Chapter 1: The Devil's Threads: A Forbidden Omen
The world dissolved into a stomach-churning whirl. One second, Ellie was laughing, her hand clasped in May’s as they touched the weird, smooth standing stone in the middle of the woods. The next, a soundless vacuum sucked all air from her lungs. Colors bled into a gray streak, gravity ceased to exist, and a sickening torque wrenched every atom in her body.
It spat them out.
They landed in a heap of tangled limbs and pained groans on a hard-packed dirt floor. Dust, thick and sweetly pungent with strange herbs, bloomed around them. Ellie coughed, her vision swimming. The graphic tee she’d worn—a vintage band logo—was now smeared with grime. Her ripped jeans felt foreign against her skin, too tight and too blue.
“What the absolute hell,” May wheezed from beneath her, shoving an elbow into Ellie’s ribs. “Get off. Did you feel that? My atoms feel scrambled.”
Ellie rolled over, her braid whipping across her face. The air was different. It was heavy, moist, and carried a layered scent: wood smoke, drying flowers, something musky and animal, and beneath it all, the sharp, metallic tang of fear. Her own.
They weren’t outside.
They were in a single-room hut, low-ceilinged and dim. Bunches of dried plants hung from the smoky rafters, looking like skeletal hands. On a rough-hewn shelf, small, pale objects glimmered—bird skulls, maybe. The only light came from a miserable fire smoldering in a stone hearth, casting leaping, monstrous shadows on the wattle-and-daub walls.
A woman stood frozen by a crude table, a heavy stone mortar tipped over at her feet, its contents—a greenish paste—splattered across the dirt. She was middle-aged, her face a map of hard living, etched with lines that spoke of wind and sun and worry. Her hands, still poised in the air, were rough, the knuckles swollen. She wore a coarse, dun-colored dress that smelled of old wool and hearth-smoke. Her eyes, wide and the color of flint, were fixed on them with pure, undiluted horror.
Not on their faces. On their clothes.
“By the old gods,” the woman whispered, the words rasping out as if torn from her throat. Her gaze swept over Ellie’s neon-laced sneakers, May’s black denim jacket. “You’re wearing the Devil’s threads.”
May pushed herself up to sitting, wincing. “Our what?” Her voice was all pragmatic irritation, the tone she used when debugging faulty code. “Lady, we just took a really bad trip. Where are we? Is this some kinda ren fair insanity?”
Ellie’s historian brain, usually a chatterbox of facts, was cold and silent. Then it rebooted with a jolt. The construction of the hut: wattle and daub, the roof thatching. The hearth. The woman’s dress—hand-spun, hand-woven, the cut simplistic and functional. No synthetic fibers. No machine stitching.
“May,” Ellie breathed, her own voice sounding thin. “Look.”
May followed her stare. She took in the hanging herbs, the skulls, the complete absence of anything plastic, electric, or modern. Her dark eyes, always so focused and analytical, dilated. “No.”
The woman, Agnes, found her voice. It strengthened, laced with a deep, rural accent that twisted the vowels. “You fell from the air. In a flash of sickly light. And you are clad in… in fabrics not of this earth. Colors not born of any dye I know.” She took a cautious step back, as if from contagion. “Demons wear such skins.”
“We’re not demons!” Ellie protested, scrambling to her feet. Her mind raced, connecting fragments. The standing stone. The vortex. The theories she’d read late at night, dismissed as fringe nonsense. “We’re from… somewhere else. A different… time.”
Agnes stared. The word ‘time’ seemed to hang in the smoky air, too big, too impossible.
May stood up slowly, brushing dirt from her clothes with sharp, frustrated slaps. “Different time. Right. So we’ve time-traveled. Through a magic rock. Ellie, your historical fantasy novels have finally melted your brain. There’s a logical explanation. There has to be.”
“Show me the logic, May,” Ellie shot back, a hysterical edge creeping in. She pointed to the lone window, a shuttered opening covered with oiled parchment. “Go on. Look out there and tell me we’re in a state park.”
May stalked to the window, pushed the stiff parchment aside a crack, and peered out. Her shoulders stiffened. Ellie watched the certainty drain from her best friend’s posture, replaced by a slow, dawning dread.
“What do you see?” Ellie asked, already fearing the answer.
“Trees. More trees. A pig. A man in… a brown sack thing, carrying a bundle of sticks.” May let the parchment fall back. She turned, her face pale. “No roads. No wires. No sounds except… birds. Wrong birds.”
Agnes watched this exchange, her suspicion momentarily overridden by fascination. “You speak to each other plainly. Like equals. And you…” She nodded at May. “You look out a window without permission. You move like a boy.”
“We’re from a place where women do what they want,” May said flatly, the tech-genius defiance back in her eyes, a defense against the terrifying unknown.
A slow understanding dawned on Agnes’s weathered face. Not acceptance, but a categorizing of threat. “A place of madness, then. Or witchcraft.” Her eyes narrowed. “The threads. The Lady Inquisitor has preached of such. Cloth too even, colors too bright. She calls them the Devil’s lure. Proof of corruption. If you are seen…”
“What happens if we’re seen?” Ellie pressed, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Agnes’s lips thinned into a grim line. “The pyre. Or the stake. Or both, for certainty.” She looked at their horrified faces and something shifted. The rigid fear softened a fraction, into a weary, pragmatic fear. “You fell into my home. The misfortune is mine as much as yours. If they find you here, my fate is sealed with yours. I am already… spoken of.”
Ellie understood. The herbs, the bones. The isolation. “You’re a wise woman.”
“Some say witch,” Agnes corrected, but there was a bitter pride in it. She moved suddenly, with a speed that belied her age, crossing to a large, worn chest. She rummaged inside, pulling out two lumpy bundles of brown and gray. “You cannot stay in those skins. Not for a moment. The smoke from my fire may draw a curious soul. Change. Now.”
She threw the bundles at them. Ellie caught hers. It was a dress, scratchy and heavy, the color of mud. May stared at hers like it was a live insect.
“You have got to be kidding me,” May said. “I am not wearing that. It probably has… bugs. And it smells like old person.”
“You will smell like cooked meat if you do not,” Agnes hissed, her patience snapping. “Or would you prefer I turn you out now, as you are, and shout for the bailiff?”
The threat was real. The air in the hut, already close, thickened with panic. Ellie started pulling at the hem of her t-shirt. “Just do it, May.”
They changed with their backs to each other, Agnes watching the door with hawk-like intensity. The fabric was coarse against Ellie’s skin, the dress an awkward shape that hung from her shoulders like a sack. She fumbled with the rough laces. May swore colorfully under her breath behind her, struggling with her own outfit.
As Ellie folded her discarded jeans and t-shirt, a strange, profound grief washed over her. They weren’t just clothes. They were proof. Of her world, her time, her self. Agnes took them from her with tongs, as if handling poison, and stuffed them deep into the chest, locking it with an iron key she wore around her neck.
“There,” Agnes said, surveying them. The modern girls were gone, replaced by two awkward, frightened peasants in ill-fitting homespun. “You look… passable. From a distance. In poor light.”
Before Ellie could ask what came next, a new sound sliced through the quiet of the woods outside. Not birds. Not the wind.
The clear, cold rhythm of marching feet. Several pairs. And the harsh jangle of metal on metal.
Agnes’s flinty eyes flew to the door. All the color left her face.
“The King’s men,” she breathed. “They never come this deep unless they seek.” Her eyes locked on Ellie and May, now trapped in their crude disguises. “Speak only if you must. Your accent is strange. Your hands are too soft. Say you are my cousin’s girls, from the north, here to help. Simple. Timid. You know nothing.”
A heavy fist hammered on the door, shaking it on its hinges.
“Open in the name of the King!” a rough voice commanded. “By order of the Inquisitor!”
The world had narrowed to this: the pounding fist, the terror in Agnes’s eyes, the scratchy weight of the lie on their skin. Ellie grabbed May’s hand. It was cold and trembling, or maybe that was her own.
Agnes took a deep, shuddering breath, smoothed her dress, and walked toward the creaking door.
Agnes took a deep, shuddering breath, smoothed her dress, and walked toward the creaking door.
The wood groaned as she pulled it open, framing two men in the damp, green light of the woods. They were not knights in shining armor. These men wore stained leather jerkins over grimy tunics, their faces hard and bored. One had a rust-specked billhook leaning against his shoulder. The other, clearly in charge, rested a hand on the pommel of a short sword. His eyes, like chips of dirty ice, swept past Agnes and into the gloom of the hut.
“Goodwife Agnes,” the leader said, his voice flat. “We’ve had reports. Strange lights deep in the Whispering Woods. Unnatural lights.”
Agnes ducked her head in a semblance of respect, but her posture remained rigid. “I’ve seen no lights, Master Rylan. Only the mist that gathers over the bog at dusk. It can play tricks on the eye.”
Rylan’s gaze slid past her again, lingering on the two figures huddled by the hearth. Ellie felt the weight of it like a physical pressure. She kept her head bowed, her eyes fixed on the dirt floor between her unfamiliar shoes. May was a statue beside her.
“Who are they?” Rylan asked, taking a single step over the threshold.
“My cousin’s girls, from the North Downs,” Agnes said, the lie flowing with a practiced ease that chilled Ellie. “Sent to help an old woman through the spring planting. Poor, simple things. Shy as field mice.”
The man with the billhook snickered. “Don’t look like much for planting.”
“They have their uses,” Agnes replied, a sharp edge entering her tone. “Do you require assistance from the King’s men for your planting, Gerald? I hear your own fields are choked with rye-grass.”
Gerald’s smirk vanished.
Master Rylan ignored the exchange. He was still staring at Ellie and May. The silence stretched, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the frantic drumbeat of Ellie’s heart. She could feel the alien fabric of the dress, the stark cleanliness of her own skin beneath it screaming a truth she desperately willed him not to see.
Then, a fly buzzed lazily past Rylan’s face. He swatted at it, his expression shifting from scrutiny to mild irritation. The moment broke.
“See that you keep to your remedies and your planting, Goodwife,” Rylan said, turning away. “And send word if you see anything that… isn’t mist. The Lady Inquisitor has a particular interest in strange lights.”
“Of course, Master Rylan,” Agnes murmured, pulling the door shut as the men turned their backs.
The thud of the wood closing was the sweetest sound Ellie had ever heard. She slumped, a gasp escaping her. May’s hand found hers again, their fingers locking together in a vise-grip of shared terror.
Agnes didn’t move from the door for a full minute, listening to the receding crunch of boots. When she finally turned, the weariness on her face had deepened into something grave. “That was a near thing. A very near thing.”
“You were amazing,” Ellie breathed, her voice shaky with adrenaline.
“I was convincing. There is a difference.” Agnes moved to the table, her movements slow. She poured three cups of a bitter-smelling liquid from a clay jug and shoved two toward them. “Drink. It will steady you.”
May sniffed hers and recoiled. “What is it?”
“It is what you have. Drink.”
They drank. It tasted like mud and pine needles, but a warmth spread through Ellie’s chest, calming the frantic flutter.
Agnes sat, folding her rough hands on the table. Now, in the relative safety, her eyes began a new, more meticulous inspection. It was no longer a search for demons, but for mistakes. Her gaze was clinical, appraising.
“You held your tongues. You kept your heads down. That was wise. But it will not be enough.” She pointed a blunt finger at Ellie’s hand, resting on the table. “Look.”
Ellie looked. Her hand, while not perfectly manicured, was clean. The nails were short and even. There was no ingrained dirt in the creases, no calluses except a small one from holding pens.
“No one who works has hands like that,” Agnes stated. “Not even a ‘simple’ cousin’s girl from the north.” Her eyes traveled to their faces. “Your skin. It is too smooth. Too even. You have no marks of the sun, no windburn. You look… cared for. In a way only lords’ children are cared for, and even then, rarely.”
May self-consciously touched her own cheek. “We use sunscreen.”
Agnes blinked, filing the nonsensical word away as more proof of their otherness. “Your hair,” she continued, focusing on Ellie’s braid. “The color of fire, but so… clean. It shines. It has no chaff, no fleas.” She turned to May. “And yours. Black as a raven’s wing, and just as sleek. No one has hair like that. It is unnatural.”
Ellie’s historical knowledge, which had failed her during the crisis, now returned with a nauseating clarity. Hygiene. Personal grooming. They were walking anachronisms.
“There’s more,” Agnes said, her voice dropping, as if even speaking of it was perilous. “Your eyebrows. Your…” She made a vague gesture toward her own body. “Your arms. Your legs. You have no hair.”
May flushed a deep red. “We wax. And shave.”
“You remove it? On purpose?” Agnes looked genuinely baffled, then her expression hardened. “Only children have no body hair. Or those with a wasting sickness. Or, according to the Inquisitor’s sermons, witches who wish to make their skins pleasing to their familiars.” She let that sink in. “Your teeth are too straight. Too white. You smell of nothing. No sweat, no earth, no woodsmoke. You smell like… like ghosts.”
The list was a crushing litany. Every point was a death sentence waiting to be pronounced.
“So what do we do?” Ellie asked, her voice small. “We can’t just… stop being clean.”
“You can,” Agnes said firmly. “You will. You will work in the garden until your hands blister and stain. You will rub ash and walnut shells into your skin to dull its sheen. You will stop washing your hair with whatever sorcery you used. You will let the oil build, the dirt settle. You will sleep in these clothes. You will smell of this hut.”
May looked horrified. “You want us to get… infested?”
“I want you to look alive,” Agnes corrected sharply. “Alive in this world. As for the hair… the body hair…” She sighed, a practical problem solver presented with a grotesque puzzle. “We will have to let it grow back. In the meantime, we will say you both recovered from a fever that made it fall out. It is known to happen. A risky story, but better than the alternative.”
She stood up, going back to her chest. This time, she pulled out two small, rough sacks. “Here. You will fill these with straw to sleep on. Tomorrow, we begin.” She looked at them, and for the first time, a flicker of something like pity showed in her flinty eyes. “The world you came from sounds a gentle, strange place. This one is not. To survive here, you must disappear. You must become dull, coarse, and unremarkable. You must become ghosts of a different kind.”
She turned to bank the fire, plunging the hut into deeper shadow. “Rest now. The light is gone, and with it, some safety. Tomorrow, the real work starts.”
Ellie lay on the thin, scratchy sack, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the night—the hoot of an owl, the scuttle of something in the thatch, May’s quiet, angry breathing beside her. She stared into the darkness where the ceiling should be, thinking not of knights or castles, but of calluses, body odor, and the terrifying, meticulous work of erasing herself.