Chapter 272: Chapter 272

A few hours later, Angela was beside herself. She still could not get through to Rocky. The family doctor had been called again, and he stood beside Clara’s bed, attending to her.

"What of Miss Shelby? Maybe we should try her line instead," one of her co-workers said, but another brushed the notion away.

"Don’t you pay attention to the news? Miss Shelby has had a near-death accident and is still in the hospital. Her situation is unknown at the moment."

"WHAT!!!!?" Angela cried out, startled. This made many things fall into place for her, from Shelby’s call with her mother to the fact that she could not get a hold of Rocky.

"Something happened last night?" The other person nodded,

"Oh no! What do I do now?" Angela lamented just as the doctor straightened.

"What is wrong with Madam Clara, Doctor?"

" Hmmmmm" The man seemed unsure of what to say or how to say it, but then, he steeled himself,

"We’re not sure what this ailment is.... This is a mystery, and we’ll have to run some more tests, but every indication tells me that she is perfectly healthy, an...."

"What do you mean that there is nothing wrong with her?" Angela’s tone came out snappily.

"You saw her yourself yesterday! How can someone grow older overnight?! Do we even know if this has stopped, or it is still ongoing! Can you at least tell me that?"

It was evident that Angela was under immense pressure that she was not giving the doctor any due respect.

The Doctor sighed. He agreed with the maid wholeheartedly, and the condition being presented to him baffled him beyond reason. If he had not seen Clara Wendover himself the night before, he would have thought that the woman on the bed was at most, a sixty-year-old woman at best.

However, the details he had of her showed that Clara was only forty-five. When he had seen Clara the previous day, he had thought her barely forty even given her miserable and hysterical front.

In all of his medical years, he had never seen nor read of a case where an individual aged overnight.

"Was it something you gave her that made her ?" Angela probed, and all eyes in the room turned to the doctor.

At that, the man raised his hands in front of him as if to surrender,

"Ahahhhaaa" The man laughed awkwardly while keeping his eyes on the maids

"As much as I would love to take credit for this, medical science has not advanced that much in these times. Also, as far as I know, there is research into reversing ageing, but it is not progressing!"

He took a few steps back, warily, as if to show that he was harmless....

"We need to run a few tests..." The Doctor suggested, as if this would make him less suspicious in their eyes.

Meanwhile, on the bed, Clara’s expression turned into a frown, but her eyes remained closed,

Clara looked around and saw dense trees surrounding her. She shivered slightly as a cool breeze swept over her, making her wrap her arms around herself. Clara looked around, scared.

The place was too quiet, and dark, and most importantly, she had no idea how she had gotten there. She found herself in unfamiliar places for the second time in just two days without knowing how she got there. That aside, the place was disturbingly familiar, but she had no idea why she would venture into the woods without her shoes and in only her bathrobe.

’I am going senile with all that is going on? Why would I come out ?’

With all that had been going on, Clara believed that she had somehow found herself there on her own accord. However, try as she might, Clara could not remember how she had come to be there.

Clara curled her toes as if that would stop the cold from seeping through her feet. She took a tentative step forward only to step on a jagged twig.

"Ouch!" Clara shouted and then clamped her hands on her mouth as she hopped on the remaining leg, holding up the one leg that was then slightly bruised from that contact.

Her eyes watered. Clara had been used to a life of pampering for more than two decades, so finding herself in such a dense forest was not something that the current her could handle.

At that time, James popped into her head.

"Why, James? Why did you leave me? Everything has gone awry since you left! Why did you have to leave?" she whispered to herself as she encouraged herself to move around.

Clara moved again, and this time, she was more careful as she did not want that experience of stepping on anything.

It did not take long before Clara came by a very familiar hut in the middle of the place where she had not even seen one animal. It was too unusual, but it was precisely because of this that Clara remembered where she was.

Despite all this, she held a tiny hope in her heart that, just maybe, everything would be alright.

Clara hesitantly approached the cottage, but the door swept open on its own accord before she could knock.

This surprised her, but Clara still stepped into the warm inner walls because it was too cold outside for her.

Each step Clara took left a muddy footprint, but she did not bother cleaning her feet. There was a nice fluffy rug just at the entrance that she could have used for this, but Clara was more preoccupied with finding out what was going on.

She distinctly remembered going back to find this same cottage, but Clara had never been able to find it since that first day she had ventured there.

Clara took in the brightly lit inner room. The light source was from the brightly lit cozy fireplace to her left as she entered.

There was a rocking chair and an armchair opposite it. Between the two was a low table and an inner room beyond which she could not see much.

Clara had a hunch that this room was exactly the same as she had seen it prior, the one time she had been desperate enough to come there on her own two legs.

She swung her gaze back to the seats as a slight rocking sound drew her attention.

"It’s you!" Clara shouted out and pointed her hand at the young woman in the seat.

Clara knew that this person had not been in the seat when she had entered the hut earlier.

The girl looked to be in her early twenties, which was impossible, at least by Clara’s calculations.

She looked only slightly older than that last time.

It had been two decades since then; the girl should be at least in her late thirties, but she looked nothing like that.

"Welcome. Care for some tea?"

The girl smiled brightly at Clara as if there was nothing wrong with the whole situation they were in. She set the knitting in her hand down and reached for a kettle without waiting for Clara’s response. Clara saw a glimpse of a tree-shaped tattoo on the back of the girl’s hand once again, and this confirmed that it was indeed the same person that she had met back then.

"It’s okay that you don’t want the tea. It’s not like you are as famished as the last time you were here."

"So, it is you! I did not guess wrong?" Clara took one tentative step forward and then caught a glimpse of herself in a small mirror hanging on the wall. Clara gasped and then it all came back to her.

Clara rushed into the place and right into the girl’s face.

The girl was not perturbed but watched Clara with a look that was way ripe beyond her years.

"Did you do this? You have a hand in this, right! REVERSE IT!"

It was as if Clara knew that this was the doing of the witch.

The girl smiled and then helped herself to a sip of the tea.

"Have you forgotten that you exchanged a decade of your life for something very precious? It is time for you to pay. What is due has been taken, and nothing more than that."

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?!!! I DID NOT EVEN USE IT!!!!! MY DAUGHTER DID! SHELBY DID! Why is she not the one paying for this."

The girl replied in a calm voice, "You asked for it.... You pay for it. Besides, you are her mother, so why can you not pay for something that she had used? If you had done this according to what you were supposed to do, it would have never fallen into those hands. Besides, everything is happening as it should!"

"What do you mean by that?"

The witch did not bother responding.

Clara took a deep breath. Then she raised her hands to place on her chest as if to calm herself.

"Ok, can you make a different exchange then? My daughter’s riches for a second chance for me. Can you make me young again? Please?" Clara went on her knees as tears glistened.

"As I told you last time, your daughter is her own person and very different from you. Even if you gave birth to her, you cannot interfere in her life’s path. Her life and possession cannot pay for your wishes, unfortunately...."

"WHAT!!! YOU CANNOT MEAN THAT!"

"It was nice doing business with you, Clara."

The world seemed to tilt around Clara, and she found herself back on her bed.

Clara’s eyes slowly opened. It took her a while to understand her surroundings. Clara was all alone in the room. She took off from the bed to the nearest mirror, and her heart dropped.

"It is true!" Clara gingerly touched her face as agony turned the pent-up frustration into tears. She clutched at her hair as if trying to tear it from its roots,

"No, No, No!!!!!!!! Please! Let this be a dream!"

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