Chapter 16

The ensuing flash of light was bright and blinding. Stars floated over my vision for a moment longer.

"Oh," I said once my eyes cleared.

"Yes," he agreed.

We stood in the middle of a small, overgrown lane deep in a forest, but I recognized the trees instantly. This was the road that would take us to my parents' house.

"What are we doing here?" I asked, panic seizing me.

Two years was not enough time to erase the memories of a childhood of neglect and scorn. Two years could not wipe away the last image I held of my mother, stooped in the dirt, grabbing at Merrick's coins.

I wondered if those coins had changed their lives.

I was certain they'd not.

But part of me hoped they had.

I pictured Mama in a new dress, one bright and fresh and not faded from years of being scrubbed on the washboard. Perhaps they'd finally fixed the roof, expanded the first level of the cabin, the way they'd always said they wanted to. Remy might have married the baker's daughter he'd been sweet on, and I pictured them all living together. Papa wouldn't have to hunt as much, and they could all spend their days chasing after the toddling triplets I invented for Remy and his imaginary wife.

"There are things here that need to be done," Merrick said, splitting my daydream open wide.

"What things?" I asked, stalling.

"Things you need to see." Merrick's lips rose. It would have looked like a smile if he hadn't been so terribly sad.

I shook my head. "They won't…they don't want to see me."

"It doesn't matter what they want. It's what you need."

I stared down the road, apprehension a tangible weight cloaking my shoulders. I peered up at my godfather. He looked as ill as I felt. "There's nothing in that house that I need to see," I insisted.

Merrick reached out and cupped my face, his long fingers icy on my skin. "I wish that were true…. Come along."

My feet, willful traitors, set themselves in motion.

The cabin looked nothing like I remembered.

They hadn't repaired the roof, and the back section of it had finally fallen in, collapsing under the weight of winter snows or a heavy rain.

They hadn't expanded either.

In fact, the cabin looked smaller now, somehow. It seemed impossible that the fifteen of us had ever lived together in such a confined space. Well…the fourteen of them, I corrected as my eyes drifted to the barn.

It too had aged poorly. Long swathes of paint peeled away from the weathered wood, unfurling down the sides like spools of fraying ribbons. I could sense it was empty, the cows and horses all long gone and never replaced.

The garden had gone to seed and now grew wherever it pleased, untended. Two chickens roamed the tangled jungle, pecking listlessly at the ground.

"They must have left," I said, glancing up at Merrick as I struggled to put together everything I saw. "After you gave them the coins…they must have moved. Maybe into town?"

Merrick's mouth was a thin, grim line. "They're still here, Hazel."

As if cued, a burst of noise came from somewhere in the cabin. It was an explosion of coughing, deep and wet and rattling and so very wrong.

A shiver ran through me. I'd never heard a cough like that.

I reached for Merrick's hand, suddenly feeling much younger than my fourteen years. I remembered the little girl who had scurried from that cabin to the barn each evening at sunset, terrified to be caught outdoors after dark. Something about the cough reminded me of that fear, that deep, unshakeable dread, that certainty that monsters lay just out of sight, waiting for you to make a mistake and devour you whole.

"Shall we go in?" Merrick asked and handed me my valise, plucking it from the air with a twist of his fingers. It felt heavier than usual. "I'm sure they're dying to see you."

Later on I would wonder at his choice of words, but in that moment, all I could do was open the door.

The smell inside was terrible, and it was impossible to determine what exactly was causing it. Rubbish and moldering food lay heaped on the table where our family had once gathered to share meals. Flies buzzed in and out of the doorway. Their droning set my teeth on edge.

"Mama?" I called out uncertainly, caught on the threshold, half in, half out. I couldn't bring myself to go any farther. Deep in the pockets of my skirt, my hands balled into nervous fists. "Papa?"

From the shadows of their back bedroom came an answering moan.

I turned toward Merrick, silently begging him to intervene, but he only gestured for me to continue inside. A painfully long moment passed before I acquiesced.

I entered the cabin, stepping over bits of broken furniture, unidentifiable scraps and lumps of things. How had everything gone wrong so quickly? We'd never had the tidiest of homes, but it had never been like this. The house my siblings and I had grown up in was now nothing more than a hovel.

Windows were clouded over with grime and cobwebs, casting a false twilight and making it difficult to see where I stepped. The edge of my shoe struck a discarded wine bottle and it rolled under a table, clinking at others hiding there, and I immediately understood.

They'd spent the coins on drink.

Wine and ale and whiskey.

I spotted the evidence all throughout the cabin.

Casks and barrels and bottles, all empty.

Another volley of coughs drew my attention from the kitchen shelves toward my parents' bedroom. I pressed my lips together, wishing I'd brought a pomander with me, before wandering in to investigate.

"Mama?" I asked, lingering back from the bed. There were two forms lying in it, but it was too dark to determine who was who. The stink of them made my eyes water.

There was a low grunt, and I could make out a set of eyes peering from the soiled blankets, black as beetles.

"Who's there?" the other figure asked, struggling to sit up. "We've nothing to steal, leave us in peace."

"It's not a robber," the first said. Mama. That awful, emaciated crone was my mother. I blinked, trying to see her as she'd been.

Her cheeks had sunk into deep pits, and her skin was a mottled map of broken capillaries and spots. She was nearly as gaunt as Merrick, and the jut of her clavicles looked as sharp as a knife's edge.

"Hazel."

It wasn't a guess, it wasn't a grab. She knew who I was. My heart warmed a little, but I kept my distance.

Papa squinted from his mess of sheets, his eyes never quite focusing on mine. His mouth hung open, and I could see he was missing several teeth. "Don't be daft, you stupid woman. That's not Hazel. That's a fine lady."

Mama struck him with such force his spittle flew through the air, tainting the bedding with flecks of red. "I know my own daughter."

He scoffed. "She's not yours, she never was yours. She was always his."

I glanced back toward the open door, wondering how much of this Merrick heard.

"It's your birthday, isn't it?" Mama realized. "Is that why you've come back? You've come to celebrate your birthday? I should make you a cake. I never…I never made you a cake." She tried to push herself from the sodden mattress but fell backward into the dank mess with a cry of pain.

Her anguish spurred me to action, and I crossed the last few feet to kneel beside the bed. I set down my kit and grabbed her hands. Her skin was papery thin and clammy, with a feverish sheen. "No, Mama, don't worry about that. Don't worry about any of that. I came…" I paused. "I came to make you well again."

I was dimly aware of Merrick filling the doorframe, backlit and limned with the morning sun. He hadn't entered, and I wasn't sure if he was attempting to give me a moment of privacy as I reunited with my parents or if he simply couldn't fit into the room.

Mama's eyes drifted to him and she jerked back, pulling the sheet in front of her as a shield. With hooked fingers, she made a ward of protection against my godfather, then poked roughly at Papa. "He's here. He's returned," she hissed.

Merrick remained in the doorway, watching everything play out with hooded, worried eyes.

"Be gone, devil," Papa spat. "I'll not have you darken the door of my home again."

I suddenly remembered how Merrick described him in my birthday retellings.

The very foolish huntsman.

As I watched him flounder against my godfather's presence, I couldn't think of a better epithet for him, and it struck me as terribly funny. I'd been so scared of him as a child, but here he was, unable to even get out of his own bed.

"It's not you I'm here for," Merrick muttered, his voice low and dangerous. "My only concern is for Hazel."

"For years we waited for you to be concerned for Hazel." Papa laughed, and his eyes looked glassy and crazed and I could practically see the waves of heat radiating from him.

They were feverish, both of them, nearly deliriously so, and I wondered when they'd last had anything other than spirits in their systems.

"I'm going to get you some water," I decided aloud. "Water and soup. And good fresh bread."

Papa snorted out another little burst of mad laughter. "Good luck finding any of that here."

He wasn't wrong.

There was nothing in the larder save for a few potatoes that were more eyes than flesh, and the bread box held only the skeletons of unlucky mice.

My eyes darted around for anything I might have missed, but I kept coming up short. I couldn't understand how it had gotten like this. Where was Remy? Where were my other brothers and sisters? Didn't they visit? Why had they left our parents in such a state of rot and decay?

"I can at least get water."

I grabbed the little red pail hanging by the back door and headed outside to the creek. I was embarrassed to admit what a relief it was to be momentarily free of the house and all its smells.

Taking deep breaths of air, I cleaned and filled the pail, and wondered at the best way to begin treating my parents. I felt Merrick's approach but remained on my knees, facing the water. I didn't want to look at him. I wasn't sure how to process any one of my multitude of emotions, but if I met his gaze, I'd only start crying.

"Did you know it was going to be like this?"

Those people lying in that bed, in that house, they were not good. They were not kind. They'd never treated me the way parents ought to treat their children…but they were my parents all the same, and it shamed me to see them reduced to such a state.

"I did," Merrick said, and his admittance surprised me. I'd thought he would feign ignorance and pretend to be as surprised as I was. I'd thought he'd lie.

"Hazel—" Merrick began, but stopped.

"I'll heal them," I finally said.

I didn't understand why we were here, with them, today of all days, but I would pass this test. I'd pass it as I had every other test he'd given me. When I offered a smile, it felt thin and forced.

He helped me to my feet and trailed after me as I made my way to the cabin. Just before I ducked back inside, he called out, stopping me on the lip of the threshold.

"Hazel?"

I turned to meet his gaze.

"I'm here for you. For…whatever you might need."

It was an odd thing to say, an odd thing to offer, when he knew all I needed to do was find the cure. But I nodded as if his words reassured me.

After my reprieve in the fresh air, the smell was worse, a fetid, meaty funk, as though parts of my parents were already starting to spoil. It spurred me into action. I poured water into the cleanest glasses I could find and hurried them to the bed.

"Drink this," I instructed my parents, foisting the glasses into their hands.

Even that simple weight proved too much for Papa, and the glass slipped between his fingers, spilling the water all over the bedding. He didn't seem to notice and raised a phantom mug to his lips.

I helped bring Mama's glass to hers, making noises of encouragement as she took a small swallow, then two. She shook her head after that, unable to stomach more.

"I'm going to get you feeling much better," I promised her. "How did all this start? Was there a fever, or…"

She blinked, struggling to remember. "At first there was…my headaches. My head. Ache. Headache," she repeated. She blinked heavily before trying the sentence again.

I wanted to be patient; I wanted to listen and hear the details, but she stopped short as a burst of coughs seized her. They filled the room with a terrible odor, hinting at an infection somewhere deep within her.

Patience be damned, I needed to know how to help her now.

Without hesitation, I brought my hands up and cupped herface.

I gasped.

There was no flower. No shimmering, shiny plant beckoning me toward a treatment, toward a cure.

There was only…

I pulled my hands away, the image too dreadful to bear, but it lingered in my sight as if burned into my retinas.

A bone-white, gaping skull.

I felt as if the air had been knocked from my lungs. Did she have a tumor? An intracranial hemorrhage? Had a virus taken up residence somewhere within her brain matter?

With trembling fingers, I reached out again, searching for any indication of what I was meant to do.

The skull stared up at me without answer. It hung above my mother's face, motionless. Though there were no eyes within its deep sockets, I knew without a doubt it was staring at me.

As if the skull read my mind, its jaw shifted, opening, widening.

Was that a smile ?

The lipless curve of it reminded me of my godfather: that was his smile, his grin.

"Merrick!"

He was beside me before I even registered he'd entered the cabin. He stooped at a painfully contorted angle, reminding me of the gargoyles that lined the parapets of Rouxbouillet's temples.

"I don't understand what this is, what it's telling me to do."

"What do you see?" he asked, but I could tell by the wrinkle of concern marring his brow that he knew. He'd always known.

Without answering, I reached to cup my fingers around Papa's face. He squirmed away in protest, but not before the same glowing skull bloomed across his features.

"How am I supposed to treat them? Why am I seeing a skull? I don't know what it means."

My godfather blinked solemnly and a knife of fear stabbed at me, slicing deep into the quivering mess of my body, ripping and rending my soft insides.

"Merrick?" I whispered, and my voice sounded so small, so scared.

He cleared his throat, his voice like gravel. "Last year, you asked what would happen to the people who could not be saved."

I remembered.

I remembered him sitting in the chair at Kieron's uncle's house. I remembered the doubts swirling through me, the fears that I wouldn't be good enough, that I wouldn't be able to help the stricken man.

But I had.

I'd done it, and everything else my gift had required of me since.

And I'd been good.

Too good, perhaps.

My record was untarnished, perfect and whole. I'd started to believe that I could cure anything. A god had chosen me, of all the people populating our world, to carry his gift, to bestow his blessing upon. Didn't that make me as a god myself? Infallible? Unstoppable?

The skulls leering over my parents' faces suggested otherwise.

"They're going to die?"

"Everyone dies eventually," he murmured unhelpfully.

"But now. They're going to die now?"

He paused, choosing his response with care. "Soon."

"Then why did you bring me here? If I can't treat them, if I can't do anything to save them, then why—"

"You can save them," Merrick interrupted. "You're here to savethem."

"But you just said—"

"Hazel," he interrupted. "There's more than one way to save alife."

I stared with bewildered confusion. He was speaking in circles, saying they were going to die but only a breath later telling me I was meant to save them. If I was going to save them, then they wouldn't die. If I was going to save them—

My breath caught as understanding detonated in my chest, as cruel as the skulls covering my parents' faces.

"No."

I think I spoke it out loud.

I knew my soul was screaming it.

"I'm not…I can't…You can't expect me to…" The words would not come. "I won't," I finally said, folding my arms over my chest to firmly dismiss the notion.

Merrick's silvery eyes drifted from me to the bed. "They're suffering," he reminded me needlessly.

"So I will help ease their pain," I said, searching through the valise. I rummaged through it, pulling out vials and sachets. "I can grind some—"

"It doesn't matter what you do," Merrick interrupted. "You'll only be prolonging their misery. There is no relief for them. Their pain will increase, they'll beg you to free them." His face darkened. "And before they do, they will infect others."

"Others?" I echoed, glancing around the abandoned cabin. "Who?"

Merrick cocked his head toward the door, listening to something I couldn't begin to hear. His eyes went distant, as if he were watching his words play out in real time. "Right now your oldest brother is making his way here. In his carriage is his new bride. They married in secret but want to tell your parents the happy news now. They plan to announce their marriage to her family in three days' time at a large country dance, where there will be plenty of people, so her family won't cause a scene. But Remy and his bride will have brought the sweats with them, caught from your parents. A hundred people at the dance will catch it. They'll bring it home to their loved ones. They'll spread it to more and more, and then—"

"You don't know that!" I shouted, trying to stop his horrid litany. "You don't know any of that!"

"You saw the deathshead," he said gently.

"I saw a skull, " I corrected him. "There could be fluid building up in their brains, an infection of some sort. If I can relieve the pressure, then—"

"They'll die no matter what you do, Hazel. It's not a reflection on you or your talents, it's a fact of mortal life. You're a healer, a great one, but no one can ever truly escape me. I come for all. And very soon, I will come for them."

Merrick's words were said without malice, without anger. They were quiet and matter-of-fact.

They infuriated me.

"If you're going to come for them, then why must I do anything?It sounds like all I need is to wait for you to do your job," I snapped. I was a cyclone of emotions burning too hot, fears running too cold.

"That's true," he admitted. "If you want them to suffer, go right ahead and wait. No one would blame you," he added quickly. "Your relationship is decidedly…complicated. Do you want to watch them in pain? Do you want to see how low one can stoop before the end?"

My nose wrinkled in horror. "No."

"Is it your brother, then? Do you want him to become ill? His bride? Her family? The minor nobles who will take it back to their estates, to their servants? They'll pass the sweats through them like money changing hands on market day. It might even travel as far as Chatellerault, can you imagine?"

"No!" I shouted, covering my ears to block out his wicked scenario.

He tipped his long fingers in a gallant sweep toward my bag. "Then perform your charge well, Docteur. Save them, end them. I'm certain your studies on poisonous plants will be most useful, wouldn't you agree?"

"I'm not poisoning them!" I protested.

"Have you a better idea? Will you bludgeon them to death? Strike them, as your father struck you? The kitchen is in shambles, but I'm certain a few of their knives are still sharp. You know which veins to open if you want them to go quickly."

"Merrick!"

He rolled his eyes. "Make up your mind, girl. Do you want their sickness plaguing the world, infecting everyone it touches? It matters very little to me. Their lives come to an end either way."

"Then you do it," I snapped. "You're the god of departures and the grave. You are the great and feared Dreaded End. If they're truly meant to die, then by all means, perform your charge well." I mimicked him, throwing my hands toward the bed in a mockery of his sweeping grace.

His eyes darkened and his mouth curled into a dangerous snarl. I knew I'd struck a chord within him, but I wasn't prepared for the full onslaught of his anger.

"How dare you presume to tell me my duties, mortal." His voice was smoke and sulfur. The red of his eyes flickered like banks of coals and bursting embers. I could feel the ground shake beneath the tremor of his bass. "You think yourself on par with me?"

"Of course not," I said, immediately bowing my head. It wastoo terrifying to look at him when he shed his usual affability. It was impossible to forget the true measure of his might when rage coiled so close to his skin's surface. "I don't understand what's happening. I'm seeking to understand." I reached out and placed my hand on his forearm, trying to form a connection with him, trying to remind him how small and weak and so very vulnerable I was. "Merrick…Godfather…Help me. Please."

He released a low growl and turned away, leaving the bedroom, leaving the house, leaving me. I was too scared to follow.

I glanced back to my parents, expecting to see twin expressions of horror on their faces, expecting them to cry and moan and beg for their lives. But they'd slipped into a dazed state of near sleep. Papa's eyes were half open, gazing listlessly out the window. Mama whimpered like a fox crying out in the night as something terrible plagued her dreams.

I put my hands on her face once more.

Now that I was prepared to see it, the skull wasn't as shocking.

It rested almost perfectly over her face, giving a ghastly glimpse of everything that lay beneath her skin. As I stared at the glowing ridges, the illuminated bones, it was easy to believe Merrick. This skull wasn't a suggested treatment, a cure waiting to be carried out. It was an omen of impending death.

Mama winced again, sucking in her breath, and I could hear a distinct rattle within her chest. I removed my hands, letting the skull fade away, and took in all the details I hadn't noticed before.

They were sick with the sweats, it was true, and I had no doubt that everything Merrick had predicted would come to pass. The plague would spread from them to my brother, from my brother to his bride, from her to her family, and so on and so on.

But there was more wrong here than just that.

The sickly pallor of her skin, the yellow cast that spoke of something gone dreadfully wrong. Bile was building up in her system, Papa's too, and I grimly thought back to the bottles strewn about the cabin.

I'd read of cirrhosis of the liver, knew that in its later stages it caused stomachs to distend as fluid built up, knew it brought on jaundice and confused drowsiness, knew it made it difficult for blood to clot.

Papa's gums were still bleeding from when Mama had struckhim.

"It hurts, Hazel," Mama whispered, her lips barely moving. "It hurts so much." She clawed at the filthy sheet covering her, trying to free herself from its confining hold, and as I eased it away from her, I spotted what she was trying to show me.

Her nightdress—nothing more than a tattered collection of cotton threads frayed past the point of use—had ridden up, exposing her thighs. She raised the hem even higher, gesturing at the mass protruding from her abdomen. It looked obscene, as round as a baby but poking out from the wrong spot. Beneath the yellowed skin, I could see a network of veins pulsing.

"Help me, Hazel," she whispered.

I ran a tender finger over the bulge and she let out a shuddering groan. Her fingers curved into claws and she scratched at the mattress, trying to get away from my gentle pressure.

"I don't…I don't know how to treat this," I admitted, feeling helpless.

"You do," Merrick insisted from the doorway. I'd been so focused on the growth in Mama's stomach I hadn't heard him return.

"Help us, please."

On the other side of the bed, Papa fought a wave of coughs that left his frame hunched and the bedding soaked in a bright swath of red. I looked away, unable to stomach the way it splashed out ofhim.

I looked instead to Merrick, my fingers already straying to my bag. His face was full of sorrow, but he nodded encouragingly.

Tears pricked at my eyes, sharp as needles. "When?"

No one answered, but they didn't really need to. I could feel the hoofbeats from Remy's carriage pulsing through my veins, drawing ever closer. It didn't matter if he was days away or only hours.

It needed to be done and over with.

Now.

I found vials of hemlock and nightshades. Used in small doses, they helped treat asthmatic patients struggling to draw breath. But if I were to brew them together, in a strong enough tea…

Their hearts would stop first, in theory.

I'd certainly never had cause to test it, but I was almost positive that the tea would make their pulse go slow and sluggish. They'd drift off, falling into a coma. It would be a quiet death, an easy death, one far more merciful than the horrors their own bodies intended for them. Than the horrors their bodies would pass along.

I picked at the cork stoppers with the tip of my fingernail, wondering if I could actually do it, if I could truly administer a lethal dose of poison to my own parents.

"You're not killing them," Merrick murmured softly from the doorway. He was so good at guessing my thoughts. "You're saving them. Saving them from the indignity of a death most brutal."

"But why am I the one who has to do it? Why can't you save them? Why can't you ease their suffering?" My voice quavered. I was still hopeful he'd intervene.

Merrick blinked curiously. "I have saved them…. I brought them you."

His words sank in deep, and I knew there was no way out of this. It was me or nothing.

We did not speak again as I set the kettle to boil.