Chapter 14: Next Stop: Outside a Really Big and Old-Looking Forest
As the odd party of five walked to Echo’s house, August stuck close to Cecily. He believed Amy when she’d said she meant them no harm–after all, most people were inherently good, even those from Earth–but he still felt that an abundance of caution wouldn’t hurt in this case. Cecily had seemed almost eager to see Amy again, but now she was aloof, pointedly ignoring Amy’s attempts to catch her eye or start a conversation. August had seen Cecily behave that way before: she would get attached to someone, then even after deciding she didn’t like that person she would still go out of her way to run into them. It probably wasn’t very healthy, but August was in no position to judge. Of course, he was also in no position to protect Cecily from anything or anyone: she had always been the one that was capable of defending both herself and August whenever they ran into trouble growing up. She was the brave one who didn’t take anyone’s crap, and he was the anxious one that would have gotten beat up a lot more in high school if she hadn’t been his sister. Still, he’d done his best to look out for her here, and he wasn’t about to give up on that.
As much as he tried to keep an eye on Cecily, though, August kept finding his gaze drawn to Bright, who was walking off to the side, a few yards from the rest of the group. He felt like Bright was watching him, but every time August looked over to try to catch him in the act, he was staring straight ahead. Why are you like this? August wondered for perhaps the dozenth time in the last few days, then shook his head at himself. Stop looking for reasons that don’t exist. Bright was as fascinating as he was rude, and August wished he could learn more about the winged boy without having to actually talk to him. It was impossible to say how old Bright was: he was only slightly taller than the Weavers and August had the impression that he was a similar age as them, but his shaggy white hair and complete lack of emotional expressiveness made it hard to tell for sure.
They all walked in awkward silence the whole way. August could tell that both Echo and Amy wanted to talk to Cecily, but she clearly wasn’t interested in building any camaraderie within the makeshift group. He was grateful for the quiet: it gave him the chance to think and to recenter a bit after all the chaos they’d been through lately, and to come up with questions to ask Baby if they ever found him: How long have you been alive? How has the world and its society evolved in that time? What does it feel like to outlive everyone you know? The last one was tentative, depending on Baby’s comfort level with deep emotional conversations.
When they finally reached the house, Echo cleared her throat. “Well, here we are!” she announced, throwing the door open theatrically. “Come on in!” They all filed into the house and Echo shut the door behind them.
“Hey, Ma!” she yelled at the ceiling. “We need to go somewhere, but I haven’t been there so Amy here is going to tell you where it is!” She looked over at Amy, who was very clearly confused. “Well, Amy? Tell her where it is!”
“Oh, um…” Amy recovered quickly and looked up at the ceiling to shout, “It’s about a three week walk south–I think–outside of a really big and old-looking forest. I think there’s some kind of building inside the forest.” She paused. “Is that good enough?”
Echo’s yellow eyes were wide and horrified as she shook her head. “Amy, that was so vague! My house does terribly even with accurate instructions! Ma, wait!” But the house had already shut its curtains and locked the door in preparation to teleport. August waited for them to open and reveal their destination, but the curtains stayed shut for ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds.
“Ma?” Echo asked nervously. “Everything okay?” They all stood with bated breath until, finally, the door swung open. The air outside looked almost blurred, as if something outside were rapidly moving, so August couldn’t get a good glimpse of where they were.
Echo let out a sigh of relief. “I have no idea where we are, but at least we landed somewhere. Come on, let’s go check it out.” She grabbed August’s arm–he was the closest person to her–and pulled him out the door.
They were in a field next to an enormous forest, just as Amy had described. “Wow, is this actually the right place?” August wondered aloud, turning around to see if Amy recognized it. But Amy wasn’t there, and neither were Cecily, Bright, or the house. He and Echo were standing in an empty field, and the others were gone.
August clutched Echo’s arm. “The house! Silly! Where are they?”
Echo grimaced. “Oh, dear. This happened once before when I was trying to describe somewhere I’d never been. It turned out there were two different places that fit my description, so my house was stuck flipping between them until I was able to calm her down.”
August looked back at the forest, then at the empty field, its yellow and pink grass swaying nonchalantly in the breeze. “So, if that’s what happened just now, it should flip back to this one soon, right?”
Echo shrugged. “I have no idea. It entirely depends on how many places fit Amy’s description. There could be hundreds of old forests with buildings in the middle.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Does that mean everyone ended up in a different one?” For the first time, August fully processed the fact that Cecily had just been teleported somewhere completely different and he had no idea where. They had split up before, but it was always for little things like errands or Cecily’s unsuccessful attempts to find a way home. Always low-risk, always just a few miles apart. Now, for the first time since they’d arrived in this world, August had no idea how far away she was or how they would find each other.
His panic must have shown on his face because Echo patted his shoulder comfortingly. “Don’t worry, the house will be traveling pretty quickly, so even if it has a lot of destinations, we should be able to catch it when it comes back in a few minutes, then we’ll find the others.”
August took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, you’re right.” They stood there in silence for a few minutes as they waited for the house. The soft breeze was still blowing, but other than that, the area was completely still, with no sounds or signs of life beyond August and Echo’s breathing.
“Do you know where we are right now?” August finally asked, unnerved by the quiet. He was used to this world constantly changing, with things randomly jumping at him at any moment, so the stillness felt wrong.
Echo shook her head. “I have no idea. I don’t know if my house understands how far a three-week walk would be for a person, so in theory we could be anywhere in the world right now. Maybe this part hasn’t been created on yet.”
“Created on?”
“I don’t know how else to put it. From what I’ve been told, everything in the world started more or less as an empty field of colors, then things grew and appeared on top of it. It’s a very gradual process, so maybe it hasn’t reached this field yet.”
August had a dozen questions about that theory: Where is the process starting from? What’s causing it? Why is the grass so colorful? He didn’t know if Echo would know the answers to those, though, and a more pressing question had emerged. “If this place is undeveloped, who’s living in the forest? Isn’t the house only going to forests that have buildings in them, since that’s what Amy described?”
Echo looked at the forest. “Yes, she would have only gone to places that fit that description, so there must be at least one building in there somewhere.”
“I wish we had a way of knowing if it’s Baby’s house,” August said. “I hate to think all this chaos could have been for nothing.”
Echo sighed, looking away from the trees and back toward the empty field behind them. “I just hope my house is okay after this ordeal. It must be exhausting for her.” August felt a twinge of guilt at the concern in her voice. He’d been so worried about Cecily, he’d forgotten that Echo was separated from her own family member…probably. He was still trying to figure out Echo’s relationship to her house–as well as just how alive the house was–and while he was sure Echo would be happy to share all the details, he didn’t want the headache that would undoubtedly come from trying to figure out that family tree.
They waited a few more minutes, then just when August started to let his attention wander, the house suddenly reappeared in front of them without so much as rustling the surrounding pink grass. Echo was ready and leaped forward in an instant, grabbing the door knob and jumping inside. August rushed in after her and found the witch hugging the wall by the entryway.
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” she was reassuring the house, doing her best to sound comforting while yelling at the top of her lungs. “You can stop now. Just stop.”
August looked back through the open door, but the scene didn’t appear to be changing anymore. “It’s working!” he said, then looked around the empty living room and kitchen. “The others must have left the house.” Of course, it would have been too easy if they were still in here.
“Can you take us to where you dropped off Silly, Amy, and Bright?” Echo requested, but the house remained still, with the curtains and door open. Echo frowned. “Oh, she is way too exhausted to teleport again.”
“What? But she was just doing it a ton of times, can’t she squeeze in at least one more?” August asked, panic flaring up again.
Echo put her hands on her hips. “My house just teleported to almost a hundred different locations in a matter of minutes. The only reason she didn’t stop before was because she couldn’t stop on her own; it was like she was falling. Now that she has stopped, she’s going to have to rest for a long time to recover from that.”
“And by ‘a long time’ you mean…?”
Echo shrugged. “A few days? It usually takes a few hours to recover from a short and easy teleportation, so for something this difficult covering this much distance, I’d expect three or four days.”
“Three or four days?” August sat on the floor and put his head in his hands.
“And in the meantime,” Echo said, sitting next to him, “we can go explore that forest and see who lives there! Three days will be over before you know it!”
“I know, I’m just worried about Silly. How are we going to find her after three days?” Anything can happen to her in three days!
“It should be easy to find her again if she just stays close to where the house dropped her off!” Echo answered hopefully. “As long as she can go three days without getting into trouble, everything should be completely fine!”
Three days without getting into trouble? August groaned and sank even lower to the floor. We’re doomed.