The four of them sat pensively before the fire, their shadows dancing on the wall each time the flames wavered. A shiver ran through Van’s chest. He’d known for quite a while that something else dwelled within him. Hohsalle claimed it was the disease agents that caused black wolf fever.
“But how could that be?” he asked. “I thought you said the warriors in my body recognized the invading disease agents and killed them. That’s why I survived.”
“Yes, but…” Hohsalle paused as though struggling to find the right words. Suddenly, his face lit up. “Remember when Makokan’s sister came running into the cave where we were imprisoned? She fought ruthlessly. Yet you saved the guard, even though he was our enemy. Why?”
“Because he was still so young. It seemed cruel to kill him. Besides, I knew he was helpless.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. The warriors inside us don’t bother killing disease agents if they know they won’t harm us.”
“Wait a minute,” Van protested. “Whatever this thing inside me is, it’s not harmless. Clearly, it’s changing my body. And Yuna’s, too.”
Hohsalle opened his mouth to respond, only to close it. A few moments later, he was about to try again when Milalle butted in.
“Have you ever heard of the mozufig?” she asked, gazing into Van’s eyes.
He blinked. “You mean the fruit tree?”
“Yes. I thought you might be familiar because it grows in the northern mountains.”
“I am.”
“Have you ever seen tiny wasps inside the fruit?”
Van nodded, wondering where Milalle was going with this. The tree grew wild in the mountains, and the sweet figs often had tiny wasps inside. As a boy, Van had been careful when eating them.
“Wasps lay their eggs in the fruit of the mozufig so that when they hatch, the larvae will be wrapped in nourishing food until they mature and fly away. The fruit makes a perfect little cradle. But it’s not only the wasps that benefit. The mozufig does, too. You see, the figs in which the wasps hatch and grow are both fruit and flower. You’ve seen how narrow the mouth of a fig is, right?”
Milalle drew her fingertips together. “Most insects could never crawl inside to pollinate it. But that’s no problem because the tiny wasps are there from birth. By the time they grow up and fly to another tree, they’re carrying lots of pollen.” With her finger, she traced a flight path through the air. “We tend to see relationships between living creatures only as hunter and hunted—those who consume and are consumed. But there are many cases where very diverse creatures use each other to survive. Whether or not something is harmful simply depends on your perspective. On whether you only see things that threaten your survival as harmful, or whether you see change itself as dangerous.”
Her expression sobered. “You said your body has changed. I think it’s your mind that sees that change as a bad thing. As far as your body’s concerned, there’s no need to destroy the agents of black wolf fever because they’re not life-threatening. So instead, it’s chosen to coexist with them.”
Van stared at the young woman. Her face had the sallow tinge of one who’d just recovered from sickness, yet her eyes were bright and alive. Van recognized that she likely had very rosy cheeks when healthy.
She’s smart. However, her intelligence seemed different, more compassionate than Hohsalle’s, perhaps.
“They may not harm me physically,” Van said. “But it’s unnerving to feel my body transforming. I want to know why this is happening. And even more so, what could happen in the future.”
Milalle nodded gravely. “We can’t say for sure why you and Yuna have changed or what will occur going forward. To help us consider those questions, let me explain a little more why we think black wolf fever didn’t kill you.”
She gestured toward Van’s chest with her hand. “I believe that the disease agents have actually become a part of you. I also think you and Yuna aren’t the only ones.”
Van looked puzzled.
“I suspect that your parents, your grandparents, and all the people of your clan carry these disease agents inside them.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because your territory is in the Toga Mountains, home to the black wolves that destroyed our kingdom.”
Van’s eyes widened.
“Consider it,” Milalle went on. “Did the black wolves ever succumb to that disease? Somehow, they carried the sickness without dying. The same thing happened with humans. Some got sick, but others didn’t. For the Otawalle, the disease was fatal, but not for the Aquafaese. And no one died of it in your homeland, either, did they? Even though the black wolves who carried it lived there in packs.”
Van’s skin prickled.
“I’m guessing the agents of this disease normally live in ticks,” Milalle said. “Infected ticks passed them on to wolves when they sucked their blood. When the agents that passed through the wolves infected our ancestors, who were never exposed before, black wolf fever manifested itself as a fearsome scourge.”
She leaned forward a little. “Yet the Gansa who live in the land where those black ticks thrive never contracted the illness. Although it’s still conjecture, I’m pretty sure your people must be exposed to a weak form of the disease during childhood, giving them a chance to develop the little warriors they need to resist it. This theory would certainly explain why the peoples of the Toga Mountains have lived there for centuries without succumbing.”
Van rubbed a hand over his face. “I see. ‘While the fox goes mad, the pyuika sleeps.’”
“What?”
A deep sense of awe surged quietly through Van’s breast. “The Gansa really are the People of the Flying Deer,” he muttered. He paused to moisten his throat with a sip of now tepid tea.
“In the season when the spark ducks return, the black tick population explodes. The bushes are full of them. Sometimes, ticks attach themselves to foxes and feast on their blood. I’ve seen poor foxes thrashing about in the thickets, contorting from seizures. It’s a pitiful sight. They look as though they’ve gone mad. Yet strangely enough, the pyuika prefer those very same thickets, especially during foaling season. They’ll curl up in them and sleep quite peacefully, even though they’re covered in ticks. My father thought they picked such places to foal because foxes avoid them, which means their foals will be safe. I guess the disease affects foxes but not pyuika.”
Hohsalle and Milalle looked at each other, their cheeks flushed.
“Do pyuika give milk?” Milalle asked.
“Of course. In the Toga Mountains, we’re raised on the milk from our mothers’ breasts and that from the pyuika, too.”
Milalle glanced at Hohsalle, and he nodded. “Go ahead. Ask,” he said.
She turned back to Van and took a deep breath. Her fingers trembled, and she clasped her hands together. “Do the pyuika eat the lichens found on trees?”
“Yes. It depends on the season, but in winter especially. During the mating season, bucks and does eat lots of ashimi. Ikimi, too. I’ll follow them to the edge of a swamp, thinking they’ve gone to get a drink, and find them grazing on ikimi instead.”
Milalle let out a long exhale and cast her gaze at Hohsalle again. Smiles spread across their faces slowly. Van blinked. “Is there something special about ashimi and ikimi?” he asked.
“There sure is!” Milalle beamed at him. “At least, I’m pretty certain there must be. It seems very likely, considering that multiple cases have several factors in common.”
Hohsalle tapped Milalle on the knee, gave her a wry grin, and turned to Van. “You told me that the medicine I used on Milalle in the prison smelled like ashimi, remember?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you were right. That’s actually what it’s made from. Your sense of smell is quite extraordinary, you know. Ikimi can be used to create that medicine, too. Although they look completely different, those two lichens share a common component.”
“Lichens,” Milalle interjected, “are a combination of algae and fungi that coexist in a mutually beneficial relationship. The fungi determine the shape of the lichen. As Hohsalle said, ashimi and ikimi are different species, but their fungi produce a common component from the nutrients their algae makes from light. We discovered that this component suppresses the disease agents of black wolf fever and have been refining the medicine we make from it. It doesn’t cure the disease yet, but we think it has great potential.”
Understanding showed in Van’s expression. “So that’s why you were so surprised when Yuna said the medicine glowed.”
Both of the Otawalle nodded. “Yes,” Milalle said. “To Yuna, the element in those lichens that suppresses disease seems to give off light. Before we were captured, she told me she knew of a place with lots of shining plants and led me to the shore of a swamp that was thick with ikimi.” Milalle gasped abruptly.
“What?” Hohsalle asked.
“I just remembered. That swamp. It was a graveyard.”
“A graveyard?”
“Yes. For fire horses, I think. There were lots of horse bones there. Even in the water. The swamp stood at the edge of the forest, and the trees on the opposite shore had been cut down to make pastureland. That must have changed the ecosystem. But I bet when it was all swamp, the soil on top of those bones was covered in ikimi, too.”
Hohsalle slapped his thigh. “Now it all makes sense!” He laughed and patted the startled Milalle on the shoulder. “I didn’t get around to telling you yet, did I? Before we were caught, I talked with the elder of the Yusula Oma. He claimed that, in the past, fire horses never got sick when bitten by ticks, and neither did people who drank their milk.”
He explained how Kinma dogs were bred and how the burial mound had changed after the settlers turned the place into a watering hole. Van and Sae stared at him as all the pieces fell into place.