On the way down the hill, Jessica asked all sorts of questions, but she found out no more than she already had. It turned out Lauren had only time traveled twice before, once to visit her friend Jaelle in the first century with druids all around, and the other time for a 14th century visit with that woman Kelsey who had come to their hotel for a meeting. But this trip she didn't have any friends they could visit. And she wouldn't say just why she was here, though she did admit she had brought Katherine along because she knew their new friend could charm her way into anything.

They were coming up on the first farmhouse on the outskirts of the village when Lauren stopped them and turned to Katherine.

"Here's your first chance. Let's start with the clothes you and Jessica need. Don't let your shawls fall open so they see your modern clothes. Just tell them—"

Katherine suddenly steered them into a nearby thicket, breaking off Lauren’s nagging.

"Ouch!" Jessica squealed. "Why did you do that?"

When they were surrounded by bushes and small trees, Katherine stopped.

“Because Lauren's going to loan me her old-fashioned dress and we need a place to change, is why.”

Lauren looked about to protest, but then she saw the expectant look on Katherine's face and took off her woolen leine dress, showing that she had on bloomers and a camisole underneath. She started to remove these too.

But Katherine stopped her with a pretty wave of her hand.

"No, keep that on. No need to make yourself scandalous. Who knows how far these people venture out. One of them might happen upon you, and I’d hate myself if you had to face them in your birthday suit."

She said this in a way that made it look like she was doing Lauren a favor, and Lauren, obviously uncomfortable with the idea of taking off her clothes out here in the wild, was buying it. Fascinating.

Jessica slowly shook her head in wonder at Katherine's selling skills, searching for a suitable metaphor that really did them justice. ‘She could sell snow to an eskimo’ came to mind, and Jessica supposed that cliché would have to do, because she couldn't think of anything else.

Katherine had already wriggled out of her tiny little jacket and silk dress and handed them to Jessica, and as soon as Lauren took off the baggy wool dress, Katherine put it on. It hung extra baggy on Katherine, but would these people notice that her clothing was extra loose? Oh, maybe that would be a selling point, an excuse for her to get different clothes.

Putting on her blue shawl over Lauren's leine and straightening it to make sure each fold hung nicely down her long slender figure, Katherine pointed at both of them.

"I'm going down there alone—" she held up her hand to stop Lauren from talking. "When I said leave it to me, I meant leave it to me. You two wait here out of sight."

And then something troubling occurred to Jessica.

"What if they don't speak English? Didn't they speak Gaelic in the Highlands in the past?"

Lauren had that joyful, amazed, ‘I'm having so much fun!’ look on her face again.

Katherine was backing out of the thicket with her hood over her head to keep the twigs out of her long blonde hair. She held up her hand again to stop Lauren from talking.

"I already figured that out, because you know what?"

Lauren still seemed joyful.

"No, what?"

Katherine was out of the thicket now and walking backwards away from them on the grassy ground down the hill with her arms crossed in front of her and a big smile on her face.

"We understood those men on horseback yelling after us back near the castle, and they weren't speaking English. When I get back, you're going to tell us who those men were, how you knew who they were, and just what we've gotten ourselves into."

And with that, Katherine turned around and jogged down the hill in her sturdy and practical new shoes.

While they waited, Lauren took out another folded gunny sack and put Katherine’s clothing in it.

Jessica tried everything she could think of to get more information out of Lauren about how time travel worked: intellectual speculation, scholastic theorization, flattery, misdirection, even point-blank questions.

However, for someone so happy about what was going on, Lauren was oddly reticent. She just shook her head no and mumbled ‘Later, we’ll sleep.’

The two of them now sat on the grassy ground inside the thicket, hugging their shawls around them over their bent knees. It felt wonderful to rest.

“Maybe we should lie down and take a nap,” said Jessica. “We can keep each other warm.”

“Maybe,” said Lauren.

They lay down, but Jessica already knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. The farm wasn't that far away, and Katherine could have been back by now if she hadn’t been trying to buy two dresses from people who didn't normally sell their clothes. Looking at the sun, Jessica could tell there were two hours left yet before sunset, so Katherine was reasonably within her time limit.

She pulled away from her friend and sat up straighter, trying not to look afraid so much as angry. Anger was stronger, and she had already cried once today. Before that she hadn’t cried since she was a kid.

"You could've done a better job explaining everything,” she said without looking at Lauren. “You could've told us we were going to time travel and that was why we needed the clothes. I just didn't see the need for them, is all. Now that I see the need, of course I would've bought some."

Some of the joy drained out of Lauren's face, and she put a hand on Jessica's arm.

"We’ll be fine. Katherine will get you clothes and we’ll go into the village and find a place to stay. They may even have an inn."

Jessica tried to reproach Lauren with her eyes, but she knew it just came off as her panicking.

"You mean you don't even know if they have an inn?"

Lauren projected her joy at being here to Jessica, as if that were some sort of compensation for Jessica’s sore and tired muscles and empty stomach.

"No, I don't know where we are this time, just that we need to find lodging — preferably a private room, or I would've had Katherine ask for lodging at the farm."

Jessica wrinkled her brow.

“But you knew there was a village up here.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like I’ve been here before.”

“How did you know?”

“I … wait till we sleep.”

They fussed like this for a long while, with Lauren revealing nothing and Jessica growing more and more frustrated.

Finally, they saw Katherine leave the farmhouse and come walking up the hill, triumphantly carrying two motley and quite dirty leine dresses. They only had a scant half hour before sunset. Lauren got up and pulled Jessica up, and the two of them ran down to meet Katherine.

"Let’s go in that shed to change." Lauren nodded her head at the small structure near the farmhouse. "I've been watching, and though there was lots of activity earlier, they’ve all gone in the house."

Katherine smacked her lips, handing one of the motley leine to Jessica. It had been made from five different weaves of woolen cloth, unmade and added to each time the owner grew, most likely.

"Yeah, they're eating dinner now. They were so astonished at the earring I gave them in payment for these two raggedy dresses that they fed me too. I would've asked for a leftover box so that you could eat as well, but…"

Full of joy and excitement again, Lauren gave Katherine a little hug and then gestured for them to follow her as she ran to the shed. It was dark inside, but only half full of hay. They felt their way to an empty corner.

Katherine tried to hand Lauren one of the two used leine.

Lauren folded her arms and raised her chin at Katherine.

“You wear the dirty one. I tried to get you a brand new one that matched your eyes, and you refused it, remember?”

After much groaning, they all quickly changed clothes.

Katherine cleared her throat.

"Okay, why can't we just go back to the castle and use whatever you used to get us here to go back home to our time?”

Lauren took her time answering, and Jessica’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, because she could see that her friend was absent mindedly combing her fingers through her hair. And then Lauren stopped and nodded.

"Because those men at the castle are druids, evil druids. They'll keep us as slaves. That's what evil druids do."

Katherine threw up her hands in a very animated gesture and whirled toward the door.

"You're making things up so that we’ll stay here. I don't appreciate the trickery, Lauren. I'm going to take a little walk so that I don't do something I’ll later regret. When I come back, you had better have some answers for me, and they had better make sense."

Lauren tried to go after Katherine as she stormed off, but Jessica held her.

"I've never seen Katherine so mad. Let her cool off. She'll be fine. She's good with people, remember? Help me open this shutter so we can look out, see if we can spot the inn that you and I both know we need to find."

Lauren pushed hard. The shutter popped up, and the two of them peered out from under it at the buildings of the village. There weren’t many, maybe two dozen, though there were more farms all around the outskirts, and they could see a large manor house up in the hills.

Sighing a grateful sigh of blissful release, Jessica pointed out a building where some of the people wearing woolen leines and shawls — men and women both, though the men wore their shawls over one arm and under the other, and some men’s shawls were leather rather than wool — were coming and going merrily. Every time the door opened, music spilled out from inside. And most encouragingly, the place had a second story with several small windows.

An inn!

Lauren’s ‘happy to be on an adventure’ look was back.

"Good job spotting it. This'll be fun, you'll see."

Jessica had her doubts.

"How will we pay for our rooms, though?"

Lauren put her hand around a small pouch Jessica hadn't noticed. It hung from her belt, and when she jiggled it, it clinked.

Jessica smiled at Lauren, finally sharing some of her joy at being on an adventure, but then she remembered.

"We’d better go after Katherine. She's been gone longer than I thought she'd be. We have good news for her, which should help her mood."

But Lauren held her.

"No need. She's coming back to us."