Work Text:
Name
The first thing Skulda de Morte did when she gained access to the library at her local school was to look up the meaning of her name. Why her mother chose a Scandinavian name – and the Norn of the Future in particular – she would never know; she had no memory of the woman who had birthed her, and then promptly left her on the steps of an orphanage in the London East End a year later. It was not as if little Skulda was a seer.
If anything, it was the opposite. Instead of the future, Skulda was certain she had the memories of what amounted to a past life, tragically cut short. The young woman she once was had her share of difficulties and screw-ups, but she had one advantage over Skulda-that-Is – Skulda-that-Was knew what it was to love and be loved. Because of who she had once been, literally a lifetime ago, Skulda-that-Is had hope for her own future.
Skulda de Morte was not going to let her current circumstances grind her down, no matter what.
Learning
Skulda-that-Was had been a gifted student who grew up in an English-speaking country. Consequently, the local comprehensive was a breeze for Skulda-that-Is. She didn’t bother to dumb down her intelligence; she knew from her research that getting into a higher ranked school was her ticket out of London slums. It was just her luck that, with her extra memories, Skulda didn’t actually spend as much time on her schoolwork as she otherwise would have.
Skulda ended up learning things her prior self never learned. She learned about going to bed hungry on bad nights, empty stomach trying to gnaw a hole in itself. She learned about uncontrollable shivering in the dead of winter, the paper thin walls of the orphanage and her threadbare comforter doing nothing to ward off the cold. She learned to tolerate watered down gruel and the lack of sugar, meat and fresh vegetables, when the orphanage was low on funds. She learned to identify opportunistic strangers who were just looking for the chance to take advantage of her, and her fellow orphanage residents. She learned self-defence out of necessity and desperation, getting herself and fellow children away from said unsavoury characters.
Skulda honed her street-smarts and her observation skills. She was not naturally charismatic, but she learned to blend. She learned to navigate both the West and East Ends of London like a native, aping attitudes and accents. Many times she had been tempted to try pickpocketing, but somehow resisted. Instead, she resorted to the pride-grating but more legally acceptable route of ‘charity’. By the end of the month, she had identified all the churches and community centres in the area that held food drives and charity bins. She charmed the pastors and program directors into letting her sift through the goods before helping to send them off. Many times, her scavenging had not only benefitted her, but extra haul also went to equip the other orphanage children too. The orphanage matrons, after making sure Skulda didn’t actually steal the items she brought back, merely shook their heads and let her be. Skulda was making their jobs easier, after all.
Skulda learned that she couldn’t afford laziness anymore if she wanted to get anywhere in life. She no longer had parents who could support her. The orphanage staff had tons of other kids to look after. It was the same at her underfunded school, with her overworked, underpaid teachers. She learned not to expect handouts.
But Skulda was technically an adult in mind. She could, and did, look after herself – even helped out with some of the younger kids, if she still had energy to spare. She learned to be thankful and content with the small things, literally counted her blessings every night. This thankfulness gave her the resolve to strive forward.
Careers
Skulda had wanted to become a doctor in her previous life. She had not made it into medical school, but found another career she’d been happy with.
That life was gone, but the reasons Skulda had wanted to be a doctor were still valid. This time, Skulda decided with flashing purple eyes, she was going to make it in.
Medical school cost money, though, and Skulda couldn’t depend on the risky prospect of getting a scholarship. So she went looking for a job.
Her first job didn’t actually earn her any money. But Skulda was tired of feeling cold all the time, so she somehow convinced a crotchety middle-aged proprietress of a yarn shop in Chinatown – no-pun intended – to teach her how to knit, in return for running errands for the shop. It helped that Skulda-that-Was spoke Cantonese, and Skulda-that-Is was prompt and dedicated in her duties. By the end of her first month, she was fluent in Cantonese again, and even picked up a little Mandarin. As a bonus, ‘Ah Yee’ let Skulda keep all the scraps of yarn that couldn’t, for some reason or the other, be sold. All the orphanage kids gained a pair of multi-coloured socks for Christmas, and a new, equally multi-coloured jumper each for their birthdays.
Eventually, her errand-girl duties expanded to include the other shops in the Chinese mall complex. The proprietors of those shops had gotten used to the purplette who spoke near accent-perfect Cantonese, and who always completed her assigned tasks reliably. They would intermittently duck out from their shops as Skulda passed by, and ask her to run messages or deliveries. They would often tip her after those deliveries too.
By the time she passed her Eleven Plus exams and got into a top-rated grammar school in the Greater London Area, she had saved up enough from errand-running that she could actually afford the transportation fees to get there. The school uniform required a bit more penny-pinching and mixing-and-matching, but ‘Ah Yee’s friend at a clothing store agreed to adjust her second-hand uniforms in return for minding the cash register.
Her errand-running tips were enough for school necessities and petty cash, but still not enough for med school. She was still a little young for a legitimate job, but she retained her command of English from her first life. So she haunted the library, and the scoured both the school and local newspapers, and began entering youth writing contests. Grammar school was a lot more intense than her local primary, so with limited spare time for writing, she concentrated only on the ones with a monetary award. She got rejected many more times than she’d won, but the times she did win she more than broke even. The practice also helped Skulda improve her writing efficiency and streamlined her thought processes. This showed in her school essays; and her extra-curricular writing especially endeared her to her English teacher, to the jealousy of her peers. The jeering and attempted bullying might have upset her had she been a normal pre-teen girl, but this wasn’t her first high school rodeo. Skulda couldn’t find it in herself to care what they thought of her.
Before her writing career really took off, however, she somehow landed her next big break at the age of fourteen.
Pub Night
“Presenting to you our musical entertainment for the evening, The Norns,” the pub manager announced to a sprinkle of polite applause. Skulda, clad in a purple blazer over her silver tube top and skinny jeans, received the microphone with a deep breath, and a modified curtsey. She still could not believe the series of events – fortunate or not, it remained to be seen – that landed her on the stage of a well-known London pub.
The grammar school Skulda attended boasted not only high university acceptance rates, but also a great music program. Skulda found out, when she signed up for choir, that she ended up having a better singing voice than her past self. Her present voice was lovely for solos, and it wasn’t long before Skulda started to channel her inner karaoke-enthusiast in school performances.
Skulda blamed her choir buddy Ursula Andrews for what happened next. In the middle of an anecdote regarding her older brother and his part-time job at a London pub, Ursula got a sudden gleam in her eye. The pub turned out to be one of the more upscale ones – if any pub could be classified as upscale – that provided live music. The boss of the pub had been bemoaning to Ursula’s brother about a last minute cancellation for that particular night; Ursula’s latest scheme was to replace that act – with herself and Skulda, apparently. Then Vivian Langley from the year above them had to interrupt Ursula’s wheedling.
“You know, if you find a third member you can form a band, and call yourselves The Norns,” Vivian suggested to Ursula, smirking at Skulda. Ursula’s surprised expression faded, and she smirked back.
“Are you volunteering?”
“I’ve always wanted to try my hand at a gig,” Vivian mused.
“Awesome! I keyboard,” Ursula offered.
“Count me and my guitar in,” Vivian replied firmly.
“And Skulda’s our lead singer,” Ursula chimed triumphantly. Neither girl paid attention to Skulda’s gobsmacked expression, nor gave the latter any time to protest.
That was how Skulda ended up in borrowed clothes and make-up, about to wing her way through pop song covers for the next two and a half hours. Ursula had gleefully dragged Skulda, Vivian, and Vivian’s guitar home with her the second school ended. Her brother raised an eyebrow, but agreed to take them with him to talk to his boss before his shift started. Vivian, the budding fashionista, had raided Ursula’s closet – with Ursula’s permission – and proceeded to wrangle the three of them into similar blaser-top-skinny jeans ensembles. A quick application of eye shadow and lip gloss each, and the girls were ready for their first gig as the newly-formed girl band, ‘The Norns’.
The night actually went very well for the impromptu band. The pub manager had been willing to give the schoolgirls a try, not having been able to hire anyone else at the last minute. Skulda, Vivian and Ursula had a chance, before the pub’s usual happy hour and dinner rush, to do a quick soundcheck and cobble together a game plan for the night. Of course, due to inexperience, there were the occasional missed note or mismatched entry. However, once she got over her initial stage fright, Skulda found that she was actually having fun putting on a show. Before long, she even found the courage to banter with her bandmates and the pub patrons. Ending the night with a free (non-alcoholic) drink at the pub and a total of £30 to split between them was even sweeter. By consensus, since Ursula’s brother argued on their behalf with his boss, they agreed to give him a 10% cut. That still left Skulda £9 richer!
Scouted
The Norns ended up with a routine gig at the pub, one Friday night a month. They also served as an emergency filler band if needed, should it not conflict with their schoolwork or other commitments. This left Skulda less time to write, so entering writing contests fell by the wayside. Still, the income from the steady gigs had her university fund building up quite nicely.
While pages of prose were out of the question, what with band practice on top of her studies, Skulda and her band members did try their hands at song-writing. They’d slip in one or two original songs every gig; most were well received, especially with the regulars.
It was just their luck – or was it fate? – that a talent agent from Apple Corps (yes, record label of the Beatles fame) happened upon the pub during one of their gigs. He approached the next month with an immediate offer to sign them on. Skulda, Ursula and Vivian stared wide-eyed at the agent; none of them even dreamed such a thing would happen to them. Nevertheless, they took the business card and promised to arrange a meeting with their parents or guardians present.
It took a lot of negotiation, and wrangling of concessions, with both the record label as well as school administration; Skulda, for example, made clear that she still intended to aim for med school, and was not willing to compromise on her studies. However, with the record label based in London, the girls could set up recording sessions without missing classes, except for the odd promotional event. Any concert tours, it was agreed, would only occur during the summer hols. By the time all the details were hammered out, it was nearly the end of December. The Norns ended up signing a three-year contract with Apple Corps just before Christmas.
Flight
The morning of their flight out of Palermo, Italy – the last stop on their mini-tour to promote their third, and long-awaited, Christmas album – The Norns were surprised by a knock on their hotel suite. Ursula opened the door to see her brother Joel, who had been made their general manager the year before.
“Mail for you, Skuld,” Joel announced, using Skulda’s stage name. “Think you might want to take a look at this first.” He held up a full-sized envelope as he stepped into the living room. The package bore the distinctive logo of the University of Cambridge.
All three girls gasped, before Skulda all but snatched the package out of Joel’s hands. The tension rose almost tangibly as she opened it. Feeling all eyes on her, she made sure to keep expressionless as she sifted through the folder. Just to be even more of a troll, she waited until Vivian was about to snap before breaking her composure.
“I got in!” Skuld all but squealed. “Conditional acceptance, but…I got in…” she repeated in disbelief.
“Of course you got in, Numb-Skuld,” Ursula retorted, before she too squealed and glomped her fellow band member.
“As if you could have gotten any other answer,” Vivian said scornfully, before she too joined the glompfest.
“I’ll call up the pub as soon as we get back to London,” offered Joel. “The Boss would be happy to offer the place for a party once he hears one of his girls got accepted into med school.” Skulda blushed, but she joined in as Ursula and Vivian laughed in agreement. The manager of the London pub where they had been scouted from had all but adopted them as honorary nieces over the years, happy to know that they made it big. They called him 'Boss' out of habit, and still played at his pub occasionally as thanks.
“But we gotta break this up now,” Joel added. “Flight’s in three hours.”
“Spoilsport,” Ursula stuck out her tongue at her brother. But the three girls obediently detangled themselves from the group hug and finished up their last minute packing. Skulda made sure every precious page of her acceptance package from Cambridge was stowed away securely in her carry-on. In the furor over getting to the airport on time, no one noticed the innocuous white envelope that had fluttered under the side table in the entryway. The letter, addressed to ‘Skulda de Morte’, remained unread.
By the time a man with a checkered mask materialized in the suite, The Norns and their entourage were well on their way to the airport.