The Twilight Star

by Laura E. Collins

  I’m not sure how long it was before I opened my eyes, but I found myself laying face down on the ground. I wasn’t hurt, just very disoriented and a little winded. I pushed myself up on my hands and knees and looked around, bewildered. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone. Slowly my companions and I rose to our feet. I counted, one, two, three . . . all the way up to nine. We were all here.

  “Hey! Is anybody hurt?” I called to my group of friends.

  “What the hell just happened?” I heard Sean’s booming voice demand.

  “Sarah? Are you okay?” I heard Samantha call to her sister.

  “I’m fine,” she said shakily as we all came together in a circle where we had fallen.

  “I don’t think that was part of the Faire,” I heard Matthew say right before I saw him take a deep breath in from his inhaler. He obviously had asthma.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. This is all just some stupid part of that haunted forest we were in. I’m gonna sue them for tainting the fog machines with hallucinogens!” Sean seethed.

  “Sean, get real. We aren’t tripping!” Hannah said.

  From there I stood and watched everyone begin to quibble with each other about what had just happened. I rubbed my hands on my upper arms and looked around. I couldn’t see the sky as we were apparently in some forest that was thickly populated with strong tall trees. It felt much cooler than the hot environment we had come from and the air smelled moist and fresh, like damp soil. I listened and tried to hear anything over the commotion from the group but it was impossible.

  “Quiet!” I finally shouted. “Listen. I can’t hear anything. I don’t even hear the parade or other sounds from the Faire.”

  “She’s right,” Paul added. “This seems different to me.”

  “If all of you are playing some kind of game, it isn’t funny!” Kennedy whined, looking like she was on the verge of tears.

  “So . . . what? Are you saying that we aren’t at the Faire anymore, Evie?” Sean said to me sarcastically.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, Sean,” I said evenly. “There has to be an explanation for this but I can’t hear myself think with everyone talking all at once.” Finally, everyone fell silent. I was right. I heard nothing that sounded like the Faire. I unzipped my small purse and pulled out my phone. I pushed the button to light up the home screen, but there were dashes where the time was usually displayed and I saw that I had no signal. The others in the group did the same, looking at their phones and even trying to make calls. I looked at my watch. It read three forty five, about the time I would have expected it to read, but I had no way to tell if that was accurate because I could hardly see the sun through the thick trees.

  “Does anyone have a signal?” Sarah asked. No one responded.

  “This doesn’t make any sense!” Matthew said.

  “Well, are we just gonna stand here all day? Let’s get moving!” Sean ordered. “Let’s just start walking and sooner or later we are going to run into somebody who knows what the hell is going on.”

  No one in the group seemed to have any better ideas so we all followed him since he took the lead. There were no paths in this dim wooded forest and the tall grasses and weeds brushed against my legs as I walked, causing me to feel a little itchy. I was quiet but my mind was not. I wanted to remain calm, but a part of me felt apprehensive about the turn of events that had happened this afternoon. I thought of my tarot card reading. That wasn’t real, I reasoned with myself. That was merely entertainment. I walked beside Paul, who kept checking his phone like I did. None of us could explain any of this.

  “Sean, hold up! We need to rest,” Hannah called from behind me. We had been walking for about forty minutes through all kinds of foliage and there had been no sign of civilization. The more time passed, the more uneasy I felt. We were lost somewhere and we had no water, food, or supplies.

  We stopped in a small clearing with a few overturned logs and sat down on them. I reached down and scratched at my bare legs that had taken a beating being swiped by the foliage. I noticed several of the others doing the same. Matthew used his inhaler again. I didn’t know much about his health but hoped that his asthma was mild.

  “I don’t understand,” Hannah commented. “What happened to us? How did we get here and why don’t our phones work?”

  “There has to be civilization around here somewhere,” Josh said.

  “We don’t even know where here is,” Kennedy added.

  “Let’s keep moving. We are losing daylight,” Sean urged. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t as upset as the rest of us. Nothing seemed to faze him.

  Our group started walking and a short while later we emerged from the thick forest and saw our first glimpse of the sky. It appeared to be a normal blue sky like we were all used to seeing with white puffy clouds, but what we weren’t prepared to see was that we were on a small mountain. We could tell that we were somewhere on the middle of it and were headed downhill. I saw two more small mountains in front of us with a clearing behind them. What lay behind them, no one could say.

  “What the hell!” Sarah groaned. “We are definitely not at the Faire anymore!”

  Everyone, including me, fell silent. No one knew what to make of this. How could this be possible? I became upset as I remembered what the tarot card reader said; that my life would suddenly change. But where were we? And how did we get here? No one said much as we continued on, Sean leading the way. I did not see any animals, but did see a few flying insects as well as what I assumed were birds, but no signs of any other people.

  My stomach rumbled as the sun began to set. As a group we took frequent rests and continued walking, but much more slowly than we had earlier in the afternoon. Everyone was worried, tired, hungry, and thirsty. We took turns using the light from our phone screens as flashlights to keep moving after the sun set until we decided to stop for the night. The temperature had dropped considerably and we huddled together to keep warm. I hoped that we wouldn’t be attacked by anything in the dark. Maybe in the morning we could find our way back home. Somehow, probably due to the exhaustion, I fell into a restless sleep.

  The flapping sound of a bird’s wings woke me. The sun had begun to rise and the foliage was covered with dew. Slowly everyone started to get up and check their phones again. Still no signal. As we began walking again, I sensed the ground even out as if we were officially off the mountain. We passed a large bush growing some dark purple berries that sort of resembled grapes.

  “These look like fruit. I wonder if they are edible,” Hannah commented, stopping to take a look at them.

  “We have no idea if those are poisonous or not, don’t eat them,” I warned as I passed by her with the others. I noticed that she stood in front of the bush for a few seconds before catching up with the group.

  We all continued walking as a unit until we neared a clearing where we saw our first sign of civilization. There was what appeared to be a dirt road slicing through the flat ground of weeds and tall grasses. We saw distinct narrow grooves in the dirt, but no tire treads. It couldn’t have been a car or truck, I thought sadly. The nine of us stopped for several minutes to take a closer look. Wait . . . one, two, three . . . eight. I looked around and counted again, thinking my mind must be playing tricks on me from hunger and dehydration. No, I was right, only eight of us. “Where’s Hannah?” I said, my gaze sweeping the horizon.

  “What?” Sarah asked, surprised as she too started looking around.

  “She was right behind me,” Josh said with panic starting to invade his voice.

  “Calm down, calm down,” Sean commanded. “She probably stopped to pee or something. Let’s retrace our steps and fan out. We’ll find her. She couldn’t have wandered off that far.”

  We did as our leader commanded. I paired up with Sarah and we called Hannah’s name as we walked back the way that we came. Everyone, even Sean, called out her name but there was no response. When we hit the edge of the forest we fanned out even more, going in different direction
s to search for her. We searched for twenty minutes before I heard, “Evelyn!” Sarah and I quickly ran to where I was being called by Paul.

  We arrived on the scene joining several of the others on the way. Paul knelt on the ground next to Hannah, who did not appear to be moving. I noticed she lay only yards away from the bush with the dark purple berries. While the others started to panic, wring their hands, and cry; Samantha and I sprang into action and rushed to check our companion. Paul had turned her face up, but even as I felt her neck for her pulse, her body seemed cool to the touch. There was a small stream of clotted blood that had run out of the side of her mouth and her eyes were rolled up in her head. She wasn’t breathing and I could not find a pulse. My adrenaline spiked at these alarming findings. I put my ear to her chest to double check, but I could not hear a heartbeat either. My compassionate mind and my scientific mind argued with themselves within me for a moment. Should I start CPR? She’s clinically dead. I had no support here . . . no IV’s, no medications, and no defibrillator to re-start her heart. She would be brain dead . . . then reality set in. I realized there was not a thing that I could do for her.

  “You’re a nurse, Evelyn, do something!” Sean ordered.

  “She’s been like this at least a half an hour,” I heard myself say. “CPR is not going to help her.”

  “You’re not going to do anything?” Sarah cried.

  “It’s pointless!” I said, raising my voice in defense. “She’s gone!”

  “NO NO NO!” I heard Sarah wail as I continued to double check my assessment of poor Hannah. “This is all my fault! This is all my fault!” Sarah shrieked with her voice rising into hysterics.

  “Calm down, Sarah!” Sean said a little harsher than I thought was necessary. “Get a grip on yourself. She has no one to blame but herself. She probably ate those berries over there and was poisoned. It’s her fault for being stupid!”

  My emotions somersaulted within me. I was losing control, becoming upset, on the verge of tears. One of my companions had died, and there wasn’t any way for me to have helped her. The reality shock of our situation stung me.

  “We can’t wait around here all day or we’ll end up like her,” Sean said, pointing to Hannah’s body.

  “You mean we are going to just leave her here?” I asked incredulously.

  “No, we aren’t going to leave her here . . . Josh and I will carry her,” Paul said as he motioned for Josh to join him to lift the body. Josh gave him a questioning look before he knelt down next to Paul. No one was in the mood to argue this time. Paul hooked his arms under and around Hannah’s upper back while Josh took her legs and we walked back towards the clearing; a little slower this time.

  Chapter 2

  Back at the clearing we began to follow the dirt road into the division between the mountains when we heard the faint noise of hoof beats and what sounded like a cart behind us. We turned and saw a man driving a horse drawn cart headed in our direction, leaving a trail of dust in his wake. Sarah and I glanced at each other in confusion. The man appeared to be late middle aged with short salt and pepper hair and a beard. He wore a tan tunic with leggings and leather laced up shoes. He looked like he was straight out of the Rose Renaissance Faire.

  The man stopped his cart in front of our group and stared at us. He didn’t seem unfriendly, but to all of us, in our lost, sorrowful, and confused dispositions, we were cautious.

  “I’ll be damned,” I heard him say softly.

  He speaks English, I thought rapidly. “Excuse me, Sir, can you help us?” I asked optimistically.

  He eyed each one of us in turn, then his eyes rested on Josh and Paul, who were still holding Hannah’s body. “Where are you from, young lady?” he asked me in what sounded like an American accent, although I could not place the region.

  “We are from the suburbs of Chicago and we need to find our way home,” Sean interrupted, approaching the man, who did not budge from his perch on the wagon. “Do you know where we are? We need help. Our friend is dead and we need food and water.”

  The man was silent for a moment and then started to climb down off of the wagon. He walked casually over to Sean and held out his hand. “Doctor Robert Thorpe,” he said as he took Sean’s hand. “And who might you be?”

  Sean introduced himself and then the rest of us.

  “How did you get here?” The doctor asked Sean, who gave a quick run-down of our situation. No one interrupted him, but simply nodded as our short story was told. After he was finished the doctor simply said, “I see.” I thought it was strange that he wasn’t taken aback by our appearances or our story. He took it in without question.

  “You’re a doctor?” I asked in disbelief before continuing.

  “I am indeed,” he said before he walked over to Hannah and took her hand to feel for a pulse in her wrist. After a moment he released it. Since there were eight of us and one of him, I did not feel particularly frightened by him, especially with Sean around, who was ripped and several inches taller than him. I always had a deep mistrust and fear of strangers ever since my mother abandoned my sister and me. I had trouble coping with it at times.

  “There’s nothing you can do for her. She’s dead. Put her in the back of the cart, then the rest of you can climb in. I’m going to take you back to the village.”

  “Sir,” I said pleadingly, “where exactly are we, and how did we get here? This is nothing like the place we came from.” Everyone’s eyes were on him. We all had the same question.

  “I’m sorry my child, but you are a long way from your home. Come, get in the wagon and I’ll get you to the village before you all perish of dehydration. I’ll explain everything to you once we get there.”

  And so, having no other choice, we all piled into the strange doctor’s wagon next to some scattered cloth bags he had placed there. It was a tight fit with all of us plus Hannah’s body, which nobody wanted to sit next to. Sarah sat in Sean’s lap. I could see tears in her eyes. Samantha sat next to me looking very tired. Paul sat on the other side of me with a sober look on his face. No one spoke as the doctor drove the horse and wagon with all of us in tow. I think we were all just grateful to be off of our feet.

  Our new companion pulled us down the long dirt road and through the pass between the two gigantic snow covered mountains that seemed to be in abundance here. Once we cleared the valley all of us dropped our mouths open in shock when we saw a massive light gray stone structure in the distance settled up against one of the mountains surrounded by forests and waterfalls. It was a castle. Enormous stone walls with gates surrounded the base of what I assumed was the village this doctor was taking us to.

  “What is that place?” Paul asked in astonishment. I wondered the same thing. The closest thing I had ever seen to a castle in person was the “Medieval Times” building where I once watched a theatrical joust and enjoyed dinner during the show.

  “That is Silverstone Castle of the Kingdom of Eteryn,” Dr. Thorpe replied thoughtfully.

  I could see how it got its name. As we neared the structure I took in the beauty of how it glistened in the sun. The rock it was made from apparently had properties similar to mica and reflected the light from different angles. It was impressive not only because of its size, but also for the tall towers that were stationed here and there. Some of the turrets had tall cone shaped roofs while some of the others were round circular shapes with notches in them. It looked fairly new, which seemed strange to me I guess because in all of the history books I had ever seen pictures of castles in, they all appeared old. I didn’t know if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “Eteryn? Is that what you call this place?” Sean demanded.

  “Indeed. I will explain it all once you’ve all been given something to drink. I want everyone to be fully with me when I tell you so I don’t have to repeat myself.”

  All of us had our eyes glued to the surroundings as we drew closer and closer to the village. Doctor Thorpe drove us through the open gates in the mass
ive stone wall into a medieval appearing village. I did not see anyone standing guard at the gates so no one stopped us. However, once we were inside, there were many people milling about apparently working. They stopped what they were doing and gaped at us as we drove past, but none of them spoke to our driver. Some of the people took one look at us in the wagon and ran back into their establishments. Perhaps the most upsetting thing to me was that I noticed the village people wore what seemed to be authentic looking medieval garb and appeared to mostly be under the age of fifty. The dirt streets and the stench of certain places we passed caused me to want to hold my breath. I had been clinging to hope that this was some kind of dream or some extension of the Rose Renaissance Faire we started our day at yesterday, but it was not. This all seemed too realistic and believable to me. The only explanation I could think of was that somehow we were not in our time anymore.

  Doctor Thorpe pulled the wagon up to a small two story building that appeared to have been crafted out of wood, stone, and mud with a thatched roof. I noticed that there were a few windows carved out of the structure but no glass window panes, only wooden shutters that were open to provide a breeze. He slowed to a stop and a young boy, perhaps around the age of twelve, came out to take the horse’s reigns from him.

  “Thank you, Drew,” the doctor said as all of us climbed out of the back. Some nearby villagers stopped to stare at our party; I suspected it was because we were all wearing summer attire of things like tank tops, T-shirts, and shorts. We must have appeared naked to them compared to their long pants and dresses.

  Josh and Paul carried Hannah’s body over to Doctor Thorpe who motioned for us to follow him inside the building. Sean led the way, which I was grateful for. Even though this doctor had come to our aide, there was no telling whether or not he was a psycho.