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MY FIRST attempt at traveling solo with the travel glasses nearly ended my life. Since I’d learned everything I knew about using the glasses from Valcas, I did not realize that once I put them on and started running there would be enough motion to transport me somewhere else.
As I sprinted along the palace hallways, I must have been worrying too much about whether or not I would need to jump off of a cliff. Before I had a chance to turn around to see whether Valcas was chasing me, I heard a loud cracking sound followed by a deafening gush of wind. The glasses softened the bright white light that forced me to close my eyes when I’d traveled with Valcas.
The light faded quickly, leaving me looking straight down a cliff. Rushing winds continued to assault my ears. My head spun as my stomach and other internal organs lurched forward. When I caught my breath long enough to remove the glasses, I saw mere inches of rocky ledge separating me from a valley thousands of feet below. I was on a ridge, a shelf in the cliff, with barely enough space to turn around. Tightly gripping the glasses, I took a half step backward and then prickled as the jagged stone of the mountain wall jabbed me from behind. I had no way of knowing how long it would take to reach level ground. My stomach churned as I remembered the colors of the earth rushing by, the terror and surprise of the freefall when Valcas pulled me off of the cliff to get to the palace. The fall would have been deadly without the travel glasses.
I covered my eyes with the glasses to help me ignore the constant reminder of the similar drop below. I breathed deeply, trying to calm down, focusing instead on Uncle Al’s cottage, my room with shelves full of books and the grounds around the lake. That’s when the impact of my arrival must have hit.
The rock behind me began to collapse. The mountain shelf below my feet cracked open and began to crumble. I lost my footing. I grasped the glasses with both hands so they wouldn’t fall off my face. My own screaming replaced the sound of the rushing wind. Uncle Al’s cottage seemed very far away in that moment, but I let the glasses know where I wanted to go. The blurred streaks of mountainside and falling rock instantly subsided, replaced by a warm glow of white.
My right foot came into contact with something solid before the rest of my body stopped falling. I tripped and tumbled forward onto a bed of earth and grass. Lying there flat on my face, I trembled for a long time, even after I’d calmed down. I looked up at Uncle Al’s cottage. I was away from the palace and had survived another fall. Valcas was nowhere in sight. Yet my teeth chattered and my body would not stop shaking. It was dark outside and very, very cold.
I crawled up out of what I now recognized was a tilled flowerbed. Before entering the house, I brushed the dirt and grass off of the gown and sandals that I still wore from the ball. The cottage looked like it had been abandoned for a long time. How long exactly, I had no idea. While focusing on my destination, I had paid no attention to when I was going, just where. The door opened freely, having been left unlocked. I closed the door behind me and flipped the light switch. The electricity was out.
“Hello? Is anybody there?”
No one answered me. The house was still and silent. My body tensed with fear for what may have happened to Uncle Al and flared with anger and resentment toward no one in particular. My brooding never felt more justified.
I climbed upstairs to my bedroom. This I could do with my eyes closed. My bedroom door opened with a creak. The air was thick and smelled of books. I slipped the travel glasses off of my face and propped them up on top of my head like a headband as I fumbled toward my nightstand where I kept a flashlight. A beam of light stretched out from the flashlight when I powered it on, letting me know that the batteries were still good. Wherever Uncle Al may be, it was clear that no one else had lived in the house in the meantime.
Unsure of whether anyone in my family was still alive, my mind flooded with questions about endless opportunities that all seemed absolutely impossible. If I tried traveling to my parents, would I hurt them by the impact of my arrival? Perhaps I would find them already dead. I’d always been curious about my father and now I had the means to find him. Only, I was afraid of what I would or wouldn’t find and of once again being rejected.
More immediately frightening, I wondered if Valcas was looking for me and whether he had the capability without the glasses to find me. Not that I expected that he would answer my questions about that topic any more than anything else. He had the annoying habit of telling me only what he wanted me to know. That made him both useless and dangerous, no matter how attractive he was, creepy eyes excluded.
By flashlight I changed out of my noble-betrothed wear into jeans, a sweatshirt and my running shoes. With the flashlight in hand, I briefly surveyed the room. My backpack, which sat on the floor near my desk, was now as dusty as my laptop and mobile phone. I decided to take the backpack with me, stuffing it with a few personal items and a change of clothes. Then, curious, I brushed dust off of my phone. I wondered whether I’d missed any calls from my two contacts while I was gone. Nothing as far as I could tell—the phone battery was dead. I placed the phone back on my desk, gingerly, fully knowing that I wouldn’t need or want it where I was going anyway. Then I headed back downstairs to the kitchen to see if I could find anything else of use.
I pulled open the cupboards above the kitchen sink and countertops. They were as dark and empty as the rest of the house. I hesitated to open the refrigerator, which I imagined only contained spoilage. I sniffed the air. It didn’t smell like anything was rotting. The kitchen smelled lonely, like a house that was waiting for its owners to come home from vacation.
I squinted and looked around. Something from the kitchen table caught my eye. I paused to stare at it, bringing the flashlight closer to prove that I wasn’t seeing things. On the table sat the newspaper I’d read nearly a week ago, right where I’d left it—the one containing the article about the lake’s overpopulation of sunfish.
My heart skipped. What had happened here since I’d left? I knew I couldn’t stay. Something was very wrong about this place. There was no way I was going to go back to Valcas and his prison of a palace either. A grim thought entered my mind. I had nowhere else to go.
I paced the dusty kitchen floor as I wracked my brain. The best person to answer my questions, the one with the most knowledge, had to be the inventor of the travel glasses. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anything about that person. Him? Her? How could I search for someone I’d never met? Valcas had said the more details the better, but he had an unfair advantage because he somehow knew me by name and location. I gritted my teeth. Apparently, the glasses didn’t need to be connected to the internet for the wearer to poke into someone’s personal life. Even though a search engine could lead to an individual’s address, the browser couldn’t actually physically take you there. What had this inventor done? Did he have any idea?
Just as I was about to drift off into full-on brooding mode, the ground began to shake below me. The walls of the cottage trembled violently. The kitchen windows blistered and cracked with loud popping sounds. I was not used to earthquakes, but I imagined that this was how one would feel.
I ducked under the kitchen table to take cover right before the windows erupted. Wind and shards of glass squalled into the room above me, sweeping the newspaper off of the table and across the room. I covered my head with my arms and screamed. Moments later, the shaking stopped and the room stilled. The impact of my arrival must have finally happened, and I was very glad that I’d made it inside well before it hit.
I yawned despite how nervous and upset I still was. With trembling limbs I crawled out from underneath the kitchen table and carefully stepped over broken glass. The darkness made it difficult, but fortunately I still had my flashlight, which I’d been clutching in a death grip. I locked the front door of the cottage and climbed back upstairs to my cold bedroom.
I decided to come up with a better plan in the morning, as early as possible. With that decision my flashlight flickered and burned out, announcing the death of the battery. I locked my bedroom door and pulled on a few more layers of clothing. It had been a long time since I’d slept in my own bed. With my ears still ringing from the blast in the kitchen, I burrowed under the dusty blankets and fell asleep.