Erin looked up at the man. Then she stared at her arm again. Then she looked back up. And then she swallowed hard.

“Okay…” she said slowly. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that the cave I came through was some kind of magic portal that transported me to a different world?”

“That’s right.”

Erin thought about that for a moment, frowning and chewing her lower lip. As surprising as it was to hear that she had come by magic to a different planet or alternate reality or wherever she was, she was actually more surprised to discover that she believed it. All things considered, it was really the most sensible explanation for everything that had happened to her during the last few hours.

“Okay…” she said again. “Yes, that does seem to fit.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “You believe me? Just like that? You’re not going to say that this has to be a joke or you must be dreaming or anything?”

Erin shook her head. “I know I’m not dreaming,” she said grimly. “My leg is killing me. You’re not supposed to feel pain in dreams, are you?”

“Your leg’s hurt as well?” He looked down at it. “I noticed you couldn’t walk well, but I thought it was just from the shock….”

“I had surgery on my knee not long ago, and it still gets sore if it’s bumped or I strain it too much,” Erin explained, gingerly trying to move her leg and wincing as a fresh surge of pain shot through it. “And trying to get away from that sethien thing did a lot of both.”

“‘Surgery’?” The man looked puzzled.

“Yes, surgery. You know, what doctors do to try to fix parts of you that aren’t working right…?”

He was still looking blank, and Erin realized that in a world where green powder could take the place of stitches—and do a much better job—the idea of surgical operations was probably as foreign as a snowball fight on a tropical island.

“I was in an accident, and my knee got really badly hurt,” she said, trying again. “The bones were broken, and some of the ligaments and stuff got torn. So the doctors had to cut open my knee to fasten all the pieces back together again. So now it’s not really hurt—it’s just not completely healed either.”

“Oh, I see.” The man nodded. “I’ve heard of the Nuril doing similar things. They’re a race that lives far to the south of here, one that doesn’t have blood-magic.”

“So you…I mean, your people…they don’t heal wounds and things that way?”

“Well, not exactly. Silmarith healers don’t have to cut open the skin to fix things. They just…how do I explain it? They can move things around and attach them where they need to be without seeing or touching them. But I’ve never had any training in that kind of thing—I wouldn’t even know where to start to try healing your knee.” He shook his head. “I was traveling with a healer, of course, but—” He broke off, his expression darkening. “Well, let’s just say we got separated….”

Erin looked at him curiously, but he didn’t elaborate.

After a moment’s silence, she asked, “What’s your name?”

He hesitated briefly before answering. “Arturyn Sil-Isáran.” He said it quietly and with a certain weight, as though it was something more than just his name. He was also watching her closely.

Erin frowned slightly. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?” She had a feeling it would if she were a native.

“Not if you are what you appear to be.” He sighed. “And may I ask your name?”

“Erin Archer. But you can just call me ‘Erin’. What should I call you? I know different cultures have different rules for that kind of thing.”

“Under the current circumstances, just ‘Arturyn’ will be fine. Probably better, actually….” He trailed off, looking pensive. There was a moment of silence. Then Arturyn seemed to come back to the issue at hand. “All right, then, Erin, what exactly should we do about your leg? It’s some distance to the nearest town, and we’ll have to walk, now that I’ve lost my paskjy.” His face fell, and he sighed again. “Poor Ruak…. And he was such a good, loyal fellow.”

“At least he died heroically,” Erin said, trying to console him. “I mean, he saved our lives, didn’t he?”

Arturyn smiled ruefully. “True. And the best way to repay him will be to get ourselves back to civilization in one piece. So then, what to do about your leg…. I don’t think I’ve got anything that’s strong enough to actually heal it—not when the problem is inside like that.” He was rummaging through his pouch again.

“What about something that would just make it stop hurting?” Erin asked, gingerly prodding her knee. “I think I could walk fine if it just weren’t sore and swollen anymore. My cousin has an herbal tea she makes that works pretty well.”

“Herbal tea?” Arturyn was frowning thoughtfully down at the contents of his bag. Then he looked at Erin’s leg. “Maybe there’s something I can…. Well, it’s worth a try.”

He leaned over and ran the fingertips of one hand lightly over Erin’s knee. She felt the skin turning cold and numb, as though he had just placed an invisible ice pack there. After a minute or two, Arturyn lifted his hand, and Erin felt warmth and feeling spread slowly back into the area.

“There, how’s that?”

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Erin carefully flexed her knee. It still felt a bit stiff and numb, but it didn’t hurt anymore. “Much better.”

“Good. That’s a handy little trick I learned to get rid of headaches—I get quite a few in my line of work. Here, try walking a little and see how it feels.” He stood up and reached down to help Erin to her feet.

“All right,” she said after pacing back and forth along the stream bank a few times. “I think I’m ready to do some walking. Where are we going, exactly?”

“Well, that’s a good question.” Arturyn frowned slightly. “As I mentioned, Suviel is the closest city, but that’s quite a long way to walk—especially with your knee. But there are some villages closer than that, and we could get help there before going further.” He reached in his pouch again and this time pulled out a folded piece of heavy paper, which he unfolded to reveal a map. “Let me see…. I think we’re about…there.” He touched the paper with a finger. “So there’s a village east and a little south of us—Celadrier. Looks like two or three miles.”

“We couldn’t just go back to the portal thing, could we?” Erin asked hopefully. “Then you wouldn’t have to worry about me slowing you down, and maybe my cousin could help you get wherever you need to go. I think she knows about this world, even though she never—” She broke off. Arturyn was shaking his head. “What?”

“Well, going straight to the portal would be ideal, I admit. But you’re forgetting that there’s still a sethien between us and it. He found one meal here, so he’s probably going to hang around in hopes of a second one. We’re quite safe from him as long as we stay deep in the forest—he’s too large to fit through the trees to get to us. But to get to the portal, we’d have to cross the plain, and there’s no way we could outrun him again.”

“Can’t we go around?”

“Not without adding several miles onto the journey and going even closer towards Mataith country than we are now.”

“Mata— What?”

“Mataith.” Arturyn repeated, looking grim. “And if you don’t know what they are, just hope you never have to find out. It would be better to meet up with the sethien again. Now, shall we go?”

And on that gloomy note, he led the way east, toward the village of Celadrier.

----------------------------------------

“…so then my cousin offered to let me come stay with her for the summer to see if she could figure out what was going on. Only so far she hasn’t been able to at all. And, in the meantime, I’ve still been seeing Wraith. That’s how I ended up here—he appeared and…I don’t know…somehow he forced me to leave the house and go through the cave. So, here I am,” Erin finished. “And I still don’t understand what any of it means.”

She looked over at Arturyn, who was walking beside her. There was a contemplative look on his face, and she could tell he was thinking over everything she had been telling him.

“I don’t suppose you have any ideas, do you?”

“Well,” he said slowly, after a moment’s pause, “I don’t know that I have any very significant ones. I can make a decent guess as to why you started having these…these visions, for want of a better word. But other than that….” He trailed off, shaking his head in a distracted way.

“You think you know why they started?” Erin asked eagerly.

“Yes, I believe so. I’m sure your cousin, if she deals with object magic, has realized it, too, though she apparently hasn’t wanted to tell you yet. It involves your magical heritage, so she may have felt you weren’t ready to hear it.”

Erin frowned. She didn’t like the idea that Kirchel would have kept such important information from her and her parents, not when she was supposed to be helping them. But there was nothing Arturyn could do about that.

“So what do you think it was that started it?” she asked him. “And what’s ‘object magic’?”

“Just what it sounds like—it’s magic that’s found in inanimate objects. It can be used by manipulating those objects or combining them so that their magic interacts. It can also sometimes interact with blood magic. That’s what most likely happened to you—there was some object magic present in the medicine you took that reacted with the magic in your blood and triggered these visions of yours.” He paused for a moment, his expression thoughtful. “But that doesn’t really help to explain exactly what those visions are. And it seems odd that they wouldn’t have stopped after you stopped taking the medicine. Object magic can sometimes linger in the blood for quite a long time, but I’ve never heard of a lingering one that had effects like you’ve described. Of course, object magic is hardly my specialty, and I’m sure there are kinds that exist in your world that we don’t have here. Was the medicine an unusual one?”

Erin shook her head. “They gave me morphine when I first got to the hospital and codeine and ibuprofen after the surgery. Those are all really common drugs. My dad said he’s known lots of other people who hallucinated when they took painkillers, but never quite like I have. And the hallucinations always stopped when they quit taking the medication.”

“Yes...” Arturyn said slowly. “Yes, that’s the curious aspect. And if the medication is well-known, I’m sure object mages from your world would have already studied it to know its effects. Your cousin would have access to that information if she’s in contact with people in this world. And yet you said she couldn’t find anything out about it....”

“Well, that’s what she told me. Of course, if you’re right, then she knows about the object magic stuff and didn’t say anything about that. Maybe she really did find out something else and just didn’t want to tell me,” Erin said, feeling rather grumpy at the thought.

“I suppose that’s possible….” Arturyn trailed off and slowed to a halt.

Erin stopped too and turned to see what he was looking at. They had just come around a bend in the small dirt track they had been following for the last hour, and a large tree trunk was lying across the path a few yards ahead of them. It looked like it was nearly four feet in diameter.

Erin sighed, wishing for the thousandth time that Wraith had just let her stay in bed. It had been midmorning when she had come out of the cave, and the sunny day had seemed wonderfully warm and bright after the dark, cold stone. But now it was early afternoon, and the forest around them was hot and humid. They hadn’t been able to travel quickly because of Erin’s limp and the physical obstacles that the forest floor presented, and Arturyn’s estimate was that they had only gone a couple of miles so far. Things had been a little easier since they had found the rough path they were now on, but it was still far from being a pleasant stroll in the park.

“Don’t worry—I can help you over,” Arturyn said with a reassuring smile.

He had apparently heard Erin’s sigh and guessed from the look on her face that she didn’t like the idea of climbing over a tree trunk that was almost as tall as she was.

He walked over to the fallen tree, beckoning Erin to follow him. When they reached it, he took hold of her under the arms and lifted her up so she was sitting on top of the tree trunk. He climbed up himself and slid down the other side. Then he reached up and lifted her down.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” Arturyn looked down the path stretching ahead of them and then squinted up at the sun. “How would you feel about taking a break from walking for a few minutes? Maybe having something to eat?”

“I would feel very good about that,” Erin said. Her feet were getting tired of walking on the uneven forest floor, and her knee was starting to hurt again.