Chapter 5 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 5 : The Nightingale's Past 01
As everyone knows, even if a king conquers the entire world, she still can't do without three meals a day.
Before dealing with anything else, the first problem Lucita had to solve was food.
She weighed her empty money pouch in her hand. At this rate, with money only going out and nothing coming in, within a month she would have to live on air.
There was still one loaf of bread left in the cupboard from yesterday's purchase. Lucita took it out, preparing to slice it for breakfast. Perhaps because it had sat overnight and wasn't very fresh, this bread had no fragrance at all.
It seemed she would eventually need to buy a frost box for food preservation.
Calculating it this way, she felt silver coins flowing out like water.
While she was painfully thinking about this, Lucita sliced the bread and fried it with butter.
The bread slices sank into the hot butter. She pressed down with the spatula, and immediately there was a sharp “sizzle.”
Lucita flipped it over. The bottom of the bread had been fried to a steaming golden-brown color.
Strange... she sniffed.
Surely there should be a fragrance by now? The overflowing milky and wheaten aromas. Her eyes could almost smell them, yet her nose still detected nothing.
Something was wrong.
She solemnly took out the spices, honey, and milk from the cupboard, smelling each bottle one by one, and finally discovered an eerie fact: her sense of smell had disappeared.
Combined with the inexplicable dizziness and the amnesia of unknown causes... an undeniable sense of dissonance pressed down on her.
Lucita finished her breakfast with a heavy heart and decided to visit Garcia's shop that afternoon.
Garcia's seed shop didn't only sell seeds, it also sold potion ingredients and ready-made potions, serving as more or less the town's clinic. As for the medical doctor newly arrived from the city, the surgeon Anastasia, her medical skills were said to be exquisite, but Lucita didn't believe her bizarre physical condition fell within the realm of science.
Following yesterday's work plan, she put on the sun hat gifted by Elsia, as her usual self, picked up a hoe, and spent the morning cultivating vegetable plots in the yard.
The front yard was divided in two by a gravel path leading from the main gate to the cottage. On the side without the well, Lucita cleared a small vegetable garden about eight meters long and six meters wide. At every footstep’s distance, she planted two or three bean seeds, then watered them once with water drawn from the well before considering the work complete.
Having planted peas, Lucita's farm wouldn't be completely barren this spring.
With this much area, she could probably harvest fifty or sixty pounds of peas. Selling them to Aurora's mill, assuming a purchase price of one silver coin per pound, she could get around fifty silver coins.
By the time she finished all the work, it was already noon. She straightened up to rest for a while, squinting at the sun on the horizon.
Fortunately it was early spring. Even the midday sun was half-asleep, the grass and trees swaying gently, leaving clusters of pale shadows on the ground. Even after working in the vegetable garden all morning, the sunlight draped over her body didn't feel hot at all.
The empty spaces by the well and in the back yard could each be cultivated into plots. When she went to the seed shop this afternoon, she could buy some other seeds and plant all these empty spaces. In one season she could probably earn back a hundred or so silver coins.
Lucita took a bath, changed into the deep blue lace-trimmed shirt and primrose-yellow pants she'd bought yesterday, slung a strawberry-red small cloth bag over her shoulder, and went out.
The narcissus flowers on the seed shop windowsill had already bloomed, their pale yellow stamens tender and fresh. Unfortunately Lucita couldn't smell them.
She pushed open the door and saw the back of a hooded woman standing by the counter talking with Garcia.
Wasn't this the woman she'd encountered at Javena's door that day?
Lucita had asked Javena about her that day and learned she was the town hunter Mavis, with a solitary personality who rarely dealt with people. That day she had been delivering venison that Javena had bought.
Lucita noticed her shoulder was empty today. Where was that bird?
The shop owner Garcia, seeing a customer arrive, said something to Mavis and came out to greet her: "Lucita, good day. Are you here to buy seeds?"
"No, today my nose... hmm?" Lucita was halfway through her sentence when she suddenly caught a faint scent and didn't know how to continue.
It was like the smell of wood rotting over many years, somewhat pungent.
She followed the source of the smell and took two steps forward, seeing a bird lying motionless on the counter.
This was the one on her shoulder that day!
It looked very beautiful, with feathers of clear lake-blue color that refracted a captivating luster in the sunlight.
The scent of decay grew stronger and stronger. Lucita couldn't help wanting to lean closer to confirm, but was blocked by Mavis's suddenly outstretched arm: "Don't touch it."
Her voice was very hoarse, as if from long periods of not speaking.
Lucita wanted to say something, but Mavis spoke first: "What did you notice?"
Mavis stared at her intensely, her eyes flickering with something like anticipation.
Lucita asked hesitantly: "What's... wrong with it?"
She hadn't expected an answer, but unexpectedly the woman spoke: "It's been sleeping for especially long periods these past few days. I came to ask Garcia to help take a look."
"I... smell something from it," Lucita said. "The smell of decay. It makes one feel..."
She spoke very hesitantly, very carefully, but still implicitly conveyed her meaning. In fact, when she first smelled this scent, the first word that floated up in her mind was "death."
It was decaying. It was gradually dying.
Mavis scrutinized her, and only after a long while slowly said: "But I don't smell anything. I don't, and neither does Garcia."
Lucita didn't answer, but asked instead: "Did Garcia find anything wrong?"
"No." Garcia said with difficulty: "Mavis, I'm really sorry, but all its bodily functions are normal. It just looks like it's sleeping. By the way, Lucita, what brought you here?"
The topic returned to her own problem.
Lucita leaned close to a bottle of mountain peach blossoms on the table and sniffed, then after confirming, handed it to Garcia: "Does this peach blossom have a fragrance?"
Garcia took it, sniffed, and gave her answer: "Very fragrant."
Lucita revealed a bitter smile as if she'd known this would be the case: "I can't smell anything anymore. Since I woke up this morning, I can't smell any scents. But I can smell this..."
"Nightingale."
"Yes, this nightingale is emitting a very strong smell of decay. This is the only scent I've smelled today."
Garcia shook her head in confusion: "Lucita, this is too strange, really. I've never seen this kind of illness, and I don't have any potion that could cure you. Are you sure you don't just have a cold? But you smelled the nightingale's scent..."
She confirmed repeatedly: "Are you too tired and having hallucinations? Or do you think it's dying, so you feel like you smell decay, when it's actually psychological? The nightingale doesn't have the scent you're describing, both Mavis and I can confirm that."
If the smell weren't so pungent, let alone Garcia, even Lucita would doubt herself like this. She shook her head very firmly: "No, this smell is very strong. And I've never smelled such a strange scent before. Rather than decay, it's more like..."
She hesitated and glanced at Mavis: "The smell of death."
"The smell of death? What's that?" Mavis's gaze locked onto her tightly like a hawk's, asking with difficulty: "Do you mean… the stench of a corpse?"
Lucita didn't expect the two to believe her when she said such things.
But perhaps she lacked imagination about the magical world, or perhaps they were truly at their wit's end, desperately clutching at the last straw. They seemed to actually believe her.
At this moment, the nightingale opened its eyes and let out a low cry.
"Sophia!" Mavis quickly reached out to stroke its feathers, asking urgently: "Are you all right?"
Sophia? What bird would have a human name? Lucita remembered when she first saw it, the way the nightingale had looked at her. That feeling of being scrutinized was still fresh in her memory.
An absurd conjecture welled up in her heart.
The nightingale made no more sounds. Its gaze slowly circled around and finally stopped unfocused in mid-air.
Garcia brought out her entire shelf of magic potions. The test tubes contained liquids of various colors—some clear, some viscous—all tightly sealed with cork stoppers, with various labels attached to the tubes.
"These are all the types of potions I have. I don't know if they'll be useful. After all, I only know how to prepare medicines according to books, I'm not a doctor." Garcia sighed: "Mavis, if you want, you can try them. I won't be responsible for any consequences. Of course, you could also go to Dr. Stasia, but she's a surgeon, not a veterinarian. I advise you not to have too much hope. Lucita, you can try a tube of medicine for treating colds. Cold medicine won't harm you if you drink it, but I can't guarantee it will work."
Mavis answered in a low voice: "She's not a beast," and said nothing more. She picked out several bottles labeled things like "Life Recovery Potion," "Mental Stimulant," "Healing Potion," opening them one by one and placing them by the nightingale's face, as if hoping the nightingale would choose the medicine to treat itself.
Lucita didn’t know what Mavis was thinking, but the nightingale obviously wouldn’t respond.
Lucita took the cold medicine potion. The cold medicine was a deep blue viscous liquid with flickering fragments of light inside, as if it contained the entire starry sky, very beautiful, but not very appetizing.
"Why don't you try your luck at Dr. Stasia's?" Lucita asked casually, attempting to uncork her medicine tube.
"It won't be useful," Mavis answered in a low voice, putting the life recovery potion back in its place.
Lucita didn’t ask why, because she smelled the second scent of the day. A trace of faint grass and wind smell overflowed from her cold medicine test tube. The scent was extremely faint and could easily be overlooked, but Lucita, having lost her sense of smell, was extremely sensitive to any trace of scent.
This was—life!
"What?" Mavis pressed for an answer.
Only then did Lucita realize she had spoken her thought aloud, so she repeated, “This tube of cold medicine has the scent of ‘life.’”
"Death... life..." Mavis murmured, then suddenly looked up and asked: "Can we try giving her this tube of cold medicine?"
Lucita handed it over.
The nightingale seemed to smell something too and, following Mavis's hand, drank the entire tube of medicine.
Whether it was an illusion or not, Lucita felt the nightingale's spirit seemed to recover somewhat.
Garcia and Mavis seemed to have the same feeling.
"Can you bring out all the cold medicine potions? Garcia!" Mavis looked up with bright eyes. Garcia dropped a "wait a moment" and started searching in the cabinet behind, finally bringing out four medicine tubes.
Disappointingly, none of these four tubes had that scent. Mavis tried giving them to the nightingale one by one. The nightingale reluctantly cooperated, but after drinking them showed no improvement, instead seeming somewhat drowsy.
"Drinking too much cold medicine makes you sleepy," Garcia explained with a bitter smile. Things seemed to have reached an impasse again.
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