Free Shades of Red by K. C. Dyer Page A

from the high window, dusk was gathering. A cool breeze whirled in through the unglazed opening and the room held a deep chill. No shutters stood ready to guard against drafts, but they would have been useless anyway, as the window was far too high on the wall to reach.
    The friar had left a small fire burning in the grate near the door to her room, and she added more fuel from the pile of wood and charcoal nearby. She pulleda worn woollen blanket from the bed and wrapped herself in it, kneeling as close to the fire as she could manage. It was time to think — not that she had much else to do.
    One side of her roasted while the other froze, and yet Darrell suspected her surroundings had been designed to allow the resident some comfort. She looked around in the dancing light of the fire. The tiny room had a straw mattress raised off the floor on a wooden bedstead and a small wooden desk and chair. There was the coarsely woven blanket she had taken from the bed, and the straw in the mattress was fresh and fragrant. The priest had left behind precious wood for the fire. Remembering the dried dung that fuelled medieval fires made her grateful for the clean smell of fruit wood burning in the grate.
    Under the desk was a wide-mouthed china bowl that Darrell recognized with some trepidation as a chamber pot. Ugh. And yet, these surroundings would probably be considered luxurious by most Portuguese standards of the day. But what did she know of Portuguese standards?
    â€œAnd what day?” she muttered aloud. “
When
am I?”
    Everything inside her rebelled at the thought of just sitting and awaiting her fate. She rose again to prowl the tiny space. Above her head a glimpse of sky pinkened into sunset.
    â€œToo bad I don’t have any of Brodie’s climbing gear,” she muttered. “I could be out that window in two minutes flat.”
    But climbing gear was not at hand. Darrell flopped on the bed and tugged her heavy skirts up over her knees. The evidence was inarguable. It was time to face facts.
    She gazed down at her legs stretched out on the bed in front of her. This morning when she had dressed for school, she had donned jeans, a heavy sweater layered over a T-shirt, and a pair of running shoes. Now she looked down at one long, lean limb, clad in some kind of woollen stocking and shod in a leather slipper. The other was red with cold and bare to below the knee, where it was wrapped tightly in cloth and attached to a leg with a jointed ankle and simple wooden foot.
    Darrell ran her hand over the surface of this strange contraption. More than anything, the feel of the smooth wood under her fingers proved the inevitable. It had happened again.
    She was lost, somewhere in time.
    The sound of chanting voices snapped Darrell out of her reverie. A heavy scent wafted in through the high window, and it took a moment or two to place it. Incense.
    She looked around the room again. Spartan, clean, with space for little more than sleep and quiet contemplation. A friar’s humble cell. And locked inside — a prisoner from another time and place.
    The voices, borne on the wind, rose and fell in rhythmic chanting. Darrell knew at once that she was listening to Latin, and yet the strange ability to speak the vernacular of this earlier time didn’t stretch her ability to understand. She listened as the voices echoed, dolorous through the dark. Something skittered at her window above. A bird? A bat? At this lonely time, Darrell would have welcomed any company at all. She curled into her thin blanket and fell asleep thinking about her dog.
    The thin blanket was not much help against the biting wind blowing through the open window, but it was all Darrell had and she was grateful for its warmth. How long had she slept? The fire had long ago burned low, the pile of wood and coal soon gone. The people of this time must really have to work to stay warm.
    Darrell shivered. It was becoming painfully clear that