Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,8

“Morning!” she called to them with a wave.

“Morning,” Greg called back. “Are you open?”

“We are now.”

One thing Greg hadn’t accounted for in his short assessment of the place online was the very open-air feel of the structure. The ground floor of it was literally ground, and other than the heavy-stone walls and a few windows, it was without shelter from the environment that surrounded it. He made sure to let Taylor go up the wrought iron staircase first. It, too, was more open than anything as it afforded a view of the ground both around the thin railing and right through the diamond-shaped cutouts in the iron of each step. He’d heard of floating staircases, and he thought that was the best description for this thing that he could ever have given it.

“Whoa. This is crazy,” he said in awe of the medieval feel of the place. The structure of it lent itself to the feeling, but so did the roughness of every part of it. There was nothing slick or modern about any of it. Rustic was one thing, this was something well beyond that. “Didn’t you say one guy built this?”

“That’s what it said,” Taylor said as she climbed in front of him.

The first hint that anything even vaguely modern had been used on the place was the wood flooring of the landing they came to.

“Holy smokes! This is unbelievable,” Greg said, shadowing her when she stopped cold in front of him. He put his hands on his hips and just stood there, taking it all in. The windows he could see across from where they stood were enormous, but none looked like modern windows as they went up to rounded points at the top of them. The wrought iron motif continued with swirls of it either decorating the archways of what would have to pass for doors or holding them up, he wasn’t sure. It was all one life-size elaborate maze that snaked off in every direction.

“Wow. I’ve seen this place forever online,” Taylor said. “I never imagined this.”

“You want to try the balcony?” he asked, never so much as moving his gaze from the dreamlike area. He couldn’t believe it was even real.

“Sure.”

Taking hold of her, mostly because the whole thing felt so strange and unreal that trapdoors were a real possibility as were actual knights appearing with swords and armor, Greg guided her over to an opening that spit them out onto more wrought-iron diamond-shaped flooring that showed them exactly how far they now were from the ground. He swayed just slightly at the though and sight but forced himself not to notice. Beyond the railing was a forest of trees that simply swallowed everything else in the world whole.

“Whoa,” Greg said, stunned by the sight. He followed her to the railing and even thought about asking how safe it might be as he tested it carefully with his hand just in case. It was far more solid than it looked, but the height was definitely starting to get to him.

“This is incredible,” Taylor breathed next to him, never taking her gaze off the forest beyond even as she clutched the plaid blanket closer around her and leaned on the wrought iron railing. “It’s like a dream.”

One glance down at her and Greg smiled. “It’s like it’s not even real.”

“No kidding.”

The castle was far more mesmerizing than it had seemed to her even in the pictures online. There was just something about the feel of it that the photos simply couldn’t capture. Some of it was the sensation of being so far away from anything in reality including civilization itself. Some of it was how random it all felt. They explored the main floor slowly, Greg following her around as if it was her tour to give. She stopped at every window, running her hands across the rough stone casings as if she could memorize it all by the feel of it.

In the main hall, they took a few pictures by the stained glass window and looked out the rock arches that were windows with no glass to them. From every angle, the forest reminded her of the one in her dreams. The one where someone was singing to her. The one where she had gone to sleep and not found it at all odd when she woke up in the midst of it. When she leaned on the rocked windowsill and closed her eyes, she could almost hear him, out there, singing to her,