Sunlight turned to a starless night sky without fanfare. The air around me cloaked my immediate environment far more ominously than the darkness of my most recent portal trip. Yesterday, the foggy depths produced my friend Bas. In France, where the darkness turned clear, sharp, and clean, I was greeted by the Portal Keeper, Gilles.
This murky darkness had an appetite.
I had no idea where I landed. My body stayed frozen in place as my eyes adjusted to the lack of natural sunlight. Shapes became clearer. Trees—tall, straight, with uniformity in the circumference of their trunks. Their branches started some six or seven feet off the ground, reaching out and up at a gentle angle and rising to create a multifingered canopy overhead. Other trees, gnarled and arthritic, had branches devoid of leaves. The tall trees spoke to me of individuals with righteous natures. The others exuded sorrow and defeat.
The portal tree directly in front of me—caught between rising up and curving around—pulsed faintly with indecision.
Coniferous. Deciduous. Non-deciduous. I shook my head, tried to clear my thinking.
The trunks to either side of me were matte black. Where leaves grew, the edges glowed in hazy clouds of white. The backing of a coppery red sky lent the scene an otherworldly cast, and none of the nearby trunks had handy identification plaques. Pressing my back to the tree, I rolled to one side to see what was behind. More forest, ruffled with a skirt of dense underbrush. Beyond—the water, its bloodred surface rippling like liquid mercury.
I had to be seeing things. Water wasn’t red. Something was wrong with my eyes.
On the ground around the portal tree, a ragged circle of silver-white bricks peeked out from underneath layers and layers of scattered and decomposing leaves. I compared the leaves on the bushes with those on the ground. They differed, their shapes and color unlike any I had seen before.
There was no sign of a path. Only a modest, half-moon-shaped clearing in front of me. The only way out was to portal home. Or to bushwhack my way through the gloom and see who or what I would meet.
If I could rest assured this was a dream—or if I was twenty years younger and childless—I might have chosen to explore. Instead, I folded to the ground, stuck out my legs, and fumbled with the zipper of my bag. Taking a long draw from my water bottle, I leaned my weight onto the heel of my palm.
Pain washed over me as tiny shards sliced into my skin where I’d made contact with the ground. Jerking my hand away, flecks of blood mottled the pristine surfaces of the white leaves. Whatever cut me was hidden. Having no idea what it was, I stopped myself from licking at the cuts and instead emptied the water bottle over my hand.
The water provided a small amount of relief.
I should have saved some to drink.
I pressed the cut-up area to my pant leg to absorb any fresh blood and used my left hand to access my dagger. Rolling to the side, I guided the weapon’s tip under the leaves and flipped the top layer. I did the same with the next layer, and the next, exposing particles of paper-thin glass and a handful of clear marble-sized glass balls.
Charming and delicate, they called to me to peer inside their bubbled surface for clues to other worlds. I almost fell onto my elbow before reason jerked me upright and warned me to be wary of touching anything else in this place.
I stared at the cuts on my palm, each oozing bright red droplets, and pondered the warning.
Ignoring my blood’s call and my stinging hand, I used the dagger to nudge a couple of the bubbles and as many shards as I could into the refillable bottle. Someone in my circle of Magicals could figure out what this stuff was. I secured the cap, checked the exterior of the bottle for more glass, then dropped it into my bag.
My dagger called to me. I held the blade close to my face, admired its honed edge and elegant shape. Pressing the exquisitely sharp tip to my upraised hand I drew a line down my thumb pad and marveled at the beauty seeping out of the cut.
Water tumbling over rocks burbled faintly in my ears. My blood was the same color as the body of water beyond the trees. I licked the red line, ascertained that my blood tasted good and that my saliva did indeed stop the flow and seal the cut.
I was tired.
I wanted more of the soporific effect of my blood on my tongue to take me into sleep. I had days, weeks, months to catch up on. I could curl up right here, my back to the tree, and sleep.
No one knew where I was. No one would disturb me. No one would ever find me—
I almost pressed my hand to the ground again and rethought my strategy as I struggled to stand. No way was I exploring any farther into this place and no way was I going to succumb to the lure of sleep. This was not Paris—at least, not any park in Paris I had ever seen photographed.
I rocked forward, steadied my stance, and gripped my wand in my right hand after sheathing my dagger. Touching the tree and gripping the freely given stick that would see me to the Old One no matter what, I closed my eyes and whispered, “Home.”
A dull pulse rippled under the bark.
I repeated my request, “Home.” Another pulse, this one a slumbering ka-thump that traveled from my palm, up my arm, into my head, pinging against my skull like a metal tongue against the inside of a bell.
I clamped my teeth onto my wand and placed my other hand on the tree. A third pulse, followed by
