“No. What do you mean?” Her mind was still foggy, the words hitting her without fully sinking in. “Not able to leave? Are you saying I can’t just drive out of here?”
“I’m sorry, Margot,” Kant said. “The place chains us to it.”
Nora tried for a small, sad smile. “Ray and I have been lucky. It’s not as bad for us. We can still live in our house in town, provided we spend the daylight hours here. But the noose is slowly tightening on us too. We’ve been having to spend more and more time here to keep the symptoms at bay. We’ll probably need to move into the employee accommodation by this time next year.”
“Symptoms?” Margot managed.
In the window’s gray light, Kant’s face appeared washed out. As though she wasn’t looking at him but at a memory. “It’s different for everyone. Some people get nauseous. For others, it’s exhaustion or shaking limbs. For others still—”
“Migraines,” Margot guessed, and Kant dipped his head into a nod. She remembered the slow, pulsing ache that had started behind her eyes when she’d visited town and how it had swelled to a roar before finally abating as she returned to the land.
“We get little bits of tether,” Kant said. “I can still visit my sister a few times a year. But I have to get the trip done in one day; I can’t sleep away from the hill. It won’t let me.”
“The longer you’re gone for, the worse the symptoms get, until you can’t fight them any longer,” Ray said. His wife still leaned against his shoulder, and he kissed the top of her head. “It’s like it consumes you, piece by piece.”
Margot let her cast-bound hand hang loosely in her lap, while her other arm wrapped around her torso, where bruises were beginning to form. “How many does it…have?”
“Us,” Kant said. “The people in this room. Plus a half dozen of the other employees.”
Ray nodded. “It takes a while for the curse to take effect. The seasonal workers will be fine; they just can’t stay more than one year. We’re careful to bring in a new lot each season. Most of them don’t even know about the hill’s lore.”
She felt hollowed out. Like someone had taken a spoon to her insides and carved them out and was still scraping, searching for a scrap or two more. The conversation wasn’t making as much sense as it should, and a low throb was starting in her arm as the painkillers began to wear off.
“Wait.” She pressed her eyes closed, trying to hold on to her thoughts before they could evaporate entirely. “You said people needed to stay here a while before it affected them. I’ve only been here for three days. That means I can still leave.”