There is no reason to expect Avie here.  Oliver certainly doesn't.

He is now hundreds of miles south of the orchard.  Several months have passed.  He expects nothing anymore beyond the monotony of life, beyond the daily toil and the hardships expected to accompany it. 

Despite these hardships, Oliver's family has had a stroke of luck.  His father and older brother are hired on a logging crew, which is more regular work than they've seen since heading west. 

"Praise the Lord!"  His mother falls to her knees when she hears the news.  "This is the answer to our prayers."

Oliver should be more at ease, but instead, his thoughts are constantly on the brink of desperation.  Why can't he be happy about the tiny cabin they rent from the logging company?  Why doesn't he feel more grateful that he has an actual roof over his head and meat on his plate every now and then?

Because it won't last, he thinks to himself.  Good fortune comes and goes, no matter how much praying you do.  God is as fickle as the harvest when it comes to doling out luck to folks like them.

There is talk of school for Oliver and Marylou, but the family is not quite comfortable enough for two children to be without work.  In the end, Oliver gets a job picking cabbage and broccoli alongside his mother while Marylou attends a nearby camp school.

Oliver works and tries not to have expectations.  Especially not about Avie.  He can't, he won't think about her.  There is no reason to.  Everything slows down for him.  He moves through water, all of his actions fluidly detached.  His mind becomes dormant, like the apple orchards in the north, their barren branches stretching up to the steely winter sky.

***

Marcella cautions her, they will not stay long.  They will hide in the Dual Realm for a short time but that is all.  Apparently, Marcella has a plan and it does not require them to remain in the Dual Realm for any length of time.  Her goal is to relocate them to another place in their own realm, somewhere they can be safe.

"Won't we be safe in the Dual Realm?" Avie is excited about the prospect.  CompassionCorp can't possibly follow them there, after all.

"Oh Avie, the Dual Realm can never be our refuge.  Perhaps I believed it to be before journeying there, but now?  It has been said that people must live in the realm they are born into.  Now I believe that to be true.  Energy works differently in every realm.  We are of this realm's energy.  Who knows what might happen to us if we stay in the Dual Realm for too long.  We may become ill, or... it's possible we may lose our senses entirely."

"You mean, go crazy?  That's ridiculous!  How can you possibly know that?"

Marcella sighs deeply.  "I didn't want to bring this up, but I suppose it's necessary now.  During our first voyage, I could feel, I guess you could say, the wrongness of it, even though we were only in the Dual Realm for a few hours.  Have you ever tried sticking together the same poles on magnets?"  Avie nods.  "Then you know what happens: they repel each other.  That's what it felt like.  Repulsion.  I'm sure you must have sensed it too."

Avie recalls nothing of the sort.  Her time in the Dual Realm was such a rush, though.  Everything was different, sure, but there had been no wrongness about it.  If anything Oliver's realm had had a positive charge for her—while she was there, she had actually been happy, for once.  She can't get over the fact that all the while, Marcella had been feeling like the wrong end of a magnet.

She blinks, saying nothing.  Marcella narrows her eyes, scanning Avie's face for some telltale sign that she wasn't the only one who felt her senses fleeing from her as soon as they stepped into the Dual Realm. 

Marcella shrugs her shoulders and turns away, stuffing a stack of papers into her leather satchel.  She may be trying to appear nonchalant, but Avie knows her experience in the orchard must have impacted her deeply.  That's why Marcella had been so afraid to return there and still seems terrified of the prospect now.  

Marcella's hand stills on the clasp of her bag.  She brings her focus back to her stepdaughter.  "Besides my own experience of great unease, there are stories."

When Avie asks what these stories are exactly, Marcella says they aren't important.  The bottom line is that they will be going back to the Dual Realm, but they won't be staying there.  Avie will have to accept that.  Her one hope is that she'll be there long enough to fulfill her promise to Oliver.

The orchard isn't the same; there are no apples; the leaves are all dead and brown, resting at the base of the trees' gnarled trunks.  There are no Dual Realm people.  No Oliver.  She searches the endless rows, climbs every hill, scans the farthest reaches of the farm for any sign that he might be here still.

He isn't. 

A cramped feeling forms within her chest and begins to expand outward.  Is it because she hasn't found Oliver?  Or is this the sickness of being in another realm that Marcella mentioned?  Maybe the madness has already begun.

Marcella finds her sitting with her back against a tree, the tannins from that year's rotting leaves staining her yellow leggings.

"The time's not right, Marcella." Avie grabs a fistful of leaves and holds them up to her as if this action will explain her frustration.  "It's winter here."

"And it's spring back home."  Marcella nods.  "It won't be when we return.  Well, not the same spring, at least.  Don't you remember, the seasons were different the first time we voyaged here as well." She holds out her hand for Avie to take.  Avie drops the leaves and lets her stepmom pull her to her feet.  "What do you think happens when we step through the Fold, Avie?  We are manipulating time as well as space."

While only a few weeks have passed between their trips to Oliver's realm, months have gone by here.  Avie's heart falls.  He must have given up on her ever returning.

"Can't we leave and return at an earlier time, when there are..." She almost lets it slip that she had wanted to see someone again. "When there are ripe apples and it's not so cold?"

Marcella brow creases.  "Going backward in the timeline is a tricky thing.  We are only here at all so that we can use our return voyage through the Fold to bring us back to our realm at the coordinates I've selected.  Besides, Avie, what would be the point?"

Avie can't tell her what the point would be, so she shakes her head dismissively instead and keeps her thoughts to herself.

"I have made ready for our return to our own realm." Marcella squeezes Avie's hand.  "We can't stay here.  I'm sorry."

When they voyage back through the Fold they do not return to where or when they left.  They are in a town across a mountain range from where they had lived.

Avie asks how much time has passed.  Marcella smiles, a playful look in her eye.

"You would be grown already, and I would have far more wrinkles."

It is spring, but as Marcella promised, it is a different spring.  They rent a room at a hotel in their new town and when Avie scans a newspaper in the hotel's lobby, she can't quite believe what she reads.  Nearly fifteen years have passed.

Marcella gets a job working in the hotel, first as a maid, and eventually as its manager.  She is firm with Avie that they are never to voyage through the Fold again, but Avie's not quite sure she trusts her stepmother's conviction.  Marcella was careful to take all of her notes with her when they left home and ever since she has kept them safe in a drawer between the beds they sleep in at the hotel.  The way Avie reasons, Marcella wouldn't keep the notes if she never intends to use the information contained in them again. 

If she didn't want Avie reading them, slowly figuring out how to manipulate the fabric of the realms herself, she really should have destroyed them completely.

It takes Avie four years to feel confident enough in her knowledge of realm work to open the Fold to the Dual Realm.  One morning after Marcella heads down to the hotel office, Avie quietly slips through, hoping that her calculations, meticulously double and triple checked, will bring her where and when she needs to be.

A/N:  Now we finally know why Marcella did not want to journey through the Fold again.  What do you think about her experience of feeling repulsed by the Dual Realm?  How do you think this will play out for the rest of the story?  For Avie, returning to the Dual Realm is disappointing.  For Marcella, it is a means to an end.  Manipulating the Fold allows Marcella to transport them to their own realm 15 years in the future and several hundred miles to the west to a place that may seem surprisingly familiar to you... Flash forward four years...has Avie found a way back to Oliver?

If you enjoyed this chapter, I hope you'll consider voting for it.  Even if you don't, thank you for reading!

Today's chapter is dedicated to @JaneCorinne.  There's so much I could say about Jane.  I've grown to look forward to her thought-provoking comments.  Jane advertises herself as a critic and guys, I would definitely contact her if you are looking for one.  There's no doubt in my mind that she'd be excellent at it.  She is also a writer and her story Witch is a promising story with a captivating start, so check it out!