Free Now You See It... by Vivian Vande Velde

sound. So I was taken completely by surprise when five men burst onto the scene, no doubt the brush cracklers from the other end of the path. Like Julian, they were tall, slender, and pointy-earred. But there the similarity ended, for instead of jeans and T-shirts, they wore clothes right out of a Renaissance festival—tunics over breeches and tall boots—and they carried weapons: bows and swords and daggers.
    Julian must have called in reinforcements, I realized. I didn't stand a chance.
    But they sure looked startled to come face-to-face with one another: Julian, who had been preoccupied with pursuing me, and the men, who'd been making so much noise that they wouldn't have been able to hear much beyond themselves.
    Four of the men went for their swords—not the kind of move people who are working together generally make. The one who had not unsheathed his sword told the others, "Don't kill him unless you absolutely have to." Definitely on the wrong side of friendly.
    So much for my ability to assess a situation.
    Julian dodged one of the two guys who lunged at him, but the second tackled him, and both of them went sprawling in the dirt. While the man who had given the don't-kill-him order stood aside, all four of the others kicked and pummeled Julian until he stopped struggling. I'd seen guys horsing around before—I'd even seen sports brawls—but this went beyond that into vicious. Then they dragged him up
on his knees, bruised and bloody, and one of them, Mr. Don't-Kill-Him—the leader?—placed a sword blade to Julian's throat.
    "Well met, Julwin Y'orick," that one said. "This will give us some bargaining power."
    Julian looked mad enough to spit, only his good manners holding him back. "My father will not deal with you just because you hold me hostage," he snapped.
    "Then your father will get you back one piece at a time, and he can reassemble you to bury you," said the other man.
    Man.
Who was I kidding? These were no men.
    He was an elf.
    They were all elves.
    I peeked over the top of my glasses to see what these guys would look like in normal vision and got two surprises:
(1) They still looked the same. Even Julian. In this place I'd accidentally found, whatever it was that caused Julian to pass for normal no longer worked.
    (2) Either wearing these glasses all day had cured my nearsightedness, or being in this place—wherever this place was—had. Because despite the distance, I could see clearly.
    Just when I thought I'd caught on to the way things worked.
    That old saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," came to mind, and I considered whether I should announce myself to Julian's attackers. But Julian wasn't exactly an enemy. And would these guys be any happier than he was to know I could see them and had wandered into their world? What made me think that five punks who would beat up on a single, unarmed guy would treat me any better?
    I waited for Julian's attackers to notice me, for them to come over and chop my head off since I didn't make a good hostage, my father being in Hong Kong, my mother being in Syracuse, and my mother's current husband being in an all-day performance appraisal meeting. And, in any case, I guessed none of them was likely to have anything this group of bully warrior elves would want.
    Or—just in case they didn't notice me on their own—there was the possibility that Julian would tell them, "Hey, you want someone who doesn't belong here? Try behind that tree trunk over there."
    But he didn't.
    Of course, there was no reason to believe they would treat him any better if he turned me over to them, so that was no reason for me to go and feel grateful to him or anything.
    But I was seriously spooked by those guys and the rough way they handled Julian as they bound his hands behind his back and taunted him with threats of violence whether or not his father gave in to their demands—whatever
they
were. So I was ... okay, I'll admit to
relieved.
I was relieved Julian didn't