The Elegant Prince

Chapter: Six

"Do you want to talk about it? Or maybe later?"

He didn't answer, he looked as though he was in deep thoughts.

They entered the hotel, and the woman behind the little desk smiled. "Oh, wow! She said as she put the Naruto manga book she had been reading down." She looked at both of them. "You do look a lot like him, only hotter and a bit more alive," she said, then laughed at her own joke. "First door on the right. Bath's down the hall." Smiling, she left them alone in the entrance hall.

When Rachelle turned to look at the man, she suddenly felt as though she was a mother abandoning her child. "You'll figure everything out soon," she said soothingly. "And this lady can tell you where to get dinner."

"Lady?" he asked. "And dinner at this hour?"

"All right," she said, frustrated. "She's a woman and a meal this is super late. I'll bet that after a good night's sleep you'll remember how you got into this world and how to get back, if you'll ever."

"I have forgot naught, madam," he said stiffly, then seemed to relent. "And you cannot leave. Only you know how to return me to my own time."

"Cut me some slack, will you?" she snapped at him. Didn't he understand that she, too, had needs? She couldn't give up all that she needed to help this stranger, could she? "If you'll just give me the fifty dollars we agreed on, I'll leave. I'll be on my way."

When he just stood there, she rummaged in the shopping bags until she found his paper money; then she removed fifty dollars and gave him the rest of it. "Tomorrow you can take your other money to the dealer and he'll give you more modern money," she said as she turned to go. "Good luck." She gave one last look in his black eyes that looked so sorrowful, then turned and left.

But once she left the hotel, she didn't feel jubilant at finally having rid herself of the man. Instead, she felt as though she was missing something.

But Rachelle forced herself to put her shoulders back and her head up. It was getting late and she had to find a place to spend the night—a cheap place—and she had to decide where to go from here.

When Madara found the upstairs room where he was to spend the night, he was appalled. The room was small, with two tiny, hard-looking beds with no cloth hangings enclosing them, and the walls were very bare. But upon closer examination he saw that the walls were painted with thousands of tiny blue flowers.

On second thought, he decided that with a few borders and some order to the paintings they might look alright. There was a window with that marvelous glass in it, and it had fabric side hangings of painted cloth. There were framed pictures on the walls, and when he touched one, he felt the glass—so clear he could hardly see it. One of the pictures was quite lewd, showing two naked women sitting on a cloth near two fully dressed men.

It was not that Madara didn't like the picture, but he couldn't bear to see such a shameful thing displayed so openly. He turned it to face the wall.

There was a cabinet in the room, but such as he'd never seen before. It was entirely full of drawers! He tried, but the top of the cabinet did not lift up. He pulled the drawers out one by one and they worked marvelously well.

After a while, Madara began to look for a chamber pot, but one was not to be found anywhere in the room. Finally, he went downstairs and out to the back garden to find a privy, but there were none.

"Have things changed that much in one hundred years?" he mumbled as he relieved himself in the rose bushes. He fumbled with the zipper and snaps, but managed rather well, he thought.

"I will do well without the witch," he said to himself as he went back into the house. Perhaps tomorrow he would wake and find this all to be a bad dream, a long, bad dream.

No one was about downstairs, so Madara looked into a room with an open door. There was furniture in the room that was fully covered with fine, woven fabric. There was a chair with not one inch of wood showing. When he sat on the chair, the softness enveloped him. For a moment he closed his eyes and thought of his brother and his gentle voice. "How is Izuna dealing with my disappearance?" He thought.

Madara turned to see the landlady standing at the door.

"I came to check on you, see if you're comfortable with the room," she said.

"Ah, yes, everything is alright," Madara said, smiling as he stood up. Suddenly, he felt dizzy and reached out to catch himself on a chair.

"Are you all right?"

"Merely tired," Madara murmured.

"Traveling always wears me out. Been far today?"

"Hundred and something years."

The woman smiled. "I feel that way too when I travel. You should have a bit of a lie-down before supper."

"Yes," Madara said softly as he started for his bed. Perhaps tomorrow he would be able to think more clearly about how to get himself back to his own time. Or perhaps tomorrow he'd wake up in his own bed and find that all of it was over, not just this twenty first-century nightmare, but also the nightmare he'd been in when last he was home.

When the landlady left, he undressed slowly, and hung his clothes up as he had seen done in the clothes shop. Where was the witch now? He wondered. Was she back in the arms of her lover? She was powerful enough to have called him forward over one hundred and thirty years, so he had no doubt that she could conjure an errant lover back across mere miles.

Nude, Madara climbed into bed. The sheets were smooth beyond believing and they smelled clean and fresh. Over him, instead of multiple, heavy coverlets, was a fat, soft, light blanket. Tomorrow, he thought as he closed his eyes in weariness. Tomorrow he would be home.

Instantly, he fell into a sleep that was deeper than any he'd ever experienced before, and he heard nothing when the sky opened and it began to rain.

Hours after he went to bed, reluctantly, he was awakened by his own thrashing about. Groggily, Madara sat up. The room was so dark that at first he didn't know where he was. As he listened to the rain pounding on the roof, his memory gradually returned. He fumbled at the table beside the bed for flint and candle so he could make a light, but there were none.

"What manner of place is this?" he exclaimed. "There are no chamber pots, no privies, and no lights."

As he was grumbling, his head turned sharply as he listened. Someone was calling him. The voice was not in words. He couldn't hear the actual sound of his name, but he could feel the urgency and the desperate need of a voice that was reaching out to him.

He ignored the calling voice and tried closing his eyes again, but he couldn't go back to sleep. No doubt it was the witch-woman, he thought with a grimace. Was she bent over a cauldron of snakes' eyes, stirring and cackling and whispering his name?

As Madara felt the pull of the call, he knew there was no use fighting her. As he lived and breathed, he knew he had to go to her.

With great reluctance, he left the warm bed, then began the arduous task of trying to dress himself in the strange modern clothes. It was when he pulled up the zipper that he discovered the parts of his body that were most susceptible to being caught in the tiny metal teeth. Cursing, he put on the flimsy shirt and felt his way out of the dark room.

He was glad to see that there was light in the hall. On the wall was a glass-enclosed torch, but the flame was not fire, and whatever it was, it was encased in a round glass sphere. He wanted to examine this miracle further, but through a window came a flash of lightning, and a crack of thunder rattled the house—and the call came to him more forcefully.

He went down the stairs, across lush carpets, and out into the pouring rain. Shielding his face with his hands, Madara looked up to see that high above his head were more flames set on top of poles, yet the blowing rain did not extinguish their fire. Shivering, already wet through, Madara put his head down into his collar.

These modern clothes had no substance! The modern people must be strong! he thought. How did they survive with no capes, or armor to protect them from the driving rain?

Struggling against the force of the rain, he went down streets that were unfamiliar to him. Several times he heard strange noises and reached for his sword, then cursed when he found that the weapon was not there. Tomorrow, he thought, he would force the woman to tell him the truth of what she had done to bring him to this strange land.

He struggled down street after street, making several wrong turns, but then he'd stop and listen until the call came again. After a while of following what he was hearing inside his mind, he left the streets that had the torches on poles and entered the darkness of the countryside. For several minutes, he walked along a road, then stopped and listened as he wiped rain from his face. Finally, he turned right and started across a field, and when he reached a fence, he climbed over it, then kept walking.

At long last, he reached a small shed, and he knew that, at last, he had found her. As he flung open the door, a flash of lightning showed her inside the shed. She was drenched and shivering, and curled into a ball on some dirty straw, trying her best to get warm. And, once again, she was weeping.

"Well, servant," he said, his teeth clenched in anger, "you have called me from a warm bed. What is it you want of me now?"

"Go away," she sobbed. "Leave me alone."

As he looked down at her, he had to admire her fortitude—as well as her pride. Her teeth were chattering so hard he could hear them over the rain; she was obviously freezing. With a sigh, he released his anger. If she were such a powerful witch, why had she not conjured herself a dry place for the night?

Madara stepped into the leaking shed, bent, and lifted her into his arms.

"I do not know who is the more helpless," he said, "you or I."

"Let me go," she said, as he picked her up, but she made no real struggle to get away from him. Instead, she put her head against his shoulder and began to sob harder. "I couldn't find any place to stay.

Madara had to adjust her in his arms as he swung over the fence, but he kept walking, and Rachelle continued crying as her arms slipped around his neck. "I don't belong anywhere," she said. "My family is perfect, but I'm not. All the women in my family marry wonderful men, but I can't even meet any wonderful men.

Mark was a great catch but I couldn't hold on to him. Oh, Madda, what am I going to do?"

They were out of the fields and back onto a paved road. "First, madam," he said, "you may not call me Madda. Madara, yes, My lord, perhaps, but not Madara. Now, since we seem destined to know one another, what is your name?"

"Rachelle," she said, clinging to him. "It's Rachelle Richardson."

"Hmph, a stupid name for a stupid person." Very well witch, let's get you inside and get you dried up.

To be continued

Thank you all for taking the time to read this.