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He’s created universes for me. Just to save me. Just to be with me.
How many other girls can say that about their man?
“You’re everything, Ellister,” I continue hugging him as the swirl becomes sluggish. “Everything I want. Everything I need. Just… everything.”
The swirling motion starts to slow, and I know we’re close. I brace myself for impact.
As the vortex loses steam, I sense the change in the atmosphere. My ears pop from pressure when we get spit out into cool air.
With a shout of exertion, Ellister spins us so his back is turned toward the ground. Less than a second later, we hit a solid surface.
It’s dark. In the past, Ellister has favored traveling to times of daylight. There’s something uplifting about going from a dim vortex to sudden brightness.
But he just went as far as he could.
“Are you okay?” I lightly touch Ellister’s exhausted face.
“I should be asking you that,” he counters, always putting me first. “How do you feel?”
“Good.” I wiggle my toes inside my fae slippers. “No symptoms.”
“Fantastic.” Eyelids heavy with fatigue, he smiles at me a little, showing one of his pointy teeth.
At some point during our travel, one of his caps came off. I look around for it, happening to get lucky when I spot it a couple feet away from his head.
I pluck it up from some brownish leaves on the ground, then I slip it into the pocket of his pants.
“So, where are we?Whenare we?” When I look up at the moon shining through the leaves overhead, I see orange, red, and yellow. From those colors, I’m estimating it’s October.
It smells like home. I’m well acquainted with the scent of damp leaves and crisp autumn in Vermont.
“As far as the year goes, I don’t know. We’re on the farm. Near the outskirts.” Ellister points to some place that’s cloaked in shadows of night. “In your original universe, the wrought iron fence would be just past those trees, but it’s not there.”
I gulp as my stomach twists into knots. “The fence was built in the 1940s. So we arrived before then?”
If we’re that far back, my parents haven’t even been born yet.
“I don’t think so. I felt us go past that time.”
“Then where’s the fence?”
Ellister’s face softens when he sees the concern in my eyes. “Remember, darling, in this reality, Waylon didn’t bargain away his grandchild’s life. He wouldn’t have feared the bad faerie man, and he wouldn’t have gone into debt building a barrier to keep me out.”
Relaxing, I blow out a sigh. He has a point.
He sits up, placing his hands on my hips as he glances around. We’re too deep in the forest to see anything other than the trees, but he sniffs the air and utilizes his super senses. “Car exhaust. It’s faint, but it’s in the air.” Then he looks up. “I hear a plane flying overhead.”
So cars and planes have been invented. “That’s good news.”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought us to the farm. It will be suspicious if we show up on foot, but I don’t have the energy to take us anywhere else.”
“Well, we’re not hijacking a vehicle.”
“It’s an option,” he says with a shrug.
“No.” I playfully push his shoulder. “The last thing we need to do is end up in jail.”
“Then you want to go with the drifter jig? Show up like the stray kittens do?”
