Chapter Text
“All right, ladies, move your crystals through the smoke widdershins, and focus on putting out positive energy. Remember, us witches have a duty to send good vibes out into the world!”
Yvonne discretely searched on her phone for the definition of “widdershins,” then waved the healing crystal she had been provided in a vaguely counter-clockwise direction through the smoke from the smoldering sage in front of her. When she’d signed up for the Upstate Coven’s monthly meet, she’d expected something a bit more… well, more. When she thought of witches, she didn’t envision a bunch of women who looked like they hosted Tupperware parties twice a month.
To be fair, she’d never have imagined that the sorts of women who hosted Tupperware parties were secret witches either. She had only come for the dream interpretation portion of the evening, but crystals seemed to be the night’s main topic. She just wanted to know why she kept having nightmares of herself alone in the woods with a volcano off in the distance – she couldn’t see it, but she knew it was there – and a sense of being watched. It wasn’t a particularly frightening dream at face value, but she always woke up from it drenched in sweat and absolutely terrified, with a sense of being deeply lost. Her internet searches had revealed that the dream apparently meant that she was stressed, was afraid of being judged, and the forest apparently stood for life’s abundance, though she wasn’t quite sure how that fit in.
All in all, she hadn’t gotten very many satisfying answers, and the dreams were happening nearly every night now, so this coven gathering was a last-ditch attempt at figuring out what her subconscious was trying to tell her.
“Great! Now, pick up your sage bundles – careful not to get burned! – and draw a five-pointed star in the air in front of you.”
Yvonne did so with a sigh, earning herself a glare from the woman beside her. She ignored it. She had better things to do with her evening, and as soon as she found out why she’d been living with this sense of rising tension and the weird dreams for the past few weeks, she would leave. She wasn’t usually the paranoid type, but she’d taken to carrying around one of those survival knives with a compass on the pommel and a tiny stash of survival supplies in the hollow hilt. If her dreams were trying to tell her she was going to get stranded in a forest – though why she would ever be anywhere near a volcano, she didn’t know… maybe Yellowstone was about to blow? – she was going to listen to them. She hadn’t been raised to believe in paranormal stuff growing up, but then she hadn’t been raised to believe in things like sleeping in on weekends, taking breaks, or having fun either, so she didn’t put much stock in that.
Come to think of it, the witches were meeting at a school – in a science lab, since it was set up for fires – and she had a knife as long as her forearm in her bag. That… probably wasn’t good.
“Perfect! Now, we’re going to douse our sage in the water we each have in the beakers in front of us, but we have to do it all at the same time. And remember, hold an image of the Falcons winning the homecoming game this weekend in your minds!”
Yvonne’s eyes were drawn to the large school spirit poster on the science lab’s wall. It showed a blue stylized falcon in mid-dive. She slowly looked down at the sage in her hand. Had they been doing some sort of spell to make sure the school’s football team won? That was… sort of creepy. And weird. Okay, coming here had been a mistake. She seriously doubted that any of these women would be able to give her any sort of satisfying answer about her dreams. She very much wanted to be anywhere but here all of a sudden.
Well, all of those practice sessions with the theatre group ought to do me some good, she thought. Moving slowly to avoid detection, she set the alarm on her phone to go off in five seconds. When the jingle rang through the room, she ignored the dirty looks she got and raised the phone to her ear.
“Hello? Oh my gosh, really? I’m on my way! Which hospital did she go to?”
Standing up, she paused her excited chatter to cover her phone’s mouthpiece and give the room a dramatic look. “My sister’s having her baby,” she said, making sure her voice carried. “I’ve got to go.”
“Oh, how exciting!” the woman who had been leading the evening’s events said. “We’ll burn some lavender for her before we end the meeting tonight. Feel free to come back next month. Goddess bless you!”
She forced an excited smile to her face and hurried to the classroom door. As soon as it closed behind her, she shoved her phone back into her purse and hurried down the halls, feeling a distinct sense of relief. Witchcraft, it seemed, wasn’t for her. She didn’t feel bad at all about crossing it off of her mental list, though she did feel a sharp surge of satisfaction at the fact that she had spent her evening doing something her parents would have detested. Maybe she’d tell them about it the next time she called.
Looking forward to going home and wasting some time in front of her television, she hurried to the darkened school’s front doors. She pulled one, found it was locked, then tried the other. It swung open and she stepped through just as a flash of blinding light exploded in front of her eyes. She squeezed them shut reflexively, had a split second to wonder if her dreams had been trying to warn her of an impending nuclear war, then had the disconcerting feeling of falling through nothing. It might have lasted only a second or a hundred years. It didn’t end with a jolt or any sort of suddenness – she just became aware that her feet were on solid ground and it didn’t feel like her stomach was turning inside out anymore.
The bright light faded at the same time, and when she squinted her eyes open cautiously, she was not met with the mangled and melted remains of the parking lot. She wasn’t met with the sight of a parking lot at all.
Instead, she found herself standing on a dirt road. There were rolling, grassy hills and trees dotted all around her, and a river off to her left. It was daytime, which made just as much sense as anything else, which was to say, it made no sense at all, since it had been dark when she left the witches’ meeting.
She turned around slowly, but the landscape didn’t change. She was not in a city. She was nowhere near a parking lot. She had no idea where she was.
At least she didn’t see any volcanos.
Yvonne staggered off of the road, even though it was really more of a two-track, because while she might have just teleported, she’d had basic road safety drilled into her since before she could walk and it was practically muscle memory at this point. Once she was safely in the grass and out of the path of any cars brave enough to speed down the questionable road, she collapsed onto her hands and knees and then twisted around shakily so she was sitting semi-comfortably on the ground.
The world felt like it was spinning, but she was almost certain that was from the shock and not from any major error of planetary physics.
What was going on? Had she blacked out somehow? She hadn’t been drinking, obviously, and she’d never touched the harder drugs, but some forms of epilepsy could lead to lapses in memory. Had she developed something like that? And then, what, decided to go on a hike while she was out of it?
She inhaled deeply, the air fresh and rich in her nostrils. She could smell the sharp, green scent of the grass she was sitting on, feel the tickle of it under her palms. Through her jeans came the dampness of the earth.
There was the sound of birds and insects in the air, but no traffic. She must be pretty far out in the middle of nowhere to escape the constant drone of vehicles. Even in the relatively rural areas of upstate New York, it was hard to get away from traffic.
So… where was she? That was probably the most important thing to figure out right now. Once she knew where she was, she could figure out how to get back home, and then she could see as many doctors and psychologists as she wanted to make sure she wasn’t losing her mind.
She slipped her purse off her shoulder and realized the fact that she still had her purse was a good sign. She hadn’t had time to worry about it yet, but if it had been missing, that would be very, very bad.
In fact, she seemed to have everything she had been wearing the night of the weird witch meetup, which was the last thing she remembered. Her tennis ball green tennis shoes, dark blue blue jeans, a light green sweater, and the necklace her grandmother had given her – one of the few precious things she had from her family. Raising her hand, she clutched it now, the edges cutting into her palm in a familiar way. It was a silver linden tree, complete with grey-green precious gems in place of leaves. It had been in her family for ages, and she did not want to be the one to lose it.
The bite of the metal helped to ground her, and she took a deep breath before opening her purse. Hey, her survival knife! Maybe all of that dream-induced paranoia had been useful after all. Her subconscious must have realized she was about to have a mental break. She ignored the sheathed blade for now, though, and grabbed her phone instead. When the screen lit up, a surge of triumph went through her. It wasn’t dead! This crisis kept getting less and less bad.
Except… she had no service. Not even a single bar. She frowned at the screen, and her frown deepened when she caught sight of the time and date. They were exactly the same as they had been that evening with the witches. Well, the time had moved on about five minutes, but that was to be expected since that was what time did.
She wracked her brain trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for this. She’d almost convinced herself that what happened had been some weird medical episode, something she could get therapy or medication for and make sure would never happened again, but if she trusted her phone… maybe she really had teleported.
Did she trust her phone? She was sure there was a way to mess with the time and date, but she didn’t know how to do it herself, and she didn’t know why anyone else would bother with it. Plus, the battery percentage was right where she had left it too, and her auburn hair was still in its braid with no flyaways. Her shirt didn’t have that grungy feel that came from wearing clothes for too long, and her teeth didn’t feel unbrushed, like she might expect if she’d been wandering in a mental haze for days. All in all, she felt… normal. It was just her surroundings that weren’t normal.
“Not crazy, huh?” she said aloud. “That’s good.” Something else must have happened. The “else” was still unknown, but at least she could probably trust her own mind and body not to fail her.
It also… didn’t really change anything. Figuring out where she was was still her priority. Anything she did next would be dependent on where she had ended up.
She followed the road, since that was the one, surefire way that she could think of to find civilization. She kept an ear and an eye out for cars, but none came trundling down the path toward her. The air was rich and the terrain only slightly hilly, so it was an easy walk, one that her hiking group probably would have turned its nose up at, the snobs. She’d never understand why they liked struggling up a hill just to have to do it again on the way back to the parking lot.
It must have been nearly forty-five minutes since she started her walk when she heard a creaking, clopping sound faintly behind her. She turned and spotted a… something… on the road coming toward her from the direction she had come. She hopped off the path, but whatever it was was moving slowly. It took her an embarrassingly long time to realize that she was looking at a cart pulled by a team of horses. Was she in Amish country? That actually explained a lot, especially the lack of phone service and traffic.
“Hey,” she called out as the cart drew nearer. She kept off the road as she waved, but did her best to be plainly visible, not wanting to spook the horses. They didn’t seem to mind her, though; it was the driver who stared at her with an expression of such pure and utter shock that she had to glance down to make sure she had nothing on her shirt. “Sorry,” she said when he drew to a halt in front of her but still didn’t say anything. “I’m a bit lost. Would you mind pointing me in the direction of the nearest town? Preferably somewhere with decent cell service, but I’ll take anything at this point.”
“My apologies, miss,” he said with an accent that was almost English but just off enough to throw her for a loop. He was wearing strange, rough looking brown garments and was almost certainly Amish, or maybe Mennonite, judging from the handmade appearance of everything on the cart, including the cart itself. He was transporting boxes and canvas bags in the back of it, though she couldn’t see what the contents were from her position. “I don’t believe Bree has much in the way of any sort of service, but I’m headed there myself and you are welcome to join me. Have you been separated from your companions? Are any of them injured?”
“Nope, it’s just me. I just… got a bit turned around, is all. Are you sure it’s okay if I ride with you? I’d really appreciate it, but I don’t want to put you out.”
“We can both ride in the cart, miss, if that’s not too forward of me.” He scooted over and she took the hint, grabbing onto the rough wood to haul herself into the cart beside him. When she glanced over, he was staring at her legs, but quickly looked away.
“Thanks for picking me up. I promise I’m not one of those crazy hitchhikers you hear about.”
He had nothing to say to that. Instead, he shot another glance at her legs and cleared his throat. “Would you like to borrow my rain cloak until you’re able to procure a dress or skirt in Bree, miss? It’s in the back. I could just—”
“Nah, I’m fine,” she said quickly when the man looked like he was about to leap into the back of the cart. “Sorry, I know this isn’t how the women you’re used to dress, and I don’t mean to offend or anything, but I’ve never been comfortable in dresses. If it really bothers you that I’m wearing pants, you could just, I dunno… not look?”
She realized that probably came off as bitchy, which had not been her intent at all, but the man just glued his eyes to the road and clucked to the horses, who started to move at an ambling walk that was just faster than her own walking pace. She settled back against the cart and sighed, glad for the scant comfort. There were a lot of things she wanted to ask the man, but he seemed to still be struggling with the concept of skinny jeans, so she decided to give him a few minutes to get his thoughts straight before she started interrogating him. Soon enough she would be in a town. She could figure out where she was, make a plan on how to get home, maybe find a motel to crash at if she was lucky, and freak out once she was somewhere private.
After ten minutes of silence, Yvonne decided to say something. She had no idea what was going on, and maybe this man could help. He was obviously part of some alternative lifestyle group, but it seemed a bit rude for her to just come out and ask. She’d go with the assumption that he was Amish until she learned otherwise; it seemed like a safe bet, since they were more common than any other similar groups in the US. Regardless of what closed community he was involved with, he had to at least know basic geography. Figuring out how to ask where she was without coming across as a loon took some thinking, but eventually she decided to just go for it. There were some things you just couldn’t ask without sounding weird.
“Hey,” she said, her voice making him jump slightly. He half turned in his seat to give her a wary look. “I promise I’m not crazy, but could you tell me what state we’re in? Are we even in the US?” His accent had really thrown her for a loop.
“What state, miss? I apologize, but I don’t know what you mean. I do not know where the… you-ess… is either. The nearest town is Bree. It’s five miles to the south. We will arrive before long.”
“So…” She hesitated, looking around. Nothing looked familiar. “This isn’t New York?”
He shook his head. “You must have gotten turned around at some point on your journey, miss. I have never heard of that place. I don’t know where it is, but it’s not near here.”
“I see.” She fell silent again, gazing at the road ahead of them and thinking. She was pretty sure that he’d know what country he was in even if he was part of a very small, very closed community, so either he was playing a cruel joke on her, or she was extremely far from home. The thought of being in another country was terrifying, but given both his accent and the fact that he didn’t recognize New York or her country’s abbreviated name, it was something she had to consider.
She had no idea how it had happened, but it was looking entirely possible that she had somehow ended up in a very out of the way corner of the English countryside. The beautiful rolling hills dotted with the occasional cluster of trees and sheep seemed to match what she’d seen in the movies, at least, and that accent of his was definitely more English than Dutch. Or were the Amish German? Wait, did England have their own version of the Amish? If so, that might explain it. Not how she’d gotten here, of course, but why he didn’t seem to know what she was talking about. Not recognizing what she was pretty sure was one of the most famous states in one of the most important countries in the world was almost understandable if he was part of a closed community in another country.
She took a deep breath, preparing to ask him what country they were in, but snapped her teeth shut on the words when she realized that dark blob on the road ahead of them was a person. They were walking at a slow clip away from the cart, and squinting examination of them showed that they had a grey hoodie tied around their waist and were wearing what looked like a blue T-shirt and sneakers. In other words, normal clothes.
Normal clothes meant they probably weren’t a weird fake-Amish-cult-English person who would keep looking at her like she was crazy for talking about normal things.
Normal clothes meant she might be able to get a straight answer as to where she was.
“Hey!” she called out, then lowered her voice to talk to the man beside her. She hadn’t introduced herself yet, and the realization that she didn’t even know his name after he let her hitchhike made her feel guilty, but she’d have to do it later. This was too important. “Sorry, but I think this person might be able to help me. Can we stop and talk to them?”
He nodded tightly, his face pale. He was staring at the person – a girl, she saw now – who they were slowly nearing. She felt a bit bad for him; he obviously wasn’t used to dealing with outsiders. Two in one day must be a shock for him. At least he’d have a neat story to tell when he got back to his homestead or wherever he lived.
“Hey!” she called out again as they neared the person and the cart slowed. “Sorry to interrupt your walk, but could you tell me where we are? I somehow got super lost and have no idea where I ended up.”
She wasn’t about to get into the whole teleporting thing quite yet. She already had one person who thought she was crazy, and she didn’t need another one.
The woman turned when she called out and stared at her for a second. Then her eyes movedaway from Yvonne and seemed to linger on the cart and on the man who was driving it.
"Um . . . I'm . . ." She swallowed. "I'm sorry, I . . . don't actually know . . . I'm kind of lost myself."
Yvonne heard the man beside her sigh when he pulled the horses to a halt. He had a resigned look on his face when she glanced at him. She felt bad for causing such a disturbance in his day – for all she knew, he was on a time limit or deadline, and she was holding him up. Her mind had been so consumed by her own problems that she hadn’t really considered him much at all. Maybe, when they got to town, she could find a way to pay him for his help. She had her bank card, so if there was an ATM, she could get cash out for him. She couldn’t exactly say it was for gas, but she was sure she could come up with something to get him to take it.
She hopped down out of the cart, patting the closest horse on the neck as she walked by it. The familiar, warm, animal scent of it filled her nose. It was a smell she’d always found comforting, and was one of the reasons she’d taken up horse riding lessons again. It had been one of her favorite activities as a child, but her parents had favored other sports over that, so she’d only taken a single summer of lessons when she was younger.
“Were you on a hike or something? The guy I’m with is taking me to the closest town, Bree, so if you’re from there, you’re heading the right direction. I’m sure he could give you a ride too, if you want. I know this is probably going to sound weird, but I was asking in a more general sense… the last thing I remember, I was in Albany, New York.” She talked fast and winced when she was done, aware that not even knowing what state she was in had to make her sound crazy, but even more than she wanted to avoid dealing with a second person who thought she was insane, she wanted to know where she was.
The woman took a step back as Yvonne approached her, but frowned in confusion at the name of the town. "Bree . . . ? I'm . . . not familiar with a Bree . . ."
Yvonne's eyes widened at the other woman's words. Not familiar with Bree? But... She glanced back at the man who had been giving her a ride in the cart. He was still sitting in it, looking somewhat impatient, but mostly resigned. She stepped closer to the girl and lowered her voice.
"The guy I'm with said that's the closest town for miles around. I've never heard of it before either - it's certainly nowhere near anywhere I'm familiar with." She bit her lip. "He seems helpful, but if he made up a town just to get me into the cart with him, then he's probably not good news. Are you from the area? If so, and you're sure there's no town named Bree around here, then I'll make up some excuse and see if he'll go on without me. If he lied about the town, I don't know what else he might be hiding."
The other woman looked at her with concern and shook her head. "No, I'm not even sure where this is. I just . . ." She hesitated. "I was just—walking down my road, at night, and"—she paused again—"I almost got hit by a truck. Then, I was here." The rest of her words came out in a rush. "I know it sounds crazy, but—you said you were just in New York? Albany?" She cast a quick glance up at the man in the cart, then at the neighboring field. "I don't know where we are, but . . . I have a weird feeling about this place."
"What?" Yvonne's eyes widened. "You mean you..." She hesitated, then lowered her voice even further. "You teleported or something too? I was just walking out of a school in Albany, when there was a bright light and I felt like I was falling, then all of a sudden I was here. It was night there, too. I thought... I don't know, I was kidnapped or there was something wrong with my brain or something. I don't have any cell service, and I couldn't think of anything to do other than try to find some more people and figure out where I was." Something horrible occurred to her as she was speaking. "Do you think we're dead? If you were about to get hit by a truck... I mean, I don't think there was anything dangerous around me, but I guess if it happened quickly, I might not have even realized it."
Even as she finished, another thought occurred to her. It was even more absurd than the two of them being in some sort of afterlife, but then, this whole situation was absurd, wasn't it?
She'd just left a meeting of a coven of witches. Had they... she hated even to think it, but she had to. Had they cast a spell on her?
The woman shook her head. "Something tells me we're not dead . . ." She seemed like she wanted to say more, but she glanced at the man in the cart ad seemed to hesitate. "I think our best chance for figuring this out is probably in Bree. I think we should go with him."
Yvonne bit her lip. Finding another person who was going through the same thing she was had thrown her for a loop almost more than the incident itself. It felt... harder to ignore, somehow, with another person there to make it real. It wasn't that she'd been clinging to this whole experience being a dream or a hallucination before, but it had been easier not to dwell on it, to focus on the more immediate problem of getting to somewhere she could call for help. But now, the fact that something very, very strange was going on had been thrust in her face, and all she could do was paste a smile on her lips and pretend she wasn't fighting not to spiral into a panic attack.
"O-okay." She took a deep breath forcing the uncertainty out of her voice and squaring her shoulders before turning to walk the few steps back to the cart. The man raised both of his eyebrows at her approach, but looked more impatient than truly curious by this point.
"Do you know this woman, miss?"
She'd told him she had been traveling alone, but he seemed either unable or unwilling to believe that. She had the feeling that women probably didn't do much on their own in whatever community he was a part of, and he definitely seemed like he hadn't had much exposure to the outside world. So she decided on a little white lie, since the truth would probably make this man leave them behind in the dust thrown up from his cart as he hurried to Bree alone.
"Yes," she said. "I'm very sorry to have kept you waiting, but she's heading toward Bree as well. Would you mind if she rode with us? I can ride in the back, if there isn't room for the three of us on the seat."
He heaved a sigh, but nodded anyway. "Of course." His gaze slid past her, to the other girl. "Come along, miss. The day isn't getting any longer, and I'd hoped to be back in Archet by night."
"Thank you," Yvonne said, beaming at him and making a note to definitely pay him back if she could. She moved around to the back of the cart in order to let the other woman sit up front, but paused and turned back to the others when she realized she still hadn't introduced herself. "I'm Yvonne, by the way. Yvonne Linden."
"I'm Siddel, son of Ortho," the man said, performing a sort of half bow without getting down from the cart or letting go of the reins. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Yvonne."
Nodding back at him with a more genuine smile on her face, Yvonne turned to introduce the other woman before realizing she hadn't asked her her name either. She really was bad at this — had she left her manners in Albany along with everything else?
Thankfully, she said, "I'm Nell," to Siddel. He nodded to her, exchanged pleasantries, then indicated that both girls would do well to climb onto the cart.
Nell turned to Yvonne. "I can ride in the back, if you want."
"No, it's fine," Yvonne assured Nell, committing her name to memory. Getting caught in a lie about knowing her would probably be a bad idea. "You've probably been walking longer than I have. It will be more comfortable up front." She hopped into the back and found a sturdy looking crate to sit on. From her new vantage point, she could finally see what was in the bags; potatoes. Lots and lots of potatoes. The contents of the crates were still a mystery, since they were sealed, but at least the potatoes were innocuous enough. Nell climbed onto the bench in front and sat gingerly next to Siddel, who started the cart moving again.
Yvonne relaxed as best she could in the back of the cart as the countryside began to roll by. She felt... well, not quite as panicked as she might have thought she would in this sort of situation, but it was definitely hard to think straight. A large portion of her brain kept insisting that this just wasn't possible. She was more afraid that she'd had some sort of major mental breakdown than that this was really happening. People didn't just... vanish and then turn up somewhere else. She'd probably have heard about it if so.
The ride, despite the discomfort, since shocks apparently hadn't made their way to this man's community yet, was surprisingly relaxing. The hilly countryside rolled past slowly, and after maybe half an hour passed, a small forest appeared on their left and the air gained a faint scent that she associated with wetlands. None of them seemed to be in the mood for talking; the man, Siddel, seemed to be the sort who was used to silence. Yvonne herself couldn't stop coming up with and then discarding theories about what happened that got more and more fantastical. The other woman, Nell, seemed to be lost in thought as well, though Yvonne couldn't see her face other than the occasional glance in profile when her head turned to look at something.
It wasn't until the faint scent of smoke reached her nose that Yvonne looked away from the landscape that they were slowly passing and turned to look where they were going. The cart was rounding a small hill, and she looked just in time to see the town. It was surrounded by a hedge and wooden walls, with a gate where it met the road. She could see a few dark smudges of smoke rising from the other side of the wall, and there were various footpaths leading away from the gate that looked well-traveled. As she watched, a man with a brace of hares hanging at his waist knocked on the gate and, after a moment, was let through. She couldn't glimpse much in the scant moment the gate opened to let him past, but what she did see made her stomach twist with bitter disappointment. Despite everything, she had assumed Bree was a normal town, one with cell service and banks and hotels and restaurants. The place the man had brought her to instead was very, very different.
"Oh," she said, the word leaving her in a whisper before she swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat.
Nell shifted and Yvonne glanced at her, but the majority of her attention was on the gate they were approaching. Something was beginning to tug at her mind, like the feeling of having forgotten a word that was on the tip of her tongue, but it wasn’t until Siddel called out a hail and the gate creaked open that she got her first good look at the buildings and, more importantly, the people on the other side that that something clicked for her.
The gate opened to a muddy road and a smell that was part woodsmoke, part livestock, and part the scent of many people living in conditions Yvonne had only read about in third world countries. The houses were all wood and thatch except for a few stone buildings, and chickens roamed freely between them. Adults walked hurriedly about their business, and children ran around much like the chickens did, but there were also some children walking with the same purpose between buildings that the adults had. At least, she thought they were children until she saw their feet.
Big, hairy feet, bare despite the mud and dirt. The other children – the real children, the ones running around and playing games – all wore shoes and had normal sized feet, but the ones who she was coming to realize were small adults were all barefoot and had abnormal feet.
Bree, she thought. The name sounded so average that it hadn’t rung a bell. She’d been thinking brie cheese, not Bree from the books she’d loved as a child. Even the wall and the gate alone hadn’t quite done it – they didn’t look the same as they had in the movies. But these, the hairy-footed small adults had driven the realization home with all the grace of a sledgehammer hitting a nail.
They weren’t small humans.
They were hobbits.
“Holy crap.”
Nell looked round at her quiet exclamation, and looked slightly alarmed by it. "What?" she asked, then turned back to the open gate, scrutinizing the scene ahead as the cart lurched into motion once more. As they rode through the grubby streets, dozens of eyes scrutinized them, some less kindly than others, and all with severe levels of interest, confusion, or distaste.
Nell's question registered in Yvonne's mind, but she was so stunned by her revelation that she couldn't bring herself to reply. She looked around as intently as she could without making it obvious that she was staring. Were they really — no, it wasn't possible. Was it? But it was just a story. Teleporting wasn't supposed to be possible either, though, and she'd pretty much come to terms that she'd been in Albany and then somewhere else in the blink of an eye.
But it was a story.
She forced herself to take deep, slow breaths, but it wasn't until she was able to think, with quiet amusement, that she was more freaked out at the sight of some hairy feet than she had been when some unknown force whisked her out of a parking lot that she knew the impending panic attack had passed. Hadn't she wanted to know where she was? If the answer wasn't somewhere on Earth, wasn't it better to be somewhere she'd at least read about than somewhere completely unfamiliar? Besides, she wasn't even sure yet. If she could find just one more piece of evidence that supported her theory, she'd have to make her peace with it, but for now, she was still just running on a guess.
Taking one last deep breath, she stood up in the slowly rocking wagon and made her way to the front, where she knelt down right behind the bench where Siddel and Nell were seated. She put a hand on the back of their seat to steady herself, shooting a concerned glance at Nell, who seemed to be huddled in on herself. Had she realized it too?
Clearing her throat, she spoke to Siddel. "Excuse me, but, um, is there an inn in this town called the Prancing Pony?"
Nell started, seemingly not having noticed how close she was, but Yvonne’s attention was on Siddel. His eyes shifted from the road to glance quickly at her, and he quirked an eyebrow before facing ahead once more. "'Sright . . . Didn't know it was so well-known for one such as yourself to have heard of it back in . . . wherever your 'Binny' is." He seemed rather uncomfortable, but Yvonne ignored it. Nell turned to face her, looking confused.
"Albany," Yvonne corrected automatically, though her mind was racing. Holy crap, they were really here. There was no way this could be some sort of reenactment, not unless they had hired a whole group of midgets — or was the proper term dwarves? Small people? She could never remember — to play the hobbits. Plus, there had been no ticket collector at the gate, no signs or advertisements... no, she'd be delusional if she tried to convince herself that this was some elaborate setup.
She saw Nell giving her an openly curious look and glanced at Siddel, who looked only marginally less curious, but much more suspicious. She bit her lip, trying to figure out how to let Nell know what was going on without making Siddel think they were either crazy, or witches. She didn't know if people here in... in Middle Earth — the thought made her giddy, half with fear and half with sheer astonishment — had the same fear of magic that people in her world had in the middle ages, given that they had wizards and whatnot, but she didn't want to risk it.
She met Nell's eyes, but when she spoke, it was in response to both of them. "Yeah... I didn't realize it before, because I didn't expect to be anywhere near here, but we have stories where I'm from about Bree and the Prancing Pony." She held the other woman's gaze, urging her to make the connection. "People tell stories about Rangers coming here and meeting wizards and Hobbits. It's... it's very well known."
Realization dawned in Nell’s eyes when Yvonne said “Hobbits.” Slowly, Yvonne turned from her and looked out at the town they were moving slowly through.
It wasn’t possible, but they were here. In Bree. In Middle Earth. And she had no idea what to do next.