Unnaturals (24 page)

Or, Albert could run for her. He was fast.

The horse wasn't in his stall. Of course,the chief had taken him. And Ivy—Ivy was lying in her own stall, moaning and sweating like the humans.

"Oh, gods, oh gods!"

"I hope they hear you. I hope they hear
us.
"

Meliora jumped. Belinda was standing at the stables' door. Her eyes were dry.

"She still lives. Before you have asked. And yes, I sent Nicolas to you. You don't understand, do you? You're not her. I am not her. We are not as strong. Andreas, he—"

"—is not as strong as us. Is not as strong as
you,
Belle." Meliora placed her hands on her shoulders. Belinda was trembling. It wasn't visible, but she was, even though her eyes were sharp. As sharp as old Codes'.

"But I came to tell you not to go yet," Belle said. "The chief is coming, he's out by the Bald Hill. You need Albert."

Mel waited. She checked on old Codes with Belinda, then went to her father's house to get the last of her belongings out and into old Codes' cottage. Last of those, she took her lifeless computer, and her mom's. The chief and old Codes hadn't taken them. Mel had kept them under her mattress.

Once in her hand, her computer beeped. She almost dropped it.

There was a message, though there was, of course, no interweb connection.

Because you disrupt my world,
the message said, an answer to her earlier question.

How?
she wrote back, though she had no idea if a message of hers would go through. How had Nicolas done it?

She put the computer in her pocket. She couldn't wait for a reply because her father was coming through the door.

"You've taken everything, I see." He nodded at the chest with drawers. It was a rough, wooden one. Mom had told her he'd made it with his own hands.

"I need Albert," Meliora replied. She had no time for pleasantries.

"I know." Her father nodded again. "He is waiting, and so am I. Let us go for your venom and flowers."

Us?

"They are not flowers, Dad." She stepped towards him. She even dared to put her hands on his shoulders. "They were flowers once, and they grew under the starlit summer sky, but now they are only a bunch of dry petals and leaves. This is what Stella—she—This is what humans turned the flowers into, Dad. They no longer live. But they can make some humans live.
Some.
"

"My brave daughter." He put an arm around her shoulders. Awkwardly, as if he didn't know how.

And he didn't. When had he last hugged someone who wasn't Mom?

What he knew was how to cut trees and make chests with drawers.

They rode together in the night. The road that had taken her and Mom two days took them only hours now.

In the snow and ice, there weren't even monsters.

"I'll go instead of you," her Dad said when they were close enough that the cottage could barely be seen in the distance. "You don't go in a place like this, my daughter."

He looked determined. He looked, at the pale light of the full moon, as someone from an old feed might look when about to accept his death sentence. He even stood before her, barring her way.

"You don't know how the medicines look, Dad."

"I'll find them. Just describe them to me again—I will go through everything and find them, and..."

"This is of no use, Dad. You don't know how to find them. I do."

"No matter! I will—I will—"

"Die for me? Reveal to Stella that something is amiss? Why? Because you didn't die years ago? Yes, Dad, Mom told me during her sick ramblings! You tried to come back for us, but you didn't succeed because it was too dangerous! I wasn't sure this was true—it might have just been Mom's sickness talking. Now I know—but it doesn't matter! What good will it do
anyone
if you risk your life now!? Stay here. Rest Albert. I'll be back as soon as I can."

He was a big man. Yet, when he stepped away he seemed shorter than a moment ago.

"If you don't come out of that house in twenty minutes, I will come, Meliora."

"You won't. I will come earlier than that." She was already on her way. She had no time for lingering. She had no time for asking Stella for permission, either. Stella had told her that she wouldn't help her any more, and Mel had no time to waste in determining the truth of this.

Mel needed medicines, so medicines she got, then rode back with her father. They didn't talk much.

"I am only letting you do this because of the crisis," he only said. "I won't let you risk yourself again when old Codes is back on her feet or Belinda takes over. You're too much like me. Way too much—but what I told you still stands—don't make waves.
Live.
"

"Yes, Dad," she said. This was easiest. She was thinking of the herbs and venom, and how exactly they must be heated and mixed, and whether it could be done at a fireplace, or if a new fire must be built outside under the full moon. She had no time, or energy, to spare for arguing with her father.

***

She had no time in the months that came, either. The full moon must have worked. Alice and her baby lived. Ivy the mare lived. Even old Codes lived.

Disease could be fought.

So Meliora did. For the whole winter, and even in the spring, when the sun showed its face again and it was time for the village to start picking at the fields again, she fought disease as it felled more and more people from the village. Stella's herbs and venom helped, and not only new mothers.

Mel had feared the herbs and venom would run out, but they lasted the winter. Mel learned how to make them last. They could be either used alone or mixed with other herbs for a similar effect—and old Codes had those herbs dried. Meliora learned about that mixing from a feed she had never read in Lucasta.

The night when Meliora and her father had come back from Stella's house, Mel had run to Alice's house and found Belinda and Nicolas there, with Belinda holding a screaming red creature in her hands and Alice bleeding. Mel prepared and dispensed medicine to everyone—and then came back to her room in old Codes' house to find a message.

A computer message. It said,
I told you, long ago, that I could start the interweb again any moment I wished.

She tried to access feeds. Strangely, she could access some. Not everything. Not nearly everything—but obviously information that he had once stored on the computer he was contacting her from.

But it's an interweb between the two of us only,
she wrote back.

It counts,
she got.

And it did.

She was lucky that he'd stored some of the feeds about healing. Doctor Mel knew how to fix wounds but not how to heal.

I took what I could before I ran,
he wrote to her. They sent messages at night, during those nights when she could not fall asleep despite the day's exhaustion.
I didn't know much about healing feeds, Mel. I only knew they existed. I knew I was running to a place called the City of Life, a better place, and I didn't think I would need them there. But I thought I might need them on the way.

How did you find this place?
she wrote.
And the computer you're writing to me from, did you use it in the village at all before the night I went for the full-moon medicine?

He didn't reply, but she was used to this. He only messaged when he wished, and he didn't wish to message always, or to answer all questions. That was fine. She didn't wish to message always, either, and she knew that he, like her, was short of time. He had to hunt, and to be careful with it so that he didn't kill pregnant animals or animals with babies. He also had to work with the woodcutters and in the fields because too many people were sick and too few able bodies were available. More and more often he also had to act the chief, since the real chief went by himself in the woods or sat by the fire with his head bent and his shoulders hunched.

Meliora still didn't know what a chief did, or where her father or Nicolas went when they disappeared because of chief business, but she had her suspicions.

Elizabeth still hated her. Meliora didn't even remember why any more; she was too busy to think of it. Elizabeth was swelling every day now and sometimes had to lie down and could not work. That was a loss. Anyone unable to work these days was a loss. Then, on the days when she
could
work, Lizzy tried to work harder than anyone, which was also a loss. She might hurt herself or the baby, but she didn't listen to Mel's warnings.

Sometimes Meliora thought that others also hated her—that even Andreas still hated her, though she was the only reason his small son still lived.

Tell me, Nic, does Andreas still hate me?
Mel messaged after a particularly hard day, though she truly had no time or energy to spare for something like this.

For a long time, no answer came. Nic might not even be at home today. Or, he might not want to write to her.

Mel lowered her head on her hands on the table by her plate. Hours later, her computer beeped. She'd left it like this, in the open. She'd not even bothered to hide it and mute its volume.

He does, and he is not alone. You should...go away. You should leave the village soon.

What are you talking about, damn you?

No reply. She threw the computer in the corner, where it beeped in protest, then muted itself. She slept.

***

Spring advanced. The grass grew greener, the sun glowed stronger. The creek, having lost all ice long ago, flowed slower and calmer. The big river started smelling like bog and summer. Or so Nicolas wrote one night. Meliora had no time to spare to go check by herself. The sick wriggled in their fever, the healthy toiled and slowly turned into skin and bones.

Old Codes started waking up for longer than a few minutes. The first night that she did, mist had wrapped the village like a heavy blanket.

"You should not venture out in the street in this," the old woman whispered. "'tis not the time for humans to go out, when the gods send the mists."

"No, Mistress Codes," Meliora said softly. "This is just condensed water, which the sun has lifted from the big lake. No god has lifted a finger for this. No god whatsoever."

Old Codes shook her head. "Don't go out..."

"Shut up, Mistress Codes! If you don't have something useful to say, don't say anything! Drink your broth! Now! You can hold it with your own hands today, can't you?"

Belinda opened her mouth. Even Mati had stopped stirring the soup. Then they both took one look at Meliora and held their tongues. Old Codes started eating.

There was a knock on the door. It was Melanie, Walter's wife, her hands still dirty from digging carrots, her face streaked with tears. Her mother and brother had both fallen ill at once. Meliora and Belinda both left and didn't come back for many hours.

"Back to the carrots," Meliora snapped before that. "No crying and meandering. Carrots, Melanie, then the cheese. The sick need to eat. And tell that husband of yours to move his lazy ass and go chop wood. What does he think he's doing, sitting at home all day yesterday? The sick need fire and food, damn you all! Move!"

It had once been customary for the hunters to rest the day after a hunt. It had once been customary for the hunters to never demean themselves by chopping wood. Meliora knew that Walter was tired. But they all were.

Melanie sniffed and ran.

"You can't order Walter, Mel," Belinda blurted as the two of them ran towards Melanie's mother. "Ordering the men is the job of the chief or his deputy."

"The chief is gone again. I don't know where Nicolas is—and I don't have time to find him, and neither do you or Mati. Besides, you know very well that he'd issue exactly the same order. Why waste time?"

"The men don't like you ordering them, Mel. They aren't used to this. Nic never orders the women, haven't you noticed? Even the chief rarely does. You shouldn't—"

"Then the men had better get used to it! I don't have time to cater to their tender feelings when I'm already catering to their tender guts! Anyone throwing up on me will take my orders!"

Belinda laughed, and a moment later so did Meliora. They were still laughing when they entered the house of the new sick.

They stopped laughing very soon.

They lost Melanie's little brother that day. He'd advanced too far and too quickly. They might still save the mother—if she stopped wailing and trying to scrape out their eyes with her nails. That, despite her being half-conscious, drenched in sweat, and smelling of feces.

"You witches! You evil spawns of the evil cities! Give my boy back!"

Meliora had to call the two young men who were chopping wood outside to tie the woman to the bed. They did, though one of them looked at Meliora as if he agreed with the sick woman's every word. Belinda was frightened, though she'd learned to hide it. Meliora ignored the young man completely.

The other young man was Nicolas. The look he cast the other man—the look, Meliora suddenly thought, that forced the other man into obeying her—did frighten her.

That night, he waited before old Codes' cottage when Meliora and Belinda came back. Belle smiled at him timidly, but he waved her away. Belinda lowered her head and quickly entered the house, only casting a worried look at him and Mel before she closed the door behind herself.

He and Mel stood at an arm's distance, facing each other. He met her eyes and she met his. They hadn't looked at each other that often these days. It was so much easier to write messages in the night.

"Go away," he said, softly. "This place is not safe for you."

She realized she was smiling. She almost wanted to laugh. "You have been trying to get rid of me ever since I came, Nic. Why do you think it will work now?"

"Get rid of you? You damn, foolish city kid, can't you understand..." He made the step that divided them and caught her shoulders.

She placed her hands on his. She raised her head at him. They were so close now that she felt his breath on her face. He felt hers, too. She knew that. She moved one of her hands and rested it on his back, and felt his heart pounding through his ribs. He was skin and bones, just like everyone, but his heart, at least, was beating strong. Strong—and, right now, fast. As fast as she wanted it.