Prologue:
Nat yelped as she attempted to tighten one of the springs on the wind-up ballerina only to have it pop out of place and bounce off of one of the cuckoo clocks that she had refinished and scratch off a patch of drying varnish.
"Darn, gosh and golly!" she cried out in frustration. She could vaguely hear Grandma Patrice's admonition in her head. "Only the uncultured use minced oaths, Natalie. Grants are never uncultured."
"Grant's also never work with their hands," Nat grumbled to herself. "Not that you're around anyway to rain disapproval upon my plebian choice of employment." She said this to the delicately fashioned Columbine that had so vexed her. She had actually designed the figure off of the Grant Family Matriarch from black and white photographs of the woman's youth in a finishing school in Italy. She thought it was apropos that though the figure looked as delicate as crystal, it was crafted of steel. "Much like mygrand-mère," she muttered to herself.
It was true that the last scion of the most vaunted House of Grant did pick a most unsuitable calling, and what some would ungraciously call a hobby, seeing that Natalie never had and probably never would have to work for her living. In any case an artist might have been acceptable, even an approved choice had she not picked iron, steel, and copper as her mediums. Anything that required an understanding of Mechanical engineering with an emphasis on metallurgy and also required that she make use of a blow torch and an old fashioned blacksmiths bellows would never be considered appropriate for a Lady of the House. The use of her blacksmith's hammer also had the added con of ensuring that she had the broadest shoulders and thickest arms ever to grace the Hallowed Halls of Nordstrom's.
"Though," she admitted to herself with a shrug, "it is fun sending pushy shop girls off to find evening gowns that would never in billion years come in a size to fit across my shoulders."
As she reached down to pick up the wayward spring, she heard a knock on the door to her workshop. Focusing on the cuckoo clock again, she saw that it was almost six.
"Shoot, Gerard is here," she mumbled. "Going to go off into ecstasies about the newest pre-historic artifact I'm sure."
"Nat, darling," she heard through the door, "don't be boorish and pretend you can't hear me!"
"Fine then, there's nobody here but us chickens!" she replied. Standing back up and giving her back a satisfying stretch.
"Just open the door, you hammer-wielding misanthrope," came the disgruntled reply. "Why you insist on cooping yourself up in this musty barn you call a workshop when you ought to be sipping cocktails at the Ritz, I don't know. It's 1925, my sweet, and your rich and if you didn't insist on being strong enough to throw a calf over your shoulder, attractive." Nat blew a loose curl out of her face as she opened the door to her loquacious friend. Gerard sent her a charming smile and twinkled blue eyes from behind his circular rimmed glasses. "You should be reducing the general male population into one quivering pulp right now," he finished.
"It just turned five now," Nat replied sourly. "Hardly cocktail hour. And why in the nine hells would I want to reduce anyone into piles of quivering manflesh?"
"Not piles," he replied cheekily, "a pile. Much more challenging. And I know you like a challenge. Imagine the logistics involved in getting them all together so that you can use your impressive feminine wiles upon at one time."
"Gerard, stop trying to charm me and just show me what you want, so you can leave and I can finish my commission." Nat replaced the spring and attempted to set it before she made her way out of the shop and across the Rose Garden, then the kitchen garden to the kitchen door. Gerard followed behind and pretended to pout at Nat's grouchy reply.
He straightened his waistcoat and settled his glasses on his nose. "Fine then little miss business only," he replied. "I left it on the tea table."
Nat's heart skipped a beat. "Don't panic," he said, "I made sure not to scratch the varnish. Wouldn't want to damage your precious antiques."
"Your one talk of antiques, Gerard," she said almost spitefully. Missing lunch and four o'clock tea always put her in an awful mood.
"They are not antiques," he said with a huff. "They are artifacts, of the most rare and important nature. Why I feel the need to educate ungrateful cretins like yourself, I'll never know."
"Educate me, my foot. You brought it here because it's easier to come to me for a description of the alloys found in that bizarre dig of yours than to do it yourself or contact that so and so of a Geologist, Lee, to do it.
"The term you're looking for is prick, darling," he said with a sigh. "And that is true, I didn't want to risk damaging it by breaking out chemistry set. How you can make your diagnosis just by looking is beyond me."
"It's a gift," she said with a smile. "Now let's see what we have here." They sat down in front of the tea table and Nat picked up the strange item placed there.
It was a long thin sword, a foot and a half in length with spiraling script wound about the length of the blade. From her limited experience dealing with Grant's previous artifacts, the blade appeared to be inscribed with Nordic runes, but what they actually said was beyond her knowledge. "Did you find it in some religious site? Perhaps a temple mound of some sort?" she queried.
"Yes," he replied, "it's obviously ceremonial with the amount of detail."
"I would say so." Her brow wrinkled. "This is embarrassing, but I don't know what it is. Usually I'm able to tell, but it's too hard to be bronze, the wrong sheen for iron, and entirely the wrong color for steel, not that I would expect steel in a Nordic mound. I've never seen anything like it."
She picked it up and ran her finger along the edge, drawing a miniscule drop of blood across the blade. "Amazing, it's still sharp," she said in wonder. She looked up into Gerard's face, not noticing when the drop of blood was pulled into the runes and disappeared. "What does the inscription say?" she asked in a hushed tone.
Standing behind her to read over her shoulder, he bent down and squinted over the sword. "I only transcribed the first half of the inscription, the second half is in a runic alphabet I am unfamiliar with. Roughly, the first half translates to 'This is the key to the House of Lost Ways. Many have found It's doors and entered It's halls but few have found their way back.' Ominous, isn't it?"
"Hmmm… The House of Lost Ways," Nat mumbled. "Strange, but I can imagine that many people would have found that attractive. I wouldn't mind a trip," she said light heartedly. She picked up the sword, with a final laugh and in a satirical voice she said, "Take me away, to the House of Lost Ways." Then she sliced the sword downwards and prepared to return it Gerard, but as she turned to face him, she saw his handsome bookish face drain of color and then he was gone.
Or perhaps, she was gone.
Gone to where? Where was she? What is this place?
She was nowhere. Everywhere. There was a swirling whiteness that consumed her mind, and sometimes when it seemed as though she had forgotten who or what she was, the whiteness would clear, and for a moment she would be Nat again. But she wasn't Nat, not Nat-As-She-Was. A different Nat. She would know things, lost things. Runes would come to her, Runes but not runes. Runes that did instead of runes that said. And then the whiteness would swirl and she was Not-Nat again.
The whiteness came and went it felt like for a thousand thousands of years, making and unmaking her, a painful maddening experience that left her wishing she could take a breath in place where air was not needed. And finally when the agony receded she remembered that she had eyes, and when she opened them the whiteness was gone and replaced by, by… what was it again? Ah, yes, sky. She stared up into the vastness of the sky unblinking for many hours remembering. Recalling how to take air into her lungs, how to flex her fingers, how to light a forge, and inscribe runes into a sword so that its edge never dulled, how to fit gears together to make a doll dance, and the color of her dead mother's eyes. So many things returned to her, and she was once again completely Nat, the Nat-That-Is. A strange Nat, she thought. But I cannot be other than what I am.
She pulled her aching body to her feet and looked out into the unfamiliar territory. I do not know this place, she thought with indifference. Her stomach growled and she set her mind on finding people. She saw several spires of smoke in the distance that looked like they might belong to a town and made her way in that direction in the hopes of dinner and a bed. Sleep, I remember enjoying that, she thought. I never seemed to want to leave my bed, she mused in slight amusement. I wonder why that was.
Perhaps I will remember.