Displaced

Chapter 7

Ivar grunted loudly with effort as he lifted Sigurd onto the bed, and Sigurd clenched his jaw tightly closed to stop himself from making a sound as the drop jarred his legs again. Once he was sitting on the edge of the bed, Ivar reached down and grabbed his legs by the leather strap, then lifted them up, leaving Sigurd half sitting, half lying on the bed.

"Do you want me to tuck you in, too?" Ivar asked him, with a cruel smirk. "Maybe sing you a lullaby?"

Sigurd folded his arms and looked away, feeling ashamed. He had not been put into bed since he was a very small child, and comments like that were not helping to improve the experience. "It isn't my fault your stupid legs don't work right," he said. He glared at them as he spoke, as though he could somehow shame them into getting better.

Unsurprisingly, it made no difference.

Ivar shrugged. "Perhaps not, but it is your fault you're too useless to figure out how to do simple things for yourself," he countered.

Sigurd squeezed his eyes closed and tried, once again, not to cry. Their arrival at home had been a series of humiliations, one after the other, with the added insult of the fact that no matter what they did or said, nobody would believe them, and he was tired of it. "Shut up," he said, because he couldn't think of anything else to say.

For a moment, Ivar did. Silence filled the room, and Sigurd opened an eye to check whether his brother was still there. Ivar had not moved from where he had been standing. His arms were folded awkwardly and he stared down at the floor. "I could teach you," he said. "Like I did when we were in the woods. If you want."

Sigurd stared at him, taken aback for a moment by what sounded like a genuine offer of help from his little brother. He shook his head. He was in bed now, and the last thing he wanted to do was get up again, and face head-on how helpless he felt without his legs.

"I'm tired, Ivar," he said. Weariness pressed in on him from all sides, and all he wanted to do was sleep. Sleep, and then wake up tomorrow as himself again. "Even if there was any point learning that stuff, I wouldn't be able to do it now."

Ivar frowned, but nodded as though he accepted the truth of what Sigurd was saying to him. "Tomorrow, then," he said.

Sigurd shook his head again. "Tomorrow, we will be ourselves again," he told him. "When I wake up in the morning, I will be in my own body, and this will have all been a bad dream."

Ivar furrowed his brow and folded his arms a little tighter. "I hope you are right."

So did Sigurd.

"But if we are not..." Ivar began.

"No," Sigurd told him, shaking his head. "We will." He spoke as forcefully as he could manage given his exhaustion. They would be themselves again; they had to be, because the alternative, spending another day as Ivar, was unthinkable. "We will," he said again.

Ivar opened his mouth as though to argue, then closed it again. He nodded. "Of course. You're right," he agreed. "We will.

Sigurd sighed. It was one thing to try to convince himself, but for some reason, hearing Ivar agree with him only made the possibility feel more unlikely. "What if we're not?" he asked. "What will we do then?"

"With the Seer mysteriously out of town and mother refusing to believe us..." Ivar shook his head. "I have no idea. Wait for the Seer to return, I suppose. Or hope that we think of something else once we are rested."

Ubbe had told them that the Seer had left for a few days. That could mean anything from three days, up to seven or eight, or even more. And that was if he even did return. Not everybody who left home on a journey came back again.