This story has been a new experience for me--a combination of romance and science fiction is not what I normally write. However, I remember reading a book called Enchantress from the Stars by Sylvia Engdahl as a kid, a science fiction story with a strong love interest sub-plot. I was deeply moved by the story. I also have enjoyed an number of other science fiction stories with strong love interest elements, including short stories by Stanley Weinbaum, who wrote and died in the 1930s. If this effort could only be one tenth as powerful as the stories that inspired me, I'd be deeply pleased.

Amuto the Faun’s legs trembled. He took in a deep breath and tried to calm himself. The legs still shook.

He could not stand in an attempt to hide his quivering limbs, not when he’d been ordered to sit on the stone bench just outside Queen Layla’s throne room. Orders were orders, and the Queen had been known to have a creature killed for doing far less than standing up when not permitted.

Ornol the minotaur stood across from him, battleaxe in hand, glaring at him.

The problem of course with trembling legs as a faun was that his hooves could clatter on the stone floor. Amuto leaned forward and pressed his arms down on his legs to try to prevent any noise escaping from where his feet and the stone surface of the antechamber met. He was mostly successful. Mostly.

What could she want from me?

There was no self-evident answer. He had performed many tasks for Queen Layla. Who could say what this task would be?

The right side of the massive jade doors that led to the Queen’s chamber opened a hand’s width. Someone Amuto couldn’t see beckoned to Ornol. The minotaur stepped forward, a single eyebrow raised as if to say, Yes, what is it?

Queen Layla’s voice boomed from the open doorway, “Is the faun out there or not?”

The soft feminine voice of the Minister of Magic replied from the other side of the door, “He is, your majesty.”

“Send him in!” she thundered.

Ornol pointed at him and then at the door but he was already on his feet, moving quick, hoping the speed of his action would cover the sight and sound produced by his shaking legs. He crossed into the room and saw the Minister of Magic, Regulusia, hovering near the door. Behind the silver-haired elf sat the queen herself, on her high throne. Light from an unknown source above cascaded down onto her magnificent person. The features of her face twisted in continual change as if constructed from a whirlwind, her true form ever in state of flux—even though she projected various images of herself at whim. The images varied in many ways, but most showed a fierce beauty. Images that Amuto longed to desire, so breathtakingly beautiful they were--but he despaired of the fierceness and cruelty of his queen.

The room lacked physical warmth of any kind—or of any other type of warmth. Perhaps he would have loved her, but Queen Layla had banished love from her realm, leaving only a ghost of empty desire and quivering fear in Amuto’s heart.

His hooves clacked and clattered on his way to the place just before the first of twenty steps leading up to the throne. He bowed deeply, with the flourish of his trembling right hand that protocol required.

“What is it you wish of me, your Majesty?” He managed to keep his voice even and bereft of the fear coiling in his gut.

“I require your services.”

“Speak the word and it shall be done,” he squeaked. The coarse hair along his body grew erect. He forgot to add “your Majesty.” He didn’t dare look up at her face to see if she’d taken offense. Should he add it now? But if he did, he’d draw attention to the fact he hadn’t said it in the first place.

What to do?

After a long pause, she spoke. “There is a phenomenon. A passageway to another universe has opened in our world—I believe it leads to the world I came from, though much seems different there from my time. I have watched it for a number of days now, but it has failed to allow me passage. Since you are a fine scholar, one I trust more than any other in my kingdom, I want you to study it. You will verify which world is on the other side, if it is the same as the one I knew or not. If you can, open it so my glory may pass through.”

He kept his body low, maintaining the position the bow had taken him to, bent over more than halfway at the waist, his eyes at the floor. A passageway? He could hardly believe it. He knew the power of the magic of He-Who-Layla-Never-Names. How could anything ever cross through His barriers? But he could not allow himself to doubt Layla, not while in her presence, not even within his own mind. Outwardly he remarked, “A passageway? Yes, I have read about such things before, your Majesty.”

“Good. I want to be able to travel through it at will. In the meantime, be sure that none of my subjects will leave this realm through the passageway. Nor will you allow anyone to cross from the other side to my domain. If they do, they are to be captured! Do you understand?”

Did the Queen forget he was nothing more than a faun? “I…I am just one person, Majesty. How can I prevent anything…?” his voice trailed off.

“You have full authority to act in my name, up to half the kingdom’s resources. You shall not fail.” She hissed with menace. “Do you understand me now?”

He didn’t quite understand, but he dared not ask any other questions. “Ye-yes, your Majesty.”

Sheriff Lucy Spotted Wolf’s eyes stared longingly at the sandwich board outside the Loville town library. “Narnia Festival This Saturday.”

Who wouldn’t want to go to Narnia, she thought wistfully, surprising herself. Because that’s how she used to think when she was a girl. Now she was a woman and didn’t have time for that “fantasy crap” (as her grandmother used to call it).

In spite of her second thoughts, she stepped into the library. Her eyes scanned the place and then came back to the librarian main desk.

Wait, do I know that guy? A memory tugged at the back of her mind but eluded her full recall. Lucy walked closer to the desk to see him better. A simple gray suit and dark tie framed his body. He stood as tall as her with a smooth, clean shaven head and face. As he caught sight of her, a gleam appeared in his green eyes behind his glasses.

“How can I help you today, Sheriff Spotted Wolf?” His grin lit up his entire face, bringing attention to his firm angular jaw and cleft chin. The warmth of his smile made him appear trustworthy.

But a faint alarm of caution entered the back of her mind. You couldn’t trust men, could you?

“Do I know you?” she blurted out a bit harshly. She then wished she could recall the words.

The man’s eyebrow lifted. “Sheriff?”

He looked at her as if she’d grown a third eye. Maybe she had. In the past four days a lot had happened in Loville. A lot she couldn’t explain.

“You look familiar to me.” She couldn’t shake the fact that he did look like someone she used to know.

“Well, my name’s Robert Spencer,” the man said slowly. “You can call me ‘Bob’ if you like. Or ‘Rob.’ My late wife favored ‘Bobby’ for some reason.”

Lucy held his gaze as she tried to place him. Then it came to her. “Narnia, at Camp Echo Lake?”

Robert Spencer blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“You talked about Narnia. At a church camp, in Montana—the only time I ever went to one. When I was maybe twelve.”

He stared at her harder, his green eyes almost boring into her mind. She held his gaze, used to having to stand her ground before men who tried to intimidate her. “Lucy?” he finally said.

She nodded. “Lucy, like the girl in the book.”

A pleased chuckle rumbled from his chest, deep and gravely. “Lucy, it’s been ages.”

“So it has,” she nodded.

“I’ve seen you around town and all but I’d never suspected you and Lucy from back then were one and the same. How many years ago was that now?”

“Well, I think I was twelve. Around that age. Now I’m thirty-nine…so, twenty-seven years.”

“Wow,” his eyes rolled backward in memory. Then his eyes swept down and up her figure, looking without lingering into ogling. “You’ve changed a lot.”

Lucy felt a bit embarrassed, even though it was normal for men to notice her figure. She used to wear baggy clothes to hide it, but didn’t do so anymore, because her body was her body and it wasn’t her fault if men reacted to it. But generally speaking, she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the attention.

She didn’t find herself minding quite as much with Robert. First of all, he was treating her with respect. In spite of him having looked her over, his face hadn’t really changed when he’d done so, and he now had his eyes firmly fixed on her eyes. Not treating her like a piece of meat.

Second, in spite of him being at least ten years older than her, he’d aged extremely well. “You haven’t changed much at all. Less hair.”

He chuckled, his voice low and masculine, and passed a hand over his head. “Yeah, I used to keep it short when I had some. Now, it’s shorter than short.”

“It looks good on you.”

“Thanks…” His eyes moved back and forth, as he were searching around for a means to continue the conversation. Lucy remembered how she’d stared at his cleft chin when she was a girl. “Um, I seem to recall reading something in the paper about you. Weren’t you in the Army?”

Lucy nodded and almost left her response at that that before adding, “Yeah, enlisted at seventeen actually. Finished at Fort Carson after twenty as an MP. Then found a job as a deputy here in Loville. The former sheriff, Sheriff Powell, thought I’d do a good job replacing him. The rest is history.”

“Ah. He died of cancer if I remember correctly. Like my late wife—and my mother.” His face settled into lines of sorrow. Before Lucy could ask about his losses, he added, “But there were other deputies more senior in the department than you, right? Was there, ah, any resentment?”

Lucy’s gaze dropped from Robert’s green eyes to the cleft in his chin. His was not the kind of question she would normally answer when discussing the Sheriff’s Office. But for some reason, she found herself talking to Robert more than she otherwise would. “Hmm, resentment? A little from most of them. At first anyway. But almost all of them are over it.”

“Ah, still a problem child or two?”

She met his eyes again. She remembered now the powerful crush she’d had on him as a girl. “You could say that…but uh…enough about me. Um,” she felt her face flushing with embarrassment, as if she were a pre-teen girl again, “How about you? What have you done with yourself?”

“Well…I grew up in Loville, actually. And, I went to college at Montana State. Did some church and camp volunteering back then, as you know. Got my doctorate in English, taught at Idaho State for a long time. Came back here after my wife died to take care of my mother, who was also ill. Took a job as the town librarian last year. I didn’t need the frankly lousy pay, but I needed something to do with myself. As you said, ‘The rest is history.’”

“I’m sorry about your losses.”

He smiled at her reassuringly, as if he felt the need to make her feel better about his suffering. Something about his kind eyes and smile set her heart to beating harder.

“It’s…ah…the sort of thing that makes us long for the world beyond this one, if that makes any sense. As Lewis wrote in The Last Battle.”

“I never cared for the ending of that book.”

Robert’s eyes widened and he snapped his fingers. “I remember now—you were the one who was so sad about the ending, because The Last Battle was the last book, which meant there would never be any more Narnia! You said, ah, something about how you didn’t know if you’d ever be able to trust a fantasy story again, because it broke your heart.”

“Wow, Dr. Spencer, I’m impressed. You have a good memory.”

He tilted his head, his eyes twinkling. “Oh, please don’t call me that. I used to work at a university that trained physicians. I know very well the difference between a PhD and a doctor!” He grinned broadly.

“All right, uh, Robert.”

“Oh, not Bob or Rob?” his grin had turned mischievous.

“How about Robbie?” She winked at him. Some part of her was shocked at herself. I never wink at men!

He laughed. “Robert it is then.”

She found herself grinning too, in spite of the fact she’d long before learned to keep her demeanor serious at all times—that doing so enhanced her authority as a law enforcement officer. “All right, Robert. Nice to meet you, but I need to get back to work.” She offered him her hand. Some part of her asked herself, What am I doing, I don’t need to leave this soon!

He took her hand, his grip strong and warm. “The pleasure is all mine…but if I may ask, what brought you into the library today?”

Her hand lingered in his longer than needed. Eventually she withdrew it, feeling the warmth of his palm moving up her arm, as if he’d heated her whole body. “Um…I saw the sign about the Narnia festival.”

“Ah! So Narnia brought us together back then and it brings us back together twenty-seven later.”

Lucy shrugged. “I devoured that book as a girl, but haven’t read it since then. And not any other fantasy, either.” Her eyes roved over him anew. He’s wearing a suit—who wears a suit in this town? He looked good in the suit though. Very intelligent. Professional. Sharp. Trim, even athletic under the clothes. The thought of “under the clothes” brought a bit of a flush to her cheeks. Then she thought, How old am I, ten?

“No fantasy at all? Not even a popular movie, like The Princess Bride?” Robert’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Nope. I’m afraid if I get any clue a story has fantasy in it, I don’t watch. I even avoid most superhero movies.”

“Really? Wow, that’s very unusual.”

“That’s how much the ending of Narnia affected me. I figured real life has enough troubles—I’ve certainly seen enough. I don’t need to make myself cry over things that don’t even exist.”

He smiled with empathy, though his eyes were still widened in surprise. “Well, I’m very sorry The Last Battle had that effect on you. I would say this world needs more books like Narnia. It’s what inspired me to set up this weekend’s event.” He rubbed his chin and tilted his head as he looked at her. “Would you like to participate—since Narnia is the one and only fantasy story that’s been part of your life? If nobody else, I’m sure the children of Loville would appreciate it.”

“Um…” She almost said no, but some part of her didn’t want to cut off the conversation so soon. “What would you have me do?”

Robert rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Oh, I don’t know. Wear a costume if you’d like to. I think you’d make a splendid dryad. You’re a bit old to dress as Lucy.” He gave her another grin and waggled his eyebrows. “Though I imagine you might like to. Since that’s your first name.”

The familiarity with which he treated her made her uncomfortable but she couldn’t explain why. It wasn’t that he made her nervous. He didn’t set her on edge. Quite the opposite in fact. He made her want to…to…

To what, Lucy? She asked herself. Trust men again? You see where that got you before.

So she nodded seriously as she spoke, “Speaking of children, do you have any of your own?”

“No. Maggie and I tried but couldn’t. Though I think I’d like to try again someday. How about you? Do you have kids?”

“Um, no. Not at all.”

“Married?”

She shook her head “no” but vocalized for emphasis, “Never.”

“Ah.”

“Ah, what?”

Now it was his turn to flush a bit in the cheeks. “Well, it’s just that you’re quite a striking woman. One of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, in fact. Though I didn’t realize before now that it’s completely natural—you don’t wear makeup at all, do you?”

“Almost never.”

“Clearly you don’t need it.”

Ah. He seemed like a nice, trustworthy, highly intelligent man, but he’s trying to get into my pants. Like so many other men. She crossed her strong arms over her chest, unconsciously covering her breasts with the long sleeves of her uniform top. “Nope, I don’t need it—wearing makeup sends the wrong message.”

“Um, yes, I suppose you want to make it clear you are in charge. Law enforcement—a serious position.”

“Yes. But that’s not all. It tells men, at least some of them, that I’m not interested. So does keeping my hair short.”

“Oh, I see,” he said softly. But then he eyed her hair. “But your hair isn’t that short. To the middle of your ears is a bit on the…um, abbreviated side, but it could be much shorter.”

“Yes, but that would send a different kind of signal to other people I’m not interested in.”

“Well, I think that’s a bit of a stereotype—”

“A bit,” she interrupted. “But only a bit.”

“I’ll take your word for that…but…um…by what you said it seems you do have an interest in men, or do you…?” His voice trailed off.

Lucy felt a powerful urge at that moment to answer his question by kissing him. But she would have never made it twenty years in the Army if she didn’t know how to suppress urges. She didn’t need him. She didn’t need anyone.

Yet, still, she felt drawn to him. He seemed different than any other man she’d ever known, a feeling she’d had about him even when she’d first met him all those years ago. Like someone she could really trust.

She stood in that place for a long moment, looking at him, wondering what to say or do next. She never got the chance to find out what that would have been.

Pops of what people without the experience of real-world weapons often mistook for firecrackers rattled the glass pane of the library door. Lucy knew exactly what they were. Gunfire.

Lucy bolted out the library door. Why had she let thoughts of Robert distract her like that? Loville had been besieged by strange happenings for days that no one could explain. With determination she thrust that thought out of her and focused on the task at hand. Protecting her town.

The shots seem far enough away to justify her putting speed over caution. She crouched down, turning her head left and right as she pulled her Ruger Blackhawk .41 magnum revolver from her belt holster. It was Powell’s choice in guns, not hers—she preferred the magazine-fed weapons the Army trained her on. But a good thing about the .41 mag is it will drop a human being with one shot, without being the wrist-sprainer the .44 tended to be…

Back towards Main Street! Motion and shouting drew her that way.

She sprinted for the wall across the street from her, the side of a former drugstore-turned-Pentecostal-church-turned-boutique two months ago. Along the wall, she ran towards Main Street, her pistol held in both hands, her right index finger off the trigger, even though her .41 was a single-action weapon that would not fire unless she cocked the hammer first.

At the corner, she stopped and looked down the street to her left, even though she could see at least part of the problem was directly ahead of her. A green Subaru Outback parked across the street from where she’d run up had its hood smashed in—like something heavy had slammed into it. The car had two bullet holes through the driver’s side windshield on an angled trajectory that had blown out the window on the passenger’s front side.

To the left, several people were running back into buildings from the street. From danger: LEFT CLEAR.

She sprinted forward, around the front of the Subaru and onto the sidewalk. Shouts drew her into the town flower shop, which had its door propped open. Inside stood Deputy Rouse, his own Blackhawk in both hands, swearing up a storm. Greasy dark blond hair drooped over his forehead, down from under his sheriff’s office cowboy hat, matched by a drooping and graying handlebar mustache covering much of his pinched reddish face.

Rouse, more than any of other deputies, was a “problem child” as Robert Spencer had put it. He used to flirt with her intensely before she became sheriff (she’d made if very plain she wasn’t interested) but now that she was the boss, he treated her with a type of continual low-level disrespect. It had crossed her mind more than once to fire him, but she’d promised Sheriff Powell to keep everyone on as deputies for at least a year after taking over—four more months to go.

“Deputy, what happened?”

He glanced her way, then turned his head back in the direction it had been pointing. “No time for chit-chat now sheriff. There’s some kinda bear in here!”

“A bear? You’re sure?”

“It only had one eye but it had to be a bear—what in hell kinda freak bear I don’t know, but it was huge!”

“Why you standing here?” Her diction was brief but crisp—the way she spoke in combat.

Rouse had never been in combat. “It wenttuh the back, I don’ know why it went there, but I damn sure wasn’t gonna follow it and let it get me up close, so I’m waitin’ here—”

“Follow me!” she interrupted, lunging past him.

She had a brief fear of him shooting her in the back, but fear had never run her life. Caution, yes. Fear, no.

She passed by the aisles filled with flowers in seconds. A door to a back employee room stood before her. She twisted the doorknob with her left hand, then kicked the door hard with her right foot. She glanced back at Rouse, who hadn’t moved a muscle.

“Come on!”

Forward into the room with a single smallish round table, a fridge and various shelves, she saw a short hall leading to her left that might go to storage--and a closed door labeled MANAGER on her right. Straight ahead was a door that stood ajar. She saw a slice of poorly-paved alleyway through the back entrance.

She charged that direction and kicked the door hard when she got to it. It slammed open, clipping something to the left that cried out with a sharp, nasal grunt. She peered fast to the right, weapon pointed down an empty alley, before moving forward into the entrance.

She sidestepped right to move around the door itself, weapon up, because whatever it was that made the noise was on the other side of the door. “Do not move! Do not move! Do not move!” she bellowed as she stepped. Obviously if it was a bear it wouldn’t listen—but it might not be a bear.

Whatever was there on the other side of the entrance started running away from her before she cleared the door. The runner made a sound of hooves clacking on asphalt. Time seemed to slow down as she moved around the metal door that had blocked her view. She caught sight of a black shape, running away. It was huge. Like a bear. But it had hooves that clacked on the hard surface. And horns rising up from its head… but the back of a man.

“STOP!” she bellowed. To her partial surprise, it actually did. And turned her way, huffing at her, with a cow’s head and man’s body (with loads of dark body hair) and cow legs all combined. A minotaur. Like from Narnia.

No, a costume. “Drop to your knees, hands in the air!”

The dude-in-the-far-too-realistic costume must have been seven feet tall. And was carrying a battleax. And had a lot of muscle under his copious black body hair.

He raised the axe over his bull head, between his wide splayed horns, and made a squeal that weirdly reminded her of a pig. He smelled a bit like a pig, too.

And then he charged her way. From less than twenty meters.

“Drop!” she shouted in the fraction of the second it took to cock the hammer. Then she shot hit him in the sternum, between his nipples.

He didn’t even slow down.

The next shot was at the base of the neck. This time he staggered a little. He was only five meters away, still coming at her with the ax. The next shot was between his eyes.

He’s still coming. But slower. She backpedaled and fired, center body mass. Then again, center body mass. He fell forward, the axe moving forward, too. She had to leap sideways to keep it from slicing her as it clattered to the alley floor.

It’s no costume. The tail twitched—the legs…were all wrong for a man. The bull skin was attached at the neck to the man’s skin, naturally, permanently. She found her lips uttering the words out loud, “It’s no costume!”

Rouse appeared at the door, his gun waiving in her direction.

“Flagging!” she shouted.

He lowered his weapon, responding correctly to having pointed his weapon at her, “flagging” her—as in having threatened to put an American flag on her coffin. “Holy hell, boss, what is it?”

She didn’t know what to say. Some small part of her mind noted he’d never called her “boss” before. Even though he’d called Powell that.

“It…uh…it’s dead.” Weak tremors hit her hands and legs now. She breathed deep. It’s just adrenaline. No big deal.

But she breathed again and released the air slowly before speaking again. “Stay here with the body. I’m going to call the county coroner. This is a crime scene—this thing tried to kill me. We’ll need photos and all that. I’ll get caution tape—it’s in my vehicle. But your job is to make sure the site stays clean—keep people away. Got it?”

“Sure, boss.”

She nodded and stepped back into the store. The flower shop owner, Mrs. Peppin, wearing an old-fashioned blue floral pattern dress, walked her direction. “What’s going on?”

“No time to talk now, ma’am.” She moved left and forward and Mrs. Peppin mirrored her motion, her arms up as if she intended to surrender. Lucy stepped forward to the right and Mrs. Peppin shifted that way, too. So Lucy faked left and moved right to get past her. She trotted out the front door, which was still propped open, ignoring the woman’s cry of, “Wait!”

When she reached the street, she jogged at a quick pace the single block back to her SUV, her cowboy boots clacking on the asphalt. She got on the radio and called her other deputies. She called the coroner on her cell phone. There were other calls to make, but that was the beginning. The others could wait until later. She reloaded her pistol as fast as she could (it’s never good to leave your primary weapon unloaded), but the design of the Ruger didn’t make that easy.

When she exited the driver’s door to go to the back for the yellow caution tape, Robert Spencer appeared, as if from nowhere, on the sidewalk next to where she was parked. She looked down at the ground as she walked past him and said, “No time now, Robert.”

“Is everything OK? I heard gunshots.”

“Yes.” She opened the back of the SUV and grabbed the tape.

“Yes to everything OK or yes to gunshots?”

She couldn’t help but half smile at him as she replied, “Yes,” as she slammed shut the back hatch.

She then stopped and put a hand on his right shoulder. The touch sent a sensation, as if it were an electric shock, running up her arm into her body. She found herself taking in a surprised breath. She looked into his eyes and watched his pupils dilate in aroused interest.

She breathed in and out, fast, and her heart beat hard. The moment seemed to linger long, but she broke it by shaking her head. “I really am too busy right now,” she murmured.

Then she took off at a fast jog. Why I am responding to Robert like that? I only reacquainted myself with him just a half hour ago.

Focus, Lucy. Focus on what’s important.

Giving herself a mental shake, she decided to run around into the alley from the left side, from Washington Street, instead of going through the flower shop again. As soon as she rounded the corner into the alley, she saw a problem.

Nothing—and no one—was there.

She sprinted to across from where the back door of the flower shop was. She spun around, looking every direction for signs of movement. What if it hadn’t really been dead? What if it killed Rouse and stuffed him in a dumpster? She pulled her pistol from its holster.

But she saw no sign that Rouse had bled. In fact, she saw no blood at all. No blood at all!

The door to the back of the store popped open and she aimed and pulled the hammer back before she realized it was Deputy Rouse.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Flagging!”

She lowered her weapon and eased the hammer forward. “Where have you been? I thought you got killed!”

“Killed by what…HEY WHATNHELL HAPPENED TO THE BODY!”

“You tell me!” she bellowed, managing not to swear at him, because that would be unprofessional.

“I don’t know! I had to take a piss.”

“So you left your assigned post--in the Army, that’s a crime!”

Rouse shifted to sarcastic, “Well thank the Lord halleluiah amen than this ain’t the frickin’ army!” He growled through the last three words.

“You coulda gone on the wall if you had to go that bad—the alley’s empty. I was worried about gawkers, but there don’t seem to be any. Surprise!” Double surprise.

“That might be how they do things down at the res, but I’m not some animal. I know how to use indoor plumbin’!”

By “res” he meant “reservation.” Her heart pounded in her chest and her vision narrowed as if looking through a tunnel of red. She realized she could kill Rouse then and there. Her grip on her pistol tightened.

She breathed, in and out, in and out. Calm down, calm down. She holstered her pistol. Through gritted teeth she managed to say, “We’ll talk about what you did and didn’t do later…but when you left, the body was still here, right?”

“Yeah!”

“How long ago did you leave?”

“I don’t know—two minutes, five? I’m not really sure.”

She looked upwards at the sky, shaking her head. God in heaven, if you are actually there… She didn’t finish the thought in words, but visualized a lightning bolt frying Rouse on the spot.

She breathed deep again and found a voice that while not entirely calm, was a least smooth and even. “Ok, ok. We’ll be ok. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

Amuto knew the first and most straightforward matter was to place a guard post at the entrance to the other world. Ornol had lent him handpicked warriors of Queen Layla’s personal guard for the task. In coordination with the captain of the wood goblins, whom he put in charge of the guard detail, he requested gargoyles be placed at either end of the visible rift, out of sight along the sides of the steep mountain where this strange anomaly had appeared. They remained hidden so as not discourage others from attempting to cross from the other side—but to capture them if they dared.

Along the same lines, he gave his plan to the captain, who agreed the other guards should remain unseen. He employed three deathwings to fly far overhead in a circular pattern, with orders to capture, not kill, anything that should pass through. And the captain placed three squads of wood goblins into the nearby jungle ready to leap out at anyone who could somehow manage to elude the gargoyles and the deathwings. He and the goblin leader established a chain of command and ordered signal pixies to provide communications between the various beings. The captain made it clear all of them understood they’d been ordered by Queen Layla, all knowing they dare not shirk their duties lest they face her wrath.

All very easy, all very clear.

The rift itself proved more of a challenge.

Reading from a small book bound in black leather, he commanded the magic of the air to perform tasks he had designed to test the barrier, searching for a means by which the Queen could pass through. Some results surprised him. The air pressure between the two worlds differed, the other world with less dense air than his own. Yet an unexpected response of the ground magic that had created Velona—a magic produced by the One-Above-All, He-Whose-Name-Layla-Forbids—had acted in retroflex for a brief time, pulling air and objects from the other world into his own, until the magic had found a balance that maintained a barrier of a fixed pressure gradient between the two universes.

Objects had been scattered from the other world into his own during that time. He used a blue detect spell to set them to glowing. Most pieces were smaller than his fist, bits of broken glass and hunks of gray rock that on some sides were strangely smooth and which seemed to have an unnaturally fine grain. He also saw that wires which had never been hammered, because their cross-section was round, not flat, were also present. They were wrapped in an unknown substance colored green on some wires, black or white on others.

But there were other things, truly unusual things. An example was a red device that when he pressed down on it, made a metallic clunking sound and left a small folded piece of metal in place, each time he pressed down on it. As if the metal piece the machine pushed out was designed to penetrate something thin, then bend into itself. Obviously an instrument of torture.

A finding he actually did expect indicated traces of magic in trails, showing where creatures from his world had crossed over to the other side. One trail especially proved large and clear—that of a cyclops. Others were smaller, so he had a hard time identifying what they were. But the cyclops trail was unmistakable.

“Nuxa,” he said, calling a signal pixie. When it came, he ordered it to deliver his preliminary report to Queen Layla. She’d want to know about the cyclops as soon as possible.

The pixie blinked its oversized eyes a single time in reply. Signal pixies coded every message into a series of eye blinks. One blink was “Yes” -or- “Received.”

“Go on then,” he commanded.

It zoomed off faster than a lightning bee.

Something seemed wrong though, something serious. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what for several minutes. Then he realized.

Someone else, a being—a human—must have passed in from the other side. It was the only way to explain the imbalance of spiritual energy…somewhere, in Velona, a human being was hiding. He or she must be hiding, because otherwise the person would have been noticed by now….

The buzz of pixie wings interrupted his thoughts. The messenger had returned. It flashed its eyes at him in a code of one blink, two blinks, and pauses. Very quickly.

YOU ARE ORDERED TO PREPARE INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION FOR THE PURPOSE OF RECOVERING HER MAJESTY’S SUBJECTS WHO HAVE DEPARTED <break> YOU HAVE TWO HOURS TO REPORT <break> ORNOL WILL BE PASSING THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE <break> HIS ORDERS ARE TO TERMINATE THE CYCLOPS IF NEED BE BUT TO AVOID KILLING BEINGS FROM THE OTHER SIDE <break> ACKNOWLEDGE—SIGNED, LAYLA, HM

Two hours! I haven’t even started working on investigating the other world yet!

“Um…acknowledged,” he said, his voice squeaking under stress. The pixie zoomed off.

So now he turned through the pages of his black book rapidly, uttering quick bursts of language, looking beyond the wall, into the other world. Flipping through pages and speaking again. Studying the beyond. Again and again.

That was a preview of Entangled with a Faun. To read the rest purchase the book.

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