~~~Valerie~~~
Greenleaf opened up before me in tiny increments. At first, all I saw were trees, lots and lots of trees. Gradually, I started to glimpse dirt driveways and dirt roads hidden by brush and trees. After a while, I saw driveways with open lawns to either side, but with houses so far down the drive that I couldn’t see them. Slowly some of those driveways turned to gravel roads. Most I wasn’t able to spot until we came upon them. Eventually, the houses started coming into view a little at a time just as the road beneath us began to shift from dirt, gravel, broken pavement, and smooth asphalt.
When our vehicle bumped onto the paved road, I started, shocked by the sudden change. I hadn’t expected a paved road. Why? I don’t know. Stephanie had said they were rural, so I had been half expecting to step back in time to the Middle Ages. I’m glad I hadn’t voiced any of my thoughts or expectations aloud to her or Scott.
Stephanie laughed and shook her head at me as if she could read my mind. Scott looked annoyed and offended.
“Hey,” I said to both of them, “if Saul can look at me as if I have two heads, I can be surprised by what I find here.”
Besides, the paved roads made me wonder again if I were truly in another world. Scott’s shifting and disappearing act could have all been a show or a mere trick of the light. I didn’t say that last bit. I didn’t want to piss them off.
As we neared town, the houses started popping up closer and closer together and closer to the road, not as near one another as they were in my neighborhood, but close enough that two people could stand on the porch of two neighboring homes and almost hear each other scream hello.
The entire time we drove to town, Stephanie told me about herself and Scott.
I knew we’d reached the town when I saw a small park with a single child playing on a swing set. I didn’t see an adult anywhere near the child. I found that worrisome but told myself not to judge anyone until I knew the customs of their land. Behind the park was a small building that I assumed was a school. A bank came into view shortly after we passed the school, then a post office—all the little buildings you see on Christmas postcards depicting what life was like fifty to seventy years ago. I wondered at that moment when I saw an apothecary next to a library how it came to be that we had the same language. The two worlds were too similar to have different timelines and histories. I made a mental note to ask Stephanie about it at our nearest convenience.
There weren’t many people wandering the streets, and all of them looked human. I had hoped to see a fairy, a troll, hell even a smurf, but all I saw was the same group of humans I would have seen at home.
“We’re here,” Stephanie said from behind me, and I looked away from the couple I had been watching to see that we had pulled up in front of a two-story building.
The building was a dark red brick with five tall, thin windows that arched at the top running the front of the building with a beautifully crafted stained glass bevel door with matching transom set off to the right of the windows. The apartment above had a black metal balcony with windows that matched the storefront. The entire thing was too much and way out of my budget. The rent for the apartment alone would be a thousand or so a month back in my tiny hometown.
I turned to Stephanie to voice my worries that I couldn’t afford the building, but she was ready for my argument.
“Don’t start arguing. The rent for everything is seven hundred dollars, or well, Valeterra’s equivalent of such—five for the store and two for the apartment. We will help you out for the first couple of months if your sales aren’t enough. We have faith that in about six months you’ll be doing fantastic business.
“I hope so,” I said, looking up at the building. “Seven hundred dollars. That can’t be real.”
“We’ve already stocked the place with books,” Stephanie said as she unlocked the door and motioned for me to enter. “We photographed your store and a few others and a few libraries to make sure we had the right layout. Your stockroom has more books in it. We have people on Earth’s side who will be placing orders for you so that you can stay current with new releases and the like. Scott will show you how to work the database that runs your computer and register. It will be much more primitive than what you’re used to, sorry. It will show us, though, what you’re selling the most of to help us keep stock of what’s popular here.”
The rows and stacks of books amazed me. The place was a booklover’s wet dream. I wandered up and down the rows reading genre headings and book spines. A used bookstore sat in the back half of the store.
“I can’t run all of this by myself,” I said, opening the door to the used book section to see that it had an entrance from the side of the building and a register.
“You worry too much. We have that covered. Right now, it’ll just be you in the bookstore and a local woman in here. You only have two registers and two computers. You can’t have any more than that, or they interfere with people’s magic. Everything down here runs on solar energy and magic, meaning come about five in the afternoon, you’ll need to start closing down. That won’t be a problem here. People are used to it.
“You have electricity in your apartment, but please be conscious of it.”
She led me upstairs to the apartment via a door in the backroom. The place was large and had an open floor plan. The apartment only had four doors other than the one I’d just come through. Two opened into bedrooms, the third into the largest bathroom I’d ever seen, and the fourth led to a back stairway outside of the building.
“Do you have any questions before I leave you to get settled?” Stephanie asked an hour later after I’d explored the entire building, and Scott showed me how to use the register.
“You’re leaving?” I was immediately terrified.
“For the moment, yes. I have to meet with my boss in a few to let him know how things are going. I thought I would come back in a couple of hours to give you a tour of the town.”
“Good. I mean… Damn it. I sound like a child. I’m just nervous. I think I’ll be all right until then. I’ll make a list of questions as they come to me, so be prepared.”
“I will.” She laughed and walked out the door, leaving me alone in the large, empty apartment.
Someone had sparsely furnished the central area with a sofa, coffee table, and a small dining table with four chairs. Both bedrooms had large beds, dressers, and nightstands. There were only three pictures on the walls: one large painting of a forest at night with a wolf prowling the trees in the main room, a sepia-toned picture of the moon in one room, and a pastel one of a single flower bud floating in a sea of grass in the other room. I chose the room with the moon. The kitchen didn’t have any of the conveniences I was used to—no Keurig, no microwave, no toaster, and no electric can opener. I did have a gas stove and a small refrigerator.
I cried a little as I opened the boxes and suitcases Scott had left in the stock room of the bookstore and slowly made the apartment my home. As long as it took me to sort through my things and pack what I wanted to bring, it took half that time to unpack.
To keep from getting depressed at the sight of the empty apartment, I went downstairs to explore the store some more. I didn’t bring my Kindle with me, and I swore only to use my cell phone to send my sister messages so that she won’t get worried. Actually, my messages would go to someone at the border who would step across and forward them to her.
Not having access to my virtual library was going to be hard, as I had more books on the Kindle than I had brought with me.
I had a feeling that until my sister got here, I was going to have to immerse myself in the books in the store as a way of keeping myself occupied. I told myself that was a good thing. The people who were coming in to get the books wouldn’t know anything about them or their authors. Knowing what I had in stock would help me greatly when trying to sell the novels to people who knew nothing about my world.
An hour later, Stephanie and Scott came back to the store. A bell over the front door jingled when they came in, and it startled me. I had found a steamy paranormal romance, had settled on one of the sofas in the reading area, and was deep into the story. I jumped up and quickly put down the book at their entrance.
“Valerie, are you down here?” Stephanie called.
“Yes… Yes, I’m here.” I got up, put the book behind the counter to get later, and joined them.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“I am, but I don’t have any money.”
“What do you mean, you don’t have any money?”
“I mean, you guys were supposed to transfer my funds over here, show me how to access it, and all of that, but...”
“Oh, yeah, right. I forgot. We’ll take care of that over dinner. My boss is paying for tonight’s meal.”
“Okay. Let me get my things.” I went upstairs to grab my purse and keys. I locked the building behind us and followed them up the main street.
Most of the businesses had closed already. The rest were in the process. The shops we passed looked like ones you would see in any small downtown area. There was a toy store, a women’s clothing store, men’s clothing store, a bakery, a jewelry shop. There were things in the windows that I found odd like signs above clothing racks that labeled them tear resistant, flame resistant, and water resistant. Some racks even had a strange symbol on them and a lovely price tag.
“Those are magic-infused,” Stephanie informed me. “It means that when a hormonal shifter shifts at random and his clothes fall off, they will magically reassemble themselves.”
At my awed look, she said, “Not indefinitely, but they should last through at least five impromptu shifts. You’ll see it mostly in children and men’s clothes. Male shifters and weres, in particular, tend to have random emotional surges that cause them to shift without warning.”
“Females don’t?” I asked, looking to Scott to see how he reacted to her statement.
He didn’t bat an eye.
“Not as much. Shifter and were females tend only to do it during menstruation, especially when they are young, but during that time of the month, they stay home. Their animals aren’t in heat or anything like that when they first hit puberty. Thankfully, they don’t start that until their human side finds its mate, but the mood swings, cramps, and other symptoms can cause a female to shift three or four times a day. Some change to avoid the bleeding and discomfort, but we’ve found that if a female does that too much or spends their entire menstrual time in animal form, they end up with fertility problems.”
“I think my head hurts,” I said and laughed. “I’ve taken in too much information today.”
“It’s okay. I’ll try to stop by regularly until it’s time to get your sister to help you acclimate.”
We walked the rest of the way to a restaurant called The Grove about two blocks up in silence while I took in the sights. A few people passed us on the street. They stared at me but didn’t say anything to me. I tried not to stare back.