Chapter 14

By the time we arrived at the farmhouse, Reynard LeCompte was careening toward madness.

Kieron ushered us into the home but paused, lingering on the threshold as a volley of shouts rose from a bedroom deeper within. "He's in his room…."

"Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop!" cried a voice stretched hoarse and painfully raw.

"Will you introduce me?" I asked uncertainly, glancing between him, Merrick, and the dark hallway leading to the back of the house.

"I don't…" Kieron cleared his throat. "If it's all the same to you…I'd rather not see him like that again." He frowned. "I suppose that makes me a coward, but I…I just can't…" He sighed.

The shouts morphed into a feral howl, ripping the house apart in its agony. Kieron winced.

"Send him away," Merrick advised. "You need to focus, and with that queasy constitution he'll be of no help at all."

My mind raced. "Camphor!" I blurted out.

Kieron raised his eyebrows.

"I just realized I don't have any camphor oil with me. Would the…perhaps the market in town might have some?"

Kieron paused and I began to worry my request was absurd. I wasn't even sure how far from town we were, wasn't sure there was a market large enough to have an apothecary shop. But then he nodded.

"I can take his horse," he volunteered. "I should be back in an hour or so. Two at the most."

"That would be so helpful, thank you," I said, my words nearly lost in the jumble of his uncle's babbling.

Kieron's gaze darted from mine to the room at the end of the house. "I'll be as quick as I can." Then he turned and fled.

Merrick watched him go, his gaze unreadable, before he gestured to the bedroom. "Shall we?"

Relief spread through my chest like a warm balm. "You're coming with me?"

"Of course," Merrick said, stooping to poke his head through the bedroom's doorframe. The farmer caught sight of him and howled.

"I thought you said no one could see you!" I fretted, whirling around.

Merrick waved his hand as if it was of no concern. "I said the boy wouldn't. But the farmer would, of course. He's close to death. If you do your work well, he won't remember anything about this moment." His skeletal fingers cupped the small of my back and guided me over the threshold. "In you go."

My leather valise was stuffed near to bursting with powders and elixirs, bandages and surgical tools. I'd nervously overpacked, not wanting to be underprepared. I set the bag on the bedside dresser with a loud thunk that made me wince, but Kieron's uncle didn't even notice.

He writhed across his pallet, bed linens soaked and stinking of sweat, urine, and loosened bowels. His skin had a dreadful pallor, somewhere between yellow and gray, and was covered with dark sores.

I immediately understood why Kieron did not want to return to this bedside. I didn't want to be here either. I did not want to be here, in this room that smelled of things worse than death, but Merrick prodded me forward.

"Sir?" I began, my voice breaking with a crack. "My name is Hazel." I twisted my fingers together, feeling stupid and small and wishing I could flee. "And I'm…I'm here to look after you."

He let out a deep groan, thrashing onto his other side. His breath was rank and reminded me of Papa's after a night of drinking. Sure enough, the floor was littered with empty bottles. I briefly wondered if he'd made the spirits himself—Kieron had led us through a field of rye on the way here—but I pushed the curiosity aside, knowing I was procrastinating.

"It burns." He gasped, digging his feet into the ticked mattress. I noticed with a sickening twist in my gut that his toes had a blackened hue. "Holy First help me, it burns."

"What does?" I asked, but he was too lost in his throes to answer me. "Reynard?"

He turned and vomited over the side of the bed. I had to jump back to avoid being splashed with the foul offering, and I felt my own stomach heave, longing to purge itself of every bit of Merrick'scake.

I whirled around to my godfather. "I can't do this." I knew I sounded panicked, lost in a rising hysteria, but I couldn't help it. This was bad. This was so much worse than I'd ever imagined.

I'd thought Merrick would ease me into life as a healer. I'd start out small—headaches, toothaches, stitching some wounds, maybe a few cases of summer colds.

Not…this.

Merrick stared down at me, appraising me with a placid expression that made me want to shriek. Didn't he understand what was going on?

"I can't…He's going to…" I sighed, none of my arguments forming into coherent thoughts. "He's going to get me sick."

Merrick shook his head. "He won't."

"The air in here is so tainted it'll be a wonder if you don't fall ill," I hissed.

"You won't get sick," he replied. "You've always had a strong constitution, have you not? In the whole of your life, can you recall a single bout of influenza?"

I thought back over my childhood. I recalled listening to my siblings as they coughed and sneezed, hearing them all the way from my little nest in the barn. I shook my head.

"An outbreak of spots?"

Another denial.

"Allergies?" he persisted.

I said nothing for a long moment. "Your doing, I suppose?"

He smiled pleasantly, as if we were having this conversation over afternoon tea. "It wouldn't do to have a healer who caught everything her patients suffered from, would it?" Merrick made a soft noise of sympathy. "I know this seems hard now, but I believe you are more than capable of helping this man. So…go on."

Behind me, the farmer let out a cry of pain, his arms flailing like a broken marionette. "Why did you bring this devil with you?" he screeched, using the last of his strength to fling a rancid pillow at my godfather. More vomit gurgled up his throat as he shrank back into the bedding, hiding under a quilt stiff with stains. "Oh Holy First, save me from this monster!"

"He's not a monster!" I snapped, striking the headboard with the heel of my palm. I just wanted to make the noise stop, to put an end to all those horrible sounds coming from him. "He's not!"

Despite the complete chaos of the moment, despite the screams and the stink and situation exploding past the point of my control, Merrick smiled down at me. He touched my cheek, making me look up at him, making me focus on his eyes alone. "You're doing fine, Hazel."

"I'm not! What is fine about any of this?"

Behind me, the farmer convulsed, shrieking about the fires of the afterworld come to singe him. He struck up a conversation with someone who was not in the room, and I looked back at my godfather with a pleading expression.

"Center yourself," he advised, his voice maddeningly calm. "Find your inner peace and try again."

I let out a sob. "I can't. I don't want to. Can't you just fix him? Please? We can go home and just…" I trailed off, hating myself, hating how much I sounded like a coward.

Merrick shook his head, not backing down. "There're clues here, Hazel. You need only look."

"I don't want to look," I admitted, tears welling up.

He paused for so long I started to believe he'd realized his mistake: I was not a healer. I never could be a healer. He'd call it all off and we could go home. Hope flared in my chest as I waited for him to admit he'd been wrong.

"Go on and touch him, then, if you're so keen on giving up."

My hope sputtered out, a flame doused with cold water. He wanted me to use the gift. The magic.

"I don't want to," I admitted, my voice small and weak and full of self-loathing.

Merrick sighed and crossed over to the corner of the room, giving me more space to work, giving himself a better angle to watch it unfold.

"We're not leaving until it's done," Merrick said, folding his long arms over one another. "Until he's treated or dead. It's your call."

A flurry of trembles shivered through my body at the impossibility of the situation.

I didn't want this man to die.

But I didn't want to be the one to save him either.

"Tell me what you see, at least," Merrick said, trying a new tactic. "You needn't touch him. Just tell me what you see."

I glanced about uneasily. I saw chaos. I saw despair. I saw the very worst things the mortal body was capable of doing, sprayed across every bit of the stinking room.

"It can help to focus on the small details," Merrick continued, seeing my stricken face.

The farmer thrashed again, ranting about a great creature of fire burning him whole. I tried to tune him out, tried to spot one small thing I could wrap my mind around.

"His sheets are soaked," I started, feeling foolish, a child playing at being a knowledgeable adult. "He's been throwing up and…" I stopped, struggling to find a phrase that didn't make me want to vomit too. "And…voiding his bowels."

Merrick nodded approvingly. "What else?"

"Peppermint could ease his stomach pains," I realized suddenly. I'd read that in one of Merrick's books. I'd used the same treatment on myself when I'd eaten too much. "I have some in my bag. I could make up a tea."

"You could," Merrick said, and I could hear the touch of pride in his tone.

It was a small thing, a very small thing, but it was something I knew I could do. Something that would offer a bit of relief.

I opened the valise and rummaged through it until I found a packet of dried mint leaves.

"I'm going to make you some tea," I told the farmer. "And then…and then we'll try to clean up some of this mess."

It wouldn't be pleasant work, stripping the bed, scrubbing the filth from his skin, but it might stop the burning sensations he spoke of. The sores covering his body were likely infected. Infections could burn; I was almost sure of it.

I left the bedroom and made my way to the kitchen.

It too was a disaster. Bread and cheese had been left out for days and were now covered with dots of mold and drowsy flies. But I found a kettle and cleaned it thoroughly, using water from the hand pump in the side yard. I kept a watchful eye on the road as I worked, but it was too soon for Kieron's return.

I felt Merrick watching each of my moves, assessing every one of my decisions. He seemed pleased, and my confidence grew as I went through the familiar motions. I might not know the exact cause of this man's illness, but I knew I could treat an upset stomach. I knew how to make tea.

"I think the spots on his body might be sores from lying in all that filth," I told Merrick, coming back into the farmhouse. I set the kettle on the hook over the hearth and began lighting a fire. "I have some creams that will help, once he's bathed."

"And his toes?" he prodded gently. "Did you see them?"

I nodded. I'd avoided thinking of them, black and curling and looking so terribly wrong against the sallow pallor of the rest of him.

"I don't know what's causing that. They look withered somehow. As if…" I paused, recalling something I'd read in one of the books in the Between. "As if they're about to fall off. Wait…. I remember this…." My fingers danced with impatience as I struggled to summon the word. "It's…it's…gangrene!" My triumph burst from me in a shout of excitement.

"Very good. Do you want to check your work?" Merrick asked.

I looked up at the Dreaded End, apprehension bubbling in my middle. "What will it be like?"

"I could tell you," Merrick said, his voice thoughtful and ponderous. "Or you could just see for yourself."

"Will it hurt?" I asked, peeking back into the bedroom. The man was quiet now, panting in an exhausted stupor. His eyes were so glazed over I didn't think he even knew I'd returned.

"You or him?" Merrick laughed at my expression. "Go on, Hazel." He nudged me gently back into the room.

Cringing, I knelt beside the bed.

The smell was so much worse up close. I could taste the foul air. It coated my mouth and left an unpleasant funk on my tongue. I looked to Merrick. "So I just…"

I fluttered my hands restlessly over Reynard's face, unsure of exactly where to touch, uncertain of how much pressure to use.

With care, Merrick put his fingers atop mine, guiding them to the man's cheeks. He held them in place for a moment before stepping aside to let me experience the full weight of his gift.

I couldn't help my gasp.

"What do you see?" he whispered, pleased.

"It…it's so beautiful," I murmured.

Sprouting out of the farmer's chest, there but not, were stalks of grain. They looked like the line drawings in my botany books, and the rendering shimmered and shone with an otherworldly sparkle, a holy glow that reminded me of Félicité's pink starlight. The stalks swayed back and forth, dancing in a flickering light that reminded me of a bonfire. This was the cure needed to heal this man—shining forth like a beacon in the night. I didn't understand it yet, how grain would help the farmer, but the answer would come, I was certainofit.

"Will it always look so wondrous?" I whispered.

I felt awestruck, weighted with a power most divine. I reached out to caress the image, but the moment I withdrew my fingers from the man's face, it faded away.

"It will," Merrick answered. "Exactly like that. On every patient who can be saved."

I turned toward him, tearing my eyes from the farmer as I heard the words he hadn't said. "What will happen when I come across someone who can't?"

Silence spread between us, filling the room.

Merrick shook his head. "Save who you need to save today, and worry about those walking with death tomorrow. Do you know what this man needs? Here and now?" I shook my head. "Then look again," he encouraged.

I cupped the farmer's face once more. "I see stalks of grain. They're waving in the breeze." I glanced to my godfather. "There's that field of rye we walked through…."

Merrick said nothing but watched me closely.

I frowned. The answer was close, so close I should have been able to grab it, but it eluded me. I looked back at the shimmering stalks. "Something…something looks wrong with them," I realized.

Poking from the stalks' spikes were dark growths. They jutted out like the stamens of flowers, going against the orderly lay of the florets. The flickering light surrounded the wheat, consuming it until there was nothing left but a whisper of ash.

"What is it?" I murmured, asking myself more than Merrick. It felt familiar to me, something I'd once read or…

No.

The memory came to me in a rush. Back in Rouxbouillet there'd been a farmer's wife who'd come to market, trying to sell flour at a steep discount. Mama, always looking for a cheap way to feed her burgeoning household, had wanted to buy as much of it as she could, but Papa had stopped her.

"Haven't you heard, you idiot woman?" he'd hissed, slapping at her hands as she'd tried to pay. "The Duvals' fields were too damp this year. That flour is contaminated with mold. Are you trying to kill us all?"

Without a word to Merrick, I stood up and raced out of the room, following my hunch. I ran past the bottles of rye spirits, past the rye bread festering in the kitchen, and out to the field we'd seen earlier.

As I ran, I ticked through every one of the man's symptoms: Nausea. Convulsions. Stomach cramps and diarrhea. A prickling, burning sensation in the feet and hands, caused by a dying circulatory system. Gangrene. Hallucinations.

"Ergot poisoning," I whispered with triumph, stopping in the middle of the rye field. Purple tubular growths hung off nearly every bit of grain I could see. I could feel Merrick's approach, and I turned to him, my face bright with understanding and pride. "It's ergot poisoning! He's been ingesting contaminated rye."

I felt breathless and giddy as my godfather smiled at me, approval coloring his expression.

"It's too late to save his toes, but I know how to treat the other symptoms."

Merrick nodded. "And then?"

I let out a deep breath, remembering the flickering flames that had consumed my vision. The cure. "And then we burn the field."