“Oh, Misha just reminded me of something. The people up north say that arkles don’t make good food because there’s a distinct smell to their meat. I thought that maybe the parasite adds that smell, causing other animals to dislike preying on them. Rotten meat begins to smell rather sour, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, so that’s the advantage the arkles gain from the parasite?” Misha’s eyes went wide, recalling their previous conversation.
“Maybe. It wouldn’t explain why removing the parasite causes the bird to die, though, so there is likely something else,” Nel replied offhandedly, getting a small frown from Misha.
“And if it’s supposed to stop predators from eating them, it’s a bit odd that the smell isn’t strong enough for any of the patients we have to be giving off that smell,” Ryne said. “Perhaps there simply aren’t enough of the parasites to give that much smell when the host is that much larger, or the larger host caused the parasite to change in some other way...” He scowled, and after a few more moments of thought, he threw his hands up. “Unfortunately, this is entirely out of my wheelhouse. I’ll leave the conjecture to Old Man Nel. Can I proceed?”
Being a surgical specialist himself, Ryne had been called in to conduct the autopsy. Anyone among the People of the Forest would have experience doing these kinds of dissections, but as someone specialized in battlefield surgery, Ryne’s experience far overshadowed the rest of theirs. In truth, Ryne was the one leading the current operation.
“Very well. Let’s take a look at the brain next.”
“Got it.” With clean, precise movements, Ryne worked his scalpel and chisel to open a portion of the skull.
At first glance, there didn’t appear to be any damage to the brain. It seemed perfectly healthy. But as the brain was removed from the skull piece by piece, all those watching were stunned. A tremendous number of fully grown worms had collected in the inner parts of the brain.
“What the...?” While the Redford doctors stood with mouths agape, the People of the Forest scowled.
“Do you know what part of the body this controls, old man?” Ryne asked.
Nel thought for a moment. “Breathing and the nerves, I believe? I think this part over here is emotion and personality... Unfortunately, this is not my specialty,” Nel said as he pointed to places where there were clearly more parasites. But no amount of scowling at each other would get them the answers they were looking for.
“I guess we’ll have to take records and send them home, huh?”
“It appears that way,” Nel agreed with a sigh, beginning to collect the worms on a plate once more.
“What are you doing with those?” Misha asked as she saw him dividing the parasites up in their lidded glass dishes.
“The fact the same insects are gathering in different places may mean they are serving different functions. We divide them up by the place we found them so we can investigate later. For example, do you smell that same odor from these ones as you did the ones in the lungs?” he asked, holding out a dish toward Misha.
“No, there’s nothing,” Misha said after giving the dish a sniff.
Nel gave a smug grin. “Exactly. By understanding the differences between the parasites, we learn more about them. By learning about the illness, we arm ourselves to defeat it. It’s not like we know everything there is to know from the beginning. It takes plain old elbow grease to get there.”
After adding a note that there was no smell from these ones on a piece of paper, he pasted that slip of paper to the lid of the dish.
“Without our experimental tools and drugs, we can’t do much ourselves. The man bringing the next batch of herbs is supposed to be bringing that stuff with him. Until he arrives, we’ve got nothing to do but collect samples.”
“So you’re not actually just playing around,” Misha blurted out without thinking, getting a raised eyebrow from Nel.
“What was that for? You’ve been spending too much time with Miranda, haven’t you?” he muttered, not stopping in his work.
“Would you mind helping? This is going to take a while,” he said, handing Misha a set of tweezers and a glass dish. Though hesitant, she eventually sidled closer and started helping them harvest the little worms.
While they worked collecting specimens, Ryne sat beside them sketching on a piece of paper. A glance at his work showed that he was drawing pictures of the heart, lungs, liver, and brain. His diagrams had such detail and quality to make Misha feel like the real organs had been reproduced exactly on the paper. She was quite surprised to learn her uncle had such a talent for drawing.
After they were done, he carefully and precisely returned each of the organs to its rightful spot in the body, then covered it with white clothing decorated with elaborate embroidery. While her attention was captured by the elegant design, which reminded her of the embroidery on her good luck charm and her clothes, Nel stepped up to the side of the operating table and bowed his head low.
He then began to sing in a language Misha had never heard before. The strange chanting lasted only ten seconds, and when he finished, Ryne continued where he left off. And then another, and then another. One by one, all of the People of the Forest in the room repeated the same verse over and over.
And then suddenly the singing stopped, replaced by a crisp ringing sound. At some point, Nel had pulled out a small rod with a number of metal plates dangling from it, swinging it around to make the clinking noise. He shook the rod over Hannah’s head, once, twice, three times. Then Nel chanted something again quietly, as if to hide his words among the sound of the metal plates, bringing an end to the ritual.
Later, Misha would learn that this was a special funeral rite passed down among the People of the Forest. It held feelings of gratitude for someone whose life would help in their research of disease and wishes for them to find peace in the next world. The embroidery added to the clothing of the deceased was meant to carry the same message. But at the time, neither Misha nor the Redford doctors knew any of that. They simply bowed their heads in silence, letting the song echo uncontested in the small stone room.
“When the arkles feed their baby chicks, they likely pass the insects or their eggs on. Alternatively, perhaps the parasite is already present when the eggs are laid. They probably spread through the karas during egg-laying in the same way. It’s also possible that when the karas rub against each other in courtship, the parasite is shared among adults. Now Misha, here comes the question. People do not feed their young mouth-to-mouth like birds do. So how does the parasite behind the Red Eye plague try to spread between humans?”
That last question from Nel stayed with Misha for a long time.