How hard could it be to find a fairy ring?

People supposedly stumbled into them in older days. Despite the rain from a few tropical storms, she’d yet to discover a ring of toadstools or darker colored grasses. Ancient lore said bad luck fell to those who broke a ring or else the person came back irrevocably changed—aged beyond their time.

Holle didn’t plan on returning. There was nothing for her here where she’d continually been an outcast.

It had been fairly easy to give up all her stuff. She’d taken the past two months to transfer the house and everything in it to her best friend. The money in her savings had been given to a domestic abuse shelter. Her possessions consisted of the clothes she wore and a cute dog with a mind of her own.

Rae barked and ran toward a small stand of trees at the edge of her former property.

“Do you know where the gateway is, girl?”

The dog bounded ahead and then turned, waiting for Holle.

She took the hint and followed. The forest cast shadows around them as the canopy of treetops hid the slow descent of the sun.

Rae circled around a small ring of nine mushrooms. She snorted and then sneezed after sniffing the fungus.

The ring was barely wide enough for Holle to stand within, and there was a heaviness to the air that raised hair on her arms. She checked her watch. There wasn’t much time before sundown.

She stepped over the mushroom caps, careful not to disturb a single one. While not superstitious, there was no reason to tempt fate by bringing bad luck to her venture.

Rae barked, dancing on her paws outside the ring. Holle scooped the dog into her arms and juggled the hyper animal and the scroll. Within the darkened woods, she unrolled the paper and then, careful to enunciate each syllable, she read the golden glowing words.

Soon, a cyclone of wind encircled them. Holle closed her eyes and thought of Brann. She longed for him to wrap his arms around her and make everything okay. Her only desire was to join him.

Swept up into the air, she gasped. Hopefully, this wasn’t a ride like Dorothy’s in the Wizard of Oz and there wasn’t a witch with red shoes at the end.

Once the feeling of everything spinning died away, Holle opened her eyes and discovered a world full of bright, bold colors that seemed to be smudged and muted. As is she was living within a watercolor painting.

She stood in the center of a crossroads. The sun rose high above the trees. Off to her left, a path flanked by a sea of wildflower meadows lead off into the distance. In front of her, a path disappeared into the forest. The one to her right twisted and turned before vanishing behind a hill. The path behind her led to snowcapped mountains far away.

None of them appealed to her. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but landing in the middle of nowhere had not been in her thoughts. A city, lots of people, or a map would have been nice. Or even better, a beacon proclaiming “Your Lover here.”