I opened my eyes—hey, look at that! I have eyes!—and upchucked everything I'd eaten, maybe ever. When whatever was left of my guts settled down, I flopped on my butt, panting, and took in my surroundings. I sat on the edge of a wide, shallow brook that tripped along over smooth stones. A fat frog watched me from a tree branch fallen halfway into the water. On the other side of the brook, the trees thinned, and the earth sloped upward, turning rocky.
"No, no, no, no." I scrambled to my feet, wobbled on legs as sturdy as warm pudding, and plopped back down onto the soft moss. There, next to my left hand, a little yellow flower grew an inch or so taller than the moss.
"What the actual fuck?"
The only answer that came was the rustle of something quick moving through the foliage.
"Nick?"
I wasn't surprised when I got no reply. I could feel Nick when he was nearby. Strange that I'd never really realized that before, but at that moment, I didn't feel anything but alone. A quick search of my pockets revealed I had no phone, no wallet, no car keys. I scooted toward the edge of the stream, dipped a hand in the icy water, and washed my face. When I tried to stand again, my legs reluctantly agreed to support me. Nick said he'd grown up upstream from that place, so there must be something there.
I started walking.
The air smelled of damp green things and river water, which sounds more unpleasant than it actually is. A mosquito whined in my ear, and I batted it away.
While I walked, I tried to figure out what had happened. The witch had... what? Transported me? Why did she send me to Nick's forest, of all places? Was it even a real place? What if I was dead? Again? I tripped over my feet and barked my shin against a fallen log.
"Cripes!"
I lifted my pant leg to examine the damage. A thin trickle of blood oozed from the cut. Well, at least that probably meant I was still alive. It also meant that this was probably not a dream or, if it was, it was completely indistinguishable from reality. Which I suppose dreams are when you're in the middle of dreaming them but... oh good grief. I dropped the cuff of my pant leg and moved on.
For the next half hour, I plodded along, got hungry, worried about what happened to Moose, wondered if Nick would come looking for me. Around the time my feet began to protest the unusual amount of exercise, I came around a bend and found a village.
Or, at least, I found what was left of a village. Half a dozen ruined stone huts groaned beneath thick layers of vines. A tree sprouted right through the roof of one of them. A handful of wooden crosses worn thin and gray with age stood at odd angles, marking the graves of the people who'd lived here. I approached one and squatted down to brush away the layer of dust, and the wood gave way beneath my fingers.
A narrow dirt trail, baked hard in the sun, led away from the river.
I grew up here, Nick had said.
Maybe it had been a different village. But I didn't really believe that. Either Nick had grown up amongst the ruins of this ancient place, or he had grown up in a time when the ancient place was new.
I would have believed either story.
For lack of better options, not having the first idea of where I was, I followed the road. Another hour passed before I came to a single stone structure strongly resembling those I'd left behind, but obviously better cared for. Red clay tiles lay in neat rows across the roof. Bright flowers bloomed in window boxes, and a Volkswagen Beetle that was twice my age stood in the gravel driveway.
Before I'd worked up the nerve to go knock on the door, a man with a receding hairline and the most impressive mustache I'd ever seen in real life came tottering out of the door, leaning hard on a shining black cane. He called out to me and waved. "Ya. Poios eísai? Giatí eísai edó? Esy ti theleis?"
"Uhm," I looked around, but no one was there to help me. "Can I use your phone?"
The old man scowled at me.
"Telephone?"
"Tilefono? Ochi," he replied.
"I don't know what that means." I blinked away tears. Now was not a good time to cry. I'd save my tears for the American Consulate when I told them my totally believable story about how I'd come to be in whatever foreign nation I was in without identification or money.
"Needing help?" he asked.
Hope exploded in my chest. "Yes! Help!"
His gaze wandered along the road in the direction I'd come from. He crossed himself and spit on the ground. "Fantasma?"
The wheels in my mind spun so fast I wouldn't have been surprised to smell smoke. Fantasma. Fantasm. Phantom. Ghosts and unnatural things. Nick had definitely been from that village. I shook my head. "Lost," I said.
He shuffled around in a circle and disappeared back inside his house, reappearing a moment later with a small glass bottle in one hand. He motioned me forward, and I obeyed, hoping he'd come through on his offer of help. "I just need a way to make a call," I said.
He tucked his cane under his arm, uncorked the bottle, and flung the contents at me. Drops of water splashed across my face and down the front of my shirt and I sputtered and stumbled back in surprise.
The old man nodded, apparently satisfied that I wasn't a Fantasma. He re-corked the bottle, stuffed it in his pocket, and fished out an ancient-looking coin. "Aftó tha sas prostatéfsei." He thrust it in my direction with some urgency.
I thanked him and tucked it in my pocket.
Apparently satisfied, he led me to the car. I climbed into the passenger seat while remembering stories that involved hitchhikers and axe murderers.
My savior tossed his cane in the miniscule back seat and turned the key. The car banged to life and belched out a cloud of bluish smoke. After a few seconds of fighting with the gearshift, the man got it where he wanted it and backed out of the driveway. Another few seconds got him in drive, and he did a burn out that sent dust and gravel flying out behind us.
I held on to the dashboard and tried not to comment.
I may have commented.
Probably he didn't understand what I said. Most likely, he interpreted the tone accurately, though. He laughed and sped up.
Eventually, we came upon a reasonably modern-looking town. We passed a gas station and a grocery and pulled into a space in front of the post office. He pointed at a bank of pay phones. "Tilefono."
Right. Pay phones. Except I didn't have any coins, and I didn't know how to ask him for any. How many coins would it take to make a call to America, anyway? I'd never actually used a pay phone and had no idea how much one cost.
"Tilefono!" he shouted in obvious exasperation.
"Yeah, okay. I got it. Thanks, geez." I climbed out of the car before he started poking me with his cane or something.
I passed through the cloud of toxic blue smoke and climbed the slight incline to the phones. There, I discovered, to my utmost delight, a sticker that read, in English, International Call Assist Dial 169. As I jabbed the three buttons, my new friend beeped the horn twice, made a dangerous-looking u-turn and putt-putted away down the road.
A woman with a thick accent agreed to help me place a collect call to Mandrake. Under the circumstances, I'd have preferred to call Nick or Mx. Landry, but Mandrake and Chantelle were the only two people in the world whose phone numbers I knew by heart, and now was not the time to call Chantelle.
"Where are you, Livvie?" was the first thing Drake asked.
With international rates being as high as they are (I assume. I've never called internationally), I tried to explain as succinctly as possible. When I finished, only a soft buzz filled the line. "Still there?" I asked.
"Yes." He cleared his throat. "What do we need to do to get you home?"
I wanted to tell him I loved him, but I thought he might take it in a different way from what I intended, so I settled for explaining about the door behind Walmart.
He sounded skeptical. "How do I get in?"
"They'll see you," I said.
"Yeah, but will they let me in?"
"Of course." I had no way of knowing that was true. "I need you to hurry, okay? I'm just sitting here at the post office in... uhm... I have no idea where." My voice hitched, so I clamped my teeth together before I could start bawling.
"Okay. Is there a phone number there? A street sign? Anything?"
I gave him as much information as I could glean from my surroundings, and he told me to stay put and wait for help. Hanging up the phone kind of felt like cutting myself off from the known universe.