And so her month-long stay with them had begun, as she discreetly pumped them for information, gorged on TV news programs, and used the internet on their old computer once she figured out how from watching them struggle to do so themselves. Hour after hour had she immersed herself, slowly learning one important idea after another.
She was on the south island of New Zealand. She needed a passport to get on a plane to England to find Stonehenge, which was still standing since she’d last seen it. It had changed since then, but then it seemed like everything had and this place was no longer recognizable, not that she had seen much anyway. While people believed in a lone god, there were no confirmed reports of Him answering anyone. Magic didn’t seem to work, and no one believed in it. An internet search of her friend’s names turned up nothing, but two other names brought up a lot, and yet all of it was considered a myth from a thousand years past. Had she been flung into the future? All signs pointed to it. Ever since, a kind of grief had lurked in the back of her mind, that everyone and everything she had ever known was just gone.
Eventually she left behind the elderly couple who had given her a wad of cash and a suitcase of old clothes and other knickknacks as she set off for Christchurch, a nearby city with international flights. She promised to repay them, but they told her not to worry about, as they weren’t using any of it anyway. Getting the documentation she needed for international travel would have been impossible were it not for their missing granddaughter, whom they had been raising after their own daughter died. She bore just enough resemblance for Erin to get a nerdy young man she flirted with to issue her a new driver’s license in the girl’s name, which she adopted, becoming Erin Jennings. Similar machinations finally got her the passport, credit cards, and a new identity, all of it helped by those sweet grandparents having done little to formalize the girl’s death. They hadn’t had the heart to go through that again and hoped they might find the real Erin one day, but it had been years and they seemed resigned that it wouldn’t happen.
She finally stood before Stonehenge, which had weathered considerably since she last saw it a month earlier. A nearby visitor center looked decades old but hadn’t been here before. Something was clearly amiss. She stayed in Britain for a year, working as a server and making new friends to avoid suspicion, hoping for a sign of her true friends, but it never came. When it became apparent that she was in this brave new land for the rest of her life, she moved to America and married someone a few years older and with a promising future. Nearly twenty years had passed.
She spent those years preparing for today, acquiring supposed magic items from around the world, a few of which were upstairs in her hotel room. None had worked, but she had heard reports of random people being able to do one thing or another. And the Stonehenge disappearance could never have happened without magic. Some people could also heal others. Most dismissed that as nonsense, but Erin knew it had been possible in her old life, which was about to collide with her new one. She felt nervous. So much depended on this conversation with the Stonehenge Four. It was important to have this talk in person. Their expressions would tell her more than words ever could.
As she sipped her tea in a hotel dining area in Gaithersburg, Maryland, the loud, excited voices of two approaching teenage girls broke her thoughts. The first words she could make out got her undivided attention.
“The guy vanished right on camera!” said the blonde one as they swept into the dining area, moving around the small tables and chairs, the afternoon sun streaming across the floor.
The brunette asked, “Do you think that’s what happened at Stonehenge, but no one was there to see it?”
“Could be. Damn, the TV isn’t on. Where’s the remote?”
Erin’s eyes went to it on the counter, from where one girl grabbed the TV control and furiously pushed buttons to no avail. “Damn thing is busted!”
“Grab a cookie and let’s go. Come on!”
They ran from the room and Erin strode right behind them, her long skirt snapping as she marched to the nearest stairs. She ascended three flights, taking two steps at a time. She finally burst into the hall and swiftly unlocked her room door, then headed straight for the TV, which came on, already set to the news from her viewing it earlier today. Words gushed from an excited black reporter as Erin read the chryon across the screen’s button, “Man Magically Vanishes on Camera.”
“Lisa,” the reporter continued, addressing a news anchor on the split screen, “as you can see from the footage, I was right in the middle of our interview when he disappeared.”
Lisa replied, “I know some people are speculating that this is just a special effect, added afterward.”
“Yeah, and I’m here to tell you this is absolutely not the truth. I saw it right in front of me and there are a dozen witnesses to this, some of whom caught it on their cellphones.”
As the two women talked, a silent replay of the moment began repeating, sometimes in slow motion. The techie, Matt, stood shyly talking into the microphone held toward him, green eyes on the reporter as he only rarely glanced at the camera as if uncomfortable before it. A light breeze touched
