by Becky James
“Good! No, wait! Not good! Go back to Oberrot!” She slammed the bathroom door.
Rose sighed when I rejoined her to sit at the kitchen table. “I’m going to need new doors before all this is over,” she said mournfully.
Staring into the mug that Rose had steeped and prepared for me, I offered, “I can help out around this abode. I can make myself useful. I don’t want to be a burden and have you send me back to Oberrot, but it seems like Evyn will take a long time to even be in the same room as me.”
“At least she’s saying something to you. Well, shouting things at you.” Rose rested her chin in her hand. “As for stuff you can do, you’re a soldier, right?”
I bit down my protest. “Not exactly. Special Forces are a breed apart. I am a single unit fighter; I can fight entirely alone or as part of a deployment. I’m an asset to any team.” I looked up at the ceiling. “I suppose I can guard the perimeter. Put me in touch with your chief of security, and he’ll put me on the roster.” He’d be overjoyed to have me, I added silently.
Rose laughed. “Oh dear. That’s not necessary here. There aren’t guardsmen patrolling the area, and definitely no chief of security, unless you count the burglar alarm. Which, by the way, hasn’t been serviced in years. Don’t tell anyone.” She stroked her chin. “What can I do with a big strapping lad… Not a lot, I’m afraid. You can probably help me get the shopping in and that’s it.” She cocked her head. “Are you a fully paid-up member of Special Forces then?”
I grimaced. “Not fully. Not yet. There’s a ritual for entry which involves your soul.” Even though Shard was my father, I had no idea what happened during it. I had seen how, after their tests, Aleric and Aly, and Gavain and Zelora had looked at each other a little differently. They seemed more distant from each other, their smiles slower in coming for their souls; the men had been keen to make up for something which they both knew they never could. I thought it had something to do with choosing between duty or your soul companion, as that made the most sense.
As always, dread filled my stomach at the idea of that choice.
Rose nodded. “I thought as much. Gough is involved with the, uh, initiation ceremony thing. He says it’s not that bad, but he won’t tell me what it is. Anyway. I’ll speak with Evyn after she’s had her shower. Don’t get into trouble while I’m gone.”
I saluted, and Rose took her tea with her. I sipped at mine, as bitter as the welcoming tea for mages and mancers. What would I choose if I had to, between Evyn or the king? I shook my head. One thing at a time. First, I’d have to convince her to accept me, then I could worry about that.
Moving back into my sleeping room, I eyed the rectangle. The sofa was orientated to face it directly. It was obvious that the two were connected in function. Could this box turn into a humming box and perhaps that would change the sofa to a more comfortable sleeping arrangement, I wondered?
The red light must be a signal of some sort. I approached it, staring into it. Perhaps it could be pushed? Nothing happened when I did so. I noticed a thinner rectangle about the size of a knife but the width of three of my fingers laid in front of it. What struck me was the number of tactile surfaces on one side only and the fact that the wording on it matched the wording on the red-light box. These were definitely connected and signed by the maker. Picking it up, I hefted it. It weighed little. There was a red tactile box on this handheld device. That seemed like the best place to start, red light to red button, and so I pushed it.
Immediately, a deafening boom filled the room. I threw myself onto and over the sofa, taking it back with me to crash over me and afford me cover from the explosion. My heart hammered wildly. The walls were not shaking, and I could not feel heat, but there was another deafening detonation. Fear threatened to lock my limbs. I have to get Evyn out of here! I crawled on my forearms to the doorway and from my position of cover took a quick reconnaissance of the situation to catalogue threats.
The rectangle displayed another world. Inside that world were bright fireballs and a chattering noise. The view changed to a close-up of a combatant. He was running hard and fast but suddenly went down. I watched wide-eyed as another explosion filled the box; when the smoke cleared, the man was gone.
“What the—?” Rose said, opening the door.
“Lady Rose, get down!” I called. “There are men in combat in here!”
The doorway froze partway open. “Oh, let me get Evyn. This is too funny.”
Funny? “Get out of the house! I’ll try to delay them!” I heard no response back.
I took quick stock. The sofa shielded me for now, and there did not seem to be any debris or shrapnel coming from this small portal to another world, nor were flames licking up the side of the box either. The men I had a view of were busy executing their battle plans and had not noticed this small intrusion into their world.
Now the window focused on another man, this one cowering in a trench with his helmet askew. He held a long pole with a blade on the top, an irregularly shaped halberd. He peered away from me, over the trench, and seemed to be preparing himself to go over the top.
“No! Stay where you are! They are dying out there!” I screamed at him. Just then the door opened and Rose and Evyn entered. “Get down!” I yelled in my best parade voice.
Rose was smiling. Evyn gave me a withering look. Shaking her head, she moved towards the window—
“No!” I leapt over the top of the sofa, grabbing Evyn’s shoulders and pulling her to my chest. Twisting away from the portal I braced myself as another explosion rocked through the window, expecting to feel searing burns or the impact of shrapnel any heartbeat. Putting my arms over her head, I gritted my teeth.
The explosions stopped dead. Evyn pushed at me. “Get off! Look, it’s just a television, okay? It shows you things, but they aren’t really here right now!”
I looked around wildly, my heart racing. The portal had shut, and Rose held the smaller box up in her hand. “See? It’s off now.”
Letting Evyn go, I slowly sank to the ground.
“Hey! Take a deep breath.”
Leaning my elbow on one knee, I gulped for air. I brought my heart rate under control and tried easing out of the battle-ready mindset.
Rose was laughing. Evyn said, “It’s not funny, Mum. He was really terrified.”
“Of a World War One B-movie!” Rose snorted.
“He could have gone completely psycho and smashed the TV. Did you even think of that?”
“Oh, lighten up, will you? It didn’t hurt anyone. There. Thorrn, a television is… entertainment. Like a theatre play.”
“Theatre where people are killed?” My stomach churned.
“It’s not real. All those people there were what’s called actors.”
I sat back on my heels. “It isn’t real at all? But… the explosions…”
“They have special effects. Special, uh, stage design. And nowadays, stuff that looks more realistic than that. None of what you saw actually happened, Thorrn. No one died.”
I nodded but Evyn said, “Well, apart from in the real World War One.”
“There was a real war?”
“Yes, in…” Evyn trailed off. “Nevermind.”
I tried not to feel discouraged as she pulled back, attempting again to draw her out. “So, there was a real war, and this is… the play of it? For entertainment?”
Evyn did not respond.
“Well, when you put it like that,” Rose said a few heartbeats later. She had also seen her daughter open up and how she had closed down again. “See, Evyn, I told you he was funny.”
Evyn shook her head. “I’m going back upstairs.”
“Wait, can you do me a favour? He’s underfoot here and I’ve got stuff to get on with. Can you just show him somewhere?”
“Not my problem. Why doesn’t he go back where he came from? That’s somewhere he can go.”
Rose intercepted her daughter at the door. “Well, you’ll need some air, and while he’s here it�
�d be nice if he could have a look around. There’s lots he has no clue about. It’s adorable.” Evyn reached past her mother for the handle. “Oh, Evyn, just take him to the park. He can have a run around there.”
“What, like a dog?” Evyn smirked. The expression on her face looked wrong; it twisted her into cruelty.
But at least it was a reaction. “Yes, like a dog,” I said. I wanted her to laugh, to roll her eyes, to glare at me, anything. She just looked at me and… through me. I shivered.
Then she asked, “What’s wrong with your hands?”
I had forgotten all about my sore palms in the panic of accidentally being in a warzone. I opened them to show her.
“Burnt himself getting the pizza out of the oven,” Rose said. “With his bare hands.”
“That’s… pretty stupid,” Evyn said, eyebrows dipping downwards.
“Indeed. There’s a lot about this world I don’t know or understand.” I balled my hands into fists. “Yet. I’m learning more. It’s overwhelming.” I had a thought. “Was this how you felt coming into my world?”
Evyn shrugged one shoulder. Rose licked her lips and said tentatively, “Help him out, Evyn.”
“He didn’t help me out!”
“But you know he’s not from here. He didn’t; we could not tell him. He behaved poorly” – Rose shot me a glance and I nodded – “but you can’t fault him for not realising that you were from Earth. You and me, we are practically unicorns or fairies come to life for him.
“Go on, Evyn. Take him to the park. It’ll blow his mind, I can straighten up in here, and you’ll get some fresh air.”
I held my breath.
She threw up her hands. “God. Fine. I’ll show you where the park is. And then when you’re done marvelling over trees and the tennis court, you can go off back to your world.”
“A court? That sounds formal.” I looked down at my plain clothes.
Rose chuckled. Evyn rolled her eyes. “Not that kind of court.” She sighed.
Evyn pulled on her footwear and a coat. I stepped into my boots, but I had brought no overcoat. She frowned at me but didn’t offer me one. Both she and her mother were smaller than me, so it could have been that they had nothing suitable. I had not seen evidence of a man of the household; no clothing or items in what I had seen so far suggested one to me. I opened my mouth to ask but then closed it.
A chill cut through me when we stepped outside. I was used to the air holding onto heat around me, but there was no such thing in this climate. I resolved to take a run around this park if it were possible. Again, I went to ask Evyn but closed my mouth.
This was difficult.
Where to start? I wanted to start at the beginning again. What is your name? Where do you come from? Where do you live? Where do you want to live? What do you like doing? What don’t you like doing? What are your strengths, and what are the things you are working on? Where do you see yourself in life and what role takes your fancy? What are your hobbies and interests and what makes you smile?
I balled my fists. The sharp pain from my abused palms was welcome. I had to start from where I had put us, a broken canal lock between us and the waters of time deluging through it. As Evyn opened the gate and turned right, I strengthened my resolve. I could not despair. I had to keep trying.
Catching up with her short strides, I walked on the darker grey, lower stone while she had the higher ground. It barely made a difference to our heights, as I still towered over her, but at least she was a little closer.
I took a deep breath. “What’s this called?” I waved at the walking surface.
She thinned her lips, remaining silent.
“It looks like stone to me. Just one long continuous stream of it, frozen solid. Where does it come from?” Silence. “Is it natural? Is there a seam underneath here that oozes it out? It cannot be put here, surely, so I will assume it’s a feature of this environment.”
Silence. Just the tramp of our feet. Evyn had her hands shoved into her pockets, her shoulders hunched, her eyes fixed straight ahead.
“I heard buzzing things passing by here. There were not many, but they sounded large.” More silence. “I would put them at the size of a horse, maybe, but then again the buzzing things in the house make disproportionate noises to their size so I cannot draw that inference.” I flexed my hands. “It’s all so very different. How do the boxes buzz, anyway?”
“I’m busy.” Evyn pulled out a thin string from her pocket. She had another handheld black rectangle – there were a lot of those here – and the act of holding it fired it to life. A bright design glowed out of it.
“Is that a lodestone?” I asked, but Evyn grimaced and put the ends of the string, little beads, into her ears. She pushed the other end into her little rectangle and tapped a few buttons that were not there before, then shoved it back into her pocket.
In the still air, I heard a tune start up, quiet as if very far away.
“What’s that? Where is it coming from?” I tried to trace the source, but it seemed to be coming from Evyn. The device must be playing the tune. “What’s that called?” I asked helplessly. “What does it do? How does it do it?”
This wasn’t working. She was able to drown my voice out by listening to the music.
“I know asking for another chance is a lot right now. All I’m asking for is for you to talk to me.” Please, I wanted to beg. And then, why not? It wasn’t as if she could hear me right now. “Please talk to me. I have waited all my life for you to appear. I used to imagine all the time what we would talk about, and I’d have sennight-long fantasies about the kinds of discussions we would have. Never in my life would I have thought I’d be talking about buzzing boxes and… and…” There was a larger buzzing noise and it was approaching, fast. “Evyn? Evyn, there’s one of those things coming. What is it?” She stomped resolutely on.
I gritted my teeth. I would find out for myself.
Moving into the centre of the stone river, I set my stance and advanced, not quite marching but on the alert. Suddenly, it turned the corner. It was huge! Easily three horses abreast! A silvrine shape moving at speed, the snout flat and angling up to glass, a person trapped within.
I had enough time to register that they held a device like Evyn’s up to their head when they saw me. Immediately the beast made an awful noise, a kind of shriek. It rapidly slowed but its momentum was too great and—
It slammed into my side. I had braced myself, but its powerful blow proved too much. Thrown back, I turned energy from the blow into a roll, spinning four, five times and scraping against the hard ground. I closed my eyes until I came to a halt.
I did a lightning-fast inventory of hurts as I sprang to my feet. My shoulders, chest and hips felt bashed but not fatally. I entered a ready stance, then sprinted to my soul.
She was open-mouthed. The fat man who had been inside the beast made his way out, staggering and gaping. “What were you doing in the road?” he exclaimed, breathless. “Oh my god, are you okay, oh my god—”
“Stand back!” I called. The silvrine beast could move at any moment. I circled it, my leg starting to ache. Forcing myself onwards was inadvisable, as an injury could compromise me. I fell back into a defensive position next to Evyn.
“What are you on?” Evyn yelled at me. “That’s a car, you could have been killed, why were you right in the middle of the road? You’re such an idiot!”
“What’s a car?” I fired back at her. I glanced at the man – another Earthian no doubt – and lowered my voice. “Is it a threat?”
“It is if you walk right in the middle of the road with a blind bend around the corner!” Evyn shook her head. “Mate, is your car okay?”
“I – yes, it’s fine, but we should get him checked out at the hospital.”
“He’s okay. Look, he’s fine.” Evyn reassured him. I straightened up. More pains lined up to be catalogued.
“I was probably doing about ten by the time I… Oh, god, I’ve never hit anyone befor
e.” The man was shaking. “Should I call the police?”
“No, it’s okay,” Evyn said hurriedly. “No harm no foul, yeah? And… yeah, just don’t be on your phone next time.”
The fat man paled. “Yes, you’re right. I could lose my licence. Right.” He seemed to come to a decision. He got back in the beast, the car, and it fired to life again. I jumped into a guard stance, ribs stabbing, but it fled away from us.
“You idiot.” Evyn breathed hard. “You could have been killed!”
“I didn’t know what it was. I asked but you would not speak to me.”
“You don’t walk in the middle of the road! How stupid can you get—”
Stung, I said, “I did not know that. Perhaps if you explained a few things to me, I would know what to do in future?” I flexed my burnt hands, spotted with new scrapes from rolling on the stone river.
She took a deep breath. Her face was grey, but her glare was hot. “I don’t know why you’re here wasting my time. I’m more than happy to teach people but you don’t belong here. Why don’t you save us both some embarrassment and go back to where you know what you’re doing?” She scowled. “That was roughly it, wasn’t it? You don’t belong here, and I’m not interested in helping you in any way.”
I nodded slowly. “Those were my words. I’m sorry you remember them. I’m sorry they cut you as they did, as they are cutting me now. I’m… I’m sorry.” I couldn’t think of what else to say. That poor excuse for an apology hung between us.
“I’m not feeling sorry for you,” Evyn said firmly. “Did you get hurt just now when the car hit you? Do you need to go to the hospital? You can’t die here, I can’t lug your body around without the neighbours talking.”
I carefully stretched out my limbs. “Back, shoulders, chest, hips, left thigh, they ache but nothing is broken.”
“Did you hit your head?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, ma’am.”
She made an exasperated noise. “This is called a pavement. We walk on the pavement. Cars use the road. I should have said something when you started walking alongside me, but I didn’t imagine you’d go bloody stand in the bloody middle of it and just wait to get hit by a car. Now, keep your head still and follow my finger with your eyes only.” She slowly moved it back and forth, up and down. “Well, that looks normal. Do you feel sick? Dizzy?”