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I had no idea how long I had been unconscious but there was a sense of it being a long time.

The old man came to check on me.

“You okay?” he asked me, helping me to sit next to the fire again. He brought me some bread to eat and tea to drink.

I told him what I remembered, a jumbled mess of confusing images.

“Now is time for catching fish,” he said, encouraging me. “Soon, will stop. You must catch as many fish as possible.”

He nodded and in the middle of telling a story, he suddenly held up his hand.

“No, not right.”

I was talking about the night my family was attacked. I was trying to describe the attacker.

“This about you,” he said, his eyes suddenly very clear. “Only you, not them.”

His words sort of made sense but I could not quite grasp it.

“And the accident?”

“Not your time,” he said, shaking his head.

“That was… why the crow was there?”

He nodded his head.

“Your work, not done.”

My work? What was he talking about?

She doesn’t seem to get many answers from the old man.

When the sun slipped behind the mountains, Jack appeared and took me home.

Chapter 10

Jack

When I saw her I was taken aback. She was so pale and weak. She struggled to stand up straight. She needed supporting and I was about to demand to know what happened to her. Camila had warned me that the experience was grueling but I had not expected this.

The old man told me that her journey had been hard and that her soul was tired. She needed rest. I carefully led Kaya to the car.

She didn’t talk at all on the way back. Her eyes were open but it was like she was in a trance.

The old man had warned me of this. He had told me to take her to bed. To keep her warm and feed her good food.

He said her memory would be particularly clear for the next 24 hours and that I needed to get her to talk about it as much as possible, when she was ready.

But she was definitely not ready. Her pupils were wide and dilated.

We checked into the hotel where I had been staying the past three days. Fortunately, I’d thought ahead, booking a suite with a private elevator so that we would have privacy and comfort. The bathroom was spacious with a huge tub sunk into the ground. I drew a bath for her, made her go into the bathroom and told her to undress.

She nodded but it was like she was somewhere else. I feared she wouldn’t come out of this trance.

After a few minutes, I heard the sound of water splashing and knew she had gotten into the water. I thought of the old man’s words to me when I had come to fetch her.

He’d tapped the spot between his eyes and kept saying words I didn’t understand.