To Swear by the Stars
Cara Clemens, a vibrant twenty-eight-year-old elementary schoolteacher, loved antiques. From the elegant Depression ware she kept on display at her home in the china hutch to the 1914 pocket watch her great grandfather had owned, the collection she kept had been building her whole life. When she was a child, she received a porcelain doll dating back to Germany, circa World War II, its painted eyes and mouth faded from such a long journey. But its scars and nicks told her the story of its travels, and it wasn't long before a passion grew. The history behind each piece made these items worth much more than what their price tags read.
Cara taught third grade at Hollow Oaks Elementary, located on the far north side of town, and home to the recent 2017 fifth-grade touch-football champions. Go, Raptors! She'd been teaching for five years and loved brightening fresh young minds with science and history.
As Cara stood in the doorway of her modest two-story home, looking at an empty street and a lazy four-way intersection, she sipped a mug of cold tea. The wind had picked up, and it shook the smaller branches of an enormous elm that shaded most of her front lawn. A nip in the air hinted that fall really was here. October had always been her favorite month. She repeatedly said the moon looked different when a cold chill was present, that it gave the town an eerie feel—but in a good way, of course.
The proud collector had resided in Frostford, Colorado, her whole life. Her parents' home was only one block north, and most of her childhood friends had never left. Sure, the town was technically within Tornado Alley, and winter snowstorms could be deadly, but, while the rest of the world seemed chock-full of violence and hate, Frostford rested peacefully between two mountains, Mount Olivious and Forman Peak; the 11,000-foot-tall snow-covered Alps almost seemed to shield the town from the rest of the country's problems.
Before Colorado was a state, the territory where Frostford now stood was known for its rich history involving the Underground Railroad and its settlers' attempts at fighting slavery. More recently, however, Frostford was known for its hundreds of reputable Big Foot sightings in and around Roosevelt National Forest, just west of the town. Word of such sightings brought tourists, filmmakers and loads of amateur Big Foot hunters. Also, it didn't hurt that the town never skimped on its luxurious four-star hotels; after all, tourism accounted for over twenty-five-million dollars in profit each year.
A delivery truck, marked Anton's Antiques, pulled to the curb. Cara smiled as she watched two men exit their seats and trudge to the back of the vehicle. They opened the rear doors, and one man climbed inside. The other, waiting to accept an antique Cara was dying to glimpse, pushed himself against the truck's bumper, leaning far in to help his associate move the item equal to their own combined body weight. When they carefully lowered the antique to the street's asphalt and let it stand on its own, Cara opened her screen door and stepped onto her porch to get a better view.
The elegant mirror stood six feet tall, bordered with carved mahogany, and, even from this distance, Cara could see the black specks within the aged mirror's face, which rocked a bit back and forth in the strengthening breeze.
The men, with all their might, carried the large piece to her door, greeted her, amid their struggles to keep the mirror upright, and thanked her as she welcomed them into her home.
"In the dining room, up against the wall in the corner, please," Cara commanded.
The men did as they were told. The mirror's dark wood, complemented by the white walls surrounding it, looked as though it had been etched by hand, the pattern of thousands of knife cuts dug deep within, blanketing the surface in a crisscrossing, almost mesmerizing fashion. Four legs mounted on a detachable base held the mirror and allowed it to swivel up and down for optimal reflective viewing.
"You know anything about this mirror?" one of the men asked Cara as he adjusted it, its face now reflecting the western window from its new nook.
"Yes." She set her teacup on a bookshelf, then walked to the antique and ran her fingers across its border. "It was built by a woodworker in France about seventy-five years ago. It doesn't have any papers, and there's no documented history of ownership. However, the story goes that it was taken from a crime scene some sixty years ago, a murder in east London. Also, it's got to be the most beautiful mirror I've ever seen." She smiled.
"Well, it looks like it's found a good home. Enjoy. We'll get out of your way."
"Thank you," Cara said.
As the men left by the front door, Cara pulled out one of the four dining room chairs that surrounded her aged oak table. She positioned the chair in front of the mirror, reclaimed her tea, sat down and admired her new purchase.
"And here I was afraid you'd be too big for the room," she said to the mirror.
For a young single woman, her house—with its white carpets, marble-topped fireplace, and 1960s-style radiators—gleamed with cleanliness. Organized photo collages lined the hallways and stairs, and a 150-year-old grandfather clock still chimed from the den on the hour. In the winter, a roaring fire behind chrome-bordered glass doors spread its dim light over a coffee table covered in This Home, People and Antique Lover magazines.
But this time of year, when the townspeople were just breaking out their rakes and tarps to clean up those pesky leaves, and visits from friends and coworkers were more frequent due to Colorado's dry season, Cara kept her most guilty pleasures—such as her romance novels, tablet for movie-watching and a decanter half-full of red wine—next to her bedside. Instead she displayed old trinkets, miniature fresh pumpkins and a glass bowl of chocolates on said coffee table, all lit by the three LED dimmers above the marble mantel.
Cara stood and tilted the mirror so even her feet were visible in its face; it engulfed her small stature and lorded over her. She had collected antique furniture before: a metal porch swing from the 1940s, a wicker chair that had been in her great grandmother's possession since the elderly woman was but a young child, and a wood crate with original leather straps and built-in shelves. But, until now, nothing Cara had ever acquired before was so beefy that it could squash her like a bug if it toppled on her.
As she once again repositioned the mirror, her fingers grazed something metallic. When she investigated, she found a silver skeleton key, held firm against the wood backing by a single piece of transparent tape. She pulled it from its temporary home. The key was thick and heavy with a scratched rounded surface. Cara examined its small decoration, a pentagram bordered with the engraved words, Open your mind.
"Why would a mirror need a key?"
As she inspected the key, turning the metal cutout every which way between her fingers, a small mechanism opened up a cover in the mirror's mahogany border, revealing a keyhole.
Cara pushed the key into the hole and turned it to the left. A loud clunk put a hard rhythm in her chest. She watched in awe as the glass frosted over and gleamed bright, like a light at the bottom of a pool, dancing in the waves.
The fantasy stories Cara's father had read to her as a child had always had an impact on her. Pirates with magical abilities, astronauts from the stars and monsters creeping down darkened streets had had her up long into the nights, shining a flashlight beam at the plastic stars on her ceiling, imagining where the stories could go.
Fiction was limitless; there was nowhere she couldn't go as long as she had the right story. But, as an adult who knew how the world worked and what was really possible, she stood in utter confusion as her jaw dropped open and pure amazement shone in her eyes, staring at a mystery that couldn't be real. Not in her reality.
Surrounding her reflection, she observed the spinning spiraling pattern of, what seemed to be, liquid mercury, shifting like a galaxy in a slew of light blues, reds and silver tones, all held within the confines of that mahogany border.
Cara leaned in close to the mirror's edge, and the pool of wonder reacted to her presence with a fresh burst of darkening twists. She gasped as small white and yellow sparks erupted from within, giving her a beautiful silent light show, its rays devouring the circling waves and splashing her arms and chest with its colored illumination.
The wind whirred around her front porch and sent the wind chimes she had hung, specifically for such a temperamental season, into a frenzy—their quick song singing out with each healthy collision of the dangling brass bars, their music pulling Cara from her daze.
Cara reexamined her shifting reflection in the mirror. Her eyes lit up, and a quick sharp breath entered her lungs when her fingertips disappeared into the ever-changing liquefied surface. She pushed farther until her entire arm had vanished into the perky field of playful sparks. As she pulled it back out, her eyes searched her skin for irritation, but even the small hairs of her arm, standing firm amid thousands of goose bumps, seemed to be perfectly in place.
She pulled her smartphone from her pocket and accessed the camera, then clicked the Record button. "Today I received my purchase of an antique mirror, shipped in from New York. Inserting a key, the mirror changed. When I touched it, the liquid face is cold, very cold, and my hand goes right through. But I see no adverse effects. I've done some stupid things in my life, and this may be another one to add to the list, but ... I think I'm going in."
Cara put the phone to Sleep, slipped it into her pocket and then gripped the mirror's border with both hands. Much like an astronaut entering the cockpit of a ship destined for the stars, yet who may never return, she bravely stepped in. As her right sneaker sank into the abyss, and the cold sensation running up her leg put a tremble in her hands, Cara's breaths became shaky. When her shoe touched solid ground, she thrust herself forward, testing its stability.
"Sturdy," she said.
She put her weight on her other foot, still outside the mirror, and tapped her foot inside the mirror a few times, hearing nothing. Taking in a deep breath of air and holding it, as if she were to be submerged in freezing water or to brace herself for an impact sure to knock the life from her body, Cara pushed forward, and through she went, until the old mirror swallowed her whole.
• • •
Cara stood in her dining room, perplexed at how dramatically the change in scenery affected her sense of direction. She brought out her phone again and clicked Record, but her screen only displayed static.
She spun a half circle and found the mirror, its face now calm and showing her the simple awe and wonder in her expression. When her fingers pressed against the hard glass, the amazement in her eyes vanished, and a slight horror overtook her.
Her fingers dipped into her pockets, searching, but the skeleton key was gone, left behind in the keyhole on the other side. She traced her right index finger around the circumference of the mirror's keyhole.
Her china hutch, table and chairs, piano and even the long classy curtains that had covered the room's picture window were gone. The century-old chandelier—hung above her table's flowery centerpiece and had so elegantly broken apart the sun's evening light with its crystals to scatter the colors all over the walls—no longer existed to tie the place together, now replaced with a modest, exposed sixty-watt bulb. Her living room lacked the cozy couches, familiar knickknacks, family photos and her season-oriented scented candles. This house she stood in was no longer a home, not even a dwelling, and, worst of all, like an old sitcom airing late on Nick at Nite, the place was drenched in nothing but black and white.
Cara walked out the front door and entered the world outside, which was void of life and enveloped in an eerie quiet. It was a purgatory filled with heavy fog and an icy chill in the air.
The streets and buildings were mirrored images of Frostford's; once again Cara struggled to grasp that what was east had now turned west, though north and south hadn't changed at all. The two very similar mountain ranges that held the town between them appeared as if they hadn't switched positions. But Cara's keen eye knew better; she could spot the difference in their peaks and the subtle regrowth Olivious had from a raging wildfire about ten years back.
The streets were empty. No string of vehicles—the ones the real Frostford had seen daily, lining the street near the east lawn of the nearby hospital's cancer clinic, belonging to the nurses and receptionists who used the building's private side entrance—were present to catch the now-nonexistent three-o'clock shade cast from the long row of bushy maple trees that grew in the grass. The huge hospital parking lot, usually overrun with visitors, sat vacant in the ghostly fog.
As Cara stood in the four-way intersection, she listened for sounds of life. Trees stood motionless as no breeze blew to move around the branches. The sky above was a pale white with no defining characteristics, such as clouds, the moon or even the sun.
A commotion at Cara's back, startling her so much she let out a brief scream, caused her to spin around in a panic. A twenty-inch holographic screen, projected from the base of an energetic light gray quadcopter craft, presented a digital greeting to the newcomer.
"Hello," the device chimed.
Its four whirring blades shifted in tiny increments, adjusting the spin-speed, keeping the device's camera lens and mesmerizing display positioned within arm's length of Cara's face. The pale light from its colorless LEDs blinked ferociously across the front end, and Cara eyed a built-in compass, reading N for north.
"Hello?"
"Welcome to The Station, your number one choice for transport to exciting new worlds. Please answer the following questions. Are you returning from a trip?"
"No," Cara answered.
"Are you a new arrival?"
"Yes."
"Splendid. Do you require assistance?"
"Well, aside from the many questions I have right now, yes. My mirror locked. I can't get back home. Also, where the hell am I?"
"Not to worry. I can have you back to safety in no time. Please tell me the street address where the bridge resides."
"At 228 Elm Street. Right over there." Cara pointed to the mock-up house that now stood on the wrong side of the road.
The computer's internal workings powered up with an electrical hum and then stopped when a simple succession of dings rang out. "Your device is now unlocked."
"Wow. Thank you. Seriously though, what is this place?" Cara peeked around the hologram to get a glance at the distant city. The Catholic church's bell tower, shaded from The Station's mysterious glow by a rustic open steeple, almost met the height of the city's clock tower, both of which stood over various dated brick buildings, such as the Frostford Public Library, the four-story fire house and the once vibrant gold-domed courthouse that resided near the city's only overpass, the dome now appearing as a dull gray.
"This is The Station, your number one choice for transport to exciting new worlds."
"Yeah, I got that. How do I get to these new worlds?" Cara asked.
"In a black-and-white world, you must find the color."
The machine zipped off before Cara could ask another question. She stood in the street, staring at the house that held her ticket back to her reality, then, once more, turned her gaze down the long boulevard that led to the inner city and hopefully "the color" and those tempting new worlds.
Like the stories she'd read as a child, the ones with brave adventurers and rich rewards for such daring quests, this place awaited a brave soul, someone to venture out and answer the mysteries that now plagued Cara. It was her journey to take, and, if her father's tales had taught her anything, it was to never turn your back on a good story.
Why else did she so love her books and her movies?
"It can't hurt to explore a bit, I suppose," she said.
Cara plodded through the thick uncut grass of 226 Elm Street, where, in her world, that particular neighboring house was up for sale and currently had no occupants, where similarly, no one wanted to take care of the lawn.
She gripped the handlebars of a bicycle leaning against the house's siding and pulled it into the light to examine it. The tires, though worn, were fully inflated; and scuffs on the seat, scratches across the frame and one cracked pedal suggested someone else had been here.
The bike took Cara past her parents' replicated home—a three-story colonial that, in both worlds, almost seemed too big for the block. She rode up Jackson Street and then on to distant neighborhoods, eventually cutting through the parking lot of a famous winery, a place mimicking the original that her grandfather used to call Heaven for us non-church-goers. She then sailed down Foster Avenue near the old abandoned high school, which, given the quiet and the unending mist, looked more like an old haunted hotel, a place perhaps Edgar Allan Poe might've stayed.
Hellman Boulevard, known for the tall trees that lined its weaving, potholed asphalt, took Cara on a quarter-mile coast, where she rode the bike's brakes intermittently throughout her descent.
She knew her hometown well and had since she was a child. She'd spent one-third the length of an average American's lifetime residing in a city that offered year-round events. The block parties every June and July, the rodeo and derby in August, the winter sports every December and the classic drive-in theater kept the town, and Cara, busy. So, when changes were presented in this alternate version of Frostford, whether small or large, she noticed.
Upon reaching the Theater District and breaking free from the street's towering oaks that had hindered her view, Cara spotted, through a break in the fog, an unfamiliar sight. That iconic forest, normally offering up its robust tree line that loomed over Frostford's middle school and amphitheater, ceased to exist. Instead, a drab, unending grassy field stretched out to the horizon.
Cara turned her attention to a more modest change. A monstrous Ferris wheel, standing still due to the nonexistent wind, its dangling tubs shrouded in shadow, yet perched proudly in the thick tranquil precipitation, watched over a quiet carnival, a carnival Cara knew had never existed in her town. The dreary contours of these dead machines, once designed to bring out the life in us all, sat empty and still, forgotten.
• • •
Cara walked to the main entrance of the carnival, consisting of two aluminum gates, each side sporting a metal cutout of a cowboy, sitting firm in a saddle, hanging onto the reins of a bucking horse. When the two gates came together to close, the name, Arpac Carnivals, stretched out above the two horsemen. It stood out bold, as a silhouette in the waning light. Cara pushed open the gates with ease, but the groaning hinges cried out so loudly that she stopped them as soon as she could squeeze through.
She poked her head into a nearby maintenance shed that offered up bags of sod, fertilizer, concrete mix and various tools; among them, the young explorer found a black military flashlight.
The light guided her into the dead carnival, and she found that a handful of concession stands—with unlit signs advertising corn dogs, cotton candy, sodas and griddle cakes, along with two ticket booths—appeared lifeless within the thinning haze. Thousands of unlit carnival lights stretched the distance of the metal frames of each ride. Normally glowing in a mixture of blue, purple, red, green and yellow, dancing in organized waves and pulses, enhancing the appeal of the neighboring Balloon Race, Pendulum Ride, Carousel Ride and the Drop Tower, they now had no power, leaving the attractions blanketed in a kind of spooky darkness.
Frostford had a yearly fair and rodeo but nothing near this carnival's size and never on this side of town. This area, in the real Frostford, was a new-car lot with a strong endorsement for Ford and Chevy trucks. There had been a few buildings to the back, housing offices and a maintenance shop, with billboards up front and a stream of inflatable arm-flailing tube men to get the attention of passing motorists.
While Cara searched the hauntingly beautiful scene, shadows crept by, jumping around the rides and booths, as if trying desperately to avoid a direct hit from her light.
In her early twenties, Cara had served a few times a month in the US Army Reserve and even had shipped out to Afghanistan for a year in early 2012. The training she had received gave her an edge she didn't have before, and the experience in a hostile country had given her scars. She knew better, when scared and paranoid, than to remain in the open.
Cara clicked off her light and, with her back pressed hard against an empty dunk tank, peered around its corner to find a kiddie-train with eight tiny child-size cars attached to its backside, waiting patiently for another trip around its small circular track.
The nearby Gravitron, with its unwelcoming open hatch, exposed a darkness within that put a pep in Cara's step as she scurried by. Reaching a desolate bumper car arena, each car frozen in place from the last time the attraction had seen any action, Cara picked up a teddy bear resting in a jumble of peanut shells and popcorn.
"Where's the life that goes along with this mess?" she asked, tossing the bear on the seat of one of the cars.
When Cara turned around, a flash of light in the distance, calling out through the maze of expired equipment, caught her eye. The blue and red fluorescents beamed through the black-and-white world, pulsing in a heart-pounding rhythm that shone brightly through the vapor.
Cara picked up her pace, carefully stepping over bundles of thick power cables strewn around the asphalt, connecting each attraction to the dead grid. The Ping-Pong fishbowl game, the ring toss, the basketball hoops all whirred by as Cara ran, focusing on the pulsating lights.
As she moved, she heard the steady tempo of simple piano chords intertwined with a quick melody, rich in high notes and played-out like a pianist shredding a scale. When the illumination consumed her, she stopped and looked at her body. The blinking colors danced over her clothes to the eerie jingle of the carnival song.
"Color," she said. "I've found color!"
Without any further direction from the quadcopter bot, Cara was hesitant, not sure what came next. She simply stared at the glorious sight and basked in the glow of her small victory.
A roller coaster stood before her, with the words A Trip to Hell plastered high above and shining like a beacon against a massive wooden backdrop, littered with demonic drawings. The words took turns shimmering as the blue-and-red light rippled through each letter. Below the sign was a single railcar, painted a stunning shade of bright red; it had a padded black seat, a single chrome handle bar and woven polyester restraints.
Cara had never been overly fond of roller coasters—or any theme park rides really. The idea of a traveling carnival never sat well with her. The knowledge that each ride had been assembled, used, torn down, transported, and reassembled over and over again had turned her off to being tossed around, whipped backward, flipped upside down and dropped from ridiculous heights.
This ride, however, with its track disappearing into the mouth of a hungry demon, didn't seem like it would present such a great challenge to her physically or emotionally. As the unnervingly upbeat music continued to play along in time with the light show, Cara climbed into the car, buckled the restraints over her lap and chest and waited.
"Now what?" she asked the giant painted demon that stared down at her.
A button on the dash lit up green and an LED display calculated her weight at 110 pounds.
"Oh. Max weight is 250," she said, reading the digital gage. "Glad I got my exercise in for the day." Cara pushed the green button with her index finger.
A light illuminated next to the button and scanned her body. It tickled her skin and vibrated her bones.
"Making sure I'm not a dummy?" she asked with a laugh.
A quick jolt shot through the car as the track seemed to shift slightly. When an electrical hum revved up, and the car engaged, the petite traveler hung on for dear life.
As a very young child, too young to have any opinions or safety concerns over the proper upkeep of such rides, Cara had eagerly allowed her father to take her on an attraction at an amusement park. The slow-moving vehicle, a repurposed tilt-a-whirl car, had taken them through a haunted mansion, where projections of the dead slow-danced to music. Her little hands had never stopped gripping her father's because she'd known that, at any minute, it would speed up and tear through the supernatural estate.
Needless to say, that's exactly what it had done. In the end, after reaching speeds that took the scream right out of her mouth, the vehicle had been caught in a damn-near perpetual spin. While everyone else had been unbuckling and exiting, Cara and her father spun and spun for what had seemed like the longest minutes of her life.
Then, with no warning whatsoever, the attendant activated the brakes and stopped the car in an instant, sending Cara and her father sliding violently to the opposite end. Fucking inertia! She never rode again, until now.
The cart rolled fast on the rail that took Cara into a black abyss. The melody of the dreary song grew louder from within the bowels of the park. When the lights finally came on, she was screeching by ghostly prop characters, badly painted headless bodies and even a river, poorly lit from the bottom with red floodlights to simulate blood, the final product looking more like a stream of cherry Kool-Aid.
An aluminum Frankenstein with a mismatched cackle that sounded like Mrs. Claus on a morphine high, blinked its red LED eyes at Cara and then robotically disengaged and collapsed to the floor, where it would await the next set of visitors.
The ride's initial appearance had hidden from Cara how far down into the Earth its swerving track actually went. After dropping many stories in a matter of seconds, the ride would level out, sharply turn this way or that, then drop even more. With each plunge came a burst of speed and, admittedly, for Cara, an undeniable panic that had her gripping the railcar's handle in a white-knuckled fury.
Though she had been ecstatic to see colors again, the multicolor strobe lights that flashed in her eyes were too much for the young woman to handle. Approaching another round of the flickering beams did nothing but disorient her; she turned her head away to take to the blackness behind closed eyelids.
A cruel occasional mist of cold water doused her face and arms, adding insult to an already miserably chilly atmosphere. The nip in the air that had plagued Cara since first entering The Station would be a nice relief compared to the freezing temperature that now surrounded her. Though her heart pumped her blood fast and hard, like a revved-up derby car gunning for the title, the constant blast of the cold atmosphere stung her wet face and hands, lowering her core body temperature in a hurry.
As another quick drop-off left Cara's heart in her throat, a demonic clown stood tall, holding a disemboweled baby in the strong grip of a single hand, separating itself from the earlier props by a level of realism she hadn't been prepared for. The dripping drool from its yellow teeth, the thick breath exiting each nostril and the slow, strained turn of its head, while its black eyes peered into her soul, gave the young woman a reason to fight the g-forces that consumed her, and she pushed herself away from the brute as far as her seat would allow. The clown extended its other gloved hand, offering her a dingy yellow balloon, and then two heavy thuds echoed about as it shifted its boots to keep on her as she passed.
Up ahead, Cara spotted two teenage girls, twins from the looks of them. Bruises and bumps amid pale flesh made them look like car-crash victims. They stood on weak legs, and, when one of the beaten adolescents opened up her mouth, a mess of blood and chunks spilled out, down her chin and neck. Their long black dresses matched the color of their ratted hair, and, as they held each other, their long fingernails dug deep into each other's arms, spurting blood over their faces.
Reaching them, the cold stare from their dead eyes defeated Cara, and she closed hers. It was clear the props were gone, left behind, along with her comfort and innocence. As she coasted along, searching the darkness for the next monster, the empty blackness started to change.
In a matter of minutes, the fear that had overpowered her faded, and gorgeous spiraling walls of a wormhole swirled around her, seeming to consume the railcar. Cara's speed was record-breaking, but somehow the force pinching her spine between her organs and against the uncomfortable metal backing of the seat had gone.
An enormous explosion of color perked up her rather bleak demeanor, and, as a plethora of different shades of blues, greens, oranges, yellows, pinks and reds surrounded her, Cara's railcar came to a sudden stop. This time, however, inertia didn't smack her on the ass and throw her forward in a violent, deadly conclusion. She closed her eyes to clear the dust from her irises. When she opened them, she squinted in the brilliance of a yellow sun, its heat radiating over her freezing body.
Cara let the heat wash over her. Her hands slipped from the vehicle's safety bar, and her eyes examined the deep blue sky; it was a dark blue that made the white puffed-up clouds look more brilliant than any atmosphere she'd seen before.
In the distance, black storm clouds were cutting into such brilliance, overtaking the blue and white, and swirling in a mess of wind and rain. Nearby a cool breeze tossed around the leaves and long twisting vines of trees so great that she had to tilt her head all the way back to see their tops. Dense sturdy trunks, some as thick and round as the seventeen-foot trampoline her parents had in their backyard when she was a kid, reached up into that tangled web of green growth that blocked out the sunshine from a shaded 150-foot area of wild grass and boulders.
As Cara climbed out of the railcar and planted her shoes in soft rich soil, she examined the situation. The ride's large demonic-looking backdrop was gone, as if the attraction had been stripped down to only the essentials. The track disappeared into a small dark cave. Cara warmed her arms with her hands and spun in a circle, trying to get her bearings. Beyond the ride was a substantial drop-off, a steep cliff that overlooked a glorious jungle that stretched on and on, all the way to the horizon.
Cara wandered away from the railcar, taking a moment to examine an extraordinary plant's glossy giant leaves. The leaves were so large, the young woman could have wrapped herself up in just one of them. They jutted out from their central stem, like a blossoming flower, and grew from beneath a jumble of broken jagged rocks. A fast-moving stream cut through the landscape and disappeared over the cliff, dropping its water to the jungle below.
Before Cara stepped into the shade cast from the monster trees' canopy, a large shadow rolled over the cliff, and she looked up to see a massive flying reptile, its wings outstretched and coasting on the light wind. Its elongated head included a sharp snout, and a triangular bone structure protruded from the top of its skull. This crest acted like a rudder of sorts, shifting every which way, seeming to stabilize the reptile as it scanned the terrain, most likely searching for food. Long talons stretched from its two back feet, and a thick tail as long as the animal's entire trunk sliced through the air like a blade. Cara watched in disbelief as it glided and swooped down, disappearing beyond the drop-off as four more reptiles followed close behind.
"I'm starting to think I'm not in the twenty-first century anymore," she muttered.
With her gaze still on the creatures, she cupped her hands and sampled the water from the stream; it was cold and fresh, not the least bit salty or bitter.
"That's better than a four-dollar bottled water," she remarked.
Cara let out a scream upon the realization that—blending with the surrounding vegetation, tall grass and moss-covered boulders—a single brown eye watched her every movement. As a giant mouth opened up, green scales stretching over the bony facial frame of the reptilian lurker became obvious, the sight sending Cara to the ground. The animal, moving upon being discovered, slowly raised its head and let out a quiet grumble, then slurped some water from the stream.
When it stood, Cara backpedaled, using her legs and arms, and watched the lurker's beefy body and thick long tail rise from beyond the rock. Its head, extended by its very long neck, sailed into the treetops, and it took in a mouthful of greeneries and yanked, ripping them off, along with some smaller branches, snapping back the main branch which shook violently.
Cara smiled, climbed to her feet and raised her hands, palms up. "Where am I?" She looked toward the gliding dinosaurs that had since multiplied by three. "And what are you?"
"Those are pterosaurs," a woman shouted from the opening at the back of the cliff.
Cara turned and met the gaze of a rough-looking older woman. She wore dirt-covered tattered pants and a button-down shirt that had lost the top three buttons. Her bloodstained collar made Cara nervous and the shredded toes of this stranger's boots hinted at a hard life. A nasty scar above the woman's left eye made her look callous, but, as her green eyes looked Cara up and down, she smiled and then admired the long-necked creature. "And that is a brachiosaurus—or at least quite similar to the ones from Prehistoric Earth."
"Who are you?" Cara asked, nearly losing her balance when her shoe slipped on a wet rock.
"I'm just like you." The gruff stranger picked chunks of fresh meat off a long blade, then put the knife in a sheath tied to her belt. "At least I was four years ago."
"What do you mean?"
"Let me guess. You came here on that fuckin' thing, right?" she pointed to the single railcar.
"Yes." Cara nodded.
"Well, I'm the other idiot who did nearly the same damn thing. I found The Station and ended up here, just like you. My name's Ravera, and you and I are the only living humans on this planet." The mysterious woman approached Cara and offered her hand.
"I'm Cara," she said, accepting the woman's gesture and toughing out Ravera's far-too-firm grip. "So, you came here on this very same carnival ride?"
Ravera laughed. "No. I've never seen this ride before. I came here on a horse, a horse with a bright red saddle. I named him Wingjammer. He was eaten within six hours of our arrival."
"Oh, God. Eaten by what?"
"Honestly you probably don't want to know, and I've been trying to forget." Ravera bent down and traced her fingers through the dirt, using the fine grains to smear the blood from the tips of her digits.
"So, you've been stuck here?"
"Indeed, I have, kiddo. What are you, thirty?" Ravera stood.
"Twenty-eight."
The rugged woman let a laugh slip from her mouth. "You're lucky I found you. Well, I guess it's not luck. I set up a dummy camp a ways back, one I use when I'm in the area. I like to keep close, just in case."
"What exactly is The Station?" Cara blurted out.
"Wow, you really are new to this. The Station? It's the ultimate train depot, transporting you through the stars. This is one of probably trillions of worlds it can take you to. And an endless supply of transport vehicles are soaked in all that beautiful color, each one with a unique destination. I guess my horse and your ride are linked to this place. Let me ask you this. What object did you use to get to The Station?"
"An old mirror," Cara answered.
Ravera nodded. "Damn. That must be how everyone does it. That's how I did it. I was working late one night in my shop, and, while cleaning, I sort of, inadvertently aligned the faces of these two god-awful gold-framed mirrors." She laughed. "They were a set, old as dirt. I stepped in between them and ... bam! Next thing I know, I'm in The Station. I eventually found Wingjammer, rode him through a field."
"You said, it transported us through the stars. You didn't mean that literally, right?"
"Kid, I could swear by the stars we're not in our own galaxy. The truth is, I don't know where we are." Ravera shot Cara a sympathetic look. "Where we're at, one always needs to have a plan, Cara. I need to go home."
The butt of Ravera's knife collided with Cara's skull and knocked the naive young woman into the stream.
Hello from Colorado! I hope you liked Part One. I definitely had fun writing it. I always had a big imagination and a love for exploration.
Btw, voting helps catapult the story's overall Wattpad rank, allowing other potential readers to find it and experience it themselves. Plus it tells me that YOU liked it, and that's what i'm aiming for. <3 --Grimm