by Dima Zales
A mop of bright curls flitted behind a crate of potatoes. “Zoe!” Petra followed, frustration and worry mounting.
The girl didn’t turn but expertly navigated the crowd, expertly navigating through tight clad legs and dust lined skirts. The child held the pink flip-flop in her hand, which surprised Petra, but then when she thought about it, there were so many surprising things, too many to count. A pig on the loose? Toothless middle-aged women? Three-legged dogs? And maybe one three-legged dog was okay, but more than that was just wrong. Petra zigzagged between the carts, searching for Zoe’s curls. Petra spotted the girl rounding a corner.
Thatched-roofed cottages with shuttered windows, white plaster buildings with timber frames, and wooden roofs—Petra hadn’t noticed this area before. Could they be the drama department’s backdrops? Most were two or three stories and quite often the second story leaned out over the first, looking like a beer belly protruding over a belt. All of it was pretty elaborate, even for Mrs. Brighton. Petra rounded the street corner and stopped short in the thick of a cheering crowd.
A sharp tug on her purse startled her, and she looked into the dirty face of a boy holding a sad looking knife. Both grabbed for her cut purse string, but Petra was quicker. She kicked at the kid and he sprinted away, disappearing into the press of bodies.
Clutching her purse, Petra was pushed from behind, jostled, tumbled to the ground. Pushing herself up onto her elbows, she faced an iron fence. A stream of red splattered the front of her dress.
Blood? Blood on her dress!
Around her, the people jeered, laughing, slapping each other on the backs and watching a pair of roosters battling on the other side of the iron fence. The birds, mottled brown, black, and white, dripped with gore and mud. The larger one had lost an eye, and blood and mucus stained the side of its face. The smaller, stringier bird lunged for his opponent’s throat. When the larger rooster fell with a dying gurgle, the crowd roared.
Bile surged in Petra’s throat. She gagged, clasped at her calves and laid her head against her knees. She spied her purse and she scooped it up. She uncurled, stood and pushed through the crowd until she reached a stand of trees at the edge of the square.
She tried to take several deep breaths, but she couldn’t calm down. Where were the yellow jackets? No one liked the security guards, Hellsfire Helen or Wicked Will, but she’d wished they were here now. She wanted to hear them tooting their blow-horns and bellowing, “Slow down, Slick! Out of the flowerbeds! Back to Class! Quit killing roosters!”
Where were the flower beds? The parking lot filled with hot, shiny cars? She spotted a church steeple and walked toward it, remembering that after her hasty-prayer she’d thought she’d seen Zoe and her flip-flop.
Outside the church, a stone wall circled a small cemetery filled with headstones. Hitching her dress to her knees, Petra felt someone watching and turned to see a man built like a water-barrel but with noodle-thin limbs. He stared at her legs and licked his lips. Quickly, she dropped her skirts, patted them into place and turned her back on the man. She still felt his gaze.
Patchy grass and a smattering of dandelions and buttercups grew between the rough markers. Here were the flower beds—weeds sprouting up over graves. The chapel she attended with her family was made of red brick and had double glass doors and a shiny white steeple. This church was made of gray stone and had heavily carved wooden doors.
She looked over her shoulder. The man stood still, watching.
Emory had followed Chambers out of necessity and justice. Simply put, principle demanded he thwart Chambers’ plan. He’d followed the girl why? Because it seemed she’d already tied him with an invisible string and he was as surely tethered as a donkey to a cart. No principles nor moral standards had anything to do with tagging her. He dodged a boy leading a sickly milk cow, and skirted past the vendors hawking their goods.
He would have walked past Anne without a glance and only stopped when she placed a hand on his arm. “Kind sir, consider my wares?”
Emory gave the girl’s retreating back a long look before giving Anne his attention. He looked into his old friend’s large, sad brown eyes. She had a cloud of brown hair that she wore swept away from her face, but in odd moments, when the hair escaped its pins, as it was wont to do, Anne reminded Emory of nothing so much as a spaniel.
“Are the colors not fine?” she asked.
Emory saw her puzzled expression that traveled from his face to the girl in blue who was quickly disappearing into the crowd. He sighed and smiled. “The finest,” he agreed, his gaze barely touching the stand and its assembly of threads and dyes.
“I’ve also tapestries,” she told him.
“They are well known, my lady. Your father’s fame is well-established.”
“Perhaps you would care to see his work,” she urged.
By now the girl in blue had melded into the crowd. Fingering the threads, Emory said, “Not today, but in two evenings hence.”
Anne’s eyebrows rose. “A meeting, sir?”
“You may find me near the rectory.”
He watched Anne’s eyes light with fire. “But how—”
“’Tis just a meeting,” he told her, modulating his tone so that a passerby would consider them strangers and not conspirators. “The plans are not set. There’s still much to discuss.”
She nodded, fussed over her threads, trying to hide her pleased and hopeful expression.
Worry stirred inside Emory. Anne’s relentless search for vengeance would surely prove dangerous. Emory had learned from hard experience that heaven meted out its own unique justice without need of human interference. The divine wheel of justice might appear slow, but it was steady and sure.
“We will meet,” Anne said. Pink stained her cheeks.
Emory’s gaze swept over the crowd. He’d lost the girl.
“Perhaps I can aid you further?” Anne’s voice brought his attention back to where it belonged.
“No. I have no need.” Emory shook his head, wishing it true.
Petra walked through the cemetery, disregarding the dark, stained markers, and headed for a fresh grave. The headstone looked new; grass had yet to grow over the mound of dirt. Petra squatted beside the headstone. Geoffery Carl, born 1589, died 1614.
Forget the stalker. Forget the Royal Oaks Renaissance Faire. Somehow she had landed in the seventeenth century. Was this a dream? She didn’t remember falling asleep. Had she hit her head in the fortuneteller’s tent? At this very moment, was her body lying unconscious in Royal Oaks while her mind played tricks in Elizabethan England?
A tear rolled down her cheek. She brushed it away, knowing her hands, filthy from the fall, would leave a smear of dirt and mascara across her cheek. It doesn’t matter how I look in a dream, she thought as the tears fell faster, bathing her face. She’d had such nightmares before, perhaps not quite realistic as this, but still she’d had those strange dreams where upon waking she’d been surprised to find herself in her own bed. Dreams where she’d forgotten to prepare for a history test, dreams where she’d lost her mother in a crowd, much like the crowd here. But she’d never dreamed of seventeenth-century England before. All those Shakespeare tragedies, Fritz, Richard, Hamlet, Lear, they were dead. No point in dreaming about them four hundred years later.
But what if it wasn’t a dream? An alternate reality? A wormhole? A parallel universe? She needed to get a grip. Maybe at some point this would all make sense, but right now she would play along. She didn’t need to worry about Zoe. What had the Fester the fortuneteller said? Some journeys must be taken alone. She didn’t have to worry. Zoe wasn’t shy–she knew how to ask for help. Just because Petra was lost in some sort of time warp didn’t mean that Zoe hadn’t found a way home. Or a funnel cake.
Petra squared her shoulders, sniffed, and looked inside her purse for a Kleenex. The light on her phone pulsed reassuringly. Of course, if she were really in seventeenth century England, there wouldn’t be cell service, let alone towers or sate
llites, but she should at least try to call home. In private.
Hot Horse guy’s witchcraft warning rang in her ear. Did they have public restrooms in the seventeenth century? Toilet paper? Aspirin? Anti-hallucinogenic drugs? Looking around, Petra saw nowhere to hide, but no one to pry either, so she sat on the spotty grass and pulled her knees to her chest. Keeping her head tucked over her lap, she opened her purse and fingered her phone. Three new texts. The familiar tiny red envelope cheered her, reminded her of who she was and where she belonged. She pressed a button and the phone chirped.
“Did you know him, my lady?” The voice over Petra’s shoulder startled her.
Petra quickly closed her purse and glanced up, her heart and thoughts racing. A pretty brown haired girl close to Petra’s age looked at her with curiosity. She reminded Petra of Robyn.
“Did you know my brother?” She sounded like Hermione. The girl’s gaze swept down from Petra’s tiara and lingered on the slippers. “Not a kinswoman…”
“Hmm.” Petra tried to gather her scattered wits. She searched the tombstone for a clue and remembered something someone had said at her mother’s funeral. “He was kind to me once.” Everyone was kind at least once.
“Aye, he was kind to all.” The girl’s eyes grew misty, and, although she smiled, she still looked sad. “Particularly to those fair of face.”
Petra raised a hand to her tousled hair and looked down at her dirty dress. “I’m sorry for your loss.” She stuttered another stock sympathy phrase as she stood. “He was very young.”
A shadow crossed over the young woman’s face and Petra followed her gaze to an ox-like man at the edge of the cemetery. He watched, fingers touching the side of his thigh and a patch of leather that concealed something, possibly a knife.
“You are not familiar with his sad story?”
When Petra shook her head, the girl hesitated a fraction before clasping Petra’s elbow and steering her away from the man with the leer.
“Perhaps ‘tis best told over a cup of tea. Would you care to join me?”
The invitation surprised Petra, and before she could think of an answer, the girl continued, “My name is Anne.” She guided Petra down a path, toward the noise of the village and away from the ox-like man. Anne slowed slightly and visibly relaxed when they emerged from the busy street onto a quiet lane although she didn’t relinquish Petra’s arm. She nodded at a cottage on the edge of a wood. “My home, my lady.”
A crude wooden fence surrounded the tiny thatched-roof house and kept in three chickens and a cow.
Petra followed Anne through the gate. All the warnings self-defense classes and all the stranger-danger instructions she’d received as a child flashed through her mind. Never talk to strangers, or go into their homes or into cars, never accept candy, or even tea. The words of a song her mother had taught her sang in her head. Go ahead and scream and shout. Yell, holler and rat the bad guys out.
But her mother wasn’t here, hadn’t been for years. And her mother hadn’t prepared her for a delusion in the sixteen hundreds. Screaming, in this case, didn’t seem right. Her thoughts went back to Zoe. Losing Zoe was the worst part of the nightmare. Strange how losing her little sister had never been a problem in her waking life, and yet here—where ever here was—losing her sister hurt the most. Petra lingered on Anne’s doorstep, looking toward the busy marketplace, picturing Zoe wandering among the wagons and booths, looking for her, lost and frightened. Anne lived here, maybe she could help her find Zoe.
Anne latched the gate. “My home will be humble compared to what you are used to.” The words held a question.
“Why do you say that?” Petra stared at the cow and noticed a goat. Not nearly as creepy as the water-barrel guy or the ox-like man, but she hoped they wouldn’t get closer.
Anne stopped at the cottage door, her hand on the iron latch. Again, her gaze swept over Petra’s dress and shoes.
“This is by far my nicest dress,” Petra said, comprehending.
Anne raised her chin, the same look that Robyn had when Petra returned from a shopping trip with something Robyn envied. “You have many?”
“Dresses?” Petra thought of her closet at home bursting with clothes, skinny jeans, tank tops, t-shirts, camisoles, cardigans. She doubted that Anne had ever heard of Urban Outfitters or Anthropology. She replied truthfully, “No, not many dresses.”
Anne pushed open the door. The cottage had few windows and was dark, cool and smelled of yeasty bread. A trestle table flanked by three stools stood in a corner, two tall wooden chairs sat near the fireplace, and a spinning wheel squatted beside a large loom. Petra had never seen a spinning wheel, except in the movie, Sleeping Beauty. Loose straw covered the wide planked wooden floor. The white-washed walls were nearly covered with large rugs that looked luxurious and out of place in the modest cottage.
In the dim light, Petra saw enough of the bright colors to see that each tapestry told a story. She wanted to study them, and yet, she hung in the doorway, uncertain, wary and still worried that Zoe was lost.
Anne bustled to a cupboard, pulled out a loaf of bread and a pot and placed them on the table. Then she picked up a long, sharp and gleaming knife. “Would you care for bread, my lady?” Anne raised the knife and Petra felt weak-kneed. The bread looked dark, thick and heavy. Petra’s mouth watered.
If this is a dream, Petra wondered, how can I be hungry? Not a dream. There had to be some other explanation. When would food be offered again? Petra slowly entered the room and let the door click behind her.
“Where you are from, are your meals as simple?”
More questions.
Petra thought of the Taco Bell’s drive-through, McDonald’s paper wrapped food. “In some ways, simpler.” The preparation, at least.
Anne unhooked a kettle from a rod above a fire smoldering in the grate. “Do you keep a fire burning?”
Anne smiled. “How else would the tea and our bodies stay warm?”
“But it’s nearly summer.”
“Tis summer in your country?”
Trapped. If throwing a beet was witchy, then Petra couldn’t tell Anne her bizarre mystery. “Almost summer, late spring.” She guessed. “The same as here, of course.”
Anne smiled as she poured the water into a cup and added a spoonful of dried herbs. Steam rose and scented the air with the thick aroma that reminded Petra of the fortuneteller’s tent. “And from where does my lady hail?”
She thought back to her English lit class. Yorkshire, Herefordshire, Sherwood Forest, and London came to mind, but she rarely lied and the idea of remembering and keeping a story straight intimidated her, so Petra said, “Royal Oaks.”
“Royal Oaks.” Anne sounded out the words as she pushed a cup of steaming brew at Petra and motioned her to sit on a stool at the table. “Tis near the palace?”
“No…” her answer sounded weak, even in her own ears. She cleared her throat and promised herself she’d sound more confident in future lies. She would come up with a story, a good one. She was good at stories…although she had never had to pass them off as nonfiction before.
“’Tis far, then?” Anne looked pointedly at Petra’s slippers. “How did you travel?” Anne’s tone had turned confrontational.
Petra settled at the table and picked up the warm cup of tea. “By horse.” She drove a Mustang, horsepower and all that, so it wasn’t a complete lie. Petra swallowed a warm sip and watched Anne slather oozy butter over a slab of the brown bread. Anne dipped the knife into a brown jar. Flecks of something, perhaps pieces of honeycomb and bees, dotted the honey. Lauren would have loved this au-naturale meal, but Petra studied the bread, looking for tiny bee body parts.
“Do you live alone?” Petra asked, wondering if a girl of Anne’s century could even own property.
“No, I live with my father. He’s away purchasing dye.”
Petra didn’t want to sound like she was prying. “I live with my dad too. Well, it used to be just the two of us after my mom died.
” It never seemed to get easier to talk about. Feeling awkward, she took a bite of the bread and honey, despite the mystery specks. Nothing crunched. As she chewed, Petra glanced at the tapestries lining the walls. “Does your father make the tapestries?”
“The tapestries are commissioned by families of means.” Anne poured herself tea and cradled the cup in her hands. “Do you like them?”
“They’re amazing.” Petra loved the vibrant colors and intricate designs. Most scenes depicted lovers, but a darker one featured an angel that seemed to transfigure from panel to panel. Wings lost, halo gone, pitchfork added. “Satan?” Petra guessed.
“An angel come from the presence of God who rebelled against the Only Begotten Son,” Anne said, following Petra’s gaze. “His name, Perdition.”
Goosebumps rose on Petra’s arms. Who would buy such a tapestry? She couldn’t see it hanging in a church or heaven forbid someone’s home. Imagine breakfast every day with Satan looking over your cornflakes, pointing his pitch fork at your latte. It was a gorgeous tapestry; the birds and flowers painted a deceptively pretty picture, but…Satan?
This is a nightmare, she reminded herself and her mind seemed to reply: Well, if this is a nightmare, how can the tea sting the back of my throat?
Had she ever eaten in a dream? Not seeing a napkin, she licked honey from her fingers and tried to remember her AP psychology class.
Dreams can be controlled. Trying to change the course of her nightmare, Petra closed her eyes on Anne and the tapestry and recalled a Robert Louis Stephenson poem her mother often read to Petra at bedtime.
From Breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.
“Bath, book and bed,” her mother would say every evening. Sometimes Petra’s dad would be there, often not. But bath, book and bed came as regularly as the sunset. The bath smelled of lavender, the books were piled in the shelves of her room. The day ended with her mother’s kiss.