I was in the woods. And I was alone.

The night was warm, with a full moon streaking through the treetops, casting the soft pine needles that blanketed the ground in an amber light. Overhead, I heard a night bird singing, a call that reminded me of a flute hitting the same melancholy note over and over again. Water trickled somewhere in the distance.

"Adam," I called out, my voice too thin, like it was trapped inside a seashell. "Adam."

Nothing.

I steadied my breath, trying to make sense of it, as I stared at my bare finger. Even the indent of the ring had disappeared. Then I looked around, taking in my surroundings.

I didn't see any manmade structures. It seemed like virgin forest, untouched by humankind. Amalia had called this door "home," but that could mean a million things. One glance down at my body told me that I hadn't aged when crossing over. So maybe I had been wrong about the door leading to the future; maybe it was the past. A simpler time. Unpolluted. Clean. A time before I knew Adam, maybe? That would explain the missing ring.

I looked up through the canopy of trees to seek out starlight. When Adam and I had gone back to the 1940s, that had been the biggest difference in the physical world—so clean you could see every star in the heavens. But the brightness of the moon blew out any other body in the sky. There were no landmarks to indicate a time period.

I realized I was still holding my invention in my hand, and that's what made me think of it. Of course Adam wasn't here. The invention had been the token that had led me to this place—the place Amalia had intended for me. Adam had crossed with nothing in his hand.

So where had DW taken him?

I put the invention in my pocket now. Then I took off my wool Boston sweater and tied it around my waist as I walked, shaking away a sudden onslaught of nerves.

"There she is."

I whipped around. Someone had whispered. I could have sworn. But it must've been a squirrel or something. Maybe a night owl.

And then giggling. Like a child.

No, more than one child. A muted giggling into tiny little palms. They were in the woods, spying on me. Hide and seek.

I turned to look and I heard them scurrying away. So they weren't supposed to be there, or they weren't supposed to be watching me.

"Hello?" I called out.

And I was greeted by more giggling in more hidden pockets of the woods.

I stopped walking, scanning every dark thicket of trees for obscured faces. I wasn't scared of children. But if there were children, that meant there were parents.

"You can come out," I called, singing the last note. "I won't bite." When I had taught robotics to little kids last year, I had learned more than a few tricks to get them to open up. They just need to think that it was a game, and that they were in charge of it.

"She's finally here," another little voice whispered. And then they all began talking at once. "She's beautiful." "I like her hair." "I thought she'd be taller." "She looks just like—"

"Come out," I called. "I'm lost in the woods and I need your help."

"I'll help you," said a little girl as she stepped out into the moonlight. She was young, maybe seven, and she had long, straight dark hair that reached her lower back. She was wearing a simple dress that looked like it might have been sewn out of something else—sheets or canvas.

"What's your name?" I asked, hoping she could see my friendly smile in the moonlight.

"Remedios."

I felt a surge of tension grip my throat. Remedios was my middle name, after my abuela. Her mother had taken the name from her favorite novel, A Hundred Years of Solitude. And it was the first word I had learned in Spanish. It meant "cures."

"Remedios, get back here," hissed a little boy, the top of his dark head barely visible as it peeked out from behind a tree.

"She's nice," Remedios responded.

"We weren't supposed to talk to her."

"Who told you that?" I asked, stepping closer to them, my hands up in a universal symbol of non-aggression.

The little boy stepped out now and stood next to the girl, clearly his younger sister. He was a good two inches taller than her. "You were supposed to just walk."

"Okay," I nodded. "Can you guide me, though?"

He considered it for a moment.

"She's being nice, Roberto," Remedios said. And the pit in my stomach clenched into a hard knot. Roberto was Robbie's full name.

Roberto didn't say anything else. He just nodded his head down the path, indicating that I should follow him. And as he walked, about half a dozen other little children emerged from their hiding places and marched behind him—little soldiers in homemade clothes, playing make-believe in the woods.

And there was nothing I could do but line up behind them and follow.

After a few minutes, I started seeing little houses tucked into the folds of forest. Little pebble paths diverged from the main walkway and weaved off into the distance, the light from a window or smoke from a chimney just visible beyond the curve of trees. One of the children began to hum and another told her to stop.

"It's in there," Roberto finally said, pointing to a large gate covered in ivy.

I nodded, offering a small smile of thanks, which was enough to make the kids all scatter off back into the woods.

I steeled myself and took a deep breath. What would be waiting for me on the other side of that gate? Would I be safe there?

"Just walk, Marina," I told myself.

The large wooden gate was carved with a beautiful ornate engraving, and only upon closer inspection did I realize it was words. A language I didn't understand. I pushed the door back and was momentarily stopped in my tracks.

A tranquil courtyard awaited me, built around a small rectangular pool in a basin of blue stone. Water trickled into it from the mouth of a frog statue, and lily pads provided landing strips for a dozen green dragonflies. Strings of fairy lights danced overhead. Wooden benches covered in bright red and marigold pillows banked the pool, and the house that sat at the other end was glistening with gold-flecked paint and ancient-looking brass and wood chandeliers. Even more writing I couldn't understand ran the length of the walls. Sanskrit, maybe?

There was a patio in front of the house, canopied by a wooden roof, and held up by four tall identical arches. It looked like something out of a Persian fairytale—an enchanted place where tigers might be sleeping on magic carpets. It was somebody's dream house.

And having no idea what else to do, I walked around the small pool, hearing my sneakers clap against the large stones inlaid around the courtyard, and stepped up to the patio. A pitcher of water and an empty cup made of blown red glass sat waiting on a silver tray, as though the house itself had been expecting somebody.

I sat down on a small wooden bench, cushioned by yet more of those multi-colored pillows. And I waited.

"You made it," a voice said above me. I whipped my head around to meet it.

And it wasn't Amalia. Or Elaheh either.

Instead, brown eyes I hadn't seen in months were looking down at me with a mixture of apprehension and warmth.

"Brady," I said.

But he looked away without responding.

****

So now we're in the rabbit hole. What will we find? Come back next Friday to find out.