***
An hour later, I was sitting cross-legged on what was, hands down, the most comfortable bed I had ever known. I set my borrowed hairbrush aside when Faith walked in carrying what appeared to be an armload of girl supplies and set the oversized serving caddy on the bedside table. I nearly cried tears of joy when I saw the pot of fresh coffee, chocolate chip cookies, muffins, and dishes of sugar and cream.
“Where’s Bill?”
“He went to bed,” she explained while she poured the steaming coffee into white porcelain mugs.
“I guess Wilson went to bed too?”
“Wilson?”
“Your dog. I didn’t know what else to call him.”
“Oh. His name is Bear. He’s a friendly thing, isn’t he? He just wandered out of the woods one day and found us a couple of years ago. He’s been here ever since.”
“Well, I sure am glad he found me today.”
Faith nodded. “So, do the clothes fit?”
I picked at the purple knit top and matching pajama bottoms.
“They fit pretty well. Thanks. It’s good to be clean again. You have no idea!” I quickly shut my mouth, and Faith looked away. I’m pretty sure she didn’t realize the graphic truth of that statement, unless she had ever been covered in a stranger’s blood, which I seriously doubted. Either way, the enormity of the situation was suddenly too hard to ignore.
“I didn’t know what to do with the clothes.”
“The clothes…” Faith stopped in mid sentence. “Oh.”
“I turned them inside out and set them in the sink.”
“Right.” She swallowed, then gave me a look that was part reassurance and part sympathy. “I can wash them for you, or I could take you shopping. You could even take something of mine.”
“Well, I don’t want to be an inconvenience.” How I managed to say that with a straight face, I will never know.
“It’s fine Claire, really. I mean, honestly, I don’t think I can get all the stains out of your clothes.”
As arguments went, that one was pretty convincing. She had a point. Even if the outfit was clean, it would still be horribly stained. I would attract attention anywhere I went. And asking Faith to wash my bloody jeans and t-shirt was no way to thank her for the hospitality she and Bill had shown me. Washing them in her machine or sink was not much better. I hopped up, walked into the small bathroom off the guest room, and dumped the wadded up clothing into the wastebasket. “You’re right. Problem solved.”
“We can get you something new tomorrow if you feel up to a little shopping.”
I hesitated. “I don’t think I have any money,” I warned her. I also needed to be on my way as soon as possible. Yet it would undoubtedly be helpful to get a guided tour of the town before striking out on my own.
“What do you mean, you don’t think you have money?”
“It might be better just to show you,” I admitted with a sigh. I pulled my bag onto the bed and unzipped the top. Then I spilled the contents in front of me on the bed. Faith sat down and stared at the small pile before raising baffled eyes to me.
“What is all this?”
She gingerly picked up the dollar bills and coins for closer inspection. She picked up the gun next, with the barrel pointing dead-center toward her chest. I reached out and swiftly but carefully removed the loaded gun from her hand.
“Be careful with that. It’s loaded.”
Her brow furrowed. “What is it?”
“It’s a gun.” I was thoroughly shocked that she had never seen one before. Everyone knew what a gun was. Didn’t they? Faith’s blank expression quickly dispelled that notion.
“It’s a weapon,” I explained. “Like a knife or a sword. You know what those are, right?”
“Yes, I know what knives are. I’ve seen swords, too.”
“Okay, well, this is sort of like that. You put the bullets in,” I flipped the chamber open, “like this. And then,” I snapped it closed, “you aim at your target and pull the trigger. The trigger is this thing right here.”
She nodded, completely focused on the impromptu lesson.
“That causes the bullet to shoot out through the opening right here.” I pointed to the tip of the weapon. “It hits the target. Sometimes the bullet shoots completely through the target. Other times it stays in and bounces around or lodges somewhere.”
“Oh.”
“Think of it as a…” I struggled for an adequate comparison. “Think of it as a really dangerous metal slingshot.”
“That makes sense, I guess,” she agreed. “Can you kill someone with it?”
“You can, yes.”
“Where did you find it? And what’s that?”
She was pointing at the money again.
“Money,” I explained simply. “Where I come from, this is money.”
Faith held up a bill and examined it before gently setting it back down.
“I don’t know what to say, Claire. There are so many questions. Where are you from? I have never seen most of this stuff before in my life.” She gestured to the pile.
“Seattle. It’s a city in the state of Washington.”
“I don’t know where that is. It must be pretty far?”
“Oh, a little,” I coughed. “It’s a whole different world.” I smiled wistfully. “Literally.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “Yes, I come from a very different place; possibly a different time, too. I’m still not sure about a lot of this.”
“You mean time travel? Or space travel?” Faith laughed a little, until she glanced down at the collection of foreign objects between us.
“I’m not from outer space,” I assured her. “I’m just like you. I think.” I frowned, then shook my head, trying to focus. “Anyway, back home I am a scientist. A botanist, to be exact. I work with a lot of different plants. Right now, I work for a large drug company. Research and manufacturing.” I sipped my coffee and idly selected a cookie from the tray.
“I have a brother named Mike. He’s an archaeologist. He works for a museum now. But several years ago, he worked in the field most of the time. He went to a place called Africa, about five years ago. He was there on a dig, and he found this.” I picked up the key that I had hastily managed to pull out of the ‘lock’ back in the cave.
Faith took the half circle into her palm and gasped.
“It can’t be. Where exactly did you say your brother found this?”
“Africa. It was buried. It’s believed to be almost five hundred years old. Why? What’s wrong?” Besides everything, I mentally corrected. Leaning over, I tried to see if there was something I had missed.
“This is the symbol of Terlain—here, on the disc.” She held up the key.
When I continued to stare at her in silence, she elaborated. “This land where we are.”
I munched absently on another cookie and considered that bit of information.
“I wish I knew more of the history surrounding the key. I have some documentation, but I left it back home. Rather, I left it in Africa. I buried it. I hope it’s still there.”
“Where else would it go?” Faith chose a muffin from the tray.
“I was followed. I don’t know how closely they were trailing me.” That still bothered me. It was unnerving to have cheated death yet again, when two weeks ago I had been craving excitement, change, and freedom. I realized humorlessly that the events of the past week had been all of those things, and so far from what I’d had in mind, that I was still reeling. But the worst part about that night in the cave was that I hadn’t known I was being followed. The only light in the cave had been my own. The only sound I’d heard had come from me. To my way of thinking, that left two options. The men knew the area or they were professionals.
“This all started a little over a week ago—for me at least,” I told Faith. “My brother’s involvement began several months before that, from what I can tell. He showed up at
my place one night to tell me he was leaving on assignment and would be gone for a while.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No, and I didn’t ask. It’s not unusual, really. Dig site locations are often kept secret. It helps to keep the site secure and it protects the finds. But something was off with my brother. It wasn’t something I thought about at the time, but looking back, I remember he was looking over his shoulder a lot that night. He seemed nervous. My brother is incredibly dedicated to his field, and it had been several years since he had been on a dig. At the time it made sense that he would be a little anxious. But now I know something was very wrong that night.”
I paused to top off my mug before continuing.
“My boss called me in the middle of the night last week and requested my presence at a meeting scheduled for that morning. There were several men there by the time I showed up. He gave me a box of notebooks that belong to my brother. He told me that Mike had received funding from the company for a dig around the same time he disappeared.”
“A drug company funded an archaeological dig?”
“That’s what I thought too.” I nodded grimly. “Apparently the dig was…controversial, and Mike was unable or unwilling to seek funding elsewhere.”
“Okay.”
“So Mike took the money and disappeared. When my boss and his crew began to search for him, they realized that the site my brother was supposed to exhume did not exist. They searched his apartment and found the notebooks.”
“Well, what was in them?” she asked with rapt attention.
“It was a story; a legend about this place.”
Faith’s mouth had formed a small ‘o.’
“It told of a war torn land, mostly…” For some reason, I hesitated to go into detail about what I had read.
“That much is true, I guess,” she admitted. “Or, was.”
“The back cover of one of the books contained a message from my brother. It was a reference to me: an old childhood nickname. And he made reference to a game we played one summer. But that’s not important,” I lied. “At any rate, that’s how I was brought into the situation.”
“They wanted to find out what you knew.”
“That too…but Mike wrote the notebooks in code.” That fact still brought a smug smile to my lips.
“What sort of code?”
I snorted and grabbed a pen and one of my maps. “Here, I’ll show you.”
“An entire roomful of grown men failed to crack that code?”
I threw my hands up in mock exasperation. “See? You took the words right out of my mouth. So, I spent a few days going through the books, and then I searched his apartment. There wasn’t much to find. But I searched his computer and found a file that had several important documents supporting the legend he talked about in the notebooks. There were maps, old drawings, things like that, and a letter from Mike. He said he had gone to find this place, and for me to destroy the key if he didn’t return in five months’ time.”
I blinked back tears and gulped the last of my coffee. Faith said nothing.
“Well, he also said that I should dig up a spot in my backyard,” I added.
“Huh?”
“He gathered some dirt on John, my boss, before he disappeared. He buried it in my yard. In his letter, Mike said that the documents he buried would be enough to ensure my safety from John and his men. The only trouble was, by that time there were men in my house, waiting for me to come home. I’m pretty sure they had my brother’s apartment bugged. They were waiting for me at my house the night I went to Mike’s apartment.”
“What did you do?”
“I saw one of the men through the curtain when I drove down my street. I went to a hotel that night.”
“So you couldn’t get to the documents.” Faith sounded disappointed.
“No, I went back and got them,” I assured her.
“You went back there?” Faith shrieked. She promptly clapped a hand over her mouth, mindful of Bill sleeping on the other side of the house.
“Believe me, I almost wish I hadn’t gone back. I could see them in the kitchen when I walked into the backyard. I was fast, but the first man came out of nowhere. I was about to leave and suddenly there he was.”
“Oh my, what did you do?”
“I hit him with my shovel.”
“Did you…?” Faith stammered, leaving the unanswered question hanging in the air between us. It was okay. I knew what she was trying to ask.
“Did I kill him? Not that I know of. The second man that came out of the house should recover nicely too. He had his gun pointed at me. I guess I was a faster shot.”
“Why didn’t you just shoot the first one?”
I raised a brow at her.
“Not that you should have shot him. Not if you didn’t have to,” she blurted, clearly out of her element.
“It’s okay. When the first one came after me, all I had was a shovel. I knocked his gun out of his hand when I hit him. That’s what I used to shoot the second guy.”
“Wow,” Faith said as she started to methodically shred the muffin in front of her.
“So I ran. I ended up at the airport, and the next thing I knew, I was in Africa. It took a couple of days to gather supplies and nail down a more exact location for where I had to go.”
“Is that the same gun?”
“No, I left the first gun in my backyard. It’s just as well. I would never have been able to get it through customs.”
Faith looked confused but didn’t ask.
“I bought this gun in Africa. I guess that’s neither here nor there, because I shot a man with this gun too.”
I told her about the journey to the cave and the ambush that took place inside. By the time I had finished, her muffin was a pile of crumbs on a plate. She paused, glanced down, and hurriedly brushed her fingers off before she set the plate aside.
“How does the key work?”
“I’m not completely sure. I wasn’t able to find out much on the how and why of its creation. Maybe Mike has a better idea about that. Or if I could do some research…anyway, what I do know is that it was believed to have been destroyed. Apparently the man in the African village who was entrusted with the job buried it instead.”
“This is only half of the key. Mike has the other half. The key in the old drawings is a full circle. The only doorway is in that cave. Half the key opens the portal. I don’t know what would happen if you tried to use the whole key, or if it would even work.”
“I wonder why it’s referred to as ‘a’ key,” Faith mused.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that makes it sound like its ‘one’ key. But it’s actually two keys.”
“Good question.” And yet another one that I wished I knew how to answer.
I had to give Faith credit. The next morning, she was as calm and collected as she had been before I’d dropped my bombshell on her. We all sat around the table and ate pancakes and bacon as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
Bill lingered over a cup of coffee before heading off to work. I was tempted to follow him outside, just to see how he was going to get there. I resisted the urge and instead questioned Faith about it while we walked to town.
“Bill works in construction,” she told me as we picked our way down the ridge.
“Ah.” I nodded. Why had I not thought of that?
“And yes, he drives a car to work.”
“I wasn’t going to ask,” I said innocently.
“Uh huh.” She smiled and shook her head.
It took us thirty minutes to walk the mile and a half to Lerna. We would have made better time, but most of the ground we covered was either uphill or downhill—great for the legs, though.
Lerna was bigger than it looked. There was a town square and a post office. There were also several stores and a pharmacy lining the main road. I noticed that the streets appeared to be arranged in a typical grid formation
. I was mostly silent while we walked casually through the town. It was a pleasant surprise to find the houses incredibly similar to the ones in my own middle class neighborhood. It was always nice to find a touch of home in unfamiliar territory.
The breeze was warm and the sun even warmer. It felt like the beginning of summer, I thought. When I’d left home, it had been the start of the fall season.
Faith led us back to the main street. I wondered if it was actually called ‘Main Street.’ I could see a street sign at the center post. It was wood instead of metal, and it had the number ‘10’ painted on it. Odd. There was also a stoplight on the corner. It had two lights that alternated blue and gold. People stopped their cars when the gold light flashed.
“This is Tenth Street?” I asked Faith as we crossed the street on the gold light.
“Yes.”
“Where I come from, this would be called Main Street, or Central Street.”
“All of our streets are numbered here.”
“Even the bigger towns?”
“Sure, as far as I’ve seen. I have never heard of any other street names. Some of the smaller towns don’t use labels at all for the streets. Sometimes the houses aren’t numbered either. That just depends on the number of people that live in each town. Settlements fewer than two or three hundred people don’t usually bother with it.”
I nodded, but didn’t respond since we were already walking into a clothing store, a red brick building with a white awning and a sign in the window that read “Mae’s.”
Inside the shop, the lighting was bright and cheerful and a curvy young woman with bouncy curls and big brown eyes smiled and came forth at once to greet us.
“Hello, Faith!”
“Claudia! You look pretty as a picture. How is your mother?”
“The same as she always is,” she waved with a friendly grin. “Who’s your friend?”
Faith placed a steady hand on my shoulder.
“This is my cousin Charlotte. She’s visiting from Coztal.”
“Coztal! How exciting! I have always wanted to go there,” Claudia confessed.
“Yes, it is lovely. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Oh, yes, Faith and I went to school together. Well, come on and tell me what I can help you girls with? Is it a special occasion, or are you looking for casual wear? I can do custom too, but that could take some time.”
“Casual will do,” Faith informed her, already moving toward a dress rack.
“Ready made is fine,” I added.
Claudia nodded and did a fast head to toe appraisal of me.
“Blue,” she announced. “Something blue would suit you perfectly. I just got a new shipment yesterday. I know that blue dress is here somewhere…now where did I put that one?” she murmured as she searched through clothing racks.
I flipped through the nearest rack and discreetly scanned a price tag. There was a symbol I had never seen before, a variation of the symbol on my key. Next to that was the number ‘30.’ Did that mean thirty dollars? I had no idea, but I hoped it wasn’t expensive, since Faith had insisted on footing the bill for this outing.
I picked a gown from the bunch and held it out in front of me for inspection. Well…it had blue on it… That was about all I could say for the thing. I was sure the word ‘gown’ printed on the tag must stand for ‘nightgown,’ because I had never seen anyone walk down the street in something so sexy or inappropriate.
The hem ended at mid-thigh and the bodice was cut daringly low. The fabric was a soft cream color. Blue and silver ties laced up the sides of the dress and nearly six inches down the bodice. It was backless. I had never owned or worn anything like it, and I was astonished to find that a small part of me wanted to. I was pretty enough, but I was also an intelligent professional, sensible and responsible. I eyed the dress with longing before carefully putting it back. I could not very well walk down the street here dressed like the happy hooker. Still, that getup and a loudspeaker would certainly be one way of locating a missing person. My lips curved and I promised myself that the first thing I did when I got home would be to buy a slutty outfit.
“Over here, ladies! Here it is!”
Claudia was standing near a fitting room, a blue-and-brown dress clutched triumphantly in one hand.
“Here, Charlotte, try this on.”
I turned my head to look behind me before I realized that Claudia was talking to me. Right, I’m Charlotte.
The dress was beautiful, an empire-waist gown that was both casual and stylish. The hem stopped a few inches above the knee. The pattern consisted of alternating patches of light blue gauzy cotton and chocolate brown suede. The short sleeves, bottom hem, bust, and sides were trimmed in the brown suede.
I did a slow pirouette and glanced up at Faith and Claudia.
“What do you think?”
“Wow.”
“It’s gorgeous. It looks like it was made for you.” Claudia gushed.
I grinned and checked out my butt in the mirror. “I think this is it. But how much does it cost?” I had already looked at the price tag and had seen the number ‘55’ marked on it.
“For Faith’s cousin? It’s on the house.”
“Wow! Thank you!”
“She is going to need a pair of shoes to go with that, too. But I insist on paying for those at least.”
“You got it, Faith.”