Prized

“I think maybe you’ll have hallucinations,” he said.

She glanced up. He was serious. She gave a piteous laugh. “Take me back to the lodge,” she said. “At least there I can be sick in private.”

In moments, he had a horse hitched up to a flatbed wagon, and he helped her crawl onto the seat. The wagon seemed to find every rut in the road, and each bump pounded directly into her head, creating a new kind of headache with spiky bursts of color and pain. Lights and sounds tilted around her, and a tiny speck of dirt on her skirt magnified into a giant bull’s eye.

“We’re here,” he said quietly when they finally reached the lodge. “Wait there and I’ll come around for you.”

“Please make it stop,” she whispered.

“Take a message up to the Matrarc,” Will said to someone. “Mlass Gaia has the acclimation sickness. Where’s Norris?”

She felt a tender hand on her arm and tried to focus. Will was looking up at her, his brown eyes warm with concern. His face swam, and for an instant he was Leon. She felt joy rising through her, but before she could speak, he shifted back into Will again. Despair overtook her. And then the wagon shifted, and the ground.

Black things were coming to chew at her feet.

“Get them away!” Gaia said, curling up into a ball.

She kicked at the black things, but they only grabbed on with their spiky, shrieking teeth. She tried to fling herself away. Strong arms held her tight, and she crawled up onto the raft, pulling in her toes. Hold your breath, she thought. That will make it stop. Hurry. She sucked in a huge breath while the inky dry wave, coming closer and reaching taller to blot out all the stars, crashed over her.

CHAPTER 6

concoction

THE SOUND OF A BELL tolling came from somewhere nearby: three rich, resonant bongs. Without moving, Gaia tested her eyes to see if any dizziness or pain came when she dared to look around the bedroom, but the morning sunlight stayed where it belonged, touching along the wall and the golden wood of the floor, with the slats adding a grid pattern of shadow. She lifted a hand to inspect her fingers in the light, and slowly flexed them in and out of a fist. The brown from her days in the wasteland was fading to more of her natural tan color.

“Are you back with us?” a woman asked.

Gaia tried to speak, but her voice had dried away to nothing. The woman stood from a rocker and poured a glass of water from a pitcher. Gaia pushed up slowly enough to take it, and sipped.

“How’s Maya?” Gaia asked.

“She’s okay. Hers didn’t start until the next day. She had the shakes for a few hours and cried some, but she nursed almost continuously and she’s gaining strength. It didn’t last as long for her. She’s moved from Mlady Eva’s to her permanent home now. How do you feel?”

Gaia thought about it. “Alive.”

The woman smiled, revealing a gap in her teeth that gave her a quirky charm. She was a tall woman in her late thirties, with glasses and a dark, thick braid that fell over her shoulder. “You don’t remember me,” she said. “I’m Mlady Roxanne, the teacher.”

Gaia searched her face more closely. “You’re the one who took Maya, with Mlady Eva.”

“You don’t remember anything else?” Mlady Roxanne laughed. She sat again and reached for her sewing basket. “I should have known. You’ve been delusional on and off for four days. We weren’t sure you’d make it.”

Gaia was barely convinced she had. It felt as if some drug had completely derailed her mind and her nervous system, everything that made her work right. She never wanted to feel that way again.

“Do you know what causes this sickness?” she asked.

“I think it’s an adjustment to the environment here, something in the food or the water,” Mlady Roxanne said. “Maybe even the air. Beyond that I don’t know, but you’re through it now. It won’t come back.”

“Unless I try to leave, right?”

“Right. And then the reverse of it will kill you.”

It didn’t make any sense to Gaia. She pushed a hand through her hair. I need a bath.

“Mlass Gaia,” Mlady Roxanne said gently, hitching the rocker a bit nearer. “You talked a lot when you were hallucinating. You’ve been through some horrible things, haven’t you?”

“What did I say?”

“Something about your father being shot and your mother bleeding to death. That wasn’t real, was it?”

Gaia fixed her gaze on the pegs that held her clothes on the wall. “I don’t want to think about the past. None of that will help me here.” She rolled and felt something restricting her arm. “What’s this?” she asked. Gray, wrinkled cotton was wrapped around her wrist, and as she pulled it loose, she saw it was a shirt.

“It’s Chardo Will’s,” Mlady Roxanne said. “You wouldn’t let it go.”

He had to leave it behind? she thought.

Mlady Roxanne laughed. “He was very concerned about you. He’s come by every day to see if you were better. Sometimes twice a day.”

Gaia felt a flash of alarm. She hoped she hadn’t said anything about the autopsy. Or about Peony. The miscarriage. She still had to help Peony with her miscarriage, and she didn’t even have the right herbs yet. “I need to get up,” she said.

She pushed herself fully upright and swung her legs over the side of the bed, but all of her strength was gone. The knobs of her ankles stuck out, making her feet look narrow, and even the dots of her birthmark tattoo seemed more delicate than usual.

“You’re going to need time to recover,” Mlady Roxanne said. “Why do I get the feeling you won’t be patient with yourself?”

“Because I won’t. I feel better when I’m doing things,” Gaia said. “I need to be out in the garden, harvesting what I need for medicines. I need to go find the other plants I need. That’ll help me gain strength better than anything else.” It frustrated her to think of all the work she’d missed already, lying in bed for four days. The world could have changed in that time.

Mlady Roxanne set her sewing into her basket and rose to her feet. “In that case,” she said, “I’ll start heating the bathwater and tell Norris to get something for you to eat.”

As Mlady Roxanne predicted, it took Gaia days to regain her strength, but as soon as she could, she began harvesting catnip, myrtle, primrose, nutmeg, ginger, and the other herbs she could from the garden. She saw Peony around the lodge, but only once to talk to alone, and then their conversation was brief. Peony had not changed her mind. If anything, she had grown more desperate during the time Gaia had been sick, fearing Gaia would change her mind.

“Soon,” Gaia reassured her. “I just need the right herbs.”

Norris let her take over one side of the pantry where there was a wide counter and racks for storage, and he found her a collection of pans she could devote exclusively to boiling and distilling tinctures and salves. Gaia sent a boy up to the Chardos for some tansy, ginseng, and blue cohosh, and Will came that afternoon to transplant some into the garden at the lodge for her.

“Thanks for the shirt,” she said, giving it back to him, clean and folded. “I didn’t mean to steal it from you.”

“That’s all right.” He ran a hand across the fabric, and smiled before he set it aside and reached for his shovel again.

The bell tolled, three resonant bongs, and Will paused where he was to touch his hand to his heart. Gaia looked across the garden to see young Sawyer and Lowe doing the same thing. A bee floated through the air, catching light in its wings, and as it got lost in the shadows under the water tower, the boys stirred again.

She lifted her gaze to Will’s, waiting for an explanation.

“It’s the matina,” he said. “It reminds us to be grateful.”

She remembered hearing the bell when she woke up from her illness, and at other times. “How often does it come?”

“Usually every day, but not always. It comes at different times. You never know when, and part of you is always waiting for it.”

“That’s all?”

He laughed. “That’s all.”

So simple, she thought. Yet she felt a subtle change around her, as if a peaceful spell had passed over the village. It was so different from what she’d once imagined it would be.

“Have you ever heard of people calling this place the Dead Forest?” Gaia asked.

“Some of the nomads do,” Will said. “We prefer ‘Sylum,’ even if it is deadly.”

“You think it is?”

He gave her an odd look. “You saw, in the barn. What do you think will happen when we run out of girls completely?”

She looked across the garden again, at the beauty and profusion of vegetables even now, as summer was waning. “I don’t understand this place,” she admitted.

Will dug his shovel and turned over a bladeful of dirt. “You will.”

Later that night, after Norris left the lodge, Gaia made a concoction for Peony, stirring it slowly over the stove. Una meowed once from under the table and Gaia glanced over.

“I know,” Gaia said. “I’m not happy about it, either.”

She poured a tall dose of the concoction in a cup and put the pan in the pantry to cool. Then she dipped a bread roll in honey and set that in another dish. She had a supply of bulky, absorbent cotton fabric and a basin for washing. She ran water into a pitcher. Then she washed her hands once more, banked the fire on the hearth, picked up her tray of supplies, blew out the lamp, and moved quietly through the lodge. The atrium was still, with wan moonlight drifting down from the clerestory as Gaia passed the dark fireplace and started up the stairs. She paused when one creaked, listening, and then proceeded softly to the second floor.

She had to pass around the three sides of the balcony to reach Peony’s corner bedroom, and then she balanced the tray along one arm in order to knock softly.

“Peony?” she whispered.

The door opened and Peony let her in. Gaia waited with her back to the door, blinded by the darkness, until Peony struck a match and lit a candle on the desk. Her room was cozy, with a watercolor of the marsh on one wall and curtains of a sheer, soft rose color. A quilt with primarily white patches and a dainty, lavender design was smoothed across the bed, and a potted spider plant grew by the open window. The soft night breeze brought the sound of crickets through the screen.

“I was afraid you would never come,” Peony said. She was dressed still, though her feet were bare. “Is that it?”

Gaia set the tray on the desk and tried to banish her nervousness. “I need to examine you first.”

“I’m sure I’m pregnant.”

“I don’t want to give this to you if I don’t have to. It will make you really sick.”

Peony climbed onto the bed. “I have something for you. I heard Mlady Roxanne talking about your sister, and I know where she is.”

“You do?”

Peony nodded. “She’s out on the first island, with Adele Bachsdatter and her husband.”

“Why with them?” Gaia asked, both excited and curious.

“I think because Mlady Adele had a stillbirth just before you came,” Peony said. “They’re good people, Mlass Gaia, and I know Mlady Adele was crazy with grief. It’s possible the Matrarc thought your sister would help her.”

Gaia tried to think if Mlady Adele would be able to nurse Maya, and guessed she could. “How do I get out to the island?” Gaia asked.

“Don’t go. You aren’t even supposed to know where she is. I just told you because I thought you deserved to know.”

There was no way she could stay away now that she knew, but that wasn’t Peony’s problem. The candle flickered in the breeze from the window, and Gaia smiled. “Thank you.”