Mary looked me over, then headed to a closet near the entrance of the house without any further explanation. Various items of outerwear, umbrellas, and other odds and ends few out of the closet as I overheard her mumbling to herself.

“I know I had them in here somewhere!” Came a muffled shout.

Whatever she was looking for must have been buried deep in this closet, because I could barely see the bottoms of her boots, wiggling slightly as she presumably was shifting the multitude of junk that had likely built up. With a final shout of victory she slowly began to extricate herself, and finally rose before looking annoyed at the mess she had made in the hallway.

“I can clean it up later,” she explained unconvincingly as she walked forward to hand me the items she had grabbed.

One of the items was a bag like the one she had been carrying yesterday but a little more worn on the outside. The other was a belt and a small-sword.

“You really do need some sort of protection if we’re going out, and to be honest it would be impractical to teach you enough magic to defend yourself. Might as well give you a weapon you’re familiar with. You were in the military on your side, so you do know how to use a sword, right?”

Yes, I did, but not really for the weird reason she thought I did. As someone who loved history, I had always been drawn to the arms and armor used in the past, and I still find it quite hard to picture someone who isn’t fascinated by them. At one point I got so infatuated with learning about historical combat that I even signed up for fencing lessons.

I know Historic European Martial Arts is more popular with the history crowd, but even the very manner in which traditional swordplay morphed into modern sport fencing was something I loved to learn about. Technically there are 3 different disciplines in modern sport fencing, and all of them have roots in various social aspects in the past. Saber is a bit different from the other two in that it developed originally from training for military members to duel with the proper side-arm for an Officer and a Gentleman.

Epée is another of the three styles of fencing, and while most people who take a casual look at the rules think it’s the most “realistic” in that a touch anywhere on the body counts for a point, it was developed after government regulations in Europe started to encourage duels to be fought more often to first blood rather than to the death, and the whole style is focused more on causing wounds and less on actual practical self-defense.

Foil fencing has the oldest roots in modern sport fencing, and comes from a time when fencing was meant to teach self-defense and how to handle oneself in fights to the death rather than the less perilous fights of later duels. The archaic-seeming right-of-way rules were originally intended to teach students not to try moves that would get them killed even after landing a touch, and only hits to the torso count since that was the fastest way to end a duel with your own life intact. I guess the best comparison would be comparing someone shooting Limited Class with a stock FS92 to an Open Class shooter with a tuned STI 2011.

I was even more drawn to small-swords by the history they have in our own country. They served as both self-defense weapons and fashion accessories, and they would have been the last style of sword that would be commonly carried in the colonies that became known as the United States. The thought of walking in one of the cities where the country was founded wearing a small-sword had a certain appeal to someone interested in the stories of the past…I felt a light slap on my face.

“Rose, what are you doing? We don’t have all day to stand around. What’re you even thinking about anyways?”

“Uhm…”

“You know how to use that bag, right? I don’t think you have ones like it in your world, but it’s pretty simple to use. Just think about what object you want to take out and grab it.”

She pulled me over to a cupboard on the other side of the entry way.

“Here’s a canteen, and some spare hardtack and beef jerky, in case for some reason the worst happens, and you get separated from me. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about falling through any thin spots again,” she gave a chuckle at this “but you should know that the woods can be a dangerous place even without falling out of the world. You saw that dire wolf yesterday, and there’s more creatures out here as well. They know well enough to keep away from me, usually. Probably the only reason that one showed its face yesterday was the sense of you coming from the otherworld trumped it’s fear of my power it likely sensed. Well, I might have been shielding my presence”

She gave a cutesy expression at this like a high school girl admitting to a tiny mistake and playing it off like it was nothing. She didn’t even seem to realize that I wouldn’t even have picked up on it if she hadn’t said anything.

She continued, reaching back into the cupboard and taking out several packets. “These are obsfucation herbs. I should be able to scare anything away if you’re with me, especially with that flashy jacket you had yesterday gone, but you still have traces of the mundane world on you, which will mark you as an easy target for monsters. If we were to get separated you would need these to make yourself scarce, as far as their sense of magic goes. Not that it should be an issue,” she added.

“For a witch you seem concerningly unfamiliar with the idea of jinxing things.”

“Thanks”

“…”

“And this,” she said, handing me what looked like a compass, “points back to the cottage. If you get separated from me it’s likely best to head straight back here. Staying still in the woods is dangerous, and you don’t want anything to grab you while waiting for me to pick you up. One last thing, though I’m only giving it to you because I feel you’d be smart enough not to waste it.”

She reached slowly and carefully into the cupboard and extracted a medium-sized box, taking her time to make sure she didn’t bump it against anything. She carefully placed it on top of the cupboard, and opened it. The inside was filled with tow, the soft leftovers from manufacturing linen, and in the center of its padding was a small pouch. She seemed both uncertain and proud at the same time of this little pouch.

“This,” she paused for effect, “is a potion I developed from my research into the mundane world, the world you came from. I’m really quite proud of it, although it was surprisingly simple to make. I merely needed to dissolve some quicksilver with aqua fortis, then add the purest of wheat spirits to it until it formed crystals. It replicates low-level attack magic perfectly when struck, and as long as you carry it in your bag there’s no risk of it going off.”

Oh God. Is she crazy? I don’t need any witch training to know exactly what is in that pouch. And she has so much of it too. Shaking, and not sure what else to do, I held open my bag for her to place the unstable explosive safely, or so I prayed, into it’s depths. She literally had mercury fulminate. Just in a sack in her cupboard, by the front door. While I certainly had committed one or two faux pas in the past with the storage of black powder, at least I never did anything so stupid as storing something that could go off with a slight “bump” with emergency rations.

I suppose it would be okay to be used in small amounts. For the longest time it was used as an ignition source for firearms, with the percussion cap having been invented in the early part of the 19th century by a Scottish reverend tired of game being scared off from the flash of his flintlock. It greatly reduced lock-time for firearms, making them more accurate, and was much more compact and convenient that the bulky system of frizzens, pans, and flints that preceded it. And it provided the framework for self-contained cartridges with all aspect of the system conveniently packed into one simple…

“Rose, pay attention! Don’t tell me you’re scared of a little attack magic.”

Maybe it’s just the standard for danger is at a different level in this strange world, but from what I had seen from Mary I was leaning more towards her just being plain unaware of how dangerous some things can be. She really is crazy. Or at least somewhat unhinged.

“It’s also a bit cold out, so don’t forget the jacket I gave you yesterday. It’ll be better to put your sword on over it.”

I found my coat hanging on a hook above the cupboard. Putting it on, I strapped the sword belt over it, threading the end of the belt through the loop on one side and slipping a serpent-shaped S-hook through the eyelet to secure it in place. Looking closer at the sword, I could see it had a bit of age to it.

The hilt was a simple affair, focused more on practicality rather than the more complex hilts often created by European makers, although with a silver hilt like those that often would have been used for more fashionable swords. The pommel, fittingly enough given my name, was carved into the shape of a rose in one of the few nods towards the artistic, and the inside of the guard had a few letters stamped on it. Drawing the blade slightly, I could see it had a colichemarde blade, with a flare near the guard of the blade. The blade was marked “Solingen,” confirming my suspicions. This sword was from my world.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

“Oh, I found it at a market fair a while back. I picked it up cheap too since the peddler wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up on the otherworldness of the piece! I figure you should have a weapon from somewhere familiar, and it really does seem like you’re familiar with that style of blade.”

I’m not going to lie, I really was finding it hard to hide my excitement. This morning had been full of more unpleasant surprises, but getting to not only handle, but carry such a piece was like a fantasy come true!

“Well then, let’s get going. We don’t have all day.”

And with that we head out back into the woods.

My good mood must have been obvious. I was in another world, but so what? I got to carry such an interesting sword. After following Mary onto the path, I couldn’t help but have a slight skip in my step. I looked over at her, wondering if I was ever going to get a hat like hers, and she looked back at me with a bemused glance.

“May I ask what you’re whistling?”

I hadn’t even been aware I was whistling, but thinking back at it, I answered her question.

“Yankee Doodle. It’s a marching song from back when my country was founded. It was originally a song meant to mock us, but it ended up becoming a rallying cry and a point of pride. And for all I know, this sword you gave me could have been carried by them!”

“Really?”

“Maybe. You can’t say for sure it wasn’t. This sword is like a physical link to the past! All the hands it passed through, from a bladesmith in Germany, to a silversmith in America to make the hilt, then on to whoever might have carried it. It could have been on the battlefield in the Seven Years war, or the Revolutionary War. Or it could have been carried on the streets of Boston, or Philadelphia, when the Declaration of Independence was signed. Just thinking about the possibilities makes me excited!”

Mary looked away, like she didn’t know how to react. She seemed unused to me speaking so much at once. Eventually she replied,

“Did you carry one like it yourself when you were in the military?”

“What? Don’t be stupid, we haven’t used swords in years for that kind of stuff. Everything’s about guns now. They barely even spend time on bayonet drill, although they do spend a fair amount on hand to hand. I just can’t help but want to know what it was like in the past, what they went through. Even me joining the military was from reading one two many books about Guadalcanal, Belleau Wood, and other battles. In reality I didn’t do much besides writing Powerpoints, but you get the point.”

The confused look on her face showed she didn’t get the point, but at this point I was too worked up to care. As we walked, the forest gave way to fields, and in the distance I could see a stone wall surrounding a town, with a gate at the end of what had now become a road leading to it. A river snaked out of the woods a few miles away from us at the tree-line and ran to the town, or rather city, before continuing on. Boats were could be seen navigating the river, with many looking as if they were rigged for ocean travel. Based on the distance, we still had an hour left of walking, but the town looked like it had been taken straight out of the 17th century. It even had a glacis surrounding the angled towers.

“What’s with that earthen wall around it?” I asked. For all her unexpected pop-culture references, her knowledge had gaps in it and I didn’t think there were cannon here.

“It’s there to deflect attacks from war mages. The earth does a better job of dampening the impact, and helps defend the wall as a final defense.”

Magic taking the place of artillery seems pretty otherworldly.

“What’s this town called?”

“Porte.”

My first fantasy town visit was about to begin.