CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Bidding and Obeisance
Clijsters was helping her to walk as they arrived at the town. The injury she had sustained in her hip had prevented her from walking normally. And she had not realized the extent of the injury inflicted on her by the bear Clijsters suggested that they should stay somewhere safe until the pain receded. “An ancient town?” she asked. “Who lives here?
“Maybe deserted town,” he said. “It looks the same as other towns we have discovered along the way. And none of them looks better than the other.”
Maybe they could take shelter in this town, although they had not seen anyone yet. Then, after as Clijsters looked around, he came back and told her that they would be taking shelter at the sorcerer’s house, the only person they had seen so far.
His woody house had no veranda and you could barely recognize that someone lived in there. She could see the range of other small houses that lined the streets of this town.
Once she was shown the room where she had to sleep, Chloe did nothing other than falling into the bed to sleep until Clijsters woke her up. She felt totally different after waking up and felt more relaxed than usual.
Clijsters brought her a bowl of hot water. “It’s okay for drinking,” he said, handing it over to her. The sorcerer lived in the next room. He had told Clijsters that people in this town didn’t stay out at all; they never came out because they were so fearful of Santa. He used to come to that town and every time he came meant death to some of the people who lived there.
Clijsters came to tell Chloe that he had a long talk with the sorcerer while she was asleep.
He also told her that now that she had rested, she should feel better than she had been previously and they could leave the town any time they wanted to, in search of the forbidden gates!
He carried the bowl away to take it back to the sorcerer’s room. Chloe felt strong again, and proud of herself; having fought off a mighty bear that wanted to claim her life. But while she still felt lost in agony, her main task was to find the forbidden gates, and she mentioned this to Clijsters as soon as he came to the room where she was relaxing.
“You are getting more stronger than you were,” he said. “You managed to resist against the bear until you got help, but I think at some point you didn’t know whether you would overcome it.”
“If you experience something terrible, you can know what you’re capable of. And if you survive, that is an event to remember,” she replied.
“You have the power to overcome everything,” he said.
However, she didn’t forget that bears were something Clijsters couldn’t bear to face. But she still kept wondering how he decided to come and encounter the bear that had attacked her. She had seen him weaken terribly when he had looked into the eyes of the two bears they had met first. Maybe he had discovered how to deal with them, she thought.
“You defeated the bear without anything happening to you this time. Is there any secret to it?”she asked.
He didn’t answer her. Maybe he felt she was getting closer to knowing him more! She insisted on wanting to know, but he kept on diverting to something different as the conversation continued.
She suddenly remembered what Gregory and the penguin had told her about Clijsters, and she felt totally doubtful about him, once again. She also was not wanting to move along with him anymore, it seemed he had millions of secrets she would be because interested in knowing before finding the forbidden gates to reunite with her parents.
