I awoke in a cave of a room: wooden boards hung like threatening stalactites, mud-laden bricks stood in front of me coarse and jagged bedrock, smeared in a thick layer of dust that made my throat raw. My hands slid to my abdomen: no pain anymore, the scorching pain I bore for years had ceased. I had forgotten what it felt like to be free from constant pain and wailing at night, and a few sobs had escaped.
Alone in the dingy room and even dingier décor, if you could call them that, was a flickering oil lamp, a faint tinge of kerosene hanging over the cave. I stood, the floorboards creaking so loud I feared it might break.
The creaks shadowed me as I took the lamp and looked for the exit, a door or a trapdoor of any kind. I gazed around, taking in the pang of olive oil and rawing dust; my eye caught a large dollhouse that leaned on the bedrock, ebony and lifeless, as this attic was. It was curious so I looked inside, at the attic; through the glass of the dormer, an eye peered. I recoiled back in response; a yelp escaped my lips and a brook of cold sweat formed on my back.
"You are noisy," a disembodied voice observed. It was gravelly,
"Who are you?" I demanded, "where are you?!"
"Calm down, boy. I am not here to harm you." From the dollhouse emerged the same stout man that had saved me from the ghoul; the winking dance of the oil lamp illuminated his face: a scar running from his forehead to his lips, a gummy pink that made me want to retch the measly bread in my stomach. His hair was disheveled (remarkably so) and his orbs were a deep shade of crimson. "Come down, Ms. Alice would like to meet you. I hope."
Ms. Alice. I had heard that name so long ago; during those times my sister would read stories to scare me; I had not believed them then, and I did not even want to believe them now. But surely this Ms. Alice and that Ms. Alice are not the same. Surely. To get my mind off this, I lowered the wick of the oil lamp, until the life had flickered out of it.
The stout man removed the dollhouse that encased him, and motioned for me to climb down; the room we were now in was the antithesis of the last: not a speck of dust smeared the dreary grey walls where wooden wheels and metal tools hung like garrisoned soldiers in single file fashion. A faint tinge of oil flitted across my nose; from the room or the oil lamp, I did not know. It was a workshop of some kind, kept clean and orderly by the owners, whoever they were. Ms. Alice, the stout man had said. But I did not remember still. I racked my faculty vehemently, knowing that it was something important when two sets of sounds arrived: the crackle of wood from footsteps and the unmistakable hiss of wheels that plodded on the floor.
The door to the right opened and the sources of the footsteps showed themselves: a young blonde woman who wore a bonnet pushing a wooden body of a wheelchair where a salt-and-pepper haired invalid sat, his craggy face and weary eyes told me he had seen and gone through enough in life. He raised an eyebrow at the stout man and spoke, his parched lips made the same crackle as the footsteps, "He is the next hunter, Alfred?"
Alfred nodded grimly. "It is so, Virgil," he said. He looked at me, a trace of pity in his eyes.
"You have told him?" the invalid, Alfred asked. No. "Then I will," he coughed but I suspected it was feigned—not that he wasn't sick but he was exaggerating it, bluffing the severity of the disease. He gazed at me; his eyes were as green as the sea was, with all the vastness and bottomlessness that came with it. It was not just a look, it was a peering in into my soul, a judgment of who I was and what my character was—I flinched at his stare but caught myself. "Your name? Anima? Anima Diggory," he stroked his silvery beard and a hairbreadth of a pause before the next words came, "Where to start? Ah, yes. As you may know, you have travelled to Yarim. You were searching for a cure, yes? However, the cure for your sickness, which I daresay is the sickle cell disease, has long been lost. However, we have found…an alternative." The old man looked at the woman with ash blonde hair. I had forgotten she was here. Her head was bowed down so I could not see her expression; there was something otherworldly about her even when her face was veiled by the wine-red bonnet.
I had just drunken in her appearance when the old man spoke again, "The doctor's cure you have searched for was replaced with a transfusion of Ms. Alice's," a pause; I took out my pouch of gold, "blood. We need not monetary payment, Mr. Diggory for we live quite adequately here in Yarim. What we need is something quite different, Mr. Diggory. Ms. Alice's blood needs to be transfused to you at least every week or you shall die but…there is a way to terminate this process—"
"How?!" my voice came out raw and high. I had finally known peace; I did not wish to return to those times of suffering any time soon. Alfred clenched his jaw, threatening to gut me like he did the ghoul if I showed any more disrespect. I swallowed and took a deep breath. "I am sorry; I did not mean to show insolent behavior. How sir, may I be rid of this cruelty altogether?"
Virgil's eyes shuttered. "A long and cruel dream, dear boy. A long and cruel dream." The words came out as if by reflection, as if the experience had once been his to bear and the result a quite bitter one.
"I must know,"