While trying to administer some medicine to a barely conscious patient, Nel muttered to himself, “It seems the key is whether the eyes have turned red or not.”
“Why do you say that?” Misha asked as she overheard him.
“The parasite that causes the Red Eye plague normally lives symbiotically with the arkle,” he explained.
“Symbiotically?”
“Yes. It’s a bit of live and let live. The parasite takes root in the gut of the arkle and reproduces there, feeding off of the nutrients the bird takes in. And though we don’t know exactly in what way, it seems the arkles also benefit from this relationship, since when we tried removing the parasite from the birds, none of them survived for more than a year.”
Misha’s eyes went wide. The deadly parasite they were fighting so hard against was actually a benefit to its original host?
“Unfortunately, we haven’t figured out why exactly the birds died. It’s a difficult experiment to carry out. Arkles are large birds whose habitat spans continents. It’s basically impossible to reproduce that habitat in captivity. Being trapped in a cage causes them stress, which damages their health. It’s hard to distinguish deaths caused by captivity from those caused by a lack of the parasite. The wild arkle population isn’t that large either, so we can’t just capture them in large quantities, and the northerners worship them as messengers of the gods, so...”
“Grandpa Nel, you’re going off topic! And you’re taking too long! That’s not what I was asking about!” Misha cut him off from his tangent. Normally she would happily listen to his endless stories, but now wasn’t the time. “Why won’t the medicine work once their eyes turn red?”
Blinking in surprise at being interrupted right when getting into his story, Nel came to when he saw Misha’s serious expression, and he shrugged. “It’s a sign the parasite has spread to the patient’s head. They’ve made their way into the patient’s eyes, causing the blood vessels to burst. If there’s that many in the eyes, then there are almost certainly many more already wreaking havoc in the brain. The human brain is a very complex thing. With the knowledge we have now, there’s nothing we can do once it’s damaged. That is probably why the patients lose consciousness as well.”
“They damage the brain...” Misha repeated, putting a hand to her forehead.
The brain was known to be delicate and complex; it was widely accepted there was next to nothing known about it. The one commonly understood thing was that the brain gave instructions to the rest of the body. Depending on what part of the brain was damaged, victims could lose the movement of their arms and legs, the ability to swallow, or even their memories. There were all sorts of strange symptoms that could result from brain damage.
“Mom said people had figured out a little bit about what part of the brain controlled each part of the body...” Misha murmured, recalling stories her mother had told her.
Nel’s eyes widened. “Leyas was still talking about that kind of stuff after leaving the village? She was much like you, listening to anyone that would speak with her. Perhaps one of them was bragging about a discovery they made and she picked it up. Even so, I’m impressed you remember.” Nel shook his head as he muttered, thinking back to old times, before returning his attention to Misha. “That’s correct. The brain is like the control tower of the human body. For some reason or other, it seems the parasites are drawn toward it. What for? What do they do once they arrive? We’ll have to keep researching to find out.”
“Mom said that all living things want to have children and continue their bloodlines. So from arkles to karas and then to people... If the parasite does well in the arkles, maybe they don’t mean to infect others?” Misha murmured to herself. “That means they probably don’t intend to kill the people they infect, right? Because if their host dies, they won’t survive either.”
“Misha?” Nel called her name as she sank into her own head, but there was no sign she heard him. A strange light shone in her eyes as she stared blankly into space. It was almost as though she were looking into another world.
“They start in the stomach and go through the liver and kidneys to eventually build colonies in the lungs. They then travel under the skin until they reach the head. What are they trying to do?” she continued, sinking deeper and deeper into the sea of her thoughts.
“Misha, come back!” Nel shouted with a loud clap right in front of her face, snapping her back to reality with a jolt.
“Huh? What?” She blinked dumbly.
Seeing her back to normal, Nel let go of a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He had seen that light in her eyes before. Back when he was young, there had been a woman who had been celebrated by the People of the Forest as being a reincarnation of one of their ancestors. She had developed numerous new medical techniques and technologies, creating all sorts of new medicines. When she had been deep in thought, the look in her eyes—as if looking at nothing yet seeing something—had been exactly the same as he had just seen in Misha’s. And it had always terrified Nel when he was younger.
He’d been afraid the woman was losing herself in exchange for seeing a deeper truth of the world. In her lifetime, she accomplished many times more than any of the other People of the Forest. She also died many, many years younger than any of them.
“I thought you might still be a bit young, but...” After staring into the confused Misha’s eyes for a while, Nel finally spoke again. “Misha, could you help me with my work for a bit?”