For twenty-seven years, Xu Hao had taken his own face for granted. He had never considered that he might miss the lines beside his eyes, the grey beginning at his temples, or the faint crease across his forehead that appeared whenever he read something particularly foolish.
Now he would have welcomed every one of them.
The boy in the stream looked back at him with a perfectly smooth forehead and an expression of growing alarm. Xu Hao touched his jaw, then his throat, and watched the reflection copy him. Even his teeth felt different. The old filling in his back molar was gone.
"Fifteen," he said aloud.
His voice made the number worse.
He sat back on the bank and stared at the moving water. The face had been unmistakable. It was his own, not that of a stranger whose body he had somehow borrowed. At fifteen, he'd been thin and impatient, with an unfortunate haircut and an unshakable conviction that he was going to discover something important before he turned twenty.
He had discovered the importance of paying his rent on time instead.
Xu Hao gave a weak laugh, then stopped. His parents would be searching for a forty-two-year-old man. Even if he could somehow find his way home, how was he supposed to explain this? His mother might recognise him. His father would probably demand a DNA test, and Xu Hao couldn't honestly blame him.
The manuscript. It had to be connected to the manuscript.
He closed his eyes and tried once more to remember what lay beyond the broken seal. The blade lifting the wax. The red fragment beside his hand. Then nothing. He could recall lectures he'd given fifteen years earlier, arguments over dates in half-forgotten chronicles, even the exact flavour of the terrible coffee in his department's staff room. But not a single second after he'd removed that seal.
"Fine," he muttered. "We'll deal with the impossible later."
His stomach chose that moment to complain.
He had no idea how many hours had passed since his last meal. His throat was dry, and the water passing over the stones looked increasingly inviting. He knew perfectly well that a clear stream could still make a man seriously ill. He also knew that dehydration would become a problem long before he found a means of boiling anything.
He studied the water upstream for signs of contamination, found none that he could see, and drank sparingly from his cupped hands. It was cold enough to ache in his teeth.
Then he washed his face, stood, and followed the bank downhill.
* * *
The forest became more difficult as the afternoon wore on. Roots crossed the narrow strips of clear ground, and brambles caught at his oversized coat. Twice he had to leave the stream where the bank dropped into steep mud. The second time, his walking stick sank so deeply that he nearly followed it.
He pulled himself free and looked down at his shoes.
"Mother would be furious."
She had never understood how an otherwise respectable professor could ruin a pair of shoes in a single afternoon. Of course, he usually had a good explanation involving an excavation trench. He wasn't sure being turned into a teenager would satisfy her.
A heavy rustling came from somewhere uphill.
Xu Hao stopped talking.
He stood still for nearly a minute, listening. The sound came again, followed by a dull crack, as though something substantial had stepped on fallen wood. He couldn't see anything between the trunks.
Whatever it was, he had no desire to meet it.
He continued along the stream, keeping the thickest trees between himself and the noise. By the time it faded, his palms were damp around the walking stick.
An expedition, he reminded himself, was not the same as being lost. On an expedition, you had equipment, maps, colleagues, and at least one person who knew where you were supposed to be. You also had the option of returning to a hotel and complaining about the food.
At present, his entire equipment consisted of one stick.
He was beginning to consider finding a place to shelter for the night when he heard voices.
Two of them, perhaps. Men, speaking loudly enough for the sound to carry through the trees.
Xu Hao stood motionless, listening. He couldn't make out the words, but the rhythm was unmistakably conversation. One voice rose in what sounded like an objection. The other answered, and both men laughed.
Relief nearly sent him running toward them.
He managed to restrain himself. People in an isolated forest might be hunters or travellers, but they might also have very good reasons for wanting to remain undisturbed. Better to approach openly than stumble into their camp like a thief.
He followed the voices through a screen of ferns and saw smoke rising between the trees.
A clearing lay ahead. A rough shelter of stretched cloth stood to one side of a fire pit, and several animal skins hung over a branch. There were cooking stones, a stack of firewood, and a heap of bones near the edge of the camp.
Two men sat beside the fire.
Xu Hao stopped.
They were enormous.
He had met basketball players who made ordinary people look like children, but these men belonged to another category altogether. Their shoulders were broad enough to fill a doorway, their bare arms thick with muscle. Both had shaved heads marked with streaks of blue paint, and rough fur garments hung around their waists.
One man sat with a broad sword resting beside his knee. The other had a wooden club propped against a log. It was nearly as thick as Xu Hao's thigh.
He looked at the club for a moment.
Perhaps he ought to keep walking.
Then one of the men laughed again, and the sound was so ordinary that Xu Hao felt foolish for being frightened. They were cooking. They were talking. There was a shelter and a fire. Whatever else they were, they were people, and he needed directions.
He stepped forward where they could see him, deliberately letting his stick brush against a branch.
"Hello? Sorry to disturb you." He raised one hand. "I'm lost. Could you tell me where the nearest town is?"
Both men turned.
The one with the sword rose first, his hand closing around the hilt. The other stood a heartbeat later and lifted the club.
Xu Hao stopped walking.
"I'm not here to take anything," he added quickly. "I only need directions."
The sword-bearer shouted something.
Xu Hao blinked. He'd heard many languages in his years of travelling, and studied enough older ones to recognise common sounds, but this speech meant nothing to him. It came out in a rush of hard syllables and low, rolling vowels.
"I'm sorry. English?"
The larger man took a step toward him, club in hand.
"Perhaps not." Xu Hao raised his other hand. "All right. I can see I've disturbed you. I'll leave."
He backed toward the ferns.
The sword-bearer barked another sentence. His companion answered, and suddenly the larger man was moving.
Xu Hao had expected someone carrying that much muscle to be slow. Instead, the giant crossed the clearing in a few strides. Xu Hao threw himself sideways, but his heel caught a root and the club was already coming down.
He saw a dark knot near the end of the wood.
I should have stayed by the stream.
The blow caught him across the head. The clearing vanished before he struck the ground.
* * *
The first thing he felt was a headache.
The second was a sharp pain around his wrists. He tried to lift his hands to check his head and discovered that neither arm would move more than a few inches.
Xu Hao opened his eyes.
He was sitting against a tree in the same clearing. Thick green vines bound his wrists together and another length secured his ankles. His walking stick lay near the fire, well out of reach.
He tested the knots. They looked careless, but someone had pulled them tight and tucked the ends beneath the turns. The more he twisted, the harder the vines bit into his skin.
He stopped before he drew blood.
"How generous," he said. "They've kept me alive to complain about it."
The clearing was empty. The fire had burned lower, and shadows stretched between the trees. He checked his jaw, his neck, and the back of his head as best he could. There was a tender swelling above one ear, but he could move his fingers and toes, and the world stayed still when he turned his head slowly.
That was something. He was not inclined to call it good news.
"Hello?" he called. "If anyone can understand me, I'd appreciate an explanation."
Nothing answered but the insects.
He tried again, more loudly, informing the absent men that assault and kidnapping were serious crimes. Halfway through an explanation of what a lawyer might do with their case, he heard footsteps behind the shelter.
The two giants emerged from the trees.
They were smiling.
Xu Hao's lecture lost its momentum.
At a closer distance, he could see that one was slightly smaller than the other. Slightly was a relative term. Even the smaller man looked tall enough to peer over a market stall without troubling his neck.
Xu Hao decided to call him Big One. The taller, club-wielding brute became Big Two. It wasn't a scholarly classification, but he had never required scholarly precision from people who hit him with furniture.
Big One crouched beside him.
The smell arrived first: old sweat, smoke, damp fur, and something sour that Xu Hao desperately hoped was part of the man's dinner. He'd worked on excavation sites where the washing arrangements consisted of a bucket and mutual optimism. This was worse.
"Listen," he said, carefully. "I don't know what you think I've done. I came here because I was lost."
Big One studied him, then caught the collar of his lab coat and lifted him into the air.
Xu Hao's feet swung uselessly.
"Put me down! Please. Preferably without another blow to the head."
The giant held him at eye level, turning him a little to inspect the strange white clothing. He spoke over his shoulder to Big Two, who laughed. Xu Hao listened hard, searching for a word he might recognise, but the exchange offered nothing.
For an awful moment, he wondered whether he had been mistaken about their intentions. They hadn't killed him. That didn't mean they planned to let him go.
"I'm really not worth selling," he said. "No money, no family nearby, and frankly very little upper-body strength."
Big One grunted and released him.
Xu Hao landed on his side in the dirt. The vines kept his hands from breaking the fall.
"You could have bent your knees," he muttered.
Neither giant appeared interested in his advice. They returned to the fire and resumed their conversation, leaving him to struggle into a sitting position.
He watched them for a while, considering what he knew. They had weapons, a camp, and the strength to break him in half. Their speech was unfamiliar. They'd tied him up, but hadn't searched him for valuables or demanded a ransom. They seemed less like men in a hurry to dispose of a prisoner than men who had found something curious in the forest and hadn't decided what to do with it.
That might be good. Curious men sometimes asked questions before resorting to violence.
Of course, these two had reversed the order.
He leaned back against the tree. The vines scratched his wrists. Somewhere nearby, fat began to hiss over the fire, and his empty stomach answered loudly enough to make Big Two glance his way.
The giant grinned.
Xu Hao sighed.
He had survived waking in a forest, discovering that he was fifteen again, and meeting two strangers who communicated chiefly through shouting and clubs.
If he wanted to survive the next conversation, he was going to have to learn their language.