Alice woke up on her bedroom’s floor with a bump on the back of her head as big as a tomato. Probably also just as angry red, but the hair covered everything up.
“Ok, remember, the Skill’s effect is instant. You call it, you sleep. No warning.”
She went to touch the new guest on her head and immediately regret it: “FUCK THAT HURTS!”
Averick found her twenty minutes later sitting at her kitchen table. Or rather, slumped on it. With a big steak on the back of her head, groaning in desperation and suppressing the shivers of cold going down her spine from her scalp.
She heard someone knocking and groaned something that could’ve been a ‘go away’ or ‘ enter’ or ‘end my suffering’.
When he entered the first thing he did wasn’t ask how she felt or if he could help. No, instead he asked: “Ok, what did you do this time?”
With another groan she removed the cold meat from the back of her head. The house apparently came with the closest thing to a fridge this world had: a wooden box enchanted with a [Cold] Spell. Or was it a rune? For the matter, was that the actual name of the spell? She couldn’t remember. Point was, she could store food and be relatively sure it wouldn’t go bad for a while. Except for meat. She had to buy that constantly.
Still, the slab of what she wanted to believe was beef and not some kind of other more exotic or magical animal original of this world was cold enough.
“Used a Skill, [Fall Asleep]. Wasn’t in bed. Effect was instant. Fell to the ground. It hurts. Help.”
Then she face planted on her table again, putting the meat back where it belonged.
Averick looked at her with a mix of pity, exasperation and amusement, shaking his head and barely managing to contain the chuckle that was trying to rise from the back of his throat. Alice didn’t deserve that, she was clearly in pain.
He walked closer to her, his hand moving towards the belt around his waist, taking a vial out from a small sac there and gently moving the girl’s hand away to remove the slab of meat.
“I’m going to use a health potion on that bump. It’s low grade, but it’s not like you lost a limb.”
He popped the stopper out and let a few drops of the off-red liquid fall over the quite visible bump on Alice’s head.
The moment they touched her scalp the drops were absorbed by the skin with the speed of a rabbit escaping from a predator. And nearly as fast the bump in Alice’s head began shrinking, until eventually nothing but smooth skin and elongated hair was in its place.
“And done,” he said as he stopped up the vial back, putting it safely where it belonged. Health Potions weren’t difficult to come by, but they were still a drain on his earnings. The things lasted a few weeks before they began losing their regenerative abilities, becoming less potent over time, until in the end you basically had a bottle of colored water that tasted like it had come from a swamp. And while his job wasn’t that dangerous, one heard tales.
Many things could be said of Averick, but that he wasn’t prepared? Never.
“Why didn’t you use one of your Health Potions?” he asked, sitting down and putting the slab of meat on a nearby plate.
Alice looked up, gingerly touching the place where her head had exploded in size, accompanied by an explosive headache, and smiled in relief.
“Thank you Averick.”
“No problem. That would be five coppers.”
“Fuck you!”
They began laughing.
In the end Alice did hand over the money he had asked for, but he kindly told her to fuck off and take the joke.
“But seriously, why didn’t you use one of your potions? Are you one of those copper-pinching people who don’t like to waste their money?”
“I’m anything but that Av, I just didn’t know I could use them for something like that?”
“What? Seriously? Where did you live up until now Alice, for real?”
“In a place where we don’t have healing potions. There, if you hurt yourself, you suffer through the pain and take medicines.”
“Medicines…” he pronounced the word slowly, as if tasting each and every syllable. More likely, even if it seemed impossible to her, he’d never heard it.
“Is that, like, one of those things [Doctors] make? You know what [Doctors] are, right? People who cure people that cannot be cured with potions.”
“I know what a [Doctor] is, you utter idiot. They’re everywhere where I come from, they’re some of the most important people among our own. They keep us alive.”
“...Where’s that? I’ll admit I don’t travel much, but I’ve never heard of such a place.”
Alice shrugged, while internally wondering if telling him she was from another world was worth it. In the end, she chose not to. He would either think her crazy, or tell someone that would then tell someone that would tell someone in an eternal cycle that would in the end lead to her being captured and experimented on like some kind of alien from a sci-fi film.
Or he would believe you, said the little voice in her head. She nodded in agreement with the tiny voice. It was a chance, but was she willing to risk it? No, she wasn’t.
“It doesn’t matter anymore Av. I can’t go back there anyway.”
She didn’t say she couldn’t go back because she didn’t know how, because she feared he would try to help her, and then she’d have to explain. And she feared losing one of her only friends in this strange new world.
“Oh,” he said, sadness dripping in his voice. He could be such a cutie sometimes, wearing his emotions on his sleeve. So easy to read.
“Anyways!” she clapped her hands, trying to change the subject, “Why are you here Averick? Got a message for me?”
The [Runner] was shaken out of his thoughts and he nodded, his usual half-flirtatious smile coming back: “Yeah, Herman sent me. He forgot to tell you something yesterday.
“Today officially begins the Silken Week. He didn’t know if, where you came from, they celebrated it or if they did it at another time of the year. Anyways, for the next week you’re basically on paid vacation.
“He also asked me to tell you, word for word,” he faked taking out a piece of paper and putting on glasses, “Dear Alice, if during this week I see you anywhere other than a bar, pub or less reputable establishment I will force you to work double shifts for an entire week.”
Questions flooded Alice’s mind: what was the Silken Week? How could she do double shifts at an Alchemist’s shop where she worked eight-to-five? Were there ‘less reputable establishments’ in Gunsee?
She decided the first question to be the most appropriate right now.
“What’s the Silken Week?”
“Ah, so you must come from one of those sad places that don’t celebrate it. Well, basically, people spend the week getting piss drunk in memory of the time when the arachne were finally defeated!”
That gave Alice pause. These people were celebrating nearly killing an entire species?
Then she remembered Albert’s words from last night: The Dream is the only place where humanity and the arachne ever managed to make peace. Outside, in the Waking World, we are still at war. An ancient war.
She remembered how… Siidi, right? - What a strange name - attacked them the moment they stepped in that dream. And understood what Albert had truly meant.
“So, for one week I don’t have to work.”
“Exactly! Now, I heard that ‘The Drunk Pig’ is offering a discount on anything alcoholic for this week. Wanna join me?”
Alice thought about it for a moment. Getting drunk didn’t sound so bad, especially in a world where potions to get rid of the morning-after effects existed. But it didn’t attract her. Not right now.
Instead, there was something else calling her. Something that had been calling her from the moment she’d arrived in this world. Something that stood out in the distance, not even that far away: the Tiurna Mountain Range.
Since she’d been able to walk, she and her grandma had spent every possible moment in the mountains surrounding lake Garda, near which she lived. They loved camping together, and her granny always told her beautiful stories of battles and faeries. And all the while, she taught her the secrets of nature and the rules of the old mountains.
Since she’d arrived here, she’d been attracted by those distant peaks. And now, finally, she had the time and the money to visit them.
“Tell me, Av, what are your opinions on hiking?”
----------------------------------------
“I hate this.”
Two days later, Alice had lost count of just how many times Averick had said those three words.
At first she’d been apologetic. Then annoyed. Now, she was amused.
“If I had a copper coin for every time you said that I wouldn’t need to work for the rest of my life.”
“Oh I’m sorry little miss goat. I’m sorry that apparently I’m more used to the plains than the mountains.”
“I never forced you to run. You decided to rush me up there.”
When they’d arrived at the foot of the mountain that morning, placed at the beginning of a trail by a kindly [Wagon Driver], a small backpack and Averick’s bag of holding filled with all the necessities for their climb, he had decided to turn the climb into a competition, confidently stating he could run to the end of the trail.
She’d told him that was a bad idea.
He’d laughed in her face and said she was just afraid.
She’d examined his legs, then his physique, bet on him lasting thirty minutes, then told him to go.
Twenty-five minutes later (by her generous estimate, since she didn’t have a clock) she found him raggedly breathing on the side of the trail.
“Come on Averick! You wouldn’t want to lose to a woman!”
And then she’d unceremoniously surpassed him, not even stopping to check on him.
“Chi si ferma è perduto!” she’d then shouted back at him. Which could be translated as ‘You snooze you lose’ from italian or, if you wanted to be more literal, ‘Those who stop are lost’. She’d always found it much more dramatic-sounding in her native language.
A few minutes later Averick managed to reach her.
“First rule of going to the mountains: you don’t run. You choose a pace, and you keep it ‘till the end. Never go faster and, if necessary, slow down. In which case you tell the person with you,” she told him without turning around.
Averick nodded, then realized she couldn’t see him so he said ‘Aye’.
They walked in companionable silence for a while, enjoying the greenery around them: the trail they were on was well beaten, with the occasional place where some good soul had put gravel to help drain the possible rainwater. It was horrendous to walk on, but it beat tracking in mud.
Not that the trail was muddy, not at all: they were in the middle of summer after all.
Spruces grew all around them, their leaves the greenest green she’d seen in the last five years. It had been so long since she’d left home.
Since she’d last visited the woods that she’d grown alongside with.
Since she’d last visited her grave.
For a moment, sadness overtook her and she nearly missed a step. Because she realized something: she would never get to visit that grave again. She had no way of going back. And that, that was enough to make her stop in her tracks, one foot poised to step forward, as if someone had cast a [Paralysis] Spell on her. She stared in front of her for a moment, looking but seeing nothing.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
Then Averick touched her shoulder.
And she was back, emotions locked tightly in a little bottle in a corner of her mind, ready to be observed and drunk somewhen in the near future.
“You alright? You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”
She shook her head and, shakily, put a smile back on her face: “No, no. Don’t worry. Just… you know, memories.”
Av, good, kind, Av, sometimes he felt no older than sixteen, other times, usually with women, he demonstrated a seriousness that made him look ten years older than his twentytwo. Averick understood that she didn’t want to talk about this. So he just nodded and went back to walking.
They went back to it, only now he was the one in front, setting the pace. His was much slower. So much so that Alice was a bit unnerved after a while. She didn’t say anything though: when she’d been a child, her grandma had done the same with her, enduring her slowness. She could do the same. She had to.
“Alice, I’ve been meaning to ask this for a while,” started Averick, pointing a finger at her right foot, “But what happened to your foot there? Why is it crooked? Did you hurt yourself when you were a kid?”
Alice looked down. Indeed, her right foot wasn’t parallel to the other, instead staying at a comfortable forty degree angle from the rest of her body. She stopped, wiggled it around, then chuckled.
“Nah, it’s nothing like that. Grandma used to call it ‘mountaineer’s foot’, because when we go down we put our feet in a particular way not to fall. She liked to say that mountains were itchy, and so they used us humans to scratch those places where the winds don’t really reach. They liked it so much that they decided to keep us there, and to do that they gave us feet that would render it impossible to walk anywhere other than on their steep skins.”
Averick stared at her with an expression that was a mix between wonder and disgust.
“Did anyone tell you your grandmother told horrible stories?”
“Yes. They usually ended up rolling down mountains. Wanna try?”
Immediately the boy raised his hands in surrender.
“I thought so,” she chuckled.
----------------------------------------
It took Averick some time to notice, but Alice was nervous.
They’d been walking for half the day now, having stopped for a couple hours to rest and have lunch. Nothing fancy, naturally, just some rations bought from a shop back in Gunsee, but they were quite filling.
After that they’d reached a fork in the road. And there they’d stopped as Alice took out a copper coin, flipping it before walking down the rightmost path.
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I didn’t know where to go, so I let destiny choose,” what she didn’t tell him was that she’d chosen the copper coin because that was a metal usually used to symbolize womanhood in many traditions. She even wore a little copper ring on her left pinky finger. A gift from her grandma.
There was no real tradition to what she’d done, truth be told. She really did not know where to go, and she really just wanted to let destiny choose for her. It had just felt right to use the copper coin.
“So wait, you chose to visit the Tiurna Mountains, and you didn’t even choose an itinerary? Where the hell have we been going up until now?”
“Wherever the wind guides us!” she shouted merrily to the wind as she did a little pirouette in sheer joy. Then she began laughing. It was childish and stupid and it was simply the best.
“You’re mad! Do you know what’s in these mountains? There are monsters!” he hissed at her.
“So? Monsters, wild animals, landslides and piece-of-shit-goats, mountains have always been dangerous. Fear not, I’m prepared for pretty much anything.”
Well, actually her plan in case she saw a bear was to either try to scare it by making a racket or run up a tree in case it didn’t work. This world didn’t have bear-sprays. Or rifles. Her grandma had one, an old Beretta MAB 18, more a piece of junk that made noise than an actual gun, but she kept it in her home in a place of honor over the fireplace, besides a photo of her deceased husband.
Alice had never met her grandpa: he had died during World War Two as a partisan, executed by a firing squad when he and his group had been found out.
“You’re fucking crazy.”
“Took you long enough. But worry not, I’m sure we won’t be seeing anything bad.”
“Don’t jinx it.”
Luckily for them nothing appeared out of the trees to attack them. Or the ground. Or the sky. Actually, in the Tiurna Mountains, there were many things that could’ve attacked them and caused a fast death, especially since [Miners] had… dug up the wrong things.
But that was a problem for another time.
They climbed.
And reached a dense patch of pines. Initially nothing changed about Alice: she was just as happy and boisterous as she’d been up until then, filled with a sort of childish joy. She seemed to be in her element, even more than she was in Herman’s laboratory and in her garden, tending to her plants (most of which were poisonous in some way apparently).
They talked and walked as she asked him to tell her stories about the arachne and the wars they’d fought, of the gods and the world. She was endlessly curious, and Averick wasn’t against showing off his knowledge to a cute girl.
“God, I so would’ve loved to study your history. The things we studied in school were much more boring.”
“I don’t know, there’s nothing special about what I told you. It’s just the past, nothing special about it. Did you study different things?”
“Yeah, as I said, much more boring ones. Don’t worry, it’s nothing.”
As they talked, time passed, the sun slowly setting, night fast approaching.
And Alice began nervously looking around, craning her neck to look further ahead, as if searching for something in particular.
“Everything alright?” he finally decided to ask.
She shook her head: “Nothing. Don’t worry. There’s still time.”
That, as everyone can very well imagine, did not calm him down. If anything, it made him even more nervous than she was.
“Is something following us?”
“What? No,” Alice seemed quite offended, “Nothing’s after us, but in a few hours it’ll be night.”
“So? Let’s stop then.”
“Not here.”
“Why?” he was genuinely beginning to feel afraid.
“Because we’re amidst pines. And pines are notoriously selfish trees. They don’t like outsiders among themselves.”
“What in Airm does that mean?”
“Look around Av,” she motioned around them, encompassing the whole forest, “Look at the ground. Do you see anything growing around here? Any flowers? Bushes? Even grass is sparse.”
Now that she made him notice, Averick did see that not much was growing around here. Other than the pines, that is.
“We don’t want to camp here if at all possible. Let’s keep walking.”
They did.
There was nothing around them, naturally. No wolves, no bears, no monsters of any kind, no tulpas. Nothing was with them. The pines were empty of life.
So empty.
So… silent.
It was as if the two of them were the only living things in this giant pine grove.
They were exceptions to a rule that had just imposed itself upon this place. Not a Rule, and certainly not a Law, but that mattered not. They weren’t of this place. They weren’t allowed in. They were going against the will of something that was both greater and lesser than them.
And it was becoming angry.
----------------------------------------
“Alice, dear, tell me, what do you hear?”
Alice’s grandmother was a slim woman. Her long, gray, straight, hair were tied in a bun behind her head so that they wouldn’t bother her while she walked in the woods. Long hair tends to get snagged everywhere.
She wore a simple white long-sleeved shirt, accompanied by beige trousers and climbing boots, laces perfectly tied and hidden inside. Alice could still remember the torturous hours of learning to tie her laces just so that they wouldn’t come undone and flop around, risking to make her fall. But her grandma was an extremely patient woman, and in the end she’d learned.
On her back she was carrying a rather heavy backpack laded with things to eat and utensils for anything they might need. And, to top it all off, she was carrying her husband’s old war rifle. Compared to her, the things Alice was carrying weighed nothing. Which, to a child, was still a lot, but she knew her grandma wouldn’t make her do anything she wasn’t sure she could do.
Alice looked up from the ground and listened carefully to the forest around them.
And heard nothing. No birds chirping, no crickets singing, nothing.
“There’s nothing grandma,” she answered in the end.
“Exactly dear. Remember, the woods are never silent. Never. When they do, it’s because something is forbidding the animals to do so. Or scares them. In any case, we must remind the woods that what they’re doing isn’t good, you understand?”
Her voice was level and calm. Actually, she sounded rather a lot like her Italian teacher at school when she made them repeat verbs.
“Yes grandma. And how do we do that?”
“Why, naturally, we do the one thing us humans were always good at: we sing!”
Sometimes Alice’s grandma spoke as if there were things other than humans and animals in the world. But that didn’t make sense. What else could there possibly be? Fae? Bad witches? Dryads? She’d read about these creatures in her books, but they were, sadly, only books. Stories. Her mama had told her so.
“Tell me, Alice, what song would you like to sing?”
----------------------------------------
Alice began singing “Italiano Vero”. She sang without making sure to be intoned, just singing for the sake of it, to fill the bottomless silence that had surrounded them.
Her voice, though, was filled with intention and desire. It sang the young words of an italian singer who had lived not too long before her. A song that spoke of what she and her people had been like, how they’d felt. A true song.
She stopped for a moment, letting the silence surround them, a pack of invisible wolves smelling prey: “Sing with me,” she told Averick.
“What? I don’t even understand what you’re saying.”
But she’d already started singing anew.
Averick didn’t understand what was happening. He didn’t know the old rules and stories of the mountains. Traditions, some of them, as old as humanity. Witch magic, they used to call it. In the end, though, always, these were Traditions. With a capital T. And it didn’t matter what world they were coming from, for the mountains and the woods answered to them, bowing in respect in front of someone who knew to respect them.
Averick, too, felt it. He was scared shitless, because he’d felt the oppressing silence. He’d felt it stick to his skin like his shirt did after a day spent running in the summer heat. It was unnatural, and yet he knew, deep down, in some primal part of his mind, that it was as natural as the air he was breathing.
And he knew that, if he wanted to keep breathing, he had to listen.
So, without understanding what the girl in front of him was saying, he sang.
There were no words, naturally. Just noises. But they were in tune with what she was singing, and that was more than enough.
Together, they sang.
And, finally, they heard it: a little bird joining them.
Soon after, the sounds of the forest came back, a gentle wind ruffling their hair.
Then, and only then, did they finally stop.
“Good job accompanying.”
That was the first thing Alice said after a while. She turned around to look at Averick, a genuine smile plastered on her face.
This girl is truly completely fucking crazy, thought Averick. They’d just… been through something. He didn’t know what it was, but from the way she’d acted, and how he’d felt, it had been dangerous. He knew, deep down, that they could’ve died.
Yet here she was, smiling with even more happiness than she’s demonstrated up until now.
Fuck, why does she still look cute?
He was asking the right questions.
----------------------------------------
Not long after that they reached a short rocky outcropping that divided the mountain in two distinct areas, the pines on one side, spruce on the other.
They stopped in a clearing nearby to make camp, surrounded by spruces.
“This is perfect. We’ll be safe. Spruces are the trees of eternal life after all.”
“Really?” at this point Averick was willing to believe her even if she said that zombies could go back to being humans.
“Yeah, they are. They’re also the trees of the moon, protectors of women. So at least I’ll be safe,” she teased him, then laughed, putting down her backpack.
“Alice, that’s not funny!”
“Don’t worry Av, we’ll be safe. You go gather some wood near here, I’ll set the camp up.”
Half an hour later two tents had been set, a fire pit dug out, surrounded by rocks, and a fire was merrily burning.
“We should have enough wood for the night,” stated Alice, certainty in every word.
A small pile of dry wood sat near the flames, ready to be tossed into the ever hungry fire.
She sat there, a pot full of water and beans slowly cooking.
They sat in silence, but this was the good kind. Companionable silence. They listened to the woods around them speak in their place, and appreciated it all the more after that short time surrounded by its silence. You didn’t know how much you liked something until it was taken from you.
“What was that song Alice?” asked Averick in the end, “What language was that?”
Alice didn’t answer right away. She instead stirred their dinner some more while she decided how to answer.
“That was Italiano Vero, a ÿ̸̤̘o̸̲̦̣̝͝u̸̦̮̘̞̱̒́̕͜n̶͙̽̓͋̈̋̍͜g̵̡͍͈͆̃̅͝ song from home. C̵̥̐a̷̢͝m̵͎̈́é̸͕ ̴̘͆o̶̜͊ŭ̶͙t̸͌ͅ ̵̯̂p̵̢̓ṟ̵͗é̴̟t̸̥͂t̶̖͝y̵͈͋ ̵̣̈́ṟ̵̈́ê̶̠c̵̩̓è̶̬ñ̷̨t̵͖̒l̶̢͆y̶͍̅.”
Then she stopped. No, something about what she’d said was wrong. The song she was talking about had come out in the eighties, long before she was even born. H̸e̵l̶l̷,̷ ̴i̵t̵ ̵w̷a̸s̴ ̵2̴0̷1̶8̴ ̴w̵h̶e̶n̴ ̵s̸h̴e̷’̷d̴ ̵a̴p̶p̵e̷a̵r̵e̶d̵ ̸h̷e̸r̶e̵.̵ ̸T̷h̷e̴ ̵s̷o̵n̸g̵ ̵w̸a̶s̷n̸'̶t̵ ̸r̵e̵c̷e̸n̵t̵ ̶a̸t̵ ̶a̸l̴l̷.̵ ̴B̴u̴t̵ ̵t̴h̶e̶n̷ ̷w̴h̶y̷ ̴d̴i̷d̴ ̶i̵t̴ ̶f̸e̶e̵l̷ ̴l̸i̷k̸e̴ ̴i̶t̸ ̷w̷a̵s̸?̷ ̸W̷h̷y̴ ̴w̶a̸s̷ ̷i̷t̷ ̴t̴h̴a̴t̶ ̵s̷h̷e̴ ̶c̶o̶u̷l̵d̶n̵'̶t̵ ̶i̷m̵a̴g̶i̶n̸e̷ ̶i̶t̶ ̴b̴e̷i̷n̷g̵ ̶a̸n̵y̵ ̶o̷l̶d̸e̷r̶?̴ ̵A̵s̵ ̴i̸f̴ ̴h̵e̷r̴ ̵m̷i̶n̸d̵ ̸w̵a̵s̸ ̵b̵e̶i̷n̸g̵ ̸l̸e̶- -
[⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛]
(A.N: For those that can’t read well what was happening: Hell, it was 2018 when she’d appeared here. The song wasn’t recent at all. But then why did it feel like it was? Why was it that she couldn’t imagine it being any older? As if her mind was being led - )
The world lurched and tore apart. Then:
“That was Italiano Vero, a beautiful song from home.”
“And in what language is that?”
“Oh, italian.”
“... ok, the word for the language you used sounded an awful lot like part of the title of the song. Are they the same?”
“Yep!”
“...Do I want to know?”
“Probably yes. But I don’t want to talk about it. Not much. I’m sorry. It’s… not pleasant.”
Because why should she try to talk about a place she would probably never get to see again?
“Ok, I’ll accept that answer. Now give me the spoon and let me cook for a while.”
In the end, the food was good.