It was early on his fourth day of travel that Alec experienced his first sign of unpleasantness. The land about him had grown progressively wilder, and people fewer and farther between. The day before, he had seen only a few farms all day and scarcely any people. The trail, though distinct and clear, was somewhat less wide.

Signs of wildlife abounded. There even were a greater number and variety of predators, including more wolves, some foxes, a pair of wildcats, and what looked to be the marks of bears on a few trees. The place certainly was wild.

The great variety of natural foods were still to be found, and rough outcroppings of naturally occurring ores and stone were common wherever nature had eroded away the soil along the stream and on hillsides. It was astounding. This place was rich, and save for some rough farms, appeared virtually untouched.

The unpleasantness he encountered on that day arrived in the form of three men who stopped him on the road in the midmorning. There was little in the way of preamble. The shortest of the trio, who spoke perfect English, demanded Alec's clothes and whatever else he had.

"You don't want any trouble from us," the man said in a voice that was wrapped in menace.

The three were not exactly prime specimens. One was clad in a form-fitting suit like Alec wore, and all three had heavy clubs. One, who immediately moved to get behind Alec, was missing his right arm from just below the elbow.

Alec had been through too much in his life for any of this shit. He'd travelled far in his youth and had been mugged and attacked more than once. There was no doubt that talk would avail him nothing.

He grasped his heavy oaken staff by the middle, pivoted, and drove the top edge of the thing into the chin of the man who moved behind him. The blow gave a satisfying crunch before the fellow fell back with a muffled grown.

Then the man who spoke, who still had not risen from where he sat on a deadfall on the side of the road, took the full weight of Alec's staff on top of his head. Their companion sprinted away without a fight.

Common sense said that Alec himself should have run and put as much distance between him and these felons as possible. But something in him wouldn't allow it. He was young and strong, stronger perhaps than he'd ever been in his life. He strolled away from the scene of the attempted robbery as calmly as if he strolled through the park.

It wouldn't have been prudent to forget the whole thing. He was careful thereafter. He so far had experienced no trouble from the local wildlife, which was a small miracle, but now he added human predators to his list of things of which to be wary.

It was a wonder. This was a land of plenty. How had those blokes fallen so far? He almost asked himself how they had fallen so far so quickly, but he then reminded himself that many of the newcomers to this area were not so new. No doubt refugees from what now appeared to be Earth's dying throes had been arriving in this land for many years. How that worked continued to elude him, but it was unlikely he would have answers anytime soon. So why trouble himself over trying to understand it?

The interesting thing was that his would-be assailants had seemed primarily interested in his clothing. The comfortable threads in which he had awoken were a wonder. Every day he expected them to begin reeking or to show some signs of wear and tear. They did not.

One of the three who had tried to rob him was clad in mere rags. The man had appeared to be a newcomer, so what had become of the clothing in which he had arrived?

It had not occurred to Alec before, but the garments were of limited supply and therefore would be incredibly valuable. They wicked off water and provided excellent insulation against the elements. While wearing them, a person had no need of a blanket or, for that matter, of shelter. And as durable as they were, they likely would prove useful as protection against other things. He already had found that thorns and briars wouldn't penetrate the durable material.

No, they were extremely valuable, perhaps the only thing he owned of any great worth. They even were rarer than metal tools. The dark gray outfits might well be the most valuable items on the planet.

Well, he'd try his best to keep ahold of his clothing. But he had more pressing issues.

"Just keep your head attached," he'd reminded himself several times over the past days. (Of course, talking to himself wasn't the greatest sign of positive mental health, but Alec figured that if he didn't try to keep up a conversation with himself, he probably was okay.)

He did have the good common sense to stop several times over the day just to make sure that he wasn't being followed. No. Not that such a thing would matter. The road appeared a single long straightaway. No sideroads or intersections appeared to him. Anyone who wanted to follow him would need only follow the road.

He thought several times about striking out into the wild, maybe following a draw or a stream bed, of which there were many. There had to be something interesting out there. But the farmer's kind words kept coming back to him. Stay on the road.

There had to be some reason the road was the way it was. It was a thin artery, but it was somewhat more than a game trail. His youthful days of woodcraft had taught him that game trails in the forest are plentiful. But they seldom ever are straight, being just what the name suggested, trails worn into the forest by the regular passing of game animals.

Despite occasional gentle curves, there were no turns in the path he followed, and there was no meandering. And the more he travelled, the more it confused him that there was not a single intersecting trail or trace. The only intersections that he had seen were located near the village at which they first had arrived. From there, several trails radiated in other directions.

Had someone made this road? It at first had seemed a natural creation. But as Alec travelled the trail, that possibility seemed less and less likely. As near as he could tell, the thing went straight east and west.

What was the country like further from the trail? Best to heed the farmer's words for now. Alec's common sense might later be overridden by his curiosity, but that wouldn't be anytime soon.

As he had been doing, he left the road as evening approached only to find a place out of sight to make his nightly camp. He was not so far from the path that he couldn't easily see it when he awoke.

He travelled in this slow and methodical way for another five days. Farmsteads by that time were few and far between, and folk he found there were friendly if a bit standoffish. He stopped at each and exchanged a few pleasant words, for all the good that did him, and was gifted once with a pleasant beverage that tasted somewhat like tea.

By the middle of that fifth day, it had been two days since he had last seen any sign of human beings. The trail by then was a mere trace, still straight and true, but the path finally intersected a river. He had encountered brooks and streams aplenty, but this was different.

The river before him was no mighty Mississippi. But it was a true river, whose flow was heavy and deep. On the far side of the artery, the trail picked up again, but the course of the river was so overwhelming that swimming across would have been tricky.

He completely had lost track of how many days he had traveled. But it seemed, for the moment, that this was as far as he would go.

"Fair enough," he said aloud. His voice was more cheerful than he would have expected, a situation that cheered him even further.

Perhaps the water would go down and he could continue his trip. For now, this was as good a place to stop as any. There were fruit trees and fish in the river, and Alec had mastered spearfishing as a lad. There seemed to be everything he needed there.

He found his eyes drawn to a slight rise north of where the trail met the river. It was high and broad and a place where the forest had pulled back from both trail and river.

It took only a few moments for him to realize that what he had thought was a thick deadfall situated there was in fact the remains of what once had been a cottage. It seemed an ideal place for one.

Pulling some reeds and brush aside, it was apparent that the walls mostly were still intact, with a stone foundation that was nearly four feet high and some sturdy wooden posts on each corner. The place only seemed in want of a roof.

It required some time for him to do the initial cleaning, which was only partly done by the time evening came. But his efforts had left him time to think. As he fiddled with some sticks and attempted to get a fire going, the first he'd made since arriving in this ethereal world, he was able to draw some conclusions.

Those conclusions didn't make him feel any more comfortable. There was something about this land that had been nagging at him. This was a damp world. It had not yet stormed, nor had they experienced anything approaching heavy rain, but it rained regularly if only lightly. The creeks and streams were full, and the place abounded with greenery.

It just didn't smell right. There was a sweet and musky aroma to the place, one that was not at all unpleasant. Below that splendid aroma was a faint smell of decay. But it was only faint.

He'd lived in moist areas before, in tropical and temperate rainforests. The smell of decay in such localities was always present and pungent.

Once he had most of the weeds cleared from the front of his new cottage, Alec was able to look around inside. The place had six sturdy wooden beams, one on each corner and one on each side of the length of the place. He touched each pillar, probed them, pulled them, and struck them.

This place very obviously had been abandoned for some time, long enough that it had been grown over with reeds and bushes. Yet there was no apparent rotting to the wooden supports that would have held up the roof if one had been present. No, the beams seemed quite solid, unaffected by rot or decay. They looked to be simple pine, but they appeared to be as sturdy as when first they were placed there.

The same was true of the stonework. It had some moss and vines on it, but peel those away, and the stones that formed the base of the walls were sturdy and the mortar that held them together was only slightly worn.

It was as if the place had been built only months before, perhaps even weeks. That couldn't possibly be true.

There was something not right about this place, something strange and otherworldly. What was going on?