I awoke in darkness.

  The first thing I noticed was the gentle rocking of the floor underneath me and the soft creak of timbers rubbing against each other. I felt rough wood against my bare skin. For the briefest of moments, I thought I might have fallen asleep somewhere and everything I had experienced was just a wild dream. But then reality sank in.

  I was on a boat.

  I lifted my head, which was still throbbing from the blow that knocked me unconscious, and looked around in the darkness. I guessed I was in some kind of cargo hold under the deck of a ship. A small hole, not much bigger than my head, was set into the top of one wall and let in the orange light from the alien sun. A single door on the far side of the room was the only way out.

  I slowly stood up and banged my head against the low ceiling. I took a moment to steady myself before looking out the window. The sun was still up. In fact, it appeared to be in the same position as when I had emerged from the pyramid. Certainly, time had passed since I was knocked unconscious. Shouldn’t the sun have moved across the sky?

  A sound behind me startled me. I whirled around and immediately regretted it. My head was still spinning, and the floor of the boat was still moving. Leaning back against the rough wooden wall behind me, I looked at the source of the noise. A small group of faces stared up at me. I could just make them out in the low light. There were four people there.

  Humans just like me!

  I moved closer and kneeled down in front of them. It was four men and a woman. They each wore a sleeveless leather tunic with a wide belt around their waist and sandals on their feet. Two of the men were around my age, while the third man looked older. The woman was maybe a few years younger than me. And she was beautiful.

  Her bright green eyes were the first thing that caught my attention. They glittered in the little light that entered the cargo hold as she met my gaze. Long dark hair that fell past her shoulders framed the delicate features of her face. She looked me up and down with a sense of curiosity and caution, and I was suddenly reminded that I was naked.

  Embarrassed, I turned to the side so my privates weren’t exposed to her, though I wasn’t certain how much she could see in the darkness. As I moved, one of the younger men moved forward to kneel between me and the woman. I couldn’t tell if he was her husband or brother, but he was certainly protective of her. They were all wearing clothes, but I couldn’t see much in that gloomy cargo hold.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  They all returned puzzled looks, and I immediately felt stupid. Of course, people on an alien world wouldn’t speak English. Most people on Earth don’t speak English, so why would I expect these people to understand me? But, I followed that stupid question with the most stereotypical thing that one sees in any movie, and pointed to my chest.

  “I’m Stephen,” I said while pointing. “Stephen.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Then, I pointed at the man, hoping that I could win his trust. “Who are you?”

  When he looked puzzled again, I tried once more.

  “Stephen.” Pointing at myself. “You?” Pointing at him.

  The older man spoke up, and as you would expect, I didn’t understand a word he said. But he was speaking to the protective man, not me. They talked back and forth for a moment. Their language seemed simple, but with no frame of reference, I had no idea what they were talking about.

  After a moment, the protective man waved me away and said something I didn’t understand, but he still got his idea across.

  Stay away from us.

  I did as he requested.

  I noticed that during the whole exchange, the woman never took her eyes off of me, but she also didn’t speak. I also got the impression that she was somehow important. Not just to the men, but important in a broader sense, as if she was someone even I should protect though I didn’t know who she was. I don’t know what gave me that impression, but it was strong.

  As I moved back to where I woke up, I found a rag piled in a corner. I don’t know if it was the remnants of someone’s clothing or a part of an old blanket, but I could wrap it around my hips and tie it off like a makeshift loincloth.

  Feeling less vulnerable, I went back to the window and looked out. The ship I was on moved over the smooth waters of the sea that I saw from the grassy hill earlier. Long oars dipped into the water and were pulled by unseen rowers on the deck over my head.

  I turned my head back and forth, trying to see more, but I couldn’t find an angle that would give me any indication of where we were going or the shoreline we were on. I felt my heart sink as I realized that the caveman had knocked me unconscious, taken me aboard a ship, and now I was at sea with no way to get back to the pyramid. And that was my only way back home.

  I turned away from the window and slid down to sit on the floor to take stock of my situation. Caveman. Dinosaurs. Pyramid. Ship. None of these things went together. The strange, orange sun and the pyramid made of a metal that I’ve never seen before suggested that I wasn’t on Earth. But the dinosaur looked exactly like a fossil in a museum come to life.

  And I supposed that the creature that knocked me unconscious could have been an alien that just looked like a caveman. But everything else about this world suggested that I had traveled back in time millions of years. But cavemen and dinosaurs never existed together. So at what time in the past could I have gone?

  I looked over at the people huddled in the corner, who were still watching me warily. I wished I could talk to them so I could figure out what was going on, and where or when I was. And I really wished I knew why my grandfather had left me a message that led me to find the portal that brought me to that place.

  I sat in that one spot as questions rolled around in my head, never leading to an answer that didn’t also contradict some other question. The sun never moved in the sky, so it was impossible to know how much time had passed. How do you tell time when nothing seems to change? Just another question that I couldn’t answer.

  The group of people eventually fell asleep huddled together. I noticed the men crowded around the woman as if to guard her. I think one man was supposed to stay on watch as he continued to keep his eyes on me until he grew too sleepy. Or maybe he finally realized that I wasn’t going to do anything except sit in my little corner of the dark cargo hold.

  I don’t know why I wasn’t sleepy. Maybe it was the travel through the portal, or maybe it was the blow to my head. Maybe it was the perpetual noon that kept me awake. Or maybe my body was still thinking it was in the Central Time Zone in the US. Regardless of the reason, I just sat with my back against the wall and wondered what would happen to me next.

  The sound of flapping wings told me that I didn’t have to wait long.