Chapter 1: The Ripping of Realities
The rain had settled into a fine, persistent mist by the time Mark Peterson trudged down the alley behind Freshmart. It was the same route he took every Tuesday after his grocery run—a shortcut between rationality and home. His reusable bag, containing precisely one lemon, a block of tofu, and a box of whole-wheat pasta, swung from his hand in a predictable rhythm.
The flickering streetlamp overhead cast more shadow than light, painting the wet concrete in oily, shifting patterns. He adjusted his glasses with his free hand, the distant hum of traffic a white-noise soundtrack to his thoughts, which were occupied with debugging a stubborn line of code from earlier in the day.
A high, gleeful cackle shattered the alley’s gloomy quiet.
Mark stopped. The sound was wrong, a scratch on the record of his evening. It was followed by a low, mechanical whirr. He looked up.
A drone, one of those delivery ones, was spiraling out of control, its red navigation lights painting erratic circles in the mist. It was headed straight for a hunched figure rooting through the dumpster.
Logic fired in his brain. Collision trajectory. Probable injury. He didn’t think; he reacted.
He dropped the grocery bag. He took two long strides, grabbed the figure by a bony shoulder, and yanked.
They stumbled back against the damp brick wall just as the drone smacked into the dumpster with a plastic crunch, skittering into a pile of wet cardboard boxes. The figure in his grip let out a squeak.
“You okay?” Mark asked, releasing her and stepping back to assess the damage. The drone’s rotors gave a final, pathetic twitch.
Then he got a proper look at her.
Wild tufts of grey hair escaped a lopsided bun, stuck through with what appeared to be a pencil and a feather. Her face was a network of fine lines, but her eyes were a shockingly vivid green, gleaming with an intensity that had nothing to do with the streetlamp. She was swathed in layers of mismatched purple fabric—a velvet cloak over a polyester housecoat, trim trailing in a puddle.
“Oh, clever boy! Quick on your feet!” Her voice was like gravel and honey. She wasn’t looking at the drone. She was staring at his face, her head cocked like a curious bird. “Solid aura. Very linear. You’ll do nicely.”
“I’ll… what? Look, are you hurt or not?” Mark bent to retrieve his groceries. The pasta box was damp. He sighed internally. This was drama. He hated drama.
Her hand shot out, moving faster than something that old should move. Her fingers, cold and surprisingly strong, clamped around his wrist.
“A debt for a life,” she chirped. “Basic transactional magic. Hold still, this only pinches for a moment.”
“What are you talking about? Let go.” He tried to pull back, but her grip was iron. A weird, staticy sensation began to travel up his arm, a vibration that seemed to bypass his skin and hum in his bones.
“The binding is looking for a placeholder, you see,” she explained conversationally, as if discussing a recipe. “I’ve been stuck pruning the royal rose garden for three centuries. Terrible for the back. I need a breather. You seem like you could use an adventure. Very tidy aura. All boxes and straight lines.”
Panic, cold and slick, finally cut through Mark’s bafflement. “Let. Go.”
He yanked backward with all his strength.
It was the wrong thing to do.
It was like pulling the ripcord on a chaotic universe. The world didn’t tear so much as unravel. The threads of his sensible cotton shirt began to separate, not ripping, but unwinding into streams of silken ribbon that fluttered around him. The alley dissolved, the bricks melting into streaks of charcoal grey that bled into violent swirls of sapphire and amethyst.
The noise was immense—a roaring, screaming cataract of color and sound without form. He was falling sideways, upward, in no direction at all. The witch’s hand was gone from his wrist, but the momentum was set.
Through the screaming vortex, a flash of other colors. Gold. Cream. A furious, beautiful face contorted in a snarl, framed by elaborate braids. A woman in an enormous, intricate ballgown, all lace and silk, tumbled past him in the maelstrom. Her eyes, wide with shock and fury, locked onto his for a fractured second. Her mouth opened, not in a scream, but in a shout he couldn’t hear over the roar. She was moving the other way, toward a shrinking point of mundane, rainy light.
Then she was gone.
The vortex spat him out.
He landed on his hands and knees, the impact jarring his teeth. The screaming faded to a hollow ring in his ears. The smell of damp concrete and garbage was gone, replaced by something overwhelmingly floral and green. The air was warm, thick, still.
He blinked, his glasses miraculously still on his nose. He was kneeling on immaculate, soft green grass, not a blade out of place. His grocery bag was gone. His shirt was, indeed, a collection of fine silk ribbons dangling from his shoulders. He was wearing his ordinary jeans and sneakers in the middle of what appeared to be a meticulously manicured rose garden under a soft, perpetual twilight.
High, impenetrable hedges walled him in. The roses were obscenely large, their petals perfect. The silence was absolute.
He took a slow, shaky breath.
A tiny, rational part of his brain tried to compile the data. Sensory input error. Logical pathways overloaded. Reboot impossible.
From somewhere beyond the hedge, a clear, silver bell rang three times.
A voice followed, young and toneless with rehearsed formality. It carried easily in the quiet air.
“The evening bell, Your Highness. It is time to prepare for the suitor’s audience. The Prince of the Western Vale has composed a new sonnet in your honor. He awaits your loveliest presence.”
Mark remained on his knees in the absurdly soft grass, the silk of his ruined shirt whispering against his skin. The last glimpse of that furious woman in the gown, hurtling toward his world, played on a loop behind his eyes.
He had a horrible, sinking feeling about where—and what—he was.
The witch’s cackle seemed to echo in the perfumed air. You’ll do nicely.
The bell rang once more, impatient now.
The bell rang once more, impatient now.
Before Mark could even process a coherent thought—debug this, debug this—the air around him shivered. The silken ribbons of his shirt twitched, then snapped against his skin like eager tentacles. They multiplied, weaving into themselves, a frantic loom of fabric and light. He felt a terrible, breezy sensation around his legs.
He looked down.
The jeans and sneakers were gone. In their place was a vast, layered confection of cream and gold silk, heavy with embroidery and supported by what felt like a small architectural wonder of petticoats. The bodice was tight, squeezing his ribs, and the neckline plunged in a way that felt both absurd and drafty. He still had his own arms, his own hands with their bitten nails, poking out from elaborate sleeves.
“What,” he said flatly, the word swallowed by the immense quiet of the garden. He patted the dress. It rustled accusingly.
A small door in the hedge, previously invisible, swung open. A young woman in a simple grey dress stood there, her eyes fixed on a point slightly above his head. She curtseyed.
“Your Highness,” she said. “We must hasten. The Prince has been waiting for fifteen minutes. He is beginning to tap his signet ring on the armrest. You know how that vexes the Steward.”
Mark opened his mouth. A sound came out that was not quite a word. The maid—or handmaiden, or whatever—finally looked at him.
Her professional composure cracked for a single, glorious second. Her eyes widened. They traveled from his short, messy brown hair, over his glasses, down to the sharp line of his collarbones exposed by the neckline, and over the frankly ridiculous swell of the gown that hid his form. Her lips pursed. It was the look of someone trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and realizing the peg was also from a different hardware store altogether.
She blinked, and the mask slid back into place. “This way, Your Loveliness.”
“I’m not her,” Mark managed, his voice too loud in the perfumed air.
“Of course, Your Highness is always herself,” the handmaiden said, stepping forward to take his elbow. Her grip was firm. “We must go.”
He was half-pulled, half-floated on the ridiculous skirt, through the hedge door and into a stone corridor. More people in livery stood at attention. As he passed, he saw their eyes. The trained, downward glances that lasted a beat too long. The subtle double-takes. A footman’s mustache twitched. A whisper, not meant for him but carried on the still air, hissed from an alcove.
“She looks… tired.”
“No, she looks like my cousin Gareth. In a dress.”
“Has the strain of all the poetry finally… you know?”
“That’s not strain. That’s a different bone structure.”
They moved into a lavish antechamber. Two older women in more ornate dresses swooped in, their faces etched with permanent concern. They began patting at his hair, trying to fluff the nonexistent curls, and tugging at the bodice to make it sit right.
“It’s no use, Lyra,” one sighed, stepping back. “The magic has provided the raiment, but the form is… resistant.”
“It’s just a man,” the other, Lyra, whispered back, desperate. “A very confused-looking man in the Loveliest Princess’s evening gown. What do we do?”
“The Protocol is clear. When the bell rings, we present the figure in the garden to the suitor. It is not for us to question the Loveliness.”
Lyra looked at Mark, who stood stiffly, feeling the crinoline dig into his hips. “But he’s not lovely. He’s just… there.”
“The Prince’s sonnet,” the first woman said, grasping for procedure. “We must focus on the sonnet.”
A page scurried up, bowing. “The Prince says if the Princess does not appear in the next two minutes, he will begin reciting from the beginning again. He’s on the third stanza of the pre-announcement preamble.”
Panic flashed through the women’s eyes. They looked at Mark, a collective, helpless resignation settling over them.
Lyra finally addressed him directly, her voice low and urgent. “Listen. You are in the garden. The bell rang. Therefore, you are the one we present. Can you at least… try to swoon a little? Or sigh dreamily? The Prince of the Western Vale is very proud of his metaphors about your eyes being like limpid pools.”
Mark adjusted his glasses. “My eyes are like slightly myopic, sleep-deprived screens. From coding. Look, there’s been a system error. A swap. You saw her leave, right? A woman in this dress, going the other way?”
The handmaiden who found him nodded, almost imperceptibly. “A most un-lovely snarl upon her face. It broke the enchantment of the garden’s twilight for a full three seconds.”
“Right. She’s the princess. I’m Mark. I debug SQL databases for a living. We need to reverse this.”
The older woman shook her head, a slow, mournful movement. “The pathway is closed. The garden bell has tolled. You are here. She is there. The audience awaits.” She straightened his sleeve, which did nothing. “The magic dresses you. It does not, it seems, transform you. You will simply have to be what you are.”
“A guy in a princess dress,” Mark stated.
“A unique interpretation of Loveliness,” the woman conceded, without a hint of irony. “Now, come. Try to glide. And for heaven’s sake, try not to blink so much. It’s terribly pragmatic.”
The great doors before them began to swing open. A herald’s voice boomed.
“Presenting Her Radiant Highness, the Loveliest Princess of the Realm, the Rose of the Eternal Dawn, the…”
The herald’s voice faltered. A wave of muffled coughing swept the room beyond.
Mark took a deep breath, the bodice straining. He looked at the resigned faces of his “help.” Then he looked at the grand, glittering hall beyond, where a puffed-up prince stood holding a scroll, his expression shifting from anticipation to profound confusion.
“Right,” Mark muttered to himself, and walked forward, not with a glide, but with the direct, slightly annoyed stride of a man who needs to explain a critical bug to a clueless project manager. The dress billowed around him like a silken tsunami.