Alec helped his host around the place for the rest of the day, she showed him a spot to sleep that night, and they toiled through the following morning on various chores on the young woman's small farmstead.

The spot was beautiful, with every manner of thing a person might need. There was a small coop of chickens and ducks, a pen with a handful of pigs, several handsome plots with a variety of crops, and a small dock on which his host kept a small boat. Apparently, she wanted for nothing.

He gave up trying to communicate with her at about noon on the following day. His host was pleasant, but she otherwise danced to the beat of her own drummer. There were no efforts on her part to direct Alec in what to do. He merely tagged along. But he got the sense that she enjoyed his company.

They saw not a single other person over the next two days. But by that time, Alec's curiosity had been sated, at least as much as it was likely to be. It was time to head back home. As pleasant as he found his new companion's company, he had not travelled to the end of all outdoors looking to make friends. He had a home to build and needed to get back to it.

His host was an early riser, and Alec was up with her at first light collecting his meager belongings to go. She got the message, and though she so far mostly had ignored him, several inscrutable looks crossed her face. If she didn't want him to go, she certainly had no words to voice her thoughts.

Instead, she went out to the pergola, fished about in some urns and pots, and came back with a small pack that smelled of food. She extended the item toward him.

"Look, um .... I don't."

"Blblblbaa," she mumbled before giving him a weak shove with her free hand and pushing the packet into his with the other. It wasn't a hostile gesture, and Alec had a hard time holding back a smile. He supposed it was her way of saying that if you're going to leave, get on with it.

He said nothing more. He only nodded and headed through the yard back toward the main road. This would be his first time heading west since coming to this land. There was a faint sense of loss and loneliness that assailed him as he departed, and he looked back once only to see her still watching him go. When he looked back a second time, just as he reached the path, she was no longer there.

What a strange experience it had been.

That there was something appealing about the young woman who he had met was without doubt. It was more than her physical charms. She was slim and lovely, it was true. But there was something magical in the way that she shifted back and forth between being deliberate and diligent and being so bloody funny and goofy. Without her saying a word, she had charmed him.

Or, perhaps, it was just the loneliness speaking. There certainly was something uncouth in her behavior. Her conduct reminded him very much of someone who only rarely ever saw people. One side of her was bubbly, and the other side was decidedly uncivilized.

It almost felt like a warning to him. "Don't let yourself become a crazed hermit," he found himself mumbling.

He didn't have the woman figured out, and he probably never would. But one thing seemed clear. There was a small plot of land on a hillock not far from the main building that had looked very much like a family plot. He tried not to intrude, but there looked to be 8 or 10 graves there.

Was she the last of her people?

She.

He didn't even have a name for the peculiar little angel. He tried several times coaxing one out of her. His only reward was her patting her chest and mumbling back to him something that sounded very much like "Alec."

Well, that proved she wasn't mute. And she wasn't deaf. She just didn't talk.

Add that peculiarity to the long list that was this bizarre land. Only one other thing had captured his attention, and he chewed on that issue now. There had seemed to be an unusually large amount of metal on that farmstead, at least a great deal by the standards of the world he so far had seen.

There were iron tools, knives, forks, and other utensils. And there were a great variety of metal bands and hinges attached to the main house and each of the buildings. Many were practical accoutrements, but others seemed to be placed on doors and shutters for nothing but decorative purposes.

By the standards of this world, the place had appeared to be a wealthy farmstead. The stead was as odd and as appealing as was its mistress.

As the miles passed, his thoughts turned to more practical matters and only occasionally returned to his former hostess. Her place had given him some ideas on how best to do a few things. If he built a pigpen, as he intended to do, he needed to keep it far from the chicken coop. And it wouldn't hurt to have a small pergola and a back porch from which to work. His tiny forge was simply not sufficient for all the things he planned on doing.

And he needed to find some way to begin growing and cultivating rice. The fruits and berries that this land held were sufficient to keep a man alive, but alone they were not enough to allow a body to thrive. Fish was a welcome respite, and he'd even hooked some eels. But his diet needed variety. It needed meat and starches.

He began to wonder whether there was a market at which he could trade, one closer than the now distant village he first had visited with the others. His former hostess was peculiar. Her farm was modest, but it occurred to Alec that she produced there far more food than one person would possibly need. Did she trade somewhere? With other people?

That idea seemed unlikely. How would she communicate with them?

By the time he'd gone through those thoughts four or five times, night had begun to settle. By a rough estimate, he was less than halfway back home. He needed to find a place to settle for the night.

He'd nibbled at fruit throughout the day, and as he settled into a hollow under a copse of trees near the trail, he unbundled the packet of food that his new friend had given him.

The thing was filled with rice pressed with raisins and a few fine slices of dried chicken and fish. There were some steamed vegetables as well, but at the center of the bundle was a short and slim knife.

The blade of the weapon—it did seem to be a weapon—was thin and remarkably keen. It was not nearly so long as the knife Alec carried, being little more than a boot knife in its dimensions, but it was a far better quality of iron or rough steel. It was a thing of great value, and he immediately felt guilty for having it.

Certainly, she wanted him to have it—it was unlikely that she'd placed it there by accident. But in this land, it was a thing of great cost and had been given to him by a near stranger. He had to fight the urge simply to turn on his heel and to march back to the small farm and return it.

No, that wasn't right. Had she given the item to him for that very purpose? To seal some bargain between them? To bind him to her in some way? Or was it just a thoughtful gift to a kind stranger who had been good enough to visit?

There was no way of knowing. By the time he dismissed the notion of returning to the tiny farm, it was past dark. He hadn't troubled himself to build a fire. The night was mild and relatively dry, so he settled back into some leaves and grass that he'd gathered before dusk and closed his eyes.

It was in the moments before he began to drift off to sleep that he heard a twig break and knew that he wasn't alone.