Chapter 2

Moving slowly around the cabin, I carefully looked out every window. The perspective changed slightly, the view stayed the same. I was looking at greenery. Only what I should be looking out into was the aftermath of a blizzard.

Jerking open the cabin door I stepped out onto the porch into a warm spring day. My senses all agreed — spring! Walking around the three sides of the cabin on the porch just confirmed the situation. Didn't explain, just confirmed.

Fuck it!

Breakfast first. Back to the stove for three eggs, a mound of hash browns, a pile of sausage links, and hobo toast. I centered myself while I cooked, solely focused on the mechanics.

I sat at the dining room table, eating an unhurried meal, my over easy eggs slathered in Tabasco. Finally sipping my coffee, I ruminated on my next steps.

Walking over to the gun cabinet, I decided that, in this case, "old friends were the best friends," screwing a 'can' to the muzzle of my Colt .45 auto, then strapping it into a tactical holster on my thigh. with my wakizashi on the other hip. Picking up my Streamlight flashlight along with the Robert's 'ring of keys' I walked off the porch into my unexpectedly transformed yard. Only the snowmobile and freight sleds gave any cue that the blizzard trek was only the night before.

I was looking at a loose row of outbuildings just beyond the Oak tree from the cabin. I decided to tackle them in order. Though in good repair the buildings had an air of long abandonment. They shared the building details with the cabin, being constructed with timbers, fieldstone, and slate roofs.

With my gun in my hand, I walked up to the first, and unlocked the full-width, hinged double doors, swinging them wide open to find a blacksmith shop with a forge, furnace, anvils, and extensive inventory of metal working tools. Carefully looking around, I found no evidence of any person. Leaving the double doors open, I moved down the line to the next.

This door opened into a machine shop filled with lathes, drill presses, milling machines, and other powered machines. Playing my flashlight around as I again looked for signs of 'human habitation'. I was shaking my head, wondering how Robert made this work without electricity. Then it dawned on me that belts connected the machines to a long shaft near the ceiling. I walked out side and behind the building to find a brick-set Horizontal Return Tubular Boiler connected to a Stationary Steam Engine whose pistons spun a hefty wheel attached by wide leather belt to a tiny pulley. driving that main shaft inside the building.

I had to smile at Robert's (or somebody's) ingenuity as I moved to the next. Swinging open the door to the next building I found a general workshop with broad workbenches, and ample storage shelves filled with hand tools, hardware, and parts.

I moved on to the last building. This one was very different, built entirely of stone, with a heavy, iron-bound plank door, and tiny windows barred by thick iron lattices. Unlocking and swinging open the door, I confronted an iron gate. Unlocking that, I entered a jail, with a pair of ten-by-ten cells along the back wall each framed with heavy, close-set iron bars even across the roof, and thick stone walls. The front wall by the door was hung with dozens and dozens of Darby handcuffs, leg irons, and combination restraints including chains with a cuff every couple feet, all of them lightly oiled and hanging ready on wood pegs.

Now I wasn't just wondering where or when I was but what I was?

Standing outside the jail holding my last key, I looked around, spotting an overgrown cluster of lilac bushes. Robert always talked about his love of lilacs...

Pressing into the center of the of the thicket, I found a modern steel door, set horizontally in a frame just inches above ground level. I'd found my last door.

Unlocking the door and swinging it up and open with a chain holding it upright I walked down the brick steps well below ground into the long narrow tunnel. Lights every ten feet brightly illuminated the brick lined shaft. Chambers widened every twenty feet, providing ample storage space.

A white piece of paper pinned to a cross beam fluttered in the breeze. I pulled it down to read in Roberts's careful script:

JEB, welcome to my and your world, a place of magic. You are well suited for your role here. I could tell you everything but that somehow seems unfair. Look around; I have left notes scattered about with essential information. The rest you must learn. Good luck -- RJ

That would be the Robert I remembered. He always called me JEB, my acronym I guess you could call it, with my name John Edward Brock. Robert also hated to ruin the surprise!

I wandered down the tunnel to the first widening, where I found a framed mural over four feet high by eight feet long. It was a diagram, with the grove surrounding this cabin at its center. It showed in some detail the roads, streams and the great woods close by. The attached note merely said to hang it in the cabin's great room. A three-foot-diameter globe sat next to it. Lying in front of it was a smaller, flexible, map with a brass compass next to it with a lid like a pocket watch. I picked up the map, to find a very detailed topographic map with many symbols. The note pinned to this one said:

This is a magic map. I read a story and liked it so much I had a wizard make one. The diamond at the center is your location. It will move as you do with the map magically updating your location and the features around you.

I folded the map, slipping it into my pocket along with the finely made compass as I moved forward. The rest of the tunnel was likewise filled with treasures and tiny cryptic notes, as I moved from one chamber to another, finding leather clothing, armor and chain mail, crossbow, a magical pack basket, and even an enchanted light crystal.

Finally, my mind overloaded, I carried the mural up the stairs into the cabin, hanging it from the hooks already set in the wall.

I was looking at it, trying to get the lay of the land, when it unexpectedly seemed to come alive. Tiny cartoon horses with riders suddenly appeared at the top of the map traveling down the map, following one of the lines representing a road. Startled, I stared at the mural for a moment. I grabbed my Steiner 10x50 binoculars as I ran out of the cabin to that end of the grove.

Hastily flopping on my belly behind a bush right at the edge of the woods, I saw the horsemen loping along the road, splashing across a small stream. The number of mounted horses and pack animals were exactly as depicted on the mural.