(These were supposed to be two chapters, but I saw that it was better to cover them on one page, so the chapter is a little long but you will enjoy it i promise ♥️♥️ and I'm truly sorry for not uploading i know some of you were wanting for so long 💔)
In that house with its cold, mud-brick walls, the silence was too heavy to be easily broken. Irene stepped forward with slow, deliberate movements, ignoring all the subtle warnings in her companions' eyes. She approached the mother and, with a calm motion devoid of any threat, reached out and took the woman's rough, trembling hand.
Irene looked her directly in the eyes and, in a low tone carrying a rare blend of quiet authority and empathy, said:
"Thank you. Please, there is no need for tension. I am not here to pressure you; all I want is to understand... how did you end up in this place?"
The mother swallowed with difficulty and looked at Irene's clean hand holding her own weary one. She felt a flicker of disappointment and withdrew her hand gently, hesitantly
. She spoke in a faint, fractured voice, as if the words were struggling to escape her throat:
"Oh... I am sorry. I cannot help with this. I was born here... in this place. I don't know much. I am just a widow, and my life is here with my children. I'm sorry... I cannot answer."
Irene felt a sharp pang of disappointment, and her shoulders slumped slightly. She closed her eyes for a fleeting second, weighing her options, then opened them and asked calmly:
"I understand you do not know. But... is there anyone in this village who might know the reason?"
Before the mother could answer, she turned toward the old doctor and spoke in rapid, panicked words in their native tongue. Irene watched her movements, then shifted her gaze to the doctor, who sighed heavily and said to Irene:
"According to what I understood, she says they are terrified, Miss. Your presence here is considered a danger to them, and if they find out you are not one of their own, no one in this village will dare to answer you. They might even attack you... in the worst-case scenario."
Sally looked at Irene in terror and said in a voice filled with fear: "My lady..."
But Irene refused to give up. She fixed her piercing gaze on the doctor and said:
"Since you come here constantly and speak their language, aren't you close to any of them? Or rather, don't you have the answers yourself?"
The doctor shook his head slowly, his eyes reflecting extreme caution:
"I assist the patients here out of charity, and even then, I am not fully welcomed. I do not know the true story behind this place, and I do not want to know. I am a simple man, and I know that digging deeper into this matter could cost me my life... and I am not prepared to die for it."
Irene's expression clouded slightly. She felt a thick fog surrounding her mission, and it seemed as though every door was being slammed in her face. She stood in the middle of the room, silent, thinking of her next move with cold rationality.
In those moments of heavy silence, the mother was watching Irene. She saw the deep contemplation in her features; she didn't know who this woman was, but she saw the sincerity in her quiet frustration and felt the honesty of her intentions.
The mother looked at her young son hiding behind her, then back at Irene. She took a deep breath, as if fighting a brief internal war, before sighing weakly and saying in her broken dialect:
"There is... one person. He might... be able to help you."
Irene blinked quickly and raised her eyes toward the mother with surprise held in check.
The mother stood up slowly, walked toward a dark, narrow corridor at the end of the house, and said one word:
"Follow me."
The mother stopped before an old, dilapidated wooden door and pushed it slowly. As soon as it opened, they were met with a pungent scent—a mixture of dried herbs and dampness—a scent suggesting this place had not been visited by fresh air in a long time. In the corner of the dark room, an elderly man lay on a tattered mattress.
The mother stepped forward, knelt by the mattress, and began speaking to him in their native tongue—a language that sounded to Irene like a mixture of whispers and sharpness. Suddenly, the old man turned. His body was gaunt, his face carved by the ravages of time. The old man's gaze shifted toward Irene. His look was sharp, dry, as if he were not looking at her features,
but examining the structure of her soul. Irene felt a cold chill run down her spine, which prompted her to clasp her hands in front of her anxiously, trying to maintain her composure.
After a brief, heated discussion, the mother turned to Irene and said in a tired, broken tone:
"This is... my grandfather. Perhaps he knows the answer... He speaks... your language... well."
Irene froze in her place. She was so surprised she couldn't respond immediately. Questions collided in her mind like raging waves, but she took a deep breath, holding onto her usual logic.
She noticed with a quick glance that the old man had a severed limb and that his sharp eyes suggested a cautious intelligence and deep suspicion toward her. She realized at that moment that one wrong word could close the door that had been opened with such difficulty.
Irene bowed respectfully, her voice filled with cautious appreciation:
"Sir, I thank you deeply for agreeing to speak with me. I know that my presence here represents a breach of your privacy, and I promise you that I..."
The man interrupted her in fluent speech, but with a harsh voice that lacked any hint of softness or welcome:
"What brought you here?"
Irene shivered slightly—not out of fear. She paused in her place, and suddenly something happened in her presence; the calm demeanor shifted to absolute, strict seriousness—a presence that made the air in the room feel heavier and colder.
Her body remained still, her gaze fixed with intense focus on the grandfather. In a very calm, deeply serious voice, she said:
"Sally... I need to be alone with the grandfather."
Sally felt that shifted presence, and she felt an invisible pressure pushing her to comply immediately without thought. Sally didn't say a word; she approached the driver and the mother quietly and said in a low, hesitant voice:
"Excuse me... could we leave them alone?"
Everyone left the room in an eerie silence, as if withdrawing from a space that was no longer meant for them. As the door closed behind them, only Irene and the grandfather remained. Irene stood for a moment; her silence reflected the weight of the situation that had shaken her core, before she breathed deeply, preparing to begin the real conversation for which she had traveled all this distance.
She gathered her thoughts and what lay beyond them, then said:
"Well, sir, since you do not like pleasantries, I will not waste your time and will get straight to the point.
From what I can see, you master the language of the city, which means you lived behind these mountains, and I am sure you possess the answers to my questions. I am here because I could not find them anywhere else. It seems the truth of your existence has been carefully hidden,
so I searched for a long time in books and held onto every small thread until I reached this place. Therefore,
I want to hear the truth directly from the people who lived in the heart of the storm. I came in search of the answer, and I hope you will guide me to it."
The old man's features hardened.
He raised a trembling hand to cut Irene's speech short with a decisive motion. He looked at her with a probing gaze full of bitterness, then said in a raspy voice that held an undeniable strength:
"Stop! I do not know what kind of sweet words you used to make my granddaughter believe you and urge me to listen to you. But this old man is not naïve enough to place blind trust in you."
He raised his voice further and continued:
"I have failed to protect many important people in my life.
I have paid heavy prices for this kind of blind trust in the promises of strangers. I will not add my granddaughter and her son to my list of victims. Get out of here before you bring upon us the wrath of those behind those mountains!"
Irene did not move, as if she had expected his reaction, and waited patiently for him to vent his last drop of anger.
The old man retreated slightly,
closed his eyes, and shook his head in bitterness, saying in a voice filled with despair and anger:
"This place is monitored entirely, and every word spoken here has an echo.
I am not a fool to trust a stranger who broke into my solitude and claims to be interested in people like us... You might be nothing more than bait sent to test the last shred of my patience. So, get out of here; I will not answer any questions."
Irene did not move.
She remained standing in the shadows of the room, as if his hurtful words were merely passing breezes.
She waited until silence returned, then said in a low voice that carried a weight that could not be ignored:
"You are right to be cautious, sir. I understand you. I don't know exactly why you are afraid to speak, or rather, who forced you to be this way, but..."
Irene took one step toward his bed. This step did not carry a threat; rather, it carried an "acknowledgment" of the tragedy he was living.
"Do you really think I am one of those eyes? Look closely around you, sir.
If I were one of their eyes, the guard battalions would be surrounding this house right now, instead of me standing here before you alone, asking you with desperation to hear me. I don't want you to misjudge, but I am the one who put her own neck under the guillotine."
Irene looked at him with deliberate coldness, as if placing a scalpel on a deep wound, and said:
"But is your desire to protect their lives here for their own benefit? Or is it... selfishness on your part? Do you believe keeping them from trying is because you don't want to take responsibility... for seeing them face the world that failed you?"
The grandfather could not bear that sentence; he stood up on his bed, and shouted at her in a stifled voice filled with fire:
"How dare you! By what right do you speak? Who are you to judge me with such arrogance? You don't know the meaning of losing everything and then trying to protect the remaining crumbs!"
Irene interrupted him, her voice rising to drown out his shouting:
"Your granddaughter!... Do you truly believe she let me in here because she trusts me? ... Have you never seen the despair in her eyes? She knows exactly the danger of what she did, and she knows that all our lives are at stake! But she chose to bet on this danger because she preferred to die trying to save her son, rather than live seeing him be crushed little by little, and facing the same fate you faced in this place!"
A sudden silence fell over the room. Irene's words were like thunderbolts; they pierced through all his defenses. The grandfather's eyes widened, his frail body shook, and the mask of anger fell away, replaced by deep cracks of sorrow. Tears began to gather in his tired eyes, then he collapsed, and his body began to shake with muffled, painful sobs the weeping of a man whose tears had dried for years, only to explode now.
Irene looked at him. There was no look of insulting pity, but a look of waiting. Her movement settled completely, leaving him room to empty all the pain he had been hiding behind his armor of fear and denial.
She kept a distance that respected his collapsed dignity and said in a low, steady voice:
"You know, sir... The bird in the cage, even though it knows every side is closed and there is no exit, continues to fly from side to side without stopping. It doesn't fly because it doesn't know there is no exit, but because its body refuses to forget the meaning of 'the sky'..."
The grandfather's body relaxed; Irene's words had touched a part of him he had tried to bury in his heart forever.
Inside that room, the old man sat watching Irene in silence, then signaled with his trembling hand: "Sit before me." Irene did as he asked, and the news from the outside was completely cut off.
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In the outer corridor, the minutes passed, heavy as centuries. Sally gripped her hand nervously, looking left and right, then whispered: "What is keeping them so long?"
The old doctor approached the window cautiously to see that the daylight was beginning to fade, and said in a worried voice: "Good heavens, we must leave immediately. Night here might change the balance of everything."
The driver stood up suddenly; his features were pale.
He said with anxiety: "What do you mean, old man?"
The doctor replied: "Sometimes the guards come at night to check the population count. If they find us, we will be in a tight spot."
The driver froze in his place. It wasn't the guards or the darkness of the night that made him tremble,
but his imagination was conjuring the face of " Lucas." He imagined Lucas knowing he had brought his wife to this desolate place,
and he was certain the blame would fall solely on him, and that his head would not remain on his shoulders if he did not get her out safely.
The driver said stuttering: "W-w-why are you saying this only now, damn it! I will go in... I will ask her to leave now."
He moved quickly toward the door, and before he could reach for the knob, it opened on its own.
The driver stepped back, bowing in submission, while Irene appeared in the doorway. She did not look like the girl who had entered; her face bore a clear mark of deep sadness, and her eyes, which had been burning with the search, were now sunken and loaded with the weight of what she had learned.
The doctor approached her and said urgently: "Miss, are you okay? Time is against us, we must leave now first; the place will become dangerous if night falls before we depart."
Irene nodded slowly, as if emerging from a whirlwind of her thoughts. She headed directly toward the mother, who was standing waiting for her.
Irene took the mother's hand with both of hers and said in a voice faint and full of sincerity: "I promise you, I will do my utmost to help you escape this desolate place."
The mother could not find words to reply; she simply breathed deeply as if regaining some of her lost hope, then bowed to Irene in a gesture of silent gratitude.
Irene turned, and with a firm tone despite all the emotions she was feeling, she said in a quiet voice: "Come... let us leave."
To be continued.....