"... were you here the whole time, dear?" Mrs. Robinson asks. Her face is making an expression.

"Well, I wasn't here, I was there," Emily points out, because she isn't going to reply incorrectly. "But yes," she finishes, because she knows what the teacher's assistant meant.

Mrs. Robinson looks at Mrs. Hill, and then back at Emily.

"You have to go outside for recess, alright?" Mrs. Robinson tells her.

She nods. "Okay."

That rule is not in the school handbook, but that is to be expected. Many rules aren't in the school handbook.

Following recess comes geography, which is boring. It would be more interesting if they could go climb the ridge outside and look and see the geography, but the point of geography isn't to be interesting. She looks at the map on the board and remembers it, and then starts doing times tables in her notebook.

The teachers are annoyed if they catch her reading during a lesson, but they never seem to mind if she does times tables. Right now she's most of the way through a table for base eight. She wants to finish tables for all the bases from two to twelve before the end of the school year.

At some point, class is over, and she opens her book to page 327 to continue reading. She finishes the book, looks up, and sighs. The bus isn't quite home yet, and she can't do homework on the bus because it makes her handwriting even worse than usual, which means this time is wasted.

She looks at trees.

Her parent greets her with a snack. She returns a hug, says facts about her day and listens to facts about her parent's day until they are in sync again, and then goes to peruse the bookshelves.

She picks out a new book — Neutron Star, by Larry Niven — and begins reading. At some point she eats dinner and brushes her teeth. She closes the book on page 203 (probably prime — no wait, it's 29 times 7), closes her eyes, and falls asleep.

The next day proceeds much the same as before, except that when recess begins she follows behind her classmates, glancing up every few words to make sure she doesn't bump into anything.

When she is outside, she sinks down, folding her legs under her, and continues to read.

A few minutes later, Mrs. Robinson comes up to her.

"Wouldn't you rather play with the other children?" she asks.

Emily considers this. It sounds unlikely.

"No," she replies. But she recognizes that this is really a veiled order, and concludes that Mrs. Robinson doesn't want her to read, for some reason.

She had a neutral opinion of the teacher's assistant, but now it plummets like a rock, settling just above 'actually dangerous to be near'. She rises to her feet and walks away, ducking behind the jungle gym.

She surveys the playground, intent on finding a location which is:

A) Outdoors, as required by the recently revealed rule

B) Not in Mrs. Robinson's line of sight, so that she cannot learn that Emily is still reading

C) Not in the path of the rambunctious hooligans her classmates turn into when the school rings a bell

She settles on a depression at the edge of the playground, where it borders the forest. It is deeper than it looks, so if she lies down there, she is completely hidden from the rest of the playground — and not in an area that anyone is likely to enter (except for Gabrielle and Elizabeth sometimes, pretending to be cats).

She lies down, squirms a little to get her head comfortably pillowed on a root, and resumes reading.

Some time later, she is shaken from her book by the sound of silence. She can no longer hear shouts and running feet passing a few meters from her hiding place.

She puts a thumb between the pages, too suddenly worried to remember her page number. She briefly contemplates whether she could just sit here until school ends — but it wouldn't go well. The teachers would probably get more angry the longer she stayed away.

She sighs, and drags herself upright.

And doesn't see the playground.

Around her, in all directions, stretches sun-dappled woods. There is not even the distant sound of traffic, which makes the sound of birdcalls and miscellaneous woodland creatures scuttling through the leaf litter all the clearer.

Oh, she thinks.

And then she's crying, and she doesn't quite know why. Things like this don't happen to her — things like this only happen in books.

As she sits, tears pouring down her cheeks, she remembers a conversation with her parent from a few years ago. She had been upset about — something, she can't remember now — and her parent had held her, stroking her hair, and said:

    "If you ever get the opportunity to go to fairyland, don't look back. I'll be okay — I'll know what's happened."

The thought ... contextualizes ... her current predicament.

She sits for a moment more, and then wipes her eyes and stands.

She checks her page number. 252 (not prime) — so she can't actually have been reading all that long. She tucks the book beneath one arm, and surveys the woods.

They are wild, and older than the woods she is used to. This is something of a blessing, since it means that there is relatively little underbrush.

Well, she knows the things she needs are:

A) Water

B) Shelter

C) Food

... possibly those are out of order? She forgets exactly what the survival guide she read says. Shelter seems difficult, and food likewise, so she may as well start with water. And water is easy to find, at least: she can just go downhill until she finds some.

She looks at the slope of the forest floor, picks a direction, and starts walking.

Emergency Services would ordinarily be able to canvas the woods quite thoroughly for a missing child — except, of course, they have no idea that she is there to look for.

So it takes her quite some time before she sees anything other than trees.

Crows call out to her as she walks, and she finds herself wondering whether this is the sort of thing where she'll meet talking animals. It seems ... less likely, somehow, than just waking up to find herself in a forest.

She's glad that it doesn't seem to be at all like the Enchanted Forest from the Enchanted Forest Chronicles — those are so treacherous to cross that she could hardly have avoided having an adventure by now.

After a time, she does come to a stream. She's not that thirsty yet, though, so she follows it down, skirting warily around a copse of birches, in case they're at all like the birches from Stardust.

At length, the stream breaks through the border of a clearing, and meanders aimlessly across the pine-needle-covered ground. Above it sits a house — a well-loved house, made of wood and clearly somewhat old. The roof is well maintained, though, and covered with solarpanels.

An old woman sits on the porch of the house in a rocking chair, writing in a notebook.

Emily jumps across the stream and makes her way up to the porch. She's just about to speak, when the woman startles and jumps half out of her seat, staring at her.

Alarm! Who are you? the woman signs. Emily has never learned sign-language, but the words just seem obvious when she follows the woman's hands.

I'm Emili, she responds, her hands moving quite without thought. She finds she likes it — its the first sign of magic she's seen since she came here, and it feels right, that she get some kind of protagonist-magic.

The woman settles herself back down in her seat.

I wasn't expecting anyone to show up like that, she explains. I'm Saher. Sit down, if you like.

She gestures at a hanging bench near her own chair.

Do you know where this is? Emily asks, setting her book down on the bench beside her, so that she doesn't have to keep one elbow pinned against her torso. I don't know how I got here; I think it must have been magic.

Saher squints at her.

Magic, huh? Well, you're at my house, on the outskirts of Possibly Too Many Cows, a bit north of Twin River City. Does that help?

Well, I know more than I did beforehand. But I haven't heard of any of those places. I think I'm from farther away. That's a good start, though. Who names a town Possibly Too Many Cows?

Now that she has found a place which probably has at least shelter and water (she can hide under the porch and drink from the stream), even if she isn't sure if this is a don't-eat-the-fairy-food sort of situation yet, she's feeling a good deal more upbeat.