by Colt, K. J.
On day four, Uncle Garrad’s fever subsided, and he managed to haul himself up into a sitting position and take some leftover leek soup. ‘Thank you,’ he said after slurping up the last of the broth. Holes had replaced previously smooth skin, and a red blotchy rash covered his upper body. ‘I must look horrible. Like a monster.’
I patted an unmarked spot on his hand. ‘The scars will heal.’
He looked at me with hopeful grey eyes. ‘Yes, they will. But this isn’t over. More will come. But not today, and not for a while.’ He reached out and squeezed my hand before shuffling back under the covers and closing his eyes. ‘But the worst is over.’
The window in my parents’ room had always been boarded. The only windows without boards in our house were small ones like in the attic and kitchen. Without ventilation, the air in the bedroom grew stale. To mask the putrid smells, I took some of Mama’s prized rose and lavender oils and sprinkled them delicately all over the house. The freshness of the air put a smile on my face.
Hours later, footsteps drew my attention from my reading, and I looked up to see Uncle Garrad standing tall in the living room. He walked over, lifted the ends of my hair, and sniffed them.
‘You smell as bad as I do. Our baths are long overdue, don’t you think?’
‘Yes. You need to bathe.’ I paused. ‘Uncle, I tended to you too much. You must wash my disease from your skin.’
He frowned and looked away. ‘Were you scared?’
‘Yes,’ I whimpered.
He held out his arms, and I went to him and crawled up on his lap. He hugged me tightly while gently stroking my head. I’d never seen him that bad before, but that was because Mama and Papa kept me from seeing it. They worried it would upset me to see him sick, and they’d been right. It was dreadful.
After a while, there were no tears left, and he set me back on the ground and stood. ‘Let’s take a bath. You first.’
We had extra stores of water in the backyard, and since the day had turned to night and our yard was fenced in, I decided to take the risk. I took the key, turned the lock in the barricade door and slowly stepped down into the darkness.
Numerous dark and shadowy objects waited for me in Mystoria, I fumbled my way through them, trying not to cringe when my fingers found something wet. Oil. I wiped my hands on my dress. The night air made me gasp as I pushed the back door open and walked outside.
The next inhale of freezing air made my chest ache, and I ducked at the sound of two women laughing and a barking dog, but the sounds were far away. The town called to me, promising mysteries and adventure—how I longed to explore the world. But I shook my head and concentrated on rolling the barrels of half-frozen water into the house and across the floor of Mystoria.
Uncle helped me get them up the stairs. ‘Thank you,’ he said, taking the key from me and locking the door. That key went back in his pocket, as did his hand, which stilled under the fabric of his trousers. His light brown eyes examined my face. ‘Bet your parents don’t realise how trustworthy you are. You didn’t give one thought to escaping, did you?’
Truth was that I had thought about it. I’d thought about it a lot.
‘It would be better…’ But the last few words caught in his throat, and he coughed and spluttered. His face turned a dark pink, and his eyes watered.
‘Don’t talk,’ I said.
He tipped his head in agreement. Uncle Garrad shuffled to our large tub that stood on one side of the living room and tipped in some icy water. We set the hearth to blaze hot, hung several pots of water over the searing flames and waited. Uncle Garrad lugged the large pots to fill the bath. Steam gathered like marsh fog.
My muscles ached. A yawn escaped my lips, and before I knew it, my uncle had undone the lace at the back of my dress. I placed a hand around his shoulders to steady myself while he loosened my long plaits and removed my clothing.
He scooped me up into his large arms, and I was careful to avoid his sores—not for fear of touching them, but so I wouldn’t hurt him. The warmth of the water moved past my skin and heated my bones.
Uncle Garrad added salts and sage, stirred with a large stick, then stepped away to stoke the fire. When he returned, he brought soap and lathered his hands. He swished them in the water. Suddenly, he stared into my eyes, and something caught in his throat as he tried to speak. He swallowed and then froze, darting his eyes to the bath as if he were guilty of something.
‘Uncle? Are you well?’
He shook his head. ‘Yes, I’m well, Adenine. Each time is worse than the last.’
I grabbed the soap he’d left on the side of the tub and rubbed it against my skin. I recited the bathing routine Mama had taught me long ago: face, hands, under arms, between legs, and feet.
Uncle Garrad returned with a flask and gulped the contents. ‘Adenine, do you love me?’
‘Yes, Uncle.’
He slurped some more, continuing to stare. I recognised the flask; it was Papa’s. I knew it contained ale, and I became afraid that Uncle Garrad would get drunk. He set the container on the table and began to undress. I hadn’t quite finished washing, so I began to hurry.
‘Do you mind if I get in?’ he asked.
‘But you’re all dirty,’ I said. I didn’t want to take a bath with someone who smelled and looked as bad as he did.
‘There’s enough water for us both.’
I nodded reluctantly, not wanting to upset him since he’d been so sick lately. Once in the tub, he sat right beside me, and I shifted away.
‘My fingers are pruning,’ I said and held up my hands for him to see. As I stood to climb out, he brought a hand down on my shoulder, forcing me to sit again.
‘I need your help, Adenine. Will you trust me?’
My heart thudded in my chest. Something was wrong. But I did trust him, and my uncertainty overruled my fear. ‘Very well.’
He pulled me onto his lap and hugged me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be hugged so tightly by him; even Papa didn’t hug me that way.
‘This is just a way to show love,’ he assured me.
His words smoothed the sharp edges of my fear; I’d always felt safe with him. His breath was hot on my neck, and I could smell the staleness of the ale.
Then he started massaging my shoulders, which felt good.
‘I want to—’
He took me off his lap, turned me around and pushed me against the back of the tub by my shoulders. He rested his knee between my legs, holding me there…he started to shake, and then he sobbed.
‘Uncle? What is it?’
He released my shoulders, but then took my ankles and pulled me towards him.
‘No,’ I said, struggling. ‘Let me go.’
His hands moved to grip the outsides of my thighs, but I thrashed around and he lost his grip.
‘Keep still!’ he cried, holding me harder.
Tears stung my eyes. Water splashed everywhere, and I couldn’t escape my terror. It was like he wanted to hurt me. Punish me. I thought of happy things like butterflies, princesses and pretty dresses, snow bears, and the hunters of Ruxdor.
An arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me out of my uncle’s grip. My eyes opened to see Mama. She was back! But she was upset, angry. Her face scared me.
‘Get off me!’ I heard Uncle Garrad yell. ‘Look at me. I’m going to die.’
Papa had him in a headlock. Mama draped her long black hair over the side of my face, preventing me from watching.
A gap in the strands showed Father holding my uncle’s head down in the tub of water.
‘Papa!’ I screamed. ‘Don’t, Papa!’
Papa pulled my uncle’s head up. Both men had gone bright red, and my Papa’s eyes blazed like an angered bear’s. ‘This is unforgiveable,’ he shouted at a volume I’d never heard him use before. He unsheathed a dagger and stabbed my uncle in the leg.
Uncle Garrad cried out and his leg spurted red. Blood. Spreading like wildfire across the water’s surface, curling and dancing into
an awful pink soup.
‘Mama!’ I shrieked, watching the red inch closer to me.
As she lifted me up and over the edge of the tub, my arm bumped a bucket of boiling water balanced on the bath’s frame. Hot water sprayed onto my face and I howled in pain.
Mama cursed, wrapped me up tight in a blanket, and took me into her bedroom. She clutched me to her chest, rocking and humming one of my favourite songs. I buried my face into her sheepskin cloak.
Papa’s voice boomed through the house like thunder. ‘It’s men like you that made them turn against us.’
There came a bang and a crash.
Papa and Uncle Garrad’s voices grew fainter, and I heard a door slam. Mama hummed in my ear, and I strained to hear the conversation.
‘No, Ardonian!’ came my uncle’s voice, a slight whisper that caressed the walls, tainting them with his anguish.
Mama covered my ears with her hands, and I heard nothing more.
When all was quiet, Mama finally let me go and whispered, ‘Stay here.’
Fear and coldness caused me to shake from head to foot. My parents’ bedroom remained untouched by the roaring fire in the kitchen hearth, and it was dark, too. She’d left me alone, and I didn’t want to be alone.
Mama and Papa were shouting from the other side of the house. I rocked back and forth, hugging myself.
‘… they’ll know about her… she’ll be taken away...’ Mama was crying as she spoke.
‘Blinding… save her… Capacia,’ Papa said.
‘…innocent!’ she screamed.
I blocked my ears with my fingers. After a few minutes, I relaxed my hands and heard silence. I crept to the door and placed my ear against it. Nothing.
Unable to stay in the shadowy room any longer, I went into the living room. A smear of blood trailed from the tub to the storeroom door. I whimpered as I stepped quietly towards the room.
I touched the door handle and froze. If Papa became as angry with me as he had with Uncle Garrad, he might hurt me, too. I shook my head. No, Papa wouldn’t do that. He loves me.
Remembering Papa’s morning hugs gave me the courage to turn the knob and open the oak door.
CHAPTER FOUR
UNCLE GARRAD LAY AMONG THE buckets of his own waste. In the middle of his chest, among the scars from his sores, was a gaping dagger wound.
‘No,’ I said softly, weakened by the horridness of the scene before me.
‘Capacia,’ Papa said before quickly covering his brother’s body with a silk-threaded rug.
Mama picked me up and rushed me from the room, holding my head down against her shoulder.
‘I want to see him,’ I said. ‘Let me see him.’
‘Hush, Adenine.’ She took me up the stairs to my attic bedroom and cradled me in her arms as I cried.
‘He’s been sick, hasn’t he?’ she asked after a while.
I nodded. My face felt raw and swollen. My eyes stung, and there was a strange pressure in my head.
‘The whole time?’ she asked.
‘Four days,’ I said along with an escaping sob.
Mama set me down on the edge of the bed and moved to kneel in front of me. ‘And you took care of him all by yourself?’
‘Yes.’ I took steadying breaths.
She kissed the backs of my hands and then cradled my face. ‘You’re so brave. I’m so proud of you.’
‘What did I do wrong?’
Tears gathered on her lower lids. ‘He wasn’t well. When people are sick, they do desperate things.’
I’d always been a good girl for him, and I’d tended to his sores. We were friends.
‘I hate him,’ I said.
‘And so you should.’ Mama turned her head. ‘I’ll be right back. This time stay here.’
‘Yes, Mama.’ I didn’t want to know what was happening anyway.
Banging and crashing continued into the night. Mama and Papa were fixing the mess I’d created. The way Uncle Garrad had held me down in the water, like he’d wanted to drown me, it felt like my fault. At least now that he was dead, that horrible disease wouldn’t bite him anymore. Had I infected him? It would explain why he hated me.
The house quietened. I slid under the bedclothes, closed my eyes, and drifted off to sleep.
Thump. Someone was in my room. The lamp was out. I couldn’t see. The person grabbed me and covered my mouth with a foul-smelling cloth.
Overwhelmed by thick fumes, I sank into nothing.
My head throbbed. The memories of yesterday were blurred, untouchable, like dreams. Disoriented, I was almost convinced I’d imagined the whole thing.
That confusion turned to terror when I couldn’t open my eyes. They were stuck together. It had to be eye-gunk, a common affliction where the eyes wept and crusted for several days. I’d contracted it before. The thought calmed me until I felt the soft skin of my eyelids. There was no crusty covering, no weeping puss, only strange bumps and what felt like pieces of thread sticking out from the corners of my eyes.
I can’t pry them open! I screamed so loudly that my ears rang.
A door banged against the wall, and someone restrained my hands as I picked at my eyes.
‘Stop it!’ Papa said. ‘You’ll make yourself bleed.’
After a few more moments of struggling against his strong hold, my arms ached and I gave up. He used that moment to tie my wrists behind my back, though he used something soft, like rags or a scarf.
‘You’re not being punished. Everything is well,’ Mama said, scooping me up in her arms. Why didn’t she untie me? ‘You’re safe in your room. Safe with me. Last night, you burned your eyes, remember? We knocked over that bucket of boiling water and it splashed into your eyes. Your eyes will heal one day; you’ll see, and you’ll be happy again. I promise. Always trust your mama. Be strong now.’
‘Where’s Uncle Garrad? Why are you here?’ I said, feeling confused because I was sure Mama and Papa had left for Old Bow for a month.
‘All is well,’ Papa said, leaning over me so close I could smell his oily scent.
‘Take this,’ Mama said, and put a spoonful of something icky in my mouth.
‘A few minutes will do the trick,’ said a voice I didn’t recognise.
‘Uncle Garrad?’ I said at the stranger.
He didn’t answer.
‘Uncle…’ I began but grew groggy. He couldn’t leave. He had to wash his hands at least. He couldn’t take my sickness…
The sounds in the room elongated and distorted. Time slowed into a heavy twisting that absorbed my discomfort and spread peace through my body.
‘She’s calming. Thank the stars,’ Mama said as I drifted into a dreamlike state.
What time was it? What day was it? I lay in bed listening for the sounds of night, of day, anything to distract me. The music from the market drifted in through the window, so I knew it to be somewhere between first rise and sunset. My eyes itched, and when I went to scratch them, pain shot through my tightly bound hands. I thought back, trying to understand the recent events.
Mama had said I would see again one day. Until then, I would cling to the hope of her promise.
Uncle Garrad was gone. There was a place in my mind where the memory was, but I couldn’t get there. It was like knowing a word but not being able to recall it, as if it were being held just beyond my reach to tease me.
Panic gripped me, and I thrashed and struggled, trying to rip my hands from the ties. After straining for some time, I weakened. My forehead cooled, and strands of hair stuck to my face and tickled my eyelashes.
‘Mama!’ I screamed. ‘Mama!’ I stopped to listen.
There were no footsteps moving up my stairs; no movement in the house at all. I rolled to the edge of the bed and tried to remember where all the furniture was. Placing two feet carefully on the ground, I stood, then hobbled forward until I bumped against the far wall. I pressed my back to it, tracing my fingertips across the rough surface of the wooden slats, and edged to my door and played with
the knob.
It was locked.
The dryness in my throat and the racing of my heart made me unbearably restless and agitated. I kicked back, slamming my heel into the door. ‘Let me out!’ Pain shot up my leg, but I kicked it again, harder.
‘Papa!’ I screamed. Someone finally came up the stairs and put a key in the lock; the door banged into me.
‘Ouch,’ I said.
Hands moved me aside, then grasped my upper arms firmly to guide me back to bed.
‘Papa? Is that you?’
‘Yes. I’ll untie you, but you mustn’t touch your eyes.’
In a desperate search for comfort, I nuzzled into his chest. He reached around, his fingers warm as they fiddled about my wrists. When my hands were free, I flung them around his neck, smelling his scent. ‘I love you, Papa.’
‘I love you too.’ His tone was full of regret, and he hugged me back tightly. But with his affection came the rush of a frightening memory. Uncle Garrad had held me in the exact same way just before…
I reeled back, falling through the air, and then bang. I had hit the floor. Other memories rushed to mind: Uncle Garrad holding me down, Papa attacking him, blood everywhere, the pungent stench of the storeroom.
Papa picked me up, but I couldn’t bear the intensity of his grip on my waist and so I lashed out. ‘Let me go.’ My hand collided with his face.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked, securing my wrists, a clear note of fear in his voice.
‘I don’t like it. He hurt me, Papa.’
His strong arms went around me, but this time they didn’t squeeze; they were suspended, gentle, firm but not restraining.
The roughness of his stubble was on my cheek. ‘He’ll never hurt you again. You’re safe. You hear me?’
But how could I trust him after he had killed my uncle? How could I trust another adult again?