[Song used is "Pompeii" by Bastille.]

I slept way in my first day on the new job.

In my defense, that was because my alarm I set the night before didn't go off.

Of course, that didn't end up mattering at all because I was woken up bright and early by a total stranger barging into my room.

I sat up as the door hit the wall loudly, startled.

"Good morning, m'lady," said a cheerful, business-like voice belonging to a woman who must have been my age or less, dressed in very odd clothes that I thought looked like something out of one of those period pieces that my mother loves watching.

I blinked at her oddly.

"Uh, lady, what are you doing in my room?" I said in bewilderment.

I wasn't scared, not yet, since I figured no kidnapper would be dressed as some old fashioned maid. Seemed a bit over the top to me.

I thought it had to be some joke my family was playing on me.

"Oh, I just came in to tidy up and bring you your breakfast, ma'am," the maid cos-player said innocently.

"Right," I said flatly.

Well, if she wasn't going to break character, I wasn't going to play along just because of that.

"Look, this is funny and all," I said, my accent getting stronger as I got more annoyed, "but I think I'm late. Did y'all take my phone or something? I should have been up hours ago."

The sun was streaming through the window that she'd just opened brightly enough for me to know it had to be at least 9 am.

"Uh...ma'am...I'm sorry, perhaps I'm not familiar with your country's language." The maid looked genuinely puzzled. "What do you mean by 'phone'?"

"You're just real committed to this bit, ain't ya?" I said, getting more annoyed.

But I figured she was getting paid for this prank, so the real person I was mad at was my brother or my mother. It had to be one of them.

Unless it was my weird uncle. He might think this was hilarious.

I got up in a huff to go out of my room and give them a piece of my mind--and that was when I realized that this prank was going way farther than I thought.

The floor wasn't my floor; it didn't have my very faded carpet on it, and it wasn't wood--at least no wood I'd ever seen.

I was wearing one of them fancy, lacy, silk nightgowns you see on TV. Not the pajamas I went to bed in. And I didn't even want to know how someone changed my clothes without me knowing it.

And my room itself, which I'd hardly looked at when it was still dim, I now saw was not the same color. It was pink instead of yellow and had fancy, brocade-like design all over the wall. It looked like a room in one of those old Victorian houses I'd been to with my family on tours through the old parts of town.

I stared at it, trying to understand what was going on.

My first thought was: I have been kidnapped!

But then I thought, who would put a kidnapped victim in a room like this?

Then I thought, I'm not tied up, and that maid just left the door unlocked.

In fact, it wasn't even totally shut yet.

I walked up to it like I was in a trance.

"M'lady? Are you all right? Do you feel ill?" the maid asked.

I pulled the door open, and, sure enough, it wasn't my old narrow hallway. It was huge. It must have been as wide as my kitchen and longer than my street when I looked down it. Huge windows at the end, a fancy carpet down the middle, and tables set out with flowers and vases and the like.

Also some large portraits along part of the wall. I was too far to see them, but right then I didn't want to.

I sank to the floor.

"Oh, what in the world is this?" I said blankly. "How did I get here and not know it?"

"Madame?" The maid seemed more concerned than before.

I begun to think she was completely unaware that this was some kind of trick at my expense. She seemed genuinely worried.

I knew I couldn't sit there staring at the hallway without looking like a crazy person, so, after swallowing a few times, I pulled myself up by the doorway.

"I...uh, just forgot how big this place is..." I said.

I wasn't normally much of a liar, but I didn't see how I could say I'd never seen it before if I was sleeping in a bed in the joint.

Was it a hotel? It had to be a huge hotel somewhere, right?

Suddenly I wondered if I was being held hostage after all. Just as some kind of elaborate scam.

"I see." The maid didn't seem to believe me. Not that I could blame her. "Well, it is a bit to get used to. But your family will settle in, trust me. Just give it a few weeks. Are you hungry?"

"My family?" I said blankly. "Where are they?"

Were we all in this together? I didn't know whether to be happy or sorry to hear it. But the hope that maybe this was a joke did come back to me briefly.

"No doubt they'll be either in bed or dining downstairs right now," the maid said. "But since you all arrived so late, we took the liberty of thinking you might like to eat in your rooms today.... Did you prefer the dining room?"

I thought I would very much have preferred the dining room if I was given a warning first...but I didn't know whether my mother or my brother would have selected that option.

This was starting to feel like one of those puzzle games where each option leads you to a different scenario.

Maybe it was...

Well, I reasoned to myself, whoever is doing this has a sick sense of humor, but I suppose if I don't solve it, I won't get a chance to give them a piece of my mind.

Aloud I said, "I might rather go downstairs, if that's all right."

"Of course. I'll help you get dressed," the maid said at once. She seemed relieved that I wanted to do anything normal.

"Oh, you don't have to do that," I said at once. "I'll just pretend you did, all right? I'm not that committed to this."

Over my dead body was some stranger helping me get into clothes! There were a lot of perverts out there nowadays.

The maid blinked at me. "Pardon?" she said, confused.

How many people just agreed to this? I thought to myself.

I looked around the room. No closet in the wall like I had before...but there was a huge wardrobe. I knew what it was--my grandma used to have one of those, though she never kept anything but old evening gowns from the 40s in hers.

I walked up to it, trying to seem at ease, and opened it.

My eyes almost popped out of my head. I guess I was expecting that they would be clothes on a similar scale to the maid's, but they were definitely upper class. Silks, satin, and some fabric I couldn't place because I don't think we use it anymore much. I later found out there was linen, ermine, and other furs in my wardrobe.

I didn't have the faintest idea how to put any of it on though. When I pulled one aside, it had more buttons than I'd ever seen.

I've met some reenactors before, once or twice, and thought it was crazy how they went  authentic with those clothes, all the straps and buttons and belts...and I wasn't changing my mind now.

"This must be worth a fortune," I said blankly.

"I suppose to someone like me," the maid said, a bit more naturally. "But I'm sure you'll have much finer clothes soon.... People get used to wealth really easily."

"What do you mean?" I said, giving her an odd look.

"I didn't mean to speak out of turn," the maid said, but I think she was realizing I wouldn't have known the difference if she did, because she went on, boldly enough. "But I was just think that you father's new status as lord might bring a lot of changes to your living situation."

There was a backstory to this game, apparently.

"My father is a lord now?" I said.

She gave me a look like I was crazy. "Didn't your family tell you why they were coming here?"

I thought frantically. I didn't know much about women in the time period this was supposed to be--heck, I wasn't even sure what time period it was.

But they were probably less educated than men, right? At least in things like politics.

Maybe I should play dumb. My brother would have said it wouldn't be hard for me.

"Well, I admit, it was a bit jumbled," I said aloud, and this was truer than she knew. "I got that we were moving here because of some...promotion, I guess. But not the...particulars."

The maid raised an eyebrow. 

"Mind telling me more about it? If you know," I said. "I'm...interested."

Anything to solve this faster.

"Perhaps we could dress you while I explain," the maid said flatly.

I knew I was going to need help after all.

But she didn't seem overeager, so maybe she was just doing her job...

I picked out the easiest looking dress I could find, and she made no comment. I think by then she just wanted me dressed so I wouldn't be even later.

But she made me put on the strangest undergarments ever first, and it took me a while to figure them out. I think one of them was something like a corset, but it wasn't like the ones I'd seen on TV. It was a little less rigid. She asked if I was used to wearing one, and I said no.

She told me it got easier with practice, and was "wonderful for your posture."

I thought my posture was fine, but whatever. It was just for now, right?

Really though, the corset wasn't the worst part once I got it on right--it was the socks and shoes. They were so stiff. I didn't like them one bit. I wanted boots or even sandals, but there wasn't anything except those dress shoes and slippers in my shoe boxes.

But at least I got a bit of an explanation while we were figuring out the wardrobe.

The maid told me that my father, Lord Laurel (the last name, I took it, not the first name), had been recognized in the wars, which she didn't explain to me, so it was probably supposed to be common knowledge. And he had saved the life of an honorable group of men, who then had asked the king to reward him.

The reward was to be assigned to a lordship and given a penchant of land and servants, one that had belonged to a lord who had been on the other side of the war and had been killed.

I was not pleased to learn that the deceased lord's family was also either killed or banished, but my maid didn't seem to think this was harsh.

Well, it was just a story, but I thought they didn't need to go so hard on it.

"So this is like a farm?" I said.

"It's bigger than the peasant farms," the maid said. "I'm sure the ones around your old estate were tiny. But there's farmland on it. Also a village that you're now the patrons of, but you must have seen that when you rode here yesterday."

"It's all a bit of a blur," I said.

"Do you get carriage sickness?" the maid asked. "That happens to my brother. Had to quit being a foot man over it."

"Maybe it's that." I didn't know. "Or I was just really tired."

Or drugged so that I didn't wake up while all this moving around was going on. The jury was out on that.

"Well, you should go down to visit it if you get the chance. It's a very nice village," the maid said cheerfully.

"Right," I said. I wanted to get to the airport--but if that was in the "village", I didn't mind. Maybe that was the choice I had to make to end this nonsense.... It did seem too easy though.

"Well, thank you.... What's your name?" I asked.

The maid seemed surprised to be asked this, or thanked.

"Olivia," she said. 

I was glad it was a name I recognized.

"Nice to meet ya, Olivia. I'm  Hope Ann," I said.

"I know, my lady," she said. 

"And you can stop with the m'lady, thing," I said, rolling my eyes. "It stopped being funny half an hour ago."

"But...ma'am, if I don't call you that, I could get beaten for being insolent." She looked terrified. "Perhaps you're not used to it, but I'm sure it will grow on you."

I supposed that she was making this up, but then again, I couldn't be sure.

"Fine," I sighed. "Just...can you tone down the style a bit?"

She didn't seem to know what I meant.

I could barely walk in those stiff shoes, but I wasn't wasting anymore time in this room.

"Before we go, ma'am," Olivia said, "what would you like us to do with your belongings? We meant to unpack them today, but if there's anything you want near you, I can set it aside."

"Which belongings are those?" I said uncertainly.

She opened a door I had thought led to a bathroom, but in fact, it led to a sitting room next to the bedroom, like a 5 star hotel suite.

In this room were a few crates and satchels, all old fashioned.

By now, I was starting to have serious doubts about how easy it would be to get out of this mess...and I couldn't understand at all what the point of it was.

"What is in all those?" I asked faintly.

"Those are all the ones from you old room, I think," Olivia said. "There might be some other things in there also."

I went up to them and began to open them.

I couldn't get the lock on the trunks undone, but I managed to yank the satchel's handles open. It was made out of what felt like carpet and much heavier than my think little backpacks or suitcases at home.

But I cared more what was in it.

I didn't recognize anything in there. It seemed to be more clothes, and what I took to be toiletries, combs, ribbons, boxes of something that smelled like spices or maybe it was oil.

It couldn't have been expensive things--the boxes were plain--but it seemed like a lot to a girl who barely used hand lotion when she thought of it and had one hairbrush and a handful of ponytail holders.

I didn't like the look of it at all. Olivia had put my hair in a braid on my insistence--and a far better one than I could have done myself, though she said it was too plain. All this seemed more to be for elaborate hairdos I wouldn't be caught dead in.

I checked the other satchels and found more of the same in one and some books in another.

Olivia expressed surprise that I knew how to read already, so I assumed that in this scenario it must be rare...at least for a lower class woman as I apparently was.

But I didn't care about that by now, I was looking for anything familiar.

Olivia unlocked the trunk to help me. I think she thought I was going frantic and was hoping it would calm me down.

She wouldn't have been far off. I was starting to feel sick. All this stuff made this seem like it was going to be way harder than I thought, and I wasn't sure what kind of game would require it all, but it wasn't one I liked.

Olivia got the trunk lid up with some effort, and said, "Perhaps it's in here, miss."

Perhaps it was whatever I was looking for. Danged if I knew.

But I began to fish through the blankets and knit items in this trunk. All heavier than I expected.

"It must be cold in the North," Olivia observed.

I was no stranger to cold, but I was to these garments. They looked horribly uncomfortable. I hoped it would be warm while I was stuck wherever this was. 

I kept rooting around in the trunk, hoping I wouldn't find a spider while I was looking, and then my hand hit something at the bottom that was not clothes.

I tugged it out with some effort.

It was a thin, little case with buckles on it, like a briefcase almost, but I don't think that's what it was.

I unlocked the buckles and lifted the lid.

Inside was a stack of paper, thicker paper than I'd ever seen. With quill pens and an ink bottle in little slots next to it. And a thin, little board to prop it up on.

"A writing table," Olivia said. "Do you write letters, m'lady?"

She sounded impressed by that.

I didn't write letters, I wrote emails. And I had no idea how to use a quill pen. But I didn't say that to her.

I would have tossed the whole thing aside, in fact, if it hadn't had writing on it already.

It was in this calligraphy that I almost could make out, but the name at the end was what caught my eye. It was signed: Karen, with the K's legs being drawn out real fancy and curvy, like an old script.

But it was the name, and that was when I suddenly began to get an idea of what had happened.

I fell back, gasping, and I think I turned white.

"M'lady are you all right? Shall I fetch a doctor? Smelling salts?" Olivia was terrified.

I didn't think that would help me, though I would have taken anything at the moment if it could.

"Uh...no, I just...I just was surprised this was...here," I made myself speak. "Can I have a minute to read this?"

It would take me several minutes to decipher it, I thought.

"Are you sure?" Olivia said.

"Yes, I'm all right now." I drew a deep breath and sat up.

Olivia looked skeptical, but she seemed like she had to obey me, so she stepped back into the bedroom.

I tore up the sheet of paper with the writing on it and brought it to the window so I could see it better.

The first line was easier to make out, and I thought it had all the gall in the world to be as casual as it was.

"My dear Hope," it said. "I trust this letter finds you well. I'm sure you're wondering what is going on. Allow me to explain..."

I could barely make out the next part, but my mind was already reeling.

I remembered now what had happened yesterday. It had never entered my mind to think of it being connected before. I had assumed all this had to do with my family's love of old fashioned things and period pieces, but I was wrong. This had nothing to do with them.

The incident, in fact, had been so small, I would not have dreamed it was important.

* * *

I had been working, as I did every weekday, at the antique store in my city of Browning, Kentucky.

I wouldn't call myself an expert on antiques. I mostly just got the job because my mother knew the owner of the store. They both were into that kind of thing, and she mentioned I was looking for a job, and since we're small town folks, that was good enough to get me an interview.

Mrs. Steele, the lady who owned it, believed in learning on the job, so she didn't mind that my only experience was the movie my mom made me sit through and my dad's history lectures.

And I admit, it was kind of interesting getting into it all. I'd learned a lot about antiques in the year I had been working there. I wasn't very good at telling their age right off, but I learned the make and model of things and usually what they would be worth.

Most of ours were low priced, but we had a few valuable things there, just for show. No one ever bought them.

And business tended to be slow. The store was only open every day because the back of it doubled as a pet grooming salon, Mrs. Steele's other job.

I liked animals okay, but I guess I wasn't that good with them, because she had me work the counter in the antique store more than I ever helped her run errands in the other one.

But that was fine with me. When we weren't busy, I was on my tablet or phone doing assignments for college or reading or looking for ideas for my own hobbies of baking and crafting.

Maybe it was a boring job for some people, but I was good at entertaining myself, and the only thing I got tired of was how quiet it was. I'm a social person.

Anyway, sometimes my brother, Tony, would pop by to annoy me or to check out our collection of cowboy belt buckles, or whatever thing he was into at the time, and sometimes he'd bring other people in. He'd tell them that it was a must see if you were visiting our town.

I guess it was, if you were into old, dusty things instead of the local color.

It wasn't my place to judge, and most of them were very nice, kindly people.

But yesterday he'd brought in someone who was a bit more of a...character, to say the least.

The woman, who was probably at least in her 30s, and introduced herself as Karen Shingle to me, said she was working on a book and was doing research.

Well, I'm interested in books, so I politely asked her what it was about.

"Well, it's kind of one of those alternate reality stories," she said. "You know, the kind where the world is like ours, but it's different. Like Game of Thrones."

"Didn't that show end badly?" I said.

"Eh," Karen shrugged. "The point is, it's a fantasy story, but I'm trying to make it seem more authentic."

"My mama always says that most period pieces have all kinds of inaccuracies in them," I remarked. "It's nice to see someone trying to fix that, not that the reader know the difference mostly."

"Indeed, people do not appreciate history at all," Karen said. "They think it's all mumbo jumbo, you know--knights and lords and ladies and sorcerers."

I raised an eyebrow. "Well," I said, "I agree with the last one. That is a bunch of hooey."

My mama always said I had a big mouth, and I think I should have kept it shut this time, but I was only too eager to give my opinion of the modern fantasy genre.

"I mean, it spoils a pretty good historical fiction," I said, in my best outraged geek voice. "They put in all that magic and ghosts and werewolves and nonsense. Why can't people just like history for what it was? It doesn't need all that crap."

Karen looked at me the way most fans of those books tended to when I said that.

"What's wrong with a little magic?" she said. "Life is boring, don't you think? If you can explain everything."

"I like explaining stuff," I said.

"Hmm? But what about things like the Holy Grail?" Karen said. "The Sorcerer's stone, El Dorado, Atlantis, all of those things are old legends, things that people might even have thought were real, and you don't think it's worthwhile to write about them?"

"That sounds like the same kind of fiction as The DaVinci Code," I scoffed. "It takes the focus off what really happened and keeps it on fiction. I think we need to remember real things, not make up stuff about it."

"But it's part of history that people believed in fairies and gnomes and trolls." Karen seemed bent on arguing this with me for some reason. "Don't you think you'd do well to consider why?"

"They didn't know any better," I said flatly.

"They were ignorant, you mean?" Karen said, frowning at me. "And I suppose you think that only small minded people are interested in these parts of history. Mermaids and fairies and magic."

"I just think that's not real history," I said.

Karen frowned. "I suppose each to their own opinion." She sounded salty. "I guess you don't believe in curses either."

"Nope," I said.

"Some people probably thought some of the items in this room were cursed," Karen said, and I thought she sounded a little too happy about that thought.

"Yeah, but ain't nothing bad ever happened to me over it," I said. My accent always came out when I got worked up, and she was starting to annoy me.

"I see," Karen said. "Well, you wouldn't be interested in my book then. It has a lot of the things I just mentioned. I think it will still be quite informative, but no doubt you wouldn't read it. It's also a romance."

"Nothing against romances, in general," I said, "but that's another thing that people care more about than the quality of the history."

Tony was giving me a look like I was asking for it now, which I was.

"But--" I cleared my throat. "--I do think that it's worthwhile to read about it, if it's done well. And I'm sure your books are well researched."

"Very well researched." Karen was staring at me in a way that I maybe should have seen as a warning. "But you wouldn't like them. I suppose, Miss Kane, that you would feel very at home trying to write your own book about history."

"I'm not much of a writer," I said. "But I think I could manage, though it's more Tony's and my mom's thing. I mostly just pick it up by osmosis."

"You seem knowledgeable about these things," Karen said. "I'm sure you would know what it would be really like in the past."

I shrugged uncomfortably. She was weirding me out.

"Well, I think I've seen enough," Karen shrugged it off. "I'd better go."

She left.

"What a weirdo," Tony said empathically. "Though you did insult her work, sis. Not very nice of ya."

"I guess I did get a bit carried away," I said. "But she was taking it way too seriously. These people who write this crap think that it's so interesting and it's really just the kind of thing teenagers read when they should be learning about real stuff."

"I think Dad's lecture have gotten to you," Tony said. "You know, it's okay to like a fictional version of the world too. What about Jane Austen's books? You like those."

"That's not that much fiction," I said.

"I'm just saying, maybe you should stop being such a purist about it, at least to prospective customers," he said. "I'm a huge history buff, but I think those stories are all right."

"You barely read, Tony," I shot back.

"Ooh hoo, look who's so smart and educated," he shot back. "I'd better go before I'm late for work."

"Yeah, get going," I shooed him.

And I put the whole incident out of my head. I'd had plenty of debates with obsessive fans of genres I didn't like before. It was nothing new. I didn't even think it was worth mentioning to my mother at dinner.... Plus I didn't want her to get mad at me for being rude to a customer.

And I went to bed, and that was the end of that.

* * *

Until...

I finally deciphered the rest of the letter I was holding.

"I'm sure you're finding this experience quite 'authentic.'" That word was underlined. "It's a little overwhelming, isn't it?"

I felt sicker.

"Let me set your mind at ease," Karen wrote amiably enough. "This is not permanent. Yet. I have a little game I propose to you. Since you claim to be so adept at understanding history better than I do and think that all that magic stuff is a load of...well, I won't put it as crassly as you--after all, swearing wasn't ladylike in these days. I challenge you to survive in this world for...oh, let's say...3 months? I would make it a year, but I wouldn't want you to get eaten by a dragon or something, and besides I'm sure I'll be done writing the story by then.

"If you follow my careful instructions until then, I promise that no permanent damage will happen to your person or your life.  But if you go off script, well, I can't guarantee anything. The rules of these written worlds are a bit unpredictable, to say the least.

"Oh, don't worry, this will be fun. And I've given your character the attribute of being entirely magic free! None of that fictional nonsense for you. Let's see how well you do. 

I"'ll even make you a deal: If you do well, I will never write another story again with that 'inaccurate' nonsense you think makes it so offensive.

"If you have any questions for me, just write them in this tablet I left for you. But I don't promise to answer all of them. I'll let you know what to do this way. Do not let anyone else see this.

Ta ta--Karen.

P.S. (I wouldn't tell Olivia any of this. She might think you're a mystical being, and we wouldn't want that.)

I dropped the page and stared out the window.

And now that I was looking over the wall, I saw the land stretching out to the horizon was nothing I knew. It wasn't Kentucky. I don't even think it was America at all.

No, it had such vibrant colors, it had to be somewhere else entirely. And I didn't see any cell towers, power lines, or highways in sight. Not a car or a plane.

It was totally empty except for tiny houses.

I was not in my world...or at least not in my time...at all.