Instead of water, I fell onto hard ground. Val struggled in my arms, and I let her go at the same time I opened my eyes. Grass. Grass and dirt and a stone wall. No snow. No lake. No dog sled.

I blinked at Val, who seemed just as surprised as I was. She was soaking wet and still had her harness on, and about two feet of tug line, but the end of the line was burnt, and the sled she had been attached to mere moments before had vanished.

"What happened?"

She looked at me, still breathing hard. Her ears perked up when she heard my voice, but she offered no opinion other than that. I felt… shit, I don't even know. I didn't feel anything but mild shock. This probably wasn't real. We had just been running down a snowy trail, then Val had swung out onto the lake to chase after an idiot squirrel, then the ice had cracked and…

Maybe we were dead. Or I was in a coma or something, which probably meant that Val was dead and I was just imagining her. Or this was all a weird dream and when I woke up, we would not go out running by the lake.

I hoped it was the last option. Or even the first, because I'd rather be in the afterlife with my dog than in a coma somewhere with her dead in a lake. At least it would mean there was an afterlife, and that dogs were allowed.

Val's mouth snapped shut mid-pant and I immediately followed her gaze. We were in front of a stone wall, near an iron gate, and a man was walking down the path on the other side of the gate toward us. I couldn't tell if he had seen us yet or not. Maybe he was the gatekeeper to the underworld, or just a figment of my dream or coma inspired imagination. None of the options seemed great – shit, if this was a dream, he could be a zombie. I dreamt about zombies a lot, though usually I can also fly or something in those dreams. This all felt too real. Usually, when I realize something's a dream, I'm able to wake up from it if I want to, but the rocks were still hard under my knees and the air was warm and I could feel the tickle of an ant crawling on my hand.

Val gave a quiet woof, still staring at the slowly approaching man, and I scrambled further away from the gate, in front of the wall, grabbing her harness and dragging her with me. I liked to think that I'm good at thinking on my feet, and sometimes I am. If the dogs get into a fight or a deer runs in front of my car or whatever, I usually don't freeze up, but right now my brain felt like it was working with only one or two cells. There was snow, and the lake, and water so cold it burned, and Val's claws scrabbling at me as I tried to pull the weight of her and the sled out of the lake, then the sound of cracking and burning cold water around my legs and my waist and my stomach as I fell through –

I realized I was beginning to panic and forced myself to breathe more slowly, burying my face in Val's damp fur as I tried to think. She was still straining toward the gate and the man, but I just slipped my fingers around her collar and held on instead of barking at her to leave it.

I had to decide what to do. A part of me was convinced this wasn't real, because it simply couldn't be, but at the same time it wasn't as if I wanted to die in a dream any more than I wanted to die in real life. Treating our sudden displacement as real, even if I was dreaming, would be safer than treating it as a dream in the off chance that it wasn't. It was kind of like that wager thing about God, but with more immediate consequences.

So, this was real. I decided I had to believe that, even if not all of me was convinced yet, but it made what came next easier.

My dog and I had just been teleported out of a frozen lake to somewhere it was summer – Australia, maybe? – and we were being approached by a strange man while possibly accidentally trespassing. The only obvious next action was to run the fuck away.

Okay, so maybe I was a bit anti-social, but I'd really rather figure out all of this shit on my own, plus society had kind of drilled it into me not to be alone with strange men. And if we really had teleported somewhere, I didn't want anyone else to know since we'd probably end up vivisected in some government facility somewhere.

I got to my feet, realizing that my pants and boots were still soaked from the lake, and tugged Val's collar. There were trees a few yards off the path that led to the gate, and I figured we could hide somewhere in there until the man went away.

"Let's go," I hissed, pulling her toward the trees. She turned, and I realized my mistake a moment too late as she took off toward the forest. Let's go was our command for mushing, and she always took off like a shot. I let go of her collar rather than let her pull me over, grateful that she was at least going the right direction, and jogged after her, pushing through the undergrowth and past the first few trees.

She trotted back to me soon, looking mildly concerned that I wasn't being dragged along behind her on a sled or a bike. I patted her side, glad that she wasn't a husky – those dogs will run forever, which is great for distance races, but not so great for letting them off leash in the woods, and whispered, "Heel."

She wasn't great at the command yet, but she did stay vaguely by me as we walked further into the woods. I only went far enough that the path or road or whatever it was wasn't visible, then found a large tree and some bushes to hide behind. I sat down, pulling Val to sit between my legs, and held onto her collar. The last thing I needed was for her to see another squirrel. I wished I had her leash, but that was still on the sled – and probably at the bottom of the lake.

In fact, most of my survival type stuff was with it. I didn't carry much with me, since we were only supposed to be doing a couple of miles, but I had a basic first-aid kit – in case Val got hurt – some water – in case Val got thirsty – and one person tent, a knife, and a lighter – in case Val got stupid and ended up stranding us somewhere and we needed to camp out, plus some food, both of the human and dog variety. In contrast, all I had in my coat pocket were my keys and my phone. My wallet was still in my purse, back in my van. It was good that it wasn't at the bottom of a lake, but bad because it meant I had no ID and no money.

I heard the man shouting something and waited silently, hoping he wouldn't care enough to come poke around the woods for us. When I heard a clang – probably the gate shutting – and nothing but silence for a few more minutes, I relaxed slightly. It didn't seem like he was going to come looking for us, at least. Maybe I would go try to find an intercom and call up to the house or manor or whatever was behind the gate and ask to use their phone eventually, but right now I really needed the time to think.

"So," I said softly to Val. "Did you teleport us out of that lake? Are you part Pokémon or something?" She wagged her tail at my voice. "If you did, could you did it again? Teleport us back. Well, not back to the lake. Back to the van." More tail wagging as she gazed at me with interest. "Teleport us home?" I tried. "Wanna go home, girl?"

She yipped, which made me wince, but we stayed where we were, sitting under a tree with my damp pants likely making mud out of the dirt I was on. I knew I was probably being dumb, but seriously, something had happened, and I had already decided that this was real, so it had to make sense somehow.

No it doesn't, I reminded myself. Real life isn't a story. Life doesn't have to make narrative sense. Sometimes things just happen, for no reason and no purpose.

Still, teleportation was big. And if it could happen once, it could happen again. I decided that if Val hadn't done it – and if she could teleport, I'm pretty sure she would have done it when she wanted to get out of her crate, or out of the yard to catch a rabbit – then maybe I had.

So I sat there, trying to teleport. I envisioned myself sitting next to my van, trying to feel the cold snow on my ass, trying to smell winter in the air. I did such a good job, I half expected to see the snowy parking lot we'd been in a couple of hours earlier, but my eyes opened to the same forest, with Val panting in my face. I even went so far as to stand up and try that twisting thing they did in Harry Potter to apparate, but only succeeded in feeling stupid. I quickly reclaimed Val's collar after that and leaned against the tree, sighing.

Now I had two conclusions which I had to work from. First, this was real. Second, I wasn't going to be able to teleport back home.

I had to find out where we were. It must be somewhere in the southern hemisphere, since it was winter at home. That left a lot of places; South America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand… I hadn't been to any of them. I figured South America or Africa would feel more… jungly… but I wasn't sure. I was hoping for New Zealand, honestly, since it seemed to have the least amount of animals that could kill Val and me, and was just generally kind of small and… nice, judging from the pictures I've seen of it. Regardless of where I was, I could probably find an American embassy or something and make my way home from there. I could think about a story while I tried to find civilization. This might be weird and frightening, and it would be embarrassing to admit to the officials that I was stranded and needed help, but I would get home.

All right. My first step was finding out where I was. My second step was finding a library or someplace that had free computers I could use to find an embassy and to email my family. Once I was in contact with them, I'd just have to tell a convincing enough story to the authorities to get me deported rather than arrested. Getting Val home might be a bit more complex due to importation laws, but she had a microchip, so I could prove she was mine, and my vet could supply her vaccination records. Even if it took a few weeks, I was sure I'd be able to get her home too. If they tried to stop me, I'd kick up a big stink on social media and I'm sure plenty of people would offer their help.

Already, I was beginning to feel less panicked. This was weird, to be sure, but it would be okay. We were still alive – we were, I had to believe that – and it would be a neat story to tell. This was the sort of thing that would be super cool to have lived through, even though actually getting through it would be insanely stressful. Plus, teleportation! That meant magic or aliens or God, or something other than boring, every-day life. Just the knowledge that there was something more out there was worth all of the stress, as long as we came out of this alive.

"Shit, Val, quit it with the squirrels." I yanked her back, snarling. She gave me a chagrined look, but I wasn't having it. "This is the third time you've tried chasing one in the last twenty minutes. In case you've forgotten, that's what landed us in this mess in the first place."

I shifted my grip on her collar, wincing. My hand was sore, and I would have given my left shoe for a leash. I knew Val would come back eventually if she took off, but I didn't want to have to stomp around in the woods calling for her. We were out of sight of that wall and the gate now, though it was slow going since I'd decided to stay in the woods for a while. The path was to our right, and we would rejoin it soon, but I didn't want to run into someone alone out here. I was looking for civilization, not random strangers.

I loved Val, I really did. She was everything I had wanted – well, mostly, and the rest would come with maturity. She wasn't even two yet. When I'd seen that litter of Belgian Malinois and saluki mixed puppies posted online, I'd known right away that I had to get one. I drove all the way to freaking Utah two days later to pick her up, a little sable bundle of brown and black with black shading on her muzzle and down her throat. She's wicked fast and smart, and would make a great dryland dog once she matured a bit, but she also had boat loads of prey drive and wasn't quite as quick on the obedience side of things as my other shepherds were.

I had gotten into mushing nearly a decade ago. At first it was just bikejoring with the Malinois I had at the time – she was ten now, and hopefully safely still in my house back in the US – but then I got another dog, a German Shepherd, and picked up a sled, and then eventually I added yet another shepherd to my team for some additional horse—er, dog-power. We did sprint races – you need much bigger teams for races like the Iditarod – of just two or three miles, occasionally up to five or six in the winter. The dogs loved it, and so did I, but we were getting smoked by the Eurohounds and greysters – pointers and huskies mixed with sighthounds. I could have gotten a dog that was actually bred for dryland mushing, I guess, but I liked my herders, and a lurcher – the term for a dog mixed with a sighthound for working purposes – seemed like the way to go.

Thus, Val. She's all drive and energy, which is great until it's not. She's got a penchant for killing small furry things, and since that almost got us killed, I wasn't feeling quite so happy with her at the moment.

Something chittered in a tree above us, and I swear, I have never hated squirrels so much as I did today.

"Fine," I snapped. "We're going back to the path."

It was really more of a road, or a two-track, with deep grooves on either side of a grassy strip. People must have used it for four-wheelers or something, or maybe carriages. I saw some hoof prints – did the Australians have an equivalent to the Amish? I still wasn't sure where we were, but I was leaning toward not Africa or South America considering I hadn't seen anything that exotic yet. As a matter of fact, I hadn't seen anything but squirrels and one rabbit off in the distance – thankfully, Val hadn't noticed that.

It was easier to walk on the two-track, at least. We were still moving away from the wall and the gate, and I figured this path would lead us to an actual road at some point. There was a lake somewhere nearby, I could smell the water, and I was debating about trying to go through the forest on the other side of where we had been to see if we could find it so at least Val could get a drink when we crested the incline we had been walking up and I saw something even better. A town. A rustic, old-looking town, but still – a town. It had cobbled streets and no cars that I could see, but it was civilization!

"We made it, Val!"

She looked up at me and wagged her tail, her mouth open in a panting, doggy grin. I started walking more quickly and she trotted at my side. I was glad she was so leggy, since it meant I didn't have to hunch down to hold her collar.

We made it into town without seeing anyone but a cat – I had to drag Val away from it, since cats fell into the definition of small and furry – and I began raking the buildings with my eyes for anywhere that looked public. I probably couldn't bring Val in with me, but I could stick my head in the door and ask if they had a rope or something I could borrow to tie her up with.

The sound of laughter came from a wood and stone building with its door propped open. There was a sign handing over the door, and I drew closer to see what it said.

The Three Broomsticks.

I stared at it for a second until Val started tugging on her collar towards another cat, and I had to yank her around again. When I looked at the sign again, it hadn't changed. There were even three crossed broomsticks burnt into the wood of the sign beneath the name. I blinked, squinted at it, then looked around. Was this like… an amusement park or something? Or… well, I knew most of the Lord of the Rings movies had been filmed in New Zealand. Maybe they filmed some of the Harry Potter movies there too and this was an old part of the set? It didn't look quite like I remembered it in the films, but it had been a while since I'd seen them.

"Val, would you stop it?" I said, irritated, as I had to pull her away from the cat again. It just sat there and hissed at her. "We've got shit to figure out. Just… behave."

I looked up in time to see a broom sweeping back and forth in front of the door. At least I could talk to someone without trying to stick my head inside while holding onto Val.

"Excuse me…" I began, but trailed off when I noticed that no one was holding onto the broom. It was sweeping on its own.