Out of This World Read online

  Iris was having a hard time swallowing her last bite of bread. She began to cough and took a few long gulps of her coffee…or cheefen…or whatever the fuck it was. “I’m still on Earth, right?” she asked when she could breathe again. “This is just some kind of candid-camera thing. Next my therapist will come waltzing into the room, telling me this was all a plan to shake me out of my funk and get me out of my shell, or at least back to normal. Well, as hot as the sex was, and as nice as you’re being to me, I’m ready to find out what’s really going on. Could you please, please tell me?”

  “What’s really going on is just what I told you,” Anandra said, opening the box and taking out a wax-sealed roll of parchment. “Here is the message for the Queen. I’ve also come to think that you don’t seem to know what magic is, not at all. Nor are you in this ‘Earth’ place you mentioned. Not right now, at least.” She spread her arms wide. “Welcome to my land, Iris. Welcome to Oria.”

  At those words, Iris did something for the first time in many, many years, something that had thoroughly embarrassed her each of the five times it had previously occurred: she fainted.

  When she came to, not much about her circumstances had changed, other than the fact that she was back on the bed she’d slept on, and her face was being fanned by her notebook, which was floating in the air above her face. Iris realized something then, as she watched the levitating paisley notebook flop from side to side: she could either do her best to accept all of this, or she could let it drive her mad—if she wasn’t mad already.

  Maybe her newfound sexual prowess had gone to her head, or maybe she’d finally had it with always being hesitant, and shy, and scared, which were things Jane had often told her she needed to work on. Or maybe it was just that she felt she had no choice. Whatever it was, her head was much clearer when she lifted it off the pillows before she got to her feet. She seemed to be more aware than she had been in months. “Let’s do it, then,” she told Anandra. “Take me to the castle.”

  “Sounds like a plan. And speaking of plans, my tutor might have a way to help you get home. As I said, he’s incredibly skilled with potions and powders, and his specialty is scrolls. Which are probably the only things powerful enough to get you back to wherever this Earth place is located. I should warn you, though.” Anandra rose from the bed and grabbed the notebook out of the air, handing it to Iris. “This trip will not be without risk. Our land has its fair share of dangers. I am a very skilled fighter, if I do say so myself, and I am quite good with a dagger, so I will do my best to protect you. My sack should come in handy as well,” she said, pointing to a small leather satchel sitting near the room’s only door. “It is practically bottomless, after all, and most of the time it proves to be very helpful. Lastly, at the very least, it will take us three full days to get to the castle, and that is if everything works out in our favor. In my life, it doesn’t tend to. I can’t yet speak for yours.”

  Iris watched as she picked up a large silver dagger, slipped it into a sheath, and buckled it to her left thigh. “That’s a scary-looking knife,” she remarked.

  “I hope it is, for our sake. If everyone thinks it looks scary enough, we won’t come across any problems on our trip. Ha! As if that’s likely.”

  “You keep talking about how dangerous it’ll be. Will we encounter other people with magical abilities on the way there?”

  “Most likely many. And magical beings as well. They’re the real ones to watch out for, since you can’t see them getting ready to perform their enchantments or cast their spells. They have no need for potions or powders, nor do they need scrolls to cast a spell.”

  “Scrolls? What are those? And how do they work?”

  “Scrolls?” Anandra tossed Iris her bag and notebook, which she surprised herself by catching. “They’re just like the potions and powders and other magically imbued items you can buy from sellers. They came into being many centuries ago, from our forefathers and foremothers, the first magical people of our land.”

  “And?” Iris gestured at Anandra in hopes she’d tell her more, but Anandra shook her head.

  “I don’t know how much about magic I should be telling you right now. I am not a tutor like Nerec, and that’s what you really need. Maybe it will be explained along the way, but right now, the most important thing is that we get going.” She pushed her chair under the table and went over to the sink with their breakfast dishes, giving each of them a quick rinse. “Don’t want any moldy plates to return home to. Or any scavengers staying near my house in hopes of more delicious bread and jam.” She dried her hands on a towel by the sink, then sprinkled some more powder over the message for the Queen, and Iris was about ten percent less shocked this time when it became invisible again. Anandra acted like she was placing it in her bag—Iris couldn’t even know for sure whether it was actually in her hand—and then she slung the bag over her shoulder and gestured toward the door. “Ladies second. Submissives, too. I don’t want you to slip and fall on your way down, after all.”

  She opened the narrow, fur-covered door, revealing a small deck and what looked like the tops of at least three trees. Each was about ten feet away from the room they were in, and each held a small circular building the same color as the tree it sat in. How high up were they? Iris wondered.

  “I hope you’re not afraid of heights,” Anandra told her, and then she kicked something off the deck and disappeared over its edge.

  “What the…” Where had she gone? She couldn’t have just jumped to her death, that much seemed somewhat obvious. So Iris slipped her notebook into her bag, zipped it up, and walked through the doorway. With hesitant steps, because she was more than a little afraid of heights, she walked up to where Anandra had just been standing and looked over the deck’s edge.

  No, she hadn’t jumped to her death. Instead, Anandra was quickly descending a rope ladder hanging between the deck and the frighteningly far-away ground. Iris shuddered a little as she estimated that they must have been at least fifty feet up in the air. She didn’t have much choice, though, so she shut the front door and, as carefully and as slowly as she could, swung herself over the edge and began climbing down. Much slower than her clearly climbing-skilled new acquaintance.

  And new lover. She couldn’t help imagining their previous night’s escapades…the surprising pain…and her surprising enjoyment of it. It had been more than just enjoyment, she realized as she climbed, because it had awakened her libido in a way Jane had never been able to. This realization didn’t make that much of a difference in how she felt about their breakup, though. She still wanted Jane back, and it was that sad thought and a train of connected ones that kept her mind busy on her way down, mercifully washing away any thoughts of how far she had to fall.

  When her feet met the forest floor, she was happy that her arms and legs hurt only a little. Apparently exercising regularly throughout her newly single year had been worth it, at least for these last few minutes. She was even a little proud of herself for getting down as fast as she had. But then she turned and saw Anandra, tapping her foot and clearly impatient. Well, it wasn’t like Iris got that many chances to climb up and down fifty-foot long rope ladders in her world.

  “You ready, then?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” Iris said. Like a human could be ready to face a treacherous trek through this unknown, magic-filled world. What might they come across as they walked? Monsters? Demons? Fairies? And why hadn’t this world caught on to the internal-combustion engine the way hers had?

  “Why don’t you have a horse? Or a donkey, or something, to help you travel faster?” she asked as they began to walk along a path through the tall trees. Only small patches of the early morning sun managed to reach all the way down through the trees to their path, but they had more than enough light to see by as they went along the wide forest trail.

  “Oh, I prefer to travel on foot. Always have.”

  Iris made a few more attempts at conversation, but Anandra seemed content to jus
t walk and breathe and be quiet, so she gave up and tried to enjoy taking in her surroundings. It was only then that she thought to look at her wristwatch, to see what time it was back on Earth, but of course, that seemed to have been yet another item taken by whoever had left her in that field.

  “If you’re looking for your strange bracelet, I put it in your bag. It was far too conspicuous for a trip such as ours, and it would have made us stand out.”

  “Ah. Thanks for not throwing it out your window, then.”

  “I thought it could possibly come in handy at some point. Besides, if I threw away your things, you might not want to sleep with me again.” Anandra smiled and gave her a small nudge. “We wouldn’t want that now, would we?”

  “No, not at all!” Good, so there would be a repeat performance of the night before. Hopefully soon, Iris thought, because—

  And Anandra seemed to think soon would be good, too, because she placed her hands on Iris’s hips and kissed her, this time nipping a little at Iris’s bottom lip as she thrust her tongue into her mouth. Iris’s cunt grew warm as they kissed, and she wished they’d had more time before they left, time for a second go at it. But maybe wherever they stayed that night, they could “go” that second time upon their arrival.

  Just as suddenly as Anandra had started kissing her, she stopped. “It’s time to walk, now. We’ll have time for play tonight, when we reach my friends’ home.” She smacked Iris’s ass—quite hard, at that—and started down the path once more.

  They settled into silence again, but this time Iris minded it less, because she had all kinds of dirty thoughts to keep her company now, thoughts about what they might do that night when they reached wherever they’d be staying. Nightfall couldn’t come soon enough, Iris decided, and neither could she.

  Chapter Three

  What must have been at least a few hours later, they finally reached the edge of the woods. Just beyond was a stretch of low, healthy-looking grass, and a bit farther along was a mid-sized, dark-green river. Iris could have sat in front of it all day, with perhaps some swimming every few hours or so, but then a sudden movement near the closest bank made her fantasy much less appealing.

  A gigantic, brown alligator sat there, sunning itself and singing somewhat operatically. Iris wasn’t used to running across giant singing alligators when she went walking, so she just did what came naturally and froze in place. Anandra had frozen, too, but not before she’d pulled out her knife and taken a defensive stance. When she noticed Iris looking at her, she put her finger to her lips and then made a series of gestures, like the ones SWAT teams always made in rescue films. Iris, of course, had no idea whatsoever what they meant, so she decided to continue staying immobile for as long as she could.

  But it was too late. The alligator had stopped singing and was starting in their direction. As it waddled closer and closer, Iris grew more and more scared. Was she about to become lunch for someone else before she’d even had a chance to have her own?

  “Get behind me,” Anandra ordered sotto voce. It wasn’t the kind of order she’d been imagining her giving for the last hour, but Iris wasn’t about to complain. She hurried behind Anandra and got ready to become food, shutting her eyes tight. Then she just listened.

  First she heard a loud smacking sound. Then a few grunts: one sounded like it came from Anandra, and the other was lower pitched, just like the alligator’s singing voice. Then a high-pitched scream, and finally, what sounded like a boulder hitting the ground and then what might have been the feet of something large moving away from them at high speed.

  “You can open your eyes now, you big bowl of pudding. She’s leaving.”

  Iris did as Anandra said and saw that her companion was the clear victor in the fight. The alligator had, so to speak, turned tail and run, as it had just reached the water and started swimming away from them. “What did you do?” Iris asked.

  “Oh, just showed her that she’d be better off sticking to singing rather than fighting.” Iris noticed then that Anandra’s dagger had a few flecks of red on it, red that Anandra wiped on the grass before putting it away. “I told you, by the way.”

  “Told me what?” Iris asked, following Anandra along the river and toward a patch of much-taller grass.

  “I told you risk would be involved. Good thing you have me along, huh?”

  “Yeah, can’t say I’m not grateful.” In more ways than one.

  Just as they reached a stretch of high grass, Anandra stopped and bent down, pulling two large lavender-colored flowers from their stalks. She handed them to Iris and picked two more. “Ball those up and put them in your ears.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll thank me later. The magical beings in this field can enchant you with their words, and you’ll never want to leave this place if you hear them clearly. These flowers are the best defense against them you’ll get.”

  “Whatever you say.” Iris rolled each flower into a tight ball and pushed each one gently into her ear canals. Hopefully Anandra wasn’t just doing some kind of hazing experiment on her: let’s see what all we can trick the naïve human into doing!

  Only a few steps into the taller-than-her-head grasses, Iris began to hear some loud rustling coming from far away. It had been a little windy by the river, so naturally, it had to be the wind. That was what she told herself at least, until she saw Anandra draw her knife and pull back her arm, sending the knife whizzing through the grass at an impossibly high speed. No human could have thrown something that hard, she thought, but Anandra clearly wasn’t human. A distant cry of pain managed to make its way through the flowers in Iris’s ears, and then she watched as Anandra took off in the same direction she’d just thrown her knife. Iris only paused for a second before she started running, but she could barely keep up and was panting hard by the time she got to Anandra.

  She was leaning over a man, curled into a ball, and clearly he was no longer alive. “You killed someone?” Iris yelled at her, and she was more than ready to yell some more.

  “Just wait one small while.”

  Before Iris’s very eyes, the man changed shape, into that of a white deer with a thin line of green fluid running down its neck. “I have just the thing for this,” Anandra told her, reaching her hand and then her arm into her leather satchel. She withdrew a small black bottle and unscrewed the lid. Attached to the lid was a dropper, and she let three drops of clear liquid fall onto the animal’s side. “You see,” Anandra said, as the creature began to shrink and change color, “not only are these creatures deadly, able to lure people and other beings to their deaths, but they’re also full of magic. I gained some of my skill with the knife from eating one of these creatures, and now I want you to do the same. It may not work, since you’re from another world, but it’s still worth a try.”

  The creature continued to shrink and change color, until in its place lay a large, heavily marbled steak, just like the ones Iris’s adoptive mom Jackie used to buy at the grocery store. Anandra picked it up off the ground and put it in her bag. “Let’s get the rest of the way through the grasses, and then we can find a good spot to have lunch. I’d say we’ve earned it!”

  Iris couldn’t even come close to disagreeing. She hadn’t experienced this much excitement since…well, never. “I’m pretty hungry, actually. What did you bring for lunch?”

  “I’ll be having some bread and hard cheese, unlike you. Remember, you have a steak to eat.”

  “Isn’t that a little heavy for lunch?” Iris mumbled as they went through the high grass. Every now and then Anandra used her knife to chop through a few stalks of the tall vegetation, but most of the time, their path was unobstructed. Now Iris was wondering something, so she asked, “Do you pass through this field often?”

  “Not if I can help it!” Anandra said with a laugh.

  After what seemed like far too long to a rather hungry Iris and her growling stomach, they reached the end of the field. Anandra put her sack down next to a short tree with peeling r
ed bark and similarly colored leaves. It reminded Iris of the manzanita trees of her world.

  “What’s this tree called?” She sat down beside Anandra, watching as she reached into her bag and pulled out a small grate and what looked like a well-crafted, small barbecue with three legs and white markings around its bowl. Iris forgot she’d asked a question as, next, Anandra blew over the top of the bowl and flames began to peek out over its top. “That’s not how we make fire in my world.”

  “How do you make it there?” Anandra took the steak out of the bag and placed it on top of the grate, settling herself on the ground behind it. Next she took out some tongs, and Iris began to wonder exactly how much that bag of hers actually held. It had already been impressive enough to her when the barbecue had come out of the barely big enough opening at its top. But Iris knew by now that she would need to suspend disbelief for the time being, at least until she had a better idea of how this world, and its magic, worked.

  Anandra hummed quietly as she checked the steak every now and again, and once it looked and smelled just right to Iris, Anandra took it off the grate and put everything besides it back in her bag, after her second time blowing on the flames seemed to extinguish them. Next she removed a large plate from her bag, and a fork and knife, and two glasses and a pitcher. That was almost the end of the rope for Iris’s planned suspension of disbelief, because the pitcher held some pale-pink liquid, which should have spilled from its wide-open top as they trekked across the land and as Anandra went up against the two dangerous creatures. She might have been a skilled fighter, but this just didn’t seem possible.