I open my eyes. It doesn’t look like anything has changed.
“You’re going to need to look at every portal,” said the rotting frog. “One of them will point home for you.”
“Portal?”
She sighs at me. “The arches, you idiot.”
I swear I hear someone scream, “That one!”
I look at the frog but she doesn’t make any kind of movements. She doesn’t stop staring at me to look in the direction of the sound. I must be imagining it.
So I pivot slowly in place and stare through each of the arches in turn from my place on the stone circle. They seem to be exactly as they were.
“Nope,” I say. “Same as they were before.”
“Look through them, not at them,” the frog says.
“That one!” the mystery voice screams. “That one abandoned this one to the Wild Hunt!”
The frog doesn’t react so I don’t, or try not to, at least. Although I can probably pass my little startled jump as a response to the muttering she’s currently got going on.
“I bet you can never find anything you’re looking for. I bet you have to call your mother to ask where you left your shoes when you only took them off a minute ago. I bet-”
I turn around full circle again and look between the arches. It takes me another turn after that to realise that one of the arches is showing me two places at once. It’s like I can see a ghost landscape over the garden, a dark, scrubby woodland that doesn’t look especially inviting. Of course home doesn’t look good. When has anything ever worked out?
“Found it? Good. Walk through,” says the frog.
I want to ask, “Do I have to?” I want to say, “I’d rather stay.” I think I’ve forgotten everything about myself and where I came from. Maybe here is home, after all.
“That one!”
This time I turn to look at the voice and there’s an incredibly angular creature running at me, human but not. In this place, it could go by any name.
“You see that, right?” I say to the frog.
She sniffs. “Yes. Now go home.”
“So I don’t need to do anything about...” I point instead of finishing the question.
“Just get gone, and good riddance to bad rubbish.”
It’s my turn to sniff. “That’s a bit harsh.”
But I turn back to the arch, take a deep breath and step-
“That one is a monster!”
-the blow lands on my shoulders but I keep walking-
“That one left me to die!”
-the blow to the head is disorientating and I stumble but I manage to carry on-
“That one killed the Wizards’ Wife!”
-I think I’ve stepped through the arch because the feel of the ground beneath my feet is different but things were blurring even before the next blow landed-
“That one is a horrible person!”
-I fall to my knees. The only thing I know is that I have to keep going. So I crawl.