Chapter Ten

  Sarehole

  “It’s past ten, you need to wake up.” Freya’s mother stood over her with arms crossed. Nani Reed could be an intimidating figure when the mood struck.

  Being torn so abruptly away from her second body was beyond disorienting. It felt as if someone had hit her in the head with a tire iron. What would happen to her body in MythHarbor? With Roman wounded as he was, it was doubtful they could get her somewhere safe.

  “Leave me alone.” Freya grumbled as she pulled the covers over herself. Maybe she could get back to sleep.

  Nani aggressively disabused her of that notion. The covers flew from the bed, landing in a heap at the foot of the bed. “I am through with this. You said you needed time. You got it. You said you needed space. You got it. You said you just needed us to trust you. You got it!” Nani pulled Freya upright, she shrank beneath her mother’s fury. “Six months Freya. Six months of you languishing in this room with no forward progress. Hell, you even backslid something fierce with your job.”

  As much as MythHarbor concerned Freya, her mother’s ire was not something she could ignore. This was probably going to be the worst tongue lashing she got since the unfortunate incident in Mrs. Kier’s classroom.

  Nani sat on the bedside next to Freya. “I don’t like this.” She sighed, looking off at the wall. “I want you to be professionally successful. So I encouraged college or pursing a serious career outside of that. But more importantly I want you to be happy. Right now, you are neither.”

  When Freya discovered the Harbor, she had been happy. It was quite literally a dream come true. But now she just thought of the dead soldiers at her feet.

  They deserved what they got. The pain lingered anyway. “I know.”

  “Your father and I are trying our best, but I think our best isn’t quite good enough for you.”

  “You think I should start therapy.” It wasn’t a terrible idea, but Freya couldn’t have her parents pay for that. And with no job she had no hope of paying for it herself.

  “Yes, I should have had you go when all this trouble began. But-” Nani narrowed her eyes. “What is that?”

  Freya yanked away the hand she hadn’t realized was scratching her tattoo. “It isn’t anything. Just something some friends and I did together.”

  A plausible enough excuse. Outside of the fact that her friends consisted of only Leia and Ben. Her mother had a number of tattoos herself, so it wasn’t likely to draw undue attention. Nani pulled the shoulder of Freya’s shirt down to reveal the crossed pens over the sword. Her jaw tightened ever so slightly. Had Freya misjudged something? Her mother had even offered to go get a tattoo with her when she turned eighteen.

  “Looks nice.” Nani stood. “Think about what I said. Please.”

  Quick as that Nani was gone. The weirdness of the encounter proved to be fleeting in the face of more serious matters. Freya needed to find a way to get back to sleep, soldiers could be closing in on them any minute. Sulivar’s soldiers.

  The stack of books on her shelf bearing his name left a bottomless pit in her stomach. Those soldiers didn’t attack her for no reason. They were sent out to kill people en mass. They had to be, why else would they be targeted? And that bastard was the cause behind it.

  Another, more familiar sense of dread kept her from returning to the Harbor. Freya’s mother was worried, worried enough to essentially rip her out of bed. Both her parents had always been a light touch. Over her twenty-five years of life, Freya could only recall three times where her parents really went off the rails.

  They hadn’t hit that point yet, she suspected because they didn’t want to dress down their adult daughter like a child. But judging from the mood in the house, it was coming quick. As much as she would have liked to bury her head in the sand and just live through the Harbor, this place still mattered. Her mother and father still mattered. Her less fantastical dreams still mattered.

  Freya opened the aging Dell Laptop collecting dust on her desk. The shortcut for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s website in her web browser brought on the typical guilt and disappointment. But this time her promise to herself kept the urge to close the window at bay. It was time to take back her life, if she could kill a man, she could sign back up for college.

  #

  Freya’s fencing drills were all coming back to her now. For a moment she feared that practicing would only further remind her of the fight with Sulivar’s soldiers, of the woman with the toy soldiers. But it did the opposite, she cleared her mind, and fell into her stance. Her fencing outfit was terribly stiff after sitting in a box in the garage for six months. But after an hour of hard drills it was starting to loosen up again. There was no telling what would be waiting for her when she awoke. It would pay to be ready.

  A pre-prepared damp cloth was a welcome respite from the oppressive heat building in her neck. Just as she wiped away the last bit of sweat on her forehead, her father came in through the garage door.

  He cocked his head, then gave her a proud smile that warmed her heart. “You’re practicing!”

  It was funny how just doing the things she once loved brought her father so much happiness.

  Freya stripped off her fencing jacket and plastic chest protector. Laving her in a tank top and trousers. “I’m set to go back to college in the Fall too.”

  Her father dropped his laptop bag and wrapped her up in arms far too muscled for a man who worked in a cubicle all day. “I am so happy for you.”

  Time would tell if Freya would screw up again, but for now she would bask in the glow of her father’s praise.

  Francis Reed had always been an easy man to read. He wore his emotions on his sleeve, and encouraged his family to do the same. Though often times they ignored his advice. Once inside, her father moved with more of a skip to her step than she had seen out of him in months. Almost bouncing between the fridge and cupboard as he whipped up one of his signature concoctions for dinner. That horrible feeling bubbled up in her again. Freya’s difficulties had been affecting him far more than he was letting on. For six months she had let him worry, not caring about how her actions were affecting everyone else.

  Freya’s father caught her downtrodden look. “I know it’s scary. I can work out of the Milwaukee office for a little while until you are comfortable.”

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  “It isn’t that, you just seem happy.”

  “Well I am!” He said, throwing his arms up to emphasize the point.

  “So you weren’t before. Because of me.”

  Francis’ smile shriveled up and fell off his face. Freya regretted saying anything. “I am your father, it’s my job to worry about you. Your time to worry about me hasn’t come yet. One day I will be old, and stubborn about my failing faculties. You can worry about me then, and not a second before.”

  “You already are old.”

  Freya’s reward for her clever comment was catching a tangerine in the back of her head.

  It was hard to imagine the man before her being too old to do anything. Sure, he was going gray, and maybe he wasn’t quite as quick as he was in Freya’s childhood. But he was essentially a force of nature. To imagine him walking around with a cane, too weak to pickup his own groceries, was like imagining the end of rainstorms, or howling wind. Freya determined not to be the cause of the wind’s early demise. So she stuffed her guilt and jumped up from her seat.

  “What can I help with?” Freya’s father smiled something devious, then passed her a pair of large onions and a knife. She groaned. “Where are the damn onion goggles?”

  #

  For obvious reasons, Freya called it an early night. Soon as the warm air of a secret world touched her skin she was on her feet. She stomped onto devastatingly smooth wooden floorboards. The whiplash of the cozy room and her expected hardships had her in a daze. The room was small, with curved ceilings and a round door. A round door with a doorknob at its exact center.

  Freya smiled. They had made it, or at least she assumed they had. She swung open the door, marveling at its strange hinges. A handful of other rooms lined the comfortable hall, with its arched ceiling and rustic plastered walls. There were four doors, including hers. Three were open with lanterns extinguished. One was shut, with dim flickering light shining under the door.

  For her own sanity, she took a moment to appreciate how much this looked like a real hobbit hole. Visiting the Hobbiton movie set had long been on the short list of things to see before she died. Wherever she was, she suspected it would tick that box.

  The hallway was a dead end, so she wandered out into the open room it branched off from. The ceiling in here was slanted, with large wooden beams embedded into it. A small fire was crackling in the fireplace. To the left of the room Roman sat in a wooden rocking chair just slightly too small for him. He turned and gave her a wave, wincing upon remembering his wound.

  “Where are we?”

  “Sarehole,” Roman said. “Zora dragged us both here, she was griping about having to scrap her Magic Missile spell in favor of pure strength.”

  Few people had ever won over Freya as completely and aggressively as Zora had done. She looked back at the single room with a closed door with a fond eye. In the future, Freya would need to be more careful. If someone can rip her out of this realm by shaking her awake in the Source, she would need to be far more conscious of the time.

  First, she would need to get a better understanding of it. Time here was similar to the Source, but it didn’t seem to be one for one. Their trek the previous day had very clearly been at least twelve hours, maybe fourteen or more. Whereas she only slept for just a hair over eight. Someone could probably make her a watch that kept time in both realms. Shouldn’t be overly complicated as surely the exact conversion has been figured out before.

  “How long has she been asleep?”

  “Four hours or so.”

  Judging from the darkness through the windows, dawn was still a little ways from breaking. “Is this some kind of Hobbit hotel?”

  Roman shook his head. “The people here are kind, they are letting us use the home of a family that moved to Geles last week. It’s going up for sale next month.”

  Not wanting to trek out into the night in an unfamiliar town, Freya took a seat in the chair opposite Roman’s. “That would be a life wouldn’t it? Living in a place like this?”

  “Some would say boring.”

  “I doubt that.” Freya scoffed, what self-respecting Tolkien fan didn’t want to live a simple life in the Shire?

  “There is a reason the farm boy pulled from his home into a grand adventure is a trope.”

  That was something that was hard to square. The countryside was boring, yet it was charming. Living in the city, Freya only wanted to return to her small town. But as she grew up she only wanted to leave. What was it that made people think that way? The concept of running from a plain life to adventure was the origin for so many of her favorite characters. Lila Bard, Luke Skywalker, Eragon, and of course Westley, more famously known as Dread Pirate Rboberts. In many cases those characters eventually longed to return to that simple life, which was so often blown to pieces by their call to adventure.

  Would that be the case with Freya? She was trying to keep her other life well separate from whatever happened in this realm. Last night’s events more than proved she could hold that line well. The only thing that would transfer between her two lives were the lessons she learned from each. Freya took a good look around. This place was comfortable. Simple furniture, warm. More than likely a fully stocked pantry awaited her. Or maybe not, it was being sold after all.

  Sold. Could this be what she did with this incredible gift of a second life? Live a comfortable existence surrounded by right people. These pages she had been gifted, it probably could buy her this place. The natives of this realm treasured these pages. It was an enticing thought. One she would entertain once she got a better idea what this region held for her. There were still so many things about this world she didn’t understand. What did the natives think about the Fable-Walkers? Did they all value pages as much as she was told, or did it differ based on area? What was the history?

  Of course this would never be enough on its own. She would need to make sure everyone knew who she was first.

  “Does Esselem teach about the history of this realm?” Freya asked.

  “Oh yes. There are more than a few classes on that. The Minister himself even teaches one.”

  “The Minister?”

  “Right, keep forgetting you’re new. He’s one of the eldest authors I’ve met. By virtue of his companion Anodos, most have figured out his identity. His true name is a rare exception to the prohibition on Fable-Walkers identifying themselves.”

  “Someone I would know?”

  “Maybe? George MacDonald, he wrote in the latter part of the 19th century. One of, if not the first author to write a classic secondary world fantasy novel. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were heavily influenced by him.”

  Freya only had a passing knowledge of George MacDonald. A notable hole in her otherwise sterling Fantasy resume. That didn’t stop her amazement at the concept of learning under him. The man was old at the turn of the twentieth century. That would make him something like two hundred years old. She would have to ask him what he thought of his proteges shoving their little faerie stories into the heart of public imagination.

  “There is so much I don’t know. What are all these different regions I keep hearing about? I know why the Bluffs are dangerous now, but why is Hathmore something to be weary of?”

  “I’m no professor. But the story of Hathmore is pretty funny actually. It’s made up of three cities, the founders of the three cities hated each other with a burning passion, and so they take every opportunity to play petty pranks to disrupt business. The region is usually referred to as one unified nation, but if you suggested as much in Staidhaven or Brennustead you’d be in the stocks before you finished your sentence. The hatred goes deep. There are often border clashes, forcible takeovers of territory. Plots upon plots upon plots. Have you heard of the scarlet waters of Leeved?”

  All of the cities he just mentioned were brand new to her. “I can’t say that I have.”

  “Well, all the wells in the city of Leeved produce a deep pinkish colored water. They now claim it as an attraction, a point of pride. But about ninety years back, old Brennus spent a year’s worth of city tax to dye the aquifer beneath Leeved pink. It was meant to be an insult, but wisely they took it in stride. Once Leeved started drawing in visitors because of it, both Staidhaven and Brennustead dyed their own wells too.”

  It was good to know that the natives of the Created realm were petty nonsensical bastards too. “That doesn’t seem like it could go on for long. Surely the people would quit entertaining these…pranks.”

  Roman just shook his head. “More than five hundred years.”

  Feuds over centuries, like the worst cultural divisions in the Source Realm, but amplified as the original belligerents are still going strong. The implications of that…How much of this realm was at war?

  Freya just looked back into the fire. All would become clear after getting to Esselem. However, there was one matter that she couldn’t wait to get a grasp on.

  “Are we in danger here, in Sarehole?”

  Roman gave a grim nod. “When the Professor was here, nobody would have dared. But he hasn’t been seen in decades. Only his reputation has kept other interested parties from seizing this land.”

  Tolkien was gone? “What happened to him?”

  “Nobody knows, he retired for the day to go work on some new language. He never came back out of his house.”

  A pang of regret echoed in her chest for the man she was hoping beyond all to meet. The self-pity was quickly overshadowed by fear of what might happen here if nobody was defending it.