Fantasyland 01 Wildest Dreams (2 page)

Valentine’s lips tipped up about a half a
centimeter at the ends.

“Oh boy,” Claudia muttered but Valentine
again ignored her and continued.

“
You understand what I
have
explained about this world? That it is parallel to
ours. That most of the same people here are there –”

I interrupted her, “Yes, I understand.”

And I understood. I
totally
understood. That was why I was forking
over a million dollars for this in the first place.

She studied me then she said softly, “And
you understand the people there who look like us, sound like us,
are not…” her eyes narrowed slightly, “
us.
”

I nodded. “I get it.”

“Finnie –” Claudia whispered and I turned to
her.

“It’s going to be okay, Claudia,” I assured
my friend.

“Right.” Claudia, as usual, sounded far from
assured.

“
It’s going to be,” I shook her hand,
“
all
right.
”

Claudia studied me. I let her. Then I
smiled, big and bright.

Her gaze moved over my face, her eyes warmed
as it did so, she shook her head and whispered, “Just for the
record, I do. I totally think you’re nuts.”

“I know,” I whispered back, still
smiling.

“
But I love you, mostly because you
are
nuts,” she told me something
else I knew and my smile got bigger.

“
This is,
mes petites filles
, touching however we had not much time
when you arrived and our window of opportunity as to when Sjofn can
make this switch is quickly closing,” Valentine warned.

“That’s another thing I don’t get,” Claudia
muttered.

“Well, you will have to ask her when she’s
here in five minutes,” Valentine returned coldly.

Claudia glared at her. Valentine accepted
her glare, completely unperturbed. Then Claudia gave up, looked at
me and rolled her eyes.

I smiled at the eye roll but I wanted to get
on with it.

I was ready for my next adventure.

So I looked at Valentine and declared,
“Valentine, I’m ready.”

She looked at me.

Then she smiled an actual smile.

Then she whispered, “Lovely. Then shall we
begin?”

Winter Wonderland

I didn’t close my eyes. I didn’t want to
miss a thing.

I kept them open while sitting in
Valentine’s elegant chair in her elegant living room and I gave
Claudia another reassuring smile, blew her a kiss and then I turned
to Valentine.

She was sitting across from me, eyes closed,
face so relaxed she could be asleep but her lips were tipped up
like she found something vaguely amusing. Her hands were lifted,
palms up, red-tipped fingertips curled toward the ceiling and her
hands started glowing with green – a beautiful, vibrant, emerald
green.

It was
awesome.

Then the entire room took on the shade of
her green and slowly and I watched the room start to fade. Mere
seconds went by while Valentine’s elegant salmon walls with their
intricate white cornices and ceilings got greener, greener, then
darker green, then all faded to black and suddenly ice blue sparks
shot all around me and I was standing in a room looking out a
window.

“Oh my God,” I breathed as I stared at the
wavy, frosted glass of the diamond-paned window, “it worked.”

It worked!

I smiled huge.

Then I studied the window, saw the catch,
lifted it out and threw the two windows outward to open them. A
gust of arctic air shot back at me but that wasn’t what made me
breathless.

“Oh my God,” I breathed again as the scene
before me assaulted my eyes with astonishing beauty.

Amazing. Unbelievable. Absolutely,
freaking
cool.

Whatever building I was in was on a small
rise, I was on the second floor and laid out before me was a Winter
Wonderland. A town or maybe small city sprawled throughout and
nestled in what looked like a valley if the not too far away, not
too close shoots of snow-topped mountains that interrupted the
twinkling midnight blue of the night sky were anything to go
by.

My head moving side to side, I took it all
in.

Most of the buildings that I could see close
were one story, topped with a marshmallow blanket of pristine white
snow; all the many chimneys had smoke drifting straight into the
air. Wavy, diamond-paned windows cast a flickering glow of
candlelight on the snow-covered ground. There were icicles hanging
from the roofs glinting in the candle and torchlight. The houses
were made of something dark perhaps wood at the bottom that went up
to the lower edge of the windows and then some light-colored
material with criss-crosses of dark beams through them. The
buildings seemed planted in the snow; there was so much of it, some
of it even blown in drifts up the sides.

Taking it in, I saw there was clearly no
city planning. The buildings looked built wherever, dotted here and
there. There were winding pathways through them, clearly well used
if the tramped snow was anything to go by. Some were narrow, some
were wider. All were lit at their sides by torches stuck in the
ground, their fire caged with iron, the small blaze dancing around
the cage. A light snow was falling and I had no idea how they
stayed lit, but they did. There were also massive barrels scattered
here and there, far fewer than the torches, that also held roaring
fires. These too lit the space and around a few, there were people
standing, holding their hands out to the flames and chatting.

But there weren’t that many people, two
around one fire, three around another in the distance.

Suddenly, I saw a horse gallop through and I
couldn’t stop myself from letting out a delighted giggle as the
rider’s cloak streamed behind him, his head topped with a furry
hat.

“
That is
so cool,
” I whispered as he took a turn on a winding path
well down the incline of the town or city like place and
disappeared around a building.

“The switch, it succeeded?” I heard a woman
ask and I jumped in surprise and turned.

Standing beside me I saw a woman with gray
hair pulled back behind her head. She was wearing a voluminous wool
cloak the color of cranberries and it had a collar made of black
fur.

Her eyebrows were up. Her face was lined in
a way that made her look interesting and was a testimony to the
fact she’d laughed much in her long life. Her somewhat faded blue
eyes were alert and she was examining me.

“It worked,” I whispered then jumped again
when a loud banging came from across the room and I turned my body
that direction to see it was someone knocking on a door.

“
Sjofn!
” a woman yelled from the other side of the door,
sounding desperate. “Open the door! We need to speak with you now!
Your mother approaches.”

I stared at the door.

My mother approaches.

I couldn’t stop my smile.

“
Close this after me,” the woman in the
room with me ordered urgently, I looked to her then her eyes moved
the length of me and back before she smiled and whispered, “Enjoy
The Drakkar. I think you will and more, I think
he
will enjoy
you
.”

I blinked at her.

What?

“
Sjofn!
” Another shout and loud knock, my body jolted
again, I looked to the door as the woman behind it shouted,
“
Please!
”

I felt a whoosh and turned again to see the
woman in the room with me was gone. I glanced around quickly as
more knocking came at the door, more pleas but I was stunned to see
I had no company.

Where did she go?

I turned to the window, looked out and down
and saw a cranberry cloak streaming around the nearest building
then I lost sight of it.

Holy moly, the bitch jumped.

I looked down at the two story fall and
heard the begging, “
Seeeeooohaaahfin!
”

“Shit,” I whispered, grabbed the windows,
pulled them to and set the latch. That stopped the arctic gust of
air but the cold still came through so I grabbed the heavy curtains
on either side and pulled them closed over the window, succeeding
in shutting out the draft mainly because the curtains were a thick,
voluminous velvet. Nothing was getting through those.

More knocking that was now more like
pounding and it didn’t stop so I turned to the room to hurry toward
the door but stopped, arrested by what I saw.

Gleaming dark wood everywhere. Dark plank
floors covered by thick pile, wool, patterned rugs. An enormous
fireplace, the massive mantel carved from cream stone. More deep
carvings in the dark wood cornices. The carving on both mantel and
molding were pears, apples and oranges with leaves and vines and it
was so intricate, even at a glance I saw it was sheer perfection. I
could even see dimples in the oranges. With that kind of
craftsmanship and that amount of it in the big room, it had to take
a hundred artisans a hundred years to do it all.

There was a big bed, four poster, headboard
carved with the same motif with an ice blue coverlet that had a
silken sheen, a fluffy, winter white blanket folded across the
bottom and six fluffy, European square pillows stacked in twos at
the head, two dove gray, two winter white, two ice blue. The heavy
curtains around the bed also were ice blue.

There was dark wood, heavily carved
furniture everywhere. Two nightstands. A big dresser. A long, tall
wardrobe. A desk and chair. A full-length, freestanding, oval
mirror with the pear, apple, orange, leaf and vine theme at the top
and drifting down the sides. A small table with a huge, cushy
armchair next to it that I desperately wanted to curl into covered
by that fluffy blanket on the bed, it looked that comfortable.

There were pearlescent globed lamps lit not
with electricity but flames dancing within on either nightstand, on
the desk, on the table by the chair and dotting the walls.

The whole room was freaking
amazing.
Way cool. Unbelievably cool.
I’d seen a lot in my life and I had the money to go for the gusto
but I’d never seen anything
this
amazing.

“
Sjofn!
Please!
” Another call
and more pounding at the door so I shook myself out of it and saw a
folded piece of paper on the bed.

That must be my note.

I stared at it a second thinking there
didn’t look like there was much to it.

I started toward it as I could swear the
pounding on the door became kicking. I looked that way but caught a
flash of something in my peripheral vision, my head turned and I
stopped dead.

Then I stood straight.

Then I turned to look at myself in the
mirror.

Then I slowly walked to it, the pounding and
begging outside the door muted as I stared with deep fascination at
what I saw.

When I got to the mirror, I reached out a
hand to touch the cold surface just to be certain it was real. When
my fingertips brushed the glass, I changed directions and moved my
hand so it lay flat to my belly and I felt it.

It was real.

I
was real and I looked like
that.

“Wow,” I whispered.

I was wearing ice blue too. An ice blue
velvet gown that had this kick freaking ass sheen at the tip of the
pile that looked iridescent white, like the shimmer on top of new
snow. The neckline was square, had thick, braided embroidery around
the edge and it shoved my breasts up so I was giving some serious
cleavage. The sleeves of the dress hugged my body from shoulder to
wrist, a sharp point of embroidered-edged material coming down my
hand that hooked at the end around my middle finger. The top of the
dress, from bosoms to hips, skimmed my body to perfection. The
skirt had a slight flare and when I tested it by kicking out at the
back, a slight train too. The dress had a no waistline, simply
flowing elegantly from bodice to hem and there was an intricate
silver or… I peered closer… no,
platinum
chain liberally splashed with aquamarines and
dusted with diamonds that hung low on my hips, a long single length
of it hanging down, winking through the folds of my skirts,
weighted at the hem by a large, twinkling aquamarine.

I was wearing a choker necklace that matched
the belt and earrings of the same dangled from my ears. My
white-blonde hair was a mass of long, thick twists that were pulled
off my forehead somehow but hung down my back, chest and shoulders.
I had shimmering pink on my cheeks, a gloss of pink on my lips, an
iridescent blue on my eyelids, a dark blue rimming my eyes and a
sparkle of pearlescent white around my temples, the same powder but
applied less opaque dusted my chest.

But the best, the absolute best, was the
crown.

Yes, I said…
the crown!

I was wearing a crown low on my forehead and
however it was fashioned it was heavy but comfortable, something
soft and maybe furry protecting my skin from the metal.

And it looked like icicles shooting up and
slightly out, crusted with glinting diamonds and sprinkled with
glimmering aquamarines.

It was freaking
phenomenal.

I lifted the heavy skirts up, up and saw a
pair of winter white, low-heeled, supple suede boots that kept
going to over my knees. Above that, skintight, woven stockings that
were also winter white and looked (and felt) like they were made of
cashmere. Up I pulled the skirt and I saw winter white satin tap
pants dripping with icicle lace at the bottoms, over this were
satin garters holding up the stockings but I saw the boned point of
the bottom of a satin bustier at my navel and I felt more boning
that I couldn’t see against my skin at my ribs.