YAY! TWO MORE REVIEWERS! Thanks to L. A. E. and Kadgal, I have become satisfyingly happy. Being happy is good. Getting reviews is good. Being said is bad. (Hey-it rhymes.) No reviews are bad. Do you speak my language? REVIEW!

Okay...I promised this would be longer, which it is, but as for better grimaces I dunno. You need to tell me. And I know I use about five billion on the same words in here (e.g.-"glance" and "explain") and sorry, but my mind hasn't been working very well lately. Maybe I should clear it before I go any farther. But I've almost got the fourth chapter done besides this, and I wanna post...Peter is back in Missouri; maybe that is the problem.

Disclaimer: If I owned any of this, besides the narrator, would I be writing this thing called a FANFIC??? No.

I opened one eye. All I could see was green. Briefly I wondered if I were back in jail, in a puke-green cell with graffiti plastered over the walls...It took me a minute to realize that the green were leaves. They rustled overhead, like some sort of weird, mystical music. I was flat on my back, my arms and legs spread. I closed the eye, then with some effort opened both of them. I raised my head above the ground a few inches, and looked at myself. I was still in my pajamas, and the book was beside me, a couple feet away. My right wrist was crooked at some odd angle. I tried to move it, but nearly cried out in pain. Broken, I thought. At least it wasn't the one I wrote with. I sat up, leaning on my left hand. My head was throbbing violently. It HAD to be worse than the hangover I got that one time after trying out some of mom's liquor cabinet. I'll never do THAT again...I grimaced, then scrubbed my face with my hand. Something was not right.

Where was I?

I appeared to be in some kind of strange forest, judging by the trees and a sparkling blue pond to my left. But there was something wrong with this picture-no animals, no birds singing, not even a cricket chirping. I seemed to be utterly alone. Why would I be alone in a forest? Last thing I remembered, I was sitting in my room in Lori and Dave's apartment...

Slowly I got up, my back feeling as if I had several rather large splinters in it, and my legs feeling as if they weighed a ton each. I picked up the book and tucked in under my shirt. Staggering, and with my right arm cradled to my chest, I made my way to the pond and splashed water on my face. I considered drinking some, but the water looked dirty, so I decided against it.

Abruptly, a voice rang out over the forest: "They're over there!"

It all happened at once. The silence disappeared instantly and was replaced with the sound of galloping horses and an uproar. I stood up quickly, glancing about. What was happening? A rustling sound to my right diverted my attention. Three people darted out from a clump of bushes, all about my age or a little older, one with a suspicious looking object under their shirt. They started to run into the forest. The teens rushed past me, not even looking up, but then one grabbed my by my sleeve, pulling me along.

"C'mon!" the kid, a short girl with pale skin, a golden mane of tightly curled ringlets, and sea-green eyes, hissed. "We gotta run!" She let go of my sleeve then ran after her two friends.

"What?" I said dumbly. "Huh?"

The girl paused behind a tree and motioned frantically.

I took a quick look back at the way she had come. What was she doing, telling me to run like that? Who did she think she was? Or-who did she think I was? But on the other hand...standing up to her rather than some angry horseman I had no idea existed until this moment was easier. I forced my legs into a run, my right hand pressed up against the book and my left arm holding that, and she turned and darted away. I followed her through the forest, very aware of the noises of the oncoming men.

As soon as I was running at her side, dodging rocks and tree limbs, I gasped between breaths, "Who-are-you?"

The girl gave me a puzzled look and kept running. "We gotta catch up with Asric and Damien," she told me, not even breathing hard. "We gotta get to the crib, 'fore the King's men find us. When we get there, ye take the stuff, got it? Go down and deliver it to Jorshan, then meet us back at the Dancin' Dove by midnight. Oth'wise, Arien won't get it, and we'll be in deep shit. He'll have our 'eads for sure." She jogged on.

"What?" I screeched. I didn't get half of what she'd said-King? Dancing Dove? 'Have our heads'? I only recognized the word "crib"-it was street slang for hideout. And who were these people-Asric, Damien, and Jordan or whatever? What the hell was this girl talking about? Did she think I was someone else?

I wanted to stop. My legs were aching and I couldn't breath very well. "Stop-" I managed to squeak out. "Wait-"

"C'mon," urged the girl, "we is almost there!"

Feeling extremely confused and quite pissed, I reluctantly made my way through some more trees, growing closer together now, and some thicket. I wondered if we were getting anywhere, or just going in circles, or if my guide even knew where she was going. My instinct told me we were headed south, but my head was so messed up, it could've been north. It seemed like forever, but the horsemen's shouts were sounding farther away, and the girl was starting to slow down. She began to walk briskly, only once peeking over her shoulder to see if I were following her.

"Here," she said abruptly, stopping. "Get in."

She had stopped at a wooden door set back into a mound of fallen trees and boulders. The door was about two and a half feet high, partially hidden by a dead log.

"There?! I won't fit in THERE," I exclaimed.

"Ye will if ye crawl," she informed me pertly. She tapped a series of knocks on the door, and it must have been a password or something, because the door opened by itself. BY ITSELF. It slid back into the rock it was built into. The door opened up to a kind of passage leading away into darkness.

I stared at it in awe.

"Ye know," the girl said, in a conversational voice, "I thought mayhaps the King might've wanted you to do these kinda missions before." She stared at me a moment, running a hand through her wild hair. "I know he likes ye on the street watch and such, but YE never bein' in the King's forest? It's almost a joke." She knelt and slid into the tunnel, vanishing in a moment.

Annoyed, I rolled my eyes and said, "I would greatly appreciate it if you actually told me what was going on."

"Don't be stupid, Zarif. Ye gotta be more serious. This is dangerous work." The girl's voice was muffled. "Or mayhaps you don't think so. Mayhaps I better tell the King to lemme bring summon else next time. C'mon. Get in."

"Hey-just a minute! What'd you call me?" I asked, crawling along after her in the tunnel. The door slid shut behind me; I jumped. "My name's Randi, not-"

"Shuddup," the girl interrupted. She stopped so suddenly I almost fell on top of her.

"What?" I whispered.

We waited. Just when I thought I was going to go insane from the darkness, I heard voices coming from outside.

"I can't find 'em, Sir," one man was saying, in a desperate sounding voice.

"You had better find them, Charnot, or I'll have your skin," another man, closer, said venomously. When his Highness finds out the ingredients are missing, you and I will both be in serious shit! You were supposed to be GUARDING the door, not taking time off-"

"I wasn't, Sir-"

"I don't care, Charnot, I just don't care! Find those sneaky little bastards or I'm going to personally make sure you won't ever see the inside of the palace again!"

I listened to the sounds of a horse trotting away, my stomach tight with fear. What was so important in that those kids had taken, to make "Sir" so upset? And what kind of a name is "Sir"? And "his Highness"? you'd think I would've gone back to the Dark Ages, I swear.

And then it hit me so suddenly I about gasped out loud.

Kings? Horses? Forest? I was in the book. I was IN the book! Alanna, that had been her name, she had wanted to become a knight, and her brother a sorcerer, learning magic and...

The thought was so incredible, so unbelievable, and yet it was really happening. I wanted to pinch myself, but my muscles wouldn't seem to work. This couldn't be happening. It was all a dream, I had probably just fallen asleep, and when I woke up, I'd be back in Sheboygan...

And yet some horrible, insane side of me KNEW it wasn't a dream. It couldn't be. I had been zapped into some crazy story out of a book--there was no denying it. That would explain the white light I had seen, though.

I closed my eyes, and took several deep breaths. Beside me the girl-I still hadn't gotten her name-sat up. I did so too, and leaned against the tunnel's wall, trying to believe this. I closed my eyes and put my face in my arms.

The girl sighed, and then was quiet. I expected her to say something, or at least continue to crawl, but she just sat there. I looked up, but wasn't prepared for what I saw.

A perfectly round ball of golden fire sat in the girl's palm. It was real, I could feel the heat coming from it and it lit up the dreary passage, but it looked oddly more like glass, not flames.

"What-" I stuttered, "what-"

"I know. It's bad, isn't it?" She sighed again. She was staring into her golden orb, but her eyes were far. She looked at me. "I'm sorry. I dint mean to get you into this, Zarif, I really dint-"

"Stop calling me that! My name is RANDI, not ZARIF!" It just burst out of me. I knew I was shouting, but right now I didn't care. This was just too much. And anyway, Ms. Cleeves, the social worker, wasn't here to tell me "to learn to control my anger".

The girl rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and my name's Princess Josiane."

"Who are you?" I asked warily. I didn't care if I wasn't making sense to her. I needed some answers, and I needed them now. "I don't have any idea where I am or what I'm doing here, but you had better tell me quick or I think my sanity is going to be ultimately destroyed forever."

A little too patiently, the girl explained, "My name's Eve, remember? Yer here 'cause I suggested t'the King that ye'd be good for the job, right? Ye agreed, and now we're down in the tunnel in the King's Forest. If we don't get out of here pretty damn fast, we're gonna be in a helluva lota trouble- "

"You don't get it, do you?" I yelled. "You don't get that I have no friggin' clue what friggin' planet I'm on, or if I'm trapped in a friggin' time warp, or what! I read a book, and the book brought me HERE. You don't bloody get that, do you? I fell out of the sky and into a woods and now I'm here, 'cause I followed YOU and now I have no friggin' idea what I'm doin'!"

She stared at me for a long while. I stared back, defiant.

"Goddess," the girl, Eve, whispered finally. "Ye ain't joshin' me, are ye?"

"Does it LOOK like I'm joking?" I snapped. Every instinct in my body screamed for me to punch her face in, but I didn't. I couldn't. If my wrist wouldn't' have been hurt, I might've.

She wet her lips, then glanced at the fire. "But-but-" She paused, and took a deep breath. "What did ye say yer name was, again?"

"Randi DiCarlos. I'm from Chicago." From the blank look on her face, I knew she had no idea where Chicago was. "Chicago," I explained, "is a city in Illinois. America. EARTH???" Finally she nodded but I knew she still didn't understand. "But I got the book in Sheboygan."

"Book? You said it-it-brought you...here?"

I pulled the book out, feeling only slightly stupid to be wearing clothes I normally slept in. From this world, wherever the hell it was, she probably wouldn't even know the difference. The book shone in the light from her fire. Eve set down the fire in her lap, like it was a pet or something. A part of me knew it was magic, but I didn't want it to be true. I handed the book to her. She studied it, then flipped through the pages, only briefly looking at them, She ran a curious finger over some of the pictures, then handed it back to me.

"I can't read," she explained.

"What, you never went to school?" I asked sarcastically.

But she looked confused and said, "School? You mean classes? Well-up in the palace the pages learn to read and write, and do numbers and stuff, besides all the knight stuff. But I ain't ever took no classes-at least not in that kinda thing." She grinned slyly at me.

So she was a thief. What are the chances of that? I thought to myself. I get pulled into another world and whom do I end up with in a dark tunnel? A thief. I am condemned to be in dark tunnels forever, I decided.

"Fine then," I said, taking the book back. "But how are we gonna get out of HERE?" I waved a hand around the passage that was beginning to feel smaller and smaller. "And HOW am I going to get back home?"

"Firs' one's easy," Eve said. "We crawl 'til we get to the crib. 'Bout ten minits from there, I'd say." She began to crawl away, the orb in hand.

I had no choice but to continue. We didn't talk; I could sense Eve thinking out what I had said. It was hard to move slowly with my wrist, so mainly I staggered and army-crawled, but soon, as she had promised, the tunnel's ceiling began to rise, and in no time at all we could stand fully up without practically decapitating ourselves.

"Here," Eve said, stopping at another wooden door. She knocked. While we waited for it to open, she said, "By the way, this is Corus. Corus, Tortall. You know, like your Chicago?"

I nodded. Tortall. Nice name, I thought wickedly.

A boy I recognized to be one of the thieves running ahead of us opened the door. He ushered us into a room beyond, glancing curiously at my pajamas.

The room behind the door was small, but a room all the same. The walls her stone, and several torches were lit, held up by brackets on the walls. The floor was dirt, and a boy was sitting in the corner, clutching the bag that looked full. I guessed that what was in it was what they had stole- "ingredients". There was a door on the far side of the room, leading somewhere new.

Eve seemed to be talking to the boy who had opened the door for us, so I studied her two friends. The boy Eve was talking to was tall, with deep black skin and light brown eyes. His hair was in about fifty little braids, all sticking out in odd places on his head. He was wearing a ragged looking shirt, with the sleeves cut off, and pants that only came to his knees. They looked like capris, but from what I knew about medieval times, they probably were britches. He was barefoot, as was the other boy. The other boy had light brown skin and slanted golden eyes. His black hair he wore long, to about his shoulders, with a yellowed bandana tied around his head to keep it out of his face. The vest, shirt, and britches he wore were caked with mud. He seemed bored.

I turned back to Eve.

"Now, I know you're not going to believe this," she was saying, "but this isn't Zarif."

"What d'ya mean that isn't Zarif?" the boy asked. "I can SEE it's her."

"No, Damien, it's not. It's kinda hard to..."

I tuned her out, wondering how she was going to explain this to her two friends, and sat down in the opposite corner of the boy who was apparently Asric. I sat back, suddenly realizing how tired and stiff I was. My eyelids began to droop, and I yawned. Just a few hours ago I was sitting in a car with Callahann...That seemed like such a long time ago..Cradling my right arm, I slipped into a state of unconsciousness. With the fire so warm in my arms, why shouldn't I sleep?



I know, the ending was a bit confusing...you'll understand later on. Review. (You'd think with people telling you to do that all the time, people would start to catch on?)