UNHEEDED: Undone Realms Book 2

Ch. 5 - The Realm of Ignorance

Avie isn't going anywhere; not to the welfare center with that CompassionCorp representative who comes to her door to make sure Avie is receiving proper care; certainly not to the Dual Realm with Marcella, because Marcella herself won't be going back.

In the weeks following their return from their journey through the Fold, Avie does her very best to persuade Marcella that they need to go back.

"We still have so much to learn."  Surely Marcella will cave if Avie can appeal to the woman's considerable intellectual side.  "You can't know everything you need to about the realms just from one voyage."

"I know more than you realize."  Marcella brushes her long greying locks while staring at Avie through the oval mirror over her bureau.  "You don't understand what really happened."

"What really happened?" 

Marcella doesn't answer.  She ties her hair back into a thick braid and leaves without saying a word.

Most of their conversations end this way now.

Avie's frustration builds.  The tension between her and her stepmother is a kettle set to boil.  Avie does everything Marcella asks of her, even cleaning her room and tending the garden every day after school.  Marcella doesn't budge. 

Soon, Avie's resolve breaks.  So much for her determination to play the part of the good, obedient daughter. 

On a particularly warm night, unable to sleep, Avie slips quietly from the house.  She walks out of the little group of weathered homes that comprises her neighborhood and heads for the quarry.  Once there, she walks along its rim, imagining that if she goes all the way to the other side, she will find herself in an orchard, a canopy of green spread before her with tiny red dots dappling the landscape.

Avie closes her eyes, her mind filled with harvests and a boy with eyes as silver as her jacket, her feet stepping on air.  Avie is snatched out of her thoughts as she feels her body in freefall. 

She has dreamed herself right off of the edge of the quarry.

The fall isn't far, but it's enough to twist her ankle and bang up her elbow; her hands are scraped raw by pointy rocks; worse than that, her temple is knocked against a stone.

Avie lies on a lip of the quarry for a long while, catching her breath and assessing her injuries.  In the moonlight, she can just make out a narrow trail leading up to the top from the ledge she's resting upon.  She gathers up her aching body and slowly makes her way along the path.  Her ankle throbs; it would be nice if she had a stick to use as a crutch, but there is nothing like that here.

It takes many grueling minutes to make it out of the quarry, many more for her to hobble back to her neighborhood.  By the time she arrives at her house, it's past dawn.  Avie sits on the stoop, raising her sore ankle onto a chair as the tears fall.  She is dirty and tired and bloodied.  She is sick of Marcella, sick of her stubbornness, angry that she dangled this fantastical carrot in front of her only to yank it away again.

"Avie, my gods, what happened to you?"  The worst person who could possibly have noticed Avie sitting there looking like she just escaped a volcanic eruption peers over the fence searching Avie's face for an explanation.  Jerris.  Marcella's long-time neighbor and self-proclaimed antagonist, Jerris can't help seeing the worst in people and shining a light on it for everyone else to see as well.  Marcella hates her.  Avie is pretty certain that emotion is reciprocated.

Avie wipes her face with the back of her hand.  She reaches into her tired mind for an excuse, but Jerris doesn't give her the opportunity. 

"Did she?"  Jerris takes in a sharp breath and clucks her tongue.  "You poor girl, I always knew Marcella had a mean streak but to do that to a child!"

"What?"  Maybe it's the lack of sleep, but it sounds to Avie like Jerris is accusing her stepmom of child abuse.  Jerris would love if that were true.  She'd consider aiding in Marcella's downfall to be one of her greatest achievements.  "Marcella didn't do this!"

Jerris clucks again and shakes her head, flaps of skin on her withered neck wobbling half a beat behind.  "You don't have to be afraid of that stepmother of yours.  I wouldn't have thought a Caller of all people would be so cruel, but now I know, I guess!"  Jerris puts on a face that is meant to look sympathetic and tilts her head to the side.  "Well, why don't you come over?  I'll cook you breakfast and we can talk about what happened."

Avie stands up as fast as her injured limbs will allow.  "No thank you!"  She runs into the house and slams the door behind her, not caring if she wakes Marcella.  She stands against the door, her chest heaving in rhythm with the pounding of her ankle.  When Marcella doesn't appear to reprimand Avie for the racket she's made, Avie seeks out the security of her bed, waking only when the door is slammed again, this time, as she discovers soon after, on the face of a well-meaning CompassionCorp agent come to determine if Marcella hits her child.

The day doesn't get any better after that.

"He kept asking how you got a bruise on your forehead, and why your clothes were torn and bloody, and all I could do is tell him 'I have no idea what you're talking about.'  Can you imagine how foolish I sounded, how guilty I must have seemed, Avie?" Marcella pours batter onto a skillet, her back turned to Avie as though she can't stand to look her in the eye.

"I'm sorry!  But it's not like I knew Jerris was going to contact CompassionCorp."  She has every right to be mad at Avie, what with her sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night and falling into a quarry and then leading a nosey neighbor into thinking Marcella is a child-beater.  Well, that last part wasn't really Avie's doing.  Jerris came to that conclusion all on her own, but still.

Marcella sighs.  "The caseworker is going to come back."

"I'll tell him what happened.  It will be fine."

Marcella flips a jostaberry pancake onto Avie's plate and sighs again. The creases on her forehead look deeper than they ever have before. "Maybe he'll believe you, maybe he won't."

It strikes Avie that Marcella is genuinely worried.  "What's going to happen if he doesn't believe me?"

Marcella glances down the hallway towards her workroom and then turns back to Avie.  "He'll call the authorities.  If they insist on a home inspection, they'll find the notes on my realm work.  Then they'll bring in a scanner and run a test and the results will tell them everything they need to know about what we did." She brings her hand up to her mouth, her eyes focusing on a distant point as her mind cycles through the various possible outcomes.  "They'll put me in prison and take you away to who knows where."

Avie's ankle begins to throb again.  "I didn't mean for this to happen!"

Marcella closes her eyes, then snaps them back open.  "Yet it did.  So now we've got to think fast."

"What?  What do we need to do?"  Avie looks up from her uneaten pancake to find Marcella gazing at her.  The hate and anger she expected to see in her eyes is curiously absent.

The older woman brings her hand up to the swell on Avie's temple and grazes her skin along the hairline. It is the first act of physical tenderness Marcella has ever shown the girl.  "Let's get you some ointment for that wound.  Then you get your wish." 

She pulls away from Avie.  Turning to her cabinet of medicines, she begins sorting through them. 

"We're going to the Dual Realm again."

A/N:  Avie's going back to the Dual Realm!  What do you think she'll find when she gets there?   Avie's behavior unintentionally leads to Marcella being investigated for child abuse, which may in turn lead to Marcella being arrested for illegal realm work.  And yet, Marcella takes it all in stride, even making Avie pancakes.  What does this say about Marcella's true feelings for her stepdaughter?  She's willing to return to the Dual Realm--does this make her desperate, or has Marcella actually been looking for an excuse to return all along?

Thank you everyone for the tremendous support you've shown for Unheeded.  All reads, votes and comments are acknowledged and appreciated.  They truly are!  You are wonderful!

Today's dedication is for @jump21txx, a fantastic reader who contributed when I called for everyone's guesses on the shape Unheeded might take.  It's always a delight to hear from her!