Displaced

Chapter 6

Ivar walked into the room at the exact moment that Aslaug entered through another door. She stopped dead in her tracks, and looked at him. There was no warmth in her expression, the smile that she usually wore whenever she looked at her youngest son was completely absent.

"Sigurd," she said.

"Look what we found," Ubbe told her, walking through the door directly after Ivar. "They were just coming in as he were heading out.

His mother pressed her lips together, then nodded. "And Ivar too?"

"He's coming," Hvitserk promised her. "He's just... the two of them are playing this strange game where they..."

Ivar shook his head and walked toward her. "It isn't a game," he said quickly, before his brothers could plant the seeds of the idea that they were lying. "Mother, it's me, Ivar. Sigurd and I have switched places, we woke up in the woods this morning and we've spent all day trying to..." he stopped when he realised that his mother's attention was elsewhere, and turned to follow her gaze.

He saw Sigurd dragging himself slowly into the room. He moved far more slowly than he had on the journey home; exhaustion was visible in every movement, and he had the air about of him of a man who had not rested for days.

"Ivar," Aslaug said, and Ivar could hear the relief in her voice. She moved closer to Sigurd. "Are you alright?"

Sigurd looked up at her, and for a moment Ivar thought that his brother was going to cry, or scream. Or possibly both. Instead, he simply looked away again, and continued his slow progress to the table.

"Ivar?" Aslaug said. "Did you hear me?"

Sigurd shook his head. "I'm not Ivar," he said. He spoke so quietly that Ivar barely caught the words.

Aslaug frowned. She stared at him for a moment, then turned her attention back to Ivar, and folded her arms. "The next time the two of you decide to disappear for the day, I would thank you to tell me first. Look at him. He's exhausted."

"We both are," Ivar told her.

Aslaug shook her head. "Ivar tires more easily than you. You should know better than this, Sigurd."

"I'm Iv..." Ivar hesitated. He looked first at his mother, and then at his brothers, trying to decide how to proceed. He needed her to understand what was happening, but it was obvious that he wasn't going to be able to convince her now, with Ubbe and Hvitserk watching eagerly, as though they were rooting for an argument.

Instead, he sighed, shook his head and sat down at the table. He chose Sigurd's usual seat, not to appease his family who thought that he was a liar, but because his usual chair, at the head of the table, was easier to get into from the ground, and he had a feeling that Sigurd would need it to be easy.

Aslaug watched him, turned her attention back to Sigurd for a moment, and then sat down too.

Ubbe and Hvitserk, with an air of disappointment about them that they weren't going to get a show, both took their usual seats at the table.

Ivar had sat at this table many times in his life, but he had never before been able to walk into the room and sit down. Instead, it had always been a process of pulling himself up into his chair. It was not a difficult thing to do; he had been doing it since he was very small. He had years of practise, and no choice in the matter, and until now he had never even thought about it before.

Apparently, that was not the case for Sigurd.

Sigurd approached Ivar's usual seat cautiously, and Ivar found himself watching with undisguised interest as his brother positioned himself on the ground next to the chair and looked up at the table as though it were a cliff face that he had been asked to scale. There was a look of defeat already in his eyes.