“Why should we listen to you?” I asked her.
“We don’t really have a choice,” Erin said.
“Yeah,” John added. “She—uh—convinced us.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “How exactly?”
“Magic,” Murphy said.
I rolled my eyes. “Murphy, be serious.”
“Lydia, I am being serious,” he said. From the look on his face, I could tell he really believed what he was telling me. I whirled on the woman.
“This isn’t funny anymore,” I said. “Would someone tell me what is going on?!” The sense of light and energy began to well up inside me once more. I tried to take a couple of deep breaths to calm down. The last thing I wanted was to pass out again.
“Yeah,” John said. “You told us you would tell us what is going on once Lydia woke up. She’s awake. So, tell us how we get back home.”
The woman looked up from where she had been poking the fire. She stared each of us in the eye before saying, “You don’t. There’s no way to go back.”
I felt like I had been hit in the chest. The little ball of energy that had been on the verge of exploding now felt utterly deflated.
“What are you talking about?” Erin asked in a voice that was breaking up.
“There is no way for you to get back home.”
John jumped up and pointed an accusing finger at the woman. “You said you would help us. You have magic! Just cast a spell and send us home!”
“It’s not that simple. The best I can do is offer to launch a fireball at you. I assure you that won’t send you home.”
“You said you would help us!” John insisted.
“Don’t take that tone with me, young man! I am helping you. Listen to what I say, and you might survive.”
John opened his mouth to reply, but I held up my hand to stop him. “Would someone please tell me what you all are talking about. Magic?”
Erin, Murphy, and John all exchanged glances but said nothing. I crossed my arms and glared at the woman. In reply, she opened up her hand and a bright orange flame appeared in the center of her palm. The woman blew on it and it floated to join the fire. I watched in disbelief as the flame blended seamlessly with the other orange flames already burning. I looked back at the woman too stunned to say anything.
“I am a Magic Wielder. I can use magic and cast spells. But I have no idea how you all got here in the first place. Travel between worlds shouldn’t be possible. Yet, it sounds like that’s what happened. Are any of you Magic Wielders?”
We all looked at her blankly. Finally, Erin said, “No, there’s no such thing as magic. Where are we? Are we even on Earth? Why can’t we go home?”
“You are in Adylra. In the Kingdom of Thavell. This is the Golden Forest at the southern end of the kingdom. Traveling between worlds is impossible so you shouldn’t even be here. But you are, and there is no way for you to go home. You need to start getting used to the idea, and quickly.” The woman talked like she was reciting a grocery list or something. There was no emotion in her voice as she told us we were stuck in a different world.
“So, what are we supposed to do?” I asked.
“You will come with me. I will get you set up in a village close to here. You will be safe. You must never tell anyone you have come from a different world,” she said.
“But you know we did. How?”
“I sensed you coming through.”
“If you sensed us coming through, and found us this quickly, how do we know someone else won’t find us?” I asked.
“I have special skills, even among Magic Wielders, and I guard this forest closely. No one else could know.”
“We don’t know you, you won’t even tell us your name. Why should we trust anything you say?” I asked.
“Because if you don’t, you will not survive.”
We fell silent. I sighed in frustration, sat down, and began to pull my boots on. Even though I had apparently been asleep for hours, I was still exhausted. I was surprised by my own reaction to this all this information. I wasn’t upset, just numb. It was like I was just watching what was happening as a spectator instead of a participant.
Erin turned back to the woman. “Then what do you want us to do right now?”
“You will stay here for the night and we will start the hike to the closest village tomorrow. I will get you set up there. It will take us three days to travel. Sleep here. I have something I must attend to. Stay here until I return with more supplies and we will begin our journey.” With that she pulled the hood of her cloak up and disappeared into the night.
8
After the woman disappeared, we all sat in silence watching the flames as they slowly burnt down. As the fire died, the night closed around us. It was nothing more than embers before someone spoke.
“Are we just going to listen to her and do what she says?” John asked.
“What else are we supposed to do, John?” Erin asked.
“I don’t know, but this just feels wrong. Why shouldn’t we tell other people what happened to us? Where we came from? We got here, didn’t we? Someone has to know how to get us back home.”
“You know,” Murphy said. He was sitting with his back to us and was staring into the embers of the fire. “I keep thinking about all these stories I read when I was younger. Kids walking through closets or clocks and getting pulled into another world. I feel like we’ve stepped into a kid’s book or something.”
I stared at the back of his head, waiting for him to continue. Murphy wasn’t usually one to get so philosophical.
"What if all those stories were real?” he asked.
“Are you serious, Murphy?” Erin asked. I could tell she thought her brother was being ridiculous. “This is crazy. We just need to find someone, tell them what happened, and keep trying to find someone to help us get the heck out of here.”
“Stuff like this clearly does happen, Erin. It’s happening right now. What do you call this?”
“Guys, come on. Let’s not fight,” I said, interrupting them. “We don’t have to have it all figured out tonight. There are other stories about people from our world getting trapped in other worlds. Maybe there is something to that. But I agree with that woman, whoever she was, I don’t think we should tell anyone where we are from or how we got here. Think about if someone showed up in our world and started talking about getting transported by a magical gateway. Would anyone take him seriously? I think we just need to lie low and once we have a clue what’s going on and where we are, we can start poking around to see if there’s a way to get back home.”
“Lydia’s right,” John said. “We don’t need to draw attention to ourselves. As for that woman, when she comes back tomorrow, we can demand she answers some of our questions before we go with her. Agreed?”
I nodded. John stared at Murphy and Erin until they both nodded at him in agreement as well. Erin nodded last and made sure to shoot a glare at all of us before turning away. I took a deep breath to keep from saying something. There was no reason to be sullen and mad and I wanted to tell her so. But today had been trying for everyone, so I let it go.
“I’m not tired after my—uh—nap, today, so I’ll stay up and keep watch. I hope unicorns are the craziest things that live in this forest, but just in case they’re not I don’t want anything to sneak up on us.”
“Good idea, Lydia. Thank you,” Murphy said. He moved by me to gather some branches and sticks that were laying in a pile next to the fire and threw them on to stoke it up some. He smiled at me as he moved past. I felt my face flush as he did so. I attempted to smile back at him. It was hard to summon up anything that felt like fun at the moment. I sighed and settled down next to the fire to keep watch.
Erin, John, and Murphy rolled out some blankets on the ground next to me. I looked at Erin and lifted an eyebrow.
“That woman gave us some supplies when she got here. It’s not much but should be enough to get us through a couple of days.” She tossed m
e something. It was wrapped in cloth. I unwrapped it to reveal some sort of jerky.
“It’s not bad,” Erin said. “We had some earlier while you were still sleeping.”
I bit into it while they continued getting things ready to lie down. It wasn’t bad. It tasted like beef jerky with a bit of spice to it. Not unlike some barbecue flavored jerky I usually bought from the store at home. It was somehow comforting to think there were cows somewhere in this new world with us.
Erin, John, and Murphy settled down to sleep. Erin and John were wrapped up in a blanket together. Erin had her head on John’s shoulder. Murphy had settled in between Erin and myself. Everything quieted down for a few minutes. There was nothing to hear but the crackling of the fire, the running water from the stream nearby, and the occasional croak of a frog.
“You know, Erin,” John’s voice said emerging from the silence. “This is not exactly how I thought our first night together would go.”
Erin erupted into a fit of giggles.
“Hey,” Murphy called from his roll of blankets. He sat up and looked toward his sister and her boyfriend. “None of that or I will march over there and sleep right in the middle of you two. See if I don’t.”
We all started laughing at that. It felt good to release the anxiety that had been pent up inside me. I laughed until I was doubled over and tears were leaking out of my eyes. Everyone else had dissolved into similar fits of giggles. After a few minutes we all quieted down except for a few chuckles here and there.
“Goodnight you guys,” I said. “Get some sleep. I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be an interesting day.”
“Goodnight Lydia,” Erin mumbled in the middle of a yawn. John had already drifted off to sleep.
Murphy patted me on the knee before turning over and covering his head up with a blanket. “Goodnight, Lydia.”
They each fell asleep, leaving me alone with the fire and the night.
9
The night passed uneventfully. Each time I felt myself getting bored, I walked around the small circle of light the fire gave off before settling down again. Besides the running of the stream and the occasional breeze that blew through the golden leaves nothing moved. I built up the fire as it ran low and rummaged through the supplies the strange woman had left us. I found the beginnings of a map one of my friends had drawn. It was nicely done, so I knew it must have been Erin. She loved to draw. I traced my finger along the path she had drawn from the cliff facing where we had appeared through the gateway through a bit of forest and to our campsite beside the stream. Murphy and John must have carried me that far.
The sky to our left began to change colors as morning drew near. I marked it on the map. I started to mark the direction as east but stopped myself and just noted it was the direction of the sunrise. Who knew if directions were the same here? To be a different world, the sunrise looked remarkably the same. The streak of yellow across the horizon. The shades of pink and purple stretching out into the black sky of night, chasing the darkness away. The yellow orb that slowly peeks out and rises into the sky. It felt nice to see something so familiar in this strange new place.
The sun continued to rise but my companions didn’t budge. I left them alone. My body was tired, but I wasn’t sleepy at all, so I didn’t bother waking them to get some shut eye myself. I just continued to sit and enjoy the peace and silence for as long as I could. I had a feeling that nothing about this day was going to be easy or uneventful. After the sun was over the horizon I stood and stretched. My back and neck popped what felt like a thousand times as I lifted my arms toward the sky as far as they would go.
It was bright enough to see the forest now. It looked just as pretty and strange as it had the day before. I felt like I was going to go crazy if I continued to sit and do nothing, so I gathered the leather water skins and walked off in the direction of the stream. It was where Erin said they had gotten the water yesterday and I could hear it running so I knew it wasn’t too far off. Since I had spent most of the previous day unconscious, I felt the need to do something useful. I snapped a small branch here and there to make sure I could find my way back to my friends.
The trek to the stream didn’t take long. After walking past the first few trees beside the clearing we were camped in, I worked my way through a rather thick growth of thorn bushes and I was on the bank of the stream. Once I saw it, I realized stream was a bit of an understatement. The body of water before me stretched at least thirty feet across. It was so clear I could see the rocks at the bottom and the little minnows and the occasional fish swimming by. It was flowing quickly to the right. Downstream just a little was a small waterfall and a small set of rapids. The sound of moving water was soothing in the early morning.
I could see little birds flittering in the trees above my head but there wasn’t any other signs of wildlife. I checked the soft mud on the banks of the water. Sure enough, there were tracks galore. I could see what looked to be squirrel tracks, some possum ones, and even a couple of canine prints that could’ve come from a coyote or wolf. I also picked out the shape of a horse’s hoof and remembered with a smile the sight of the unicorn. Were these the unicorn’s tracks or the tracks of a regular horse? Everything else from the day before seemed like a blur but the memory of seeing the unicorn was clear as day, almost like it was seared into my memory. I laughed a little at myself as I was checking out the tracks. I was matching the tracks to animals I was familiar with, but from the experience of seeing the mythological creature yesterday I knew I really didn’t have a clue what was living in the forest. What I thought were raccoon tracks could turn out to be some sort of talking rat for all I knew.
I quit looking at the tracks and set about filling up the water skins. In no time I was finished and ready to head back when I heard a rhythmic thud-thud-thud somewhere deeper in the forest. I stood and peered through the trees but didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary. I turned to make my way back to where I had come from when I heard it again. Thud-thud-thud. Again, I stared into the forest, trying to see something that was making that sound but there was nothing. I waited for a moment and sure enough another thud-thud-thud made its way to my ears.
“What you’re thinking is a really bad idea, Lydia,” I told myself. It didn’t matter. I needed to find out what that noise was. It seemed so out of place in this quiet forest.
“I’m not going to go far,” I said, talking to myself again. “Besides, I’m sure I’ll be back before anyone is awake.”
The sound was definitely coming from across the stream. There were stones sticking up out of the water, so I picked my way across them. I wasn’t sure how waterproof these new boots were, and I wasn’t too keen to find out. There was nothing I hated more than wet socks. It took just a couple of minutes for me to pick my way across and stay dry.
Once I was on the other side I paused and listened for the sound again. It didn’t disappoint me. Thud-thud-thud. Now that I was a bit closer to it, I could tell it was coming from my left. I started in that direction, still carefully marking my way as I walked along. The last thing I wanted to do was get lost. Then the thought struck me that being in a whole other world was as lost as I could get. I shook my head at myself. As the sound got louder, I slowed my pace a bit. If whatever was making that sound wasn’t friendly, I didn’t want to burst in on it and make my presence known.
As I approached the noise, I realized it was coming from a massive hole in the ground hidden by some brush a few hundred yard away from the stream. What was a hole doing in the middle of the forest? I paused for a moment and studied it. It was almost perfectly round, so it was most likely man made. I realized it was probably an animal trap of some sort. Concern for the unicorn I saw yesterday seized me and I rushed forward. The unicorn was the only large living creature we had seen so far. What if it had come this way and fallen into the hole? It could have been hurt or injured. I approached carefully just in case part of the ground around the hole broke and sent me falling too.
&nb
sp; As soon as I was close enough, I peered into the hole to see what was stuck. It wasn’t the unicorn that had fallen in. I gasped when I saw what was down there instead. It was the last thing I expected.
“Oh, hello,” a voice said. “Who are you?”
10
The hole was about ten feet deep and standing at the bottom was a man. I could see he was tall with dark curly hair. And, I was a little embarrassed to notice, quite handsome.
“Hello, can you hear me?” he asked.
“Oh, sorry,” I replied. “I was just a little startled to see you.”
“Likewise,” he said. I noticed his hands were on his waist. And one of them was holding what looked remarkably like a sword hilt.
“May I ask what you’re doing this part of the Golden Forest?” he asked.
That was an excellent question. I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer. It wasn’t like we had thought about seeing other people while we were off gallivanting in the forest alone. Oops.
“I’m with some friends and we, um, got lost last night. Ended up here. Figured we could find our way back to the road in the morning.” That sounded as good as anything. And it wasn’t entirely untrue. I just hoped he believed me.
“Where are these friends?” he asked. To be the one stuck in a hole this guy seemed awfully demanding.
“Asleep. Or at least, they were when I left them. I went to get some water at the stream and heard the sound you were making. What were you doing anyway?”
“I was banging my sword against this tree limb that’s down here. I thought maybe I could chop it half and stack it to climb out. I guess you saved me the trouble. Why are you and your friends traveling?”
Gatebreaker: Book One Page 4