Derrick, Kally, and Taylor rumbled down the road in Taylor’s truck, dubbed Perseus. With every sharp twist and curve of the mountainous backroad, Derrick wished their destination would appear, or the vehicle would put itself out of its misery and break down. He glanced over at Kally, who was stuck between them and clutching her seat belt for dear life. For his part, Taylor was chatting away in Welsh. He was more animated this way, Derrick noted. Where Taylor was usually quiet and shielded behind his blond mop of bangs, he lit up when talking in Welsh. It was nice to see him babbling excitedly at whoever he was talking to. 

“Hwyl, Mam,” he said before ending the call and turning to them. “Mum says ‘hi.’ You both can come for Easter dinner if you’d like.” The holiday was coming up soon. Derrick hadn’t thought about religion much since he’d started school, so he’d been happy to let the day pass unmarked, but a home-cooked meal sounded nice. 

“I’ll come,” he agreed. Taylor nodded and looked at Kally.

“You as well?” 

Kally groaned. “Get us to the town before you ask me about food, please.” She made a fist over her mouth and groaned again. 

“Do you get motion sickness?” Derrick asked. She only nodded, eyes squeezed shut as the truck swayed once more. 

“You yak in Perseus; you’re cleaning it up,” Taylor warned, his accent thickened with urgency. Kally only gagged in response.

They made it to Aberdeen with the car unsullied. At some point in the ride, Kally had shifted over Derrick’s lap to sit in the window seat, letting the cool breeze run over her face to soothe her nausea. Perseus made his rumbling journey through the streets to the pier, where the ferry schedule was posted. They stopped to grab food at a fish and chips stall. Derrick wrinkled his nose that the malt vinegar Kally liberally drizzled over her fries.  

“Who are we going to see again?” He waited for Taylor to finish checking his phone. 

“Dr. Maggie Kiernan,” he said around a steaming mouthful of fish. “She’s a historian for the Orkney Isles.” 

“Would she know about Viking burials on the mainland?” Kally asked before offering her half-empty bottle of vinegar to him. Derrick moved away. The smell was making him nauseous. It was amazing how someone who had just recovered from a bout of motion sickness could ingest something so rancid.

“Possibly.” Taylor showered his fries and continued talking. “Dr. Fraiser said Maggie knows more about the Orkney Vikings than anyone she’s ever worked with. So they started a project to create records of the communities through oral history’s from the families that have been there for generations.”

“Does Dr. Frasier think the two came from Orkney?” Derrick didn’t know much about the Viking age. Most of his classes focused on the Greek and Roman side of things. A few delved into Mesopotamia and African Diaspora, but the Vikings went largely unmentioned unless it was a special interest class. 

Taylor shrugged. “Can’t hurt to check. The Orkney communities are relatively close to O’Donnel’s land. Back when, if you had your own ship, you could get pretty much anywhere if you had good winds and knew your way around. Plenty of people could have traded with Orkney or moved to the mainland from there.” 

“Our ladies could have moved there because they wanted to live together peacefully with their cats,” Kally chimed in. 

“Are you still on the lesbian’s thing?” Derrick asked incredulously. “We have no evidence they were actually together.” 

“We don’t have evidence that they weren’t,” Kally countered. “History is much gayer than you think, young Padawan. Try digging around about the wild west sometime.” She reached out and bopped him on the nose, vinegar once again filling up his senses. 

“Our ferry is loading,” Taylor announced, blatantly ignoring Derrick’s gagging and Kally’s evil chuckles. 

“Yes, Mom,” Kally chirped before dragging them both over to the line. 

The ferry ride was boring and long. The trio spent most of it sipping scalding tea to fend off the chill winds and cold ocean spray. Tourists and residents that wanted to avoid the cool weather packed into the common areas. Just a glance inside had been enough to encourage them to find a less populated place to sit. Finally, they wound up on a balcony overlooking the water. 

“I’m going to freeze my ass off at this rate,” Kally grumbled before snuggling farther into Taylor’s side. 

“You wanted to come here,” Taylor reminded her. However, Derrick wasn’t sold on the idea that the flush running over Taylor’s cheeks was entirely from the cold. “You knew it was chilly.” 

“I’m from the middle of Texas,” Kally hissed. “There’s only so much ‘chilly’ I can take.” 

“It’s always colder on the ocean,” Derrick said. He’d known he’d worked part-time on a whale-watching boat in Main throughout high school. Kally blew a raspberry at him and focused on leeching as much warmth from Taylor as she could. 

It took six hours to reach Kirkwall. They popped between the balcony and the dining area, wandering around trying to stave off boredom. The smartest thing to do seemed to be to take a nap. Derrick and Taylor snoozed while Kally furiously typed away on her laptop, abusing the ferry’s Wi-Fi in the name of working on an essay. She was three pages in when they landed with dusk approaching. They’d agreed to meet Dr. Keirnan in a cafe near the pier. 

The shop was warm and inviting with a nautical theme. Anchors and helms decorated the walls, and ropes crisscrossed themselves to form dividers between booths. A small woman with dark brown hair turning silver at the temples waved at them and trotted over. 

“You must be Mary’s students,” she declared cheerfully. “I hadn’t expected you for another half-hour at least. Go on and get a snack or something and a cuppa. You’re all probably chilled through.” Unable to get a word in edge-wise, they did what she said and settled into the booth with a tea and a scone each. 

“It’s a biscuit,” Kally muttered under her breath as she slathered hers with jam and butter. 

“Now,” Dr. Keirnan beamed at them after they’d all settled. She gave off such a friendly vibe, reminding Derrick of a grandmother. “You’re all staying with me tonight until the ferry can take you back, but there’s no reason we can’t get started now. What would you like to know?” They glanced at each other before Taylor took the lead.

“Did the professor tell you about the grave we located?” 

“She mentioned it in passing, but you know how Mary is—” she waved dismissively, “very stoic.” The three of them chuckled awkwardly. 

“Well, we wanted to pick your brain about the two skeletons we found in it.” 

They spent an hour going over their findings, detailing the items they’d pulled out of the grave and the arrangement of the bodies in it. Kally pulled out photos she’d made of the grave goods and skeletons and waited for the doctor to put on her glasses to look over them. 

“You mentioned the crucifix, yes?” She pulled out an image of the small cross that would have gone on a necklace. “I can see why Mary would assume that one is a Christian. It was a fairly as-you-like-it religion at the time, especially among Vikings. This though…” She pulled out the image of an altar cross. 

“We figured it was something collected in a raid.” Derrick pointed at the base. “It would have sat on an altar in a monastery, wouldn’t it?” 

“Yes, or an abbey. Considering these are two women, normally, I’d assume that the items were family heirlooms.” She quieted. 

“But…” Kally promoted

“Did you three hear about the Birka Grave Bj 581?” She looked between them for some kind of recognition.

“The female Viking Warrior grave?” Kally asked. “I remember getting annoyed at the National Geographic Special.”

“Yes,” Dr. Kiernan hummed and pursed her lips. “Slightly boring stuff that. Anyway, this grave is laid out very much how Bj 581 was. Only there are two people here, and it looks like they have divided the grave goods between them.”

“How so?” Taylor asked. 

“Much of the gold items and weapons are on the side of the skeleton laying down. The sword and the coins are usually strong indicators of a warrior or tradesman. I also see game pieces. The other side has the carving tools and the household goods.”

“We theorized that one was a craftsperson,” Taylor said. “The sitting skeleton also had the most jewelry, while the one laying had more stress markers indicating fighting. The seated one was from Ireland, but we couldn’t pinpoint where. Based on the tests we ran, the one laying is Scandinavian.

Dr. Keirnan hummed and looked at the report they’d drawn up for their grave unit and the subsequent lab results. 

“I think I might have some files that could help with this,” she finally said. “But for now, let’s get back to the house and set you all up for the night. We can get back on it first thing tomorrow.”

With a clap of her hands, she rushed them through, putting away their research, and hustled them out the door.