Chapter 3
Mysteries are Better Left Unsolved
Although the light of a new day brought nothing but a desire to stay in bed, crying in self-pity, Alissa managed to find the motivation to get up.
She had decided to fight to save her daughter, but that decision didn’t make it any easier to figure out where to start.
How could she win this battle when she barely knew what she was facing?
With that thought, she deduced it would be crucial to her success to find out what she was really up against.
Alissa didn’t know much about Senectus Subita.
In fact, she had the feeling nobody did.
It was almost as if everyone considered it to be a forbidden subject.
She had the idea that people believed not bringing it up would make it somehow less tangible.
This entire city had always accepted it as an irrefutable reality.
They assembled their lives around this one thing that had always been part of them, instead of questioning it.
There was a group of people in town who believed Senectus to be a blessing, a sign that one was chosen by the greater power to be sacrificed, and in return, they would keep the fields fertile, the hunts bountiful, and the weather pleasant.
Alissa grunted at the thought of that. She had always despised them, those who would celebrate the passing of others as a graceful sign of divinity. Now that Dhalia was about to be damned by the same wicked fate, she despised them all the more. Dhalia was only a child, not a sacrifice.
But Alissa never believed in that. No, she didn’t believe in any of the myths she heard when she was little. How could she, when no theories ever mentioned the threads of life and death she could see glowing around the victims?
A sound from the kitchen threshold interrupted her wandering thoughts. She was taken aback for a moment when her eyes settled on her daughter’s figure. She had almost forgotten that Dhalia would be forever accompanied by that entangled mess of black and white.
“Good morning, honey.” She smiled, trying to hide her distress with a gentle kiss on the girl’s forehead.
“Hi, Mommy.”
“Did you sleep well?”
Dhalia nodded, joining her mother at the table. “Do princesses exist?” Her head twisted sideways in curiosity.
Alissa frowned. “There are no princesses in Bryniard…”
After seeing the instant look of disappointment on the girl’s face, indulging her child’s fantasies seemed to be Alissa’s only option when life was already so damn hard. She shrugged, rectifying the situation. “Perhaps there is a princess somewhere beyond these walls, honey.”
“What about the monsters?”
“Well…” She glanced at the ceiling for inspiration. “Maybe the princess has the power to control all the monsters, and they can’t hurt her.” Alissa was entirely out of her comfort zone, saying things she never believed in to avoid upsetting her daughter. “Why do you ask, honey?”
“I had a dream of a princess. She had silver hair and blue eyes. Her dress was so beautiful!” Dhalia sighed, grabbing a bite from a loaf of bread, the one that was meant for her mother.
Alissa kept her smile on her lips as her stomach rumbled. She would never deny her daughter food, even when that often meant she had to go days without a proper meal herself.
Alissa was one of the two hunters of Bryniard.
It was her father who taught her to hunt on a particularly chilly night almost fifteen years ago.
Before that day, Alissa had never ventured into the woods at the edge of town; it was too dangerous for children to be there unaccompanied.
Her first memory of this moment defined who she was meant to be for the rest of her life.
She held the bow and arrow in her small hands, her slight body almost giving way to the weight of the weapon, more than half her size.
She still remembered the sound of the arrow slicing through the wind right into the squirrel’s chest, the look in the animal’s eyes when the last breath came out of its lungs.
The dark little eyes stared at her as if they had been betrayed.
When its heart beat its last, Alissa cried desperately.
She wished she could give its life back, but it was too late.
There was no saving a life she had ripped apart herself.
Her father only gazed into her eyes, his large, rough hands squeezing her shoulders in sympathy. “You have to be strong, my child. We only do this to survive.”
Anyone would think that after the way Alissa sobbed at the killing, her father would dismiss her and do the other butcherous tasks himself, but that day, she had to do it all.
She had flinched at the sound of the little bones breaking and the warm blood, so much blood, dripping from her hands while she skinned it.
She would never forget how slippery its body felt while she removed the organs, the way it looked like a completely different creature without all the fur.
Alissa asked herself then whether she was any different from the terrible monsters who lived outside the walls in the tales she often heard.
Even now, Alissa hated hunting. She loathed the killing, the skinning, all of it.
But she never resented her father for it.
If anything, he had given her the means to survive in her parents’ absence.
Hunting was all she knew how to do; it was what kept her and Dhalia alive.
Standing by the animals’ dying bodies, waiting for the moment their innocent souls were gone, she would seek strength in her father’s words and whisper the prayer she had learned from her mother so long ago.
Alissa had decided earlier that day that the best place to start her quest would be Bryniard’s apothecary shop, where Mr. Hamit worked.
It was not because she missed the old man or because the last of the heartburn potions she bought from him was working its way through her digestive system.
To be honest, enduring the eighty-year-old man’s bad temper was not her favorite way to start the day.
However, the fact that he was the oldest person alive in Bryniard and the owner of the only apothecary shop was enough to overlook his unpleasant demeanor.
Alissa wore her brown pants and a white long-sleeved shirt cinched at her waist as she walked inside the shop, carrying the only bag she owned on her shoulder.
Her eyes fixed on the counter, where a man with a cigar hanging between his lips was busy writing on a sheet of paper.
The bell above the door rang as Alissa entered, prompting a grunt and a deep rolling of eyes from Mr. Hamit.
He stared at her over round-framed glasses perched on the tip of his nose, his dark brown skin contrasting with the sparse, thin white hair on his head.
The strong scent of smoke, old furniture, and mint invaded her nostrils as she reached the counter.
If she were ever taken to the apothecary shop blindfolded, she would instantly know where she was only by the unpleasant, familiar smell.
“You again,” he said.
Her eyes widened in response.
“You can’t expect me to welcome you with open arms after last time.”
Alissa had hoped he had forgotten her last disastrous visit, but it seemed that shattering an entire case of potion vials was not so easily erased from memory.
“That was an accident. I already apologized!”
Mr. Hamit raised his eyebrows, skeptical, and she felt the need to apologize again. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rabbit.”
It was Dhalia who first called the old man Mr. Rabbit, not in jest but simply because it was relatively common for such young children to mix up words.
That was the day Alissa laughed the hardest. She laughed until the air in her lungs faltered and her stomach ached.
From that day on, both mother and daughter embraced Mr. Rabbit as his official name, though Alissa had never made the mistake of calling him that to his face.
She blushed, noticing her slip-up, but she held the smile of a child begging their parents for something. A smile that clearly stated she had come with intentions Mr. Hamit might not get too excited about.
“What do you want, Miss Kriegen?”
“I need your help with something.” Alissa opened her bag and grabbed a small notebook and a quill pen from within. The man’s eyes instantly narrowed, but he let her speak without interruptions to satisfy the sudden curiosity that took over him.
“I have some questions for you.” Her smile grew wider by the second, as if by smiling, the chances of Mr. Hamit helping her increased. It might have worked with other people, but for this man in particular, it could have been the other way around.
“Questions about…”
“Senectus Subita.” Her smile gave way to hopeful eyes.
“No.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her in boredom.
“Please, Mr. Hamit.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I beg for your help, sir. It’s important.” The urgency in her voice might have been apparent to him because his face softened for the briefest of seconds.
“Okay, I’ll answer your questions. With one condition.”
His eyes were mirthful, and suddenly, Alissa was scared of what he would ask of her. Still, she would do anything to save Dhalia, so she voiced her willingness. “I’ll do anything.”
“I don’t want you to sell Mr. Dreit venison for the rest of the year.
I can’t stand any more of that idiot bragging about how venison seasoned in wine and spices is his favorite dinner menu.
” The old man grunted at the recollection of Mr. Dreit’s smugness and snarled in disgust, “That rich bastard.” His right hand slapped the counter in anger, and Alissa assumed there was some banter going on between the two.
She thought it best not to mention that her chances of hunting deer this season were close to zero; she agreed instead.
“We’ll see how you like your venison now, asshole,” he murmured to himself with an evil smile on his lips.