White Orchids {BOOK 1 COMPLETED}

Chapter 42

The forest is bigger than what we first suspected. We've followed the darkness that we occasionally caught a glimpse of behind the bare, crooked branches. We thought that was the best strategy to move through the strange forest. But just like everything else here, the rules that might have worked in the living world rarely worked here. When we saw the same crooked tree with the horrifying face that made the hair on my arm rise, we realized we had been walking in circles.

We split up. Sun and Sage in one group and me, Nine, and Clover in another. One group looks for a way out by creating circles, crosses, and arrows in the mud. The circles are the symbol for our base, while the crosses show us which way make us go in circles, and the arrows show us where we have already walked and how to find our way back to the base. The other group rest so they can take over once the first is too exhausted to continue.

That the world makes us go in circles isn't the only thing I've noticed. There's a forgotten ache in my stomach, one I haven't felt since I was alive, and I realize that it's hunger.

And not to speak of the tiredness, that I need to sleep. I'm not sure it's the world that creates the feeling of being human again or if it's the darkness. When Nine throws a slice of rye bread to me I guess it's the latter. I've never been fond of it but when my stomach rumbles, I don't care what he gave me.

"It gives you more energy," he says and takes a bite of his own slice.

Clover has turned his back to us and is laying down on the muddy ground, with his head over a makeshift pillow of a pile of leaves. None of us are comfortable with sleeping on a hard, muddy ground, but all three of us are so exhausted that it doesn't matter.

"Thank you," I mumble and take a bite of the slice.

I sit crisscrossed on the muddy ground and my head is aching. I think of the soft, welcoming bed in my childhood's room. I think it's the first time I long to return to the Eleven since I arrived at the Realm of the Dead.

"What is making me hungry?" I ask.

I take another bite, this time a bigger one. A more desperate attempt to remove the aching hunger. Not that a single piece of bread without toppings could satiate this biting hunger, yet it was better than nothing.

"The darkness," Nine answers, while touching the open wounds gently. "I don't know why, but it's like it's fooling our souls that it has a body and makes us react."

"Are you in any pain?"

"Just here," he says and moves the shaky fingers away from the scars, "in other worlds I cannot feel it at all."

I try to figure out if Clover has fallen asleep. The body looks tense, but you cannot relax here – not entirely. Maybe not even when you sleep.

I eat the rest of the slice of bread lay down on the ground once I'm done. I'm surprised when I feel the mud touch my skin. The longer I'm here the more I feel, and it's overwhelming. How could I have gone my entire life without thinking of every little thing touching me? My sweater and my leggings against my skin, the muddy leaves and the feeling of the breadcrumbs on my fingers.

When I close my eyes, it doesn't take long until sleep finds me. The exhaustion beats the biting hunger and the unpleasantness of the hard bed of leaves and mud.

****

I awake by a sound, and when I open my eyes I see Sage make a cross with his foot by one of the arrows – another road that leads us in circles.