~~~Valerie~~~
Seven weeks later, I kissed my sister goodbye on the steps of our home. We were both bawling as if we would never see each other again. Gail was crying that hard because I was leaving her side for the first time in years despite the fact that I promised her that I wouldn’t stay gone forever and that I would be home during the holidays. I prayed that she would be in Valeterra within the year, and I knew the probability was high that she would be, but I cried as if I were saying goodbye to her, the house, our life together for the last time. I also cried because I was scared of what I was about to do.
All morning, Gail followed me from my room to the SUV parked in front of our house and back again, as I loaded the vehicle with all the items I couldn’t bring myself to leave behind. I couldn’t take any furniture yet, but I packed nearly every item of clothing I owned, all my favorite books, photos, and pretty much whatever else I could fit into the back of the vehicle.
Instead of telling Gail that I was taking a trip to Europe or a cruise, I told her I was driving across the country, and I didn’t know when I’d come back home. I told her that I needed to clear my head and have some alone time. That last part was true. I was going to use the time to focus on myself.
Over the last few years, I’d gained more weight than I would have liked. I’d always been on the thick side, but what I weighed right at that moment was more than I’d ever weighed. I might take up jogging, I told myself while planning my new life. My health wasn’t bad, but I figured I should probably get a handle on things before I developed diabetes and other problems. I wasn’t sure if they had yoga classes in Valeterra, but one could hope, or I could get a few books to teach myself some of the poses.
Stephanie wasn’t big on dispersing information about Valeterra despite my constant barrage of questions. She did tell me that Valeterra was more rural than our world was, but that was due to the low population and lack of technology. They didn’t need ten story apartment complexes to house large families or skyscrapers for big businesses. She told me to think of the smallest town I had ever visited that had maybe one stop light in the middle of Main Street because most of their towns were that size. Some were slightly bigger, but most were much smaller.
I was both anxious and scared to cross over to Valeterra. At the same time, I was dubious that it existed. I finally saw the video of a male, not Jackson unfortunately, stripping and shifting. Stephanie also showed me videos taken of the portal zones. Yes, the videos looked real and helped convince me I wasn’t losing my mind in agreeing to everything. The money they spent on me also helped. I couldn’t see spending that much on someone like me for a hoax.
Reluctantly, I pulled myself from my sister’s arms and got into the vehicle. Without looking back, I pulled out of my driveway and turned toward the interstate. Stephanie and a tall, dark-haired gentleman by the name of Scott met me at a small airport across town. We wouldn’t be flying to the portal, but they would be able to store my vehicle there for me to use when I returned. My SUV wasn’t properly equipped to run in their world. When I baulked about not having my own form of transportation, Stephanie told me to worry. Very few people in her world had cars, as very few creatures were in need of one, and that they would provide me one if I needed it.
At the airport, Scott transferred my belongings to a bigger vehicle that didn’t look that much different from one of ours on the outside. ON the inside though it ran on solar power while in our world and magic and solar in Valeterra. Stephanie and I sat in the middle row while Scott drove so that she and I could talk about what I should expect. She was vague on so much of it that I worried even more that they were playing me or that I was walking into something completely different than a simple “set up a bookstore and maybe meet a hot guy” situation.
Scott drove us deep into the Tennessee mountains. When the road became gravel, then became dirt, I started to panic.
“Everything is fine, Ms. Stutts,” Stephanie said. “Some of the portals are in slightly more public areas, but most are in a secure place like this, which is a good thing. You wouldn’t want people and creatures moving back and forth at random. Their location also makes us, and them, wonder if someone from Valeterra didn’t open the portals on purpose.”
“Is that possible? Why would one of them do something like that,” I asked, trying not to let the blurry trees passing us by distract me.
“It’s possible, yes. Proven, no. As to why, I don’t know. Either way, it’s a good thing that whatever caused them made them mostly hidden from the people of this world.”
“Will the other side look like this?” I said, nodding toward the world outside the vehicle.
“Pretty much. Greenleaf is close to the portal, though. Maybe a ten-minute drive, so you won’t be in the middle of the woods.”
We drove for another twenty minutes, then Scott slowed to a stop. He turned to face Stephanie, and my heart began to beat wildly in my chest. That was the moment where I would die—I just knew it. Those two were Satanists or something, and they were about to sacrifice me.
“What’s going on?” I asked, reaching for the door handle, readying myself to escape. I wouldn’t get far as out of shape as I was. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.
“I have to cross over first to let them know you are here,” Scott said.
Stephanie nodded and opened her door.
“Want to move up front so you can better see where we’re going?” she asked me.
I nodded slowly and followed Scott out of the vehicle. He walked around to the front bumper and pulled off his jacket, socks, shirt, and pants, while Stephanie and I watched. It took me a second to realize what he was about to do and from which world he was from, and it wasn’t mine.
Shocked, I opened my mouth to say something, but Stephanie cut me off, saying, “Watch.”
Scott didn’t seem to mind that Stephanie and I were seeing him in the near nude. I blushed and looked away when he got to his underwear. Stephanie did not.
I’d seen the video of the wolf changing. I’d read about how shapeshifters and weres turned in books and saw them do it in movies and TV shows. Some shows depicted the shift as painful, others as if it happened in the blink of an eye. Scott’s change was in between the two just like the man in the video’s change. He didn’t make a noise as if it hurt, but he grunted a time or two as his joints popped and his body transformed into a dark, gray cougar. It didn’t take long, but I was so awestruck by it that it felt like it took an hour.
Up until then, I had told myself I believed, or well, that I wanted to believe, but I hadn’t believed, not really, not until Scott shifted right in front of me. Once he was in animal form he turned to Stephanie before disappearing.
“What the…” I said.
“He said he’d be right back,” Stephanie said as if that was what I was questioning. That hadn’t been what I wanted to know, but once she mentioned it, I then wanted to know how she’d known what he said.
“You understood him?” I asked, turning on her in confusion and fear.
“Yeah,” she said as if her being able to do so meant nothing.
“How?” I asked, growing a bit angrier.
“I’ll tell you all about Scott and me when we cross over,” she said, reaching for the door handle.
At that second, Scott crossed back over the border. He apparently gave Stephanie the go ahead, because she asked me to get into the vehicle.
“Can we cross over in this thing?” I asked. My head was swimming, so I chose that subject to focus my thoughts.
“We can cross through this portal in something this large and heavy, but not many of the other portals.”
Looking doubtfully from her to the area the portal was supposed to be and down at the cougar pacing the portal’s entrance, I got into the vehicle. There was no going back then, and I knew it. Bracing myself for what was to come, I stared forward and let a virtual stranger take me to a new world.
I didn’t know what I thought I expected to see when we crossed that invisible line, but it wasn’t what I saw before me. I looked over my shoulder, then back through the windshield. Nothing had changed. Nothing. The trees and plant life that had surrounded me on my side of the portal surrounded me on the Valeterra side. If I hadn’t seen Scott change and disappear into thin air, I would have been confident that the two of them had been lying to me.
Stephanie pulled to a stop a few yards from the portal and two men approached her window. I had been so caught up in looking forward and out my window that I hadn’t seen the log building to the left of us that almost blended into the forest. She rolled down her window and handed Scott’s clothing to one of the men. He carried it into the building while the other one gaped at me.
“Close your mouth, Saul. You’ll catch flies,” Stephanie said to the man. “Yes, she’s a human, but she won’t bite you. Compared to you and your inner bear, she’s harmless.”
I wanted to growl at her words, but if he was a bear, then harmless was what I was in comparison. I also wanted to know who she was. She obviously wasn’t human. I’d known something was off about her, but I hadn’t guessed she wasn’t human.
Saul didn’t respond to her. He just kept staring at me.
The second man came back with a human-looking Scott in tow. Stephanie got out of the vehicle and moved to the middle seat. I started to ask her if she wanted me to join her, but she shook her head before I could open my mouth.
“You stay up there. I’m from Greenleaf. I know the town. You enjoy the view.”
Scott nodded to the two men, and we started toward town. I grew nervous all over again.