A loud clanging woke me up, driving the drill piercing my brain even deeper, until I felt nauseous. Was that a blacksmith banging on metal? It was a sound I’d only ever heard once before, at a living history museum in Virginia, but that once was enough to make the noise unforgettable. I must be dreaming, I realized, there was no way there could be a blacksmith on my boat. Only the boat wasn’t moving.

I sat up, a move that earned me even more pain and heaving stomach as soon as my head was vertical. I put my hand to my mouth and somehow managed to hold back the urge to be sick, but still had to keep my eyes clamped shut as pain coursed through me. My other hand began searching for the cause of the pain and I soon found a very large, hard knot at the back of my head.

“Holy hell! What happened?” The act of speaking just made my head hurt more and I growled low in my throat about the pain from a soft bed that I knew wasn’t mine even before I opened my eyes. There was no swaying, gentle rolling, or movement of any kind from the bed that should have been little more than a sheet covered cushion but was somehow a soft mattress I never wanted to leave. The world was still, stationary. Something was wrong.

I cracked one eye open, afraid of a piercing ray of light from one of the boat’s portholes, but found darkness lit only by flames too far away to make a difference. Fire, that’s not a good sign, especially not on a boat. I wasn’t so convinced I was on my boat, though. I scrambled from the tall bed and down to the floor, the wood gave me the final clue that this was not my boat. I was on land.

When you’ve lived on a small yacht for any length of time you know that even the slightest movement will make the boat sway and your body comes to naturally adjust to that, to even anticipate that movement and when it doesn’t happen you notice it. When the world didn’t shift around I knew I was either on a huge vessel, or on land. I don’t think many ships have wood floors and fires nowadays, so I had to choose the latter option, right?

I heard a whimper of confusion and fear escape my throat before I could squelch it and grimaced. I am not a wimp, I’m not a crybaby, the last few years of my life had crushed any weakness within me, but in that moment I was terrified. I tried to see into the darkness the fire did little to illuminate, but couldn’t make anything out. There was no window in the room, no lamp that my seeking hands could find; there wasn’t even a lantern for crying out loud.

I felt another whimper threatening to escape and stood up straight instead. I’ve divorced my husband and dealt with his stalker-games, I’ve sailed across the Atlantic alone; I’ve faced down a storm that would make grown man wet their pants...oh, the storm. Bits and pieces of memories started to play in my head, and I felt my knees go weak as the memory of the world turning upside down returned.

Had I died? Is that what this was? My hands sought out the wall on the side of the bed I was standing on as I tried to make sense of my current reality. Maybe I had died, I wasn’t a religious person, not by any measure, but maybe this was the afterlife I’d come to doubt existed. I looked around, my eyes searching out the darkness.

This can’t be heaven, there were no clouds or angels playing harps. I didn’t see clumps of reunited family members in white robes doing...whatever people were supposed to do in heaven. Surely heaven wouldn’t be this dark either?

I swayed towards the fire, the only source of light in the room. Maybe this was...the other place? I gulped as I looked down into the flames, my head throbbing fiercely at the brightness of the flames. I closed my aching eyes and turned away from the warmth.

I headed back to the bed. Despite the fire, I didn’t think this was hell either. Maybe I hadn’t been a total saint in my lifetime, but I couldn’t smell brimstone and sulfur, there was no devil poking me in the ass with a stick, and I couldn’t see a lake of fire where damned souls screamed out their eternal agony. Nope, I should be dead, and perhaps I was, but this place I now inhabited was not my culture’s concept of the afterlife.

Cold air streamed in from somewhere, a piercingly cold draft, and I clasped my arms over my chest just as I found the bed again. Had I somehow managed to survive the deadly freezing water and washed up on land somewhere? That’s when I realized I was naked and grabbed at the blanket on the bed. Nope, there was no way this was heaven, not if you wake up naked with no idea of where you were.

Memories of a movie flashed in my head, but I knew I wasn’t a college kid so maybe there wouldn’t be raving murderers of any kind outside hoping to murder me for betraying our kind. Hopefully.

I moved away from the bed, my hands held out to find the walls as my feet shuffled slowly away from the fire. If I could find a wall, perhaps I could find a door.

Voices joined the clanging sound I could hear, and I knew I must be on land. The only question now was where was I? I found a wall at last and started to move along it, until I felt the surface change and knew I must have found a door. I found a handle and twisted it, a relieved sigh escaped me as I pushed the door open.

Chaos, total, utter chaos met me when I opened the door. People, men, women, and children, bustled by and talked amongst themselves as I stood there, the blanket from the bed clasped around my shoulders. I could only stand there, my mouth hanging open, as the most beautiful people I’d ever seen went about their lives before me.

Dark haired and light, the tall people all had the fine features of the Nordic people, not the Hispanic or indigenous beauty of the people of South America that I had expected. For a moment I reconsidered whether I was dead or not. The people all wore leather and furs in styles I’d only ever seen in movies or pictures, never in real life. Not outside of costumes anyway. Time travel? Had I hit a weird Bermuda Triangle of shifty time in that storm?

I’d heard odd tales on my travels so the idea was as logical as the sight I saw before me, I thought as I scoffed at myself quietly. Where the hell am I?

“Ah, Thyra, you’re awake.” A very tall, very beautiful man came out of the crowd to join me. “Here, let’s go back inside where it’s quiet.”

I gaped at him and it was only my shock that had my feet moving as he took my elbow and guided me back into the dark of the room I’d only just escaped from. “You’re...”

“Yes, I’m Endre, come now, get back in bed.” He guided me gently to the bed, helping me to climb back up the tall frame and onto the mattress that welcomed me softly.

“You’re...” I could only stare at him, taking in the reality of him. He really was...

“Endre, yes. And you’re Thyra. Are you thirsty?” He didn’t look at me, only rearranged the blanket around me before he moved to take up a fur of some animal I couldn’t identify and placed it around my body.

“No, you’re...” But he interrupted me again.

“Hungry at all? I can fetch you something, gladly.” He went to the door and shouted for something in a language I couldn’t understand.

My headache returned with a fierce piercing pain and I moaned in agony as I turned on my side. The world began to spin and all I could do was hang on with my fingers clutched into the strange but incredibly soft fur.

“I told you that you needed to rest. Now you’ve made yourself ill again.” He soothed a hand down my head, softly, gently, and somehow the pain started to ease.

“Oh, that’s nice.” I murmured as the pain went away altogether and exhaustion took over. “Thank you, Dream Man.”