“That does sound like you,” said Qi. “If you’ll excuse me a moment, I need to go be yelled at by Ji. I really enjoy it when there are two of you.”
She wandered over to Ji, who did, in fact, begin to berate her for something or other. Freddy wasn’t sure she would ever understand either of them, even if she ended up time travelling with Josiah for the next hundred years.
*
It took them most of the rest of the day to get back to Ling’s village. After that, there were adjustments to be made.
Ling and her family were farmers. The women and children amongst the villagers worked in the rice fields, while the men hunted or fished in the great river nearby. There were other villages in the area—the brothers came from one—but Freddy got the sense the villagers saw real strangers only very rarely. They were as curious about her as the Vikings had been, though they were also wary of her. She thought it was because she had come with Josiah. They didn’t like the way Ji and Josiah looked so alike. Qi hadn’t left the forest with them, but Freddy wondered if she had something to do with the wariness as well.
Ling, like Bragi, seemed to have reframed her life around the presence of Ji and Qi. Josiah and Freddy didn’t bother her at all. Freddy found herself liking Ling, who just seemed very firm and sensible about everything. When she saw the villagers whispering about Freddy, she said a few short, sharp words that shut everyone up immediately. Then she nodded, pulled Freddy into the hut that was apparently her own, and handed her several pieces of clothing. Freddy expected that what she said at this point was disparaging and directed towards Freddy’s jeans.
Josiah looked in. “Is everything all right?”
“I think she wants me to wear these,” said Freddy, holding the tunic and skirt out towards him. They would almost fit her. Ling was only a few inches taller than she was.
“Do it,” said Josiah. “You’ll have to start helping in the fields tomorrow, and you’ll be much more comfortable in those.”
She stared at him. “Helping in the fields? How long will we—”
“A while,” said Josiah, and disappeared again.
“A while” was a useful term, Freddy found herself thinking. It could mean anything at all. She felt suddenly, immensely, helplessly far from home.
*
In this case, “a while” meant twenty-six days.
It had got to the point where she had almost forgotten about the time travel. She hadn’t really, of course; she had just pushed it to the back of her mind to keep the homesickness company. She let herself be homesick for only a few minutes at a time. It did hit her unexpectedly every once in a while, but she could control it if she had to. Sometimes she missed Mel. That was the predictable bit of the homesickness. There were less predictable bits. She found herself missing school and her basement and even Roland. That last one worried her, as the thought of Roland set her clutching her key once or twice, and she didn’t know why, whereas even when she forced herself to think about her mum, she couldn’t seem to work up any real feeling. She didn’t know if she was mad at Roland any more. She thought she was, since she couldn’t seem to connect the idea of Roland with any emotion but anger, but the anger was five thousand years in the future. It didn’t fit here. She was sure there was something seriously wrong with her.
Other things she missed were more understandable: showers, shampoo, processed meat, books, TV, popcorn, someone besides Josiah to talk to. But she had adapted to life with Ling’s family more easily than she would have thought. Working in the fields was hard but not boring, and it got easier as her muscles adjusted to it and the pain in her head faded. The villagers were harvesting rice right now. It was a bit like weeding, and she had always liked weeding, to Mel’s disgust. It was also nice not to have to think or worry about anything much.
She had even learned a bit of the language. She hadn’t done it on purpose; she had just always been good at picking up languages. She couldn’t talk to anybody here, aside from being able to point at things and say “water” or “fire” or “good,” but she thought Ling approved of the fact that she could do even that much. Ling approved of a number of things Freddy did, even though Freddy was pretty sure they were all basically baby skills. One day, Freddy tore a hole in her skirt by catching it on a bush. Ling took one look at the material flapping around Freddy’s knees and pulled a skin bag out of an alcove. She opened it and showed its contents to Freddy, who found herself gazing down at neat rows of bone needles and little skeins of gut and thread. A sewing kit, she thought.
Ling selected one of the needles and handed it to Freddy, then looked at her expectantly.
It wasn’t as if she had never sewn anything before. Mel was hard on her clothes, and Freddy had had to teach herself to deal with the various rips and tears. It had been trial and error at first, but eventually, she’d figured out how to mend clothing in such a way that it wouldn’t immediately come apart again. But she wasn’t good at sewing. She always hoped the rips were on the seams; otherwise, she would end up with an ugly, zigzagging mess of thread that would begin to unravel within a few weeks. She ran a finger over Ling’s needle, hesitated, and reached for a skein of undyed thread.
Ling watched her work for a moment, then laid a hand over hers gently, stopping the sewing. She took the needle from Freddy and carefully pulled out the thread. Freddy was chagrined to see how easily it came loose. She was not any good at sewing. It was better for Ling to do it herself.
Ling didn’t do it herself. She put the needle back in Freddy’s hand and slid her own hand into place over Freddy’s fingers. Slowly, patiently, the woman guided the direction of the needle. When Freddy’s fingers began to cramp up in a death grip, Ling slapped gently at her hand until it relaxed. The needle’s motion … It’s a pattern, thought Freddy, surprised. It isn’t even a hard one. The pattern repeated, over and over, and then the tear was nothing but a crooked line of slightly lighter thread against the undyed cloth.
Ling smiled and nodded approvingly. A brief warm glow blossomed in Freddy’s chest. She wasn’t sure why. She didn’t remember feeling anything like that before.