Chapter 361: The other soul
Belle took a deep sigh of relief, but the pain under her feet tensed her up again. If such pain couldn’t wake her up, what else could? That cemetery she had just left behind, she realized, must not have been the same as the one she had once been in, because she couldn’t see the river of souls anywhere. Or it might have been, but she had lost her way...
"I can’t be stuck here... I need to go back to my family. Belle, think," she told herself as she bit back a cry while pulling out the stick. Her entire body shook from the pain. She wished Kuhn was here, at least he knew this place better than she did.
The fogs that had cleared away earlier began hovering in the air again, swallowing her in its mist.
Knowing that now, with her blood drifting through the air, the reapers and the Watcher would sense her faster than normal, Belle knew she couldn’t give in to fear and weakness. She got up again and continued to walk forward, trying not to step on her wound.
Belle walked around the woods for almost an hour without finding a way out of it, before the realization that she had been walking in circles dawned on her, when she noticed a small torn piece of her dress hanging on a twig sticking out from behind a tree where she had fallen down after hurting her leg. She had been going in circles since!
Belle almost cried out in frustration that was mounting into fear. A living person could not be here for more than a day, or their soul would naturally belong to this world. Kuhn had told her that once.
She was thinking about what to do and where to go when she heard a movement from behind her, a sound so sudden it made her heart thud in fright at the unexpected presence.
Mustering the courage to turn, she slowly looked over her shoulder, and her fear shifted into surprise at the sight before her. It wasn’t a person nor a reaper standing there, it was a soul.
A young woman stood there, her black hair glimmering under the moonlight. She was dressed in a long white gown, its hem dirty and torn. From how she looked fresh and unfounded by anything in this world, Belle could tell she was a new soul, someone who had probably died not long ago.
"You are alive," came the words of the soul who was watching her keenly and taking in her disheveled state and bleeding leg. "You shouldn’t be here," she started, her eyes coming to settle on Belle’s. Eyes that had begun to turn hallowed and dark, which made Belle rephrase her thought about her being a new soul. Unlike her dress and hair, her eyes and face seemed like someone who had stayed here for long.
Belle didn’t want to be at ease with anything from this world, nor did she want to trust enough to talk to a soul she didn’t know, but then she needed a way out of this woods, and she nodded her head.
"Yes... can you help me out of here? I mean, out of these woods," she said, hoping that the soul was at least different from the ones she had encountered so far during her visits here. On her first visit, Farrah had gathered the walking dead to attack her and eat her, and on her second visit, spirits had wanted to take over her body.
The soul looked at her for a moment longer before finally nodding her head. "Yes. If you are new here, getting out of these woods is impossible, that is why it’s called the Lost Woods of the Dead. But I will help you out of it. My name is Norah, by the way," she supplied with a smile that didn’t quite reach her hollowed eyes.
Belle nodded in understanding, not giving her own name, as she felt that behind that smile a desperate soul, one who truly didn’t want to be here, might be lurking. Many souls here didn’t want to be here.
"Nice to meet you, Norah. I will really be glad if you show me the way out of the woods. I have been going in circles since I got here," she said, trying to be polite as she stood, favoring her injured foot. It was best not to be too familiar, and not to be rude at the same time.
Norah’s smile fell and she turned away, saying, "Follow me." Then she began to walk away.
As much as Belle didn’t trust the soul, she couldn’t stay behind in the woods or go back to the cemetery. Hence, she followed cautiously behind the woman.
"How come you are here while still being alive?" the soul asked without stopping, her tone curious.
"I don’t know," Belle replied. It was the truth anyway, she had no idea how she could be in two different worlds that one couldn’t be in at the same time, unless you were either dead or alive. She had puzzled over it more than twice on why she was the way she was, and most times she believed that perhaps she was gifted, or a reaper had favored her, like Astral had favored Rohan, and she just didn’t have the memory.
But then, remembering the first Isabelle, she began to question many things all over again.
"If I were you, I would never come here. And I wouldn’t have been here myself if I hadn’t died in the most stupid way a person could possibly die. I lost my life to a silly accident. That is why I am here now, stuck in this place, when I should have been on the other side," the soul said, her voice carrying a flat, empty tone.
Belle couldn’t help but ask curiously, "What kind of accident?"
"I tripped over the front hem of my dress while coming down a carriage step. I fell over and hit my head against a stone bench right next to where my dumb coachman parked my carriage. My skull broke, and I died instantly. Immediately, I saw myself floating out of my body with a hideous creature holding a scythe beside me." She let out a toneless laugh as she continued, "You should have seen how terrified I was, and how angry, that the creature harvested me like a crop and all but dragged me into a portal and into a boat, and brought me here."
Belle listened to her words while also noticing that they had somehow left the woods behind and were now walking in an open space, with dislocated houses silhouetted in the distance. She also found herself sympathizing with the soul, who was telling her death story.
"I am sorry," she said, meaning the words.
"Sorry can’t fix anything. I am stuck here, constantly trying to hide from spirits who don’t know that souls aren’t here to be eaten by the likes of them."