I pushed my way through, crying out as the thorns tore at my arms, thankful for the thick fabric of the cloak I wore. Once outside the limits of the enchantment, I took off the cloak and changed my clothes. It would not do for a woman to walk about on the roads alone, though it was safer in the country than in the cities, where gangs of youths roamed about seeking unprotected women to abuse and ruin. I had already decided to wear my grubby boy clothes, which would attract no one’s interest. Then, tears still running down my face, with my hair twisted up under a grubby cap, and with everything I owned in a sack over my shoulder, I went away from there. At the roadside not far distant stood a pale arm of stone which emerged from the forest in a tumbled wall topped by a rock shaped like a cat’s head. Under that rock was a little cave Grumpkin and I had discovered long ago. We called it the cathole. It was a place to secrete treasures, a place for Grumpkin to hide in, a place I had hidden in once or twice myself as a little child, though I had outgrown it long since. Now I stopped and put most of the wealth I carried inside it, stopping the opening with a few head-sized stones well wedged into place with smaller bits of rock. The aunts had often warned against the robbers at large in the world, robbers and ruffians and villains of all sorts. Hiding a part of what I had would save it against later need.
I kept some coin in my sack. Though they might not be real, I kept the emeralds wrapped up in rags: collar, circlet, two brooches, and a bracelet. I kept one warrant on a usurer. The rest of the jewelry and coin and the other warrant, I secreted away. Once this was done, I started on my way again, wishing I had a horse. It had been a weary and frightening day.
As I came from behind the stone, I saw a shattered gleam of sun on the flower-gathering hill, as though a man in armor had moved and reflected the light. I thought of Giles, my heart leaping up. He had known I needed him and had come home! Grumpkin cried, and I held him in my arms as I ran toward that gleam of light, telling myself it was Giles, it couldn’t be Giles, perhaps it was only a knight, but perhaps he had a spare horse he might let me ride, or even a horse and saddle I might buy. I had not gone far before Grumpkin snarled, sensing presences I did not. He would not have snarled at Giles.
[We had not foreseen this! We had planned on Mary Blossom taking Beauty’s place, but we had not foreseen this!]
The men and women I came upon were doing something incomprehensible. They moved among contrivances, among strange apparatus, boxes which hummed and winked and made noises like the midnight peeps of startled birds. There were five persons, some men, some women, though it was hard to tell which were which. They were clad much alike, and my impression of maleness and femaleness came more from stance and stature than from any other regard.
I saw them before they saw me. I should have stopped, turned, gone somewhere else, but it is a measure of my distraction and pain that I simply kept walking, mouth open, eyes fixed on them, wondering vaguely who they were and what they were doing on the May flower hill.
[Nothing in our calculations had included this! These people came from a time the Pool could no longer reach, a time beyond the veil, where I could not see.…]
“Did you get time lapse shots of the hedge?” the oldest of the men cried, his voice urgent.
“Time lapse, hell,” answered the tallest, heaviest man, his eye fixed to the end of the convoluted box he held upon his shoulder. “It’s fast enough to show without lapse. Look at the damn thing! It’s fairly crawling into the sky!”
I turned. The hedge had grown up behind me and was now higher than my head. Tendrils at the top reached upward like hands, clutching at the clouds. I felt a sob pressing upward and choked it down. Now was no time to give way, however much I needed to do so.
“What are you doing?” I cried, stepping from behind the bush.
[I actually reached out to stop her, but she moved too quickly.]
They turned, mouths open, staring. Almost simultaneously, two who had not spoken before said:
“Oh, shit!”
“That’s torn it. Hell!”
Not a polite greeting, considering everything, though not necessarily hostile.
“What in the bloody hell are you doing here?” asked one of the women in an offended voice. “There’s not supposed to be anyone here!” Her accent was strange. It took me a moment to figure out what she had said.
I shook my head, almost unable to respond. “Coming home,” I mumbled. “From market.”
I saw them mouthing the words, having the same difficulty I had had in understanding what they heard. Evidently my tongue was not their native speech.
The oldest man turned to one of others, throwing up his hands. “What do we do about this, Alice?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know, Martin,” the one called Alice replied. “If this shows up on the monitors, they’ll have our guts for dinner.”
“What’s your name,
