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Once again, I stared at my old brown satchel. My hand reached inside, fingers brushing against the yellow dog-eared pages of my ancient copy of 1984. My dad had always loved Dystopia and Sci-fi. This particular copy was filled with his decade old scrawlings - notes and ideas from many years before. When I was a child. When I was with him night and day.
My fingers flicked over to the second book. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. In his case, a mysterious journey to the future. In mine, one to the past. Lord almighty I missed them, my parents. My mother would be sat reading Oscar Wilde and smiling charmingly to herself as she hummed softly to the Vivaldi record in the background. My father would be dancing, glass of port in one hand and a book in the other.
And I'd be there. On the sofa. Beside them. A bright smile as I watched the scene play out, happy and content in the world to which I belonged. And then reality dawned on my once more, the rain spattering down and smudging the neat inkwork. Desperately, I shoved the old books back into my leather satchel and looked up at the grey clouds.
This was home now. This was my life. For better or worse.
My lips pursed, eyes sore as I thought about everything that I'd lost. And then everything that I'd gained. New friends, companionship, hope to help forge the future as my parents would later study it.
God, I wondered what they must've been going through. Their daughter gone, vanished without a trace. Perhaps they thought I'd been kidnapped, assaulted, killed. Little did they know that no logical explanation could come close. Little did they know that I was safe.
An old song played in my head, as though it were a scene from a cheesy Hollywood movie. And I thought about my life. What made me so special? The old lady said she could see it in me, that the stone would pick me. But why? What was different about me? I was just a girl from Oxford, not exactly a Viking in the making. And yet, somehow, I'd managed to survive.
I looked down at my watch, now no longer working. It still told the time that it had when I first arrived here. I wasn't sure why I kept wearing it, perhaps more for sentiment than actual usefulness. Nevertheless, tradition appeared to triumph.
Since my conversation with Ivar, and his argument with his brothers, I'd found myself feeling more and more comfortable here each day. He'd arranged for one of his men to stand guard with me, instead of with him. And, as comforting as the gesture was, it was still rather awkward to walk around with an armed guard all day. As if I was important. As if, I wasn't just some girl from Oxford.
"You're rather quiet, you know." I spoke cheerily, packing up my things but quickly being distracted by the sweet berries growing out of the wall. "If you don't want to be here, I don't mind walking back on my own."
He looked at me, contemplating my offer and then shaking his head. "My orders were to stand guard-"
"And protect me?" I smiled, holding back a small chuckle. "From the blackberries?"
"Ivar said-"
"Ivar doesn't have to know." I answered calmly. "Go have a rest, I'll be fine." Gratefully, the young man nodded and left me there in silence as I began my exploration.
There were so many plants growing, many I knew and many that I didn't. As my hands traced the stone walls, I noticed the difference between how they felt now and how they did when last I touched them - over a thousand years prior. 11 hundred years, to be exact.
As I continued my stroll, I began to realise how unpopulated York had become. I'd wandered so far from everyone else without even noticing. I slipped through a hole in the old Roman walls - ruined by centuries of weathering and war beforehand - and found myself with one final dilemma. Perhaps not final at all, but some part of me hoped that it might be.
As I stared out past further battlements, my eyes widened. There it was. That stone. That same stone. I clambered over more rocks, falling out from the wall and onto the hard surface of the ground. There it was. Within my grasp.
