Chapter Three A Spell of Disbelief
My head was throbbing when I woke. That couldn’t be good. Did I faint? A panic attack...at where? Tempo? No, I’d been at the library. Oh hell, that whole mess.
Intending to take it slow, I blinked open my eyes—
Above me was a cloudy gray sky, crisscrossed by branches. The crisp air smelled of pine and earthy soil. I bolted upright.
That nut Sorrel had drugged me, dragged me off to a forest, and—I looked myself over—dressed me in a Ren Faire outfit?
My hands moved across the fabric on their own.
My thick sweater and crude cargo pants were gone.
Instead, the dark magenta gown was soft as butter, a clear contrast with the leather bodice fitted firmly over the top.
I could tell how firm—the top of the corset cut into my breasts, making them lift at the edge of the neckline.
I would never have picked this out on my own—indeed would have nowhere to wear it.
I threw a hand over my chest and straightened off the ground. “Sorrel?” I called weakly. “What’s going on?”
She appeared in a poof of yellow smoke.
I screamed. It was the crazy lady from the library but half of her was missing. Only her head and torso floated in front of me, like Casper the Friendly Ghost.
“Oh, drat, you can only call me three times.” Sorrel bobbled her head as if I should have known better.
Her hair was braided this time—a long, thick rope built of many intricate strands hanging over her shoulder.
It was certainly fancy. I didn’t even have a name for the hairstyle.
Her clothing had also changed—the gown was gone, replaced with a sleek jacket with statement shoulders the same light color as her hair.
I tried not to look down at her smoky, missing bottom half.
“Sorrel, what did you do?”
“Okay, first summoning of your Fairy Bookmother it is. Let’s make the most of it.
” Her voice pitched into new ecstasy with her next reveal.
“You, Dottie darling, are now in the world of Landsome Roads. Here, you can play out the fantasies of your dreams and become a brand-new va-va-voom woman! Plus”—she quickened her pace even as her smile grew—“you’re going to save book five by finally making it the story readers have always wanted.
Don’t be intimidated by the plot issues—I’m sure you’ll hardly notice them. Just focus on having a good time.”
I stared her down. “Whatever this is, take me back. I didn’t sign anything. I do not consent to being filmed!” I said loudly for any hidden camera people.
“No one’s filming you, honey,” she said.
“This is just for you. A little me time to help you loosen up. What you do with it is up to you. Plus, you know, help us smooth over those bumps in the story.” Her voice dropped as she tried to pacify me.
“You’re Landsome Roads’s biggest fan. Just follow your instincts. ”
“I don’t want to do...this.”
Sorrel gave an odd kind of smile, less benevolent than the others. She swung her braid back. “Oh, but you do. You just don’t believe this is real. Watch this.” Sorrel spun her hands gently together.
Flowers bloomed over my head. I took them off. A flower crown.
She flipped one hand upward.
Gold thread wove through my gown, contrasting with the dark cloth brilliantly.
“And onnneee more!” she sang, popping both hands open.
A satchel appeared at my side. My satchel. From home.
I went weak in the knees. How did she do that?
Sorrel tilted her head in a dainty way. “Just a few rules before I go. Common FAQs, if you will.”
The hand holding the flower crown dropped to my side. “You don’t need to say ‘common.’ It’s implied.”
“See? This is what I’m talking about.” Sorrel tilted her chin. “We’re going to make you more fun at parties.” She cleared her throat. “So, the FAQs. Let’s get your biggest question out of the way: no, you cannot get pregnant here.”
I stuttered. “What? That was not my most urgent question.”
“After all, this isn’t your real body. So, FAQ number two—no, you can’t die here. But you can feel pain and hunger. All the human things, especially lust.” She puckered her lips at me.
“Sorrel, none of these are my biggest questions. How do I get home?”
She nodded sagely. “I’ll add that to the FAQ list. And the answer is—it’s different for everyone. When it’s time, it’s time.”
“So, people have done this before?”
She ducked her head slightly. “As I said, we’re a new division. Fairy Godmothers have worked a lot of magic over the years, and don’t worry, we’re extensively testing the Fairy Bookmother model.”
“But wait, I could be here for forty years?”
“Honey, it won’t take you forty years to lighten up.” She laughed, flashing her white teeth. “Besides, all of this will feel like a blip when you return home. No time will have passed in your reality at all.”
At least my parents wouldn’t arrive home to find me missing, call my work, and get a very biased, one-sided story of what I do when they’re gone.
Sorrel continued, “While you’re working on you, I want you to think about our little conversation at the library.
The publisher made a boo-boo entrusting Sherry Whitehorse’s story to the wrong author.
Every reader knows the fifth book is the disgrace of an otherwise perfect series.
Well, I’m now trusting you to steer things right. ”
I put my hands out, as if I could pause all of this and process it.
“I think that’s everything. Mwah!” She blew me a kiss. “Go have fun.”
And then I was alone in a forest in a corset and a gown. I spun around. Really alone.
“Sor—” I almost called her again but stopped myself on the off chance this was actually real. I could only call on her twice more, and honestly, I might need directions or, who knew, help solving a warlock’s riddle.
The trees were tall, their branches touching overhead, with little more than delicate ferns across the forest floor.
The air smelled of soft mulch and pine. I took an experimental step forward.
Then another. I stopped and strained my ears, listening for the distant sound of a highway, but there was nothing—just the dense sound of branches swaying.
Most of the trees were a calming green but two showed edges of red and orange. Fall was coming.
I’d never believed in magic—much less Fairy Godmothers, much much less Fairy Bookmothers—but there was no denying I was really in a forest. I had felt the appearance of the flower crown on my head and seen the dress bloom.
No one else was around to deliver the satchel.
And the way Sorrel floated there? I’d never seen anything like it. And...and what?
A thrill went through me.
I was really here.
If I turned my pages just right, I could meet him. Ironclaw. Become a notch on his belt, so to speak. Oh God, I was feeling some of those human emotions Sorrel referenced.
I grabbed my bag and sprinted through the forest.
––––––––
WAIT, AM I the experiment?
I’d grown winded running through the trees and the thought cooled the thrill in my belly. I broke into a trot.
Sorrel said they were testing this new division.
..as in present tense. Did they have other tests going on or was it me?
I tried to recall exactly what she had said.
This wasn’t my real body, I would go home when the time was right—that was vague—and I was supposed to fix book five.
That was not a short order. Fans, myself included, had many complaints about this last book.
If I was going to have a chance at changing anything, step one was to get out of this forest.
I ran through Landsome Roads lore in my head. I definitely wasn’t in the southern lands, so that meant no bog crocs, winsome nymphs, or lions to worry about. But in the north, there were druid cults, cave bears, and dart flowers. Then the Dark Mage, of course, the villain of the series.
I slowed my pace even more. Of all of those, my biggest current risk was running into a thicket of dart flowers. Sorrel said I couldn’t die, but those would still render me unconscious, and if that happened, I’d be sleeping in the forest that night.
I pecked my way through the trees, uncertain of direction. I wasn’t much of a hiker but knew enough to look for the sun. The problem was I had no direction in mind as a goal.
As I walked, my brain had nothing to do but spin. Sorrel said I was to fix book five. If I was really here, if this was really happening, I would have wished for book two. Like any story though, magic never seemed to side with what was easy or fun. Book five was the one that needed the help.
My heart sank when I remembered Sherry Whitehorse was gone. What would she have wanted for the rest of the series? She would never have added so many battle scenes and would have wanted her characters to come to proper endings. The interloper writer left a lot of holes at the end of the book.
I brightened as I realized how easy this was going to be.
All I needed to do was guide a few key events so there were fewer battles, more romance, and fix the biggest complaint of the fandom—that the queen dumped Ironclaw at the end.
I could...would...mend their relationship after I’d gotten a night or two on my own with him.
Other ideas and problematic plot points were surfacing when I came across a wagon wheel rut. It was long overgrown. Besides Sorrel’s magic, that was the first sign I wasn’t just in the woods somewhere in North America.
With the trail came my first real decision—I could follow it one way or the other.
I looked at the sky. East and west? I wondered why Sorrel didn’t drop me off outside a castle or at least tell me what direction to head in.
A thought seized me. What if I never found Ironclaw?
The queendom stretched across a continent.
I could walk for years, always missing him.