No One Else Could Heal Her by Hiyodori

Author:Hiyodori
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

About ten minutes into our hike, I offered to navigate. Wist—who must’ve assumed I was in earnest—tried to hand me the map.

I didn’t take it. “You might not want to do that,” I informed her.

“You offered.”

“I was being polite.”

If she hadn’t already wanted to boot me into the nearest creek, she certainly did now.

“Look,” I said. “I can read a map. But I can’t promise I won’t read it backwards.”

Wist stopped, unfolded the map some more, and pointed. “This is the route to the cabin.” Her finger traced a very roundabout path to get there.

“Why not cut across the water?”

“We have time to go the longer way.”

“Safety first, huh?”

“There are three tasks at the cabin. I’d like to get them done before dark.”

“Then knock the last task out before bed, or early tomorrow morning?”

“Do you have a preference?”

I raised my hand as if we were in class. “I vote for morning. Don’t want to mess around with the forest at night. If you plan on going alone, of course, do whatever you want.”

“You’d rather wait in the cabin?”

“Let me see what it’s like before I decide that.”

The trails were well-maintained, with worn stone steps set into the steepest slopes. Some parts even had a railing.

Water trickled through a lichen-painted tumble of rocks far, far below. Unfamiliar bird calls ricocheted sharply among the treetops.

The cicadas did sound different here, after all: more wheezy and mournful, less grating. The air, too, tasted nothing like the air on the island.

About the only thing that hadn’t changed was Wist’s willingness to forge ahead in silence. Soon enough, I was struggling for breath too much to attempt to provoke her into talking.

During a brief break, I asked her if she were supposed to use magic to obtain drinking water. Or if First Aid could be used to treat dehydration.

Wist reached inside her bag. She wordlessly handed me a regular steel bottle.

The alleged route to the cabin took us alongside a winding chasm with walls of basalt columns. Deep water filled the bottom. It was wide enough for boating. And unnervingly still, compared to the ocean. All along the gorge, we heard the sound of waterfalls rushing down unseen.

I waved off clouds of gnats. Deeper in the brush, neon yellow spiders crouched at the center of webs the size of hammocks.

The trail—though eroded and slick in places—remained unexpectedly clear.

At the end of the gorge, a lace-like cascade of slender white waterfalls finally came into view. Wist led us away from them, through crowds of thin-branched maple trees. They were the sort of maples with delicate baby leaves, leaves so decisive in hue that they made every other green in the world feel inadequate.

Wist stopped. I stopped beside her, plucking at my shirt to fan myself. Everything felt sticky.

“The cabin,” she said.

I gazed out at a stretch of empty dirt.

There were hints of a neglected garden. A few abandoned brooms. A rusting ladder on its side. Nothing that could be termed an actual building.

“Maybe you read the map wrong,” I commented.

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