Off Track: A Romantic Magical Quest Series (The Madeline Journeys Book 1)

by P. A. Wilson

  “Did he suggest you try to be my friend? To disarm me with your kindness so, I would be more compliant.”

  “Please, control your anger,” Arabela said. “He told me I would be more successful if I simply talked to you.”

  “Good.”

  “That is what I am trying.”

  “Are you surprised that you are not being successful.” Madeline’s anger was transferring to Glory, who started twitching and sidestepping in nervousness. She reached forward and patted the horse’s neck. “There, there, Glory. Don’t fret. I don’t like being handled, Arabela.”

  “The spell translates that to being treated like a horse or other beast. I am not doing that.”

  “You may not think so, but you’re trying to impose your wishes on me. I’ve agreed to go along but I am not going to lie down and roll over just because you say so.”

  “That is not what I want.” Arabela’s frustration boiled over into the words. “Why are you so determined to be difficult? Is this situation not hard enough already?”

  “Difficult for you?” Madeline was shocked. “Look, you get to exact your revenge on your husband’s killer, and then rule in his place. What’s difficult for you?”

  “Many things.” Arabela’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I loved my husband and when his life was taken my own became of no worth to me. I waited for the pain and sorrow to take me to join him.”

  “It doesn’t look like that to me.” Madeline was not going to be taken in by a story of grief. This woman was far from the grieving widow.

  “When Blu told me I was… you know what he told me, I put aside my grief. I could not indulge my emotions in this condition. The person you see today is not just Arabela; it is the future of my people.”

  “Yes, you get to rule an entire land when we’re done. I don’t know what will happen to me.” Madeline heard the resentment in her voice. “I hate sounding so pathetic, but you have no idea what I feel about not knowing if I will survive.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if the prophecy needs me to die to make your revenge successful?” Tears pushed at Madeline’s eyes. She felt an overwhelming regret at all the things she hadn’t done in her life. “I don’t want to. I’m not ready to die.”

  “No one is,” Arabela said, a frown on her face. “Do you think my Alric was ready to die when the lightning bolt hit?”

  “I know. I’m not stupid,” Madeline said. “Look, I need to have a plan. Even if I die doing this, it will be okay if I have a plan.”

  “What plan, the plan of how to defeat Sayer? That is not for you to make, it is my responsibility. When the time comes, you will know what to do. Do not waste your time worrying about that.”

  “No, a plan of what to do when we are done,” Madeline snapped. “I know I can’t control what happens up to whatever I was brought here to do. I need to have something to look forward to.”

  “You think that I do not understand your need to plan your future?” Arabela snapped back. “I too am a creature of fate. I do not wish to rule the Summer Lands. Like you, I have to do something I am not sure I want to do. You are not the only one who feels a need to control the future.”

  “If you understand, why don’t you help me? Why are you always telling me what to do instead of asking me?”

  “Because I know my duty. It is apparent that in your world duty means nothing in the face of your desires for your own comfort and pleasure.” Arabela’s face was flushed with her anger.

  “Don’t tell me I don’t know my duty. I spent my life so far meeting expectations from my parents, my friends, and my employers. Life is not just about duty.” Madeline kicked her horse into a canter. “I do not wish to talk anymore.”

  18

  Madeline could hear another horse catching up. “Leave me alone,” she shouted over her shoulder.

  “I cannot,” Jode’s voice came back. “I will not speak if you wish peace but it is dangerous to ride alone in the forest. I will stay with you.”

  She regretted her words and her tone as she slowed to a walk. She and Jode were the only riders visible. “I’m sorry. I thought Arabela had followed me.”

  “No.” Jode pulled alongside. “I asked her to stay with the others. I did not want to listen to you argue any longer.”

  “I don’t know why I can’t keep my temper. She just seems to push me over the edge all the time.” Madeline sighed. “I know it’s not her fault. I am as much to blame as she is.”

  “It must be difficult for you to be here,” Jode said. “Are you missing your friends, your life?”

  “I didn’t have many friends.” It hurt to acknowledge that.

  “You know that she did not look for you, just for an answer to her question,” Jode said. “If she had known that she had to pull you here, she may not have asked for the prophecy.”

  “But she did.”

  “What would you have done in her place?”

  “I don’t know.” Madeline was silent for a while. If she had to be honest, she would have done the same as Arabela. She couldn’t explain why she was so quick to anger. She’d always been able to be reasonable even with the most difficult client.

  She finally said, “Jode, I am not used to just waiting for something to happen. I just keep trying to make things go faster. It’s like a compulsion.”

  “So you can go home?” Jode looked away as he said the words.

  Madeline could see his disappointment in the straightness of his back, and his refusal to meet her eyes. The thought of going home didn’t settle her feelings. In fact, the thought of leaving him made her sad, and the thought of leaving this beautiful world made her feel depressed.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “When I first got here I would have said yes. When I made my decision to stay and help it seemed to change things.”

  “In what way.” Riding closer, Jode glanced at her before focusing on the forest edges that now ran right up to the road. “Have you made friends here?”

  “Maybe.” She thought of Elise who helped her to get through the first two days without totally embarrassing herself, and realized she had made a friend. “Yes, I supposed there are a few people I would miss if I left.”

  “What is it that draws you back? Is there a lover waiting?” He looked down at his hands.

  Madeline shook her head. Jode’s ability to display his love in every action was endearing. Back home, she might have found it borderline creepy, here it was charming. “If there was, would he have given up by now?”

  “If he loved you, he would never give up. It has only been a few days. What a poor love that would be.”

  Madeline was surprised. “How do you know it hasn’t been years in my world?” She had assumed that time passed faster on her world, it was a pretty standard plot device in movies.

  “Blu tells us we are parallel to your world. Each minute you spend here is equal to a minute in your world.” Jode shrugged. “Even so, if necessary Blu may be able to send you back in time to your world. No one need miss you.”

  “Oh, well, someone will be looking for us by now, I suppose.” She thought someone in the firm would eventually phone the police when she didn’t come to work.

  “I hope someone would care enough about you there to try to find you. If you disappeared from here, I would never stop looking.”

  “Oh, Jode, I am sorry.” She felt her heart turn at the thought of him wasting his life searching and waiting for a lost love. “I don’t know why you feel this way. I can’t say what I feel for you. There is too much rolling around my brain.”

  “You are not responsible for my feelings. If fate has meant me to love someone who does not love me back, then so be it. I will say this only once.” He turned to look at her. “I would lay my life down for you, Lady Madeline. Whether or not you stay here, please consider my heart yours to hold.”

  “You don’t make it easier for me to figure out what to do.” She smiled at him. “I do feel attraction to you. I don’t kno
w if it is anything more than that.”

  “Let us leave this topic.” He turned his gaze back to the forest. “Is there some way we can find that will allow you and Arabela to work civilly together? I ask because it will have an effect on the whole company if you bicker all the time.”

  “I try.” Madeline laughed, “God knows I do, I can try harder. I understand why she talked to Simon; I can be a pain if I don’t know what is going on.”

  “Can I answer any more questions for you to help you learn what is…going on?”

  “Yes,” Madeline brightened. “If you can tell me about the world you live in. I can figure out how to use the knowledge. I just don’t have any understanding of where I am, or how to survive here. I’m sorry, I feel like I keep asking the same questions.”

  “Do not be sorry, ask questions and I will answer to my best ability.” He rode closer again. “Please though, let us wait here where it is clear until the others catch up. There are bandits who would happily take us for ransom.”

  Madeline looked around. The left side of the road bordered a fast running river and this side was clear of anything but low growing ground cover for about half a kilometer. “Yes, if you think this is the best place to wait. I don’t want you to worry; I want you to talk. And, I swear to you I will find a way to work with Arabela.”

  They sat on their horses and talked while they waited for the rest of the company to catch up.

  Later, in Lanewall, as she watched the proceedings, Madeline realized she had no desire to help Arabela and the mayor, Mr. Timwell, as they settled disagreements and listened to complaints about quality of goods, delivery times, and breakage allowance. This type of thing had been her bread and butter back in her old life. Now, she was happy to sit on the sidelines, sipping a local beer and munching on spiced nuts with the other members of the company.

  “You look bored.” Simon said, passing her a new mug of beer. “Is it better to be involved?”

  She pushed her empty mug to the end of the table so the server could clear it more easily. “I’m not bored. I’m watching. I think the problem is that here there’s no problem. This is more like a managed forum for discussion. There’s no intricacy of interpretation, no shade of precedent. And have you noticed, everyone seems to want to find a solution. Where’s the challenge in that?”

  “So, it sounds like you might have come to one decision.”

  “What decision?” Madeline took a long drink of her beer.

  “If you stay you won’t want to be a scribe, mayor, or anything that looks like a legal profession.” He tilted his head in question.

  “Okay, I’ll take it. Like I said, I need a decision.” As she spoke, Madeline felt the fog in her brain thinning. “I still have to figure out whether to stay or go, and what to do either way, but let’s call this progress.”

  “You forgot one decision,” Simon said.

  “I forgot a lot of little decisions, which one in particular?”

  “Jode.” Simon looked over his shoulder where the man in question was sitting talking to a group of small children, telling stories, if their rapt stares were anything to go by.

  “He’s not a decision.” She sighed in resignation. “At least not the way you are thinking. You know he loves me.”

  Simon laughed. “Yes, I’m not blind, or deaf, or stupid.”

  “Well, the problem is that he does really love me.” She watched Jode pretend to have a sword fight. “I’ve heard the words too often from men who wanted something from me and thought that was the way to get it. The guy loves me with all his heart.”

  “So why is that a problem?”

  “I don’t know what I feel for him.” She drank more of the beer, giving herself time to gather her words. “I think what I feel might be love. It’s hard to tell under all the confusion and stress, but what if I can’t stay? What if I have to leave? Or, what if this quest kills me?”

  “What difference would any of that make? If you love him, you love him. What’s the saying?” He wrinkled his forehead. “Oh, yeah, what the heart wants the heart wants.”

  “So, what do you think I should do?” She laughed at his surprised expression. “This is me being less controlling, get used to it.”

  “I think you should go for it, whatever it is in this culture. If you let him court you according to his rules, then you can call it off if it gets too much for you. You just need to leave the baggage back home on the other side of the tree we came through.”

  “It won’t make my final stay or go decision any easier.” She watched Jode reach the climax of the story and the children all screamed then laughed so hard they rolled on the ground.

  “It won’t make it harder, I promise. If you don’t love him, then no harm no foul. If you do, then why would it make it harder?”

  “I wouldn’t want to resent him for making me stay. My mother stayed with my dad because she got pregnant with me. She wanted to be a dancer and I think she regretted it forever.” Madeline blurted out the information like a confession.

  “I’m sorry. Just remember this; if you do love him, and want to spend your life with him, there will always be something about him you’ll resent. Shit, you can’t expect to live together for more than a week without something annoying one of you, probably you. If you are together, you will always have the opportunity to resolve it. If you go back, you might regret leaving and would have no way of fixing it.”

  “I didn’t realize you were so wise in the ways of love and life,” she raised her eyebrow.

  “I have hidden depths.” He grinned. “And I watched a lot of Oprah and Doctor Phil.”

  The group rode out of the village with bags of trail food and a couple of barrels of beer on the horses, walking slowly to avoid jostling the beer on the short journey to the main camp. The ride took them through a small warehouse district just outside of town, the guards waved as the horses passed. The fields that surrounded the village were full of flowers and bordered with herbaceous hedges.

  “This is pretty, like a painting of a forgotten pastoral time in my world,” Madeline said as she moved in beside Arabela. “The scent of these fields is almost overwhelming.”

  “They are for the perfume factories closer to the ocean. The merchants here provide the dried and fresh ingredients for the scent makers.”

  “Industry is not so pretty in my world.” Madeline cleared her throat. “I want to apologize for my mood earlier.”

  “I think we both acted badly. I forget how much you have had to accept in such a short time. I am accustomed to solving problems for the people who I consider friends, not letting then solve their own problems.”

  “And I am used to the same thing.” Madeline looked over at Arabela. “If we stopped fighting we could probably solve any problem put in front of us.”

  “Ah, and then where would the world be,” Arabela asked chuckling. “It may be that between us we do not know everything.”

  “That may be true, but would anything we didn’t know be worth the bother?” She reached out her hand to Arabela. “As one control freak to the other, maybe we should call a peace.”

  “I like that term,” Arabela said. “It describes you perfectly.”

  “Hey, lady,” Madeline said. “We’re supposed to be getting along, don’t start a fight.”

  “I was simply making an observation.” Arabela blushed, “I suppose I see how that would be offensive. Perhaps I am forgetting to look in the mirror before speaking.”

  “We have an expression for that,” Madeline said. “The pot calling the kettle black.”

  “Are you saying I’m the pot?” Arabela said looking at her flat stomach. “I don’t show yet.”

  Madeline laughed and held out her hand again. “Peace?”

  Arabela leaned across and shook the hand. “Fate help Sayer Goddard,” she said.

  Madeline rode in silence for a few minutes, thinking over what they should do next.

  “I think it would be a good idea if you met with me
and Blu this evening,” Arabela said, before Madeline could think of anything concrete.

  “I’m not a religious person,” Madeline said. “I don’t know what good meeting with Blu would do.”

  “Blu is a priest,” Arabela said as though that would help.

  “Yes, and I still don’t understand what religion has to do with it.” Madeline reminded herself that they had just agreed to peace and thought a moment. “What function does Blu have beyond religion?”

  “The priest is also a secular advisor here. Are they not in your world?”

  “No,” Madeline said as understanding dawned. “Or rather, not in my country; we have had many ugly situations happen when religion is involved in the day to day running of a country.”

  “It would not be possible to run the country without the priests.”

  “How many religions do you have?”

  “One, how can there be more than one true path?”

  “If my world is any example, you can’t peacefully have more than one. We have hundreds of paths and many of our wars, past and present, have been about how people worship and what name they give to god.”

  “And yet you wish to go back?” Arabela sounded astonished.

  “Sometimes the familiar is better than the unknown, even if the familiar is imperfect.”

  “We have a saying,” Arabela said. “It is better to serve a bad lord than a good Scree.”

  Madeline laughed. “We say better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. I guess I should meet with you and Blu tonight.”

  19

  They trotted into the main camp in the late afternoon. After helping to stable her horse, Madeline went back to her tent to wash the dust off her face and brush out her hair.

  “Come back to the central room within ten minutes,” Arabela said before slipping through the curtain to her room.

  Madeline looked longingly at the clean clothes laid out on her bed. She weighed her choice, really clean clothes tomorrow and stay in the road soiled ones she was already wearing, or clean clothes now with no bath. Madeline decided that she would appreciate the change of clothes tomorrow.