Over another night on the road, Yuila tells a skeptical Mina a tail of Coes and Unrechts in the cave shadows.
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The following day brought a drizzle of rain that seeped through the top layer of clothing Edvard, Mina, and Yuila wore. It was barely noticeable at first, the light mist that developed slowly into fine drops of water, but by early afternoon they were each excruciatingly aware of the cool wetness.
Edvard didn't want to push their progress in the thick, cloudy weather. A twisting, bouldered trail departed from the main trade road, and they followed it into a gorge of craggy, sand-colored caves and hollows devoid of much ground vegetation. He investigated a few before choosing a cave that sunk about twenty feet into the hillside. Satisfied it offered no second entry, and was devoid of bats and varmints, he ushered Mina and Yuila inside with the packs from the animals, and tended the horses beneath some nearby trees.
Mina was left in the cave with a lit torch and a frightened Crone. Yuila clung so closely she could barely coax a fire from the damp timber Edvard had gathered. "A little room, please, Yuila."
The girl only stayed at her elbow as they kneeled, watching the shadows on the stone walls from the smoky fire. "We can't stay here, Sapo. They'll seal us up inside."
Mina bent lower over the meek fire, pushing the drier pieces into the center. "Who will?"
"The Coes. The evil Unrecht. We banished them from Prima Lūce and they'll find us and seal us up."
She shook her head, frustrated with the meager fire. "So which is it, Yuila? Are they Coes or Unrecht?"
"Unrecht are all the different Crones." Yuila sat closer to her. "The ones who can do other things besides be invisible. The shape-changers and the white ones. But the evil ones are all Coes."
"What are the good Unrecht called?"
Yuila looked at her with annoyance. "Just Unrecht."
Mina shook her head. "Why are the white ones so different?"
"Their eyes are white. Their hair is white."
Albinos, Mina thought. "What about the shape-changers? Are they all evil?"
"No. They're just Unrecht. Some are very good, and some very powerful." Yuila looked to the entrance of the cave as the rain started falling harder. "Edvard will want to see one of the very powerful ones when he returns me. Only one of them can do what he wants."
Mina frowned, studying the younger girl's face. "What does he want done?"
Yuila suddenly shrank back. "To put me back where I belong, Sapo."
Mina thought there was more to her answer, but Yuila left it at that. "What can the Unrecht do for him?"
The girl shrugged. "They can do lots of things. But there are lots of things they cannot do."
Mina saw a spark grow in the fire and blew carefully on it. "What will they do for him, Yuila?"
The Crone sighed. "Nothing. They'll tell him it was very generous to bring me back, and please never to come again."
"And he knows this?"
Yuila nodded, watching the fire brighten.
"And he'll take you back anyway?"
The girl nodded again.
Mina decided Yuila was incapable of answering more thoroughly. To her it seemed Edvard was returning the Crone for a compensation he knew would never come.
Which only left her with wondering why. It was a long journey, and not an easy one to come, she had learned when he had described the mountains they were to cross in the near future. She examined Yuila's face in the growing light. Perhaps it was to keep a debt or promise the girl knew nothing about.
Mina turned her attention to the tiny fire starting to build. "I'm sure Edvard knows what he's doing, Yuila."
Mina said nothing of her conversation with Yuila when Edvard returned from the horses. He spread his wet cloak near the fire where the girls' were already drying.
It rained all afternoon and into the evening. At nightfall, the winds picked up and stormed, and Edvard left to move the horses and mule to a better sheltered stand of trees. Yuila did not argue about going outside to meditate this time, Mina noticed. The girl huddled in a dark spot in the cave and put her hands over her ears.
The fire burned stronger when it reached dry wood as Mina and Edvard sat near it as darkness settled over the cavernous terrain later. Supper had consisted of sausage and bread and the last of the elderberry wine. Thoughts of Yuila's words from that afternoon were on Mina's mind. Yuila had changed her story about being lost so many times she wasn't sure she could believe the girl. Even if she was right, he was taking her home to Prima Lūce, and if he received a reward, then great. Why not? she thought. It was a long trip to make. And if he was not rewarded, then at least Yuila was back home.
He didn't seem to expect any sort of recompense, she thought. She had asked him before about it. She returned his gaze from across the fire.
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Seventeen." He shook his head. "Seventeen in a few months. How old are you?"
"Sixteen."
"Why do you ask?"
She shrugged. "You're tall." It wasn't exactly what she had meant to say. And why did she think him tall? Well, taller than other sixteen-year-old boys I know, then she stopped, thinking again. She couldn't remember any other sixteen-year-old boys. Or girls, for that matter. She could vaguely recall the school she had went to in Chicago. She tried to focus her thoughts on her newer school, the one in, in . . .
Why couldn't she remember the name of the town they had moved to? She knew she had started school there. She couldn't picture in her mind any of the classrooms. The students were all just a bunch of blank, vague half-memories. She couldn't focus on any of them. Without realizing it, her hands balled her skirt into bunches.
There had been a girl who sat in front of her in . . . What was the class? And someone had sat beside her. Or behind her. She remembered passing a paper behind her. She tried to recall the grade she had on her own paper, but she couldn't even remember what class it was.
"Mina?" Edvard said again, sitting beside her at the fire. When she looked to him her dark eyes were wide, nearly fearful. "What did you just say?"
She shook her head. Had she said something? She didn't think so. "I don't know."
"You said something about a name. Who is it?"
She shook her head again. "I wasn't . . ." What? she thought, Listening to myself? She took a stick from the fire that they had used to warm the sausage for supper. She looked at the soot-blackened tip and handed it to him. "Write your name."
He looked at her strangely, then took the stick. She watched as he drew on the pale gray stone flooring. When he was finished, he gave her the stick.
"That's your name?"
When he nodded, she sighed. "Why can't I read it? If I can understand your language, why can't I read that?"
He chuckled. "Maybe you can't read, Mina. You don't have to read a language to understand hearing it. Write your name."
She wrote her name in English. He shook his head. She wrote it in Japanese hiragana, as her Grandmother Tanako had taught her, and then in the kanji characters her mother had shown her. She finally wrote in Romaji, the transliteration of Japanese using Latin letters.
He shook his head. "You have a very long name, Misato."
She smiled. "It's in three variations." She looked back to his name, not recognizing any of the letters. "Well, at least we speak the same language."
Yuila dropped down beside them, looking with curiosity at each name. "Do mine, Sapo."
Mina obliged her, substituting an "r" sound for Yuila's "l" in the hiragana. She knew she was supposed to write foreign names in the second of the three Japanese alphabets, but her katakana was a little rusty and she had never learned any kanji other than her name. "Except it would be pronounced Yura or Yuda."
The girl wrinkled her face. "It looks nice, but it doesn't sound as nice." She watched as Mina wrote Edvard's name, using a "d" sound rather than the "v".
"Edobarudo."
"That's worse," Yuila said. "Unless you were a girl."
He gave her a look and she giggled. He took another stick from the fire and drew a circle, then another circle gaping inside of it for a mouth, then added two eyes. "Yuila."
The girl frowned at it. "That's just a face with a mouth."
“Sure is.” Edvard nodded, then drew another set of characters. "That's Misato."
She studied the letters for a long moment, shaking her head. "Write his name, Yuila."
The girl sat back on her heels, despondent. "I can't write yet."
He nodded and wrote a set of loopy characters. "Yuila the Crone."
Yuila smiled and tried her hand at imitating the symbols. He stood and stretched, then grabbed his nearly dried cloak.
"I'm going to check the horses."
Yuila spent another hour drawing names, until a good portion of the floor was covered with one sort of mark or another. She finally decided on a spot near the fire and made herself comfortable for the night.
Not long after that Mina and Edvard also made their bedrolls. She found herself drifting off a little later, listening to the rain now falling with only occasional gusts of wind. The worst of the storm had passed, the downpour outside was still loud.
She closed her eyes tightly against the fire's low light. The cave had warmed up a bit too much, and Edvard had let the flames die down. She wondered what name she had said, or even if it was a name at all. It could have been any name, even the name of the school she was trying to recall.
She sighed and pulled her blanket to her chin despite the added heat. Was it possible to forget her world? Her other life? Would she?
She hoped not. Not her mother.
PG13, saga; teen, fantasy, fantasy world travel, teen romance, clean romance, realm, magical realism, shadow world, school/new school, high school, fiction, serial. #ReadFree with free signup. ♫♪
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Thanks to P.G. Waters for the use of her story!