Page 3 of The Time Of Queens

“Oh good, you are awake,” Pip said.

I took in the beams overhead, before shifting until I was sitting up on a hard sofa that was more like a padded bench with striped fabric.

“Something that was bound to happen when you clapped in her face,” Adam added calmly.

Pip stuck her tongue out at him and, in turn, he simply grinned and snapped his teeth at her. As for the room I now found myself in, it was quite plain. With nothing more than an old-fashioned window, a double bed, a few small side tables, a single chair, and the hard sofa I was lying on. There wasn’t even a single picture on the walls or a rug on the worn, wooden floor.

“Why are you wearing men’s clothes?” Pip asked, making me laugh before shaking my head at her. Because this was my first-time meeting a version of Pip from the past. There wasn’t a mad hair colour in sight, and there weren’t any tattoos or piercings, telling me she wasn’t the same girl I had time travelled with. If anything, it just made her look even younger, as if no older than seventeen or eighteen, at the very least.

“Where am I?” I asked, ignoring the question about why she thought I was dressed like a man. This was when Adam folded the paper he had been reading before placing it down on the table next to him. He was wearing pinstripe blue trousers, an ivory waistcoat, with a blue cravat tied at his neck over his white shirt. His blue tailored jacket was folded over the end of the bed.

As for Pip, she was wearing a duck egg blue dress, with a huge skirt that must have had hoops underneath, as it could have fit a whole kindergarten class worth of kids underneath. To this she added a cute little red jacket with puffy sleeves and lace cuffs.

Her dark hair was parted in the middle, with each side twisted back into a plaited bun at the base of her neck. She looked like an extra from Gone with the Wind.

“We are in the Hundred House Inn in Great Witley,” Adam told me, and I looked to Pip who was grinning like a mad woman nodding her head.

“We saved you,” she added, making me grin at her, because well, it was Pip. Meaning that when she looked at you in the excited childlike way of hers, it was hard not to smile. Of course,she was also beautiful and from the adoring way Adam kept looking at her, he knew it too.

“Although what we saved you from exactly, we are still unsure,” Adam added, giving Pip a pointed look before turning one of curiosity to me, making me sigh.

“This is going to sound complicated,” I stated, making Pip snort.

“I’m a forest Imp born on the wrong side of the mother tree and he’s the most feared monster in all of Hell… trust us, we are Mr and Mrs Complicated, right, Bonbon?” Pip said, winking at her husband and making him grin while I burst out laughing.

“Well, when you put it like that,” I commented, making Adam raise a brow at me before asking,

“I must say, for a mortal you don’t seem surprised by all my wife just told you, why is that?”

Pip bounced on the bed and lifted her massive, hooped skirts up before folding her legs down under her and dropping to her bum. Therefore, she ended up sitting in an island of material that surrounded her.

“Because like I keep telling you, Treacle Top, she’s from the future… this one, honestly. Plus, I even know her name is Toots, although I must confess that is a peculiar name,” she added, tossing a thumb over her shoulder to point at her husband. However, my mind spun as I shouted,

“Wait! You know?!”

“Of course. Hence why you are here now,” she said, spreading out her hands as if the reason was laid in front of her and written on her skirts.

“But how?” I asked, shaking my head, but she simply tapped the side of her head and told me,

“My brain is magic.”

I frowned slightly before prompting for more.

“Magic?”

“She dreamed of you,” Adam offered helpfully.

“Oh… so you know all about me?” I hoped this was the case, as that would mean this next part would go a lot quicker, seeing as I wouldn’t have to explain the last thirty years of my life.

“Nope, just a dream that told me where you would be, so as we could save you, although I would have been there earlier had sugar bunny over there not argued with me,” she replied, crushing that hope.

“Yes, and must I remind you, we are still going against our king.” At this she rolled her eyes.

“And as I keep telling you, Biscuit, better to go against a king than the Fates themselves. Anyway, I dreamt that a distant traveller… that’s you by the way… a damsel from a different time… also you… would need our help and that’s about it… so, your turn… go,” Pip urged, making me roll my lips in my teeth to try and stop myself from giggling.

Christ but she hadn’t changed.

No, only her style had gotten more outrageous over time, but she was still the same quirky Imp I knew. Which is why I told them,

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