On the other side of my bathroom wall was the most amazing landscape I’d ever seen—because it was perfectly ordinary and could have been my neighbor’s backyard. The browning grass, kept alive by a lake of water sprinkled on it every day, was pretty typical of our neighborhood. The heat pouring down from a bright blue sky and a dry, warm breeze really did make me think of home. Was I just…outside?
“Where…?”
“Come on.” Gerald jerked me into motion again. I was too busy trying to pinpoint whose backyard I was in to focus on where we were going. I had a few neighbors that would call the police in a heartbeat if they saw me and a strange little green man on their property. Was I in one of those yards?
I blinked when Gerald walked us through a brick fence and we immerged into a tropical jungle, thickly scented with flowers and moss. The heady smell made me dizzy. I had a brief moment to murmur, “We could stay here,” before Gerald pulled me into the base of a giant tree.
We stepped out into desert with gold sand dunes as far as I could see. I didn’t even get a chance to feel the heat before Gerald pulled me into the sand. There was a split second when I couldn’t breathe, and I thought I was dead.
Then we immerged into the rain.
“This is a longer trip than I expected,” I gasped as rain washed sand out of my hair and soaked through my jeans and cotton t-shirt. I was not happy about the wet t-shirt part, or the damage all this jumping to new environments was doing to my hair, but given everything else it was the least of my worries.
“Okay, now where to?” The rain was cold and I was getting chilled. I hate being cold. That’s why I live in the desert. Although, I could go back to that tropical jungle that smelled so good I got dizzy. I could definitely go back there.
I was expecting Gerald to walk us through another wall, or drop us down through the cobblestones at my feet. Instead, he led me down an alley between two large brick buildings, turned onto a pedestrian path that wound through what looked like a medieval German village—though I wasn’t an expert. The beams across the second stories on all the buildings and the wooden roofs reminded me of Germany, though.
What did they call those kinds of buildings? There was a name for them. Couldn’t think of it at that moment. I needed my phone to do a search. But my cell was at home plugged into its charger. Because I had been in the toilet. Not expecting to go on an adventure.
There probably wouldn’t have been cell service there anyway.
The path ended in a small courtyard dominated by a gray stone fountain. I stared at the statue in the center of the fountain for a solid minute before I realized it was me.
The statue was standing with head high, hair flowing out behind the woman who was apparently me, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, one of the hiking boots had a big hole in it. Water sprayed out of a globe held in the statue’s open palm, filling the circular stone pool beneath.
The only real difference between the statue and me at the moment were the shoes. I was wearing tennis shoes, not hiking boots. Those were still in my closet.
“Gerald?”
“Sophie.”
“What’s this?”
“A fountain the people here made for you. I think they build it about ten years from now.”
“Huh?”
“Time’s a funny thing, Sophie,” Gerald said, sounding very philosophical.
“Uh huh.”
We stood there for a few more minutes getting steadily wetter and colder. I was soaked through already so it didn’t much matter. But I could use a coat. There were lights on in some of the surrounding buildings, flickering orange light, but no one passed through the open courtyard or looked out a window to yell at us.
Wrapping my arms around myself, my gaze sweeping the courtyard, I finally got impatient. “What are we waiting for?”
“The alignment.”
“The alignment?”
“Yes. As someone—” he glared at me, “—delayed our original schedule, we missed the last one. Now we have to wait.”
Okay. Weird. But apparently, that was my life now. “Want to tell me where we’re going while we wait?”
“To see The Man. The ‘where’ won’t make any sense to you. You’ve never been there before.”
As rain dripped off the tip of my nose, I stared at the fountain statue that looked like me. And wondered.
“Here we go.” Gerald took my hand again and we were off.
He dragged me through three more settings before stopping for a breath. I looked around at the newest place, thinking I’d never complain about having more than two airport layovers again.
We were standing in the middle of a pasture of purple grass dotted with multicolored things that looked like miniature animals on sticks but were probably supposed to be flowers. The one tree I could see in the distance had round orange foliage and a florescent pink trunk. The sky was a light blue and the clouds were white. It looked like the kind of world a child would color in a coloring book.
“Is this it?” I did a single turn to take in the colorful landscape.
“Not yet. One last transition and we’re there. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait here for a bit.” Gerald glanced around as if nervous, his tail twitching in the bright sunshine.
I frowned, turned in a circle again, trying to figure out what had him spooked. This did not look like a dangerous place.
As we waited, Gerald’s tension passed to me. I found myself watching the horizon dreading the sight of some giant monster striding toward us. Gerald started tapping his foot.
“Almost time?” I murmured.
“Almost. Won’t be soon enough for me.”
“Mind telling me why you’re worried?”
“There are some bad things in this world. We don’t want them to notice us.”
“Bad as in…”
He froze, his gaze locking on something in the grass behind me. I turned slowly, hoping it was the alignment but terrified of seeing a giant snake.
What I saw horrified me more.
The little brightly colored flowers were moving. Not waving gently in the breeze. They were actually moving, in slow measured jumps on their reed thin stems. The flower heads shaped like animals were also moving, growing with every jump. Their misshapen heads twisted toward us, mouths gaping open to reveal a lot of very sharp looking teeth.
Teeth inside a flower mouth that looked vaguely like animal heads. That was bad.
“It’s gonna hurt if they bite us, isn’t it?” I didn’t really want to know. I turned in a circle. No escape route. We were surrounded. And the no-longer-so-little flower-monsters were closing in. “Don’t suppose you’ve got that alignment coming up anytime soon, Gerald.”
“Won’t be quick enough. They’re picking up speed. Here.” He grabbed my arm and tugged me closer to the ground.
I knelt down. “Will this help?”
“Yes.” He scrambled onto my shoulders before I knew what he was doing.
“Hey! You’re heavy.”
“Stand up, stand up, stand up!” The panic in his voice made me stumbled upward, choking when he clamped his arms around my neck to keep his balance.
Once at my full height again, I recognized this wasn’t helping me at all. “Why am I protecting you?”
“Because they probably won’t like you, but they love eating Heezgnomes. Don’t worry. Just don’t make any sudden moves.”
“Right. No sudden moves.” I adjusted his legs over my shoulders so I was holding him more firmly. He’d stopped choking me, but only because his arms were wrapped around the top of my head now instead of my neck. “You do realize if they bite me, I’m going to jump and scream, and you’re gonna come tumbling off.”
“Don’t do that!” His arms dropped back around my neck, squeezing tight.
I gagged. “If you choke me,” I wheezed, “I’ll pass out and you’ll end up on the ground sooner.” His arms loosened but only a little. “How long until the alignment?”
“Few more minutes.”
“Gerald.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t think I’m gonna like saving your world if I have to face miniature biting animals that look like flowers.”
The nearest flower animals were sniffing around my feet.
“Don’t worry,” Gerald said, his voice an octave higher in my ear, “we don’t have anything like these flowers in my world.”
“Oh good.”
A little yellow flower that looked like a cross between a dog and an elephant nudged my foot. Then sharp little teeth sunk deep into my tennis shoes, and I squealed in shock. I kicked out and sent the dog-elephant flying.
Chaos erupted.
Miniature animal flowers in primary colors swarmed my feet. I screeched and jumped around, kicking and stomping, not at all worried about the flower animals I was crushing under my shoe. If they weren’t been trying to eat me, I wouldn’t have had to step on them.
After a minute, I realized the attack had slowed. The flower animals were backing away from me. I looked at the grass around my feet. It looked like a crayon box had melted. Even my white tennis shoes were covered in color.
“Yuck.”
“You saved me. I can’t believe it. He said you would…” Gerald babbled in my ear, switching between English and some language I couldn’t understand.
I let him babble while I caught my breath, keeping a careful watch on the animal flowers. After all the stomping and with the carnage at my feet, they wisely stayed at a respectful distance.
Once I could breathe without wheezing, I tried to reach Gerald through all the babble. “Gerald.”
More babbling. Some patting of my head. Arms still too tight around my neck, but at least he wasn’t choking me anymore. Still. I needed his attention.
“Gerald!”
“What? What?”
“The alignment?”
“Oh. Right. Let me down.”
“You sure?” I eyed the milling animal flowers. They’d left us a circle of space, a sort of no-man’s land littered with crayon-colored flower corpses. But I didn’t trust them to stay away indefinitely.
“Yeah.” Gerald patted my head again. “Hurry. I don’t want to miss this one.”
Me neither. I knelt and let him slid off my back. Rolling my shoulders as I stood—geez, Heezgnomes were heavy for only being three feet tall!—I watched the surrounding flowers and grabbed Gerald’s hand. “Are all Heezgnomes so…sturdy.”
“Sturdy?”
“Weighty…” I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but also my back hurt now and he had interrupted me in the bathroom, so my ability to be delicate with feelings was low.
“Weighty?”
“Are you supposed to be so heavy?” I huffed.
“Yes.”
And we fell through the purple grass.