“Huh! No, I don’t think we have the capacity to treat this condition,” said the doctor at one hospital, shaking his head. I sighed: Another attempt had ended in ignominious failure.
A mage in another country was very excited by me: She grabbed me by the shoulders and exclaimed, “This is incredible! What is going on with your body?! Let me study you!”
I got scared and ran away.
In another country, a shady group tried to get me to buy a jar. “This jar, you see—you buy this jar, and any illness you have will be healed on the spot!”
I took fright and ran away again.
After that I went to all sorts of countries, asking not just mages and doctors but all kinds of people about what might be done.
As I went hither and yon, time passed, until it had been nearly a year. Finally, I found myself in a town square in one country in particular. I was sitting on a bench when I let out a sigh. “Looks like I’m out of funds.”
The inside of my wallet was looking awfully lonely. That’s what happens when you spend a year trying to get medical treatment instead of working…
“I’ve got to do something different, or I’m going to be in trouble.”
I needed money if I was going to travel and visit people. But my wallet yawned open in front of me, hungry for cash. I put my head in my hands, the very picture of a distraught young woman.
“I guess I’d better put my search for a cure on hold and get a job instead.”
Luckily, I happened to be staying in a relatively large country just then. The more people there are, the more workers places need. I grabbed every HELP WANTED poster I could find in the square and started hitting up potential workplaces. It was a big country. It wouldn’t take me long to find a job.
“I’m sorry? Thirty years old? Take your jokes someplace else, kid.”
Uh…
It wouldn’t take me long at a—
“Look at you! You’re just a baby! I’d go to jail if I let you work here.”
Ooookay.
This wouldn’t take lo—
“Is this your idea of a prank? Get outta here!”
Gah!
It had been several days already.
“This is not good,” I mumbled to myself.
No, not good at all. Before I knew it, I was scraping the bottom of my wallet. Although I tended to forget it these days, my body was still fourteen. I could act as mature as I wanted, but I would inevitably look like a child. So what if I told them truthfully that I was thirty years old? Nobody would take my word on it and give me a job.
But as it turned out, nobody would give me a job if I lied, either.
“I’m fourteen, sir.”
“Scram!”
When I tried claiming to be my apparent age in interviews, of course I was promptly chased out. An office was no place for children.
“I’ve got to do something different, or I’m going to be in trouble,” I said to myself, repeating those same words from a few days before—and sitting in the same place. But now, things were even more serious than they had been the first time. At this rate, I really was going to end up having to camp out.
I never thought of going back home. “I’ll just try a little bit longer to find some work…”
I wasn’t a kid, after all. I had brought this problem on myself, and I wanted to deal with it myself. I got back to my feet with a mixture of panic and resolution.
Which was when somebody patted me on the shoulder. “Hullo there.”
I turned to see a man I didn’t recognize standing there. Now, who could this be?
“Who are you?” I asked guardedly.
The man smiled, radiating kindness. “You’re the young lady who’s been looking for work recently, aren’t you? You’ve got a lot of people talking.”
I gave him a hard look and didn’t say anything.
The man shrugged. “You can skip the intimidating glare. I’m just here to offer you work.”
“O-offer me work?” I asked, all my vigilance evaporating. I was saved! “You…you really mean that?” I tried to continue to look suspicious of him, but I was walking on air.
I fired questions at him one after another: Where was this job? What did it entail? Why had he approached me?
The man’s brow furrowed. “First, I have a question for you. You’re young Riviere—is that right?”
“Yes,” I said.
What about it?
In the face of my renewed dubiousness, the man said, “A matter of prudence. I try to exercise the utmost caution, especially when dealing with youngsters like you.”
“Why?”
“Well, it would never do to kidnap the wrong child.”
“Huh?”
What was he talking about?
I felt the shock, the confusion. When the smile vanished from the man’s face, I knew I had been caught in a trap—but by then, it was already too late.
Everything went dark.
“Eeeeek!” I cried.
Someone had put a cloth bag over me from behind, all the way from my head to my toes, and just like that, I was stuck. I struggled and fought in the darkness. I shouted. But there was no sign that my voice made it outside the bag.
“You’ve got a lot of people talking,” I heard the man say. “There’s a noble from another land who’s especially interested in your body. He hired me to bring you to him.”
Lucky you, finding work just when you needed it.
From somewhere beyond the darkness around me, I sensed the man laughing.
They must have put me on an open wagon, because when I was let out of the sack, the sight that met my eyes was a great blue sky spreading overhead, and the country I had been in growing steadily smaller behind us.
“Hey, you think she’s really thirty years old?” asked a well-built man with a knife at his hip and a hard look in his eyes. He directed his question at the driver while he expertly bound my hands with rope. I assumed he was the one who had shoved me in the sack.
Then he turned to me. “Let’s get one thing straight. You get any funny ideas, I’ll kill you without a second thought.” A nice, easy-to-understand threat. Then the well-built man got up and went back to sit by the driver.