Chapter One: Japan

 They sat in neat rows of five, each of the desks the exact same distance apart. A woman that was neither young nor old stood in front of the white dry-erase board and was scribbling near-illegible notes on it with a brown marker while droning on in a slightly nasal, monotone voice about some obscure and easily-forgotten theorem.  A few paid attention, most pretended to, and the remainder stared out the windows at nothing in particular.

       Gwyn McLaine glanced at the small wall clock. 2:57. Would the day never be over? She looked down at her open notebook at a page covered with a fairly even mix of Algebra II notes and doodles of flying penguins, dancing daisies, and the many personalities of Señor Ratón. She tucked a black-red curl behind one ear and put the finishing touches onto Darth Ratón. Yes, he looked much better with the lightsaber and cape.

       Riiiing!

       Gwyn snapped her notebook shut and shoved both it and her pen into her satchel. 3:00. That was it. Another day, another five homework assignments. She sighed as she made her way out of the suddenly suffocating classroom, down the hall to the stairwell, around the couple who couldn’t have waited two more minutes until they were in the parking lot to start making out, down the stairs, out the doors, under the HOOVER HIGH SCHOOL sign, and away from the oppressive crowds of her fellow students. Gwyn shook her head. Halfway through the first nine-weeks of school and nothing to show for it save the reappearance of her writing bump and perpetually tense shoulder and back muscles from hauling that satchel around. Ah, yes. The charms of the sophomore year were never-ending.

       Gwyn hummed tunelessly as she walked down the street toward her house. It was something to do. She had long since gotten used to doing things alone, but that didn’t necessarily prevent boredom. She looked down at her feet as she walked. With each step, the hem of her long black skirt fluttered from the motion of her feet. She picked up her pace to see if the fluttering would increase proportionally with her speed. It did. Right up until she walked into something very solid.

       She looked up, an apology forming on her lips. The words never got any farther than that, though. A rather scantily clad and masculinely built woman with pitch black skin and bleach blond hair stared down at her. “And they say I’m weird,” she muttered under her breath.

       The large woman gave a feral grin displaying pointed, yellow teeth. Gwyn took a reflexive step back. The woman raised a hand and the world flashed white, then faded to black.

       It was difficult to say whether it was the loud, ear-piercing creak! as the door swung shut or the less-than-gentle introduction to the stone floor that woke Gwyn up first. Regardless, neither made her feel much better. She did her best to curl into a ball and held her head in her hands. Had she not been very sure that she had not been drinking the previous day – that and she’d never had one to compare her current state of being to – Gwyn would have sworn that she had a hangover. Her head throbbed, she maintained only a fingernail grip on the contents of her stomach, and her entire body ached. Once she believed that she was no longer in grave danger of displaying her lunch to whatever else lived in this place with her, she rolled onto her back, flung one arm over her eyes and rested the other across her belly, and slipped silently into the familiar comfort of sleep.

       Gwyn was suddenly and unceremoniously awoken by a large quantity of rather cold water being tossed on her. She sat up with a gasp and glared at everything in general as she tried to find whoever had dumped the water on her. She found him soon enough. He loomed almost directly over her, tall and large and imposing with flaming red hair and gleaming eyes.

       “So,” he began in a deep, curiously soft voice. “You’re her, huh?”

       She glared defiantly at the man. “Unless there’s another girl in here that I didn’t know about,” she snapped petulantly, betting that there wasn’t since she didn’t actually know.

       He reached down with a large hand, took her roughly by the arm, and jerked her to her feet. His other hand took her by the chin and held her like that for his inspection. “Well, you certainly do look that part,” he chuckled. “Come on, lassie, the captain will be waiting for you.”

       “Lassie?!”

       The man led her out the door and down the hall at a fairly fast clip. Gwyn protested the entire way, squirming in his grip and hurling threats and insults at him, all of which he merely laughed off. Opening a door seemingly at random, the man dragged Gwyn inside. He saluted the man in grey waiting for them there. The Grey Man saluted back and smirked at Gwyn. “This is her?”

       The man holding her arm smiled and nodded. “Yes, sir. Quite a firebrand, actually.”

       “Certainly is young.”

       “Yes, sir, she is.”

       “That could be useful.”

       “Yes, sir.”

       Gwyn sighed in exasperation. “You know, you could actually wait until you were behind my back to talk about me.”

       The Grey Man looked at her in amused surprise. “Yes. Quite a firebrand indeed. That will be all.”

       The fiery-haired man let go of her arm, saluted one more time, and left. Gwyn wanted to rub some feeling back into her arm, but from the look in the other man’s eye she thought that would give him some measure of pleasure from that show of weakness, so she didn’t. She looked at him. He was not a large man, not much taller than she with dark hair graying regally at the temples and an aristocratic face. “Who are you?”

       He chuckled. “You may call me ‘sir.’”

       Gwyn raised a brow. “I may.”

       The man’s face hardened. “Your petulance was amusing at first, but it will stop now. Sit down.”

       Gwyn found herself obeying meekly. An unreasonable fear welled up inside of her as the man placed a hand on either side of her head and lifted her face. His eyes bored into hers. “And now, little girl, you will tell me everything I want to know.”

       The cell had been welcome by the time the man had finished with her. He’d asked her questions, and like a child she’d answered them guilelessly. When her answers hadn’t pleased him, he’d hit her. Most of her answers hadn’t pleased him. She had only been more than happy to return to the dank darkness of the little stone room.

       Gwyn could only imagine how she must look. Her left eye felt swollen. Her lip was split and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. It hurt to breathe deeply. She just generally hurt. Someone had left some food and water for her. She drank but ignored the food for fear of it coming back up if she did eat it.

       Gwyn curled up into a little ball and slept. Slept and dreamed. She dreamed of a bright place full of gold and of a sweet heat that protected and consumed.

       She woke up slowly, unwilling to leave the warmth of the dream, but eventually reality won over. Her eyes opened and she saw the red haired man once more standing over her. “You again.”

       He crossed his arms. “On your feet, lassie. The Captain wants another word with you.”

       Something snapped inside of Gwyn. She got to her feet and stood up straight. She was a tall girl – five feet, eight inches barefoot – and from her new vantage point, the man didn’t look quite so imposing. She tossed her head to remove some hair that had fallen in her face, and stared at him. “No,” she said.

       That seemed to confuse him for a moment. “Excuse me?”

       Gwyn swallowed, but it did nothing to prevent the hot rage from swelling inside of her. “I said no. I’m not going to talk to your commander.”

       He smirked. “You don’t have a choice, lassie.”

       She blinked. “I always have a choice. Right up until I die.”

       “That can be arranged.”

       Gwyn shook her head. “I will not go.” A small part of her mind, way in the back, jumped up and down, waved colorful flags, and screamed at her to shut up while she was still conscious and just go with the man. She pointedly ignored it. The man couldn’t frighten her. He couldn’t force her to do anything. She had a power he couldn’t stop, a power she didn’t understand, herself. It frightened her and strengthened her at the same time.

       The man’s eyes widened fractionally. He reached out to grab her arm, but as soon as his hand closed around her, he let out a surprised yelp and jerked back. Gwyn was already moving. Her hand came back and she delivered a vicious open-handed slap to the side of his face that whipped his head around. As she’d expected, it left an angry red mark on his cheek, although the blisters that had begun to appear were unanticipated.

       The man snarled and lunged for her. This time, her body listened to that small part of her mind – which had now begun to yell “Run! Run! Run!” – and she bolted out the door. She heard the man giving chase, hurling curses and orders for her to stop. She ignored him and charged on.

       It didn’t take too much longer for her long skirt to tangle in her legs. Normally, it wouldn’t have been too much of a crisis, but a slick spot chose that moment to appear under her foot. She went down, hard, first landing on a stone bench, thoroughly knocking the wind out of her, and then rolling off to land on her back on the rough hewn stone floor. As she rolled off the bench, her skirt got caught on an edge and the sound of ripping fabric filled the air. She rolled, coughed, and spit out a mouthful of blood. Adrenaline got her standing again in less than a second. Swearing viciously in every language she knew, she finished the job the bench edge had begun and ripped the bottom part of her skirt off. It was now almost indecently short with a vertical rip in front of her left thigh rising almost to the skirt’s waist. She continued running, not paying attention to where she was going, really, just as long as she was going up. She felt heat surging through her. Sounds of pursuit intensified. She swore some more.

       Through a door, up some steps, down a hallway, dodge a monster, quick glance behind, turn a corner – Where am I? Is that their breathing or mine? – up more stairs, turn a corner, dead end, turn around, vault a padded bench – What did I do? Why did they want me? – up a ramped hallway, turn a corner, quick glance behind, pick up the pace – How do I get out of this place? Who are these people? – avoid the voices.

       The heat was fading. Gwyn gasped painfully and held her ribs. She kept running. Her foot caught on a rug that had suddenly appeared under her feet. She went down again, this time catching herself on her hands and knees. She got back up, a bit slower this time, and kept running. She was vaguely aware that rug-burn wasn’t supposed to bleed, but quickly dismissed the blood trickling down her right leg. Her vision began to blur. She blinked and it cleared for a moment before fuzzing again. Now why would it do that? Ah, yes. Tears did that. But she wasn’t crying. Was she?

       Gwyn didn’t notice when the carpeted hallway turned into a sidewalk – maybe when she’d gone through the dark hole? – but she became painfully aware of it when her right knee gave out and she skidded about a foot on her shoulder. She laid there for a moment, just trying to breathe. It didn’t work as well as she’d hoped. With no small effort, she pushed herself up and got unsteadily to her feet. She stumbled over to the corner to look at the street signs. Maybe she could find her way to a police station. Yeah, that’d be good. She looked up at the sign and blinked. She must have been more tired than she’d thought. Couldn’t even read the street signs. She stood on her toes and squinted.

       Whatthecrap?!

       Okay, this was officially a bad day. First, she’d had to go to school, then she got mugged by some freak of nature, tossed in a dungeon, interrogated, threatened, beat-up, and now the street signs were in Japanese! What a dirty trick, changing the signs like that! What some people wouldn’t do!

       Gwyn shook her head and gave up on the street signs. She walked around and looked for any familiar landmarks. Well, it seemed as though all of the signs had been replaced with Japanese. Based on this, she could only draw two conclusions. 1) The populace of Birmingham had decided to play a rather mean-spirited joke on her or 2) she was in Japan. She serious doubted the former, not because she wouldn’t put it past them, but because not that many people cared that much about her. And she seriously doubted the latter since she hadn’t been gone long enough to even get to Japan, much less have been kept here for as long as she had been. So, given that, Gwyn concluded that she was stark, raving mad. But was she really insane since she knew she was insane? She sighed. This was most vexing.

       But there, a house on top of a hill. And a lot of steps. Gwyn looked up.

       Not quite dawn. Light in the windows. People. Help. Up the stairs. Handrail. Breathe. Wince. Don’t think. Up the stairs.

       Gwyn got to the last step and sat down. Her body simply refused to function any more. She cradled her head, which had begun to throb, in her arms and closed her eyes. She heard voices. Had those guys finally caught up to her? She lifted her head. No, a black-haired girl a little older than she in what Gwyn assumed was traditional garb was shouting into the house. In Japanese.

       Well, don’t that beat all? She actually was in Japan.

BACK