The Plague Diaries

by Ronlyn Domingue

  GrandBren bought me an archery set. Come try it with us, Harmyn said. She had the bow over her shoulder.

  I blanched, reminded of the hunt for the deer and for me, then fumed, annoyed at their amusement. As I opened my satchel to find my notebook, I said to her through the silence, I need to be alone with my father.

  I’m going to the water closet, she said, which I knew Father heard because he nodded.

  With a gesture, I told Father to sit down. I handed him one of the two pencils I kept with me.

  Broke the old bowl. Sorry, I wrote.

  Father looked at the space where it had been. His expression conveyed surprise tinged with sadness. Too broken to mend? he wrote.

  Yes. Want to talk to you. I’ve been reading through Mother’s diaries. Found record of your engagement, marriage, note you wrote when she was pregnant first time, I wrote.

  He seemed confused until the memory swept in. His smile was reflective.

  What do you remember? I wrote.

  I was so happy with the first. Hopeful. I was older than your mother. The wait for a child was longer for me, he wrote.

  How was she?

  Nervous. She had never cared for a baby. Didn’t know how she’d manage. Didn’t sleep well. Nightmares. Otherwise healthy.

  And when he was stillborn? I wrote.

  Father rubbed his brow. He wrote, I felt as if someone had gouged a piece out of my heart. No indication anything might be wrong. So shocked.

  And she was—?

  Numb for some time. As if she couldn’t believe what happened, he wrote.

  The second?

  Confess, I was more cautious, more protective of her. Still happy. Your mother—brave, reassured me all would be well. Nightmares again. Acute aversion to many smells, unlike the first. Wouldn’t wear her perfumes.

  Looked forward to the baby?

  Father’s pencil hovered above the paper. She did, in her own quiet way.

  And when he came blue?

  Why do you want to know this? he wrote.

  I’m curious, I wrote.

  I was devastated. Wrong to feel so, but felt she betrayed me.

  I forced myself not to look at him. Not once, not a single instance, could I remember him speak an unkind word about her.

  Why? I wrote.

  I wanted a –s– child. Never believed physicians who said mental effort bad for women, but she worked as much as ever. Did that cause harm? Don’t know. She knew how I grieved the first, he wrote.

  That S. He struck it out, but the truth slipped. He had wanted a son. I pulled the notebook toward me.

  Did she? Grieve? I wrote.

  She wasn’t one to dwell, he wrote.

  Did you see their births?

  No. But there for yours. INSISTED.

  Did you see them after?

  Father nodded.

  What did they look like? I wrote.

  This is morbid, he wrote.

  I want to know.

  Perfect, but blue.

  Why?

  The cords. The first, wrapped round his neck. Second, a knot like a fist, he wrote.

  An electric pain ripped from my navel through the tip of my tongue. I remembered what she’d called my brothers—Noose and Knot. I thought of Aoife and the twins she bore, whom she did not want and did not name in her manuscript.

  You named me. Did you name them? I wrote.

  Duncan. Riley.

  His head dropped as a tear inched down his cheek. I tried but couldn’t touch him. A cold sweat broke through my skin. Noose and Knot. Duncan and Riley. My brothers who never were.

  Harmyn returned, narrowed her eyes at me, and slipped next to him. I almost told her to leave us—my father, our loss—but I knew the moment she rested her small hand between his shoulders, she would soothe the wound, ripped wide open.

  AS SOON AS WORD CAME that Nikolas was a day from his return, I sent a message, through a winged courier, which read “Harmyn will be at Father’s the night of the ninth.”

  I received no reply. When I tidied the cottage that afternoon, I anticipated he might not meet me if duty kept him to his office. As I built a fire to hold off the evening’s chill, I realized I’d never spent a night alone there. When I was a little girl, I’d imagined what it would be like to live as Old Woman did with the plants and animals as my sole companions. My quest allowed an exploration of that solitude. I found it suited me; I wished for no more than the peace it offered. However, once Nikolas accompanied me, I found comfort in his presence and conversation, and now, there was far more to our friendship. Perhaps I wasn’t the lone creature I thought myself to be. Still, a part of me longed for the rigors of study and work that engaged the mind. These thoughts chased one another in circles as I made the bed, a meal, a cup of tea.

  This I preferred to what had begun to stalk me. Fragments of memory, dark and unwelcome.

  A storm swept into the woods, but I didn’t notice until the lightning drew my attention. I turned back to reading Old Woman’s plant lore and startled when a hand brushed my shoulder. Nikolas was soaked, but I hugged him anyway. He kissed me through a rumble of thunder I could only feel. He held the left side of my face when he noticed the bruise, then patted my shoulders when he realized I’d shrunk.

  Two bottles of wine were on the table. We went to the shelves. He took two cups as I grabbed bowls and walked to the hearth. I ladled the soup I made. Being near the fire was warmer, so I spread a blanket for us to sit there. When I turned to look for him, he was naked from the chest and wrapped in a quilt below. He handed me a cup and settled beside me. Unbidden, I thought of Fewmany’s hand, a crystal glass, the red wine.

  We ate and had a second cup before he reached for the obligatory notebook.

  Good we timed our departure from Ilsace with your prediction. Were back in Ailliath by the equinox. I wasn’t prepared for the silence. One adviser said he hears his heartbeat & coachman said he endures a constant ringing, like a Tell-a-Bell which won’t wind down. The afflictions, how quickly they came on. I woke up the first morning with a light bruise on my side & a feeling of weight on my shoulders, both worsened to the point they are now. How are you? he wrote.

  You’ll see later, I wrote.

  How is Harmyn? Your father?

  H still singing, with friends in woods most days, very tired at night. Father has hunched back & it’s hard for him to keep his head up. Everyone at FM Inc. working half days now. Father said they’re exhausted, trouble with concentration, I wrote.

  What I saw coming through town, I wasn’t prepared for. As if survivors of a war walk the streets, he wrote.

  Yes, that’s what it’s like, I thought as I reached for the bottle. I filled our cups to the rim. Nikolas put his aside and stroked my arm. Loneliness welled up through my body. The force made my palms and soles ache.

  I held my breath until I suffocated the urge to cry and banished the fragment I glimpsed. My little hands, reaching for my mother.

  The notebook lay open at my knee. I wrote, Since you lost your hearing, have you noticed unpleasant memories coming back to you?

  As he nodded, his eyes were hard.

  I realized I hoped he’d say no, even expected him to. Nikolas, I thought, was always so cheerful and well liked, someone I would have called happy. No doubt since his youngest days, everything possible had been done to please him. A desired son, a treasured heir, given a square place in the center of the world. He had always been surrounded by friends and, as I’d seen at the castle, attended by staff and servants who had affection for him.

  I would have thought you’ve had a nearly perfect life, I wrote.

  Wrong, he wrote.

  How so?

  Not now.

  He closed the pencil within the notebook. As he unbuttoned my dress, I almost pushed him away. What was to happen didn’t require all of me to be unclothed. He stopped to look into my eyes. He’d felt my resistance. I nodded with my consent. When my dress’s bodice fell away, he swept his palms along the
lengths of my arms. I pressed my lids shut as the hollow feeling claimed me.

  He traced his hands along my shriveled arms with curiosity, with affection, but not disgust. When I finally glanced at him, he pressed his palm against my cheek as I tried to look away. I drifted my fingertips to his sides above his waist, carefully, but he bent to his right as if I’d struck him. I almost pulled back, but I knew if he’d braved my hideous limbs, I must return the witness.

  I guided him to turn to the firelight as I eased the quilt away.

  “Oh, Nikolas,” I said into his deaf ear.

  A swollen red streak striped his side as if he’d been whipped without restraint. I followed its margin, felt its furious heat, kissed the flawless skin above the wound.

  He drew me up by the shoulders. He kissed me, too, above and below my bruise. We held each other until love was stronger than the pain.

  WEEK 17

  DIARY ENTRY 11 OCTOBER /38

  I wonder what the children were thinking when they went to bed last night. Who was frightened? Who was relieved? Harmyn assured me it was gentle, like going to sleep. We went to see about Julia and Lucas. There they lay side by side in my old bed, Flowsy tucked next to Julia and a blanket folded at Lucas’s neck. Mrs. Elgin was fretful, her hands fluttering. The neighbors will help look after them, and I said to send word if I could help, too. I mentioned to no one I paid the Elgins’ rent through next summer, for the children’s sake.

  The streets are so deserted now, not a child in sight. This only makes our shared desolation worse. The hearing loss—we are all so insular. Caught within ourselves. The only means to reach someone now is to look, or to touch. We don’t want to look too long or too closely, afraid of what we’ll see. We aren’t supposed to touch, not beyond a handshake or quick pat; affection is not for public spectacle.

  I don’t know how I’ll endure this for two more months. What I miss. Nib scratch. Birdcall. Wheel crush. Twig crack. Footsteps. Music. His voice. My own. The third-phase sleep—I welcome it. Blankness, no thought, empty. Unless we dream, unable to wake up. At least now when the ogress comes for me, I can escape when I open my eyes.

  From the Plague of Silences Recollection Project Archives, Selected Excerpts

  Diary No. 101. Male, 23, liveryman

  Even here in Gomfrey, owners selling horses for bargains to stables out of Rothwyke. Nags go off to the sleight market. Not all beef is beef these days. Us at the margins, maids and laundry women, laborers, men like me, it’s becoming dire. The ones who pay our wages, more and more working half days or not at all, so they can’t keep us. I have three horses left. Mr. N— behind on his payment and won’t sell the horse so I split the feed from the other two to keep the three alive. Can’t let Ruffian starve. At least I have enough to eat and the lot owner lets me keep a proper bed in the stable since the landlord evicted me.

  Diary No. 307. Male, 54, physician

  I wouldn’t have believed this if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Throughout Rothwyke, the children sleep. The adults who can hear say they make no sounds. Of the ones I observed, I saw them twitch and shift. I feared if there was no movement at all, the risk of bedsores was imminent. Whether they can hear again, I cannot say. They don’t respond to loud noises. Physical sensitivity is compromised. I discerned no response when they were pricked, pinched, touched with a warm poker or cold, or sprinkled with water. Mysterious, eerie. The ones I’ve seen still have the afflictions from the prior phase. Perhaps this will heal in their rest. Alone, when my imagination takes on a life of its own and my own troubles get the better of me, I wonder if we might fall into an eternal sleep, never to awaken. Ridiculous, of course. The animals recovered. So shall we.

  Diary No. 415. Lord Humphrey Sullyard

  Haaud’s continued occupation of Uldiland bodes a coming invasion into Thrigin. Most of us believe that is likely, if not assured. For now, because of the mountains, Thrigin can hold the shared border with Haaud, but that could quickly change with any movement coming from Uldiland. To the north, Giphia fell. At last. Haaud now pushes farther into Kirsau. Ilsace is sending troops across. They are next if Kirsau falls, and it would only be a matter of time for us. Ailliath remains neutral, signing no pacts, giving no aid, keeping minimal troops at our border. I can’t imagine how we’ll hold off much longer. The king must see reason here.

  We await several towns’ revised population tallies, detailed to the household, sex and age and occupation, and plans for ration storage, ward gardens, etc. Places the envoys visited on the way to and back from Ilsace have been most prompt to respond. Lord Milton thinks they were reassured—that is, the mayors, leaders, and subjects—to see the king himself, to hear from him, his written words at least. They took him at his word then, regardless of past frank correspondence, that they must remain vigilant. The plague, should it strike them, requires their preparation. The king was correct to insist on this.

  Interview No. 124. Male; age during plague, 17; current occupation, porter

  There were five younger than myself. I didn’t sicken with the second phase when they did. That upset them. They didn’t think of me as grown. I didn’t either, but Mother said I was always beyond my years, and she wasn’t surprised I got my wisdom teeth at sixteen.

  The next oldest, they avoided me, fifteen and fourteen they were. The youngest were ten, six, and three. My sister, the one who was ten, she was a delicate girl. She didn’t like seeing everyone disfigured. She was also terrified of the sleep, but I didn’t know this soon enough. We’d been told of the sleep when we could still hear, at a ward meeting. The adults were expected to tell the children, but my parents didn’t want to frighten the younger ones. The ten- and six-year-olds heard from friends. I didn’t know this at first. Not until the end of the second phase when L— cried every day and I convinced her to tell me what the matter was. I was never so happy we could write some as I was then. She believed she would fall asleep and never wake up. I told her no, that wasn’t true. She would sleep the way bears do through winter, then wake up very hungry. She laughed at that, then cried with relief.

  I was glad the children slept before the rest of us. As the weeks went on—shops and offices closing, the hobby and athletic clubs not meeting because so few went. Almost everyone had tetchy moods. The smallest thing could cause a turn. Drop a package, brush a passerby, wait in a stalled line. There would be shouting although no one could hear and pushing and brawling. Public drunkenness like never before. Attacks, assaults, vandalism, as if men went mad. People falling to the ground for no reason having tantrums, crying, sometimes staring off at nothing. Do you remember?

  I was glad to fall asleep at night. It was such a deep sleep, not like it was in the first phase. As if a force were pulling me down, into a cave, under water.

  WEEK 18

  AT THE START OF THE eighteenth week, Harmyn asked to meet in Nikolas’s office. She didn’t wait for us to sit down before handing me a letter. It read

  Dear Secret and Nikolas,

  I could tell you this, but I decided to write instead. I had to think about what to say first.

  When I told you I saw little flecks of light on people and inside of them? With the children, the spots have started to look like shiny holes.

  I’ll try to explain what I’ve seen and how I understand it.

  I want you to imagine a hole like the hollow of a tree. The tree is Now.

  Step through the hollow. On the other side, you’re in a time and place you may or may not remember. This is Then. A past.

  In Then, you might find something that was taken from you, left behind, or given away. Not like a coat or a toy, but that could be there, too. Sometimes it’s a belief, or an emotion, or a thought. No matter what it is, the missing piece is a part of you.

  A person has many holes. Those all connect Then and Now. None is separate from the rest. See in my drawing how they overlap.

  You are probably wondering, what about the shadows?

  Shadows cover the holes b
etween Now and Then, moving between them. The shadows are thought and feeling, and they know something has been lost. When the shadows get stirred up, that’s when they can spill into what I call the poison.

  I should give you an example.

  You’ll remember when Aoife told how Wei glimpsed what happened to her father and the little girl on the tree. Wei’s hand got bloody when she touched Leit. That’s because she went into the space between Then and Now and saw her father at the very moment of the wound. Then, he left behind his blood and part of his voice. What was taken from him was his faith and hope. A shadow took the place of what he lost and covered the hole between Now and Then. So, if he thought about the horrible thing that happened or something reminded him of it, that’s when the shadow came out into Now. He could hold it back, but Aoife felt it as darkness—as poison. She was right to be afraid he’d fail to contain it and hurt someone. That shadow was very very strong and full of rage and guilt.

  Not everyone has shadows so dark and dangerous, but all shadows hold pain. All shadows want back what’s missing to make things whole again.

  As our children sleep, they are slipping into the holes between Now and Then. To them, it feels like dreaming. Sometimes they are only dreaming. Sometimes dreams mix with memory, or it’s memory alone.

  I should tell you, though, not all holes lead to Then as they’ve known it. Some of the Thens are what could have been. And some Thens are for people, ancestors, who came before them, and they can see into these. There are many realms which exist at the same time, too. Inside of everyone, there are different Nows and Thens, even futures. The children are going to these places. Some will stay there and won’t come back. The ones who do return won’t be the same.

  The adults are next, soon enough.

  Harmyn

  I finished reading before Nikolas. Harmyn stood with her arms behind her back. Whatever questions I could have asked, none of the answers would have explained the Mystery. What she told us was beyond comprehension, more fantastic than any myth or story I’d ever read. In all the moments I’d felt cautious around her, I never feared her, but I did then. My gift with creatures and plants was extraordinary. Her gifts were supernatural, the extent of them unknown.