Airel: The Discovering (Airel Saga Book Two)

Chapter XII

I WAS CONFUSED AND hurt. Not for myself, but for Michael. He was in pain and something was on his mind, but I didn’t know what to do. Should I leave him be, give him space? Relationships were hard. Most of the time I didn’t even know what I wanted, let alone what Michael did. I decided to let him be and clean up. I was covered with eight days of sweat, and I could feel my clothes sticking to my body.

Bathing can be glorious. I hosed off in a scalding shower while filling the tub, then climbed in for a good soak. There were candles and matches, which I used, as well as several clay pots of very yummy-smelling botanicals. I was guessing that everything in the bathroom, as well as everything in the bedroom, had not been touched by any kind of manufacturing process at all. There were no electronics of any kind that I could remember, either, come to think of it. Not even a clock. Well, not an electronic one, anyway.

Everything was rough, but well-made. The tile, the fixtures—all of it bore the stamp of authenticity in a way that no house in town could touch. Even the water felt different. Maybe he had built a boiler somewhere in the house that heated the water to be used for bathing. Or maybe it was coming from a natural hot spring. Whatever it was, it wasn’t running out any time soon, for which I was grateful. I was starting to feel like myself again.

When I thought about the hallway, my mind flashed back to my parents, my friends, my whole life as I had known it. I sat there in the tub for a pretty long time, just crying. It had been at least eight days—that’s what Michael had said—and my parents probably thought I was dead.

Oh, God. I couldn’t imagine how they must feel by now. But I had to resolve myself to the fact that, as of right now, there was absolutely nothing I could do about getting back home. I might be able to set a few things in motion…

I had to get my mind back out of desperation mode. I looked at the candles that illuminated the bathroom, watched them burn. Blackness rested against the outside of the lead glass windows, beyond which was at least a thousand foot drop to the valley floor—I had peeked out earlier. Hmm.

I didn’t know how, but literally every piece of clothing I owned somehow showed up here, in the closet in my room. Cell. Wait, is the door still busted off the hinges? If the door was gone, I was basically free. I dragged myself from the tub and back into the shower, resolving to check on that. First, I wanted—needed—to be squeaky clean.

When I was done and dressed, I took a passing glance at the door that led to the hallway. It was as if I had never kicked it down. I shook my head, trying to hold onto my version of reality. It didn’t matter that it was, like, version 6.2.7 by now. It just had to make sense to me.

I went back into the bathroom and peered into the mirror. Gorgeous, of course. Superhumanly gorgeous. Michael would die. So to speak. I ran a brush through my hair, expecting it to frizz into a fro, but amazingly, it looked like I had just stepped off a cover shoot for a magazine again, only better. I looked into the mirror, leaning into it to get a closer look. “Aaaaaaaaand… no makeup necessary.” Bonus.

This was weird. I was not used to being—looking—like this. I knew it was a gift and I decided to enjoy it, because if I did have a baseball-size tumor in my head, I was dead anyway.

My thoughts turned to Michael. He seemed to be under some sort of pressure. Was he just worried about me? I didn’t want to push him to talk to me, but at the same time, I wanted to know what was going on in his head. I missed him.

After a few minutes sitting on the foot of the bed, I opened my eyes. More than anything, I remembered two words: “I’m sorry.” They came to me in a version of Michael’s voice; it was recognizable but strange. I knew that he had sat at my bedside for the span of eight days muttering those two words. Now why would he do that?