The Tradesman
Page 5
them never speak of it, but Alba starts always arriving at the start of the week, never going more than three weeks without coming by. That is why Roderick begins to panic when the summer comes and over a month passes without him seeing her.
“I’ll trust whatever decisions you make,” Roderick says to his foreman as he hands him the keys to his estate. “I’m not certain how long I will be gone for, but we can meet when I get back about how things have gone in my absence.”
The two then clasp hands, and Roderick gets onto his horse and rides north. That is the direction that Alba headed in the last time they parted ways. A couple of people on the coast, alchemists he recalls, asked her to fetch certain flowers and roots that are common to the foothills near the mountains. It seemed simple enough. What could have gone wrong?
When he arrives at some villages near the foothills, Roderick starts asking around about her. After a day of searching, he finally is able to talk to someone who knows something, a cook at an inn.
“Yeah, she was here a week ago,” the cook confidently says. “She was wanting to know about the different passes that lead up to the Lower Valley. Said something about rumors of a rare flower growing in one of them. A pink one.”
“Do you remember the name of the pass?”
“Yeah, the Eagle’s Walkway. Why?”
Roderick doesn’t answer him, instead walking out of the inn disheartened as he hops back onto his horse.
‘Why couldn’t you just tell her the truth?’ he laments.
As he darts toward the pass, the many dangers that would have awaited Alba circle in his mind. Steep slopes and cliffs surround the roadway. Flooding is common, especially in the late spring and summer, and can come from nowhere. That is not to mention all of the wild beasts that could prey on her.
Roderick beckons his horse up the rocky paths, his eyes continually shifting from spot to spot looking for anything even remotely suspicious. As he gets higher, he becomes nervous about the amount of moisture in the ground, which makes it difficult for even his horse to move without slipping.
Suddenly, his heart stops, and he quickly dismounts.
Near a steep-sloping mountainside lies a satchel, the same one that Alba always has with her. Lying with it are the scattered petals from old, dried up flowers. Lightly-pink ones. Roderick steps cautiously beyond them, following a muddy slide mark in the ground. His hands shake. His whole body trembles. He doesn’t want to look over the edge because he knows what he will see. Slowly, he leans forward, and there she is.
“Alba!” he cries out, but receives no response.
Scanning the steep hillside, he finds an area he can glide down to get to where she has fallen. Carefully, he works his way there and then slides downhill on the loose rocks and dirt that form the topsoil. Stepping sideways to control his slide, he slowly approaches her. Once he is almost there, he throws his weight against the mountainside to stop just a few feet from where she lies unconscious but breathing.
“Alba,” he says more calmly this time, “I’m here to help you.”
Her eyes shift beneath her eyelids as she faintly hears him. Roderick places his hand in hers, squeezing lightly. She tries her best to squeeze back.
“Rode… is … is that you?” she manages.
“Yes, I’m here,” he answers through heavy, exhausted breaths. “How long have you been here?”
She doesn’t reply, but he guesses that she would have no idea anyway. The way she lies suggests that she has hardly moved since her fall. Her head is badly banged up, and her body, too, has cuts all over it. The bleeding seems to have stopped, but she is covered with several large bruises.
Roderick glances up and judges the fall to have been several hundred feet, not that she dropped that entire distance. The top of the cliff is only thirty feet or so from where she likely hit. Her body then tumbled all this way before a break in the slope brought her to a stop. Considering the remaining thousands of feet she could have rolled, she is very lucky.
Alba’s mouth opens slightly.
“I was… dreaming about you,” a faint smile forms at the corner of her mouth.
Roderick smiles back, though it is hard for him to do so without also feeling the agony of his weeping heart.
“What was the dream about?” he asks as he deftly places his hands beneath her, hoping that she is too out of it and numb to feel the pain of her broken body as he lifts her.
“We were… in… your garden…” she winces as she speaks, each pause a deep breath sounded with pain.
Tears stream down Roderick’s face as he carries her up the hill. He can tell that each step he takes is her misery. Each time he slips and jostles her, his soul agonizes knowing that any misstep he takes must feel like torture for her.
“You… kissed… me,” she continues, as though despite her pain she knows that her words give him the strength to keep going. “I… let you… and I didn’t… stop you…”
She doesn’t say anything else before Roderick gets her to the top, where he lays her gently. She is still breathing, but more weakly than before. He cries, feeling helpless to save her. That is until he again notices her satchel and the lightly-pink petals scattered around it.
“I’ll be right back,” he whispers to her, getting up and rushing over to search the remains of the flowers.
All of them are withered and dried up. Roderick doesn’t know much about medicine, but he does know that when plants are dry and withered, they lose their potency. He will need fresher flowers to give her the best chance, if there remains any chance at all, and he knows where to find them.
He returns to Alba’s side with the satchel, which is soft and made of animal skin. Within it, he finds that one of the flowers is encased in glass. He removes it and places the satchel beneath her head as a rest, then resting the glassed flower in her hand.
“I love you,” he says, kissing her on the cheek.
The place he had broken down, the place where he had planted the seed, is not far from where they are now. Roderick saddles back up and prompts his horse on. After a swift ride, he dismounts and runs off of the trail to where the bush would be.
To his surprise, it is not the size it once was, and much of the plant has withered away. Only a small portion remains green and full of life, and from it grows just one last flower. Before he picks it, Roderick runs to the elevated pile of dirt next to the plant. He will need something that is buried there as well.
The ground is still moist, and he finds it easy to dig with his hands. Frantically, he begins to uncover the supplies, tossing everything aside that is not what he is looking for. Finally, he locates what he seeks, a metal pot and stand for boiling water over a fire. He rushes over to the plant and plucks the last flower from it, mounting his horse and returning to Alba, who lies just as he left her.
He quickly searches for and finds some dry wood and kindling and places them by Alba’s side. Removing flint and steel from his horse’s pack, he then starts a fire, emptying his canteen into the pot and waiting for the water to heat up. Once it is hot enough, he begins tearing up the flower petals and mixing them in.
“Please let this work,” he mumbles. “I don’t know if I can go on without her.”
“Yes… you can…” Alba quietly interrupts, reaching her hand out and weakly grasping Roderick’s.
The words seem to deplete the rest of her strength, and she falls back into her daze, releasing her grip on Roderick’s hand.
“No, you have to let me give you this,” he cries, pouring the water into his canteen and pressing it to her lips. “Just hold on a little longer.”
She resists at first, seeming confused as though she doesn’t know what is going on or who is trying to get her to drink.
“Just take little sips,” Roderick instructs as simply as he can. “This will make you better.”
She slowly sips until the canteen is empty, but this does less to calm Roderick down than he had expected. The flowers are only a myth, after all, and she never tol
d him what the doctor had found. Maybe it ended up being nothing. Maybe that’s why she kept the flowers and didn’t do anything with them, not wanting to ruin their mystique for him.
The hours come and go, and little changes. Roderick lets the fire die down but then rebuilds it as the sun sets. Alba drifts into an even deeper sleep, one he is unable to rouse her from. He lies down by her in the night, but cannot bring himself to sleep, focusing only on the rising and lowering of her chest.
‘If I can hear her breathing, then there is still hope for her to come back,’ he tells himself.
As the sun lifts into the sky and shines its light on Alba, Roderick notices some things he hadn’t been able to see in the orange light of the fire. Her bruises have faded substantially. Some of the smaller ones have even vanished entirely. Several of her cuts have also begun healing over.
“Hey,” he excitedly whispers to her. “You’re getting better.”
She doesn’t respond or react to his voice. Despite the brightness of the morning light, she remains in her slumber.
‘She’s not out of the dark yet,’ he reminds himself.
He then determines to get her carefully out of the mountains as soon as possible. Thinking quickly, he makes a trip to his cache of supplies, constructing a crude stretcher with boards and ropes, which then fasten to the horse’s saddle, and adding layers of soft fabric and cushion to make it more comfortable.
“I’m sorry if this hurts you,” he tells her,