Lost Without You

Letting my tears flow freely for a while as the bus descended the narrow, rocky road, I forbade myself to look back towards the castle. My home.

I was leaving my heart behind; I felt strangely numb, as if I was dreaming while sleepwalking, rather than moving around in a real world, abandoning this place on my own volition. The thought didn't really hurt, not yet, I was just empty and sad, feeling... lost.

Trying not to think about anything, I looked among the dark trees of the surrounding forest, noticing the path leading to the lake. Our lake. I drew a shaky, painful breath, then looked on the other side of the road. We were just passing what before, when we walked by on our way up, looked like a small, insignificant ruin. Now, I recognized it as the mill.

You mustn't cry. Once you start... It's not the right moment now, my subconscious reminded me. You'll have enough time to cry yourself to oblivion once you arrive home, to London.

I wiped the last tears off my face, closed my eyes and didn't reopen them until the bus rolled to a stop in front of our hotel.

"Are you ok, Sam? Shall we go?" Lia put her hand on my arm, urging me to stand up and follow the other passengers out of the bus.

Even the small town spreading around the hotel in every direction looked huge, noisy and too bright, illuminated by the tall lamps lining the pavements. How would I ever get used to London again?

Wrapping my arms around my body, feeling cold and insignificant in this place, I followed Lia, Anne and the two boys inside.

The exceedingly steady and strong electrical light illuminating the interior was strangely disturbing after the soft, warm flicker of the candles and the moving, whispering fires I lived with for a year. It was making my headache worse again, forcing me to squint.

Where's Katerina with her willow bark, would she be back from the mill by now, looking for me? Was the miller feeling better? Poor Clara, lost somewhere, and... Ioan... Was Vlad all right? Junior only said that he had been imprisoned but there had been a fight, had he been injured? Oh why did I not push him to tell me more?!

"Do you have a headache?" Lia's voice disturbed my thoughts.

"What? Yes." I admitted, startled out of my reverie by her question.

"I've got some medicines in my luggage, I'll give you something as soon as we get upstairs." She promised as we reached the reception desk.

We should have taken the key with us as all the others, I thought, looking longingly at the rest of our group going directly upstairs. It seemed it was only us and the two boys who had left the key at the reception. I was too tired to wait now, I needed to lay down.

I leaned against the long counter, propping my elbow on its wooden surface, letting my head rest, face hidden, in the palm of my hand.

"Good evening. How was the tour? Have you met our ghosts?" The receptionist, coming in from one of the adjacent rooms, asked.

I looked up; it wasn't the same young man with whom we had left our keys in the morning. A year ago. This was a middle aged woman, addressing us in English laced with a heavy Romanian accent, teasing, making fun of us. For her, we were just a typical bunch of young British adventurers. If only she knew what I had seen.

"Well, I haven't seen any ghosts." Anne said, taking the key from our room and following... Mark and Lucas, bingo!, up the stairs. "Maybe Samara has met some though, she looks disturbed, says she got lost!" She called across the hall, looking towards me, laughing.