"Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error as well."
--Carl Jung
He was understandably confused waking up naked in a strange girl's bed with little memory of most of the day he was there. From the moment he woke, Allison did her best to occupy most of his attention, sitting beside him on the bed with his head in her lap. He sat up immediately, pulling the sheets around him protectively. The girl introduced herself, regardless, and smiled sweetly at him.
"Do you need anything?" she positively purred.
"My pants," he replied, looking around the room. Annie found them and he took them gratefully from her hands. "Man, I keep waking up naked in places I don't remember going," he said fumbling under the sheets. "I hope that doesn't turn into a habit."
"She said it was necessary for healing," Annie said. "I had to do the same thing."
"Sorry I missed it," he said off-hand and she blushed. "I, for one, still feel like crap."
"I couldn't regress you far," Allison admitted. "You seem to have a serious wound beyond a serious case of lycanthropy."
"So I am a werewolf." He looked around for his shirt. Annie found it and handed it over. He wriggled out of the sheets and stood on the other side of the bed. "Did you tell her about our other problem?" Annie nodded.
"I don't know what world you've come from, so I can hardly help you go back," Allison informed him, smile never slipping. He looked around the room at the posters on the wall. He pointed to one, of a picture of an old truck with its front tires on the back of another. The band's name—Aerosmith—was painted above it. Annie recognized it as the band's latest album, "Pump."
"That one," he said. She looked at where he was pointing, not comprehending. "Aerosmith is from our world."
"Really?" Allison asked looking surprised. Her smile faded. "My mother…" she began. "My mother was from that world. I love the music."
"You're from our world?" Annie asked her, even more surprised. This girl certainly didn't seem to come from a backwards medieval world like Marya's. But her world?
"I was born in the Hive," Allison said shaking her head. "My mother kept up with things from her world and passed it on to me. I know a lot of your world, but I'm not from there."
"Have you ever been to our world?" Aiden asked her. She smiled sweetly at him.
"A few times. But it gets me in trouble with the Council. They can't arrest me but they can give a lot of grief. You really come from that world?"
"Can you get us back home?" Aiden asked her, looking serious. The girl thought about it.
"For a price," she said finally. Aiden scowled.
"What kind of price?" Annie said in the ensuing silence. Marya was looking curiously at Allison, no doubt wondering the same thing.
"I will ask for it when the time comes," she grinned. The girl was clearly not going to tell them. Annie scowled at her, understanding Aiden's dislike for witches.
"Is it something we'll be able to pay?" she asked her, looking for a hint.
"Oh, yes," she replied. She got to her feet. "I can take you to the Hub and we can find a gateway from there."
"What's the Hub?" Aiden asked, suspicious.
"It's the world at the center of the Multiverse. If you think of all the other worlds as spokes on a wheel, the Hub is at the center. It's where the Council rules from."
"And where is the 'Hive' where you're from?"
"Between worlds."
"This Council—what do they do exactly?"
"They maintain order throughout the Multiverse. Or try to, anyways."
"Space-time cops," Aiden growled and rolled his eyes.
"Kind of," Allison agreed. "Only not so militaristic. They are sworn to peace."
"Will they hassle us?" Aiden was used to being harassed by authority figures. He had long hair and was a teenager—two strikes against him in the eyes of authorities.
"If we keep a low profile nobody will hassle us," she assured him.
"Can you transport all of us? Five boys and one girl?"
"Five boys? Where are the rest of you?"
"Looking for a way home at the edge of our world," Marya told her.
"And to maybe pick up a bottle of insulin," Aiden added. "There was a sixth boy who stole my insulin, but he can go blow for all I care."
"Do you know what you need?" Allison asked him. He nodded. "I can take you to the Hub—the markets there have everything."
"Ugh. Extradimensional insulin? Might be asking for trouble."
"We can find what you need. Your world is a dreamer's world, so a lot of stuff comes from there. It wouldn't surprise me if that's where most of the multiversal insulin comes from."
"A dreamer's world?" Annie said. "What does that mean?"
"Other worlds have ties to your world. Like Oz. And the Squares. The dreams of people from your world made reality. Your world is one of the special ones." She sighed. "As I said, my mother was from your world."
"That explains your affinity for it, then," Aiden said lacing up his boots. He sang a few lines of "Janey's Got a Gun" from the Aerosmith album and Alison grinned, delighted. Aiden, for his part, grinned back and stood up straight. "Right. I need insulin. We can make a trip to the Hub for that much—look for the proper gateway, maybe, and go home when the others get back."
"What about Jacob?" Annie asked him curiously.
"Screw that guy," Aiden growled. "He can find his own way home. Hopefully we never see him again. I keep hoping he got captured by those pig-things that caught us."
"You wish he were dead? Is that what you're saying?"
"It's no less than what he wanted for me," he said solemnly. "I'm not killing him by leaving him here. He's killing me by taking my insulin. An eye for an eye and all that, but he's done worse."
"It just doesn't seem right. I just can't believe he would want to kill you."
"You don't know him like I do. Jealous, jealous, jealous."
"But over me? I can't believe it because I don't know what to think of that. He would really kill you because I was paying more attention to you than him?"
"He really would. People think I have a few screws loose because I'm kind of funny. Jacob's the real deal, man. His mother is certifiable—and he's his mother's son through and through. He already hated me—you paying attention to me was enough to push him over the edge. It couldn't be your fault—it's obviously my fault," he said sarcastically.
"God," she said covering her face with her hands. "What if it was the other way around?"
"I would have been disappointed, sure, but not jealous. If it really made me mad, I would have talked to you about getting some attention—not just off the other guy."
"That would make more sense," she agreed. "Killing somebody is a heavy thing… not something teenagers should be thinking about. Or even considering."
"He pulled the trigger. He's just waiting for the bullet to hit me." He put a hand on her shoulder and she reached up to touch it gently. Allison sighed and bent to make up the unoccupied bed. Annie caught the envious look Allison had thrown before focusing on her task. She quickly dropped her hand and bent to help her with the bed. She did not want to make an enemy—the girl was clearly jealous for the same reasons Jacob had been jealous of Aiden. Aiden was paying more attention to her than the young witch. Marya watched them all calmly near the door while Aiden moved away to study the posters on the wall.
"How do you… I mean, what—or—how do we get to this Hub?" she asked the other girl companionably. Allison grinned as she smoothed the coverlet.
"There's a gateway in the basement," she told her. "It comes out at a gardening shed near the Council's stronghold."
"You have a gateway here?" Marya asked, impressed.
"I take classes at the Hub's University," she replied. "I needed a way to and from."
"You go to a university?" Annie asked, impressed.
"You don't go to school?"
"Yeah. A junior high school. I'm not even to high school yet."
"You're not missing anything," Aiden said from across the room. He was in his second year of high school, already a sophomore.
"In Berelain we always had tutors," Marya remarked near the door.
"What do they teach in a multidimensional university?" Aiden wondered aloud. "Geometry and physics might be completely different on another world. And history! Whose history would you study? Do they even teach English?"
"It's a universal language in the Hub. There are translators everywhere so it makes it seem like one language," Allison explained. "It would seem to us like everybody was speaking English." She glanced at the dark-haired girl near the door. "To Marya everyone would be speaking in—what? Lunarian? Moonman?"
"English is not your first language?" Annie marveled.
"My kind speak in the language of the moon and mystery," the other girl replied.
"Say something," Annie asked her. Marya opened her mouth and formed a few musical syllables. "What did you say?"
"The moon will rise soon," she translated, grinning. Aiden looked out the window and sighed.
"You're going to have to lock me up," he said. "Where I'm sure tomorrow morning I'll wake up in another place I don't remember going."
"I have a few cells in the basement," Allison said taking his arm and leading him away. He raised his eyebrows at the mentioning of cells. "For animals," she grinned. "Your neighbor will be a mule named Brick."
"Brick?"
"Yeah. He's as dumb as one. He's not afraid of were—well, whatever you were."
"Coyote," Annie said, following them out.
"That's bad medicine," he grinned. "Wonder why I arbitrarily became that."
"Better than a were-skunk," Annie said.
"Skunk-women are hot. Drove Pepe LaPew out of his mind."
"Do you base your whole life on cartoons?" she teased.
"Yes," he said thinking about it. "And comic books."
"Geek."
"We're all geeks about something or other. I'm sure you're geeky about something."
"Nope. You're just a geek." She winked and smiled at him. "But I like you." That earned her another scowl from Allison from the corner of her eye. She led them down the basement stairs, grabbing a lamp from a nearby shelf. She lit it with a snap of her fingers.
"You keep a mule down here in the dark?"
"He's got a gateway to a big field in the sun," she replied.
"Jesus. A dimensional-stepping mule. What other surprises do you have in store for us, Ms. Gross?" The girl just grinned and led him into a ten by ten foot cell. There was straw on the floor.
"Your bed for the evening," she said sweetly.