The past, present, and future, were all equally in gloom. -- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Princess Rigmor, in her nineteen years of life, had never left the palace without at least one guard. She halted at at the door set aside for the servants' use and gazed at it, half-frightened, half-excited, as a young child might be when about to enter a room forbidden to them. She reached out and rested her hand on the door handle. It was cold to the touch. She took a deep breath, steeled her nerve, and pressed down on the handle.

The door slid open smoothly, and she looked out on a part of the city she had never seen before. Bakers, chimney-sweeps, and servants hurried to and fro, paying no attention to anything but wherever they were going. None of them spared the palace walls a glance, and the tall, thin girl clad in an ill-fitting, hastily-donned servant girl's dress might have been invisible for all the notice they took of her. Rigmor found her anonymity surprisingly comforting.

She straightened her dress, "borrowed" from a maid's wardrobe, and stepped out of the doorway.

~~~~

It had been mere days since Hjalmar last stayed at an inn and slept in a bed, but so much had happened since then that it felt more like years. Determined to get a good night's sleep despite all his worries for the next days and weeks, he collapsed fully-clothed into his bed and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.

Since his father died Hjalmar had often dreamt of the years before his death. He had dreamt of things that did happen -- blackberrying with his siblings, helping his father make dinner on his mother's birthday -- and things he wished had happened -- his father recovering from his illness. This was the first time he dreamt of something that had neither happened nor had he wished had happened.

He stood in the doorway of his father's study as it had been when he was a child: mahogany walls, purple curtains, books everywhere, a globe in one corner, and his father behind the desk in front of the window. Through the window he could see strange constellations whirling around the sky at speeds real stars could never match, and curious ribbons of red, green and purple weaved through and around the constellations. He had heard of these ribbons -- the norþlys [1] they were called, or the "northern lights" -- but had never seen them. Vardiholm was too far south for them to appear over it regularly.

Gudmund Dalsgaard looked up from the letter he was writing and smiled. "Ah, there you are, Hjalmar! Sit down, sit down."

Hjalmar stepped into the room. His bare feet sank into the red-brown carpet as he crossed to the armchair his father indicated.

"Now," said Gudmund, "I'd like to have a word with you. You've done well enough so far, and I suppose you could do worse in your choice of travelling companion," a wry note crept into his voice.

As this was a dream, it never occurred to Hjalmar to wonder how his father knew about Solvej. "I had very little choice in the matter, Father."

"True enough, true enough." Gudmund chuckled as if he found Solvej's antics hilarious. "That isn't why I had you called here, though. You'll need to get a job when you reach the city." This was so obvious that Hjalmar couldn't understand why his father, even this dream version of his father, felt the need to mention it. "I hear there's a bookshop looking for another store assistant; that would do nicely."

"Yes, Father," said Hjalmar, puzzled. Why would he dream about his father giving him advice on what job to take?

"Good!" Gudmund beamed. "Oh, and a word of advice: big cities are terribly dirty and the air is unhealthy. I'd go for a good long walk every day if I were you."

Hjalmar was more puzzled than before. Why on Earth would his dream include his father telling him to go for walks? Gudmund had never been fond of walks in life.

"Now, it's almost morning," Gudmund continued, turning to the window. The norþlys had faded and the stars, though still visible, were fainter and moving more slowly, as if they had tired themselves out with their dashing hither and thither. The wan grey light of morning was just starting to colour the sky. "Off you go, and mind what I've told you!"

The armchair, the study and Gudmund all blurred together and disappeared, and Hjalmar drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep. He slept for another hour or so. Outside the window the sun rose over the horizon and the birds began to sing. The clamour of voices, doors being unlocked, horses being fastened to carts, and all the usual early morning noise began again. Hjalmar slept through it all.

Until someone dropped a wet sponge on his head.

~~~~

While Hjalmar and the rest of the town slept, Solvej remained awake. Being dead, sleep was an unimportant luxury. She could sleep, but she had no need of it. She retreated to her room after dinner -- something else she no longer needed, but partook of to prevent comment. Causing consternation deliberately was one thing. Causing consternation for no reason was another.

When she first entered her room she locked the door and looked around with interest. Her hopes of seeing more evidence of how much life had changed in the last hundred years were dashed. Apart from the presence of a sink in a corner, so little was different from what she knew that she might have gone back in time a hundred years. To make up for this disappointment, she examined the sink with the curiosity of one who had never seen such a thing before. She turned the taps on and off so many times that the next morning the innkeeper was at a loss to understand how the hot water tank had been so depleted.

Losing interest in the taps, she turned and surveyed her room. Pale blue walls, flower-patterned curtains, a white-washed chair with a flower-patterned cushion, a scrupulously clean but rather worn green carpet, a flower-patterned quilt on the bed... It was a pleasant enough room, but for someone who wanted to learn more about "How We Live Now", it was rather disappointing.

"Ah, well," Solvej said aloud (during life she had gotten into the habit of talking to herself, and after death she slipped back into the habit without realising), "I won't learn anything here."

She took off her hat and set it down on the chair. Then she pulled back the curtains and opened the window. For a moment she stood still, hands resting on the windowpanes, and breathed in the night air. She promptly pulled a face. The smell of plants and flowers was overpowered by the reek of rubbish, smoke, animals and all the smells of a town.

She climbed through the window, onto the windowsill, stood for a moment as she measured the distance to the ground, then jumped. She landed with the faintest of "thud"s on the cobblestoned courtyard beneath. A few horses dozing in their stalls looked up and whickered inquiringly. No one else noticed a thing.

Solvej crossed the courtyard. Rather than open the gate and risk disturbing everyone in hearing range, she made for a part of the wall shadowed by the stable. She swept up her skirt and tucked it into her belt, took a deep breath, and began to climb the wall. It was made of large bricks stacked on top of each other, and the mortar between them had mouldered away in places, providing her with plenty of handholds. She reached the top, clambered carefully over it, and began to descend. Her descent was more rapid than she intended, for she missed a foothold and fell half of the way.

"I wish it was true, that nonsense about ghosts walking through walls," she remarked as she dusted herself off.

The night was dark, and as cold as spring nights usually are. Clouds veiled the moon and hid the stars. Only occasionally a faint pinprick of light could be glimpsed through gaps in the clouds. And yet there was light; light from the street-lights placed at intervals along the road. By these lights Solvej got a better look at the town than she had at her arrival.

Some of the buildings were old, some new; some crumbling, some well-kept; some freshly-painted and some with their paint cracked and peeling. Signs over their doors announced that this was a green-grocer's and that a baker's; this was a tailor's and that a milliner's. Solvej eyed them curiously as she passed, noting the new fashions in the clothing stores. Finally she came to what she was looking for: a newsagent's. She stopped in front of the door and rested her hand on the handle.

Reaching out with her magic, she willed the door to unlock. The door obediently opened as if a key had turned in the lock. She slipped through the door, closing it quietly behind her, and started searching for the previous day's newspapers. They were stacked in boxes behind the counter. She opened one, took out the first newspaper in the box, and sat down on the cashier's chair to read it.

Absorbed in her reading, she failed to notice the clock above the door. Its hands moved steadily around its face. Twelve o'clock passed, one o'clock, two, three, and so on until six o'clock had passed. The first dull lights of dawn turned the sky outside the shuttered windows a pale pinkish-purple. Solvej read on, engrossed in an account of the latest scandal revolving around a politician and some Rovici opera singer. The sounds of people waking and preparing to go about their day pierced the stillness of the air -- doors being unlocked, windows being thrown open, water-pumps creaking. Solvej read on, oblivious.

Outside the door there was the scraping, clattering sound of a key being inserted into the lock. Solvej abruptly snapped back to reality. The key turned in the lock. She extinguished the orb of light and shoved the newspaper she had been reading back into the box. There was an irritated exclamation from the person outside the door as the key refused to unlock the door -- for Solvej had already unlocked it, and forgotten to lock it again.

Solvej pushed the box back where she found it and stacked the other boxes on top of it. The person outside the door turned the key the other way, and grumbled again as the door still didn't unlock. She scanned the room in search of somewhere to hide, saw a narrow hall at the back of the shop leading to a door, and scurried down it to pull the door open. It opened easily, leading into a storeroom with a small window. She closed the door behind her, reached up, and opened the window.

The shop door opened.

"That door gets harder to open every day," a man's voice grumbled.

Solvej squeezed through the window as silently as possible to find herself in a sort of alleyway leading out to the street. She pushed the window closed and set off down the alleyway. In the news-agent's she had just left, the shop-keeper discovered the haphazardly-stacked boxes and vowed to have words with whoever was responsible.

Along the street people were opening shops, placing boxes of produce outside their doors, raising shutters and preparing for the day. Everyone was too busy to take notice of the oddly-dressed girl who hurried down the street without seeming to move quickly at all. Solvej reached the inn just as a yawning servant boy opened the doors. He nodded to her absently as she passed him, too tired to wonder at what she was doing there so early.

The innkeeper and his wife were in the kitchen; the servants were in the stable-yard; the lodgers were in their rooms. There was no one to see Solvej tiptoe up the stairs, along the landing, and into her room.

Once in her room, she doubled back the quilt and pulled it this way and that to make it appear she had slept in the bed. Then she washed her face at the sink (and examined the taps again while she was at it), tidied her clothes, and brushed and braided her hair. This done, she picked up her hat, placed it on top of her hair, and set off to find Hjalmar.

His room, next door to hers, was the mirror image of hers, right down to the ubiquitous flower patterns on curtains, cushion and quilt. He hadn't locked the door. She opened it easily and slipped in. Hjalmar was still asleep, tangled up in his quilt and with his head half-buried under the pillow. She gave him a shake. He slept on, snoring quietly.

"Wake up!" she hissed in his ear.

He didn't wake. She placed her hands on her hips, nodded once in a "so that's how it's going to be" way, and went over to the sink.

In life, Solvej had been the oldest of seven children, and her mother had often tasked her with waking her siblings. When faced with four brothers determined not to wake up, creativity was necessary. And so she had found a foolproof way to wake them: a wet towel dropped on their heads. The same principle would work here. Soaking the towel the inn provided would lead to awkward questions, but no one would be surprised if a sponge was wet.

She pulled the pillow away from Hjalmar, held the now-dripping sponge over his head, and let it drop.

The inn's residents were startled to hear a muffled shriek from upstairs, followed by a bellow of "SOLVEJ!"

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] norþlys = This is an invented word in the fictional Vardiholm language, but it is based on norðrljós, the Old Norse name for the Northern Lights. The letter thorn, or þ, is pronounced "th" as in "thought".