Chapter 6 #3
She consulted her map with quiet certainty before continuing along the winding trail without the slightest hesitation, never questioning her direction or second-guessing her next step.
I found myself trusting her so completely that I scarcely thought about where we were going at all.
For perhaps the first time in years, I wasn't measuring every fork in the trail or wondering whether I was already lost. I simply... followed.
I stole a cautious glance towards her. She walked with the same calm composure she’d worn ever since I’d met, her attention divided between the map in her hands and the forest unfolding around us.
There were none of the shy smiles, lingering glances, or playful teasing I’d occasionally witnessed between young couples in the village.
If this truly was the courtship outing her grandmother seemed convinced it was, Cecelia was conducting it in a manner unlike any I’d ever observed.
For reasons I couldn’t explain, I found her confidence…comforting. I hadn’t realized how exhausting it was to constantly wonder whether the next step would lead me farther from where I intended to go until someone else quietly removed the burden.
She glanced sideways. “Is something amusing? You’re smiling.”
I hadn’t realized until she pointed it out. I rubbed the back of my neck. “Nothing important.”
Though she appeared slightly confused, she accepted that answer without curiosity and continued walking.
The silence should have been awkward. Instead it reminded me of sitting beside a crackling fire after a long day of travel, where conversation wasn’t necessary because simply not being alone was enough.
Her grandmother’s cheerful declaration drifted uninvited back into my thoughts. “A fine choice for a first courtship outing.”
My ears warmed all over again. Was this what courtship outings were normally like?
I’d never been on one. My nervous gaze darted towards her hand.
Would she want me to hold it? No, surely it was too soon.
Then should I be saying something? Surely prolonged silence wasn’t considered particularly romantic.
I wanted to get to know her better, but didn’t even know where to begin.
I searched desperately for an appropriate topic before my gaze settled on the map in her hands.
“So…” I began cautiously. “Do you often invite men into the forest to gather berries?” The words had scarcely left my mouth before I wanted to recall them. Surely asking about other men was thoroughly inappropriate this early.
Much to my relief, she didn’t appear offended; her expression remained blank as she answered serenely, “I normally gather my ingredients alone.”
Hope fluttered unexpectedly in my chest.
“I've never thought to invite one before, and usually people don't ask.”
My budding hope promptly tripped over itself. Had she wished I hadn’t invited myself along? Now that I considered it, she had been rather insistent on foraging alone.
“You seem…disappointed?” Her observation sounded more like a question.
“I do?”
“You sighed twice.” She made the observation matter-of-factly, as though she were measuring ingredients rather than noticing the strange restless emotion that was beginning to stir my chest. “You don’t have to accompany me if you don’t wish to.”
“I want to spend time with you.” The truth of my statement seemed to enfold us within the pine-scented air. Heat engulfed my cheeks, but I didn’t look away.
She made no reaction to my words—no sign of happiness, or even flirtation—merely stared at me, a hint of brightness filling her doe-like brown eyes…though it might have been my imagination. How could someone simultaneously be so observant and so impossible to read?
After a moment, she nodded once, seeming satisfied with that answer, and returned her attention to the trail. “I’m glad.”
That seemed…promising? I couldn’t tell. She appeared blissfully unaware that she’d just turned my thoughts into hopeless knots.
We rounded another bend where the trees grew farther apart, revealing glimpses of silver mist drifting between towering pines. Cecelia paused only long enough to make a small notation on her map before continuing.
“How long have you enjoyed maps?” That seemed a safe enough topic for an outing that may or may not be a courtship excursion.
For the first time her eyes brightened slightly, as though I’d finally found the one thing that affected her.
She smoothed one corner of the parchment where a raindrop had begun to curl the edge, her gaze drifting over the careful lines she’d drawn.
“Because eventually, all places disappear. The bakery moves every full moon.”
She said it as though explaining the weather, but the way her fingertip rested lightly against the winding path ahead conveyed another emotion entirely opposite of indifference.
“By next month this trail won’t belong to me anymore, so I draw it before I lose it.”
The simple words settled over me with surprising weight.
I thought of the countless forests I’d crossed, the villages I barely remembered, the mountains whose names I’d forgotten, the rivers I'd promised myself I'd visit again…and most of all, the homes I’d never had.
I’d spent years trying not to become attached to places because the curse would always carry me away.
Instead, she’d spent years becoming attached to them anyway before preserving them—not because she expected to return, but because they had mattered.
Without realizing it, she’d found a way to keep every place she’d ever loved.
I instinctively reached into my cloak pocket to touch the leaf journal I always kept with me, the sole record of all the places I’d been to all these years, the mementos I’d gathered offering the only record of where my wanderings had once taken me.
I glanced towards her again. She was studying the map with complete contentment, utterly unaware that she’d just shifted something inside me. For the first time in years, I didn’t feel quite so lost.