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"Ivar, there is something I have to tell you."
I remember everything so clearly. Like falling down a rabbit hole, and ending in wonderland.
'"Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."'
The dusty old words came back to me, a memory from another life it seemed. For my world was like another world, and my life before this one was another life as well. I couldn't go on living a double life. I had to be myself. But who was I now? If this world was mine now, surely this life was too.
I didn't know. Perhaps it was just the mere fear of coming clean as Ivar stared up at me, waiting for me to tell him all that I had to say. His own fear was evident, that perhaps I was about to leave him behind like everyone else in his life had done. And that only made my guilt increase.
I recall the days before I fell into this rabbit hole all too well. But it all seemed so surreal now that I had grown used to this world. My world was becoming more and more like a fever dream, one that I could not quite recall perfectly.
"We're going..." My father leaned down, finger tracing the old tattered Victorian map. "Here." His grin was wide like the Cheshire cat. And, when I looked down, I knew instantly why.
I gazed up at my mother for the answers, then back down to the map. "York?" I whispered, my own beaming smile spreading over me. "York? We're going to York? We have enough money?"
My mother chuckled, tapping my arm with a roll of the eye. "Trust you to worry about money on your birthday."
But my father gave me a nod, lowering his glasses onto his nose. "More than enough."
At this, I could not help the giddy excitement that fueled me. I was overjoyed, so overjoyed that I could not even contain it, and I embraced them both in a warm hug.
The next time I would ever meet my parents, would be when my father found some rotten old corpse at an excavation sight. I will have been dead for a thousand years before either of them are ever born. They will not see me happily in love. They will not see me married, or with a child, or when I'm growing old and grey. Lord I missed them.
They'd always know what to do. And in this strange world, I felt I needed their guidance more than ever.
Finally, I looked back at Ivar with a heavy gulp. "I need you to trust me, because everything I'm going to tell you is going to sound absolutely insane." Again, his brows seemed to furrow. But he remained silent, waiting for me to speak again - for some sort of answer to the questions filling his mind in that moment. "I'm not Welsh." I began, and I could feel my heart rate increasing with every piece of information I divulged. "I'm from a place called Oxford, a long way South from here. In England." I watched him stiffen at the realisation that I was, in fact, English. That I was a Saxon. But that wasn't what I was trying to tell him. Not that I was the enemy, that I was one of them, or worse that I was a turncoat traitor that couldn't be trusted. Still, he remained silent, and for that I was grateful. "I'm not a Saxon." I assured, and he oncemore began to look at me like I was talking gibberish. If I was from Oxford, I was a Saxon. Was I not? I took a deep breath, trying to think of the words that I wanted to say but none came to mind. How could I eloquently tell him that I was from the future? "And I'm not a witch, either. I'm not a Seer, a Volva, I can't practice any magic. But everything I've told you is true, everything that I've said will happen is going to happen. I know this because- because- because I'm from the future."
