. "How is it necessary that the men spend a few nights running around in the woods on drugs?"

"I don't mean that!" Paige replied. "I mean, OK. Where you and I come from, there's enough food, right? We don't have to worry about starving. We also don't have to worry about getting killed, right? Not as a matter of course in our daily lives, anyway. We don't have to worry about people coming to our house and throwing us out and just taking it, deciding it's their house. But here, they do have to worry about all of that. Everyone does – even the kings and queens. Eirik explained it in survival terms. He said it's not about men being more worthy than women, or vice-versa, it's simply about everyone having a necessary role to play. The women aren't out in the woods tonight because the children and the old people need to be cared for. The grain needs to be ground and the bread needs to be baked."

"OK," I said, still skeptical. "But what's so necessary about the men being out in the forest with the gothi? How does that contribute to survival? Wouldn't it be more useful if they were hunting?"

Eirik began to fuss, then, and Paige lifted him to her breast. "Oh there will be a hunt," she told me. "At the end of this first part of Yule, the men will go on a hunt. The venison will be used for the Yule feasting."

"But what about –" I started, because Paige hadn't explained why the nights with the gothi and the 'foul teas' were necessary. But she saw that I was getting a little heated and held up her free hand.

"Emma, slow down! I'm trying to explain it to you, aren't I? And don't look at me like that, like I've turned into some kind of fifties housewife – this life, here, with the Vikings? It couldn't be farther from that."

I sat back on the furs – Jarl Eirik and Paige's roundhouse was full of what might best be described as day beds. Simple wooden platforms about four feet by two feet, set less than a foot off the ground and cushioned by linen sacks stuffed with straw and then, on top of those, a thick wool blanket and a fur. They were always receiving visitors and they needed somewhere comfortable to put them. "OK," I said, consciously lowering my voice. "I'm just curious. I'm sorry if I got a little loud."

Paige stroked her finger down one of her son's fat cheeks and looked up at me. "The rituals in the woods are just that – rituals, sacred processes. You've only seen a successful Jarl in Ragnar. Hell, I've only seen a successful Jarl in Eirik. I've known only good times. Easy victories. You said the same – that the estate near Caistley fell with ease. But it is not always easy, and no leader is ever confident that he and his people will always be on the winning side. The Jarls are privileged – you've seen it. But it's an exchange. The people agree to allow the Jarl a luxurious roundhouse, confidence in their deference, the power to make decisions and lead men. In turn, they get safety – and the Jarl's get responsibility. If someone dies, it's on Eirik's shoulders – just as it is on Ragnar's if something should befall any one of his people."

My friend was right about that. Ragnar was scarcely older than me, but I'd seen the way he worried if one of his people was sick, or one of his men injured. It wasn't something I understood, because I am from a modern, middle-class family. The only thing I had ever been responsible for was – well, it was very little, if I'm honest. Getting to class on time, I suppose, and even that proved too difficult on an embarrassingly frequent number of days.

"OK," I said to Paige. "I get that. It's so weird, isn't it? How different their lives are – can you imagine anyone we know leading a group the way Eirik and Ragnar do? Deciding when to sail, where to settle, who to promote to positions of responsibility? I don't think I know a single man our age who could do it. Back home, I mean – in 2017."

"Me neither," she agreed. "That's what I was going to say about the rituals the men go through, the preparations for a hunt, the visits to the between-worlds – which is what Eirik calls them. Even that is about survival, isn't it? Because being a warrior is scary. There's a good chance you'll die young, and painfully. A good chance you won't see your children grow up – if you even manage to have any before some grubby stranger shoves his spear into your belly. So the Vikings – all of them, the whole society – they agree to venerate the warriors, to give them their due. The gothi helps them get used to the idea of death, to think of the rewards of an honorable death and a place in the Great Hall in the next world."

"Damn," I commented, thinking deeply about what Paige was saying. "When you put it that way, it's almost kind of awful, isn't it? Preparing them for death? The warriors are our age - some of them even younger!"

"But it has to be that way, that's what Eirik was saying. Everyone has their role, and nothing works if the people don't fulfill those roles. The children die if their mothers don't care for them. The society dies if the warriors don't defend it. Eirik doesn't think I'm dumber than him – actually he constantly says the opposite – but I've never seen even an ounce of this questioning that you're doing – and that I've done my share of – in him before."

"I guess they can't afford to question it, can they?" I asked. "It's like you said – there's work to be done. If no one does it, people die. That's crazy, Paige. Isn't that crazy? I've never thought about any of this before – about how easy we have it in the future."

Paige smiled and held up my empty ale cup, raising her eyebrows at me to see if I wanted more. I nodded and she passed me her sleeping baby so she could pour it. "You're right," she commented, looking back over her shoulder. "You do have it easier. But you also have it harder. The tangible parts – the food, the central heating, the cars – those are easier. But some of the others things, I don't know..."

We talked on into the night, until our heads were nodding with sleep, and then one of Hildy's girls led me back through the cold winds to the westerly roundhouse so I could sleep. And before I did, I thought of Ragnar out in the freezing woods, his eyes focused on seeing the next life, on welcoming it. All my churlish envy was gone after talking and thinking with Paige. If I felt anything for Ragnar that night it was a kind of admiration laced with sadness. He was so young, so vital and strong. And the chances of him dying before he got his first gray hair now seemed so high and so real. Suddenly the bathing in the hot-springs made sense – I even found myself wanting to go again the next day, and again until I was allowed to spend my nights with Ragnar once more. He wasn't out with his warriors and the gothi having fun. He was out learning about what it meant to be a Jarl, about what it meant to suffer, to sacrifice, maybe even to die before his time. And when he came back to me, I was going to show him I understood that.