The Unknown Alchemist

Chapter 6 - I just 'am'

"Your hair!" he cried out in horror.

She sighed and ran her fingers through it, careful to not pull on any scabs.

"Don't worry," Avery chuckled. "It hasn't gone far."

She pulled a bubbling pot off the fire and brought it to the table. "Do you think you can eat more today? We need to get some food in you to help with the repairs."

If she focused on him she wouldn't have to think about her own trauma. She didn't want to talk about what had happened, what he had witnessed. She knew he had so many questions, but she had no answers. They were the same questions she asked herself every day.

Avery served the stew and brought it over to Roedin in bed. He was able to hold the bowl and feed himself now that the fever had broken, but he was very weak and tired easily. She dragged the table to the bed so it felt like they were sharing a meal together, and lowered herself into the chair, closing her eyes with relief as she settled in. When she opened them she found Roedin watching her with concern, taking in her exhaustion and disheveled appearance.

Eventually he mustered the courage to ask. "Avery—"

"No."

He waited.

"Avery—"

"I don't know his name, or how he gets here, or how to make him stop." Avery ground her teeth but kept her eyes down on the food in her bowl.

"How long has this been happening?" he asked quietly.

Still Avery kept her eyes averted, looking away but not really seeing anything. "It feels like always. There was a time when he wasn't here, but I have trouble remembering it."

Roedin swallowed and looked down at his own bowl of stew. "Why did you cover for me? I'm a stranger and you could have ended it if you had told him who was in here. What secrets are you protecting?"

She stared down at the table and shook her head.

"It wouldn't have mattered. He can't enter the Cabin anyway. That infuriates him; that there's a spell here he cannot break. So he waits for me to come out. Then he wants to know who I am, and why I'm here. My answer is always the same, but he never believes me."

She paused like she was reliving the memory.

"One time he accused me of being a powerful sorcerer in disguise. He said I wasn't aging so I must be a sapien. I used to imagine that I really was a sapien, a prime even, and my powers were locked away by an evil curse. And when I was free I would revisit all the pain he had put me through, tenfold."

No smile touched her face this time. This was not a light-hearted fantasy she read in her books.

"I'm not as strong as you think," she said, staring straight at Roedin. Then she looked away again. "I would have told him everything to get him to stop. But I have no answers. I don't know why I'm here, and I don't know who cursed this place. And I don't where he came from or what he's hoping to find here."

She looked back to Roedin then, daring him to tell her how he got here.

"So why don't you run? Leave this place and be rid of it?" he asked.

Avery bore into his eyes with a hundred years of fury burning in her face. "I can't."

Roedin waited.

"I've tried. I've tried everything. I know every inch of this forest. I've walked off in all directions. I've followed the creek so that I couldn't turn in circles. But no matter how long I walk, I always end up back here. I've tried sleeping out there, and when I wake I'm back at the Cabin. I've tried mapping it out, but if I write anything down it's gone almost immediately." A corner of her mouth lifted. "If I could write things down I could track the passage of time, which we've already learned is not acceptable."