When Danika Lovelle was born, her parents rejoiced. She had many nicknames all called in love, Nika, Dani, Lovey. All was well. Her father was a historian, specializing in music across the ages. He consulted on films and television shows, escorting and playing his replica or antique instruments around the world for concerts and other projects. He was the only one who always called her by her full name, singing it out around the house. Danika grew up dancing on the carpet in their living room, while her father played her all the music of the ages. Along with his songs, he would tell her all the stories, because he always said that music was the way that stories were told. That song connected all the times and people of the world. He was a smiling man. Her mother was more serious, but even she had to smile, when she saw her little daughter on her father's lap, singing nonsensical songs while he strummed a guitar, or a lute. Ms. Lovelle worked with computers, designing software for the US Government, very private work, and so the little family of three lived quietly far away in the corner of Maine. Danika's kingdom was surrounded by dense pine forest and pushed to the cliffs that kissed the Atlantic Ocean. It was filled with song and as much learning as she wanted.
To her family's surprise she developed a love for martial arts, all her own, like nothing anyone she knew had ever seen. There was one martial arts school and when her dad couldn't drive her, she would jog the mile and a half to the dojo. Rain or shine.
The closest public school was miles to the south, and public school did not align well with the travel that her father's job demanded, and the long hours that her mother's did. Her parents taught her at the kitchen table with all the books she could ever want. When he travelled, Mr. Lovelle would bring his little girl with him, and so she saw some of the greatest cities, opera houses, cathedrals, and monuments of the modern world. She'd visit the foreign martial arts schools when her father was rehearsing or working, even climbing the long stairs to a Shaolin temple on a trip to China. When she was at home, her closest friends were the children who lived on the nearby Passamaquoddy Reservation at Pleasant Point. Out in the middle of nowhere, the children were free to roam the woods, go camping, and explore to their heart's content. Danika was a common sight on the reservation, and when her friends learned the older skills, like basket making and weaving, she tagged along. Her world was wild and free and perfect. And then it all wasn't.
She had been out stargazing on the cliffs with her best friend Rae, and some other friends. She went home and found the house empty. This was expected. Her father and mother had travelled together to Boston. Her father for a concert, her mother for a conference. They had decided to watch the Boston Marathon before returning home. Danika was accustomed to handling the house herself. But when her uncle, her mother's cousin really, showed up on her doorstep with the worst news possible, Danika went from independent spirit to like any other 13 year old girl. Weeping in the arms of a stranger she'd seen only in pictures.
Her uncle tried his best. He was really rather young, but her father had no family, and her mother was the youngest of her family save for Uncle Gideon. No one else had been capable of caring for her, or had even wanted to try. Gideon with his career as a writer had stepped up and even offered to stay in Maine instead of dragging Danika away from her home. He wasn't her parents but he tried. Danika took control of her own education, sitting at the kitchen table alone and spending more time out in the forest. She maintained her father's instruments until buyers came forward and she was in no position to refuse their offers. Men in suits came to collect her mother's computer system and every file, scrap of paper, and piece of anything in her mother's home office. By age 19 the happy house with the big windows looked very different. When Gideon approached her with the news, she felt that at this point what else did she have to lose. She hadn't even taken off her "fight bag" as she called it, from class that day, when he started talking.
"I'm sorry Dani. But you're older now and I've been offered a job writing in California that can help handle costs and-" he put his hands on her shoulders, "-if you want you can come with me."
She looked at her childhood home, a shadow of what it used to be. But she just didn't want to let it go. "I know you've got college applications out, you can make up your mind when you get them back." Gideon pulled her in for a hug, and she buried her face in his Chicago Blackhawks sweatshirt. She needed to think and there was only one place she could do that anymore. She went out to the cliffs, saying she'd be home before the thunderstorm off the coast even broke water nearby. But she didn't. She watched it roll in with a kind of sad resignation. She put her fight bag in her lap and wrapped her arms and knees around it, just looking for something to squeeze. The rain began to sprinkle down and thunder rumbled in the distance.
The wind hadn't even kicked up yet. The waters in the bay were still. But out of nowhere, as if a wave had hit the cliff, a great spray of water arched over Danika's head and doused her. It was liquid ice in the February chill, and her heartbeat spiked up and then slowed to a crawl as she felt every blood vessel contract and her body almost seize. In the dark and the cold it was like everything froze. Time, Space, her. But then the world sped back up to pace and she rose, spluttering to her feet, gripping her bag, and running home, in the direction she knew to be home. Gideon would be upset, as upset as he could be at her. But the trees looked different. Everything looked different.
She was lost. She couldn't be lost. She'd trekked every part of these woods right up until the Canadian border, even snuck across it once or twice. She turned around and round, looking for any indicators. The storm clouds blotted out the stars and the sun was well past set. When in doubt hunker down and wait til morning when you can find your way home. She slung her bag over her shoulder and hunted out a gulch under a rocky overhang, safe from the rain, if not from the wind. In her dazed state she still had the sense to question what fireflies were doing out in such weather.
Morning came, as morning does, and now that the fog had lifted from the horizon, Danika could see why she was so lost. The cliffs she knew, the trees, were nowhere to be seen. The sun glittered on the sea, but it wasn't Passamaquoddy Bay. It was smaller, more like a fjord. The cliffs were taller and she could hear the rushing of a waterfall not even a half mile to the North. She wasn't anywhere near home. How far had she run? In the distance she heard a horn, it sounded like a goat horn, like the one her father used to play because the sound made her giggle incessantly. She left the gulch and went to the cliff, backtracking her retreat from last night. In the waters, she saw over 40 ships sailing in. She recognized them immediately from her books at home. Viking ships. And walking off of them...Vikings.
Hvitserk followed Ivar off the ships onto the pier. Returning to Kattegat was bittersweet. Ivar was all for the revels, victory being the only thing he could talk about the entire trip back from England. But for Hvitserk, there was something in the pit of his stomach that had him feeling that this was only the beginning. Fate was taunting him, and for what reason he really could not tell. It was on the breeze and he could hear it. The storm had nearly floundered them so close to their destination but they had made it through unscathed, with only a few lost livestock and weapons. His brother's voice made its way back into his head, where it always seemed to be these days.
"Come alone Hvitserk, don't you want to come celebrate, with the King of Kattegat!" he shouted the last part to the whole assembled lot, who cheered as Ivar called for ale and meat. Hvitserk did not roll his eyes. He figured Kattegat cheered because they had nothing better to cheer for. But he was not so blind. Ivar was getting his head inflated fatter than their father's had ever been, even when he tried to raid Paris. And Hvitserk knew that this could only mean trouble, especially for him. If Ivar needed someone to suffer, and more often than not, it was Hvitserk.