Lady of Sparta

I stared at him as I stood in front of him nervously. His face was soft and appeared to be as nonthreatening as he could be. His dark brown eyes met mine. In that split second, I wanted to throw myself at him for some unknown reasons. I shook my head and took a step away from him.

“Then why did you have an arrow pointed at me?” I asked him, crossing my arms. I was having a hard time believing his words, and I wasn't going to trust him until I got an explanation.

“You startled me,” he answered. The words sounded vaguely Greek, but the words didn't seem like the language that I learned. I had to think about what it was that he was implying.

“What language are you speaking?” I asked him.

“Greek,” he replied, staring at me like I had two heads. He must have been surprised that I asked a question like that. “The same as you.”

I shrugged my shoulders. I decided that there was nothing that I could do to correct him. Maybe he spoke a different slang of Greek, or maybe he didn’t know proper Greek. I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t know how to form the words to tell him.

I started walking the way I came. I figured it was time to get back to my hotel. I needed to rest and to get rid of the headache that was becoming apparent. When I got to where the street should have been, I stopped in my tracks. The concrete was gone, and there was just a scattered group of trees and grass. I looked around trying to hear the sound of cars, but it was almost silence. There were a few bugs chirping and the sound of the two of us breathing.

“What are you looking for?” the man asked behind me. I could hear the curiosity in his voice as he took a step forward, placing him next to me.

“My hotel,” I answered.

He looked at me strangely. “What’s a hotel?” he asked.

That’s when I was shocked. How could someone not know what a hotel was? I could understand if they had never been in one, but to not know what one was. I gave him a short description of it, but he still looked confused. I sighed and looked at my arms. I saw the drying blood and the wounds that were inflicted by the thorn bush. “Great,” I mutter to myself. “First day in another country, and I’m cut up.”

“Follow me,” he demanded and nodded his head in a direction. He started to walk, but he stopped when he didn't hear me following. “Come on. I’ll clean your wounds, and I'll let you stay there for a little bit.”

“I don’t even know your name,” I argued. I didn’t think that would change anything, but I could at least know his name. I still wasn't sure if I could trust him, but he seemed willing to help me.

“My name is Aristides,” he said with a smile, showing his white teeth. “Now, come with me.”

I sighed. What else could I have done? The hotel was obviously not here, or he just didn’t know what it was. We walked past some farmlands with people wearing some kind of tunic. I couldn’t decide if everyone was pulling some sort of joke on me, but then I saw some people walking around the dirt road that we found. They looked at me strangely. I was the one dressed odd to them. I was had on a floral shirt and blue jeans. Well, my packing didn’t go as I hoped. I was sticking out like a sore thumb.

“Where are we?” I asked, afraid that I hadn’t come the way I came. I didn’t like the stares that I was getting. It made my skin crawl especially when a tall guy with dark brown hair looked me over with his brown eyes like I was some sort of prize to be won.

“Sparta,” he answered like it was nothing. He looked at me, trying to gauge my reaction.

I wanted to argue that this wasn’t Sparta. It couldn’t be, but then I looked around and saw this was what historians said Sparta was like in the past. I followed Aristides closely, fearing that I might be hurt worse than I already was.

He led me to a small house. He opened the door, and smiled at himself. He was proud of this place even though it was incredibly simple. He pointed to the bed, indicating that I should sit down. I quickly obliged and sat down. He got a bowl filled with what I assumed was water. The clear liquid was cold on my skin as he washed away the dried blood. The water turned red when Aristides dipped the rag back into the bowl.

I looked at the small house. The kitchen seemed to be combined with the room. In fact, I was sure there was only one room until I saw another brown door. It was shut tight, and I could only wonder what was on the other side. The only light in the house was what was coming through the windows. There was an absence of light bulbs and light switches, leading me to believe that there isn't any electricity in the building.

“Why did you push away from me?” he muttered more to himself than to me. He looked at me for an answer though. His eyes searched my face.

“You scared me,” I told him. I figured I shouldn't lie. I was sure that it had been written all over my face when I saw the bow with the arrow pointed at me. I realized that I never gave him my name, so I decided that he should know mine. “I’m Gemma, by the way. People call me Gem.”

He smiled. He didn't make some cliché comment about how it fit, or how it’s such an accurate name. He moved around and found another piece of cloth that he wrapped around my arm. Thankfully, I didn’t shove my other arm into the thorns, meaning it was just covered in dirt.

“Where are you from?” he asked, trying to calm my nerves down. He seemed to notice my nerves spiking up in the silence.

“Florida in the U.S.,” I answered. I didn't know why I added the U.S. on. I figured it would have been assumed that was the country I was from.

Now if I didn't already think something was up, this would have been the time to begin to freak out. “Where is Florida and the U.S.?” he asked. The words seemed foreign coming out of his mouth. It looked like it left a bad taste in his mouth.

I began thinking that I was in a bad dream, and I didn’t know how to wake up. I didn’t even answer his question. I just looked at my hands, trying to figure this out. It’s like I was sent back in time, but that couldn’t have happened? It’s not possible. Besides, I didn’t go through anything that sent me back in time. This had to be a dream. I would wake up at some point, and I would laugh about how strange this dream was. I would even tell someone about it, and they would laugh with me.

The problem was I didn’t wake up. Or at least I didn’t at that moment. The man just looked at me with his brown eyes. I looked at him as he moved around. His muscles rippled under his skin as he made something. I didn’t know what he was doing, but he seemed like it was keeping his mind off something.

All I knew was that I wanted to wake up in my hotel, and I wanted to forget this dream. I wanted to go back to modern day Sparta. Not whatever this was. I didn’t know what this place was. I didn’t think about the energized trees that I had walked out of.