The Skin Map by Stephen R. Lawhead Page B

plump hand, he raised his shapeless hat and made a comical little bow from the waist.
    The old-fashioned gesture touched her strangely and made her smile. “I am happy to meet you, Herr Stifflebeam.”
    “Please! Please, Herr Stifflebeam is my father. I am simply Etzel.”
    “Etzel it is.”
    “You know,” he confided cheerfully, “I almost did not stop for you.”
    “Oh?”
    “I thought you were a man.” He indicated her strange clothes and short hair. He smiled and shrugged. “But then I said to myself—think, Etzel, maybe this is how they are dressing in Bohemia. You have never been out of München, so how do you know what they do in Bohemia?”
    Mina heard the word Bohemia and wondered at it. She had to think a moment to phrase the next question in German, then said, “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you come to be in Cornwall?”
    He gave her a strange look. “Bless me, Fräulein , but I have never been to England. This Cornwall is in England, oder ?”
    “But we are in Cornwall now,” she informed him. “ This is Cornwall.”
    He put back his head and laughed; it was a full and happy sound. “Young people must have their jokes, I suppose. No, we are not in England, Fräulein . We are in Bohemia as you surely must know,” he told her, then added by way of explanation: “We are on the road that leads to Prague.”
    “Prague?”
    Englebert regarded her with a look of pitying concern. “Ja, I think so.” He nodded slowly. “At least, this is what the signs tell me.” He examined her again for a moment, then said, “Could it be that you are lost, Fräulein ?”
    “ Jawohl ,” she sighed, slumping back in her seat. “Most definitely, lost.” The desperate strangeness of her plight came crashing in upon her with renewed vengeance. First London had disappeared, and now Cornwall. What next? Tears of fear and frustration welled up in her large dark eyes. She thought, What in God’s name is happening to me?
    “There, there, Schnuckel . Not to worry,” said her podgy companion as if reading her mind. “Etzel will take good care of you. There is nothing to fear.” He reached behind the seat back and produced a heavy woollen blanket, which he passed to her. “Here, your clothes are wet and it is getting cold. Wrap yourself in this. You will feel better, ja ?”
    Accepting the blanket, she brushed at the tears with the heels of her hands. Schnuckel —it was what her grandmother had always called her, the same grandmother, in fact, whose German she spoke and whose name she bore. “ Vielen Dank .” She sniffed, gathering the travel robe around her. As the warmth began to seep into her, she did feel a little better for his reassurance. Keep it together, girl, she told herself. You’ve got to keep a clear head. Think!
    Her first thought was that without a doubt her current predicament was all her low rat of a boyfriend’s fault. All that talk about laying lines, or whatever it was, and crossing thresholds into other worlds and all that malarkey. It was so . . . she searched for a word. Impossible. So utterly impossible. No rational and sane person would have, could have believed him.
    Yet, here she was.
    But where was that?
    “Excuse me, Herr Stifflebeam—”
    “Etzel,” he corrected her with a smile.
    “Excuse me, Etzel,” she said, “but where are we exactly?”
    “Well, now,” he said, sucking his teeth as he considered, “we are a little way from the village of Hodynin the province of Bohemia, which is part of the great empire of Austria.” He gave her a sideways glance. “Where did you think we might be, if I may ask?”
    “I hardly know,” she replied. At least she was growing more comfortable with the language as, like a rusty pump that only required priming, the words began to flow more easily. “I was travelling with someone who has gone missing. There was a storm, you see, and I seem to have become a little confused.”
    Englebert greeted this explanation with placid