The Shelter Of Trees
Of all those who got off at Mount Era Boarding School, Myrie was the last person to leave the train. She first stopped next to the train to get her bearings. She had a clear idea of the plan of the train station and the surrounding area and decided to wait until everyone was gone and then organize herself. She wanted to savour being alone for a few moments.
Besides her, 7 others had gotten off the train: Merlin and Hermen, the two older ones from the first capsule and the three others from the third capsule. Myrie observered how the group gathered around the elders. She wondered for a moment if this happened by chance, or if they were all just sociable, but then she noticed how the two older ones made gestures fitting that behaviour. Myrie wondered if she had to join them after all, but she really lacked the energy at the moment. From the snippets of conversation she got, she noticed how the two older ones introduced themselves as teachers. As far as Myrie catched, they didn’t say anything of importance, but only led the other children into the elevator.
Myrie stayed where she was as the train slowly picked up speed again and disappeared into the tunnel. Merlin waved energetically that she might to follow, but she shook her head, and finally he said goodbye to the others in the elevator and got out again. The adult human came after before the elevator finally closed the doors. They waited patiently next to the elevator while Merlin walked back to Myrie.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I thought I might take the stairs and be a little by myself,” Myrie answered.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to impose myself, I was just worried,” Merlin replied.
Myrie remembered that she didn’t want to be dismissive, and that she was about to send away a person who had the best chance of becoming a friend so far.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You can come with me. Only it will probably be exhausting with the luggage.”
She glanced at the entrance to the stairwell and wished to finally enter it. There was something calming about large stairwells, Myrie found. Merlin followed her gaze.
“Anyway, you should consider if you want climb the stairs all the way up,” the teacher now intervened. “We stand under the first hills of a high mountain, and the train has not gone steeply uphill while the mountain was rising. There are 60 steep, long stairs ahead of you. But then again, we can call the elevator after every second flight of stairs. Two flights of stairs correspond to a little more than an average floor height with respect to human sizes.”
“We? Would you come with us?” Myrie asked.
“I’d give you two flights of stairs headstart so you can talk without having me right behind you, and that is, if you dare have sufficiant puff left for it. But yet, I’d like to be around in case something happens. That would make me more comfortable, since you are learners who are here for the first time,” he answered.
He seemed friendly, Myrie thought. There was still the question about the luggage. At that moment, the elevator came back and a frame moved autonomously towards the teacher.
“Your suitcase can go up on it if you want to walk. If you changed your mind on walking, you can of course go with it right away,” explained the teacher.
Merlin thought for a moment, then he said, “Nothing can happen to me, right? I’ll try the stairs too.”
The man nodded and signaled to the baggage vehicle, whereupon it drove to Merlin’s suitcase, loaded it and rolled back into the elevator.
Myrie walked first to the door and held it open for the other two. In the stairwell she stopped for a moment to take in the atmosphere of it. The train station in Byrglingen also had a staircase, but this one was completely different. It was a shaft hewn into the rock, into which steep black stairs were embedded, which glittered slightly. The steps had a rough surface, were all exactly the same and perfect. The walls, on the other hand, looked different in every place. It was coarse, dwarven-typical craft, Myrie recognized that. She would be able to observe the rock of the mountain change on her way up.
The air was cool and moist, and smelled a little salty, but not like the sea smelled salty, the smell of which Myrie knew from the olfactory emitter of her playroom. It had a kind of floral consmell, Myrie thought. She liked this staircase. The teacher – she had already forgotten the name – and Merlin had waited patiently until she had absorbed the impression. But now Myrie started the ascent, taking two steps at a time. That felt good. Her muscles needed this movement after sitting on the train for so long.
Merlin followed her, also taking two steps at a time, but after only three flights of stairs he was panting heavily. And after a few more, he paused as he gasped.
“Myrie, I have to climb more slowly,” he shouted up as soon as he was able to again.
Myrie paused then, too, torn between not leaving Merlin alone, and challenging her body and finally being alone. She ran down to Merlin and came up with a third idea. She could also use each staircase three times, and in this way stay abreast and concurrently move more. She did so, but soon switched to a different tactic of not using each staircase three times, but each step several times, rocking and hopping and changing feet. Merlin seemed impressed and perhaps confused, but he didn’t say a word. So they climbed the many stairs in silence. The silence did Myrie good. Even Merlin’s breathing was still very fast, but more even. He might have sore muscles tomorrow, Myrie thought. She herself very rarely had sore muscles. Last time it was, when she had climbed up a steep slope, the height of which she had underestimated, but she had not wanted to turn back in between nevertheless.
And then, much too soon, they were at the top. The stairwell, again separated by a door, opened out into a wide tunnel, the floor of which was made of the same stone as the stairs, and the walls of which were also hewn into the rock. However, the edges had been worked out here, so that the walls and ceiling gave the impression of frozen waves of stone. It was also much drier than the stairwell and the pleasant smell of salt had given way to another. There was some forest mixed in, Myrie thought, but not that of a coniferous forest. Merlin had leaned against the wall and was breathing loudly and quickly while Myrie looked around.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said the teacher, who had now also stepped through the door, and Myrie’s gaze followed. “And you were very brave,” he said, turning to Merlin. “She drove you quite a bit. Congratulations to both of you.”
Myrie looked at the man slightly annoyed. She hadn’t driven Merlin. She had built in extra detours so that she would not be faster. But if she thought about it rightly, she had always been somewhat before Merlin, that might have rushed him. Her face smoothed and she turned to Merlin.
“If I have, I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay,” he panted.
So she had driven him. Shame rose in her and fighting that strong feeling was hard. Why did something like this happen to her? Why didn’t she notice anything about it? But on the other hand, why hadn’t he said something?
“Well, this direction leads straight to the basement of the school,” the teacher interrupted her thoughts and pointed in one direction, then in the other, adding: “This one leads outside and we would be standing in front of the school. Would you like to make another detour outside?”
Myrie was about to agree immediately, but then she thought she could let Merlin go first and looked over at him. But he was already looking at her, waiting for what she would say. So they remained silent for a moment.
“I’d like to take a look outside, but I’m also happy to adapt,” Merlin said finally.
Myrie answered with a broad grin. And so they followed the teacher down the corridor to a heavy double sliding door, which opened as they approached and closed again after them. It appeared windproof and weatherproof and rolled in a recess in the floor and ceiling. Myrie walked ahead of the other two up a last flight of stairs, out of the tunnel into the open. The last steps were also made of that black, slightly glittering material and ended in a cobbled square in front of a monstrous building that astonished Myrie. She had the map of the building and its many floors in her head, but she had misjudged the size still. The floors were each much higher than she would have expected, and the rooms also had to have a larger floor area than she had guessed.
Even in virtualities, she had not come across a more impressive building. Of course, that might be because she wasn’t so interested in virtualities with civilization.
This building was huge, but that alone was not the reason why it was so impressive. It consisted largely of the black material, like the steps, but in other places also of white stone. It had huge window fronts, but also walls that were made entirely of stone. And it looked as if it had not been built in one piece, but had been expanded over the years. Although this had apparently been done in the same style, the different parts of the building looked a bit thrown together.
The paved square in front of the school was also made of these two kinds of stone, and was also quite large, though not nearly as large as the building took up in floor space. A few paths branched off from the square, which were lost in a large lawn that arched along in shallow hills. Every now and then there were a few scattered trees and bushes on top of it, or a greenhouse, so Myrie couldn’t see the trellis that fenced off the grounds.
In front of them, the square gave way to a mighty entrance portal, which Myrie was sure was the main entrance. The glass sliding doors were several meters high. The teacher had let them wonder for quite a while – Merlin was no less astonished – but now he invited them to follow him. The glass doors opened for them, letting out a background noise that instantly discouraged Myrie. She turned her gaze to the right, where the entrance hall led into a huge hall full of people who were all gibbering and some of them eating. Myrie quickly looked away again and hoped that she didn’t have to go there right away, but that she might maybe have a rest beforehand.
She was lucky. The teacher led them to a reception desk, where Hermen waited impatiently for them.
“There you are at last. That fella wants to know if you want to share a room with me,” he said quickly. “You want it, right?”
“Sure!” called Merlin. He went to the reception desk and talked to the person behind it.
Myrie hadn’t even thought about rooms yet. She imagined how she would survive a week crammed into a room with others. Even if it were Merlin she had liked so far, she didn’t feel comfortable at the thought that he would be by her side all the time. That was just too much. Even with her family, she was happy to have her own room. Even there, she needed to retreat from everything from time to time. And sometimes even that was too cramped for her, and she fled into the mountains. She was not allowed to do that here. She was not allowed behind the trellis without permission. Panic rose in her again, and she tried to fight and suppress it with little success, and so it was only after she had been spoken to the second time in a friendly manner that she realized that it was her turn.
She stepped up to the counter, which slid down to Myrie’s size, including the woman sitting behind it. She had put on a friendly smile and didn’t seem angry that Myrie had kept her waiting so long. All this friendliness surprised Myrie. But then she remembered that it often took longer for adults to get annoyed, and that apart from elders she had only met Merlin, who was not annoyed with her.
“Would you be so kind as to tell me your name?” the woman asked.
She was human, Myrie realized, and she seemed very soft. She had a round face with soft cheeks and fine hair that fell on her shoulders in an unnaturally bright red in round, large curls. They were dyed, Myrie surmised. She also had a soft, large bosom and equally soft-looking, mighty upper arms. Only her forearms and fingers seemed very strong rather than soft.
“Is there something wrong with me?” the woman asked a little suspiciously, touching her hairstyle.
“I don’t know. Should I be able to recognize something like if there was something wrong with you?” Myrie asked, confused. This question, in turn, seemed to confuse the woman, who dropped her hand again.
“Anyway,” she said finally, shaking her head and with it the confusion off her. “Would you be so kind as to tell me your name?”
“Myrie Zange. And you?” said Myrie.
Again, the woman seemed irritated and shook it off again. “Ulka Flamesmith. Mrs. Ulka Flamesmith,” she answered. She looked briefly at a screen in front of her and nodded.
“We have rooms for four, six, eight and ten. What do you prefer, and do you have any special wishes about who you would like to share a room with?” she asked now. It was a tone that was simultanuously friendly and businesslike.
“Are there any single rooms?” Myrie asked, but with little hope.
Ulka Flamesmith looked briefly at her screen again, which seemed to be updated by Myrie’s questions, and replied regretfully:
“There are single rooms for some of our apprentices, but unfortunately the premises do not offer the capacity to provide each person with a single room. Unfortunately, the single rooms are already all occupied by learners with special needs who depend on them this semester. I’m sorry about that.”
Myrie sighed silently.
“Then probably in a four-person room,” she said.
“And do you have any special wishes, with whom? Or don’t you know anyone yet?” the woman asked.
Her voice was soft and she tried to sound comforting, which she didn’t quite succeed in. She was still far too busy with herself and the organization she was doing here. Myrie wondered why there wasn’t an AI here that could have done it just as well. The woman had done nothing but ask questions. The rest had already been taken over by an AI.
“Hmm?” said the woman, lest Myrie’s attention wander elsewhere again.
Myrie looked around at Merlin, who was waiting for her. Did he mind if she was in the same room with him? Myrie felt unsure to decide, but Merlin gave a thumbs up.
“Seems to be a nice human, this Merlin. And he also said he would like to be in a room with you,” said Ulka Flamesmith, thus concluding the proceedings.
She asked Myrie for permission to send her or her main educational AI the keys to her room, and Gramantra settled the rest without Myrie witnessing much of it. She would share a room in a ground floor wing with Merlin and Hermen and another still unknown person. Ulka Flamesmith informed Myrie about another appointment that same evening when she was to meet with some others with whom she would study together and a teacher. Of course, the meeting was not mandatory. Some of the apprentices didn’t come until tomorrow. But she would highly recommend it to Myrie. They would be told some organizational things and they could get to know each other outside of a lesson.
Myrie’s receptivity was very limited by now, and she wondered if she would have recovered by then. Until then, she would go to her room with Hermen and Merlin. Hermen and Merlin would probably unpack their luggage while Myrie would rest on her bed. Hermen seemed a bit disoriented, but Merlin, like Myrie, also seemed to have internalized the plan of the school.
Although they had entered via the ground floor and their room was also on the ground floor, they had to descend a flight of stairs on the way there. Stairs with a longer, straight section followed by a step on one side, and two smaller steps for smaller people on the other. A railing separated it from a flat ramp.
The school grounds were just quite uneven.
Finally they turned into the right corridor, on both sides of which doors led into the rooms. In the corridors there were a few other students walking around to visit their neighboring rooms, but it was still comparatively quiet. The rooms were probably quite soundproof. That was at least something. When they reached their door, it jumped open invitingly. Hermen and Merlin went in first, and Myrie followed. The first thing she saw was the window, which towered large and high on the opposite wall and gave a view of the wide meadow. Then she saw that Hermen’s and Merlin’s luggage was already there. And then she realized that there were no beds in the room, and that surprised her. Instead, plain white duvet covers floated in the air in four places, tracing the outlines of mattresses. Myrie went to the one to the left of the window and looked out. From this mattress, which perhaps wasn’t a mattress at all, she could easily look out.
“The mattresses are created by an EM field. The duvet covers, in turn, work like EM suits. They enclose the virtual mattresses and as a result they can also be touched by people without an EM suit. They create the opposite field, so that the mattresses can each take on size, shape and softness as desired,” Gramantra explained in her ear.
The AI had been silent the whole time and now it answered Myrie’s question at exactly the right moment. How well they knew Myrie. As befits a good educational AI.
Myrie lay down on the mattress, which already had a pretty good shape and size. Intrinsically, it was unnecessarily tall, that, probably, Myrie would change in the course of time, but right now she didn’t dare to speak. Hermen and Merlin were discussing something and were so wonderfully inattentive to her.
She also wondered if there would be the blankets and pillows at some point. She could do without, but it was so much more comfortable with it. For the moment, however, it was feasible. Myrie curled up in an embryonic position and looked out the window.
Merlin woke her from deep sleep. It was pitch dark outside and the light in the room shone too brightly into her eyes. But she had not wanted to fall asleep. And then she had simply lost control of it. It had been the most exhausting day of her life so far, Myrie adjudged. She sat up aduously, fighting against the fervent desire to give in and go back to sleep again. It had felt so nice.
“Did I miss the meeting?” she mumbled, almost hopefully, as she realized.
“No, it’s about to start,” Merlin said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have woken you.”
Myrie got out of bed. Meanwhile, bed linen lay on a chair next to the entrance. Hermen made a grumpy sound.
“I didn’t really intend to share a room with such a baby that you have to take care of,” he grumbled.
They left the room. Myrie didn’t show it, but inwardly Hermen’s comment affected her very much. She was angry with herself that she had fallen asleep. And at the same time she found Hermen’s whole manner so far abominable. She would never have complained about a person who accidentally fell asleep exhausted after such day.
She didn’t show it, mainly because she couldn’t think of anything to say. And that also annoyed her. She walked a little behind the other two along the corridors. As they climbed the stairs, Merlin couldn’t completely suppress a groan. He had been a bit stiff the whole time. Sore muscles, as she had feared.
“If you want, I’ll carry you,” she offered.
The suggestion made Merlin look at her in confusion, and Hermen tapped his forehead with his finger. At that, in turn, Merlin threw a cold, very stern look at Hermen. Then he turned to Myrie and seemed funny and friendly again from one moment to the next.
“Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll try walking a little more on my own, otherwise I might rust entirely,” Merlin declined, “But if at some point I don’t move at all, you are welcome to carry me to a workshop so that they can oil me there.”
Hermen grinned. It took Myrie a while to understand what Merlin meant, then she giggled to herself.
“So, you are a late bloomer, who would have thought,” Hermen commented.
The usual, Myrie thought. She knew this kind of treatment so well. You’d think she’d gotten used to it over time, but it hurt. It burned in her, in her throat. She felt slightly nauseous and couldn’t get a word out until they were upstairs.
They entered a classroom on the first floor. There were already several other children scattered around the room, some shy, others talking like Merlin and Hermen, and a woman with white-blond hair walked between them to greet them one by one. One of the children stood a little apart and attracted Myrie’s gaze. She was beautiful. Myrie’s breath caught for a moment. She was the most beautiful person she had ever seen, Myrie reflected. She was a little more than a head taller than Myrie and had very dark brown, smooth skin. The eyes were also very dark, perhaps even black, and even the lighter vitreous body of her eyes was not white, but light brown. Her face was narrow and had no sharp edges. The nose was nice, Myrie thought. But probably the most impressive thing about the slender person was the hair. They fell in fine curls over her shoulders, where they were fanned out and fell down to her buttocks.
“Hey!” someone near her yelled.
Was it about her? If so, the person would probably have to wait a bit. The sight of these hairs held her gaze so much she couldn’t even turn around. A pointed ear peeked out of this hair. She couldn’t see the other because the child was standing slightly turned to her. Myrie started moving to walk around the person.
“Hey!” shouted the person from before again, this time more energetic and annoyed.
Myrie felt now a little more certain that it actually was about her, but this realization only spread very far back in her mind. Her consciousness was completely absorbed by the way the person’s hair moved as she turned to Myrie and now stared back. The beautiful face didn’t look completely relaxed, Myrie thought.
A strong hand on her shoulder brought Myrie back to this world. Someone touched her without being asked, that was bad. Without thinking, she tore herself away, turned around and punched the person who had touched her in the face. It was the white-blonde woman who cried out in pain, and now seemed horrified, but remained silent. For a moment the situation was frozen, then blood gradually ran from her nose. Myrie, no less horrified, looked back at her, and at the same time felt all eyes resting on her. What had she done? She started trembling all over, a wave of disgust for herself flooded through her. How could this have happened? She had hit someone. It had happened to her from time to time that she might have wriggled a little roughly out of the grips of people who didn’t know that she couldn’t be touched unless she was explicitly ready for it. But she had never hit a person. And now she had done it, and to a teacher at that. Myrie breathed hastily and it made her dizzy. She had to run. And she did. She ran out of the classroom, through a sliding door, foremost out of sight. But here the doors and walls were all much too tight and winding to run effectively fast. She ran towards a window.
“Open!” she called pleading to the window casements.
The windows obeyed. Myrie swung herself over the window-sill, and, hanging from it outside, ordered the windows to close again. And that they did too. Myrie glanced down. At an acceptable distance was the upper edge of the window below her, a ground-floor window. And a good distance below was the lawn on which the school building stood. Myrie let herself fall until the balls of her feet met the narrow window surround beneath her. Smoothly, she absorbed the shock, did half a twist and half a somersault backwards so that she could roll away from the school building over her left shoulder on the lawn. The ground had the perfect consistency for this maneuver. She took advantage of the momentum of the fall and ran away as fast as she could, and the dizziness subsided. Her thoughts, however, were still a bustle and web of self-reproaches and feelings and thoughts that she could not keep track of, and that flooded her uncontrollably.
Although there were obstacles loosely scattered over the property, it was so little dense that she could make her way between them without any effort. And the trellis came much too quickly. Myrie was well aware that if she ignored it, she would face big problems, from dangers in the terrain behind it to warnings or expulsions from school. But it wasn’t her most pressing problem. Her emotional state was just so unbearable that she ignored everything else. Placing her toes between the longitudinal struts on the crossbars, she was in two leaps over the demarcation and away.
For a short while, the ground kept being quite alike the school grounds, which lay now on the other side of the trellis. But then the soil was covered in a sea of nettles and tendrils, towering over Myrie, soon transitioning into the woods. Some of the vines wrapped themselves so fiercely around Myrie’s ankles that they almost tore her down. Instead, Myrie won, uprooting the plants thereby. When she reached under the canopy of trees, the vegetation changed almost abruptly. Moss covered the ground aswell as tall, light stems, the color of grain, which snapped easily under Myrie’s feet. Rotten trees and thin branches lay scattered on the ground and one or the other purple flower grew between the roots of the gigantic trees. Myrie was able to run into the forest for quite a while without much effort, without the forest resisting her. But then – Myrie didn’t know how long she had been running – it yet became more dense. Whole fallen trees blocked her way, between whose branches she swung herself. On the one hand, she was happy that her arms were now also strained, on the other hand, she had to think about how best to cope with the handicaps and that exhausted her. She really didn’t want to think at all. And it also annoyed her that she couldn’t keep up her speed.
Then again, there might be something good about it. Maybe she would never have stopped running otherwise. Perhaps, as she crossed the stream, it would not have occurred to her that she felt a strong thirst. She barely even noticed it now. So she stopped and drank from the small stream, hoping that it wasn’t unhealthy. When she straightened up again, she looked around for the first time. The trees seemed ancient, she thought. And they smelled marvellous. It was quite damp and fresh in this forest. Well, it had indeed become night by now. But Myrie remembered that the forest that bordered the school was called Duskwood, and it merged somewhere into the Sinister Forest. And the forests had these names for a reason. In the Sinister Forest, the trees were so tall and so dense that even during the day hardly any light reached the ground. Myrie didn’t know if she was still in Duskwood or already in Sinister Forest. She fervently hoped for the former. The Sinister Forest was notorious for some very dangerous animals. Myrie briefly considered returning back to school to avoid the danger of this forest, but she decided against it for now. It might perhaps be unreasonable, she knew that. But she didn’t want to go back, not by any stretch of the imagination.
In the direction from which she had come, she saw a few traces of her feet. If she was followed by people who were good at paying attention to details, they would find her effortlessly. Myrie didn’t like the thought. On the other hand, of course, it was good that she could likewise find her way back effortlessly if she wanted to. She waded a little through the creek and looked around for a good tree for a place to sleep, while she wondered if she should wake Gramantra from the suspend. Perhaps Gramantra could tell her something about the dangers that lurked here and how she could protect herself. Or give her some other good advice. But she decided against that aswell. Even if it was still the Duskwood, there might not be enough light here during the day to charge Gramantra. She would have to manage the charge well. She didn’t know yet how long she would retreat here in the woods.
After wading through the stream for a while, looking around and confident that her recent change of location was not so easy to reconstruct, she chose a tree. It had no branches up to the main junction about two meters above her. There, the main trunk broke open into five similarly thick branches to the side, which formed a cozy-looking hollow. Myrie picked up some slightly rotten bark from the ground, which were overgrown with moss, and with the help of her rope she transported herself and what she had collected up into the forked branch. There she spread the bark so that it formed a well-camouflaged hiding place. Myrie looked at it again from below, then she climbed up for her stay, fluffed up the sleeping bag, crumbled into it and covered herself with moss from above. An owl hoohooted above her. If only it was nothing more than an owl. But Myrie felt reasonably well camouflaged. Next the tiredness overwhelmed her again and kept her from worrying further about possible dangers. It was nice here, Myrie thought before she fell asleep, the smell of moss in her nose.
Just some hours later, she woke up to a whirring sound. A huge insect, she thought at first. The sound came closer and Myrie felt how her blood rushed to her head with fright. Vague ideas of how it could sting her and how she could die from the poison flitted through her consciousness. She didn’t move, didn’t make a sound apart from breathing, which she couldn’t avoid. The whirring went away again. It seemed to fly up and down. Gradually, she came to the conclusion that the behavior of the sound carrier did not have the typical noise behavior of insects. It buzzed in a steady tone, without ever sounding hectic, much too emotionless for an insect, just up and down and, judging by the sound, only made a detour every now and then to avoid a tree.
Myrie also heard a crackling of branches and a rustling in the distance. Of course, the forest rustled constantly. Wind moved the leaves, and a number of rather small animals also seemed to be on the move. When she had settled in, for example, she had seen a startled rabbit. But this crackling seemed to come from something bigger, which didn’t make its way through the forest too quickly. And now Myrie heard voices, too. At first, she couldn’t understand what they were saying. She understood only a few words, including curses. She suspected that there were two people, but it could also be three. She listened spellbound and finally she could make out more.
“Maybe you’re right,” was the first sentence she understood completely.
She recognized the voice as that of the man who had accompanied her up the stairs. He had seemed sympathetic to her. The buzzing became louder again. She wondered if she should warn these people. But it would be too late anyway. Now the buzzing moved away again and headed directly towards these people.
“I hate this forest!” another voice cursed, breaking the pause in the conversation that had just occurred.
She recognized this voice as that of the person whom she had hit earlier. The considerations that had just taken shape in her that she could reveal herself to the man now collapsed again. A new wave of shame flooded her.
“The other day you said you found it to be beautiful,” the man said now, and Myrie could tell by the tone that he was grinning.
“Yes, it seems,” the woman replied hastily. “I forget that so easily when I have to walk through it at night, and the Amma is not even reachable.”
“Good Amma,” answered the other, sighing. For a while again, Myrie only heard the approaching crackling and the up and down of the whirring. She felt very uncomfortable at the thought of them getting closer.
“I know I’m repeating myself, but I can’t say often enough that the Amma really chose an impractical time to make one of her excursions,” the woman said sorrowfully.
“Or the child to disappear. But you’re certainly right. She would have found them quickly,” the teacher replied.
They stopped and for a short time the whirring and rustling of the trees in the wind was the only thing Myrie heard. Had they discovered her and therefore stopped, she asked herself with unease. But they were actually far too far away for that.
“Do you think she could have come this far and actually be somewhere here? These climbs seem quite risky for such a child,” the woman reflected.
Myrie remembered that an extremly branched, thick, fallen tree lay about where they were now, which was also moss-covered and slippery.
“She could have gone around the outside, but I remind you: she apparently jumped from the first floor without any noticeable damage,” the teacher replied.
Now Myrie could hear other sounds. The creaking of some branches and the panting of the teachers while they probably overcame the fallen tree.
“A miracle. But even if the signs indicate that, it might not be what actually happened. There are other possibilities, too,” the woman replied.
“You mean she could have had the windows open and closed and then decided on a different path?” the man asked.
“Exactly.”
“Hmm, and what about the flattened grass under the windows?”
“It could have been flattened for a long time, by a person who was sitting there eating at lunchtime,” the woman considered.
“Hmm, yes, it could be.”
They paused from talking once more, and after a while Myrie heard the crackling again. They had probably overcome the tree and would soon be very close to her. Myrie tried to breathe calmly and relaxed, so that she would be able to do it very quietly in a moment.
“I just hope nothing happened to her and we find her,” the woman sighed.
That surprised Myrie. The woman whom she had beaten hoped that she would be found? Was it perhaps not about her after all?
“For sure,” the teacher encouraged her.
“There was that one case once whith no success. Before my time at some point. A child had been running away and never being seen again.” The woman’s voice had been quieter than before, and very worried.
“Hmm. I remember. I had just started,” the teacher reflected tentatively.
They had stopped again. The whirring changed abruptly. It suddenly buzzed much higher, the movement was faster, directly towards the two teachers, and fell silent.
“I…” said the teacher she had hit, but interrupted herself and fell silent as well.
Had they heard Myrie? Myrie hardly dared to breathe. The distance was now small enough that it was realistic. Would she be found right away? Myrie wasn’t quite sure if that was a bad thing, but she didn’t want to. She was not prepared for it. She stayed perfectly still.
“Heddra,” said the teacher.
Myrie almost inhaled aloud. Was he talking about her mother?
“When I met the new child, I wondered who she reminded me of. You made me remember, thank you. She has certain similarities in character to the learner who disappeared without a trace,” he continued.
The buzzing started again. And suddenly Myrie knew what it was. It was a drone that he was piloting and that was supposed to be looking for her. Fortunately, she was lying under a pile of moss, she thought. But still, she wasn’t sure if it would look natural from above.
“You’re not exactly encouraging me now,” said the woman unhappily.
“No, look at it that way!” replied the other teacher, actually seeming confident, Myrie thought. “For one thing, even if they are similar, they are not the same. Heddra disappeared after half a year when she lost heart. Myrie, on the other hand, doesn’t seem fuss-free, but she still seemed pretty brave earlier. And on the other hand, I have the vague hope that Heddra could be her mother. That would mean that Heddra would have survived back then.”
“Do you remember Heddra’s last name?” the woman asked. She didn’t sound quite as unhappy as before.
“No. Certainly not Pliers, though,” the man answered.
The voices gradually faded away and Myrie calmed down inwardly, as if she had breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, she postponed actually doing this.
“What I wanted to say earlier, I admire how casually you control this mini drone. This precision! I’m sure I’d have piloted into several trees with it,” the woman said admiringly.
“You wouldn’t have. I know you and your skill. You just haven’t practiced it for a while, and you’re in a complete tizzy today.”
“You’re always so uplifting,” she said.
She didn’t seem so convinced, but she seemed more confident than in somewhere in the middle of their conversation. Myrie feared her on the one hand, dreaded the reaction if they met again, wondered if she shouldn’t avoid it altogether. On the other hand, she also felt sorry for her. She couldn’t even really understand why she was so unhappy. Was it really because of her? Was it perhaps because she would have a guilty conscience if something happened to Myrie? Maybe she felt responsible. Perhaps she would even be held responsible by others. For example, from her dad.
It was the first time she’d really thought about her dad since she’d gotten on the train. Would they inform him? Then he would be terribly worried. She suddenly thought about running after the two teachers after all. But then she remembered that she would certainly get into trouble because she had hit the woman. And while she thought about it, hectic and yet not very effective, the crackling had faded away. The buzzing had also disappeared and she hadn’t heard voices for a long time. She was alone. Alone and very tired. Her head was unsorted and it took her a long time to fall asleep again. She wasn’t even sure if she really wanted to. And her mind was also more tired than her body. But at some point she fell asleep. Maybe it was already dawn, you couldn’t see that so well in this forest.