A Brave New World

Taking a blind step into the portal, Sir George wasn’t sure what to expect on the other side, certainly not emptiness, his step pitching him off balance and forward as he fell almost twenty feet straight down to a hard surface below. Trying to land as best he could, he bounced and rolled onto his side, coming to rest on his back and looking up at where he had fallen from. There a small measure of light, but what he saw pushed his ability to describe.

Above him, and hanging inverted and suspended from a small hook through a small hole in the ornate silver handle was what appeared to be a tarnished lady’s hand held looking glass, oval, mayhap a dozen feet on the long axis by eight on the side.

There was what appeared to be some great linen sheet seemingly half pulled away from the platform he found himself upon, like the tableau of an impossibly large vanity or dresser. Thick blankets of dust covered everything, though not quite to the depth where he stood as compared to the draped sheet.

“What madness is this?” he noised under his breath, getting to his feet, and brushing the dust from his person, creating a small hanging cloud of particulate making him sneeze thrice in rapid succession. Looking, aside from where he had landed, he could see other marks in the dust, dragon tracks. The dragon had passed through here, the irregular marks looked like it was carrying something in one of its hind claws. He knew he was on the right path.

Following the tracks through the disturbed dust, he walked to the edge of the grand bureau and paused, shaking his head, the tracks ended. Obviously the creature had taken flight. Looking out, he out sigh. How could this possibly be? It was as if he were in some enormous warehouse or storage repository, dust laden sheets covered shapes the size of houses and small keeps. High overhead, barely visible in the wan light shafting through two small windows were walls leading up to roof joists crossing impossible spans. He was inside some grand type hall constructed of enormous timber.

Undaunted by the inconceivable nature of his environment, the knight was able to get himself down from his height to a floor below using the edge of the sheet. Arriving at a roughly hewn wide plank floor, he walked through the ankle high dust amidst the covered shapes, coming to a broad open space. Pushing onward, he traveled through the open plain, coming to a precipitous drop, overlooking a fancy carriage of absolute gigantic proportions at rest. There were large evenly spaced vertical timbers much broader than he, reaching up, with horizontal cross members joining then some forty or fifty feet over his head. Standing beside one of the timbers, he looked down over the conveyance, the coach at least ten times larger than any ship he had ever seen, the rear wheels of grand scale he was astounded.

Reaching a hand up, George scratched at the unruly grey hair atop his head, faded blue eyes looking first left then right before settling back on the carriage beneath his viewpoint. He started laughing out loud, not a frantic sound, more akin to mirth as if remembering some jest and just now understanding the punch line. He knew where he was, inside some type of carriage house, though ridiculously large. He was perched on the edge of the loft overlooking the carriage bay. To his way of thinking, it was obvious. Traveling through the portal had somehow shrunk him, rendering him no larger than a mouse and depositing him here. He also knew young Daffyd was here too, somewhere and undoubtedly similarly made small. The question was where? He knew time was running out and the longer he tarried, the more likely the dragon would be to consume the boy. The first thing he needed to do was get down from the upper floor, but how? Even if there was something soft below to land in, the fall from such a great height would surely kill any man. Walking along the edge of the loft floor, looking for a means of descent, he found a wooden ladder with rungs built into the face of the platform leading to the ground below, but the drop between rungs was too large to be of any use to him.

Looking around, he nodded. Walking back over to where there were sheets, he pulled the dirk from his belt and plunged it through the material, sawing off a six inch wide strip the length of the sheet. Again and again he repeated the process until he had a pile of strands. Weaving them together, he was able to fashion a crude length of material that resembled a rope nearly two hundred feet in length. Dragging it over to the edge, he looked for a place to secure it so that he might scale down it. He found an anchor point near the ladder. Looping an end of the rope around one of the up stands, he tied it, pulling it taut and testing it to see if it would bear his weight. The last thing he wanted to discover halfway down his climb was that the rope wouldn’t hold him. Giving it a couple more really good tugs, he felt satisfied he wouldn’t plummet to his demise and fed the rope over the edge, playing it out slowly to double check its length.

Pausing to catch his wind, he sat at the edge of the loft, feet hanging over the empty space beneath. The effort of crafting and slinging the rope had brought a sheen of sweat to his brow. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his ruddy damp face.

Forcing himself back to his feet, his body protested, aching from the dual falls he had suffered earlier in the day. Making sure everything was secure, he prepared to climb down the rope, when he heard a grating noise coming from beyond the carriage and light filled the interior of the house. Someone or thing was coming into the carriage house.

Crouching low, he waited as the light grew brighter and he was able to perceive an enormous silhouette of a person behind it.

“Forsooth, let us see what madness awaits,” he intoned, grinning off the side of his face at the prospective adventure unfolding as the figure of a woman became more distinct.