Chapter 1, part 2

Naomi giggled with a touch of hysteria at the old woman holding the frying pan, AKA her savior. She smacked her hands over her mouth to hold in her panicked mirth.

“Are you okay, girl?”

She nodded still covering her mouth.

The old woman looked down at the sword. “You gonna pick that up?”

She thought about shaking her head. The sword had dried blood on it. But she could hear distant, angry, male shouts, indicating more Hammonds in the area. She picked it up. With the sword in her hands, her panic dropped a few degrees. She took a deep breath and asked the skillet-wielding woman, “Do you know anyplace we can go that’s safe?”

The old woman nodded. She grabbed the sleeve of Naomi’s sweatshirt and pulled her down the street. “Why didn’t you leave with the others?” she asked.

“What?” She stumbled as she struggled to fall in step with the old woman.

She stopped to peek around a corner. “Damn it, they’ve probably blocked every road,” she muttered. Naomi took a quick peek too. There was a barricade blocking the street. A couple of men stood sentry at it.

“Where am I? I just want to go home.”

“You can’t go home. You have to escape, but the every way is blocked.”

“What? Where is this? What’s going on?”

The old woman turned to her with narrowed eyes. “What do you mean, ‘what’s going on’? The town’s being pillaged by Tavik and his hoard! If you don’t get out of here, you’ll become a spoil of war. I’ve managed to get all the other women and children out. Where have you been?”

“I just got here! One minute, I was in my kitchen, and then I was in some burning building. I don’t know how I got here. Or where here is.”

The old woman’s eyebrows rose. “You got here by magic?”

She threw up her hands; the sword waggled in the air. “Yeah, it was magic. Poof! I’m here. Where is here?”

“So you’re a witch?” the old woman asked.

“What?”

“You’re a witch?”

She began to think that the old woman hadn’t been joking about the magic. “No, I’m not a witch.”

“Did a witch send you?” She really didn’t like how seriously the old woman was interrogating her about this.

“No, and there’s no such thing as magic or witches.”

The old woman crossed her arms and drew back to coolly look down her nose at her. “Then how did you get here?”

“I don’t know!”

“Then it could’ve been magic.”

“There’s no such thing!”

“Then how did you get here?”

She felt like she’d gotten stuck in some strange comedy sketch routine. “All right! If it makes you happy, it might've been magic.”

“Believe me dear, I am not happy about this at all. You are in grave danger.”

She slumped. “How are we going to get out of this?”

The old woman cupped her chin and appeared to go into deep thought. Naomi waited. The old woman’s eyes would lift slowly up every few seconds and then quickly fall back to the ground as she muttered to herself.

After a few minutes, the old woman shook her head. “I don’t know, but I promise I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

For some reason, Naomi felt like she really meant it. She may be crazy, but a determined crazy person could accomplish surprising things sometimes. She stuck out her hand. “Thanks. My name’s Naomi.”

The old woman eyes snapped to her. “What?”

She nodded. “Um Naomi, I was named after my grandmother. What's your--” The old woman grabbed a fistful of her sweatshirt and started dragging her again.

“Where are we going?”

“To the castle.” She pointed up the slope. What formed in Naomi head when she heard the term castle was the Disney trademark. What was on top of the hill was a cluster of stumpy stone towers with a wall around it.

“Do you think we’ll be safe there?”

“Yes, I know someone.”

“So they'll be able to hide us or get us to safety?”

“Don't worry. I have a plan.”

She had a plan now? How about sharing? “So what's the plan?”

“Don't worry about it.”

“Does it involve witches and magic?”

The old woman threw a not so friendly look back at her.

That had been kind of snarky. She decided to stick to safer topics. “So what's your name?” She half expected another preposterous answer. Maybe she'd say E=mc2 or Looney, actually that would be a pretty good name for her.

“I'm Agatha.”

“And where are we?”

“Harold’s Pass.” That didn’t tell her anything.

“How far’s that from Atlanta?”

The old woman shrugged her shoulders.

“What’s near here?”

“The Akron Mountains, the road to Ravant.”

“What?”

“Do you really not know how you came here?”

She started thinking about what she could remember. There’d been so many immediate things to worry about, mainly Hammond, that she hadn’t had a chance to really think. Here she was on a footpath headed to a castle, dragging a sword with someone else's blood on it with no clue how she got into this mess or how she was going to get out of it.

And to think, her day had started out so normally…

Continue to Chapter 1, part 3.