Deja Vu (The Wealcere Chronicles)

Chapter 6 - Enchantress and powers

Leaving the sheltering trees behind, we venture out onto the forest path. I know I'm wearing more comfortable shoes, some kind of boots I found among Isabella's things, but I feel like I wasn't born to be in this environment. I miss the trusty asphalt.

'Can you tell us about your world?' Nero asks me, not caring about the stares from the others.

'Leave her alone Nero,' Astoria tells him.

'Why? She is new, she is interesting, I want to get to know her.'

'What do you want to know?' I reply before Astoria responds, because maybe a little small talk is just what I need.

'Everything, what do you have there? Are you part of a revolution? What are your vampires like? Your enchanters?'

Poor guy, he's in for the disappointment of his life.

'None of that exists in my world. They're just inventions in movies, books. Stories told to entertain humans. We only have humans.'

'Or so you think,' he answers me and I don't get to say any more because we are approaching a river.

None of them seem affected by the river running fast between us and the other side.

'How are we going to cross?' I ask them because they don't seem concerned about it.

Astoria smiles at Gabriel with an intimacy that really makes me wary. He's my best friend and a stranger makes us feel like this, like strangers.

He seems to notice.

'There's a rope in the tree up ahead, we grab a branch and pull it to us. The enchanters usually create a water bridge. The vampires jump over it. Everyone crosses the Mai River as they can.'

'A rope? Like a jungle man? Are you kidding? No, I'm not.'

They ignore me and just as he asks, Nero grabs a long branch that is lying hidden in plain sight, stretches it over the river until he reaches a rope that is painted the color of the trunk.

He hooks the branch and brings the rope up to grasp it in his hand. He stands on a rock there.

'This is my favorite part,' he tells me, and he takes the momentum to cross over the river like a jungle man.

He lands on the other side perfectly, as if he had done nothing.

'No, impossible, I'm not doing that,' I repeat because they don't seem to understand that under no circumstances am I going to cross that way.

Astoria repeats Nero's process and does the same as him, landing the same way, making it look like they had practiced it like a choreography put together.

'It's your turn Isa, I'll help you catch the rope, you always have a hard time...'

'Gabriel, I don't know if you didn't hear me, but no. Just no.'

'Isa...'

'They call me Izzy, not Isa, and I'm not going to do that. I'm going to fall into the water, or I'm going to break my neck. Either way, I'll end up dead. Find another way.'

'There is no other way. Alyssa lives just beyond those trees, in a cabin she enchanted herself. Only we know about it. The only way to get to her is across the Mai River. This is our way.'

'Then go without me.'

'Izzy,' he says with emphasis, 'we came for you, I'm not going to go see the world's crankiest enchantress without you.'

I don't want to do it, I can't do it.

Yet I find myself on the rock. My arms stretch as far as they can to catch the rope, and once it's in my hands, I know there's no way I'm swinging.