Chapter 1

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Chester

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Vikings are cool. Everyone knows that. It’s the axes, I think. And the boats. And the helmets and swords and armour, and pretty much everything else about them. And it’s all this that makes it even more impressive that Miss Galloway somehow still managed to make them boring. It wasn’t even what she said, really. It was more her voice; while other people speak in a way that’s sort of up and down, her voice just droned.

“Like an old fridge,” I muttered.

“You’re doing it again,” a voice tried to whisper into my ear.

And I mean tried to whisper. Freya Bell wasn’t capable of speaking quietly enough that you could ever really call it a whisper.

“Doing what?” I actually whispered back, throwing glances to the teacher at the front of our little tour group.

“Starting sentences in your head, and finishing them out loud,” she replied, smiling. “It’s weird.”

“Year 8!” Miss Galloway called out reproachfully from the front.

Nobody else had actually been talking, but sometimes, when she didn’t what it to seem like she was picking on her, Miss Galloway called Freya, ‘Year 8’.

“You are very privileged to be amongst the first to see this new exhibition on the Ancient Norse people. Please treat the museum with the respect it deserves, and listen when I am talking to you.”

“Sorry, Miss!” Freya yelled back, completely unfazed, even as I reddened under Miss Galloway’s ‘You should know better, Chester’ look.

“Now before we move on, does anybody need the toilet?”

Several hands went up and, as Miss Galloway began to arrange them, Freya moved up to my ear once again.

“Now’s our chance!”

“Nope,” I replied, unable to stop a small smirk pulling at my lips.

“You don’t even know what I want to do,” Freya complained.

“I do know what you want to do,” I retorted. “You want to get me expelled. We’ve been friends for over a year, and that’s always what you want to do.”

“That’s not true!” she insisted, before considering further. “I mean, it may be a consequence, but that’s never what I’m actually aiming for. I want to have fun!”

I glanced back a few feet to where Mr Shukla was staring at us from his place at the back of the group.

“You’re under heavy guard,” I said. “This trip is strictly no fun allowed.”

Freya smiled at me. The defiant smile of an adventurer about to set off on a quest.

“Shukla doesn’t scare me.”

“Keep moving you two!” The TA bellowed, and we both jumped in fright.

I saw him smile as he began to herd some of the boys towards the toilets. He’d heard us. Because of course he had. Freya can’t whisper.

“Come on,” she insisted to me, as Shukla moved away, his eyes still fixed upon us. “You’re meant to be the clever one! Think of something. I just want to explore. Just a little bit.”

I sighed. “Two minutes. And we don’t leave this hall.”

“Ten minutes,” Freya countered. “And we do leave the hall, but we stay in earshot.”

“Five minutes. This hall and the next corridor.”

She looked at me long and hard. “Five minutes. This hall and the hall next door.”

I considered her proposal. A year ago, I wouldn’t have even thought about it – just the thought of breaking the rules at all would have terrified me – but Freya had been good for me. Or maybe bad. Probably bad, but I had to admit, I’d had more fun since I’d known her than I ever had before.

“Deal.”

“Yes!” she cried mutedly, trying her best not to gather any more attention. “What do we do? What’s our distraction?”

I smirked. “We don’t have to do anything. I saw Charlie going at his lunchbox on the bus ride over. He demolished an entire block of cheese.”

Freya looked at me in disbelief. “What is wrong with that boy?”

“Charlie loves cheese.”

“Charlie is lactose intolerant!”

I shrugged. “He says he loves the cheese more than he hates the vomiting. Anyway, he’s about to give you your window of opportunity.”

As we’d been walking towards the toilets at the back of the History Museum’s huge entrance hall, I had been watching Charlie bend lower and lower, his arms wrapping around his stomach. Not two minutes after the plan had been set, he finally reached his breaking point, and his hand shot up.

“Mr Shukla!” he cried. “Mr Shukla, I’m not very well!”

He started to wretch where he stood, and Shukla sprung forward, steering him quickly into the toilets, all the while shouting, “Hold it in! Hold it in!”

Freya and I looked at each other for a long moment, then burst out laughing.

“Come on!” she said. “Five minutes, starting now!”

She set off at a gallop towards the door out of the hall, and I followed her two steps behind, stuck, like usual these days, between excitement and terror. I couldn’t help but look back towards the group, but none of them had seemed to notice, and the teachers were busy with the others. Five minutes. Five minutes and we’d be back, and no one would know we were gone.

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Chapter 2

 

As we left the entrance hall, a hush fell over the place, as if the museum itself was trying to keep the secret of our escape. Walking through the deserted halls, I found myself whispering.

“Look,” I murmured, gesturing to an open door to our right.

Through it, I could just make out what looked like the curving front of a ship. A viking ship!

“Awesome!” Freya exclaimed, and I winced as her voice echoed back at us from the bare walls of the corridor.

I didn’t have time to tell her to keep it down before she took off in the direction of the room and bounded energetically inside. I followed.

Music, soft and tinkling but with a strange beauty, met my ears as I crossed into the hall of the ship exhibit. Freya had stopped in the entryway, her mouth agape at the sight that greeted her. Dominating the room was an ancient ship, on loan, a sign told me, from a museum in Norway. The thousand years or so that had passed since it was built had eaten away at the wood, and the entire thing was supported by a new metal frame, with large holes all over the hull. Even so, it was beautiful. A real Viking longboat – all sleek lines, curving beams and carved wood.

All I could do was stare at it. Freya, I could sense, was moving around behind me – she never could stay still for long – but I was rooted to the floor, taking in every detail. It looked like it had survived a few battles. Or maybe it was just age. Even beside the holes, the wood was in rough shape, chipped and scratched and rugged. I crept forward, leaning over the rope that separated me from it, imagining myself on board, to the soundtrack of the tinkling music that continued to play throughout the room.

Then I was struck with a sinking feeling. Sometimes, at home, when everything has been just a bit too quiet for a bit too long, one of my parents will suddenly bolt up and run out of the room to check on my sister, knowing that that kind of quiet can never mean anything good. It was the same quiet that suddenly hit me now. Freya had not moved or spoken in minutes.

I looked back and saw her studying something. Not the boat, but one of the glass displays on the walls around the outside. She was standing completely still, a far off look on her face. I tip-toed forwards, uncertain, until I could read the display. It was a long paragraph on a sign above some little stones and artefacts, but the thing that caught my attention was the title, big and bold at the top of the glass. Seiðr: VIKING RITUALS AND MAGIC.

“Freya?” I asked tentatively. She said nothing. “Freya?” I tried again, a bit louder, and this time she turned.

Slowly, her eyes came round to me, but they were still far away, looking at something that wasn’t there.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She gave her head a shake, and her usual smile appeared back on her face, but there was something more to it. I couldn’t think of how to describe it before the word hit me – wonder.

“Yeah,” she said, her eyes suddenly looking all around her. “I’m amazing! I can understand!”

“Erm. Okay…”

Then she was moving again. She darted back towards the ship.

“They’re letters, Chester!” she exclaimed. “Words!”

I followed her gaze towards the scratches I had noticed on the wood on the inside of the ship.

“Words?” I asked.

“Yeah, words. I can’t quite see them from here.”

I felt my heart give a jolt, as she ducked under the rope. She didn’t stop there, though. I watched in horror as she put her foot on one of the metal supports and pushed herself up and onto the ship.

“Freya!” I whisper-shouted at her. “What are you doing?!”

She ignored me. I was sweating now, my heart racing as I glanced back at the door, still thankfully empty.

“Freya, the five minutes are up!”

Again, she didn’t respond, didn’t even seem to hear me. With one last look back, I ducked under the rope and went up to the ship.

“I was right!” she said as I approached. “They’re words!”

“Freya, come on! We need to go!”

Now I was panicking. Detention was one thing, but if we were caught like this, we could actually get expelled! Maybe even arrested! I put a foot on the metal support to try and reach up towards her, but she just moved further onto the ship. Reluctantly, I stepped onto the ancient wood of the longboat, and grabbed her by the arm.

“Come on!”

“No, wait. I’m wrong,” she said. “They’re not just words. Listen to the music, Chester. They go together! They’re lyrics!”

“You’re starting to scare me now, Freya,” I replied, and I meant it. “We can’t be here!”

She did look back at me as I said that, but only for a second, and then her eyes were back on the faint scratch marks on the wood. She reached out a hand and stroked them, and then, incredibly, she began to sing.

I had never heard Freya sing before, not properly anyway, not in a way that wasn’t meant as a joke. I was surprised to find out that she was good at it. But this surprise was nothing compared to the shock of the words that came out of her mouth. I didn’t recognise them. Not one. She was singing, but not in English and not in any language I knew at all.

Her words matched the tune that was being piped into the room, in a strange but wonderful song. And then the room began to shake. It shuddered until I felt it in my bones. It tossed me from side to side. An earthquake?! I reached out and steadied myself, moving properly onto the longboat now, and that was when I realised that it wasn’t the room that was shaking at all. It was the boat!

All of a sudden, I felt a swell beneath me and, as I looked down, my mouth fell open in astonishment. Waves, actual waves, were lapping at the bottom of the boat. The smell of salt filled my nostrils and, with the constant rocking, I had to force myself to swallow to stop myself being sick.

“Freya, whatever you’re doing, you need to stop it!”

But she didn’t. She continued to sing, her knuckles white as she grasped onto the side of the boat. That was when we began to rise. The waves were getting higher, and the boat was lifting from its metal supports. Surely it couldn’t float?! There were huge holes all over it! But there weren’t. As I looked around, I saw that all of them were gone. I turned my head from side to side, taking it all in, and I saw the boat knitting itself back together. Even as I watched, the chips disappeared, the beams bent back into place, and the scratches – the lyrics to Freya’s strange song – grew bolder, brighter.

We were properly moving now, afloat on the impossible waves. A sail that had not been there a moment before flapped behind my head, caught a wind that shouldn’t have existed, and moved us forward. Not into the museum wall, but into nothing. A darkness that had opened before the boat. But no, it wasn’t nothing. As I looked closer, peered into the darkness, I saw that it was the exact opposite. It was everything! The world! Land and sky and sea, and we were moving into it. I heard the sail catch the wind behind me again, and this time we surged forward, lurched towards the dark everything, and then we weren’t in the museum anymore.