Author's Note: Sorry for the delay. The first proper chapter. Sorry if anything is amiss. I actually can't remember the year that it is supposed to be when James' is supposed to die (took a guess, but I can correct it if anyone knows - which I would appreciate quite a bit - well actually I would be in your debt pretty much). Thank you so much for the favs/watches.

Otherwise, enjoy and I should have more up soon :)

Disclaimer: I don't own. Never will.

Strangeness and Charm

Chapter One

Ivy Jones climbed down from the tree she had been sitting in, as fast as her fingers would allow her. Poor Oli just seemed to stay in trouble with his sisters. She rushed over to her fighting siblings, prying them apart, having to use her whole body to keep them separated.

"Who started it?" she demanded fiercely.

"Oli did," Grace, the boldest of the pair, snapped as she pointed her finger at her brother. Oli was now sitting in the grass, looking confused. Sophia was nodding her head anxiously. She always went along with Grace's schemes. Ivy thought that it was God's way of making a joke that Grace had the sweetest name and was the meanest child.

"That doesn't mean you can pry his bloody arms from his body!" The twins shared a look and Ivy realized what she had done.

They "oooed" and said they were rushing off to tell mother.

"Fine, as long as it stops you from killing Oli." She watched them go, blond hair blowing in the wind. Their hair would turn color like hers, to a drab brown that matched her father's locks. She used to wish that she had been graced with pretty, copper hair like Mildred Callahan from over the way, when she was a child.

Instead, her hair color now was an artistic mix of plum and blue on the ends, where her best friend Amy had dyed it before leaving for America as part of some program. Ivy's father hated it, but could do little to change her hair now that she was eighteen.

Remembering Oli, Ivy glanced down. He was looking up at her, expectantly.

"Come on Oli," Ivy told him, picking him up off the ground and brushing his clothing off. "Let's go see the damage." He was a bit too big to be carrying, but Ivy didn't care. She merely hoisted him onto her hip and started across the yard.

In the early morning sun, her mother was on the side of the house that overlooked the abandoned pasture, her nimble fingers working to hang the family laundry.

Harper kept promising to buy her a dryer with his leftover crop money, but he never had. Ivy would have bought one, if she made enough at her part-time job in town. She was a clerk for the movie rental store. Just her and Liam, who wished he were her boyfriend instead of just her boss. Liam was a bit older than Ivy, and his idea of romance was watching football matches and drinking.

As much as she hated to say it, if she didn't leave this village soon, he would wear her down.

The twins were already busy telling their mother all about the 'naughty' word Ivy had said in front of them. Ivy's mother gave a long-suffering sigh, familiar with this situation before as she rubbed her forehead.

"Hullo mum," Ivy greeted her, setting Oli down. He ran and clung to her mother's pant leg.

"Ivy, I've told you before. Just because you are eighteen now, does not mean that you may use foul language in front of the little ones." Ivy had heard this speech so much that she could nearly say it with her mother.

"I know," she shrugged. "Of course, I'm sure tiny murderers would overrule my mouth any day."

"Sophia, Grace, I've warned you about playing roughly with Oli. He's…" She glanced down at her son. Oli didn't speak much, though he should have been by now. "My special little angel." Ivy's mother worried that Oli was not quite right, as she had been nearly forty when he had been born. However, she had Grace and Sophia right after that and besides being the devil incarnate, they seemed normal.

Out of all her siblings, Ivy's favorite was Oli. Mostly because he was the least amount of trouble to watch. But there was something genuinely sweet in his smile. In some ways, Oli was more Ivy's child than he was her mother's baby.

"But now that you're here, you'll be finishing the laundry. I've got to run Ben, Gav, Emma, Isabella, and Landon to that thing with the school and Aunt Lettie's." She caught sight of Ivy's scraped up hands, of the graphite from her pencil. "You've been climbing that tree again, have you? Don't get blood on my sheets. I'll be back soon."

Ivy had forgotten today was the day that half of her siblings would be leaving for the summer either for some special credit in Ben and Gav's case, or to spend the summer working with Aunt Lettie in another village, as was the case for Emma, Isabella, and Landon. Ivy had done it when she was about their age, so that Lettie could attempt to school her in manners and proper behavior.

Lettie or Letitia Jennings – now – was considered to be somewhat of a local celeb in her village because of her famous husband. She insisted on teaching the women in this family proper social behavior. Ivy figured it was about wasted on her. It was part of a truce between Aunt Lettie and Ivy's mother, Helen, which had been started before her birth. Ivy was relieved because it meant that more of siblings would be out of her hair for the summer.

"Fine then. Oli and I shall finish the laundry." Ivy pulled an odd face after her mother had bade her goodbye, thankfully taking Sophia and Grace along for the ride into town and beyond. Oli laughed and clapped his hands together.

Ivy gave him the important job of holding the basket – handmade of course- full of clothespins as she hung sheets, shorts, and the rest of the collected laundry on the lines.

"Where's mum gone off to?" Harper asked a while later as he ducked under the billowing sheets. Ivy hoped that he didn't get them dirty.

"You forgot didn't you?" she sighed.

"Forgot what? She forgot about feeding us."

"No. There's things in the pantry. She took the savages with her, don't you remember? For their time away, hopefully in jail, some of them."

"Shame she didn't take you with them. Can't stand you moping about here, whining about Uni and art. 'You all lack culture!' 'You don't understand me!' 'You-" But Ivy cut him off in his terrible impression of her by throwing one of her shoes at his head. It sailed by with inches to spare but at least it shut him up.

"Shut up!" she shouted after him anyway. "I'll make some lunch then." She didn't want her father to join Harper's cause. She pinned the last bit of laundry, then grabbed for Oli's hand. "Come on, let's go feed those tigers." He laughed and skipped along beside her.

She sang him a nonsensical song about items she found outside until they hopped up the steps to the multi-story farmhouse that she knew was older then all of the siblings combined.

It was cold-cut sandwiches with chips for the four of them. Her father did not say much, but that was not unusual. Cecil Jones was a man of few words. They all munched quietly in the shade of the dining room. He told them through the years if the air unit had to be running, then the lights had to be off to save electricity.

Ivy hardly minded. She slept in a room by herself, which meant that she could sleep in whatever she liked – usually with her window open and most of her clothes off.

After lunch, it was time for a few chores about the house. Ivy made Oli sit in one of the wicker chairs on the verandah, with a coloring book and crayons so that she could sweep. She made him sit on the couch the same way so that she could dust too.

Around three, she started the process of peeling cucumbers for chilled soup later. Oli's job this time was to take the scraps and feed them to his free-range chickens. Ivy felt the chickens were too 'free-range' when they hopped up on her windowsill in the mornings and evenings. Oli loved his chickens, however, and no one in the family was allowed to complain.

By the time Ivy had everything peeled, seeded, chopped, and simmering, it was nearly four-thirty. She wondered how long her mother's trip was going to take. She poured the soup into the blender – a wedding gift to her parents just over twenty-years ago, before finally putting the whole concoction into the refrigerator to chill until dinnertime.

"Oli?" she called, realizing she had not seen him since the last time she had sent him with cucumber skins to his chickens. When he didn't appear after a few minutes, Ivy rushed outside. "Oli?" She could hear his chickens clucking on the side of the house and she hoped that Oliver was still pretending to be one of them.

It was something he enjoyed, tucking his arms under and stretching his neck out in a believable impression of one of his hens. "Oli?" The assorted chickens all stared up at Ivy as she rounded the corner of the house, their orange eyes watching her as if she were from Mars. Oliver wasn't with them.

"Oh God!" Ivy began running to where the laundry was, wondering if he were just playing among the sheets. She whipped her way through the laundry, coming out on the other side facing the empty pasture. She hoped he had not gone near the farm equipment. Her dad would kill her, and she would probably blame herself if anything happened to Oli.

She spotted him, standing quietly near the pasture, waving at something. He turned around and gestured to her, with a big grin on his face.

"Oli!" she shouted, running towards him. "You gave me such a fright! What are you…" Her words died in her throat as she saw what Oli had been waving to in the pasture. Or more like, who he had been waving to.

There was a man sitting in the abandoned pasture, looking quite confused, his long legs splayed out in front of him. Ivy supposed that was only natural, as she was quite confused as to how he got there.

She climbed the pasture fence, straddling the rail, to get a better look.

"Hullo?" she called. The man finally turned his head in her direction. Well goodness, he was striking. She wished she had her sketchbook.

"Miss?" he asked, "if may I ask, where am I?"

"My pasture. In England. In a village far removed from normal society." Ivy hopped down from the fence, to approach him. He was not dressed in a modern fashion. Instead, he looked like an extra from one of those war movies Liam was always nattering on about.

She caught a glimpse of bright blue eyes underneath his cap, just before he turned away from her, blush coloring his cheeks.

"Miss, what strange land is this?"

"What do you mean?"

"You are quite exposed." He was studying the pasture grass with great intensity, but she could see that he was trying not to glance back at her.

"What do you mean by that?" Ivy glanced down at her outfit – jean shorts and a loose linen top. Her midriff top was one of the items on the wash line.

"I suppose I might have struck my head in my tumble from my horse." Ivy agreed silently, that perhaps he had struck his head, because there was no horse around her farm.

"What's going on here? Did Liam put you up to this?"

"Miss, I can assure you," his voice grew strained as she came closer to him, "I have no knowledge of a jest or of this 'Liam' you speak of."

"You look like something from a history book about The Great War."

"I can assure you, there is nothing 'great' about the war with the Germans. Miss, I must find my horse and the remains of the cavalry." He finally turned back to look at her. Ivy couldn't explain it, but he seemed sincere.

"What year do you believe it is?" she asked, the smile sliding from her face. What if this man were a psycho?

"Miss, it is 1915 – 16 at the latest. War has a way of sapping time and place from you."

A bead of sweat made its way down Ivy's back. "I'm afraid you're mistaken. It's 2000. The third of June to be-" The gentleman seemed to have fainted. "Oh Hell."

Ivy could see deep crimson spreading slowly across the right shoulder of his neat, military uniform. No wonder he fainted.

"Oli, go fetch father. Now," she commanded her brother on the other side of the fence as Ivy set about unbuttoning the man's coat to look at the damage.

X

Captain James Nicholls could feel Joey's powerful stride beneath him as they charged across the battlefield. Time seemed to have come to a halt when he spotted the German and his large gun.

He knew it would be the end.

James could not spot Jamie or anyone else he recognized.

To do what – exactly? Signal? Give some type of warning that he was done for?

He couldn't be sure if he fell before the machine gun ripped him apart, or if he jumped to avoid it.

It's a strange sensation to suddenly be falling towards the ground, body suspended in mid-air, muscles bracing for impact, only to never make contact.

Instead, James seemed to tumble through the earth, instead of to it, tumbling through darkness, and finally a blinding light.

When he finally sat up, he realized it was late afternoon, and deadly silent.

Upon glancing around, he was relieved to find a field cleared of dead horses and men. However, it was eerie because he had no idea to where everyone could have disappeared.

He was alone, in a pasture, with an old farmhouse in the distance.

In the harsh sunlight that required the use of his hand to shield it from his eyes despite his visor, James spotted a boy at the paddock fence, waving to him. He waved back, more out of habit. The boy was dressed strangely.

James' arm throbbed, but before he could tend to it, he heard a woman's voice. He watched the little boy turn and wave to a young lady running across the field.

She was arresting, her slender legs gripping the fence, as she climbed over to come see him. She was scantily clad as well, her legs bare – save for the half trousers she was wearing, her billowy, off the shoulder blouse and lack of a corset, petticoats, and other undergarments. Her skin was lightly tanned and smooth. And her hair, unrestrained and cascading around her shoulders, brown but touched with exotic colors he had only ever seen in nature or paintings.

She was brash, but not German, as she questioned him. He knew he shouldn't look at her, when she was dressed so improperly, so risqué. James' arm throbbed worse, but this stranger seemed quite mad in addition to being oddly dressed - 2000?

And after that, he recalled no more.

X

Author's End Note: Oh goodness, right? Stay tuned for next chapter!