Deja Vu (The Wealcere Chronicles)

Chapter 1 - Isabel

They think I'm crazy. And maybe they're right, maybe I've lost my mind.

I don't know how to explain what is happening, there are no words to describe it. I don't think anyone has ever been through this so that I can explain it. It's not in any book, in any manual.

So I will try to put it in the simplest way.

One minute I was in my childhood home, and the next, I was waking up in a small hut in what looked like a medieval village completely naked.

My terrified scream was the icing on the dessert of madness.

A woman came into my so-called room at that moment, she looked like my mother, sounded like my mother, but I was absolutely sure she was not.

My babbling, nudity and nervous breakdown at the sight of a corset waiting for me convinced her to take me to the healer's hut.

So here I am.

Sitting in a hut, in an unfamiliar place, with a woman who looks just like my mother, but surely is not, scared to death, not knowing what to do or what to say.

I just listen to the conversation she is having with the woman who is also waiting for the healer, I listen to her as if I have stuck my head in the water, distant, almost without volume.

'Don't worry Teresa, he will help her, he always helps her, you know how much he cares about her,' the other woman with almost white hair tells her in an accent that is very close to what I know as Scottish.

The one who is supposedly my mother Teresa turns to me realizing my strange existence, only to return to crying into an embroidered handkerchief.

What on earth is going on?

This is the longest and most absurd nightmare I've ever had.

Eric, I just want to go back to Eric.

'Please, I just want to wake up. Wake up, wake up,' I say out loud, pinching myself because I know it makes you wake up, but the pain in my arm is a bad omen.

My so-called mother looks at me with horror in her eyes, unable to believe a word I say.

'She says she's dreaming, she speaks with that strange accent, I don't know what to do Cynthia, I'm desperate.'

'You don't think it will be the work of the enchanters?'

'Don't say that, not even as a joke. My daughter doesn't associate with the enchanters, with any of those...people.'

I don't even care to understand what they say.

They keep talking and all I can think about is that Eric must think I really abandoned him after....

He'll think I left him?

Will he think I'm still alive?

How will I get in touch with him?

I don't have my phone.

I don't even know if phones exist here.

The one who claims to be my mother kisses me on the head and starts pacing back and forth in the small room of the hut. Someone comes out from behind a door, warning me that maybe it's my turn to enter.

I don't know how I got here, but if it's a dream, it's time to wake up. I try again and again to pinch myself but it doesn't work.

I know how I physically got here, my so-called mother dragged me along the stone paths of the village, to this little hut.