Stuck In Magic Read online

  Stuck In Magic

  Christopher Nuttall

  Chapter One

  I shouldn’t have been on that road.

  I should have been safe at home, in bed with my wife, but …

  I cursed savagely as I drove down the interstate, cursing my wife and her lover and the schools she’d chosen for the kids and everything else, including myself.

  It should have been so wonderful. I’d been given permission to go on leave a day early and, fool that I was, I had driven straight home to see my wife and kids. I’d walked in on her in bed with the neighbour, a fat fool who had nothing to recommend him beyond an even fatter bank account and a wife too in love with her social life to make a fuss about her husband’s infidelity. It had taken all the willpower I could muster, growing up a poor kid who’d decided the army offered him the only chance of a decent life, to keep from killing the pair of them. I honestly wasn’t sure why I’d hesitated.

  My fingers tightened on the wheel. Cleo and I had said some pretty horrible things to each other, as soon as the fat fool had fled. She’d screamed that I just didn’t have any ambition, that I could have moved up in the army or left for a high-paying civilian job somewhere … somewhere I’d be bored out of my skull within the week. I’d shouted back that she’d known what she was getting into, back when she became a military wife. God knew she’d coped well, in our early years of moving from post to post. It was only when the kids had come into our lives that she’d insisted on putting roots down somewhere permanent, somewhere the kids would have stable lives and schooling. And then the kids themselves had entered the fray …

  They’d known. They had to have known. And they’d said nothing.

  I pushed down on the accelerator, the car surging forward as if I could outrun my demons. I sure where I was going. I just wanted to get away. A hundred ideas ran through my head, each one more outrageous than the last. I could drive to a red light district, meet up with a few of my buddies and get insanely drunk. Or I could put in for BUD/S training or something – anything – that would get me away from my life. Or … I felt a wave of self-pity that would have surprised the men under my command, on my last deployment. I’d put everything into the marriage. I’d done everything right. And it hadn’t been enough.

  My fists clenched again as I peered into the darkness. The interstate was empty. I hadn’t seen another car for miles. I wasn’t even sure where I was.

  The stars overhead seemed to mock me, reminding me I was small in the eyes of the universe. Nothing I did would ever matter, in the long term. Nothing … I knew I should be thinking about divorce, about getting a lawyer to sort out custody and shit like that and … despair threatened to overwhelm me as I remembered an old teammate who’d gone through a very bitter divorce. He’d put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I understood, now, how he’d felt.

  Everything he’d worked for had vanished in the blink of an eye. And there was nothing he could have done that wouldn’t have made matters worse.

  Fuck, I thought, numbly.

  I frowned as I saw lights in the distance, flickering lights. The police? I forced myself to take a deep breath, slow down and drive sensibly. I didn’t want to be pulled over, not when I was in no state to handle it. There’d been too many horror stories about people being shot for me to want to risk it. The

  cops were jumpy these days. Everyone was.

  My eyes narrowed as the lights rose up in front of me. For a moment, I stared in disbelief. A helicopter? A light aircraft? Was I driving towards an airfield? It was possible … the lights darted and twisted in a way I would have thought impossible. A UFO? I snorted at the thought. It was insane. The lights were flickering … maybe they were fireworks. Some dumb kids, living in flyover country, letting off fireworks for the sheer hell of it. I’d done it myself, when I’d been a kid and thought I’d never amount to anything. My past self had been a fool. And yet …

  The air flared with light. I cursed, throwing up a hand to cover my eyes. A nuke? The car shook violently, as if I’d just driven into a shockwave. I kept my eyes tightly closed, hours upon hours spent reading the manuals for WMD

  attack echoing through my head. I slammed down on the breaks, feeling the car tilting … my head span so badly I was sure the car had been picked up by the shockwave and thrown back down the interstate. Was the country under attack?

  I’d heard the usual rumblings from Iran and North Korea, but … there’d been no hint they were going to throw a nuke at us. Even if they had … I couldn’t think of anything near that merited a nuclear strike. The closest major target was quite some distance away.

  A loud crash echoed through the car. I winced, my eyes snapping open. Bright sunlight beamed down at me. I stared, blinking stupidly. Sunlight? It had been near midnight, only a few short seconds ago. Had I blanked out? My fingers fumbled with the safety catch on my belt, trying to get free. If the country had been nuked … I heard glass crashing behind me and knew I hadn’t blanked out for more than a second or two, if that. The car was falling to pieces and my fingers were refusing to cooperate … I gritted my teeth, trying to open the door. It wasn’t easy. The car was at the bottom of a ditch.

  My head spun. What the fuck?

  I stared in disbelief as I forced the door open and stumbled into the ditch.

  I’d been on the interstate, driving through the plains. I wasn’t any longer.

  There was a forest behind me, as if I’d driven out of it, and a roughly-made road in front of me. The ditch reminded me of a trench I’d seen in Afghanistan, right down to the tiny trickle of water at the bottom. It was bizarre. I rubbed my head, wondering if I was delirious. It made as much sense as anything else. What the fuck had happened to me?

  The sense of unreality grew stronger as I looked back at the car. It was clearly smashed beyond all hope of repair, the front looking as if I’d driven her into a tank. And yet … there was no hint I’d actually driven out of the forest. I looked into the trees and felt a flicker of naked fear, something I hadn’t felt in years. It felt like unseen eyes were looking back at me. I hadn’t felt so threatened since I’d patrolled the streets of Baghdad during the Surge …

  It made no sense. I clambered out of the ditch and looked around. The entire world had changed. I could see mountains in the distance, mountains I could have sworn hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. The road itself looked like a poorly-maintained dusty track, rather than the interstate. I’d seen better roads in the Third World. I looked up into the clear blue sky and saw nothing, save for a handful of birds. There were no planes, no helicopters … nothing I would have expected to see, after a WMD attack. There wasn’t any mushroom cloud either. I swallowed hard as I realised that, whatever had happened, I wasn’t in Kansas any longer. I’d read a book where a nuclear blast had tossed a homestead through time and space. Had that happened to me? I hoped not. The future world had been nothing more than a dark mirror of the present.

  It could be worse, I told myself. Really.

  The thought didn’t reassure me as I tested the air. It was warm, although

  nowhere near as hot as Texas or Iraq. I had the feeling it was probably going to get a lot hotter, judging by the dusty road and the absence of any real traffic. The locals were probably trying to sleep through the worst of the heat, then resuming their business as the sun started to go back down. If there were any locals … a shiver ran down my spine as I realised there might not be any locals. For all I knew, there weren’t any locals.

  Hugh Farnham thought the same, I reminded myself. And look what happened to him.

  I snorted as I jumped back into the ditch and started to dig through the car.

  My pistol went on my belt, the handful of clips I’d brought with me i
nto my bag.

  I’d packed a handful of things in the car, including a first aid kit and a bunch of ration bars, but I hadn’t expected finding myself … somewhere. I kicked myself for not packing a rifle and … whatever else I might have needed. If I’d known I was going to fall through time, or whatever else had happened to me, I would have brought along everything from a reference library to tools and gear to build my own homestead. It would have been so much easier.

  My smartphone felt oddly warm as I took it out of my pocket and pushed the power switch. Nothing happened. I stared down at the device for a moment, then sniffed it. It smelt of molten metal and electrical fire. I shook my head slowly, remembering all the dire warnings about what EMPs would do to our electrical devices. Whatever had happened to me had been much more than a simple EMP, but it had clearly fried everything electrical in my car. I tested the radio, just to be sure. It was useless. I hesitated, then pointed the pistol down the ditch and fired. The gun, at least, worked properly. So did my clockwork watch.

  Although I have no idea what time it is here either, I thought. The sun suggested it was just past noon, but … that was nothing more than a guideline.

  Fuck.

  I finished searching the car, transferring everything useful to the bag. There were wasn’t much of any use, save for the pistol … I looked up, wondering if I would have to shoot a bird for dinner. The ration bars wouldn’t last very long.

  I cursed under my breath, wishing I’d thought to pack a handful of MREs. One of my buddies was a demented survivalist, stockpiling everything from medical supplies to MREs and enough canned food to feed an army. He’d invited me to stay with him, if the shit hit the fan. I wished he – and his supplies – were with me. I had a feeling I was going to need help.

  I clambered back onto the road and looked down at the car. I’d never been very attached to it – the dealer had tried to screw me, damn him – but it still felt wrong to see the crumpled mess. I hoped the fuel tank was intact … I couldn’t smell gas, yet that was meaningless. A match in the wrong place might set off an explosion. I might have been luckier than I’d realised. The EMP might have sparked a fire instead, turning the entire car into an inferno.

  Fuck, I thought, again.

  I peered east, then west, trying to decide which way to go. The air was growing warmer, the heat haze starting to blur my vision. There was no hint of which direction led to civilisation, no hint of anything … if indeed there was a civilisation. I told myself not to be silly. The road might be primitive, but it was clear proof that someone was trying to make the world a little smaller.

  And that suggested a unitary authority of some kind. The tribesmen I’d met in Afghanistan had been reluctant to help build roads outside their villages, fearing they’d be used and abused by terrorists, taxmen and other undesirables.

  They’d probably been right.

  A movement caught my eye as I looked west. Something was moving, coming out of the haze towards me. I tensed, one hand dropping to my pistol before I forced myself to stay calm. I had absolutely no idea what was coming. If I’d had a

  platoon behind me … I banished the wishful thinking with an effort as I strolled back, trying to find a place where they could see me well before they got close enough to pose a threat. I had no idea if they’d be jumpy, when they saw me.

  I’d spent enough time in the Third World to know that travellers were rarely considered welcome, particularly in war zones. It was quite possible the newcomers, whoever they were, would try to rob or kill me.

  I waited, as patiently as I could, as the newcomers took on shape and form. It looked like a wagon train, right out of the Wild West, combined with gypsy caravans and … a shiver ran down my spine at the complete absence of modern technology. I’d lived in trailer parks that had everything from satellite dishes to hot and cold running water. These people … there were no visible automobiles or weapons or everything else even the poorest had taken for granted. I had the feeling, suddenly, that I was about to come face to face with Laura Ingalls Wilder or someone like her. This was no meeting of the SCA.

  This was real.

  The caravan started to slow as they saw me. I held up my hands, uneasily aware that I didn’t look harmless. I’d had to look strong on the streets, then as a raw recruit and soldier … it had been important, back then, to look like you wouldn’t tolerate any nonsense. It was the quickest way to ensure there would be no nonsense. But now … I kept myself still, studying them as intensely as they were studying me. They didn’t have any weapons, but that didn’t make them harmless. My Drill Instructor had been smaller than me, yet he’d never had any trouble kicking my ass across the field.

  They were a strange lot, I decided. The first wagon had three people sitting up front: an elderly man who looked like a mix of African and Chinese, a middle-aged woman who looked as if she hailed from Mongolia and a young man who had a distantly Slavic appearance. I wondered, despite everything, if I was being tricked, if a hidden camera crew were about to jump out of nowhere and laugh at me. I’d seen enough tribal societies to know they were very suspicious of newcomers. It was strange to see such an odd racial mix.

  The rules might be different here, I thought. Don’t let your preconceptions get in the way of your understanding.

  The wagon train came to a halt. The elderly man stood and peered down at me.

  He had a vaguely grandfatherly face, the sort of person you would trust completely. I knew at once he was no one to mess with, or to jerk around. The other two held their places, but the younger man seemed to be shifting into position to attack … if necessary. I didn’t blame him. They had no way to know if I was friendly or not. The man spoke …

  I could have kicked myself. He didn’t speak English. Of course he didn’t speak English! I should have expected it, but I’d met English-speakers right across the globe. Here … it was anyone’s guess. I didn’t know what language he spoke, but it wasn’t English or Arabic or any of the other languages I’d studied over the years. I didn’t recognise a single word. Not one.

  “I don’t understand you,” I said, trying to convey a complete lack of comprehension. “My name is Elliot. Elliot Richardson.”

  They stared at me with equal lack of comprehension. The elderly man hesitated, then spoke again. I guessed he was trying a different language, one he didn’t speak anything like so well. It didn’t matter. I still couldn’t understand it.

  He tried a third language, then a fourth, both uselessly. I tried a handful of languages myself – the army had turned me into something of a linguist – but he didn’t seem to understand them. My heart sank. If I was … somewhere else …

  their languages might have nothing in common with earthly words. I might never be able to make myself understood.

  The man turned and shouted a word. “Jasmine!”

  I blinked. Jasmine? That, at least, sounded familiar. But they hadn’t understood my Arabic or my Farsi. I knew I wasn’t a perfect speaker, but I wasn’t exactly incomprehensible. And they didn’t look remotely Arabic. It might be nothing more than a coincidence or a loanword from another language, something that had moved from culture to culture so long ago that everyone had forgotten its origin.

  A girl – I guessed she was Jasmine – jumped out of the second wagon and landed neatly on her feet. I stared. She was stunning, with long dark hair, oriental eyes and a strikingly pale face. I figured she was around twenty, although it was hard to be sure. She raised her eyebrows when she saw me, then glanced at the elderly man. Her grandfather? The man said something to her, then looked at me.

  Jasmine held up a hand, then moved it in a strange pattern. I blinked in astonishment as I saw light flickering between her fingers. What the … her hand straightened out and jabbed towards me. I felt a tingle running through my body, a strange sense the world had tilted off its axis …

  “Hi,” Jasmine said. She spoke English! But … her lips weren’t matching her words. “Can you understand me?”
/>   I felt my knees buckle. What the fuck was that?

  Chapter Two

  “Can you understand me?” Jasmine was eying me, worriedly. “Can you …?”

  “Yes,” I managed. “What … what was that?”

  “Magic,” Jasmine said. She sounded slightly reassured. “A simple translation spell.”

  A simple … my mind seemed to stagger in utter disbelief. Magic? Impossible. I was dreaming. I had to be dreaming. I’d crashed the car and fallen into a coma and any moment now I’d wake up in a hospital bed, facing an enormous bill. Or I might die. The road had been empty when night had become day and … it was unlikely anyone would see the crash in time to save my life. It had been very dark. A car might drive past, the driver unaware there was anything to see. I could die at any moment.

  Jasmine stepped forward. “What would you like to be called?”

  I blinked. It was an odd way of asking my name. “Elliot,” I managed. “I’m called Elliot.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” Jasmine bobbed what looked like an old-fashioned curtsey. “You came out of the Greenwood?”

  My incomprehension must have shown on my face, because she pointed to the car and the trees beyond. It did look as though I’d driven through the foliage and straight into the ditch, although it was clearly impossible. There was no suggestion I’d crashed my way through the trees. They were practically a solid barrier. The handful of chinks within the foliage were barely big enough for a grown man. I felt claustrophobic just looking at them. I’d delved into enough tight spaces, during the war, to feel uneasy about going back inside.

  I found my voice. “What happened to me?”

  “Some people walk into the Greenwood and come out in a different time and place,” Jasmine said. She walked past me, her eyes narrowing as she saw the car. “I’m afraid there’s no way home.”

  “I have a family,” I protested. “I …”

  Jasmine turned to look at me. “I’m very sorry,” she said. I didn’t doubt her for a moment. “But there’s no way home.”