Reader Beware

Chapter 2

Rika turned around again, as if that would change what she was seeing. But the trees, bushes, and other plants remained where they were. She tried closing her eyes and opening them a few times, but that didn’t work either. She even tried pinching herself.

Getting annoyed now, her arm hurting didn’t help any, she tried to figure out what had happened. Normally she’d have chalked this up to a dream, but the pinch still hurt, and her dreams were never like this. Her hands went to her hips and the feel of something hard instead of her hand, drew Rika’s attention downward.

She was still holding the book. She frowned. In all the books she’d read…But that was something straight out of a bad fantasy novel. A sudden thought occurred to her and she grinned. If it worked one way, there was no reason it wouldn’t work the other. She eagerly flipped the book open and froze. The first page had writing on it now.

“I snapped the book closed and looked up at the shelf. Except the shelf wasn’t there. In fact, the whole library wasn’t there. I found myself looking at a line of trees.”

Rika stopped reading then, gaze moving back to the trees, feeling a cold sweat begin on her neck, goosebumps rolling across her skin. She looked down at the book sitting innocently in her hand and snapped it shut. She flipped it over and saw the back was still the same. She turned it back to the front and saw the title and picture were still there.

Then her eyes went to the author. A tiny choking noise escaped her lips. The author had gone from You to Rika Sullivan. She snapped her head up and looked around, wondering if someone was watching her. Part of her wanted to believe this was some kind of practical joke, but the rest of her knew that no one could have pulled this off. Not without some kind of Star Trek style teleporter.

She had to face facts. The book had brought her here, wherever here was, and she was stuck. How and why didn’t matter at the moment. Not when she was out in the wilderness. She had to find shelter, food, and water, not necessarily in that order. She wasn’t looking forward to spending the night out in the woods. While she read enough books where characters had made shelters and found things to eat in when stranded in the wild, she didn’t think she could emulate them. Especially since she didn’t even know what the edible plants looked like.

Taking a deep breath, doing her best to keep the panic she could feel clawing at her stomach down, Rika carefully put the book into her bag and then picked the direction that looked the least overgrown and set off. Within minutes she discovered something. Forests and skirt didn’t mix.

Her plaid skirt, part of her hated uniform, seemed to go out of its way to get tangled with every twig, bush, and thorny plant it could find. Rika was forced to hold it close to her leg, the excessive material held in one fist, to be able to keep up a normal speed. It made walking a bit awkward.

It didn’t take long before Rika vowed never to go camping. She was getting scratched and poked by branches and thorns, and she’d already been tripped twice by half-buried logs. When she finally stumbled onto an animal track, she felt her shoulders slump with relief. The path wasn’t wide, but it was mostly clear of underbrush and would make walking easier. And, if what she’d read was right, it was likely to lead her either to a clearing or a water source. She hoped for the latter, her throat already dry.

She continued on, not seeing anything but plants, and not hearing anything but the chirping and screeching of birds overhead, along with chattering that sounded like it might belong to a squirrel. At least she hoped it was a squirrel. It had sounded bigger than any squirrel should. Her mind chose that moment to bring forth the memories of the monsters she’d so often read about, the vicious kinds that preyed on unsuspecting travellers. She knew she was not only unsuspecting, she didn’t even know what was out there.

By the time she finally reached the end of the path, her blouse and stray strands of her hair were sticking to her due to the sweat that covered her whole body, stinging as it hit her various cuts. Seeing the small pond, its clear water practically begging her to duck her head in it, Rika broke into a shambling run.

She knelt on the bank, leaning over and drinking straight from the pond, not caring if it probably wasn’t hygienic. Only when her throat no longer felt like it was made of sand paper did she duck her whole head under, enjoying the sudden coolness on her skin and faintly throbbing temples.

Pulling her head out, she sighed, even the feeling of her hair dripping water down her back feeling good. Then she took a look around where she was. It was a small clearing, filled with pale yellow grass, interrupted only by the massive fallen tree that lay along one edge, covered in a dark green moss. Aside from the pond, it was empty of anything but grass and a few tiny white flowers that were mostly hidden by the waving yellow strands.

At least that’s what she thought right up until she heard a male voice call out “Hey, you there! Girl!”

She looked around, trying to find where the voice was coming from but saw nothing. Only the trees, grass, and water. She frowned and stood, turning around again, still unable to find where the sound was coming from.

“Up here,” she heard the voice say, an edge of irritation colouring it.

Tilting her head back, she looked straight up. Just to her right, hanging several feet in the air, was a man. A man tangled in a rope net. He met her eyes and said “Will you help me down?”

Rika couldn’t help herself. She laughed.