UNHEEDED: Undone Realms Book 2

Ch. 18 - Upon a Stormy Sea We Float

Avie opens the drapes, then closes them again. The light is too bright. It makes her queasy. A bowl of corn flakes sits uneaten on her bedside table.  She lies back down, attempting to calm the waves of nausea with sheer will. She really needs to get started with her day, but she can't seem to motivate herself to do much. Oliver has been feeling sick too and this has her worried. 

She made the wrong choice agreeing to bring him here. She knows this to be true, she feels it in the pit of her stomach, yet she can't seem to bring herself to admit it to him. 

She loves him.  So as sick as it makes her, today she is going to tell him he needs to return home.  There's too much at risk if he stays.  Because she loves him, she will have to do this.  She will have to let him go.  Her stomach twists and she runs to the bathroom, heaving.

Just as she's cleaning herself off, the door opens and Marcella walks in, supporting Oliver as he slumps against her.

"Oliver!" She runs over to him and the two women lead him to his bed.

"Of course, you would be here."  Marcella's eyes narrow as she scans Oliver's room.

"Well, it's not exactly a secret that I've been...hanging out here, is it?"  Avie prepares herself for a lecture on virtuous living, as if Marcella's one to talk, but Marcella has more pressing issues on her mind.

"Do I even have to run the test, Avie?"

Avie brushes the hair from Oliver's forehead.  He's awake, but his eyes are glazed over.  She can't tell if he's looking at her or through her.  In her distressed state, she doesn't quite grasp what Marcella is saying.  "What test?"

Marcella stomps her feet.  "I knew it!  I knew you must have been involved, yet I chose to ignore it.  I chose to believe you wouldn't be so foolish.  You know, I actually had convinced myself he'd come here from another realm all by himself—that he was a journeyer from beyond the Dual Realms like the ones scholars claimed arrived here long ago and first taught us about realm journeying—that you had nothing to do with him being here." Marcella's eyes bore into Avie.  Avie can feel them, even though she keeps her head cast down and refuses to meet Marcella's gaze. Marcella is right—she has been foolish, on so many levels, not least of which was thinking Marcella wouldn't notice Oliver's otherworldliness.

"I believed he'd tell us who he was eventually," Marcella continues.  "A journeyer from some other realm—here in my hotel, dating my stepdaughter.  I couldn't stop thinking of what I could learn from him!  I tried to tease the truth out of him by talking about realm work.  All the while, it seems to me that he was acting the innocent.  But it wasn't an act, was it?"  Marcella begins frantically pacing the room.  "He's hallucinating about apples now.  Apples and making his quota and some girl named Marylou.  Oh Avie, he's just a boy from that orchard, isn't he?"

"Marcella, I didn't—"

Marcella cuts her off.  "How could you do this, Avie?  After all of my warnings, how could you bring him here?  This," she points to Oliver.  "This is your doing."

Avie's hand falls away from him.  She straightens her back.  "He wanted to leave.  His life was terrible there.  We thought he would be happier here." 

"Does he look happy to you?"  Marcella sits down on the bed opposite of Avie and pats Oliver's cheeks, trying to bring his focus back from wherever it's been travelling.  "He doesn't even know where he is or where he's supposed to be."

Avie turns away, afraid to see in Oliver's eyes the truth of Marcella's words.  A storm brews, waves grow.  Before she can reply to Marcella she finds herself back in the bathroom, her head over the toilet again.  When she walks back into the room, Marcella is waiting for her with arms crossed.

"You're right, okay, Marcella?" She leans against the wall and then sinks down to the ground.  "And there's something wrong with me too.  I think I spent too much time in Oliver's realm."

Marcella snorts.  "More like you spent too much time with Oliver."

Avie cringes and grips herself around her belly, too overwhelmed to take in Marcella's meaning.  "I have to bring him back, don't I?"

Marcella crouches down in front of her.  "You stupid, stupid girl.  It's too late for that."

"Too late?" Panic replaces her sorrow.  "It can't be.  He can still be healed, I'm certain!"

"It's not about healing, it's about the crackdown." Avie stares at her blankly.  "Gah!  Do neither of you look at the news unless I thrust it in front of you?"

The news that Avie has failed to take note of is discouraging, to say the least.  There's been a major breakthrough in realm journeying security.  Callers have created a way to prevent the Fold from opening to the Dual Realm.  However, they haven't been able to close off the Fold from the other side.  This means journeyers can still cross into this realm from elsewhere.  It also means that they're still looking for people like Oliver, and at the same time, there's no way for people like him to escape.

Avie covers her face with her hands.  The sobs shake her body more than the roiling waves of a stormy sea.

"So he's trapped here," she finally says when she's able to speak again.  "He'll go crazy and the authorities will find him and there's nothing we can do about it."

Marcella grips Avie's hands and pries them from her face.  "The situation may appear hopeless, Avie.  But I might have another solution."

How could she possibly?  Avie can't believe there's a way out of this mess.  "What solution?  If the Fold is locked..."

"The Fold is not locked! Such a thing is impossible. They've simply created a barricade within the Fold which essentially cuts us off from the Dual Realm."

"Then what good is the Fold at all? We've never figured out how to get anywhere else besides the Dual Realm."

 "Maybe, maybe."  Marcella's eyes gleam.  Whatever this solution is, it is enticing enough for her momentarily to forget about Oliver's state and Avie's mistakes.  "If we can't get to the Dual Realm, if we can't get to any other realm in existence..."

She squeezes Avie's hand. "Then we'll just have to create our own."

A/N: At long last, we've found out what Marcella thought she knew about Oliver's origin.  Unfortunately, even though Avie is on board with him returning to his own realm, it's no longer possible to get him there. I don't know about you, but with that twist in mind, I'm curious to find out exactly what Marcella has planned.  Will she actually succeed in creating a new realm?  Will she be able to save Oliver?  And of course, this chapter had another big reveal, didn't it... though it wasn't stated outright, I'm sure many of you caught it!

Thanks once again for your votes, comments, reads, and enthusiasm for this story.  Yay, you!!!

Today's chapter is dedicated to @Joflower.  I'm on a werewolf kick, it seems:  Jolene's featured story, Zara's Wolf, depicts a young woman who wakes up in the wilderness, alone save for a wolf who doesn't seem to want to leave her side.  I love this story!  You should give it a shot!