The Return To Erda Box Set Page 2

  When I turned to them, they straightened up. I swear, some of the trees even turned their back on me. Swiveled somehow. I started to curse and stopped myself just in case I was dreaming and was still the girl who lived in the Earth dimension. The thought that perhaps I had traveled to a new realm after all, occurred to me. Maybe in this one, I was different? Still me, but different somehow.

  The dinosaur on top of me squawked and lifted off to land in one of the leaning trees. Seeing it fly I realized what it was, even though it didn’t seem possible.

  I could believe that Lady, the pileated woodpecker that had befriended me on Earth, was in my dream, but how could she have dimension traveled with me? Besides, she was so big!

  “You are pretty dense,” the voice said again. “But given that you smacked your head, we’ll give you a break. For now.”

  Holding my head, I stood and looked around. I was in a clearing, surrounded by trees—a blue sky above me and what appeared as a meadow of sorts in front of me. I recognized some of the flowers, even though they were not quite right, somehow. That mystery would have to be solved later.

  For now, I needed to figure out where I was and what I was supposed to do next.

  If I did dimension travel, where was Suzanne? If there had been a portal, it was no longer there. Stumbling to a nearby rock, still holding my head, I sat down hoping to gain some perspective.

  What was I supposed to do? Where was I supposed to go? Why was Lady here with me, but not Suzanne? And who spoke to me?

  The rock moved, or slid, and then stopped. This is what going crazy feels like, I thought. Besides, I’m hungry. Why didn’t I think to bring food?

  I knew why. I thought Suzanne would be with me. She would show me the ropes, explain the mysteries of her dimension, her realm. Take me to her friends. I would visit, and then I could go home.

  “I’m afraid that going home is not possible, Hannah,” I heard Suzanne say from somewhere behind me.

  I turned to see her standing by one of the trees that had been leaning towards me but was now standing as straight and rigid as any tree on Earth. I wouldn’t have known that it was Suzanne though. I had never seen her as a solid being before.

  She had always visited us as a wisp of a person, sometimes as transparent as a mist, other times more substantial but with a body that trailed off, that looked like what some people called ghosts but without the white sheet.

  I knew that my mother had met Suzanne as a human person before she had begun to dimension travel and I had seen pictures of Suzanne. She had been beautiful. She still was, but not the same. First, because she wasn’t wearing what she had when we stepped into the portal.

  “You don’t like what I’m wearing?” the person who looked like Suzanne said. If it was Suzanne, she had transformed her flowing white and black cloak with streaks of red into more practical black leggings and a red tunic type top. Her long white hair was now short, snipped into spikes.

  Like a tongue-tied teenager who knew nothing, I gaped at her. “What are you?”

  Her answer was to completely disappear as Lady swooped down from the top of the tree to land on the rock I had vacated after it had started to slide.

  Lady cawed at me and started off into the forest. When I didn’t move, she flew back and grabbed my hair.

  “Ow-ziffer. Stop it. Okay, I’ll follow you. But will Suzanne know where we are going?”

  Once again I heard laughter, more than one kind of laughter this time. It was a chorus of laughter. I spun around. The leaves of the trees were trembling. Were they laughing at me?

  I had no choice. I had to follow. But in my heart, I was scared and angry. Whoever was laughing had no right to laugh. I had been deserted. And what did Suzanne, or that woman pretending to be Suzanne, mean when she said I couldn’t go home?

  How dare she leave me all alone. All I had was a crazy bird. And laughing trees and a rock that didn’t act like a rock.

  Perhaps this is a dream after all, and I would wake up soon, but in the meantime, I needed to know what was happening. That was my thing. after all. Didn’t mean I wasn’t still angry, though.

  Shatterskin Three

  Still holding my head, I started to follow the bird that looked like Lady into the forest until I realized what I was doing. I was following something into somewhere without questioning what was happening. It was like getting into a strange car with an unknown person. Would I ever do that? No. Even if the person looked like someone that I knew? Well, perhaps. But birds look almost alike, don’t they? So it wasn’t as if I could tell Lady from another bird just like her.

  Almost too late I saw the bird fly back towards me, bent on either knocking me over again or pulling my hair. Either way, I wasn’t going to let that happen. I dropped to the ground and curled into a little ball and stayed there.

  Probably looked pretty stupid, but at least I didn’t get my hair pulled. I lifted my head just a bit and saw the bird sitting on the ground in front of me. I got the distinct impression that she was not happy with me for thinking that she looked the same as other pileated woodpeckers that looked like dinosaurs or dragons.

  Birds, animals, insects could tell the difference between each other, why couldn’t I? She turned her face sideways and looked directly into my eyes. Something about those eyes were familiar, and at that moment I knew for sure that it was Lady from Earth who was sitting there. I reached out to touch her head, and she pulled her head back and gave me a look that I wouldn’t forget. No touching. “Okay, okay. So you’re Lady. Now, what is this place?”

  I took a big breath in and smelled the woods. It smelled like the forests back home. Loamy, cool, a city of insects and animals mostly invisible unless you lived there and learned to see. Before stepping into the portal, I had been learning a little about the forest behind our house. Learning more about this forest was going to be fun. Maybe it would give me a clue as to where I was, assuming I wasn’t dreaming. Didn’t that voice say, Erda?

  Screwing up my courage, I decided it was time to explore. I stood up, and for the first time since I tripped and fell on my face, I looked down at myself and screamed.

  Who was this person? Was it me? What looked like my hands felt the clothes that I had on. They were not what I was wearing when I was standing in the door of the portal. I had been wearing what I always wear, like most girls my age: skinny jeans, t-shirt, and at the last minute I had grabbed my favorite soft sweater.

  Suzanne had told me I couldn’t bring anything other than what I was wearing through the portal. Everything else would dissolve in the transfer. What I needed would be provided for me.

  What she had neglected to tell me was that I would arrive in different clothes. I ran my hands over whatever it was that was covering my legs. They felt almost like the leggings I wore in the winter and looked like the ones that woman by the tree had been wearing.

  However, they felt completely different from anything I had worn before. These leggings were still soft like winter leggings, but much stronger. They were as tight as my skin but so lightweight that if I hadn’t seen that I was wearing them, I would have thought I had nothing on. Scary thought, that. The shirt was the same material as the leggings. Close to my body, but soft and comfortable.

  As a reader of strange stories, I wondered if I was caught up in a dream, like in one of my books. Ones where people ended up in bodies that weren’t theirs. Because not only were the clothes weird, so was I. Older. Not twelve anymore. The tight clothing proved that. Not me. At least not the me that lived on Earth.

  “Well, you always said you were older than your Earth age, little one,” the taunting voice I had first heard said. “You were right about that anyway. Everything else, well, we’ll see.”

  “Not going anywhere until you show yourself, and explain what’s happening,” I answered and sat down in a huff. The s
trange body and clothing would have to wait. Maybe I didn’t look like me, but I felt like me. That would have to be enough for now.

  As I sat down, I ended up on a rock again, even though I had not noticed it. Where did it come from? Was it a rock? It looked like one. At the moment I had more pressing problems than figuring out if it was a rock, or how it got behind me, because the laughter started again. I stood, hands clenched at my side. I was sick of the taunting, and the not knowing.

  “She is kinda pretty when she’s angry isn’t she?”

  “Humph. For a human I guess.”

  “Human? Pretty? What the ziffer? Who are you? Come out now and show yourself,” I demanded. I was too angry to demand to know where all the z swear words were coming from. It was just one more strange thing going on.

  “Or else? What are you going to do, little one? Fight? You haven’t seen us yet. You don’t have the advantage in this. If I were you, and luckily I’m not, I would shut up and do what you’re told to do.

  “This is our world, not yours.”

  With those words, everything stopped. It was as if everything around me sucked in a breath of air and held it, waiting for something terrible to happen.

  The ground shook. Lady flew beside me and sat there, cocking her head, looking for danger.

  The release of the breath was a wind so intense I had to grab a branch of a tree that happened to be nearby to keep from following the leaves and bits of things I had never seen before that were blowing past me.

  “Sorry, sorry, so sorry. I’ll not do it again,” squeaked the voice that was taunting me seconds before.

  “You’re right. You won’t,” roared the wind. “Now show yourself to her and do your job. Take care of her!”

  Shatterskin Four

  What happened next scared me so much I thought that my hair might pop out of my head. Like quills. You know, porcupines. Maybe they did, because I shut my eyes so fast I wouldn’t have seen it happen. That confirmed it. Basically, I’m a coward.

  I guess I was harboring a belief that I was some kind of hotshot because on earth I had gifts. Gifts people called paranormal. Here, so far, I had nothing. Things were happening that I had no control over. Including swearing strange words and wearing clothes that looked like they belonged to some cat woman. I was no longer a little girl. I thought that would be cool. I was wrong.

  So far this traveling to another dimension was turning out to be something I wished I had never decided to do. Nothing about it was fun. At all.

  After cowering behind my hands for a few moments, I took a peek between my fingers. Yep. They were still there. Two of them. What they were, I wasn’t sure. It would require me to look at them.

  When no one shoved anything at me or ran me over, or even spoke mean words, I gathered up a tiny bit of courage and opened one eye. Supposedly keeping the other eye shut would make me safer?

  I opened, closed, opened, closed, but nothing changed. They were still there. Not moving and not smiling either. One of them had a face that reminded me of a piece of bark. The other one was standing behind it, so I could only see a tiny hand and foot.

  Perhaps the tiny one was afraid of me. That thought emboldened me enough to open both my eyes while taking the miniature precaution of stepping back and trying to hide behind Lady. She wasn’t there. Again. She had deserted me. Nice.

  It felt as if an eternity passed while I stared at two little, maybe people, standing in front of me. They stared back at me before the grumpy, bark faced one cleared its throat and said, “Sorry, sorry, so sorry.” The taunter.

  Now I had to decide. Was I going to taunt back, or make friends?

  I took a quick look around me. No friends. Right. Could use a few. I gathered up the remnant of what had passed as courage just the day before and demanded with great authority, “Who are you?”

  The thought cloud over grumpy’s head was almost visible. He thought I was a joke. He was right. But the voice that came with the wind told him to take care of me. Wait. What kind of “take care of?” It must be the other kind because if it were to get rid of me, it would have been as easy as flicking a finger and I probably would have died of fright.

  Instead, he just stood there like a lump of wood. He even looked like wood. Like a stump of wood with arms and legs covered in some weird green material that almost made him look like an elf. Almost. He was too wide and gnarly. He didn’t fit my version of an elf anyway.

  The head that belonged to the tiny hands and feet popped out behind grumpy and smiled at me. It was a real smile. I couldn’t help myself. I had to smile back. I doubted if the two of them were related.

  This one had a face as smooth and open as a rose petal. She stepped forward and extended a hand. Upside down. Did she want to shake hands, or was I supposed to kiss it?

  She laughed and said, “Like this,” as she put her hand out and Mr. Wood Face covered it with his hand sliding them off of each other like a handshake from the seventies. I expected them to wiggle their fingers after that, but maybe they didn’t know that part. Or Wood Head’s fingers didn’t move.

  I extended my hand, and she covered it. We slid back, and I wiggled my fingers.

  Flower Girl laughed, and Wood Head said, “Humpf.”

  “I’m Hannah,” I said, and then pointing at where Lady had just flown, “and that’s Lady somewhere out there.”

  “Oh, we know who you are Earth person,” Woody said. “We are supposed to get you to where you are going.”

  “Could we at least start with names? And then you could tell me where I am and then where we are going. And why.”

  When Grumpy Wood Face grunted, Flower Girl cuffed him on the back of his head. “Cut it out, Frank.”

  I didn’t hear what she said next because I started laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. Frank? Not something exciting or even appropriate to what he looked like? Frank?

  “Sorry, sorry, so sorry,” I said parroting Grumpy Wood Head who was really Frank. It was too much. Who could be afraid of a Frank? The laughter felt good to me, but when I looked at my two new friends, I was embarrassed.

  Frank had turned his back to me, and little Flower Girl had her arm around his back whispering something.

  “No really, I am sorry. That was so mean. I think it was a release from all of this.”

  When they turned around I could see that they weren’t sad, they were laughing, too.

  “It’s a joke? Is he not Frank? Or what?”

  “No, we’re sorry.” Flower Girl said. “We’ve been teasing you all along. No, his name isn’t Frank. He is Ruta, and my name is Beru. Ruta doesn’t like change much, and you are bringing it. Me, I love it. Which is probably why we were both chosen to guide you.”

  “Ruta and Beru suit you both. But I don’t know anything. Who chose you? And where are you taking me?”

  Beru answered me. “It’s best you find out as we travel. We’ve stayed too long here. Some powers don’t want you here. We tried to do our best to keep it a secret, but by now it will be known that a portal opened, and you have returned. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

  “Returned? I can’t have returned. I’ve never been here.”

  Beru and Ruta exchanged glances. “Perhaps we have said too much,” Beru said.

  I screamed as a gut-wrenching shrieking sound in the distance made the ground beneath my feet jump.

  “Go now,” Ruta grunted and headed into the forest. He didn’t need to tell me twice. I wasn’t interested in meeting whatever caused that sound. I had heard about sonic booms. Maybe that’s what this was, except it was pitched so high it sounded like a giant scratching his fingernails across the sky.

  It wasn’t courage that had me following a lump of wood and a flower into the forest. It was fear.

  Shatterskin Five

 
Ruta moved through the woods faster than I thought possible. Beru was even quicker. She kept circling back behind me and then running ahead of Ruta, and then coming back to me. I was running faster than I had ever run before, so how she was doing that was a mystery.

  There was no path as far as I could see. Ruta and Beru just ran, and things moved out of their way. Or at least I thought that was what was happening. I didn’t see any movement. Instead, there was an opening wherever Ruta went, and I followed Ruta through it.

  After what felt like two days but was probably less than an hour, I couldn’t run anymore. I tripped over my foot and fell flat on my face again for the second time in one day. I hoped it would be the last. Ruta had kept on running, but the next time Beru circled back she found me lying on the ground trying to breathe.

  She clicked her fingers together, and a moment later Ruta was there.

  “I don’t think she can go on right now, Ruta. Let’s stay here. We’re far enough from the clearing, and we can hide here until Hannah rests. Your friend has told us how much energy it takes to come through that portal. You need to rest.”

  When Ruta turned his grumpy stern face to me, I burst into tears as I mumbled, “Thank you Beru, and I’m sorry, Ruta.”

  I caught a look pass between them, and I swear I saw Ruta’s block face soften. I was too tired to ask what friend they were talking about.

  When Beru placed a mound of leaves under my head and covered me with some mysterious cloth she pulled out of her pocket, I fell asleep within seconds. The last thing I heard before entering emptiness was Suzanne’s voice saying it was safe, for now. That was enough for me. Suzanne hadn’t deserted me.

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