The sky was blue, the color of a robin’s eggs.

I saw a nest of them once, while climbing a neighbor’s tree. I was eight at the time and hunting for a stray frisbee. My brother, the jackass, had thrown it next door. I didn’t remember the reason why—that part was hazy—but I would never forget my surprise at finding the eggs. They sat in their nest like treasures.

That was fifty-six years ago, practically a lifetime.

As I watched, a smattering of clouds scudded across the sky. The wind up there must really be blowing for them to move like that. Down below, where I was, the breeze was gentle, swaying the grass around me.

I looked around and realized I was laying on my back on a hillside. Down below in the distance, a line of trees marked the edge of a forest. Fields and crops stood in between, while further up the hill was a tall wall, like the kind you’d find in a Miyazaki film. The stones were cartoonish in their size and assembly. They reached up at least twenty feet though and seemed sturdy.

I didn’t remember coming to this place.

My last memory was of leaving the office. I worked as an office manager for a small production company making documentary films for the education market. The weather report predicted freezing rain in the afternoon, so I cut out of work early to beat the bad weather and traffic. The next thing I knew I was on the hillside, with no sign of cold or rain. If anything, the air was balmy. The breeze felt good ruffling across my body.

My body. I lifted my hands and saw them smaller than they should be. No hair or calluses. None of the tiny scars that one gathers over time. They were innocent hands, untouched by life. And the rest of my body matched. I was no longer sixty-four years old, but a child instead.

Did I slip and hit my head? Was I unconscious? Dreaming? The sky, the scent of the grass, and the way the rocks prodded my back—those all felt real. But my thoughts and emotions felt muffled.

I recognized that something very wrong had taken place, but the alarm was distant, as if under a thick blanket of mild acceptance. Minutes passed. An hour or two. I didn’t wake up. Nothing happened, except for the clouds moving across the sky.

More time passed. My body became hungry, and the feeling of emptiness grew until some boundary was crossed. My distant mind registered that I should eat.

I stood. On my feet were a pair of leather shoes. I wore thick woolen pants and shirt. They were simple clothes but well made. I peeked inside the pants. Still male. At least that didn’t change.

I walked uphill and followed the line of the wall. Where there were people, there would be food. And I found my first person after twenty minutes of walking. A man stood at the gate to the town. He wore chainmail over a thick cloth jacket. Over his shoulder rested a spear.

I stood there amazed. Even my distant thoughts went silent. It was a long time since I’d been to a Renaissance Faire, and I didn’t expect to come across one so randomly.

The guard at the gate grew more and more uneasy as I stared at him. The spear went from resting on his shoulder to being readied for use. His knuckles were white gripping the haft.

He yelled out, threatening me with his spear. An armored woman came out to join him. They exchanged words, and I understood none of them. The language sounded like nothing I’d heard before.

The woman also had a spear and joined in threatening me. Their faces were ugly with… with… fear.

I wanted to come closer to explain that I was dreaming or unconscious or in a coma. That none of this was real. But I couldn’t think through the strange feeling in my head. So I just stood there. I knew the situation was wrong, but I wasn’t capable of addressing it.

Eventually, a person wearing robes stepped through the gate. They wore a mask in the shape of a crow and carried a wooden hoop two feet across. More words were exchanged, and the two guards were grateful to step back.

The Crow sang some words and raised their hoop to the sky. In the distance, thunder rumbled in reply.

I looked up, but the clouds hadn’t changed.

The space inside the hoop twisted. I was curious to see what would happen and came closer. Until a snake, mottled black and green, poked its head out from inside the hoop.

The snake’s glare snapped me from my daze and sent me running down the hill, through the fields, and into the trees. I ran and ran, not paying attention to the brush and branches. Headlong through the forest I went, driven by fear and something inside me screaming. For I knew that I wasn’t dreaming. I knew that somehow, I was somewhere else and that everything familiar was gone.

###

I don’t know for how long I ran, but it felt endless. If I keep going like this, I’m going to die. The thought stopped me cold, my feet skidding on the forest loam.

Slowly, the muffling of my thoughts eased a notch. Enough that I could think again, so I did.

I considered everything I’d experienced so far. I noted the sweat drenching my shirt, my hand on my side because of the stitch there, the way my shoes squelched from the burst blisters and blood inside them. I considered it all and was sure—sure that this wasn’t a dream.

And then I had my second coherent thought: If there’s a wall, there’s something to keep out—something dangerous.

The fear I’d been feeling all this time jumped into my throat, and the muffling came back to press it down again. I stood helpless for ten, fifteen minutes before the pressure eased.

My thoughts were jumbled, scattered, but I knew I couldn’t panic. I had to keep a lid on my emotions, because if I didn’t, something else would do it for me and turn me into a vacant-eyed copy of myself.

What does one do when lost in the woods? At least that answer came to mind easily: shelter, water, food. It was drummed into me by mi abuelo the first time he took me hunting.

I start moving through the forest looking for a safe place to camp. The trees were a mix of pine, cedar, hemlock, spruce, and maple—those were the familiar ones. There were some that weren’t familiar though. One had a black, furry bark and reddish pods hanging from its branches. Another was striped yellow, the leaves smelling like cardamom.

My heart beat hard when I saw those trees. All I needed was a horned rabbit or a goblin to seal the deal. Another world…