There was five old women and about six younger ones, two of which were pregnant. Anya made a twelfth member of this little coven, which had to be what it was. Vanessa wished she had worn her cross necklace. Not being uber-religious herself, the cross would have made her feel better anyway.
It had taken about two or three hours to walk to this little cabin in the mountains. The women all exclaimed excitedly in her appearance. The older women knew English fairly well, the younger ones, knew fewer words. Anya said they had to learn multiple languages before they take their post as the keeper of the stones. Vanessa wanted to ask what she was going on about again, but she needed to use the bathroom, and eat before anything.
The women pulled her out a gray wool dress -- so it was some kind of wool and not burlap -- they told her to put that on, over a thinner cotton shift, with little leather slippers. She figured she should let them be humored enough to feed her and take her back to Oslo, if anything else.
They took her into an extra room and showed her the chamber pot. You have GOT to be kidding. She changed, but skipped the stays altogether because she didn't want to call anyone to squeeze the life out of her helping her get them on. After having seeing there really was not a bathroom, Vanessa surrendered her bladder to the chamber pot.
They fed her some kind of stew, Vanessa was not quite sure what was in it meat wise. It was hot and it was food, so she ate it with no abandon.
After she was fed and in the current fashion, she was sat down in a circle of them where they asked her about her time, and how she came to the stone circle.
Vanessa told them about America in the 1990s and how Oslo was in her time. The women listened with awe. She told them how she had gotten lost being curious, and the women tsked at that. They got excited to know Vanessa could name the runes, if not interpret a great deal of them.
"If you recognized Nauthiz, and it's meaning on the stone, why did you go through it anyway?" One of the younger women, named Krista, asked.
"I already had touched it before it occurred to me what it meant, and by that time I had been sucked in already."
Anya nodded as though, that was expected. "And then what, Elskling, what did the stones sound like?"
"What did they…. You mean you can't hear them?" Vanessa asked, the thought only just occurring to her.
All the women shook their heads. "It is part of the position." An older woman stated, Vanessa could not recall her name.
"As…keeper of the stones, you said?" Vanessa asked.
The old lady nodded. "We are a secret order. As were our mother's before us. The stones have been here for as long as we have known, but we do not know when they first got there. Or when the runes got carved into them. There have been people every now and then who come through, and we are there to help them adapt."
"Adapt?" Vanessa asked.
"There was this one woman," The old woman continued, "Before the first of the keepers decided to take their post. She came through wearing similar clothing as you did. She called them…jeans, I believe that is what she called them." Seeing Vanessa nod, she began again. "She hiked her way out of the mountains, into a village. This was the time of the Norsemen…"
"Vikings!" Vanessa said excitedly.
"Yes." The lady continued. "Vikings. They saw her garments and knew not what to make of her. She asked if they were on a set of some kind, what ever that is, and the men began after a while to think her quite mad. The women in the group, one of which was a Saxon prisoner who was later married to one of the men, and who knew the girl's language."
The lady took a pause and drank from goblet near by. "The Saxon understood the words she was saying, about a cave and singing stones. But she wasn't making sense of it. So the Saxon asked her husband, if he could accompany herself, the strange woman, and a few of the other wives who took interest in the poor girl to this cave. He obliged. When they got there, the girl would not go in, complaining that the stones would get her, and 'can you hear them? Can you hear the stones?' Only one of the women heard it. And upon further exploration, they had gone in, and the one who heard them had vanished."
Vanessa, and the others all listened, not making a noise. The others knew the story of course, but they were into it nonetheless.
"The small exploration party was shocked. They went back and the woman's husband blamed the outsider of murdering his wife. Before the group who saw what had happened could prevent them, they cut her head off. The other women, there was six, grouped together and decided to become the keepers of the stones. Since they couldn't hear the stones, they didn't fear the stone would take them. And their husbands would let them keep watch out for their woman who disappeared, or any new people who came through."
"And did anymore come through?" Vanessa asked, her hands had been clutching her neck since hearing the poor other woman's unfortunate death.
Anya took up from there. "Oh, of course. There hasn't been any more since any of us have been alive unfortunately. Before Marta's time as a keeper," she indicating the old woman who had told the tale, "there had been a few, some of which died during their journey. Another came through exclaiming that it had worked, the gemstones were the key."
"Gemstones?" Vanessa's hands went to her ears, where her absent diamonds had been.
"Gemstones." Agreed Marta. "The woman had been a witch, and confessed it to us freely. She had studied the carvings on the stones many of times, and read about previous attempts in other parts of the world. None of us could figure out the meanings the runes has said. There was something about colored stones, so I guess she meant that. Did you wear gemstones coming through?"
"I had diamonds. Earrings. They disappeared." Vanessa confessed.
Some of the women muttered to each other in Scandinavian. Anya grinned. "She said sometimes the gems don't make it through, if they are weak. You are lucky that you made it through when your gems did not." This was agreed upon by the others.
Marta silenced them all again. "Well, since you are in this time and your gems are gone, we wouldn't send you back through thinking you could not make it. You can't speak Norwegian, but you do speak English. Would you like to go to England, or maybe the colonies?"
"Well I am from Savannah, so I guess the colonies." Vanessa loved the Vikings and all, but she loved her throat a bit more and felt being far away from Norway may be best.
Marta grinned. "In the morning we will ride back to Oslo. From there, we will buy you passage to the Colonies. It has been wonderful to meet with you, try to adapt, and do not tell another soul about the way you got here. Tell them your parents died of some ague."
"Um…okay." Vanessa felt a bit uneasy, but the cot they gave her engulfed her into sleep before she could think on it any more.
