“You sent me to this place,” Agata said without question.
The woman smiled. “Child, you’re right where you need to be.”
“Where am I, a different part of Norway or something? I’m clearly out in the middle of nowhere with people that think it’s in style to live like they did centuries ago.” Agata rubbed her hands over her arms, the blanket doing nothing to keep the cold out. “I didn’t ask for this.”
The old woman looked at where Stian slept. “We always want what we don’t think we need,” she said in this cryptic voice and went to stare at Agata with those creamy white eyes again. “But when we are given the opportunity to see it for ourselves, experience it, then we see that it is what we’ve been missing.”
Agata thought on those words. “What in the hell are you talking about? You drugged me, shipped me off to this place where Stian keeps, well, kept me chained up, where villagers would like to skin me over my association with that Viking.” God, she was arguing with this woman in her dream. Closing her eyes she shook her head. This was too bizarre. This whole situation was strange.
“Did you not tell me you wished for something else?”
Agata closed her eyes again and rubbed her forehead.
“You are in the In-Between, child, and if you truly were unhappy you’d have no trouble leaving. You’d be given the chance to escape of your own free will.” The woman continued to stare at her. “You’d be shown the way out, but only if you truly wanted to leave.”
“This is crazy,” Agata whispered. “I can’t understand him, and up until last night I have tried to escape. I don’t want to be here.” But as the words left her mouth this strange feeling overcame her. Did she really mean what she’d said?
She looked around the small hut, thought on the fact that in this short time she’d learned where everything was, and the schedule Stian kept as he worked day and night. To say this was a simpler life was an understatement. If anything it was worse, harder, more brutal. The people within it killed with little provocation.
“So you’re telling me you sent me to some kind of alternative universe?” Agata shook her head. “This is so damn crazy,” she said for the hundredth time since being dropped in the Twilight Zone.
“The In-Between, child.” The older woman pointed to Stian. “If he wasn’t who you truly belonged with, you wouldn’t have been given to him.”
Given to him?
“Enjoy the freedom of not having to pretend, child.”
“None of this makes sense.” She spoke to herself. “Are you a witch or something?” God, Agata sounded so ridiculous, felt stupid for even engaging in this conversation. But the truth was she was here, having this conversation with a woman in her dreams, knowing that she was no longer in her time, and so she had no option but to accept what was happening until it could be changed. The woman grabbed a small, coin-purse sized satchel from one of the pockets in her oversized cloak, and handed it to Agata.
“You are not a prisoner.”
“Try telling Stian that,” Agata said and grabbed the satchel.
“The warrior has had a bad life, one nobody should endure no matter what plane you live in.” The old woman nodded to the satchel. “If you truly want to leave, then all you have to do is dump those contents in water and drink it. Same as before, but, child, you must really want to leave, deep in your bones, in your very soul.”
Agata looked up, feeling her eyebrows knit in confusion. She was in an alternate dimension, but that wasn’t as unbelievable as it should have been. Before she could ask what that meant the old woman was gone. This chill raced along her body, more pronounced now then it had ever been.
She slowly opened her eyes, and shot up on the pallet, a small sound leaving her. Stian was up and alert, the small ax he held in his hand poised like he meant to do some serious damage. His eyes weren’t on her though, as if she might dart off, but scanning the hut. He rested back down beside her, pulled her close again, and whispered something in her hair.
Agata couldn’t relax, not even when she felt the heavy, deep breathing of Stian as he drifted back to sleep. She stared at the ceiling, counted the rows of logs that made the roof, and opened her hand. Lifting the satchel up her heart pounded. This was quite possibly the strangest thing she’d ever encountered, the weirdest thing she’d ever lived through. In her heart she knew that she couldn’t stay here.
This wasn’t her home, and even if her apartment in the city was lonely and cold, it was still where she found comfort on those empty nights. But even after being here for a week, or hell she didn’t even know how long since the days seemed to run together, she’d never felt the kind of desire as she had with Stian tonight.