Chapter 33
THE skittish woman led them to one of the outlying inns they had pounded on the doors of earlier. Luckily, the old inn still had a usable stable attached. The woman quietly told them to put their horses inside the empty stable before looking in all directions and slipping inside her home. They followed her once they settled their horses.
“…Pardon me, but are you not allowed to go outside?” Yuki questioned the woman as soon as she set foot inside her home. No one needed to observe much to tell the woman was sneaking around.
The woman froze like a deer in the headlights. Vigo cut into their conversation bringing Yuki back on point as well, “Save the question and answer session for later. Show me to the patient. Yuki, please assist with the medicine preparations. Miss, please show me to the patient’s room.”
“Ah, okay…”
“I’ll be borrowing your kitchen,” Yuki said to the woman’s back, picking up the water bucket she had left on the table near the door.
Preparing and combining the medicine had become one of Yuki’s primary jobs during their travels. She used an iron pot to boil the water and divvied it up among several cups. In one cup, she poured Rifaenotis’ powdered medicine concoction and stirred it with a wooden spoon.
She took the cup with the mucilaginous, brownish-green liquid smelling of mugwort and iron and the cup with boiling water in one hand each, and followed Selena to a makeshift sickroom. Crammed into the large room once used as a parlor were ten occupied beds.
“…So many sick…” Yuki muttered.
Vigo didn’t look at Yuki as he systematically examined every patient and methodically gave orders. She hopped to action following his command to give medicine in order from the youngest to the oldest patients. Five of the infected patients consisted of the woman’s husband and four young children. The other five moaning in beds were neighbors who had contracted the Ten Day Fever and left their homes to keep their families from infection.
They finished the basic medical rounds and moved to another room in the inn when Vigo broached the subject, “Now then, won’t you explain the situation for us?”
The woman, who introduced herself as Corona, nodded and finally told them what they wanted to know. After Prince Lucat liberated Fol from Isis’ control, Fol’s citizens who had successfully escaped before his take over—including Corona and her family—returned from where they had taken refuge.
Upon their return, Corona and her family rebuilt their abandoned home and opened their spare rooms to the public as an inn. A month afterwards a sudden surge in the Ten Day Fever spread the illness to people from all over the land. The Fol Castle Knights began claiming the inauspiciousness of the late-night hours were suspected of worsening the spread of the Ten Day Fever, and suggested people shouldn’t go outside at night.
This initial suggestion rapidly escalated to them proclaiming those who go out at night are the source of the Ten Day Fever and would be appropriately punished for their crimes. Pressure from the Knights and fear of the rumors had the townspeople limit their trips and work outside to the morning and afternoon. Once evening fell, they firmly locked their doors and held their breath hoping no ghosts or sick would come knocking.
Yuki shook angrily on the couch as she listened to Corona’s explanation. “What the heck?! Where do they get off telling people they can’t walk around at night?!”
“Yuki, in Aridol nighttime is considered the Witch’s Hour and is abhorred,” Selena explained, patting Yuki on the head to placate her.
“The Witch’s Hour? Just because of a superstition it’s okay to restrict people to their houses even though there’s no proof they’ll get infected by walking at night?”
“Nor is there proof they won’t get infected,” Vigo interjected. Yuki swallowed her words. “I don’t believe it either. But it means there are people who do believe it here.”
But that’s a fear the Fol Knights are instilling in the people. Is it all right for them to be spreading this rumor?
Yuki still didn’t understand what role Knights played at large in Aridol, but if they were similar to an elite class of police, their acknowledgement of the Witch’s Hour being inauspicious meant Adolunde held to such a belief.
Even if Adolunde isn’t preaching that belief, that’s how most people see it here. Yuki wanted to speak her thoughts, but her dry throat wouldn’t move to form the words.
Adolunde declared nighttime as the Witch’s Hour. Refuting their beliefs was a dead-end. Even if someone took the time to listen to her deny their beliefs, they’d only look down their nose at her and snort. What did a foreigner know?
Exhausted mentally and physically from being the only healthy person caring for her family and five other sick people, Corona slumped back in her chair after finishing her long-winded story. Not wanting to put any more strain on her, Vigo ceased with his questions and told her to rest. Corona protested resting when she was the only healthy family member to assist the doctors, but Vigo told her his instructions to rest were his explicit orders as the doctor she wanted to assist.
“We’ll borrow the adjacent room. We won’t leave and cause you any problems. Relax.”
Tears filled Corona’s eyes. She bowed her head and muttered her gratitude ceaselessly.
✦ ✦ ✦
TWO days later and Yuki had rarely left their single room in Corona’s inn. The inn was the best in the area with a bathroom furnished in every room, removing the need to leave for anything but food. Yuki offered to help cook, but after a good night’s rest Corona was back in action and wouldn’t hear anything of it.
“Absolutely not. I cannot impose any further on the kind doctor and his assistants. You must rest!” Corona declared and shooed her out of the kitchen. From then on, she brought all meals to their rooms further eliminating any need to leave.
The nighttime restrictions placed on the town forced Corona to busily move about all through the day to finish her business outside before nightfall. On the most part, it was just Yuki’s group and the sick patients. The only time any of them left their room was to check on the patients. Aside from leaving the room twice a day to give the patients their medicine, Yuki was bound to a moderately sized room anguishing away the sudden free time on her hands.
I shouldn’t be wasting my time sitting around right now.
Were it possible, she wanted to examine and help everyone locked away in their homes. She brought it up with Vigo, but he shook his head.
“Their country is probably doing something for them,” he dismissed the idea.
She rocked back and forth with her knees hugged to her chest on the bed. Until now, her days were marked by hurried travel or action. She was always racing against time. Now time passed by slower than a snail. Her race had been halted to slug speed despite the need to rush not having been addressed. While the constant travel had its own tiring aspects, for some reason she felt far worse and languid sitting in the inn doing nothing than at her most hectic moments.
I don’t want to be stuck with my thoughts.
“Yuki, what are you traveling to Adolunde for?” Selena’s words from the night at Touta’s encampment came rushing back, haunting her. “Think only of yourself and your Knight.”
Stop it. Yuki clawed at the invisible seal on her chest. I don’t want to think about it.
Thinking would unleash the anxiety and worry tightly stuffed in the box buried in her heart.
Don’t make me imagine it anymore.
She shook her head in denial. Until now, every second was too hectic, difficult, and stimulating to think about anything other than immediate survival. Every day brought encounters with new people, prayers for those walking the line between life and death, and earnest entreaties to console people from taking their own lives from despair. Her words of comfort meant for the patients were actually for her all along.
“You will be okay. You will absolutely be okay,” she told the dying patients.
It’s okay. Luca will absolutely be okay.
“If you lose yourself to despair, you’ll only worry the person you’re thinking of,” she consoled the family members of patients.
If I lose myself to despair, I’ll worry everyone around me.
“They will definitely get better!”
I will definitely see him again.
What did Luca say the last day she saw him? Even his words escaped her. They were terribly hurtful, scarring words too. Once said, they deeply stabbed her, and yet now she found they eluded her. She remembered being infuriated with herself for being useless. Efforts to be accepted and acknowledged ended in futility. Ashamed, she ran away. Each time she remembered her childish escape, she wanted to disappear.
Luca…
Why was it every time she decided not to cry anymore the unstable lid on her feelings flipped over and let her anxiety loose?
“Don’t worry. I will definitely come for you,” she repeated over and over to the rhythm of her rocking.