Chapter 34: Freeda.

Chapter 34 - Freeda."Just how fucking stupid are you? Are your brains completely rotted? What an idiot!"

"I'm sorry, Lisa ..." Lee weakly mumbled, "I shouldn't have done that ..."

It took a moment, but it slowly came to him that the distant cursing wasn't Lisa's. And then the worst possible thing happened. Her image, sitting in the bed next to him and playing with the two parts of the amulet began to blur, and slowly vanished.

He tried to reach out and grab her, but his hands touched nothing but a thin air. The dream was over.

"I told you he'll be fine!" Lee heard a voice. It was soft and pleasant to the ear.

His eyelids slowly opened, and he saw an elderly lady smiling back at him. It felt like he knew her, and the way she caressed his forehead was definitely familiar.

"He's finally awake!" Turns out that the owner of the pleasant voice was the old lady.

She was sitting next to him on his bed, but talking to another woman, who appeared in the doorway with a steaming bowl in one hand and a large wooden spoon in the other. She was dressed in stained linen shirt and long, dark blue skirt, and gave the impression of her working in a tavern or an alehouse.

"You bitch!" She cursed, "I'll never forgive you if anything happens to my only grandson! You city people are clueless morons!"

'Grandson?' Lee was confused. The excessive cursing was familiar. Right, Tess used to speak that way, although it was hard to believe she was less rude compared to this woman.

'Oh, my God!' He finally recognized the person next to him. She looked like Tess, no – she was Tess, but twenty, or maybe even thirty years older! And she got so much thinner! Just how long was he unconscious?!



"Mom?" He whispered. Not because he was weak, but because what he saw was surreal! It couldn't be that after one dream he woke up inside of another, right?!

As if guessing his thoughts, Tess said, "Mhm. I'm here. You slept for quite a while, you know? The trees in the garden are already in full bloom!"

"Trees – shmees! Enough with your nonsense!" The rude woman in the doorway barked, "A young man like my Lee has to eat properly first! Look how skinny he has become! You city-fuckers have no clue how to raise a child!"

While talking, she unceremoniously sat on the other side of the bed, and began to feed Lee the contents of the bowl – a thin soup of sorts. But not only it was hot, it was so spicy Lee immediately teared up and large droplets of sweat began to roll down his forehead.

"Mom, I ..." Tess tried to say something, but the woman interrupted her.

"Shut up, stupid!" But then looked at Lee's weird expression, all smiles, and said, "Don't you worry, pumpkin! From now on grandma will take a good care of you!"

"Grandma?" Lee blurted out between two hot spoons she showed in his mouth.

Apparently he wasn't allowed to talk, but a quick look around told he was in a relatively small and bright room, but it was an illusion caused by the rays of sun falling directly on the bed through the large window. The bed was big though, and not only he, the two women had plenty of room while sitting on it.

"Right, you never met before." Tess nodded, "This is my mother, your grandmother. Sometimes she might say something ... well ... peculiar, but she's a nice person, you'll see!"

"Peculiar, my ass!" Tess's mother snorted, but then her expression changed again, and she said to Lee in the sweetest voice she could muster, "I am your grandmother, but you can call me Freeda. Your stupid mother never visits, but fortunately she showed up a couple months back and brought you along. I predicted years ago that your retarded father would throw her out at some point. That clown is in love with the bitch that calls himself emperor and has no clue about the family values!"

"Mom, Alan ..." Tess tried to argue, but Freeda interrupted her.

"Shut up! If you've ever listened to me, your family wouldn't have ever fallen apart!" She said and continued to feed Lee, "My husband, your grandfather, was nothing like that! He always put his family first and worked hard to ..."



Lee stared in disbelief at the two without a clue what to think. What in the world happened? Why was Tess suddenly so old and thin? And how come her mother looked half her age? How was that even possible?

Unfortunately he had to empty the whole bowl of soup before Freeda left, and he could speak with Tess alone.

"Mom? What happened to you?" Lee asked when he was certain Freeda couldn't hear them.

"Sigh ... mom got old." Tess said, but didn't avoid his eyes, "Don't worry about it. It's fine. As long as you are well, everything is fine!"

Only then Lee remembered what he did at the event. Killing Lance, swallowing the water spark, and then almost dying. Right! How did she save him? Did she cut that thing out of his abdomen?

He threw off the blanket and looked at his naked belly, but there were no scars, no nothing. Just a regular child's body.

"As I said, you're fine!" Tess patiently said, and pulled the blanket back, "You got tired and we left the party. There's nothing more to it."

Lee glanced at her with furrowed brows, expecting a proper explanation, but she only smiled in return.

After a longer moment of silence, she leaned closer, and whispered, "I'm sorry, it's all my fault! I should've told you what those things are, but I really, really didn't want you to have one. You see, moms sometimes are overprotective and for that ... for that they pay the price. On the other hand, I'm certain you'll never do that again, right?"

Lee involuntarily nodded, but even though he understood the words, he couldn't grasp the meaning. Why didn't she want him to become amazingly strong? Was she scared of Victoria? No, that shouldn't be the case. Or he would have the obligation to work for the emperor? Maybe?

"Teresa! Ingrid's fucking early!" A distant shout disrupted his train of thought.

"That's my student!" Tess quickly said, "You still need to rest. It'll be hard for you to start walking after lying in the bed for months, but I'll help you step by step."

Then she kissed his forehead and left, but Lee continued to lie there, confused.



'Alright! Enough lazing around!' After few moments he said to himself. He would get his answers in time, if not from Tess, then from his surprisingly direct grandmother.

But first he had to get out of bed. Listening to Tess's warning, he didn't rush. He started with massaging his hands, then shoulders, and only then slowly sat up. Afterwards he proceeded to do the same with his legs, but soon he came to realization that someone has been regularly doing it – his extremities weren't stiff at all!

Obviously he wasn't going to do splits right away, but he was able to put his feet on the floor and slowly stand up.

He entered the kitchen on slightly wobbly legs, but Freeda was over the moon to see him walking.

"Damn it! I knew it!" She proudly said, "Your great-grandmother's recipe works wonders after all! What a remarkable woman! Take that, you arrogant city doctors! Motherfucking cocksuc..."

"Can I have some water?" Lee interrupted her endless flow of swearwords.

Finally he found out where did his stepmother get her manner of expression. It was almost something like a family dialect and, after listening to Tess swear for almost six years, he immediately felt closer to his grandmother.

"Sure, pumpkin, sure!" Freeda pointed at a wooden bowl and a bucket filled with water. Lee got confused for a split moment, but realizing she wasn't going to run around and serve his every whim made him like her even more.

After finally dozing the flames that burned in his mouth after the grandmother's soup, he directly asked, "What happened to my mom?"

"It's all your damn father's fault! And the emperor's! Those fuckers ..."

"Freeda, stop!" Lee interrupted her, "I'm serious! What happened to her? People don't age thirty years in two months!"

She deeply looked at him, confused by the manner of speaking that didn't fit a six year old child, but then sighed and said, "You better ask her. She won't fucking forgive me if I say something out of line ..."