Chapter 3: How it Started vs How it’s Going (Hint: It’s the Same)

Cecily woke up to the sound of August moving around in the kitchen. It’s too early for cooking, she thought with an inward groan as she rolled over on the couch. One of the only things she appreciated about this world was its lack of clocks. She liked not having anywhere to be or anything to do: it offered a nice contrast to working a full-time job back on Earth. August, on the other hand, had kept his schedule of waking up early even though he no longer had classes to attend.

After a few more minutes of listening to her brother humming softly to himself, Cecily finally got up and looked at the ugly silver locket Ravioli Girl had given her, which was laying on the floor next to her couch. She wasn’t sure why, but she put it on before folding up her blanket and stumbling tiredly over to August. The house was small and the kitchen and living room were essentially one large room, with a single bedroom and washroom branching off the short hallway leading to the front door. The house had been furnished by its former resident, a very short middle-aged man whose name Cecily had never learned. He was the first person she and August had met when they ended up in this stupid world, in an encounter that August had called “a learning experience.”

Two months ago, Cecily and August had stumbled on this house during their third day in the magical world, once they’d pinched each other enough to be certain they were not dreaming. Seeing an actual house after sleeping in the woods and surviving on Cecily’s emergency snacks, they immediately knocked on the door. A small, balding man answered and looked them up and down. “Well, you two look terrible.”

“We, um, got lost,” August told him, glancing at Cecily for confirmation.

The man opened the door wider and ushered them into his home. “Come on in and tell me where you’re from, and I’ll get you back there.”

August had started to walk into the house, but Cecily caught his arm to stop him. “How do you know you can get us home?” she asked suspiciously. “We haven’t even told you where we’re from.”

The man looked at her like she was an idiot. “I’ll make you a portal. Have you ever traveled by portal before?”

“I… I think we have?” Cecily said hesitantly, unsure if it had been a portal that had taken them from Earth or some other weird phenomenon.

“Well, then, you should know how it works. I will expect a fairly large Favor for this, though,” he replied, holding out his hand to shake.

Cecily frowned, not sure what he meant but certain that she didn’t like his tone. “If you have a favor that you need, we could try to help before we leave,” she said, hesitantly shaking his hand.

Balding Man turned to August as well. “You, too.” August nodded and shook his hand, which seemed to satisfy the stranger. “Come on in, I’ll get it set up.” The man walked back into the house, leaving the twins standing on the doorstep.

“It’s worth a shot,” August finally said with a determined expression. “If there’s any chance this man could get us home, we have to take it.”

“You’re right,” Cecily agreed, “but be very careful. I think it’s weird that all he asked for was a favor, so we still don’t know what his intentions are.”

Balding Man was in his living room and tossed what looked like an ordinary door mat on the floor. “Okay, now where do you want to go?” he asked.

“Connecticut?” August requested hopefully, and Balding Man narrowed his eyes.

“Never heard of it. We’ll have to find it manually since I haven’t been there. Do you have any objects from this Connecticut place?”

“I have this,” August offered, holding up the lanyard he had gotten at freshmen orientation. He detached his keys from it and handed it to the odd man, who tossed it onto the door mat. The lanyard immediately sank into the mat and disappeared as if it had been thrown into a pit of quicksand. Cecily jumped back, staring suspiciously at the rest of the floor in case it decided to swallow her up as well.

“Now stand on the mat and think about where you want to go,” the man instructed.

“We’re not going to stand on that!” Cecily protested. “It will eat us alive!”

Balding Man folded his arms. “Do you want my help or not?”

“I’ll do it,” August volunteered, shaking off Cecily as she tried to stop him. Don’t you dare get eaten by that door mat, she thought as she watched him step onto it. If you leave me here alone I will kill you.

He didn’t get eaten, though, and after a moment of silence, a doorway appeared in front of the mat. There was no actual door or frame, just a large rectangle that showed the inside of a cement building on the other side. Cecily moved closer and recognized the pile of unnecessarily large teddy bears. “Is that Costco?”

“I’m really hungry right now,” August admitted. “It’s the first place I thought of.”

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“I’ll take it!” she exclaimed, feeling her spirits soar at the very Earthly smell of hot dogs and rotisserie chickens. “Do we just walk through?”

Balding Man didn’t answer; he was too busy staring through the portal at the shelves of bulk food and fuzzy blankets. “This is Connecticut?”

“Well, it’s a store in Connecticut, but there are a lot of other stores just like this all over the place,” August started to explain, but with a delighted laugh, the man shoved past him and dove through the portal, yelling, “Connecticut!”

As soon as his body passed through the doorway, it vanished, leaving Cecily and August standing in shock on the mat. “Re-open it!” Cecily nearly screamed, and they both started throwing things at the mat: her phone, his drivers license, her backpack. The mat didn’t consume any of it, and the portal didn’t reappear. They kept trying for almost an hour, then finally sat down on the couch to wait and hope that Balding Man would come back. He never did, and no one else seemed to live there, so they stayed.

They had been living there ever since. A home for a home, Cecily thought wryly as she sat at the small kitchen table and watched August knead some bread. He had already lit a fire in their wood-powered stove, which had taken them weeks to figure out how to work

“We’re almost out of flour,” August announced as he noticed her watching him. Cecily groaned. Buying food in this world was such a hassle: everyone asked for favors to pay for things, and while Cecily was completely on board to buy on non-existant credit, August had been hesitant to rack up any I-owe-yous since they seemed to be the only two nonmagical people around and had no idea what the favors would be. Instead, they had gotten food by trading trinkets from Earth or Balding Man’s possessions, but they had almost run out of useless things to sell.

“We need to get home soon,” she sighed, looking at the ceiling.

“What we need,” August disagreed, laying a towel over the loaf of bread to let it rise, “is to meet more people. Maybe that way we can find work, or figure out a way to exchange favors with someone.”

Cecily frowned. “Every time we meet someone new it goes horribly wrong. Why would you want to meet more people?”

“Not everyone is bad, Silly! Puddle and Glow are sweet,” he protested. “I think there are good people in this world, we’ve just had bad luck finding them. What about the girl you met yesterday? She gave you that necklace as a gift, right?”

Cecily glanced back down at the locket. “Yeah, I’m still not convinced this isn’t a curse, but I guess she seemed nice.” Come to think of it, Ravioli Girl was the first other young adult Cecily had run into, everyone else was either much older or in Glow’s case, much younger. I wonder what her story is, she thought absently, wondering where the magical chef had gone when she vanished.

“Well, that can be our mission when we go to the market,” August announced. “We’ll ask around, try to get to know people, and see if anyone is hiring workers.”

“We don’t have any marketable skills here,” Cecily argued. “You’re an English major and I worked at a drive thru. How would we apply those to a quasi-medieval magic world?” It was a genuine concern, but also the thought of finding work here would make it feel more like a permanent arrangement. Squatting in a stranger’s house and selling his stuff was one thing, but being gainfully employed was a level of commitment she wasn’t ready for.

August shrugged, not pushing the point but not agreeing with her either. He’s really going to look for a job, isn’t he? Cecily thought, feeling defeated. If August got a job, she would feel like dead weight if she didn’t have one, but if she got one it would be admitting defeat. Plus, if she was busy all day, who would look for ways to get them home?

August sat down at the table to do his daily writing while the bread was rising. “Got anything for me?” Cecily asked hopefully.

He nodded at a pile of papers on the side table next to the couch, and Cecily moved to the couch to pick them up. There was very little to do in the house, so her only source of entertainment was whatever August had written the day before. His first piece was a poem about a prisoner who dreamed of going home. Maybe he’s struggling more than I thought, Cecily reflected before starting to laugh.

“What is it?” August asked. “That’s not supposed to be a funny poem.”

“It’s not, it’s just that I think you have a typo–or whatever you call it when it’s handwritten.”

“I think it’s just called a mistake.”

“Right, well you have one of those. You said this guy’s hands are shackled with manicures.”

“What?” August looked baffled. “That makes no sense. What was I trying to say?”

Cecily cackled. “I have no idea, but I love the idea of this tragic prisoner sporting a manicure!”

August cracked a smile. “Maybe he can’t escape because he doesn’t want to break a nail.”

Cecily laughed again, then continued reading. She couldn’t really appreciate the poem’s meaning after establishing the mental image of the manicure, not that she usually appreciated August’s poetry as much as she should have. He worked hard at it and she was pretty sure he was talented, so it was a pity he only had Cecily’s uncultured eyes to look over his work.

After half an hour of sitting in silence, August got up to check on the bread, then snapped his fingers. “Manacles! I was trying to say manacles.”

“Like the glasses? That doesn’t make sense either.”

August rolled his eyes as he gagued the size of the loaf. “Manacles are chains, Cecily.”

Cecily made a face at him. “Then why don’t you just say ‘chains’ like a normal person?”

“Because a normal person would know what manacles are,” he retorted.

For a moment, Cecily felt like they were back on Earth, arguing over things that didn’t matter and not worrying about magical people and places. It was nice.

Then, as if summoned by Cecily’s momentary contentment, Glow appeared in the middle of their kitchen. Cecily dropped the papers she was holding. “Holy sh–”

“Glow!” August interrupted with a warning glance at Cecily. “Look, Silly, it’s Glow, our very young and innocent neighbor!”

Cecily finished the swear silently and added a few more before giving Glow a stern look. “You really surprised me, Glow. You shouldn’t teleport in here without asking.”

“I did ask!” Glow protested. “I asked Da, and he said I could come ask you for help!”

“What do you need help with?” August asked, covering the bread back up and sitting next to Cecily on the couch. Cecily sighed. She didn’t want to deal with a runny nose or splinter or whatever issues magical five-year-olds had to deal with.

Glow grinned, her big purple eyes bright and unconcerned as she announced, “There are big angry monsters at my house! I think they are going to eat us!”