No, your eyes do not deceive you.

The phrase “dull red pickup truck” did indeed appear at the end of that last chapter. And yes, the pickup truck in question did indeed hit Atticus from the side.

It all happened far too fast for Atticus to comprehend. He stepped out onto a narrow plain of flat, dark ground, and then there came a terrible force against him, and in the blink of an eye he was on the ground, gasping for breath, seeing spots.

The driver-side door flew open. In a flash, a scrawny, red-haired woman leapt out and knelt by his side, checking him over frantically.

“Are you all right?” She practically screamed it at him. “Golly, please, please be all right…”

It was probably a very good sign that Atticus had the presence of mind to yell for her to, quote: “Get away from me-” and then a lengthy string of words I really shouldn’t repeat. His shouts startled her; she jumped back a little, taken by surprise. But then she scowled at him, and the look on her face was enough to make him uneasy in his addled state.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, but the woman just scowled at him some more.

“No, you’re not. You’ve just been hit by a pickup truck. Up you get, we’re going to the hospital.”

As she gently—yes, gently, Atticus was surprised to find—guided him back onto his feet, she froze, her eyes flicking up and down with an expression of shock as she took her first good look at him. More accurately, at his clothing. She sucked in a breath.

Atticus frowned condescendingly. “Something wrong with you, woman?”

She turned on him. “You’re from the Valley.” It wasn’t a question.

He blinked, nodded loosely. “Yes, I—”

“Atticus Fletcher?”

He froze.

Now how did she know a thing like that?

The red-haired woman did not take him to the hospital.

Instead, she took him directly across the street, to the source of the red light that had bathed Atticus’s face as he left the forest. Now, I know this is a subject about which you have been obsessively wondering, at least since Princess Tiffany encountered the light in the fourth chapter, so please, allow me to put your questions to rest.

The light was not from a car, as you might have been thinking. It was not from a bus, either. It was not from a train, or a boat, or a helicopter, or a motorcycle, or a tractor, or a flare gun, or a bird, or a plane, or Superman, or a flashlight, or a lightsaber, or an evil robotic overlord aiming to conquer the world from Alaska eastward.

(Too specific?)

Actually, the red light came from a sign. Five letters, stacked in a vertical line, though only four of them were lit. Not especially classy, if you ask me—but then, what can you really expect from an old, run-down otel?

Sorry. Motel. That unlit ‘M’ is really throwing me off.

Now, I recognize that you are likely aware of what a motel is. You have likely stayed in a few yourself. But just for a moment, I want you to imagine you haven’t. You’ve never even heard the word. You’ve spent your entire life living in a kingdom of a few hundred people, wearing armor and swinging swords and killing boars for supper.

And then, one night, you step out of that kingdom, only to be immediately hit by a pickup truck and dragged into a motel. A tad unsettling, don’t you think? Especially for someone with little to no experience ever being unsettled before.

Above all else there were two things that unsettled Atticus Fletcher as the red-haired woman helped him into the motel:

1. The motel was larger than Douglas’s castle.

2. The woman’s hair was curly.

The implications of the first item are obvious. This woman was no princess, yet the princess Atticus had known lived, somehow, in a smaller abode. Atticus had hardly existed in this foreign place for five minutes, and already its vastness shocked him to his core. (Though it must be admitted, getting hit by the pickup truck had already put him into shock, so take that how you will.)

The implications of the second item, to anyone who has not lived in the Valley, are less clear. I recognize that we have not gone into much—or really, any—detail concerning the general appearance of the Valley folk. I’ve mentioned that Princess Tiffany looked a bit different, with a unique skin tone and all that, and there is a reason for that. I will not discuss the reason yet, but I will tell you that while it is true that Tiffany did not look like the other Valley folk, there is one telling characteristic she had that was, in fact, incredibly similar. That characteristic, as it happens, is very straight hair.

That’s right.

Atticus Fletcher had never seen a curly-haired person in his life.

And in his already-vulnerable state, the implications of that simply broke his brain.

Abruptly Atticus realized the curly-haired woman’s mouth was moving, and though the ringing in his ears stubbornly remained, he forced himself to listen through it.


“What did you say?” he tried to ask, but all that came out was, “What…”

She understood.

“I said I’ve already got a room ready for you,” she told him. “I almost let someone book it yesterday, we were beginning to think you were never going to show up—”

“We?” he tried to ask, but this time he couldn’t get any sound out at all, and she kept talking.

“—but now you have, thank goodness, and thank goodness I didn’t let them book that room after all. I’ll have to check you over for injuries, of course… I am so sorry about that, by the way.”

“We?” he tried to ask again. All he managed was a frustrated grunt.

“My name’s Ash, in case you were wondering,” the woman went on. “Sorry, I just realized I hadn’t introduced myself. Might be awkward, me knowing who you are, you not knowing me. So I’m Ash. Or AJ. Call me Ashley Jane and you lose that room, I don’t care what your friend says.”

Friend? Atticus blinked. He’d never had one of those before.

That was just the shock he needed to shock him out of his state of shock. (Ooh, fun sentence.) Atticus’s head whipped around to look at the woman Ash, and when he tried to ask “My friend?” this time the words fell out problem-free. But even before she answered, even before the name left her lips, he knew. He knew exactly who she was talking about.

“Tiffany, of course.”

And even though he had known, the sound of her name awakened him in an instant. Atticus’s body protested as he straightened with purpose, but he ignored it and stopped in his tracks, taking Ash none too gently by the shoulder.

“Tiffany. Is she alive?”

Startled, Ash stammered under his serious gaze. “Wha—er, yes. Yes, she’s alive.”

“Is she safe?”

Now Ash laughed, removing his hand from her shoulder (which took a good deal of effort, for Atticus was, as I have said, incredibly strong). “Relax, Fletcher, she’s fine. She’s great, actually. Says she’s never been better.”

“Is she-”

“No, she’s not here.” Ash cut him off before he could finish the question—something that, as far as I am aware, had never been done to Atticus Fletcher before. “But she’ll be back tomorrow, probably sometime after dinner. She’s been staying with my brother for a few days; she wanted to explore the city a bit while she waited.”

“Waited?”

“For you.”

Atticus stared, suddenly growing suspicious. Tiffany had been chased through the woods by somebody, that much was clear. She wouldn’t have run so much otherwise, or tried so hard to disguise her trail. The woman standing before him was an unlikely suspect, but at the same time… well, anything was possible.

He cleared his throat. “Take me to her.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

“Look, Fletcher, you just got hit by a car—”

“That word means nothing to me. Take me to the princess.”

For a while, they simply stood there and looked at each other. The silence dripped with tension. Then at last, Ash looked down at something on her wrist (a watch, for those more educated than Atticus Fletcher) and shrugged.

“All right then. Should be a train leaving in fifteen. You swear you’re not too hurt?”

“I am fine.”

She nodded. “Then we’ll be on it.”



Back to Episode 5

Forward to Episode 7

Tune in next Friday, October 25 for episode seven…