Seeds of Discovery by Breeana Puttroff

from home.
    The height of the window led her to guess that she was probably about three floors above the ground in the castle. Directly below her, she could see wide, manicured lawns stretching several hundred yards to where she could just make out the shape of a tall stone wall. As she watched, a pair of small brownish-red bunnies hopped across one of the stone walkways and into one of the well-tended flowerbeds.
    Bored now, as well as anxious, she headed back to the doorway. This time she wasn’t quite as careful to be silent in opening it. Her head was all the way into the corridor before she noticed the small difference. One of the doors was halfway open. Startled, she ducked back into the room.
    Before she could get her door completely closed, she heard the shrieking giggles and slamming door that let her know that one room, at least, was occupied by children. Quickly, she retreated to the soft couch in the middle of the room and curled up on it, watching the sky become more and more blue through the window.
    Sitting there, anxious and desperate as she was to get back home, to return to normal, to not scare her mother half to death, another emotion was starting to filter in. The curiosity that had plagued her for the last several weeks was back with a vengeance.
    All of these weeks of following William, of trying to figure out where he so often disappeared to, had yielded her an answer she had never expected, and the answer had left her with a million more questions. She still had no idea exactly where she was or how she had gotten here. This couldn’t be real, could it? Suddenly, she realized that she wanted to find out more about what had happened here than she really wanted to go home. And then, she wasn’t completely certain that she wasn’t dreaming.
    She stood again, and began wandering the room, inspecting everything again, staring out the window once more. Something else about this place was nagging at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.
    A knock at the door interrupted Quinn’s reverie. Just as he had the night before, Thomas entered the room without waiting for her response.
    “You are up! My little sisters told me you were poking your head out. You sure have a talent for causing excitement around here.” He flashed his happy grin at her.
    She grimaced; she wasn’t sure how happy she was to be attracting all of this attention.
    “Are you hungry? It’ll be breakfast time soon.” Thomas’ twinkling gray eyes appeared a bit sleepy this morning, but he had clearly been awake for at least a little while. The curls of his dark hair were a bit wet. He looked nice; wearing freshly pressed black pants and a short-sleeved steel-gray sweater over a white shirt; the starched collar was folded down crisply by his neck. Quinn suddenly felt a bit under-dressed.
    “I am a little hungry, I guess,” she told him. “But, mostly I just want to get home.”
    A look of concern mingled with confusion swept over Thomas’ usually-carefree face. He was silent for a moment before his smile returned, a little more subdued and kinder. “I’m sorry. I’m sure it must be hard for you, coming here unexpectedly and being stuck. Breakfast will help with the hungry part, though!”
    He had lost her on a single word: stuck. “What do you mean, stuck? William comes back all the time.” In that instant, she realized how much she had assumed. She mentally played back the scene at the bridge with William from the night before. What had he said? There’s no way back to your home tonight.
    She had locked on to the ‘tonight,’ part, maybe thinking that the ‘gate’ closed at dark. Assuming she would be able to get back through in the morning.
    Thomas watched her for a long moment, seeming to notice her internal struggle. He finally spoke, “In your world, it must seem that way – that William goes back and forth ‘all the time’.” He paused, scrutinizing Quinn’s face carefully. “It