Trustful: Day 5

Word Count: 30,019

Summary of Events:

Rosemarie fetched some of Hulda's medicines for Wolfgang's horse, running into Hulda in the process — although she managed to convince Hulda she was using the medicines for an injured bird in her room — before going and treating the horse. Wolfgang successfully killed a deer and was gutting it when Rosemarie came to visit and they talked, mainly about Wolfgang's suspicions that Hulda was a sorceress . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

""Why?" Rosemarie asked.

"Because she isolates herself," Wolfgang replied. "Besides, really, why else would she have you?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Sorcerers demand payment for their service, and it's been known that some sorcerers will demand the firstborn child of the person they're serving in payment for the services they rendered," Wolfgang replied. "Therefore Hulda could've offered your parents a service and demanded you in payment."

Wolfgang looked up to see her staring in horror at him. She dropped to her knees and began to sob.

Turing his gaze back down to the buck, Wolfgang carefully started to cut out the internal organs and separate them according to their kind and whether he'd use them or not.

Her sobbing eventually got the better of him, though, so he sheathed his knife and went over to her, wrapping her into a gentle embrace, although making sure not to touch her with his bloody hands.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm a little bitter currently. I probably shouldn't have said that."

She pulled out of his arms and looked at him with desperation. "Then is it true or not?"

"I don't know," Wolfgang replied. "It seems more than likely. You said this Hulda is very old, and, regardless of whether she's a sorceress or a normal woman, she'd thus be beyond childbearing age, thus she must've taken you from someone else, which lends to her being a sorceress because they demand payments of things such as even peoples' firstborns."

"What is childbearing age?" she asked.

"Women have only a limited amount to time that they can bear children," Wolfgang replied. "It's approximately thirty years, but normal women can live for ninety years, meaning that she spends more of her life unable to bear children than to bear children. Elven women can live up to three hundred years, but can only bear children for about one hundred years. If Hulda is very old then she can no longer bear children, and I guarantee you she didn't lose that ability in the last twenty years or so."

"So then a different woman bore me?" she asked.

"Yes," Wolfgang replied. "That would be your mother, after she and your father . . . came together."

"You mean they mated?" she asked.

"Yes," Wolfgang replied.

"And Hulda took me?" Rosemarie asked.

"That's my guess," Wolfgang replied.

Rosemarie's face crumpled again and she clutched at Wolfgang's shoulders, burying her face into his chest. Wolfgang gently closed his arms around her and put his head down onto hers.

He held her for a long time as she sobbed before she finally pulled away from him and dried her eyes.

"I have to find them," Rosemarie said. "I have to get away from Hulda."

"Well you're not going anywhere alone," Wolfgang replied, getting up and moving back to the buck to keep working. "You haven't travelled anywhere before if you've lived cooped up in a fortress all your life, and you're not going to start by travelling alone through the Black Mountains of all places.""