Stay With Me Read online

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Stay With Me

  ISBN 9781419923241

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Stay With Me Copyright © 2009 Ruby Duvall

  Edited by Helen Woodall

  Photography and cover art by Les Byerley

  Electronic book Publication August 2009

  This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/)

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  STAY WITH ME

  Ruby Duvall

  Dedication

  This genre was a big challenge for me and I’d like to thank Sheila for all her help with editing and enormous amounts of research. Your support keeps me going! Thanks as well to Linda, Shawn and Lindy for their valued insight. My editor Helen is a Godsend and I’m so glad to be working with her. Thanks for everything, Helen!

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  History Channel: A&E Television Networks

  Narnia: C.S. Lewis

  Teflon: E. I. Du Pont De Nemours and Company Corporation

  The Beatles: Apple Corps Limited

  Twilight Zone: CBS Broadcasting Inc. Stay With Me

  Chapter One

  A curious legend tells of a fae,

  Clothed all in green, with skin ashen gray.

  Half girl and half goat, mysterious they say,

  How the Glaistig comes and goes ev’ry day.

  It was cold. She shivered and goose bumps rose on her skin. For a few seconds, she felt warmer and then another breeze ran over her, eliciting a full-body shiver.

  Her entire body hurt, as if she was the bloodied and bruised hero at the end of an action movie, limping toward a group of cop cars after killing the last bad guy. After faintly moaning, she inhaled more deeply. The musty smell of moss was a surprise. She had expected the dry, sterile air of a hospital.

  Another breeze drifted over her and she tried to curl into a tighter ball. She realized then that she was on her side and that something heavy was in her left hand.

  Opening her eyes, she saw with blurry vision a long stretch of ground from which a great many thick trees sprung, though they were all at the same odd angle. Blinking, her vision cleared somewhat and she made out a fallen log lying in the far distance. Between it and her the ground was sprinkled with leaves, small brush and a couple of larger rocks. Large shafts of sunlight slanted through the air from the gaps in the canopy above, which highlighted floating white specks.

  Many birds chirped to their own tunes, calling to each other or arguing, and the sleepy buzz of insects rose in waves as they all played a tune in unison, like a sort of miniature orchestra. The cool breeze swam through the forest once again, pushing leaves together and gently bowing the trees.

  It was a peaceful vision, if a little too cold. She recalled the SUV running the red light and wondered if this was some vivid hallucination. She might have panicked if she weren’t so tired. Closing her eyes again, she tried to work up the motivation to move but wasn’t very upset when she couldn’t. After all, this was a dream, wasn’t it?

  When she next opened her eyes, the shafts of light had grown brighter. The air was warmer and the breeze had died down. Fewer birds sang than before.

  She didn’t understand. Was this the same dream? Her left side was aching where she had lain against the cold dirt of the forest floor, so she sat up, using her right hand as leverage.

  “What the…” she rasped, looking down at herself.

  She was still wearing the fairy costume she had put on for the Halloween party, could even feel the large butterfly wings on her back. Instead of the ballerina slippers she had intended to wear, the black sneakers she had been wearing while driving were on her feet and her brown leather purse hung from her neck and shoulder. She didn’t see any immediate injuries. Even stranger was the steering wheel in her left hand.

  Weirded out, she let it go.

  She ran her hands over her body to verify what her eyes told her and her fingers brushed the locket around her neck. She merely glanced at it the first time, not really looking at it, but then her eyes shot back to it.

  The antique locket she had bought just hours before the party had been tarnished with age, though someone had done their best to shine it up. What now hung from her neck was far from being an antique and it glimmered in the sunlight. Suspended on a gold toggle chain, the locket was in the shape of a small book, in the center of which a mabe pearl sat in the spot that had previously been empty. Red enamel covered the front and back of the miniature book, leaving the gold binding bare. Delicate engravings in the enamel depicted waves flowing in a circle around the pearl in the center. Engraved on the back of the one-inch-tall book was a clock face with no hands.

  The caw of a bird overhead startled her and she looked up with a spurt of fright. She blinked in confusion to notice that none of the leaves in the surrounding trees had changed colors yet. After gaining her feet, she turned in a slow circle. She looked in all directions and saw only forest, though one direction was obviously downhill. In fact, she had been lying on a rather steep slope.

  Standing still to listen for a moment, she realized how silent the air was. Of course, the natural sounds of a forest were present—chirping birds, humming insects, a sighing breeze. However, she couldn’t hear the buzz of air conditioning or a furnace, the distant clanking of a train, the whoosh of cars rushing by on an open highway, the echoing roar of an airplane overhead, or the deep rumble of a large factory.

  The air was utterly devoid of manmade sounds. Another breeze pushed against the wings on her back and lifted small strands of her hair from her neck. She stood straighter as a chill skittered up her spine.

  The up-do that her mother had helped create had fallen to the side of her head, so she took a moment to pull out the pins and the elastic band, letting her hair drape down to the collar of her low-cut dress. She then brushed off a couple of small dry clumps of dirt from where she had lain on the ground.

  Remembering her cell phone, she heaved an enormous sigh of relief and began to dig through her purse to locate it. With a couple of calls, she would have this whole mess sorted out. Pulling the phone from her purse, she looked at it to see if it was damaged but it seemed to be okay. The battery was working and only half-empty.

  However, she had absolutely no signal. Her chest tightened with anxiety, making it more difficult to breathe and indeed aggravating her panting.

  “No, no, no.” She roamed the area, holding the cell phone this way or that. “No, no. Don’t do this to me.” It was no use. She had zero bars. Even so, she attempted to make a call and selected her home phone number from the address book. Putting the receiver to her ear, she was surprised to hear absolutely nothing—not even the phone’s beeps as it attempted to make a call.

  Giving up, she put the phone back in her purse, taking deep breaths and trying to calm down. She then pawed through her purse to verify its contents—a cell phone, a compact mirror, a foldable hairbrush, a wristwatch, a wallet, a pill case with half a dozen aspirin,
a pack of mints, a ballpoint pen and a pink handkerchief. Her watch seemed to be broken though. The hands were still moving but they were reading the wrong time. No way was it six o’clock. Looking back at her cell phone, though, she was surprised to find it reading the same time. Six a.m.? The sun was at its peak!

  Chewing on her lower lip, she zipped her purse shut just as her stomach grumbled. Leaning down and picking up her steering wheel, she carefully made her way down the hill.

  At the base, she found a thin, fast-moving stream only perhaps knee-deep in some places. It was a small wooded valley, along the floor of which the brook ran. The trees were a little sparser near the stream and she looked up to see a bright sun almost directly overhead. No clouds sat in the sky to keep it company.

  The surrealism of her situation hit her then. The sun felt warm. The breeze tickled her bare arms. Her stomach craved a nice hamburger. The water was wet and it tasted good as she drank a couple of handfuls. Was this really happening? Was she caught in a dream she had cooked up to match her stupid fantasies? Why was she wearing her sneakers and lugging around her steering wheel?

  What the hell was going on? Her sense of calm was wearing very thin and she was fighting to keep a scream from rising out of her cramping stomach.

  Unzipping her purse and withdrawing her phone with shaky hands, she looked at the signal strength again but nothing had changed. Worried that her battery might run out before she could get to a service area, she turned off the phone and slid it back into her purse. She stared at the little brook in front of her, not really looking at it but trying her hardest to make sense of the Twilight Zone episode in which she had found herself.

  Nothing so strange had ever happened to her before, though this wasn’t exactly what she had meant when wishing for an escape.

  Reaching into her purse, she drew out her handkerchief and set it on her knee as she washed her hands in the stream. It gave her something to do, something to distract her from the fear. It also somehow helped to wash the nervous sweat from her hands. After putting everything away and zipping her purse shut, she picked up her steering wheel and walked downstream.

  She would worry about the why and how later. First, she wanted to find civilization and go home.

  —

  A very long hour later, the stream had grown to a much wider river, having joined up with other creeks from side valleys, and she came upon a broad set of falls. The boulders in and along the river looked like petrified layered cake and the layers were slanted at an angle. Water passed swiftly through the narrow chutes between these giant boulders, making the river look like a kayaker’s worst nightmare—or wet dream, if said kayaker had a death wish. It also made her trip slow going, though having sneakers helped. After descending past the falls, she reached a calmer part of the river.

  Deciding to take a short break, she set down the steering wheel, drank another couple of handfuls of water and popped a breath mint, having nothing else to eat and growing hungrier as the minutes ticked by. Rings of ripples appeared occasionally on the river’s surface every time fish bit at low-flying insects.

  Carefully perched on a riverside boulder, which had been warming in the sun, she contemplated what to do if night fell and she had to sleep outside. Finding food would be a problem. She didn’t mind gutting and eating a fish but catching it and lighting a fire was difficult without a pole or a net, not to mention matches—or even a piece of old-fashioned flint. The friction method of lighting a fire was quite a lot of work and she wasn’t even quite sure how to do it. She could already tell that it would be too cold to sleep without a fire. She sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep in the dark either. She didn’t want to wake up to find a wolf sniffing her and deciding which part to eat first.

  In that moment of silence, the faint sound of shouts floated to her, almost too far away to hear. Her spine snapped straight and she sat motionless, wondering if the wind was playing tricks on her. A few seconds later, the far-off sound of human voices reached her ears again.

  Feeling a leap of hope in her chest, she hastily grabbed for her steering wheel, stood up and began jogging downriver. Seeing a break in the tree line up ahead, she was anxious to see a wider panorama of her surroundings but she slowed down nonetheless, not wanting to simply burst out into the open. The river continued out of the forest to join another much larger river running in a long expedient line down and around another rise in the distance but she stopped at the tree line, stunned.

  Before her was a valley full of verdure and surrounded by stout mountains. They weren’t the Rockies by any stretch but neither could you insult their size by calling them hills. The valley floor sloped up gently to these dwarf mountains and the sides were sprinkled with trees. The valley turned a few minutes’ run from where she stood, a turn which the river followed and in the distance, she thought she saw a path or perhaps a narrow road.

  A louder and more resounding round of cheerful shouts rang across the valley.

  “Yes!” she whispered. “I’m saved, I’m saved!” Breaking into another jog, she continued to follow the river. Of course, whoever she met up with was going to wonder why on God’s green earth she was dressed the way she was but she didn’t care. All she wanted was to go home and find out what the hell had happened to her.

  After a few more minutes, small buildings and the distant figures of people emerged from behind the rise. Wanting to cry with relief, she continued to jog along the riverside, mindful of her footing on the rocky ground.

  As she came closer, though, she was able to make out more of the town and its residents and felt a trickle of doubt. Ducking behind one of the many trees near the river, she carefully peered around the trunk. Raising her hand to shield her eyes from the sun, which peeked at her through gaps in the leaves above, she studied the large group of people gathered between a few of the buildings. The heads of two people moved above the rest, like a pair of giants but they moved as if dancing…or fighting.

  She snuck closer to find another suitable tree to spy from. Was this a Renaissance fair?

  The buildings were all made of stone and thatched roofs. Men, women and children were walking about, all wearing rather unflattering medieval clothing, which didn’t vary all that much. She didn’t see any pirates or courtiers. The shouting was coming from the spectators gathered around some sort of elevated wrestling ring or platform situated in the center of a square that was halfway blocked by the closer building.

  Even stranger, the men cheering them on were wearing skirts. No, scratch that. They were wearing tunics. The colors varied a bit but they were mostly russet brown or checkered. A couple of men wore jerkins as well. Some of the villagers weren’t even wearing shoes and others wore very simple leather shoes with laces that wrapped around their calves. An ancestry festival?

  She sincerely hoped it was simply a festival but somewhere deep inside, she knew it wasn’t. It wasn’t a reenactment or a fair or some huge and strange Halloween party. It was a real place full of real people. Her hallucination had either taken a seriously insane new turn or…

  “That’s not possible. It’s not possible,” she said to herself, affirming over and over again that she was dreaming. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. Things like that didn’t happen.

  Her legs couldn’t hold her up anymore and she slumped gracelessly to the grassy ground, alone and scared out of her mind.

  “What do I do? What do I do?” She stared at her purse, sitting on her lap. Her cell phone was useless. In fact, she realized that no one should ever find it. Her steering wheel too. Would they think she was a witch and burn her? Or was that a Puritan thing? Thoughts buzzed inside her mind in a frenzied jumble as she tried to figure out her next move. Did she have anything at all that would give her a clue?

  “Locket,” she gasped. Studying the locket’s etchings, she saw nothing that helped. Worriedly chewing the inside of her lip, she opened the locket.

  Somewhere inside her head, she thought she heard a great wind rushing t
oward her, a deep sucking sound almost like the pull of an enormous set of lungs. A tiny square of folded paper was hidden inside the locket and she carefully plucked it out, letting her locket hang open as she laid it to rest against her skin.

  Her fingers shook as she cautiously and meticulously opened the folds in the piece of paper, anxious for answers. When the delicate parchment was completely unfolded, it measured six inches by four. She could even see the color of her fingers through the thin material and was wary of ripping it.

  Unfortunately, the writing was completely illegible. Her chest tightened with apprehension. She couldn’t even recognize the language. It wasn’t any writing system with a Latin alphabet. It wasn’t Arabic, Cyrillic, or Chinese. It didn’t look like hieroglyphics either—at least, not like the hieroglyphics she had seen on the History Channel.

  The longer she stared at it, though, the more the slashes and strokes began to blur and swim through and around each other, dragging themselves across the page and leaving trails of ink. Her eyes watered from watching the symbols shift and she blinked a few times but it was difficult to refocus. Eventually, she noticed recognizable letters, a word and then a phrase. The writing sharpened and finally the message settled to become ordinary handwritten words on a page, as if they had always been as such.

  The doe doth tread upon a bed of heather,

  She and the gray lady oft seen together.

  Attached are they by a gold and red tether,

  One pulling the other out of the nether.

  The stag doth wait in a lush and green meadow,

  And all aim for his heart with blackened arrows.

  Thrice pierced, he dies, all around him is harrow’d.

  What once was light, now buried in sorrow.

  She read and reread the note many times, the words making about as much sense as a political speech. A doe and a gray lady were connected to each other in some way, perhaps even inseparable. Was the gold and red tether speaking of her locket? Was she the doe and which was pulling the other out of the nether? What did the nether even mean and who was the stag?