Chapter 4 #2
“I know,” Clarice replies, but the hope in her eyes destroys me. “Thank you for coming with me.”
She’s on edge, restless for dawn. Keeping her inside much longer feels impossible. I’ve already stretched out my routine: looping my belt with my knife, stuffing extra satchels, refilling my waterskin, gathering both the usual and unusual herbs I might need.
“Please, I can help. I won’t slow you down,” Ezran says. The hunger in his eyes is poorly concealed.
My chest constricts. I don’t want him to come face-to-face with desert sickness. I don’t want him to witness just how brutally the desert can rip apart a body, a mind, a soul. Ezran knows I tried to save Mom, that she had the same symptoms, but he wasn’t there. He doesn’t know how hard I fought.
But maybe he needs to see the consequences. It could knock some of the dumber ideas out of his head, instill a healthy fear. I glance at Gramps for guidance, but he’s just staring at his cold tea, strangely distant. He gets like that sometimes, after talking about Mom. I swallow.
“Fine,” I say. “If Clarice is okay with it.”
Ezran’s eyes light up. He turns to Clarice. She gives an absentminded nod.
I shove down the flickers of memory that try to surface and wrap my scarf firmly over my mouth and nose—another layer between me and whatever awaits.
The first light creeps under the door. I unlatch it and step out.
The three of us start down the main road, hardly more than a dirt path. Ezran’s limp slows us, but not much. He vaults himself along, using his new walking stick with gusto.
An unusual prickle on my neck has me lifting my shoulders toward my ears.
I frown, my eyes darting to the high line of the sand.
The bristle of the desert watching me shouldn’t be lingering after the storm.
Perhaps it’s just my lack of sleep and faintly throbbing head.
I’ll have to wait for it to ebb with the tides.
“Thanks again,” Clarice says. Her words stir uncomfortably inside me. I swallow the urge to tell her, again, that if it’s truly desert sickness, then there isn’t anything I can do.
I keep walking, trying not to dwell on where we’re headed. But an idea pushes forward. It’s hardly a remedy, and it wasn’t enough for Mom—I swallow hard—but she wasn’t just taken by a storm. She was taken by one of them.
“You know, back in the city—” Clarice’s eyes dart guiltily toward me. She’s always blabbered under stress.
“You can talk about it,” I say. It should be fine. We were friends not a year ago, before I gave my dream to her. It wasn’t her fault. And talking might distract her to keep her calm.
“It’s just so different there.” She exhales like she’s releasing a great weight. Then her voice grows hushed. “They don’t just use glass, but mirrors too.”
My eyes widen, even hearing it for the second time. I glance uneasily at my brother, not wanting to incite his curiosity. Fortunately, we’re arriving at the apothecary. The unassuming building is only double the size of our hut but stretches out lengthwise.
I halt in front of the stout door, knocking once, but there’s no reply. The shopkeeper would never come in this early. I fit my key into the lock.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” I tell Ezran.
“But—”
“Lavender makes you sneeze.” Perfectly true, perfectly effective. I look at Clarice. The last thing I need is her giving Ezran ideas about glass and mirrors. “Follow me.”
The bell jangles as we step inside the musty room. But if there’s anything that can save her father, it’s among the jars and flasks that line these shelves: herbs lovingly dried and powdered by my own hands and the hands that came before me.
I weave easily toward the back of the narrow room, ducking beneath the puffy fragrant bundle of white sage that tickles the top of my head. Clarice sets the lavender and sage swinging, and I’m struck by a pang of sadness. She’s already forgotten how to move inside this space.
“The girls in the city own real dresses,” she rambles, giving a faint smile. “When it gets hot, they even wear short sleeves, with skirts above their knees. And the guys are way more handsome.”
I keep my gaze trained on the mortar and pestle I’ve pulled out from under the counter.
No reason to let her see the twist in my stomach.
I wish I didn’t care. The last boy who was interested in me—the baker’s boy—invited me fleaberry picking, only to end up with a nasty rash.
He was too embarrassed to tell me until finally I noticed his itching and demanded to treat him.
He apologized the entire time. I didn’t realize until a week later, talking to his mother, that he believed we had gone on a date.
More embarrassing still was my willingness to look past the poor attempt.
But when he came to see me in the apothecary, with Mrs. Brownbottom waiting in line behind him, and recited a poem about how my mud-brown eyes were as alluring as the desert…
any interest was permanently snuffed out.
“It’s more progressive there, too,” Clarice continues.
“Yeah?” I shouldn’t ask, but my ears strain, hungry for scraps of insight into the life I almost had.
“Especially at the institute. There are things even the healers can’t do.” She lowers her voice. “That’s when they get mages involved.”
My hands freeze. I nearly dump out the entire pot of greenroot powder. Steadying myself, my hands still quiver as I measure it out, and I have to scoop some back.
“Mages?” I whisper. Just because I’m horrified doesn’t mean I’m not curious.
“They’ve been summoned at least twice by the institute while I’ve been there. I don’t know what they do. We all stay out of the way, of course.”
The knowledge sits like undercooked yuca in my stomach.
I consider chewing a stalk of gumroot to settle my nerves, but that would be an indulgence.
Instead, I crush the mixture more firmly than needed, funnel it into a wide leather flask, and seal the top with the satisfying twist of a cork stopper.
“Alright,” I say, steeling myself. “Let’s go.”
Clarice hesitates, so I take the lead. I breathe in one last lungful of floral musk before stepping out and locking the door behind us.
The cool shiver of being observed runs up my spine, even beneath the heat of the rising day. Ezran waits where we left him, oblivious, drawing with his stick in the dirt.
“Come on,” I say. I don’t let my step falter. Ezran’s excitement has curdled into a jittery bounce, his eyes fixed ahead. Clarice lags behind, quiet and pale. Somehow, between the two of them, they give me the courage I need to stay calm. One of us has to.
It only takes a few minutes to reach Clarice’s hut.
It isn’t much nicer than ours, just further from high tide.
The same sun-scorched, resinous roof hangs low over the doorway, and the mud-slapped wooden frame bears its own collection of nicks and grooves.
Moisture collects on my brow and anticipation slicks my palms. I take a warm breath meant to calm, but it sits hot in my chest.
Clarice shuffles forward, opens the door, and leads us inside. Exchanging glances with Ezran, I step after her over the threshold.
Her father lies on the packed earth in the center of the hut.
His tunic is sweated through and smeared with dirt, along with his face, like he’s been thrashing against the ground.
I inhale sharply. It’s like breathing in sand.
The air burns with the same mineral bite of last night’s storm.
I breathe only through my mouth, trying to stay calm, pressing my hands to my sides to keep them from trembling.
Ezran steps in after me. The instant he sees Clarice’s father, he goes still.
I’ve only ever heard the man speak in a gentle, quiet voice. Now he hisses, spits, mutters in guttural half-words I can’t decipher. I try not to listen. He looks like a wild animal trapped in a human body, eyelids twitching violently. It sends goosebumps up my arms.
Clarice’s mother sits folded into herself in a shadowed corner to the side, sobbing softly into the crook of her elbow.
Ezran takes a stumbling step back, his eyes pinned on the madman. Then he spins around and scampers back out the door.
I’m too stunned to react, then heat surges into my cheeks, anger and embarrassment, a sting of betrayal. He didn’t even have the decency to excuse himself after begging to come along.
I suppress my own urge to flee. Instead, I turn back to Clarice’s father and make myself step forward. Hopeless emptiness crawls up my throat, like it’s trying to choke me, but I force words through.
“I can try to… to ease his—”
Pain? Suffering? Slow surrender to the true nature of magic, of the desert and its torment?
Anything I could say feels hollow and useless, so I close my mouth and do the only thing I can.
I pull the herbs I mixed back at the apothecary from my satchel, wet a clean brown cotton cloth, and sprinkle the crushed mixture until it seeps into a deep, purplish stain. Swallowing, I lean over the bed.
The scent hits harder this close: magic, mages, the mad. They’re all the same, all corrupted by the desert and its endless, ruinous thirst—deeper than the bone-dry sand.
I shudder.
“It’s okay,” I murmur, and then sweep the cloth across his forehead, leaving a dark stripe. He twitches, and the room goes silent; even the crying goes quiet at the change.
I wipe streaks of purple down both sides of his neck, and he lets out a shuddered sigh. Hardly breathing, I continue, methodically brushing the salve across his damp collarbones. I peel open the left side of his tunic and press the cloth over his heart.
His mumbles grow fainter.
I apply a second layer of salve. His jaw slackens from that rigid clench, and he lets out a heavy exhale. Some of the deep wrinkles on his brow unfurl.
I press the cool cloth over his heart a second time.
“You!” The garbled cry rips from his throat, hardly human.
I freeze.
His eyes snap open, white, wide, sightless, and fix on me. “You’re one of them!”
I can only stare in horror as he starts to wail, an ear-splitting song, agonizing and atonal. Like the desert wind.
“You’re one of them! You’re one of them!” he shrieks.
His hand lurches forward, snatching my necklace. He yanks the thin cord. The cord bites into my skin, then snaps with a fiery pinch.
I shriek.
Clarice and her mother rush to his other side.
“Shh, Pa, it’s alright!” Clarice strokes his dirty hair. His eyes flicker wildly, then dim, confused, before his lids fall closed.
I inch backward toward the door, my palm pressed to the bare skin at my neck. It tingles and burns, feels naked. I’m alive with fright and the echoing shock of the snapping cord.
I slip out of the hut, gulping the warm air into my lungs like a balm. The hot breeze from the desert is less oppressive than the scent of madness.
Even with the desert’s eyes on me.