PART ONE: ANACHRONISM

Chapter XXIII: The Enemy Doesn't Play Fair

When I got back to my apartment (somewhere around ten at night), the first thing I did was call Nick. I paced my kitchen, cellphone to the ear, waiting for him to answer. The kitchen needed a serious cleaning. Plates were stacked in the sink so that I could barely access the tap, and the counters hadn't been wiped down in a while. Grimacing, I started putting the dirty plates in the dishwasher.

"Hello?" The sleepy voice of Nick crackled through the phone.

Plate in hand, I said, "It was a disaster."

There was a pause. "The coffee was that bad, huh?"

"No, the date was that bad. Guess who Skipped in the middle of the movie theater?"

"Ow. Yeah, that's not a good thing. I would advise you to not that on the next date."

"There's not going to be a next date!"

"Okay, okay, calm down, Ana. Where are you right now?"

"Home." I dropped a fork and knife into the dishwasher. "It was awful. Not just the date but everything that happened after. And you won't believe the most embarrassing part."

"There's more?"

"There's always more."

"Okay," said Nick. "You stay there—don't go Skipping anywhere—and I'll come over. I have a solution for situations like this."

"Solution?" I frowned at the kitchen sink. "This kind of stuff can be solved?"

"Yep." Nick hung up.

As the line beeped dead, I gave up on cleaning and headed for the living room. I collapsed onto the couch and tossed to cellphone onto the cushion beside me.

Today was meant to be perfect. I had a date. With a cute normal guy. We went to the movies. Perfect. But nope, not for me. I wasn't allowed perfect and normal. Not only did my date fail miserably, but I found out that Boromir would die on this journey. No, not that. He wasn't going to die. I was going to save him. Right?

I lay on the couch for a good half hour before a knock woke me out of my stupid. Sluggishly, I dragged myself across the room to open the door. Nick grinned at me and lifted a plastic grocery store bag to eye level.

"Ice cream?" I asked.

"The solution to everything," said Nick. "Ben and Jerry's pints. Baked Alaska for you and Chocolate Fudge Brownie for me. I think that should last us a night, right?"

"Damn," I muttered, taking the plastic bag from him. "I knew there was a reason I'm friends with you."

"What?" Nick stepped into the apartment, closing the door behind him. "It wasn't my charm and devilishly good-looks?"

I went into my kitchen and got two huge (clean) spoons. "If you're lucky, it was because of your stunning sense of humor. Can you tell me the joke about Claude again?"

"Now that's hitting below the belt."

I hopped onto the couch and opened my container of delicious Baked Alaska. I patted the cushion beside me, and Nick sat down. He accepted the second spoon from me before shoveling a massive bite of Chocolate Fudge Brownie into his mouth.

Between bites, he said, "So, Ana, tell me about your life."

"It smphucks."

"Don't talk with your mouth full," said Nick. "It's unattractive."

I swallowed. "I don't care. I'm never going to date. I'm going to die a crazy old lady. I can't even be a crazy cat lady because I'll disappear for months at a time and I won't be able to feed my cats and they'll either run away or die." I took another huge bite of ice cream. "Isnmph that samph?"

"I have no idea what you just said." Nick leaned back against the overstuffed couch cushions and sighed. "If it makes you feel any better, I went to see Joanna."

I swallowed. "How is that supposed make me feel better? I don't like Joanna."

"She has a new boyfriend."

"Oh."

"Apparently, she didn't want to wait around on a boyfriend who had been missing for six months," said Nick. "Whatever. I should have expected as much. I probably wouldn't wait around for six months if she had gone missing."

"She's always been snobby to Bonnie and me. The sooner she is out of your life, the better. I would say Middle Earth was a good experience for you—it has freed you from her evil clutches."

"Way to be sympathetic."

"Whenever Bonnie and I hung out with her friends, Joanna'd start talking shit about us. Then, the moment you came back, we were all best friends again. Think of a giant vulture. She's perched up in her loft, watching you, waiting for you to fall, so she can fly down and pick the flesh off your bones with her sharp teeth." I mimed the motion with my hands.

"You look ridiculous," said Nick. 'Even more ridiculous than usual. And that's saying something."

"Meh, I'm used to it. I have accepted my condition. Or, as Faramir would call it, my affliction."

"Faramir?"

"He's a friend from Middle Earth. That's part of why my life sucks." I took another huge bite of ice cream.

"He makes your life suck? How? Should I beat him up?"

I snorted. "As if you could. He's Boromir's brother and a captain of Gondor. Besides, he's not the reason my life sucks."

"You think I can't beat up a captain of Gondor?" Nick showed me his nonexistent muscles. "You think he can handle these?"

"Unless you learned swordfighting as the goblin town jester, I think you're toast." I had another bite of ice cream. "I would have died a hundred times in Middle Earth if I wasn't able to Skip."

"Well, there you go." Nick elbowed me in the side. "There's something positive about all this Skipping."

I elbowed him back. "I wouldn't even be in Middle Earth if it weren't for the Skipping."

"Oh, right." Nick had another bite of ice cream. "So then, why does your life suck?"

"So, I ran into Faramir during my Skip. That's why I mentioned about him." I stabbed my ice cream with my spoon but didn't take a bite. Then, in a small voice, I said, "He told me that Boromir had died."

"Oh."

"But it's okay," I said quickly, "because I can bring him back."

Nick frowned. I could see him mulling things over in his head, trying to decide how to explain this to me. "Ana, you Skip from one world to the other. You're not a necromancer, you're just a…a Skipper."

"I've done it before," I said. "I saved the Fellowship when they died in the Gap of Rohan."

"Well, yeah," said Nick. "That was good. But should you really have such a say over life and death?"

"It's not a say," I said. "I'm not stopping him from dying, I'm simply changing what's going to happen."

"Isn't that the same thing?'

"No. Stopping him from dying would be like me making him an immortal vampire. Actually—can I do that? Do you know any immortal vampires? That might save me a lot of trouble."

"Your plans get weirder by the second."

"I'm just saying. Immortality makes my job easier."

Nick hesitated. "I'm sure no one expects you to stop people from dying."

"But what if I can save Boromir? What if that's possible, but I decide not to try because everyone tells me that I don't have to. So he's just dead. And I could've done something. What kind of friend would I be then?"

"But doesn't changing the timeline mean you might mess up everything?" asked Nick. "We did watch Back to the Future together. And what happens if you can't stop him from dying?"

"I'll save him. I know I can."

We both took huge bites of ice cream. Nick stared at my black television screen. I couldn't read his expression, but I had the feeling whatever thoughts ran through his head, weren't good for me. Maybe he was contemplating what an idiot I was. Well, that was probably better than him being trapped in his memories of goblin town.

I swallowed my mouthful of Baked Alaska and said, "You know what's missing? Bonnie."

Nick tore his eyes away from the blank screen and smiled. "Man, I miss that crazy girl. She'd be yelling at us—'Why don't I get any ice cream? What part of my life sucks? Well nothing right now, but something will suck down the road so I deserve ice cream in preparation.'"

"That sounds like Bonnie."

Nick sighed. "She's still in Middle Earth, huh?"

"Yeah. But I'll get her back. She's probably not hanging out with goblins like you were. Knowing Bonnie she's in Hobbiton somewhere driving all the little people crazy."

"They'll kick her out of the Shire."

"That'd be hilarious."

We both laughed at the idea. Then, another heavy silence settled about us and we filled it by eating our ice creams with far more focus than necessary.

"Well," said Nick when he'd finished off his pint, "we've established that both our lives suck. We have ice cream. You want to know what's left to do?"

"Coffee?" I asked.

Nick considered this. "That's not what I was thinking of, but let's add it to the list. I was thinking a romantic comedy marathon."

"Totally up for it," I said. "I'll make the coffee, you set up the movies."

We watched romantic comedies until five in the morning. I regret nothing. It's one of the emotional remedy things. Like when you sit on the red sofas in a psychiatrist's office and talk about all your problems—except Nick and I sat on my navy blue sofa. And there wasn't a psychiatrist. Just romantic comedies with hot leads and embarrassing situations. We fell asleep, curled up on opposite ends of the couch, and woke up some time the next afternoon.

Having Nick back in my life was great, but I found that I'd been foolish in thinking that things would go back to the way they were before. I'd assumed our friendship would continue to be light-hearted and fun, where we watched movies together and occasionally complained about our love lives. But I'd failed to account for the absence of Bonnie. Every time we got lunch together or watched a television show together, Nick and I were reminded that she was still somewhere in Middle Earth. I promised myself and Nick that I would find her. No matter how long it took.

In some ways, it was nice to have someone in Ohio who knew about Middle Earth; I could finally make jokes about elves and dwarves without having to backtrack and say something about the internet. However, I quickly realized that Nick didn't have the same love for Middle Earth that I did, and he grew quieter whenever I mentioned it. His experience there had been one of goblins and bones.

He jumped whenever he heard a sudden, loud noise, and he hated meat now, even more than before. He'd be unable to watch if I ever ate beef in front of him. One time when I met him for lunch, there were dark shadows under his eyes, and he told me he'd had trouble sleeping. He didn't tell me the exact reason, but I could guess.

Still, I had missed my friend and it was good to have him back.

A whole week passed without any Skipping incidents. (I know, I was impressed too.) I spent the week searching for a new job, catching up on television shows with Nick, and helping him sort out the six months he had missed. But, of course, a week was too good to last. Come Monday, I stood in line at Caribou Coffee, when—Skip—I went to Middle Earth.

Now that I look back on it, the poor people in line behind me must have felt so awkward. They blinked, and I was gone. Oh well, their minds probably warped the situation so that it made sense to them. That's what my English teacher in junior year had done. I sat by the window in her class, so when I suddenly disappeared mid-lecture, she decided I had jumped out of the window and escaped. Thankfully, the schoolboard didn't really believe her since her classroom was on the third floor.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic again. I Skipped from the coffee shop to a field of browning grass.

Great, I thought, I had ended up in the middle of nowhere again.

But when I looked a little closer, I realized that the fields looked oddly familiar. On one side ran great river, over which lay a stone city in ruins…Osgiliath. And then—when I turned around—I could see the great white city of Minas Tirith embedded in the mountainside.

Gondor. I'd ended up in Gondor. (On Pelennor Fields, to be exact, though I didn't know it at the time.)

Well, all right, I wouldn't complain about ending up in Gondor. If the timing was right, I might run into Boromir and I could warn him of his impending death. That thought cheered me considerably.

I was debating in which direction I should head—towards Osgiliath or Minas Tirith—when something underneath the wall of Minas Tirith caught my eye. I squinted, trying to see what made that rippling effect in the white stone. The outer wall was…moving? No, I realized, the gates were opening, letting a solitary white horse out onto the fields.

Was the horse coming for me?

Surely not. I mean, I knew Denethor had a warrant on my head, but I'd just shown up in Gondor, and I hadn't done anything threatening. I hadn't even taken a step yet. The white horse and its rider were probably just leaving Minas Tirith to go somewhere completely unrelated. Maybe a vacation to Dunland.

But…the white horse galloped right at me. Maybe I was standing in the direction of Dunland?

Only when I glanced over my shoulder in the direction of Osgiliath did I finally understood what was going on. Behind me, a group of horses—maybe fifty, maybe a hundred, it was hard to tell—raced across the fields, bearing soldiers back to the city of Minas Tirith. And, of course, these horses headed right for me.

I backed away, hands raised and my eyes fixed on the riders. Oh God. At this rate, I would end up run down by horses—which might be an even worse fate than falling from a six-story building.

"Skip me back," I muttered. "Skip me back. Skip me back."

Nothing. Not even a twitch. Damn it, what is the use of Skipping if it doesn't work when I want it to?

The horses drew even closer. There were so many of them that it'd be impossible to run. I wouldn't be able to escape in time. I could imagine my body battered and bloodied beneath the hooves.

And right when I had that terrifying thought, the nazgûl appeared. Not just any nazgûl, nazgûl with wings.

I just have that kind of luck.

Black riders on giant beasts with wings. The creatures were shaped like dragons, but (thankfully) their size couldn't match Smaug. Their necks and heads resembled those of a snake than of a dragon. I later learned that these creatures were called fell beasts, and they had been bred by Sauron back in the Elder Days to serve as steeds for the nazgûl.

The nazgûl rode the fell beasts now, perched on saddles and clutching reigns in their metal-gloved hands. At the nazgûl's command, the fell beasts swooped down and attacked the fleeing soldiers. They clawed the horses and hurled men across the field, leaving a wake of broken bodies behind them.

"Skip me back. Skip me back. Skip me back." I started run towards Minas Tirith, away from the soldiers and nazgûl. "I don't want to die—Skip me back, damn it!"

A bright, white light shone through the sky.

I blinked, trying to clear my eyes.

Overhead, the nazgûl and their fell beasts screamed and pulled away from the light as if it had burned them.

For a second, I thought the light had come from the sun, but then I saw that the white horse was only a few yards from me. It continued galloping at full speed towards the fleeing soldiers. The horse bore not one, but two riders: an old man dressed entirely in white who held a glowing staff above his head and a hobbit, dressed in black armor. Gandalf and Pippin.

I opened my mouth to call out to them when something grabbed me from behind and lifted me from the ground.

The ground disappeared, and the world was thrown off-kilter. I didn't dare struggle, afraid that I would fall and die, so instead I wrenched my eyes shut and shrieked, "Don't kill me! Please don't kill me!"

My stomach hit some contraption made of wood, and I felt muscles shifting underneath me… Wind rushed through my blonde hair, blowing it in all directions and ensuring that it would be frizzy for days to come.

Trembling, I opened my eyes and saw that I had been thrown across a horse's back. My stomach rested between the horse's neck and the rider in armor. My head danged over the side, giving me perfect view of horses sweat-soaked legs moving, beating against the ground as it ran.

"I'm pretty sure this is not safe," I cried.

"That is not the primary concern right now."

The calming voice was familiar, and I raised my head enough to see that the rider behind me was Faramir. His gaze focused straight ahead as his horse raced across the fields towards the White City.

"Hey!" I said, clinging to the saddle for dear life. "Long time no see."

Faramir ignored me, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

The horse sped up, and I would have slid off the saddle if Faramir hadn't been holding onto my shirt. Wriggling to say on the horse, I asked, "What brings you here?"

"I am a little busy at the moment," said Faramir.

He pulled his horse's reins and the creature veered to the right—just before a fell beast came swooping down, burying its claws into the flesh of the soldier to our left. The fell beast hurled the soldier across the fields, while the horse slammed into another rider, and both went crashing down, their bodies twisting, cracking, and breaking as they rolled along the dying grass.

Needless to say, I started panicking.

"Faramir!" I cried. "Faster! Go faster!"

"My horse can only go so fast."

"Not fast enough!"

"Why do you not ride the horse yourself?" Irritation colored his voice.

If I had any common sense, I would have realized this was a stressful situation and stopped yelling at him. Unfortunately, back then, I rarely had any common sense.

"That's just asking for death!" I cried. "I've never ridden a horse on my own in my life!"

"Then cease yelling at me to hurry! Do you not think I am moving at all speed already?"

The nazgûl came down again, and Faramir stooped low. The fell beast's claws narrowly missed his head. I watched, my hands curled around the straps of the saddle, as the talons caught hold of the rider behind us instead.

"Why do they fly?" I wailed. "They aren't allowed to have flying bat things while we only have horses—that's not fair! Faramir, they're cheating!"

"It is not meant to be fair," said Faramir. "It is war."

Unfortunately, he was right. The enemy never plays fair.

The white horse pulled up beside us, and I got a good view of Gandalf and Pippin. Gandalf was too focused on maintaining the light coming from his staff to notice me, but Pippin did.

It was probably a bizarre thing to see me sprawled out on a horse's back, my hair wind-whipped and my face deathly pale. I also probably looked like I was going to throw up at any second.

Pippin stared at me for a good long moment, silently mouthing my name. I smiled and waved. Despite the situation, Pippin managed a weak smile and wave back. (I knew I liked him for a reason.)

Overhead, the nazgûl tried to attack Gandalf, but the moment the fell beasts got too close, the wizard would direct the scalding light of his staff at them. The fell beasts jerked away, screeching. Their howls pierced the air. Like knives, they dug into the ears of any who heard them, instilling fears into the very hearts of the Gondorians. Pippin covered his ears with his hands. I would have loved to do that same, but my hands were occupied with holding onto the saddle. Gritting my teeth, I bore through the pain.

The ride back to Minas Tirith was filled with screeching, dying, blood, and broken bodies. I almost cried when we drew into the shadow of the thick iron gates, carved with the images of the kings of old. The gates had been thrown open, and we rode into the White City accompanied by whatever soldiers and horses had managed to survive.

After making sure all the remaining riders had made it into the city, Faramir pulled his horse to a halt in front of a stone fountain. Both he and the horse gasped for breath, while I focused on not vomiting.

Slowly, the nausea faded, and I relaxed. My arms and legs still hung over either side of the horse, and I probably looked more like a corpse than a woman just passing through.

"You have terrible timing," said Faramir.

"I know," I said miserably. "It always happens like this. The Skip has a shitty sense of humor."

Faramir leaned forward and, in a hushed voice, said, "You should be cautious. My father still has a warrant on your head."

"He does?"

I tried to sit up, but of course, that failed miserably and I ended up falling off the horse. I landed on the cobblestone street with a painful crunch. The horse shifted next to me, and its hoof came frightfully close to crushing my left hand. I leapt up, clutching my hand to my chest. A second later, the pain from the hard landing reached me, and I hobbled over to the fountain. "Not a smart move."

"That tumble looked painful," said Faramir, dismounting from his horse with ease. He looked over his shoulder. "Where is Mithrandir?"

"What's that?"

"Mithrandir." When he wasn't being chased by nazgûl, Faramir had amazing patience when it came to dealing with me. "Not what, but who. Mithrandir refers to the wizard."

"Oh, you mean Gandalf." I stood on tiptoe and looked around, trying to peer over the backs of the horses. Of course, they all stood at least a foot taller than me and I couldn't see a thing. "Just look for the obnoxiously clean white robe."

"There he is," said Faramir.

"Where?" I tried jumping up and down, but I still couldn't see anything over the horses' backs.

"You may not be a dwarf," said Faramir, "but you certainly have the height of one. Come, this way."

Leading his horse by the reins, Faramir maneuvered through the crowd to where Gandalf helped Pippin dismount. I followed Faramir, dodging this way and that, trying not to get stepped on by a horse or soldier.

"Mithrandir," greeted Faramir. He glanced at Pippin for the first time, and a frown crossed his face.

Gandalf opened his mouth to respond to Faramir, but when he caught sight of me, all the light drained from his eyes.

Faramir looked from Gandalf to me, and then asked, "You are acquainted with her?"

Gandalf let a long, tired sigh.