To begin with, the tunnel should not have been filled with light.

And yet it was—a beautiful blue light. It made no sense.

I was in the woods, and I was running. Behind me, the air tasted like fear and pain, sharp and acrid. Ahead of me, was light.

He was…coming for me. On I ran, as an animal instinctively flees from its predator, even while my limbs felt as if they were slowly stiffening. I remember how my heart hammered in my chest and the pain in my body was so intense that I felt myself begin to black out.

Then, the green of the wood closed in on me, and I found myself carried towards a little hill where thick tree roots tangled and wove together.

That hill. In the center of it, gaping through a tangle of roots, was an opening. I close my eyes and I still see it now, glowing softly in such an irresistibly beautiful blue-green.

It drew me towards it. Or perhaps I chose to go. I should have been afraid, I suppose. All I felt, though, was a sense of deliverance. Safe.

Then I was inside, and the luminosity swallowed me.

Almost immediately around me the blue-green glow winked out into blackness. For a moment I remember standing still in the darkness, as if everything had been suddenly stripped away—my surroundings, my body. My mind.

Then the glow returned, such a lovely blue-green—so lovely, that for a moment nothing else mattered.

Ahead of me, draped from the ceiling in a heavenly curtain, the soft blue-green glow beckoned me into the light. And so I stepped forward, trembling with…something. Excitement. Recognition.

It was a tunnel, but not like any dug into the earth. It was temperate and mossy, the walls and floor rough and knobby like the roots of a tree. The air was not exactly fresh like outdoor air, yet it was far from musty or stale—instead it had a rich earthiness to it, as if you could drink in pure chlorophyll with each breath.

As I walked, the tunnel grew tall enough that the ceiling stretched high above me and I beheld, at last, the source of the strange light: glow worms, hundreds of them, scattered across the cavernous ceiling, their delicate sticky webs hanging in elegant curtains like strands of pearls.

I walked for what felt like an eternity in that tunnel, guided by the little luminous worms, till the tunnel at last began to taper once more. And gradually I found myself walking towards a different kind of light, one I’d almost forgotten the feel of—the sun.

And as I stepped out of the tunnel and into the bright sunlight, the roar of waves and the sharp tang of low tide assaulted my senses. I found myself standing on a lonely beach, far from anything I had ever known.

I know my name. It is this: Sophie.

I dimly remember my world, but it feels like a dream. And so does this place.

Here, they call me Safia. Damaya Safia. Lady Safia—nice, isn’t it? At least, some call me that. Since I’ve more or less been imprisoned within a single room from the moment I was brought to this palace, I don’t socialize very much.

Of course, I would accept even less socialization if it meant avoiding contact with that royal pervert who can’t keep his hands to himself. Astan, Pashan i Verunia.

See, I’ve picked up on a few Verunian words since I’ve arrived here. King of Dicks, more like.

Still, it’s an elegant kind of imprisonment, and more than I could have hoped for given my circumstances. My room is admittedly large, and overlooks a pretty inner courtyard of rosy stone and latticed windows. But it drives me wild that I can’t get out there. How I would love to feel the sunlight on my face, a breeze over my skin. I’ve spent a lot of time instead pacing back and forth in my room, and even more time staring out the latticed windows, catching at glimpses of activity like a hungry dog waiting at table for scraps.

Once, I saw a beautifully dressed lady furtively brush past a guard before the two of them dashed out of the courtyard together, to whereabouts unknown but to activities easy to guess. Another time I saw two little boys with a matronly-looking woman stroll through, the boys clashing wooden swords with each other. The pashan’s children, perhaps. But mostly I see a random collection of people strolling in and out, in and out, unaware of their perfect freedom to come and go as they please.

The day that I was found feels like ages ago. In reality I think it must have been about two, or two and a half months now, since I stepped out of that glowing tunnel and found myself on a beach, nowhere near the woods I had been walking in.

Everything was so…vivid. Bright, almost dazzling sunlight after the muted glow of the tunnel. The blue-green water, so startlingly clear, stretching outward in a seemingly endless horizon. And behind me, the rocky, sandy shore rising up to meet steep, craggy cliffs topped with rich green grasses that waved gently in the salty sea air.

I remember the dizziness that had hit me so suddenly then. I wavered, stumbling and catching myself as I fell to my knees, breathing hard. Spots danced before my eyes and my head began to ache.

Blinking in confusion and slight panic, I had slowly picked myself up and turned around, stumbling back towards the cliff. There lay the entrance to the tunnel, a dark and twisted crack in the rock, surrounded by thick tree roots. I stepped into its dark embrace, holding out my hands in front of me to keep from stumbling again.

To my shock, after a few moments, my fingers brushed against dirt and rock, no longer the knobby surface of tree roots.

No. The tunnel—it was gone. But how? I walked out, turned around and walked back. It couldn’t have vanished. Unless, unless—could it be some kind of wormhole? Would anyone be missing me now? I couldn’t even remember who existed to miss me.

Then the voices had come and I jumped and spun around. There were men approaching from down the beach, dressed in leather and metal armor, curved swords at their sides. Soldiers.

They approached me and began to speak, forming syllables in a strange language that I couldn’t hope to comprehend. I shook my head, staring between them in growing panic.

Another voice, then, older and lower, spoke gently, and the men parted to let him come forward. By now, my head ached so badly that I could barely focus on him. But his voice was kind, and though I couldn’t understand him, I knew he would not hurt me. I learned his name, then: Brevir.

They built a campfire and stayed on that beach for a night, inviting me to camp with them. I remember laying on the sand and staring numbly up at foreign stars, feeling surreal. The next day, the soldiers broke camp and prepared to ride off from the beach.

There was a spare horse for me, but when it very quickly became clear that I didn’t know the first thing about riding, one of the soldiers helped me up onto the back of Brevir’s horse, where I gripped his armor nervously and awaited my fate. And as we rode away from the coastline through grassy fields and farms, the sun at our backs, I wondered what I had allowed myself to be led into.

(Also, it turns out that riding a horse is incredibly uncomfortable if you don’t know what you’re doing, even as a passenger. I couldn’t sit without wincing for several days.)

My wonder had soon turned to astonishment and awe when in the late morning, we crested a hill and suddenly a great expanse of grassland came into view, gently sloping upward with verdant green towards a large metropolis of golden brown stone and red clay roofs at the highest point on the horizon. A magnificent palace rose out of the center of the tangled bustle, almost pink in color and so elegant that it looked like I had stepped into a literal fairy tale.

The only thing is, now I can’t decide yet if I’m in one of those Brothers Grimm fairy tales where everyone dies.

It was Brevir who courteously gave me his hand in order to present me to the king. It had to have been Brevir who had halted the guards leading me down into what I am pretty sure was a dungeon, and contrived to have me given a room of my own.

And it was Brevir, too, who deescalated Astan’s rage that day that I fought back against his filthy hands. I don’t understand what his position is here, exactly, but I think I can trust him to help me go back to wherever I come from.

That tunnel. The tunnel is the key to all of it. I know this, but I can’t work it out exactly how or why. But I’ve seen it  in one of the books I’ve been given here, which seems to be a kind of fairy tale book for kids.

There’s an illustration of a huge tree, with thick roots at its base shown as hollowed out, and glowing with the same blue-green glow as the tunnel I walked through. I can’t say what opens and closes the tunnels, but I feel sure there must be more of them, for the tree seems incredibly…powerful. Able to do strange things.

Ah. Aha. There’s something else that happened to me when I walked through that tunnel. I’m not exactly sure how to say it.

I stare at my reflection in the polished silver mirror set on the dresser. Every time I look at myself, my stomach twists. Everything around me is different and I’d like to be the one constant I can rely on to feel familiar. My name, my body, and my fleeting memories—they’re all I have here. Yet as I stare at my own reflection and my startlingly vivid violet eyes stare back at me, I know I can never go back.

I blink several times, watching the light catch in my irises, so beautifully luminous and so alien it’s like admiring a stranger. What color were my eyes before the tunnel? It takes me a moment, and even the beat of time it takes to recall gives me a little stab of anxiety, but I do remember—they were blue gray. Now, not so much.

I push back a strand of hair from my forehead—still the same strawberry blonde at least—and try to breathe evenly. I’m still me. I am. Just me, with weirdly purple eyes. It’ll be fine. It’s going to be fine.

 On a plus side, the tunnel seems to have corrected my notoriously terrible vision. In fact, these new violet eyes seem able to see better than 20/20, like some kind of Bionic Woman. I tossed my contacts long ago (and good thing, too, since saline solution does not seem to be one of this nation’s available commodities).

A knock comes at my door and two women enter, their arms full of bundles.

“Good morning, Damaya Safia.” Sartra, tall and willowy, greets me with a dignified bow, trailed by cheerful Bani.

I glance up from the mirror and smile. By now, I’m used to having Sartra and Bani come and go. I’ve come to look forward to their company, even though they’re obviously forced to be around me. I hope they don’t find it too onerous. They probably wonder why they’ve been tasked to serve someone who so clearly is not meant to live in a palace, but both are too well-bred to show anything but polite courtesy to me.

The idea of having someone to do such menial tasks as to help me dress or bring fresh water was so uncomfortable at first that I couldn’t stop myself from rushing around and grabbing at things to help any time they approached. Eventually, one day, Bani actually grabbed my wrist and halted me, took a hairbrush out of my hand with a grin, then simply said “Sit.”

Her face looked so comical that I suddenly burst out laughing and realized I was probably making everyone’s life harder. So now I try to let them do what they are here to do (and hopefully well paid to do). I do try to keep everything as clean as possible, though. No reason to make unnecessary work for anybody.

Sartra, a tall and willowy woman I guess to be in her thirties, glides into the room in a cloud of filmy lavender robes and lays her bundles upon the bed. Her silvery white locks, held back by two braids from her temples, fall around her in a curtain as she bends to her task, her amethyst arm bangles clinking softly. After two months, I still marvel at the elegance of her gestures, as if her every movement were a carefully choreographed art. Yet she carries herself with such natural grace that I know it has to be innate.

I remember a glimpse I captured the other day of Pashan Astan’s wife—or one of them, since he seemed to have a few—and even the Pashana couldn’t rival Sartra’s regality. Someone like Sartra seems like she should have her own household of servants.

Perhaps it’s like in the old European courts, where only ladies of noble birth are considered good enough to serve in the royal household. Though usually that would be reserved for a queen. Still, there’s just no way of knowing. Reserved but exceedingly polite to me, it’s been a challenge trying to crack Sartra’s exterior and understand the thoughts that lie beneath the surface of that serene gaze.

Bani, by contrast, warmed to me almost instantly. It was perhaps her curiosity more than anything. I remember meeting her when Brevir had first brought me to my rooms and presented the two servants to me. Bani, a full head shorter than Sartra and perhaps ten years younger, had nearly danced beside her staid companion with the excitement of getting to meet me, her dark eyes merry and sparkling.

Looking back, I’m pretty sure that I was some kind of exotic display to her. Is it bad that I didn’t mind? It was so nice for someone to actually want to talk to me. She was one of the few things about this place that wasn’t remote or cold.

It’s Bani who I can thank for helping me to learn as much of the local language as I have. We made a game of making gestures, or pointing at objects and naming them, first in her language and then mine—no, yes, hello, good morning, goodbye, bath, cup, eat, book, clothes, dancing.

Bani is a petite woman, even shorter than me, and curvier than her willowy companion, with beautiful dark curls and a golden olive complexion. Today she’s wearing an embroidered gown the color of persimmon, with a matching band of fabric that winds round her curls like a Grecian knot. Golden hoops gleam from her ears and wrists. The overall effect is like a very ebullient fertility goddess, as she bounds up to me and bounces a hasty bow with a grin before dumping her own bundles on the bed.

“Hello, Lady! Travel today,” she says proudly in halting English, handing me a dressing robe to put on over my nightgown.

My smile quickly fades as I slip the robe over my shoulders and finally take in her words. Travel?

Bani is busily fussing with the ties of my dressing robe but I’m so distracted by her words that I barely notice. Now I looked up and see that Brevir has entered the room, having been waiting in the hall behind them, I suppose. He bows in greeting to me, looking particularly tired.

“Travel, Damayo?” I say a bit nervously to Brevir. Perhaps Bani has mixed up her words and simply meant a horseback ride or something.

But to my slight unease, Brevir comes and takes my hands in his, then gazes at me gravely. “Yes, my lady.” He hesitates, then ventures, “Today you must travel. You understand? Go from here.”

My heart flips in my chest in slight shock as I stare back at him. “Yes. No—” I struggle to find the words in his language. Unfortunately, the concept of ‘why’ has not yet come up as one of my language lessons.

Brevir looks pained, but he seems unable to continue, or perhaps assumes it would be fruitless to try to explain it to me. I stare back at him in dismay. It must have been my attack on Astan, I think furiously. But what was I supposed to do, just let him have his way?

Thoughts crowd into my head as Brevir gives further instructions to Sartra and Bani, who are in the midst of packing things into trunks. It’s not like I chose to come here, or even that I wanted to really be here. But the fear of having to survive on my own in some alternate reality, with a language barrier, is terrifying. My head begins to spin, and I clutch at the carved wooden post of the bed to steady myself.

The other three in the room notice me and Bani hastens over to put out a reassuring hand on my arm. Brevir looks utterly miserable and impassive at the same time, like he can’t wait to get out of this room and be done with this unsavory task. Which he probably can’t.

I stare at him now, silently pleading. Looking pained, he meets my eyes and holds them for a moment, then simply says, “I will return soon.” Then, letting his gaze slide from me, he turns and departs, while I stare helplessly after him.

As Sartra and Bani help me change into thick, warm clothing much too heavy for this Mediterranean-esque climate, the pit in my stomach grows. I find myself moving about the room as if on autopilot, my hands reaching out to pick up toiletries as if they were someone else’s hands, and dropping them unceremoniously into a fabric bag.

Finally, Bani puts out a gentle hand over my own and bids me to stop. I drop the comb in my fingers with a clatter on the floor, and go and sit on the bed, staring numbly ahead, feeling like I’m going to have another out-of-body experience. So strange, when you get anxiety. It’s like your soul literally wants to leave your body.

 Finally, after what feels like hours but is probably just about half an hour, another knock comes at the door. It’s Brevir again, and this time, hovering in the doorway are two soldiers flanking him on either side. I swallow.

 Brevir speaks again to the women, glancing at me, and they nod. Bani retrieves a traveling cloak and drapes it over my shoulders, giving my arm a quick squeeze. Sartra gestures towards the trunks and the guards begin to collect my things.

 Brevir now steps aside from the door, and Sartra and Bani begin to lead me from my room down the grand corridors of the palace, out through the courtyard and to where a carriage is waiting. The sight of it makes my stomach drop. This is real.

 We came to a halt before it and the coachman holds open the door. Now, Brevir turns to me and waits until my eyes meet his, grave and slightly crinkled at the edges. In the morning light, he looks even more tired and drawn than I’ve seen him for a while, faint lines of care etched across his brow.

 Brevir bows his deepest to me, then holds out his hand. I hesitate, emotions warring within me. Finally, I put mine out and he takes it with a look of gratitude. To my astonishment he kisses it and holds it for a long while, looking back at me sadly.

 Finally he drops it and turns to Sartra and Bani. To Bani, he bows graciously and says “Good journey, Bani.” Bani smiles at him, a genuinely excited smile. I think she’s the only one who is looking forward to this. Whatever this is.

 To Sartra, Brevir pauses. Then, to my utter surprise, a dart of color suffuses his cheeks. Satra’s complexion remains cool and poised, but for a moment her shoulders seem to sag slightly, as if finally bending under the weight of some great burden.

 Brevir now takes her hands in his own and seems unsure of how to begin. “My dear Lady Sartra, if I could have—”

 Sartra shakes her head quickly, then raises her chin with a serene smile. “No, my Lord Brevir. There is nothing to regret.”

 For a moment, she holds his gaze. My eyes drop to their hands, still clasped. Something dawns in me, and instinctively I glance away.

 From the corner of my eye, Brevir seems to recover himself. His jaw tightens slightly and he nods, then raises Sartra’s slim hand to his lips. With as much dignity had she been a princess, he guides her to the carriage and gently hands her in.

 Then Brevir returns and helps each of us, in turn, into the carriage. I sit numbly on the plush velvet seat, my body tingling with anxiety. Sartra seems a thousand miles away, folded in on herself, hands clasped in her lap, her gaze fixed at the ground.

 Bani is a ball of energy, settling packages around us and practically buzzing in her seat, a gleam of excitement in her eye, though she casts a sympathetic glance at Sartra from time to time.

 Then Brevir steps back from the open carriage door and crosses his arms behind his back, nodding. He nods reassuringly at me and smiles, but in his eyes there is strain and sadness. And as I stare back at him, the tears flow down my cheeks, the door is shut, and the carriage lurches forward.