by C B Samet
“No.” I sipped my tea. The warm lemon flavor lingered on my palate. “I just wondered why news of it seemed so slow to travel across the continent.”
She frowned. “Well, of the ten continents, they aren’t even in the top half of the wealthiest.”
I gaped at her. What did that have to do with anything?
Natalie sat straighter. “We organized a relief effort. All the university students donated supplies. Mama transported them to Kovia—and we met ambassador Goran, and had breakfast with him and his family.”
“Oh, how pleasant.”
“Imagine the advertisement,” Bart continued, his mind still dwelling on the concept of my under-utilized transport abilities. “‘Holidays by Abbey.’ Oh, you could truly spice it up with ‘Champion Holidays.’”
I shot Joshua a look as I abandoned any further effort at sensible conversation.
“My beautiful wife.” Joshua ran a finger along my cheek, before tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear.
We each lay on our side in bed, looking at each other by the flickering light of the bedside candles. In the other room, behind a closed door, the children slept peacefully. They’d worn themselves out playing at Marrin Beach and filling their stomachs over dinner with their grandparents.
“You’re saying that because we just made love.”
He grinned. Satisfaction emanated from his expression. “That type of physical activity, after a disagreement, is always pleasant.”
“Makes me wish we could extend our holiday.” I knew such a wish to be impossible. Even the few days Joshua had spared meant more patients would be awaiting his return. Before he could remind me of that, I added, “But I know you need to get back.”
Joshua rolled onto his back and positioned his hands behind his head. “It’s difficult being the only magical healer. People, from infants to elderly, travel from across the continent. For every person I heal, magically or naturally, three more arrive. I love helping people, and it may surprise you to know that I gain more satisfaction when I achieve it naturally, rather than by magic. But the cycle can be exhausting.”
I listened quietly. Long ago, I’d abandoned my demands that Joshua find an alternative to using his stone. Constant use drained him, but I finally accepted his passion, realizing his call to healing. The best way to help him—help us—was to support him.
I ran a finger along his bare chest. “I’m happy to be your source of distraction and recuperation.”
“I’ll never say ‘no’ to that.” He reached over and pulled me towards him.
I suppressed a laugh as I straddled him.
He pulled me down closer for a tender kiss. “I may heal my patients, but you heal me.” He brushed a thumb across my lips. “Your love gives me strength. Each night with you is a gift—whether we’re exhausted after a day with the children or making love.”
I stared at him, amazed that after thirteen years of marriage he could still make such a heartfelt statement.
“Though preferably making love,” he added with a boyish grin.
I didn’t have words for how much I loved him, so I kissed him again and made his wish come true.
Summer arrived, with the trees brimming in green leaves and the blossoms of spring gone. The temperature hadn’t turned hot yet, so the children spent long days outside. I watched them, and realized I needed to buy more warm weather clothes for Natalie and Paul, who’d both grown since last summer.
After our usual morning routine of getting dressed and welcoming the household help into our home, I walked with Joshua to the end of our driveway before transporting him to his clinic. From inside the walls, I heard the murmuring of people already waiting outside the front door.
“Sounds like you’ll be busy.”
“Evidence that I need a hospital.” He wrapped his arms around me and gave a squeeze.
As I returned his embrace, my gaze roamed the room. Joshua had expanded the clinic over the years, but judging by the line at his door, more space was still needed—and more healers.
“I’ll pick you up this evening.”
I transported to my university office to prepare for my morning lecture.
An hour later, I stood in my classroom and began my lecture. I wrote a chemical equation on the chalkboard:
3I2 + NH3 —> NI3 + 3HI
I turned to the demonstration table and held up a glass beaker. “This is one gram of ground iodine crystals. I’m pouring it over concentrated aqueous ammonia. While we let that sit and dry, here’s what it looks like when you pour that solution over filter paper.”
The filter paper was secured to another beaker by twine. Dark brown crystals clung to the paper. This pre-prepared demonstration had already been given time to dry. “The dark clusters are the nitrogen triiodide. This compound, in its dry form, is very unstable.”
I pulled out a feather and a meter stick from my demonstration table. After securing the feather to the end of the meter stick, I took two steps back from the table and situated a pair of glass goggles over my eyes. The students, seated in the theatre-style room, were a safe distance from the table.
Gingerly, I dipped the feather into the filter paper with the dry nitrogen triiodide. A loud boom erupted, and a cloud of purple fumes plumed over the table. Gasps of surprise were followed by cheers. As the gas dissipated, I wrote on the board.
2NI3(s) —> N2 (g) + 3I3 (g)
After I dismissed the late morning class, Dean Lariat approached me in the classroom. Her short, gray hair looked disheveled, and her lips were stretched thin.
“Class attendance was abysmal today,” I commented. “I had my big explosion. Chemical reaction of nitrogen triiodide. Usually they all come.” I began putting the beakers and supplies in a crate to take back to my office
“For twelve years you’ve been trying to destroy this classroom.”
I followed her gaze to the charred and scarred demonstration table, the victim of my many experiments.
The last of the students trailed out the door.
She glanced around the room as though a spy might be lurking. “You’d know why students were sparse if you lived in town.”
I placed the iodine crystals in my box. “Enlighten me.”
“A lot of people have fallen ill. We’re closing school for the rest of the week.”
“Closing school?” I’d never heard of such an occurrence.
“People are beginning to panic. Some are leaving the city.”
“What news from the Queen?”
Dean Lariat shook her head. “She’s issued a public notice to stay home and not panic, which naturally means everyone is doing the exact opposite.”
I thought of Joshua, recalling the throng of people outside the clinic door that morning. If “a lot of people have fallen ill” meant an outbreak was occurring, his clinic could be overrun by patients. If people were in a state of panic, as Dean Lariat had suggested, Joshua might need help.
“I need to get to Joshua.”
She straightened. “Yes, that makes sense. Don’t worry about the mess.”
As I gave her a grateful nod, Mal’s apparition appeared by the door. “Don’t go to the clinic, Abigail. It isn’t safe.”
“What?”
Dean Lariat took a confused step back. “I said don’t worry about the mess.”
I looked back at her. She hadn’t heard Mal, since only I could see and hear him. Like almost everyone else in my life, she didn’t even know of his existence.
I gave her a forced smile. “Thank you. I’m going.” I scurried out of the classroom and wound my way through the halls to my office. En-route, the lack of students and professors mulling about the hall created an ominous silence. I shut my office door.
“Mal, explain yourself.” I’d experienced enough of his warnings over the years to know to heed them.
He reappeared, the same solemn expression on his face. “A sickness spreads.”
“What sickness? Spreads where?”
“A plague.” His voice was grim.
“Is Joshua in danger?”
“No. The Queen’s guards relocated him to the castle when the clinic flooded with patients. If you go to the clinic, you’ll be exposed.”
“But Joshua is unharmed?”
“He is unharmed.” Mal lifted his arms and projected a scene for me. He was somehow capable of re-creating images of past events so that I could watch them unfold as if I had been there.
I instantly recognized Joshua’s clinic. Instead of the peaceful, tidy interior I left him in that morning, I saw wall-to-wall patients resting on cots or on the floor. Some had blankets others gripped flasks of water. Some huddled close, together as families, with looks of devastation marring their faces. Some of the patients were flush with fever, while others looked pale and sickly. One woman—ashen, with bloodshot eyes and a bleeding nose—cradled a small, pale corpse.
As I swallowed, I averted my eyes to the ground. The images Mal showed me had no sound or smell, though I imaged if they did, it would be of blood and human waste.
When I looked back, I saw Joshua rushing between patients to administer elixirs and tonics. He looked ragged but focused. He wasn’t using his healing stone. I wondered if that was because he recognized the masses would strip him of his strength if he did, or because he didn’t have an understanding of the illness and therefore couldn’t heal it.
Joshua could heal many ailments, but only through careful study over the years. His stone worked by rapidly helping the body heal through mechanisms he’d come to understand.
As I watched, castle guards entered the crowded clinic. Their pristine blue garments, with silver-embroidered horse and metal vambraces, contrasted with the dirt, and blood, and human secretions that filled the clinic. They were young men and women, eager to serve the Queen, but not hardened soldiers. Since Mal’s scepter absorbed evil, no human wars had happened in over seven thousand years. Aside from minor skirmishes, the guards had little experience with true battle.
Their determined gaze found Joshua. One of the young guardsmen spoke to him, and Joshua looked at the man with incredulity. He signaled around at the patients in the clinic. The guard’s face became stern. He gave Joshua some type of command.
One weak and feeble woman pushed herself to her feet. She spoke through a swollen tongue and ulcerated mouth. I couldn’t read her lips, but she was clearly angry. Others joined in protest.
The energy in the room shifted from silent suffering to heated hostility. The guards’ eyes flickered around the room, and their hands reached for the hilts of their swords.
My mouth went dry, my heart hammering in my chest. I reminded myself that these were prior events and I could take no action to change them. Whatever happened next, Mal had already assured me Joshua was presently safe.
Patients started shoving to their feet—the ones with enough strength to do so.
Swords were drawn from their sheaths.
Joshua raised his hands as he addressed the crowd. I could tell he had tried to provide words of reassurance, but the people didn’t appear placated.
As the guards escorted Joshua out of the clinic, they had to force their way through—physically pushing the mob of people aside. Agitation erupted into anger as the patients continued to protest. The guards grew more protective of Joshua as the hostility in the room escalated.
As the guards shoved their way through the mob, Joshua was ushered into a waiting carriage. Someone on the street—a yellow-toothed man dressed in worn clothing, who looked like he might have walked fifty kilometers to get to the clinic that day—grabbed Joshua’s wrist.
The man spoke, his face a mixture of fury and pleading.
“I’m sorry.” Joshua’s lips formed the words even though they weren’t audible to me. He tried to gently pull free, but the man held tight.
One of the guards punched the man in the face. As he stumbled back, the carriage door slammed shut. The crowd exploded with rage, hollering and banging on the carriage. The horses were signaled and took off with a jolt, knocking those crowding the carriage to the cobblestones.
I turned and looked at Mal. “Merciful Monks,” I gasped. I felt relieved they’d evacuated Joshua—he didn’t have the resources to treat so many—but their evacuation tactics left something to be desired. I didn’t see the other healers who normally worked with him, either. Were they ill?
I complained, “If he was needed urgently at the castle, they could have sent some of their own healers to take his place. They abandoned all of those people. Patients often travel hundreds of kilometers to see Joshua.”
Mal didn’t reply.
I realized his silent imaging of the past still played past events. I turned back to watch the angry mob. They began attacking each other now. Arguments erupted, both internal and external to the clinic. Pushing and shoving escalated to fighting. When one of Joshua’s burners was knocked over, flames spread up nearby curtains. Bottles of chemicals became superheated and began popping, spewing chards of hot glass.
“No! His clinic!”
I watched in horror as people began evacuating. Some stole items as they fled. Others left invalids on the floor. No one attempted to put out the fire.
The image faded and vanished.
I stared at the wall of my office. “The clinic?”
“Ashes.”
I thought of all of Joshua’s books and ledgers and healing remedies. He’d be devastated. He might not even know yet.
I started to ask Mal why he hadn’t told me sooner, but restrained myself. Whenever I asked him this question, he always explained that he could only see parts of current or future events, and the timing was variable.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
My restraint is often short lived.
“You would have gone to help,” Mal answered.
“Absolutely,” I snapped.
“Then you would have been exposed to the illness.”
Mal had been protecting me, again, even when I might have failed to protect myself.
“Where is Joshua now? I’ll go to him.”
“You’re missing the bigger picture, Abigail.”
“What’s that?”
“This is a plague—rapidly spreading, highly contagious, and deadly. You are, as of yet, unexposed. If you go to the castle, you will be exposed.”
If I was exposed, then I couldn’t go to the children without exposing them. Could this illness reach our rural estate? “I need to move the children to safety.”
“Yes.”
“Misty Isles is unaffected?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. You’re right.” I paced my office. “You did the right thing.”
He crossed his arms and arched an eyebrow as if to say: Did you expect anything less than perfection?
“Alright. No need to further inflate your ego. From what you’ve shown me, the disaster has only begun.” I walked out of my office and down the hall.
Mal’s lean apparition walked casually beside me. “Where are you going?”
“To talk to Sunny. I need a history lesson.”
He nodded in understanding.
“But you have to vanish. I lose all credibility when people see me looking in your direction and talking to no one.”
“As you wish.” His form dissolved before he finished the sentence.
7
I found Sunny, the university history professor, in her office with her nose buried in an excessively thick book on the history of sea travel.
I knocked on her open door.
Sunny looked up at me over her reading spectacles. “Oh, Abigail, is it our lunch date? Did I lose track of time?” She started to stand.
“No, no.” I waved her back into her seat as I entered. “You’ve heard about the infection spreading?”
She nodded, pulling off her glasses. “Many students are out and classes are being cancelled.”
I sat down in the chair opposite her desk. “What do you know about th
e—” I hesitated. I never asked Mal the specific name of the plague.
“Omega plague,” Mal whispered to me.
“—Omega plague.”
She straightened. “What? Why do you say that? No one has called it that?”
I was startled by her alarm. “I spoke with someone earlier—”
“Someone tall and dashing,” Mal purred.
“—someone annoying, but who is often right about such things. He hypothesized that this could be the Omega plague. If that’s true, what are the ramifications?”
“Not a hypothesis,” Mal corrected.
I sighed.
Sunny pursed her lips, stood, and walked over to close her door. “Stop saying that out loud.”
“Omega plague?”
“Yes,” she hissed. Her curly brown hair bounced as she shook her head at me. When the door shut, she sat back in her chair. “The Omega plague decimated the continent of Kovia eight hundred years ago. We don’t throw around the name carelessly.”
I frowned. “It’s not as though reciting the name of a disease incurs its wrath.”
“No. But you could insight panic.”
I thought about Joshua’s cremated clinic.
Too late to avoid panic.
“Can you tell me about it? How did it spread? What are the symptoms? How was it stopped?”
“You should take my history of medicine course next semester.”
If there is a next semester.
Sunny continued, “I don’t know if anyone who studied it lived to write about it. Historians think it was viral, but unlike the Jau virus, a vaccine was never discovered. Exposure or inoculation to symptom manifestation is three days. From the appearance of symptoms to the occurrence of death is usually five days.”
Bile tickled the back of my throat.
“Symptoms start with a rash and escalate to bleeding organs—bloody stool and urine, coughing up blood, oozing blood from eyes and nose.”