“What you have to get through your head, Harold, is that your life is not a fairy tale. You’re never going back.”

My girlfriend, Sondra, had spoken the words I didn’t ever want to hear. Funny how twenty-two words can suck the life out of you. I knew what she said was true, but her statement rang a death knell over any hope I would return to Kingdom one day. However, I rebutted with my latest thoughts of returning to the fairytale world where I had spent my summer between high school and college three years before.

I pointed at the pile of papers sitting on the corner table in my apartment. “But what about the stories? Admit it. They’re from Kingdom, and we don’t know who sent them or how they did it.”

“We don’t know they came from Kingdom. The author might be some nutcase who read your novel and sent you a short story of their own.”

She had a point, but I was certain the short stories originated from outside of earth. My correspondent had details about Kingdom a casual reader of the novel wouldn’t know.

When I’d returned from the land of fairies and monsters, I wrote a book most considered fiction but that was, in truth, derived from reality. My actual experience had started with a ghost who brought me to Kingdom to unite five sisters separated at birth, and they had become the rulers of that fairytale world. The short stories someone had mailed me had details I hadn’t chronicled but only I knew. They were not made up.

Sondra, seated on my couch and drinking a Sprite, crossed her legs. I paced in front of her, agitated. She said, “Why do we have to talk about Kingdom all the time? We started talking about us.”

“Kingdom is what brought us together,” I countered.

“It’s our past. We, you and I—Harold Tray and Sondra Saturn—are here now. Not the queens, not the fairies and trolls, not…Planet.”

“That’s a low blow.”

Sondra lowered her eyes. Her expression admitted the truth of my charge, and her tone softened. “Planet loved you. I know. That tiny pixie couldn’t love a person more—but she died, Harold. And when you came back, I sought you out. I thought because Planet and I were connected, you and I might feel the same way about one another.”

“And we do. So what’s the problem?”

Sondra’s eyes narrowed. “Your head isn’t here on earth. It’s with her.”

Another low blow.

As thunder rumbled outside, I decided to attack this from a different angle. “If we were there, I wouldn’t have to worry about our money problems. You wouldn’t have to find a job. I was a hero there.”

Sondra set the Sprite can on a ceramic coaster. “Don’t be like that, Harold. Don’t be a glory-days guy. Yeah, we’re struggling. It stinks I can’t find a job around here after four years of school and massive college debt. It sucks you still have a year left to go. It blows we’re stuck in boyfriend and girlfriend mode now, but that doesn’t mean our best days are behind us.”

I ran a hand through my brown, tousled hair. “You think I’ll meet famous people and save the world on earth?”

Sondra’s eyes locked on mine. “You don’t get it. I’m talking about us and what we’ll do together. If we stay together, we’ll have a lot to look forward to.”

Drops hit the roof of my apartment. “What do you mean by if? What about when? I thought we were a when sort of couple, not an if sort.”

“I guess the hero doesn’t know everything!”

Unmistakable scorn. Sondra took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Going back is not a choice. We have to deal with our issues right here, where we have bills to pay and where we have problems. Let’s be practical and work on them.”

I crossed my arms. “Really? Now you’re the practical one? Since when did I start dating your sister?”

“Shut up.”

Fury roiled inside of me. “Admit it. You’ve changed. You’re not the same person you were when we met.”

She said, “And when was that precisely? At college or earlier? You didn’t meet me in Kingdom, Harold!”

“You’re obsessed with this, aren’t you? I meant our first autumn and winter when we met at college. Don’t you remember?”

Sondra adjusted her winged, black-framed glasses and rubbed her right temple, a move I had seen before when she was gearing up to deliver her worst. “Of course I do. Perhaps…perhaps we need time away from one another.”

I stepped back, and my arms dropped to my sides. I struggled to respond, hoping she would disagree with me and fight for us. I wanted her to point out how much we loved each other. I feared if we took a break, we would never get back together again.

Call it gentleman’s intuition if you will, but I knew Sondra was the woman for me. I would never find another like her. Still, as I said, she had changed, and I couldn’t understand why.

Someone knocked three short raps on my door and interrupted our discussion. Rolling thunder followed the knock, and the combined sound put me on edge. The staccato tapping grabbed our attention, but neither of us moved to answer it.

Sondra eyed the door. “Don’t.”

The rat-a-tat knocking persisted like a wooden stick beating on a snare drum. I decided to irritate her and disregard her command and justified it with the most unlikely scenario. “Someone might be in trouble.”

Sondra pointed at the door. “It might also be a maniac. No one has visited you since you moved in. And now, on a night with a huge storm, you decide to respond? You may be known as Hero in Kingdom, but you’re no hero here.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m always Hero.”

I crossed the room to the door and peered through the peephole. A woman, slight in figure and wrapped in a heavy, scarlet cloak, stood outside. With her head lowered to avoid the rain, she remained unidentifiable.

Sondra stood. “Who is it?”

“I can’t tell. She looks harmless.”

I opened the door, and light pushed the darkness away on my porch, revealing a full view of my late-night caller. Slender and wiry, she regarded me with wide eyes. Her black hair cascaded down her shoulders like a waterfall spilling over rocks. I recognized her at once. “Rose!”

Rose Red, a friend from Kingdom, stood on my porch, but I could hardly trust my eyes. The idea of traveling between worlds was pretty much unfathomable. The woman before me had to be from earth, although her likeness to Rose was incredible. Yet the word she used to greet me chased the impossibility from my mind.

“Hero?”