1.1: A Modern Mind in a YounViking's's Body
I wake with a mouth full of salt and the taste of iron on my tongue, as if the ocean threw sandpaper at my teeth. Panic slams into me, a blinding, hot wave—my mind spins with terror, my heart racing as my chest aches to breathe. Sky, wind, and gulls arguing overhead create a world alive and indifferent, amplifying how utterly displaced I feel. I grip at clarity, fighting down dizziness, dread mounting as I realize this air is strange and this body wrong—a jarring alienation that makes my skin crawl. I roll to my side, coughing up seawater, every muscle screaming survival. When I spot my hands—rough, scarred, clearly not mine—shock rips through me, fear threatening to crush my thoughts.
My forearms are wiry, the sun-scorched skin unfamiliar. As I push up, the world spins: forest to one side, a beach strewn with kelp, a fjord cutting into land. A rowboat floats nearby, an oar tangled in seaweed. A glint near the shore—a knife among netting and driftwood, its hilt known from late-night studies. Urgency grips me; knowledge is the only weapon now.
don't't know this place, and loneliness punches through me, raw and sharp as any wound. The mountains and their shadows stir something desperate—a homesickness for a life I may have lost forever. Every scent—peat, salt—hits like a memory crafted to torment, sending grief twisting in my chest. My knees buckle under the weight of loss and fear, and thknife's's glint on the sand becomes my will to go on, an anchor as I drown in confusion. Out of this emotional storm, a name bursts through, heavy with fate: Ragnar.
No last name. No middle initial. Just Ragnar, the kind of name that turns into thunder when enough voices say it together.
My mind reels, panic swallowing every attempt at reason. The last memory flashes: wet road, locked brakes, a truck barreling down—I relive the terror, a cold finality closing in. Despair mingles with disbelief, grief settling like ice in my veins. Alone, cut off from everything I knew, dread thickens tilit's's almost impossible to breathe.
A wave slaps the shore, spraying my shins, yanking me from the spiral. I force myself to breathe until my chest steadies. The sky is a high white sheet, crushing in its vastness. Each detail is so sharp it hurts—too real to ignore.
Okay. Checklist. Breathe. Each inhalation slices through the panic, hands tingling with fear can't't shake. I scan for injury—no obvious broken bones, but every ache is foreign and unsettling. The rope-burned palms throb, each sting deepening the feeling that don't't belong in this skin. The pendant at my neckThor's's hammer, is the only solid point in all this fear. I grip it, craving comfort, but panic keeps rising; I am more alone and afraid thaI'veve ever been.
Someone yells my name"
"Ragna"!"
The voice comes from the trees, rough and bright, like fire in a dry hearth. I pivot too fast, vision spotting. A boy about my age—no, mbody's's age—bursts through the brush, breathless and grinning likhe's's found a pile of silverHe's's broad-shouldered, pale hair braided, clothes a patchwork of wool and leather. It would look like cosplay if not for the grime and the smell of smoke and animal. He stops dead when he sees me upright and grabs my shoulders hard enough to make the bruises yell"
"You went ove"!" he says, in a language thaisn't't English but lands in my ear likI'veve always spoken it. The words are rounder. Vowels soft with the sound of sea. My stomach flips with the wrongness and rightness of understanding" "Fool fish! I thought the fjord took yo"."I'm'm no"—" I start, then shut my mouth, because sayinI'm'm not who you think will get me a prayer or a knife or both. Also, my voiceIt's's higher than I expect, rough around the edges. It belongs in this throatHe's's still talking" "Father will have my hide if he thinks I left you. Come. The tide turn"."
I nod likthat's's a normal sentence and follow, legs figuring themselves out. The forest closes in—a corridor of birch and pine that smells like sap, damp, and the sweet rot of fallen needles. The path is suggestion, not trail. My new body knows it—feet find the flat places, the stones thadon't't slip. The boy—Frode, my brain supplies, without asking me—keeps up a running commentary, half scolding, half relief. He calls me names that are probably affectionate and definitely insulting, in the way boys at the edge of adulthood teach love by throwing elbows.
Village hits you like a noise before you see it: axes splitting wood, a woman calling in a voice that makes you want to stand up straighter, a dog barking at something idoesn't't like and maybe never will. Then the houses appear, dark wood and turf roofs hunched against the cold, smoke funnels stitching lines into the sky. People turn when we come into the clearing. A few wave. More stare. A man with a scar that turns his mouth into fox's's half-smile looks at me likhe's's measuring grain.
I know this place with an ache so fierce I almost choke on it, something between homesickness and heartbreak. Not becausI'veve been here, but becausI'veve studied places like this until they felt like a home I missed in the wrong direction of time. The difference between a picture and a life is sound and smell—each sensation cuts sharper than it should. This is alive, and it hurts.
Frode shoves me toward the largest hall and drops his voice"Don't't look at him like tha"," he hisses" "You lost the oar and then the boat. He is not soft this mornin"."
Him is Father, then. His name sits in my mouth like a secretI'm'm not ready to say it. The hall swallows us in smoke and dimness, the heat a slap. The air tastes like wood and stew and sweat and old songs ground into beams. Men and women sit along benches, eating, mending, talking low. Two dogs sleep under the central table. At the far end, on a platform more suggestion than throne, a man leans forward with his elbows on his knees. His beard is braided with bits of bone. His eyes flash when they land on me like blades catching the sun.
I have an instant of wanting to make a joke—failed, obviously—but the instinct to survive beats out my mouth. Yet underneath, a flicker of terror coils around ambition and guilt, like a snake in a tight corner, waiting, always waiting. It teases the edge of my control. But I bow my head just enough, my hands clenching instinctively like they remember holding something precious, or dangerous. The weight of mfather's's gaze feels like standing under a sky that might fall. Words arrange themselves, surprising me with their willingness. I misjudged the curren',' I say' 'Iwon't't happen agai'.' The impulse to glance at my father is quick, suppressed; revealing nothing while revealing everything if you were looking.
The stew is a revelation. Ishouldn't't beIt's's fish and barley and something green and bitter that sharpens the edges. But the heat goes straight to the hollows inside me, filling, anchoring. The woman who ladles it into my bowl does it without looking at me, as iI'm'm always here. That steadies me more than anything. Being expected is a kind of grace.
While I eat, I listen. People talk around me like a weather system. A trader is expected in two days with iron. The nexvillage's's goat-er is a liar and stole grazing ground by moving stones while everyone slept. Two children were caught trying to cut their hair like warriors. Someone laughs and says let them; blood will show them their heads are heavy enough without boasting. When I scrape the bottom of the bowl, I feel eyes on me. The priest—not a priest like my century would understand, but the man who keeps the songs and the stories—sits across the fire. His hair is shot through with silver. He watches likhe's's counting the flecks in my eyes.
The day is a long rope of work. Nets are their own language, all twist and patience, logic in loops. My fingers cramp and bleed anew andon't't ask my permission. Frode sings something rude under his breath until I throw a wad of kelp at him and he yelps like I sliced him. The fox-scar man says nothing, but when my knot slips he flicks it with a finger and shakes his headThere's's no malice there. Just the dull ache of standardsIt's's almost easy, how quickly the body remembers what don't't. By noon, my hands have learned the idea of rope. By afternoon, my eyes have learned the shimmer that means the weather is changing. I stop to listen to the rustling of leaves, feeling the wind shift as the air grows cooler, promising rain. By evening, my brain feels like someone rang a bell inside it for hours. A storm is thinking about us from far out. Gathering my thoughts, I decide to walk to the edge of the village, scanning the horizon for any signs of weather disturbance. I have a thought about tacking up a windbreak anit's's so practical and so simple that it frightens me how much I want to grab a hammer and make this place safer. Safer means different. Different means dangerous. I shake off a shiver and note the shadows growing long as I head back, determined to keep my hands busy until the light fadesIt's's night when the priest finds me at the waterline, where the fjord talks to itself in always. He stands quietly until I acknowledge him, which takes longer than it should. My thoughts keep chasing their tails. When I finally look uphe's's not smiling, but his face is a kind thing anyway"
"Your eyes came back olde"," he says.
I go cold all the way down" "From the wate"?"
"From wherever you wen"." He lifts his chin at the pendant on my chest" "The gods leave marks when they return a thing they almost too"."
I could lie. I could tell him I hit my head. I could laugh. The truth sits on my tongue like a coin. don't't spit it out, but don't't hide it entirely" "I had…a drea"," I say carefully" "A long one. I learned things. don't't know if they matte"."
He considers that likit's's a riddle with two right answers" "Things are only dangerous when they want to be. You will learn which of yours d"."
"don't't want to make troubl"," I say, and I do and don't't. Both feel like treason"
"Trouble is a tid"." He touches the hammer at my chest as if it were a small animal that might bite" "You can learn the currents. Yocan't't command the se"."
He leaves me with the water and my pulse, and the night leans in with the sound of a hundred small lives doing their living. I sit until the stars push through the cloud ragged as a torn sail. When I finally crawl onto the pallet that is apparently mine—fur, wool, the smell of smoke in everything—the exhaustion wraps around me like a mother and a jailer. Sleep takes me before fear can finish its sentence.
I dream of snakes. Not coils and fangs, but scales like shields, patterns like maps, moving under skin. I dream of a pit, and a crown, anEngland's's cliffs rising like teeth. I dream of the faces of boys don't't know yet and love already, named like storms.
When dawn stares me in the face, pale and implacable, I have a plan thaisn't't a plan, but a fact with edges: repair the nets before the equinox. The task is simple, tangible, and necessary, and it grounds me with the urgency of the sea. I can push this place gently without breaking it if I learn its seams. I can move like water, take the shape of every vessel, wear down rock. don't't know if I want to be a legend. I know don't't want to be a song that ends in silence.
1.2: First Ripples: Survival, Secrecy, and the OlGods's' Price
The first ripple is small enough that no one but me feels itIt's's a map, drawn in the dirt with a stick while Frode eyes me likI'veve started worshiping antsWe'rere on the headland above the beach where the wind knifes your ears and the sun pretendit's's warm. I press the stick into damp earth and trace the fjord, the sandbar thaisn't't always a sandbar, the rocks that snag nets, the current that runs like a muscle under the surface when the tide turns. I put an X where men always fall in if thedon't't hold the rope when they jump from the big boat to the little.
Frode squints" "We know thi"."
"Do w"?" I say, and try for lightness over the thrum in my chest" "Show me where the current runs hardes"."
He points in three placesHe's's wrong in one. I say nothing. The point is not to be right. The point is to start naming things out loud that live in the bodies of people who never needed them named. I shift the stick, draw a line to the wrong place" "This is where I fell in yesterda"," I say" "I thought it was her"." I circle the true dangerous spot" "Iwasn't'"."
He grunts, the sound of a fact sliding into his head" "We could set a line her"," he says" "Tie to that root. The anchor keeps slippin"."
Together we rig it. Root, rope, stoneIt's's nothingIt's's everything, becausit's's the first time I let my mouth hold onto something I remember from a life can't't afford to say out loud. The rope takes the pull and keeps a boy on a boat. Maybe that boy is me. Maybit's's someone else. Either way, the line hums under my hand like a small god and I say a thank-you to no one in particular.
The second ripple is a list. Wdon't't call it that because listaren't't a thing you say as a thingthey'rere just carried in heads and done when they can be done. But I make one anyway, under my breath, while I walk the hall and the sheds and the places we stash the stuff that makes winter survivable. How much barley. How much salt. How many arrows with fletching that will not steer true. How many boats with seams that need more pitch. don't't write anything down. There is nothing to write on that will survive a day without being used for something, anI'm'm not ready to be the guy who hoards bark with marks on it like his thoughts are too important for air. I keep it in my brain and check it twice a day until discomfort turns into order. At night, I whisper it like a prayer until it feels like one.
The third ripple is a lieIt's's a sweet one, and it saves face more than lives, which is why it works. The fox-scar man—Eirik, I pull up from the place names live in this body—catches me adjusting the angle of the fish racks so the wind will do more work and smoke less. He lifts an eyebrow sharp enough to cut cheese" "You think you know better than your aun"?"
"Iwasn't't m"," I say, hands up" "Sigrid told me to shift them so the wind would strip moisture faste"."
Sigrid, who does actually know better than most people here anisn't't above experimenting if it means her winter fish keep less mold. Eirik stares at me, stares at the racks, and then grunts again, which is becoming my favorite word. He adjusts them one more finger-length like he meant to do it. The men on the far side of the yardon't't even look over. We all save pride together. The fish dry cleanerThat's's itThat's's all. But when the firsweek's's batch lasts a day longer before it goes sweet, Sigrid calls me useful without smiling. In this placethat's's almost love.
The fourth ripple costs. It starts at the stones by the goats—an argument in sharp voices about a wall that grew in the night—and ends at the council fire where men weigh fairness likit's's iron. The neighborinvillage's's boy swears on his mother hdidn't't move the boundary. Our old men swear on nothing but dirt that he did. Everyone is right in the way that makes war. I stand, heart in my mouth, and say, as iit's's the most boring idea in the world" "If you move the line every season to match the water and the grass, yodon't't have to move it in the nigh"." I talk about markers that rot and show their age so no one can pretend they were always there. About walking together at the turn of the seasons to agree out loud where ground gives itself. I keep it small, no big words, no big ideas that make people hea" "ki"g" when I sa" "fai".It's's not my place to speak. I know it by the way heads tilt, by the way mfather's's shoulder tightens. But the priest watches me over the fire with that not-smile that is maybe approval and maybe a warning. In the end, they agree to try it, because it sounds like work, and work is honest. The boy from the neighbor village walks away without looking ba,cas ifke he knows I made hifeel m less of a thief. Two weeks later, a man who has always been friendly looks at me like I stole his dog. Every solution creates a wound somewhere else. I scratcThor's's hammer and remind myself I did not come here to be loved.
Night after night, I make a habit of vanishing at the same timeIt's's a lie inside a ritual: I go to the headland alone, but not for secrets. I go to breathe. I go to talk to the sky in a language that is just the inside of my head. I go because the northern lights start to show themselves in thin curtains some evenings, a silent wave of green and purple like a bruise healing and aching all at once. The first time it happens, I almost cry from the shock. In my other life, I watched videos of this on a screen the size of my palm. Here, it eats the sky. I hold my breath likI'm'm in a chapelIt's's on the fifth night of this routine that someone follows me without trying to be quiet. Footsteps crack twigs like unspooled rhythms. don't't turn, because pretending to be surprised is a bad look. When she sits next to me on the cold rock, an equal distance from the cliff edge and the path, I know who it is by the way the air shifts. SigneShe's's two years older than me and carries herself like gravity is a thinshe's's learned to negotiate with instead of obeyShe's's also the only persoI'veve seen throw a spear further than my father, which means don't't want to get on her bad side, and also that I keep accidentally watching her hands"You'rere making list"," she says, a statement that is not a question"
"What are list"," I return, because I am an idiot.
She snorts and bumps my shoulder with hers" "Things in your head. In lines. You count. I see your mouth move when you thin"."
"Rud"," I say, ancan't't help smiling. Shdoesn't't smile back, exactly, but the corners of her eyes soften. We sit in silence for a while, because silence here is a thing you share more often than words and because watching the sky together feels like getting away with something"
"Do you drea"?" she asks, eventually"
"Ye"," I say, carefully honest" "Too muc"."
"Of wha"?"
"Snake"," I say, because the truth is a trap and a key" "And kings and water and men who sing about dying likit's's a feas"."
She grunts, which apparently is the language of my life now" "Then keep your mouth shut until you learn which songs are worth singin"."I'm'm tryin"," I say, and she nods like she can see the strain of it in my neck.
The old gods ask their prices in the way of old things: they do not itemize. It takes me a while to notice that each time I shift something, the world bumps back. The rope we tie at the dangerous spot saves a boy from going under in a bad squall, and thaboy's's mother spends her gratitude throwing it at the gods, not at us. Good. BuEirik's's nephew falls a day later on slick rock because the line tightens at a moment ididn't't used to. He survives with a cut from hip to knee that will scar jagged and make him old before he is. My lisdoesn't't have a place for that. My chest does, and it hurts.
In the quiet aftermath, I sit alone with this ledger of choices and consequences turning over in my mind. I weigh the boy, now safe but unaware of the gamble that bought his life, againsEirik's's nephew, whose injury has become a permanent reminder that there are no gains without losses, no changes without echoes. Is this progress? I ask myself, feeling the weight of the answer settle like a stone in my stomach. Do we move forward knowing each step might cost someone their future? The gods remain silent, leaving me only with my own ambivalence as solace.
The fish dry better and last longer. Sigrid gets a small reputation for having a lucky smokehouse. Men come from two villages over to look and say they taste something different. They ask questions. She answers without giving them what they want. I do not put myself in that fire. The priest catches my eye and nods as if to say, good, you are learning to hide your teeth.
The council walks the line at the change of season, and we set markers together. No one moves them in the night. The neighbor boy stops scowling at me. Instead, a cousin I always liked begins to mutter, not at me, but at the idea of new things. He stands a little farther away when I come near. I catalog that distance like supplies. This is the cost of the third ripple. I pay it and try not to spend the change.
The biggest ripple I do not planIt's's morning heavy with fog, the fjord a flat piece of pewter. We hear shouting thaisn't't ours, voices flayed thin by panic. By the time we find them, the little trading boat is half-sunk, a family clutching the hull like fleas on a dying dog. The father—dark beard, eyes blown wide—waves a strip of cloth like surrender. don't't wait to ask. I run for the rope at the headland, and when Eirik swears at me for stealing it, I swear back, and we race, and for the first time since I woke up inside this life, my brain and my body click like gearsI'm'm shouting orders in clips, anthey'rere listening becausthere's's no time to not. We anchor the rope to the root we already know holds. We form a chain. We tie knots shouldn't't know names for but my fingers do. I go into the water up to my chest and feel it haul at my legs, angry as a thing with a grudge. We pull the mother first, then the boy, then the girl with blood in her hair, then the father who keeps trying to hand us a bag that clinks like coin and which we refuse because waren't't stupid. When they are all on the shore and breathing, I can finally hear the priest behind me, chanting not a prayer but an old rhythmic counting that keeps hands moving in time.
The fog thins like a curtain letting us back into the world. People slap my back hard enough to bruise, and Eirik says nothing at all, which is louder than a speech. The father who almost drowned presses the bag of clinking into my hands and I push it at him likit's's poison. He insists. Something stutters in the transaction: gratitude stiff when it should be rawI'm'm too tired to parse it. I shove the coins at Sigrid, who has already begun to scold the rescued woman for shivering so loudly" "Sal"," I say" "Buy sal"."
don't't expect the priest to be the one to pull me aside later. He brings me to the edge of the trees, where the ground is soft with old needles. He looks at me likI'm'm a skittish animal and a storm at the same time"
"You stepped into thgods's' river toda"," he says" "You did well. But be careful. Gratitude binds as tightly as envy. Yodon't't want sailors from away singing your nam"."
"Wh"?" I ask, and I know why, but I want to hear it in his mouth"
"Because the world is small and news is fast when it is a good stor"," he says" "And because names attract knives. You are not ready for eithe".He's's right. My whole plan is to be a shadow wearing a future under my skin. But the sky keeps putting me in the bright places, and don't't seem to know how to say no when people are drowning.
That night, the hall is thick with heat and the buzz of people wanting to relive the morning. The family we pulled from the water sits near the fire, pale and shaky, the children asleep in a pile with ondog's's head on their feet. The father catches my eye and raises his cup. I nod, uncomfortable with how like a target a raised cup makes a person. Signe drops onto the bench beside me and bumps my knee with hers" "You could have die"," she says, as ishe's's telling me I left the door open"
"So could the"," I say, and she rolls her eyes like that is not the point, which iisn't't"
"You are going to make it hard to keep your head dow"," she says" "I will try not to cut it off when the time come"."
"Comfortin"," I say, and she grins finally, quick and bright like a sword catching light.
I sleep badly, dreams crowded and hot. In one, the snake pit is a joke my brain tells me: a pit filled not with snakes but with voices, each one a future whispering what will happen if I tug this thread or that. Save him, lose her. Spill blood now, swallow it later. Trade a name for a dozen lives. There is no choice that does not make a second choice for me. When I wake, sweat cold on my back, the dawn looks like a thin blade again and my mouth tastes like fear.
I kneel in the dirt behind the hall and put my hands in the soilIt's's a stupid ritual, but it helps. My fingers come up black, nails packed with earth. I press my thumb into the meat of my palm until I feel the point where pain becomes information. My list for the day is ordinary: pitch a seam, check the stores, help Sigrid with new racks, see if Eirik will teach me how to feel for rot in boards with a knife point. Ordinary is the robe I put on over everything wild and ragged.
At the headland, the wind bites. The rope hums. I stand with it for a while, listening, learning its one song, learning it so well that maybe later, when the songs get bigger and more costlyI'llll still be able to hear this one under them like a heartbeat.
don't't know what kind of leadeI'm'm going to become. don't't know iI'm'm going to be a leader at all. Legend is a story people tell about someone whethey'veve forgotten how to forgive their own compromisesI'm'm not a legendI'm'm a boy with a borrowed body and a brain full of futures. I watch the water, and I wait for the next ripple to show me where the shore is shallow and where it drops away without warning.
And when Frode yells that my father wants me, now, and Eirik wants me, yesterday, and Sigrid wants me, always, I go, becausthat's's the price of being here, and because moving is how you keep from turning into stone. The old gods can keep their marksI'llll pay for mine with rope burns and fish scales and the ache in my hands wheI'veve counted one too many sacks of barley. Destiny can wait. I have work.