Jennifer Sorenson allowed the door to close behind her and stood for a moment gathering her thoughts. Twenty-seven years later and she was still amazed at how much love, worry and compassion a parent could feel. It had begun the moment Hannah was first placed in her arms, and had continued unabated, day and night, for the next three decades. As a younger woman, she would never have guessed that raising a child would be the most meaningful and important thing she would do in her life. Feeling inadequate, unable to help Hannah deal with the potential heartbreak of a failed relationship, she quickly opened the door again, stepped outside and called quietly, ‘Be careful, Hannah.’ Her daughter was already several blocks away; she couldn’t hear, but Jennifer, feeling better, returned inside to close up the shop.
Hannah arrived home to find no answer to any of her telephone messages. Showering quickly, she donned jeans, her running shoes and an old wool sweater she had bought in high school. Grabbing car keys and a Gore-tex jacket, she left the house for the drive up Clear Creek Canyon. Hannah disliked handbags, preferring instead to slip a thin leather wallet into her jacket or the back pocket of her jeans. She rarely wore make-up, but for those rare occasions when she needed the extra boost, she had a backpack with an array of beauty products stuffed haphazardly inside. Secretly, she was glad tonight was not an evening that merited that degree of preparation; she left the backpack on a chair.
Traffic was heavy heading west into the mountains. The ski season wasn’t yet underway, but October weekends meant changing aspens, and Interstate 70 was jammed with carloads of what the locals called ‘leaf peepers’. She didn’t want to grow too frustrated with Steven before she knew why he had been avoiding her, so she rolled down the windows and tried to enjoy the crisp autumn evening. She loved the fall and started looking forward to the changing season with the first cool evenings that blew through Denver in late August.
Hannah left the majority of motorists to continue west while she turned off and followed Clear Creek into Idaho Springs. She was surprised to find both Steven’s and Mark’s vehicles parked in the driveway outside 147 Tenth Street. From the dusting of snow colouring the pavement it was obvious that neither car had been moved. Either the boys had walked to work this morning and been delayed somewhere, or they had never left the house at all.
Lights were on in the front room, hallway and kitchen, but she didn’t see anyone moving about inside. She knocked on the side door, but no one answered. As she knocked again, she moved the barbecue grill on their porch and reached under the back wheel for the spare key Steven had used the weekend before. When the door remained unanswered, she took a deep breath and let herself inside.
Almost immediately, Hannah sensed something wrong in the house. She felt a strange sensation; she thought she could feel the air shimmering against her flesh, as if a window had been left cracked open during a hurricane. Reaching the living room, she saw what looked like static electricity, dancing in the air.
‘Steven,’ she called to the empty house, ‘are you here? Mark?’ No one answered and she stood riveted by the yellow and green lights flickering dimly above the disintegrating, secondhand sofa the boys seemed to love for reasons she couldn’t even begin to fathom. The peculiar nature of the shimmering atmosphere made her uncomfortable and she decided to leave a note for Steven before continuing her search for him in town.
‘Maybe they’re down at Owen’s,’ she muttered to herself, looking for a sheet of paper. Against one wall was Steven’s desk and she walked towards it, hoping to find something on which to scribble a quick message.
Discovering no pens on the desk, Hannah slid the wooden chair back and pulled open the top drawer – and as she did so, the odd lights and rippling air suddenly went completely still, as if they were operated by a hidden switch someone had just thrown in a different room.
‘What the hell?’ she asked, looking down at her feet. She hadn’t immediately noticed that the coffee table had been pushed back against the couch to accommodate a strange cloth tapestry rolled out on the wooden planks of the living room floor. She crouched down to feel the material between her fingers. It was smooth, but unlike any fabric she had ever seen, and it had been stitched meticulously, decorated with a series of symbols and shapes. Some appeared to be primitive caricatures of trees and mountains, but many were unusually shaped runes she did not recognise from any period in history. The cloth was obviously an antique, but she struggled to date the piece. She could not remember her grandfather ever showing her such an odd ornamentation style.
‘Your taste surprises me, Steven,’ Hannah announced to the empty room. She decided she would have to learn more about the tapestry once she had found him.
She turned back to the drawer, not noticing that the back legs of the chair she had slid across the floor had caused the cloth to bunch up on itself. Still no pen or pencil, not even a chewed stub. She closed the drawer and looked over at the log mantle above the fireplace. Several pens stood in an old fraternity mug near a photo of Mark Jenkins standing proudly next to a mountain bike atop what Hannah guessed was Trail Ridge Road in the national park.
‘Bingo,’ she announced, starting across the tapestry. Without thinking, she reached out with one hand and pushed the wooden chair back into place under the desk. The folds of wrinkled material flattened out against the cold floorboards and Hannah Sorenson disappeared from the room.
THE FIREPLACE
‘Garec, Sallax.’ Versen Bier waved to them from across the ancient hall. ‘Where have you been all day?’ Gazing into the half-light at the far end of the narrow chamber, Steven saw a group of workers hauling large wooden boxes down stone steps to a room beneath the palace’s ground floor. Torchlight brought some hazy visibility to the otherwise dark room, but not enough for Steven to see what was stored in the crates. The woodsman started towards the small group. He was a powerful-looking man with sandy brown hair, boyish features and muscular forearms, and dressed similarly to Garec and Sallax. In his belt he wore a long hunting knife and a small double-bit axe that looked honed to a razor’s edge.
‘Well, Sallax, look at your nose,’ Versen said, smiling. ‘What happened to you?’
‘He did,’ Sallax answered dryly, motioning towards Mark.
‘Aha. And who have we here?’ the woodsman asked the two foreigners. ‘From the look of your bonds, I’d say spies. Unless of course you’re making an innovative fashion statement and you expect all of us to be dressed this way in the coming Twinmoons.’
‘We’re not spies,’ Steven told him matter-of-factly.
Noticing Mark’s face, Versen asked, ‘Oh? And what happened to you?’
Mark forced a grin and nodded towards Sallax. ‘He did.’
Steven, Versen and Garec all chuckled, and Sallax turned towards the wall to avoid making eye-contact with any of them. Hearing laughter coming from the group, Brynne moved across the abandoned dining hall to join them.
‘Am I the only one who finds it odd you’re all laughing together? Especially when two of you are tied up?’ she asked. She was sweating openly from hauling boxes, but Mark found her curiously attractive, despite her grimy appearance.
Garec put his arm around Brynne’s shoulders and led her to stand before the two strangers. ‘This is Mark Jenkins and Steven Taylor. They are from Color- Colorado?’ He looked to Steven, who nodded. ‘Apparently, they fell through a magic tapestry they stole… no, found , and were transported to the beach near the point.’