Page 31 of The Very Virile Viking

This "new world," as Magnus had come to regard the country where they had landed, was full of marvels, but, truth to tell, he was all marveled out. Three days! And not a clue as to where exactly they were. Vikings were not meant to be indoors all the time. Soon his muscles would soften. His brain was surely already turned to gruel.

And there was another truth to tell: Magnus was randier than a bull, with all this time to sit around and ponder his favorite subject. He needed some good, hard exercise to expend his energy.

He had just put Lida down on the big bed for a nap. He guessed she was all tired out from watching Bert and Ernie on the tell-a-vision box, or waddling endlessly about the place like a duckling. They were all becoming more adept at this country's form of the English language, thanks to the tell-a-vision, but his children were also learning some foul words, which he'd had to halt a time or two already. A great number of them were gleaned from Hamr and Njal's latest hero, a rascally little fellow called Bart Simpson. Some of the words, like free-can , Magnus had decided couldn't be too bad. But he still misliked the word suck as an expletive. In fact, he wasn't sure what it meant when someone said, "That sucks!" So he'd told the children they could say "free-can" but not That sucks!" Of course, the most perplexing one was "friggin'." Since Frigg was a goddess and the wife of Odin, he could not figure how "friggin'" became a bad word; so he'd decided to forbid that word, too, if for no other reason than to avoid offending the gods.

"Did you hear what I said, Father? I am in love."

At your age, young men are always in love… or lust. Same thing. "I heard you, Torolf. I heard you."

Torolf was lying on the low pallet, known as a sofa, arms crossed under his neck. He was watching some loud music event on the tell-a-vision box. Kirsten and Dagny were stretched out on the rug watching as well. The three of them seemed oblivious to the screeching that was taking place in the living chamber where Njal and Hamr were practicing something called kung fu, which they had learned on the tell-a-vision box from a person known as the Carrot-y Kid.

Only soft murmurs came from the kitchen, where Storvald was teaching Jogeir and Kolbein how to do a puzzle, which Angela had left for them. Nay, it wasn't the kitchen whence their murmurs emanated. It was the bathroom… again.

"If anyone flushes that toilet again," he shouted, "there is going to be a young Viking boy going down the hole with all that water."

Immediately he heard the bathroom door slam and murmurs traveling along the corridor and back to the kitchen. "No one ever lets us have any fun," Storvald grumbled.

"Let us make some mica-wave popcorn," Kolbein suggested to his brothers.

"Do not free-can burn it this time. The building master said we are in big trouble if we make the free-can smoking alarm go off again," Jogeir said.

" That is the object of my affection." Torolf, who somehow managed to ignore all the noise emanating from the other rooms, nodded his head toward the tell-a-vision screen, where a nubile young woman was gyrating and shaking her female parts as if she were having a fit… an erotic fit, he had to admit." 'Tis Britney Spears."

"Britain Spear? Ha! That will be the day I allow my son to align himself with a Saxon wench. And a warlike wench she must be, too, if she carries a spear in her name."

"Daaa-aaad!" Kirsten groaned.

" Dad? What is this 'Dad' business?"

" Dad is what children in this land called their fathers."

"We are Vikings, no matter where we are. You, my Viking maid, will call me Father."

"Father, then," Kirsten conceded. "It's Britney.. not Britain."

"Same thing," he said. "By thunder, is that young woman really wearing so little clothing?" The girl's skintight braies started below her hips and barely covered her nether cheeks. On top, only her breasts were covered… just barely.

"Yea, is it not great?" Torolf grinned up at him and winked mischievously.

"It is grate, all right. Grating on the nerves, if you ask me. Is there no soft music in this land? Why does it have to be so raucous all the time?"

"I love it," Dagny said. "Can I get my navel pierced, like Britney? Can I, can I?"

"Why would you want your navel pierced when no one is going to see it? Because I am telling you now, Dagny, afore you ask… you are not purchasing such nonattire."

Dagny gave him a look foreign to her usual biddable self. If he did not know it afore, he did now: this land was having a bad influence on his children.

"I am considering a tattoo," Torolf said. "Mayhap a dragon or a hawk. But I do not know whether to put it on my shoulder or my thigh."

"How about a jackass on your buttock?" Magnus suggested. And he was serious.

"Well, if I were going to be pierced, I would rather have a gold ring in my nose. Just a small one. On the left nostril. I saw a girl on Sex and the City with one, and it was so cooool. No one else at Uncle Olaf's court would have the same. What do you think of that, Da… Father? May I put a gold ring in my nose?

May I?" Kirsten asked. And she was serious, too.

"Only if you intend to moo and give milk into a wood bucket twice a day," he told her. "And, by the by, I thought I told you girls not to watch that sinful program on the tell-a-vision."

"I saw the nose ring afore we turned it off," Kirsten said, but he could tell by the blush on her face that she was telling an untruth.