Free Summerhill by Kevin Frane Page B

she was being stared at in turn, took a look at herself.
    Summerhill patted himself on the chest. He was dressed similarly to Katherine, though he at least had on a pair of pants instead of a skirt. Slung across his shoulder in place of the bag he’d brought from the lifeboat was a heavy leather satchel, its strap long enough to allow the bag to rest comfortably at his hip.
    “You look like you’re ready to head out on safari, mate,” Katherine said. She chuckled, then nodded upwards. “I like the hat.”
    Though he hadn’t felt the weight of it atop his head before, when he glanced upward, Summerhill saw the brim of said hat. He reached up and checked the fit of it. Not only was it sized perfectly for his head, but there were even holes for his ears. “You sure you don’t know anything else about nevereefs?” he asked as he adjusted the hat out of some reflex.
    “It sure doesn’t look like we’re inside a reef,” Katherine replied. “Though I can’t really see where else we could have possibly ended up after that fall.”
    “Guess we’ll have to look around.” Summerhill got to his feet, then helped Katherine up. She dusted herself off with her free hand, then patted at her front some more, paying specific attention to the pockets of her jacket. Wrinkling her brow in confusion, she began to sift through them.
    “Oh, hey, this should come in handy,” she said as she started to pull a variety of implements out from those deep pockets. Among the items kept on her person were a compass, a tinderbox, a pocket sundial, some handkerchiefs, and other such personal effects. “Not sure where any of it came from, but it’s good to know that we have it.”
    The satchel—the one that had replaced Summerhill’s food supply bag—was packed with smaller wrapped packages of jerky, dried fruit and nuts, and crusty bread. A few testing sniffs suggested that it was all still edible, if nowhere near as remarkable as the self-reconstituting meal packages from the lifeboat. If portioned properly, it could probably sustain two people for a couple of days, but not much longer than that.
    Summerhill patted himself down to see if there was anything else of note in his pockets. He was outfitted with more or less the same kind of personal gear as Katherine, with one notable exception: he also carried an elaborate, gold-plated hunter-case pocket watch. On the back were engraved the words: To One of My Favorites.
    The sight of it filled him with nostalgia without bringing any actual memories to mind. He didn’t recall ever owning this watch—or any watch, for that matter—though paradoxically enough, he remembered thinking he’d owned a watch, for some reason, which was ridiculous because there was no time to keep track of back in the World of the Pale Gray Sky.
    Upon opening the case to check the watch itself, Summerhill let out a quiet bark of surprise. The hands of the watch whirled around the face, their movements constantly changing speed, and sometimes even changing direction. The faint ticking from the watch’s internal mechanisms didn’t sound abnormal at all, and kept up the same, steady rhythm regardless of how quickly the hands were moving, impossible as that should have been.
    The Chief’s words came to mind again: “‘Impossible’ isn’t a word we’re big on here.”
    As a timepiece, the watch was useless, a baffling mess of hands that whirled about in nonsensical patterns. It was just as confusing as a keepsake, too, with an old, sepia tone photograph set inside the case.
    Katherine leaned in and took a look. “Someone you know?” she asked.
    It was the otter-creature from the Nusquam , the one Summerhill had bumped into after his last trip to the bar. “Sort of?” he said, staring at the photo in confusion.
    Changing appearance after crossing a dimensional barrier was one thing. Finding their pockets loaded with personal effects they hadn’t brought with them was another. Why would Summerhill have a