New Wilderness

Dixie’s stomach rumbled. She was perched on a slender branch, fifteen feet above the ground.

A rabbit-shaped creature hopped closer to the trap she had set. The creature had blue fur, floppy ears, and six eyes atop its head. Dixie had never seen one up close. As it moved closer, the creature trailed an afterimage of glowing mist or spores -- Dixie didn’t know which. Among the rainbow of luminescent forestry, the rabbit didn’t stand out as much as it would have in Dixie’s world.

The six-eyed rabbit sniffed a severed human hand that Dixie had left as bait. It unhinged its jaw, and began to swallow the hand, starting with the wrist.

“Come to mama,” Dixie whispered. She tapped a pendant hanging around her neck, and a matching necklace snapped to life on the ground. The rabbit tried to leap away, but the silver chain ensnared its back legs. In less than a second, the necklace twisted around the rabbit’s body, like a snake constricting a meal.

“Yes!” Dixie pumped her fist in the air.

Then, the necklace began to glow. There was a green flash, and tiny pieces of rabbit exploded across the forest floor. The hand, rabbit, and necklace were nothing but splattered goop.

“Awww,” moaned Dixie. She plucked her pendant free from the string around her neck. “Why’d you go and blow up my food? I thought you was just gonna trap it. Stupid one-use, magic treasure!”

Dixie hurled the hunk of silver into the forest, and didn’t see where it landed.

“Now what am I gonna eat?”

For almost five months, by her count, Dixie had been trapped in this strange, enchanted forest. As an elf, and she had grown up in the woods. But these woods weren’t like anything she knew. This was a different plane of existence entirely. Days and nights floated by in an endless twilight. Plants and animals gave off orange and green and blue light. In place of soil or rocks or large bodies of water, there was teeming plant ƒlife and layers of ancient sod and sphagnum.

Everything in this place was more alive. That was the best way Dixie could put it. There was a pulse that seemed to ripple through the air and all of the living creatures around her. Each creature’s heartbeat was at a different tempo, but it was the same meter. She felt her own heartbeat matching the rhythm, too.

So far, Dixie hadn’t seen another humanoid creature. That didn’t necessarily surprise her, though. She had crossed into this plane from an island in the middle of the ocean. Everything in her world had a parallel shape in this one, so even though the ocean become an ocean of moss, she was still stranded in the middle of nowhere.

Dixie wondered where she was relative to the material plane. She had island-hopped her way back to what she assumed was a continent. It was strange to see a forest mimicking a coastline with no water to hold it at bay. She had entered the forest three weeks ago, just as she was running short on magical items to keep her supplied. The necklace and pendant was the last piece of enchanted treasure she had carried from the island. From now on, she had to hunt for food the old-fashioned way.

Dixie dropped to the ground, and the moss provided a springy landing pad. She scoped out the area. There was nothing left of her trap —nothing she could use, anyway.

Then, Dixie heard a strange, percussive sound. A few moments later, a similar noise responded to the first. They were signals, she thought. And they were coming closer. Scrunching sounds accompanied the clicks and clacks. Dixie pressed herself against a tree, facing herself away from the approaching creatures. She summoned a gleaming white javelin. It appeared out of thin air, dropping into her hands. It wasn’t the ideal weapon for a forest like this, but it was the best she had.

A few moments later, two insect-like creatures stepped into view. They had black eyes, mandibles instead of mouths, and semi-transparent exoskeletons. Surprisingly, they were bipedal, and roughly humanoid. The two of them looked out-of-place slashing through the thick flora. They were dressed in untidy leather gear, and each held hooked cutlasses. One of them looked older than the other.

The two creatures surveyed the area, and both scratched the carapace on their scalps when they saw the jellified rabbit remains. Dixie held her breath, thinking flat thoughts. The younger of the creatures’ eyes followed a trail of green goo, and its eyes slowly lighted on Dixie, then went wide.

It pointed, and its mandibles moved to shout, but Dixie leapt from the shadows before it could say anything.

Dixie and the creature crashed to the ground. It gasped, and lay motionless for a moment. Dixie raised herself to a kneeling position, knee pinning the creature to the ground. She held the javelin pointed towards the creature’s held, then turned to the older one.

“Freeze,” she shouted. “Or your friend ain’t gonna see tomorrow. And I reckon you neither, but I’m willing to find out.”

The older creature raised its arms, palms out, still holding the sword in its right hand.

“Who are you?” The older one spoke in common, enunciated every syllable with care.

“Name’s Dixie. Who’s asking?” Dixie raised an eyebrow.

The older one pointed at itself, and said, “Percillus.” Then, it pointed to the one beneath Dixie. “Nauster.”

“Nice to meet ya!” Dixie smiled. “Hand me your sword and I’ll let your friend go—uh, Percy, was it?”

“Percillus.”

“Right,” Dixie nodded. She reached out a hand. “Come on then. Hand it over.”

Percillus turned his sword over to Dixie, and she stepped off of Nauster.

“Thanks guys,” said Dixie. “Sorry, I’m a little jumpy, seeing as I ain’t seen civilized folk — or any folk, for that matter — for a couple months. Nice sword!”

While Dixie looked over the cutlass, Percillus helped Nauster to his feet. The two of them looked confused. Dixie tested the sword’s weight as she swung it through the air.

“Not bad,” she said.

“How did you—er—what are you doing here?” asked Nauster.

“Well, I’ll tell ya, but mind me if I’m a little outta practice. We was hunting this big ole pirate treasure, but there was another pirate hunting us the whole time. He caught up, and then…”

Dixie tossed the sword back to Percillus, then scratched her head.

“It gets kinda fuzzy. There was an explosion, then we’re getting dragged onto some island. Next thing I know, I’m leading an inter-dimensional jailbreak. That is, til I got hit on the head something fierce. I wake up with the biggest headache you ever known, with nothing but some giant trees and a stash of magic weapons. That was a few months back, and I’ve been awful hungry most of the time since then. Speaking of, you got any food on you? I’d love to tell more, but I’m not gonna get far on an empty stomach.”

Percillus leaned towards Nauster, and Dixie heard the clicking sound as they spoke in some strange language. Nauster gesticulated in large, sweeping motions. Dixie twirled the javelin. She had been practicing tossing it in the air and catching it again. Now, she could catch it most of the time, but every three or four attempts she would send it flying to the side or in front of her.

Finally, Percillus and Nauster stopped whispering to each other. Nauster crossed his arms, and Percillus said, “We have food. We will give you some, but in exchange for services.”

Dixie squinted.

“Hang on now, just what kind of elf do you think you’re talking to? I am a lady, and I don’t perform no services just to get by.”

“Apologies,” said Nauster. “We do not mean the services you insinuate. We have a vessel, and it has recently become damaged. If you can help repair it, then we have means to pay you.”

“Well, ain’t this your lucky day?” said Dixie. “I ran munitions and maintenance aboard the Feral Lady, back when she was still afloat. I can fix whatever you throw my way.”

She twirled the javelin one last time, then tossed it in the air, and it vanished.

“Lead the way,” Dixie said. Nauster and Percillus strung their cutlasses back through their belts, and started pushing through the underbrush and foliage along the path they had cut.

After several minutes, Dixie heard more voices chattering up ahead. They emerged into a clearing of shattered trees and crushed plant life that looked like it had been formed by a falling meteoroid. In the center of a small crater half a dozen insectoid creatures just like Nauster and Percillus tended to a ship unlike any Dixie had seen before.

The vessel was long and shallow. The lower deck spanned across two canoe-like structures that didn’t look nearly buoyant enough to keep it afloat. The center of the ship was three stories tall, and there were several mounted ballistae facing either direction. There were tall, single-sail masts at the bow and to either side of the main cabin. This ship looked like someone had fastened several kites and a model watchtower to a couple of toy boats. At the very front of the boat, jutting out before the mast, was a blade that gleamed with rainbow colors.

“Wow, you fellas weren’t kidding,” Dixie said. She rushed ahead of Nauster and Percillus, and began examining the ship. When the crew saw her coming, they immediately drew their weapons, but relaxed when they saw Nauster and Percillus’s frantic flailing.

By the time Percillus caught up with Dixie, she was examining the sails.

“This shouldn’t be able to move at all, much less plummet out of the sky. How did you get it here in the first place?” Dixie asked.

“We had to make a swift escape, and ended up here on accident.”

“Oh yeah, why’s that?” Dixie said. She pulled herself up a ladder, and onto the main deck. There was a bundle of wires that ran from the blade at the front of the ship up to the bridge and down below deck.

“We were being pursued. We don’t… come from this place. We’re travelers of sorts,” said Nauster.

“Travelers?”

“Yes. We’re not from any of the planes. We travel between them. These sails aren’t for wind; they are powered by thoughts.” Nauster said.

Dixie nodded, chewed on a fingernail, and said, “Huh, that’s a wild setup. And this bad boy,” she motioned toward the blade and the wires, “is how you get from one plane to another?”

“Yes,” Nauster seemed surprised that Dixie was following the new information so easily.

“That’s gotta be powered by something magical enough to cut through space and time. I’m guessing that’s what’s broke, or you’d have hopped back to wherever you come from. Correct?” Dixie asked. Nauster nodded. “Show me.”

Nauster led her below deck. The wires were connected to a large canister that held a glowing gem suspended in a vacuum. The gem glowed with an orange light that illuminated the entire room. All around the walls, strange meters twitched, and projections of other places were projected. The device looked intact.

“We do not know why it won’t open a portal. Without that, we cannot return to the plane of thought, where the ship will move once again,” said Nauster.

Dixie dropped to the floor, and scooted on her back until she was directly beneath the vacuum chamber. She popped open a panel, and coughed as a tiny cloud of ash fell onto her face.

“Found it,” she said.

There was a mess of scorch marks and shriveled wires behind the panel. Almost all of them were damaged, but some were salvageable.

“You burned out these registers, and they’ll need to be replaced. I’m guessing to took a hit just as you jumped from one plane to this one.”

Dixie scooted back out from under the machine. She wiped the ash from her face, but did little more than smear it.

“Don’t you have an engineer or something that could fix this?” she asked.

Nauster frowned and shook his head. “Iomour was killed during the attack.”

“Well,” said Dixie as she hopped to her feet. “I’ve got good news for you: that’s an easy fix. Bad news: it’ll cost you.”

“How much?” Nauster asked. He folded his arms.

“Me,” Dixie said with a smile. “Take me with you. I need a new ship and crew anyways. And I’m really easygoing; I won’t even be trouble. I can get along with just about anybody I known.”

Nauster seemed taken aback by Dixie’s offer. His mandibles clicked for a few moments, and then he extended a hand.

“Deal,” he said.

“Well alright! That’s what I like to hear,” said Dixie. She shook his hand violently. “Let’s get started. But first: I need something hot to eat and the tallest glass of water you got aboard.”