Chapter 44 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 44: Visitor from the Royal Capital 10
On any ordinary day, such a bright, lively color would have felt warm and cheerful. But now, as it caught her eye, it carried a faint and unsettling sense of dread.
Lucita opened her right hand.
On the face of the mermaid pocket watch, the glaring patch of red belonging to humanity seemed to have deepened again, thick as a pool of congealed blood.
Teresa’s bakery looked just as it always did. Behind the glass display case, bread and candies gave off a tempting sweetness that drifted out through the small window. Customers came and went in a steady stream, and Teresa’s round, fair face wore its usual warm smile.
When Lucita arrived, Sophia was just stepping out the door with a bag containing a simple white loaf.
Spotting Lucita, her eyes lit up: "Luci! It's been a while."
"It has." Lucita greeted her, then asked: "I heard Mavis has been ill? Is she doing alright?"
Sophia's smile dimmed. "You heard too."
Looking closer, Lucita noticed that Sophia’s complexion seemed off as well, pale, with a hint of fatigue.
Lucita couldn't help but press: "You don't look too well yourself."
"I'm managing." Sophia said, with some effort. "You know how it is with me. But Mavis……we don't know what illness it is. It looks like a head cold, but cold remedies aren't doing anything for her. She's been bedridden for days now, getting a little worse each day."
Thinking of Sophia’s situation, Lucita felt her chest tighten and sighed softly. “Is there anything I can do? Can you manage everything on your own?”
"We're getting by. My mother has moved in to help me look after Mavis." Sophia managed a brief smile. “The problem is, neither of us knows much about human cooking, so we’ve been buying meals from the bakery and the tavern every day.”
"Here." She held out a bag of deep crimson blackthorn plums. “Want one? I just got them from Aurora’s.”
Lucita's first instinct was to decline, but something crossed her mind and she reached into the bag and took one. "Thank you."
She held the deep-red plum and carefully nibbled through a small patch of its skin.
Sophia noticed and laughed. "Don't worry, I tried one already. They're very sweet, not sour at all."
Lucita nodded. "They really are sweet."
Sophia chatted with her for a moment: "Do you like Teresa’s bread too? Mavis loves it. Teresa insists hers is the best. Personally, I think it’s too sweet, it can’t compare to Lily’s white bread.” She shrugged. “I really don’t get why people prefer her baking.”
"Perhaps sweetness makes people happy," Lucita said offhandedly, then watched as Sophia picked up her bags and slowly walked away.
She leaned against a pillar, felt a wave of nausea rise, and quietly dropped the plum into a rubbish bin.
Just as she'd thought……it wasn't only Teresa's bakery.
The plague was spreading far more aggressively than she had imagined. Yet the townspeople showed no sign of anything wrong. Only the humans were falling ill.
Mavis, Palmer……had they both been struck down by the plague?
If so, then there were two more humans here.
Anastasia, and the bard living with her……
Coincidentally, Palmer and that bard were the only two outsiders who had arrived recently.
Lucita bought another piece of bread and tasted it, confirming that what she'd bought earlier was no isolated case. Then she turned and headed straight for Stasia's surgical clinic.
She needed to see whether the last two humans were still in good health.
In the middle of the day, a "Temporarily Closed" sign hung from the wooden door of the surgical clinic, its neat script written in deep red ink, swaying crookedly in the breeze.
It was common knowledge that Anastasia's clinic and her living quarters were one and the same.
Lucita knocked tentatively.
A faint, hoarse voice came from within: "Who is it?"
Footsteps drew closer.
Someone peered out from behind the door — it was Stasia, though her appearance was rather unlike her usual self.
Stasia looked utterly haggard. One side of her collar was turned up — something that would never have happened to her on an ordinary day; it was the sort of thing you'd sooner expect from Durani.
Her brow was unconsciously knitted, and her voice was as rough as if she'd gone days without water: "I'm ill, if you need something, please find Garcia. She can handle most things."
Lucita's brow twitched.
Just as she'd feared……
She stood where she was, motionless, as though she hadn't registered that Stasia was turning her away: "In that case, is the bard also ill?"
Stasia's pupils contracted.
"Yes, this illness seems to be contagious……" Stasia said slowly. "How did you know? None of my neighbors have fallen sick. It was only after I caught the same illness myself that I was certain it could spread, and after that, we haven't left the house at all."
"Unfortunately, the plague had already been spreading long before you fell ill. By now, everyone who was going to get sick already has." Lucita stated this plainly.
"That's impossible! The Vayne household to my left is perfectly fine, the Daly family to my right is perfectly fine, everyone nearby is perfectly fine. There's been absolutely no word of any illness going around!" Stasia stared at her, wide-eyed and disbelieving.
"Indeed, the half-bloods are all perfectly fine. Only humans are susceptible. Is that so strange? Have you ever seen a chicken catch swine fever, or a pig catch fowl plague?"
"Half-bloods? What do you mean?" Stasia looked thoroughly bewildered.
Lucita was startled in turn. "You didn't know…?"
Even if she hadn't known the town's situation when she first moved in, three years of living here should have been enough to figure it out.
But Dr. Stasia was a research eccentric who lived entirely in her own world, almost entirely outside Irttat's social circles. The consequence of keeping both ears firmly shut to the world outside her door was that she had not noticed a single thing amiss about Irttat……
Everyone always said Dr. Stasia was reclusive and thoroughly enigmatic, Lucita had never quite appreciated how true that was until now. This encounter had given her a thorough understanding.
Lucita pressed a hand to her forehead in resignation.
"And are you also a half-blood?"
From afar, a faint woman's voice drifted through the door and interrupted them.
Stasia turned sharply: "Kelsey! Why are you out of bed!"
Lucita answered the question: "Yes, I am."
"Then you can't be infected. Is that correct?"
"That's correct."
"Anna," said Kelsey, "let her in."
Stasia blinked, then opened the door.
With a creak, a shaft of sunlight fell through the doorway, and in an instant motes of dust scattered in every direction.
Both Stasia and Kelsey instinctively squinted.
The room was considerably brighter now.
Perhaps because years of wandering had worn her body down, Kelsey, despite suffering the same illness, looked far more frail, almost skeletal. And yet she sat there, rallying what strength she had, her expression composed and calm, still carrying a faint, quiet air of dignity.
Someone with an unusual past, Lucita thought.
Kelsey spoke first, and her first concern was not her condition: "The entire town, none of them are human?"
Lucita considered. "Mavis is human. And Palmer, I suppose, she's not a resident, but she has fallen ill. She's recovering at Lily's tavern now."
An answer that was more or less expected.
Kelsey couldn't help but laugh, turning to Stasia: "What a remarkable thing to experience."
Stasia had already slumped onto the table, and at that she couldn't help but tilt her head and ask: "How are you not surprised? Don't tell me you already knew and I was the only one who didn't."
"No, I only just found out as well," Kelsey said, reassuringly. "When I first arrived and saw the elves, I really was quite astonished."
"So was I," Stasia muttered. "But I never imagined it wasn't just the elves and mermaids who weren't human, turns out none of them are…"
"There are mermaids as well?" Kelsey remarked with genuine interest. "I know something of elven history. History aside, given everything they've suffered being hunted and having their eyes gouged out, it would be absolutely inconceivable for them to coexist peacefully with humans. So I had my suspicions about this place."
"To uncover a secret like this on one's deathbed, at least it won't have been in vain." Stasia sighed, propping her head up with both hands, looking thoroughly deflated.
Lucita asked suddenly: "Could I have a vial of blood?"
From anyone else in town, such a request would have been startlingly abrupt, as blood was something deeply vital to any living creature.
But Stasia, as a human physician, had no particular sensitivity around it, and instead felt a flicker of curiosity kindle: "You want to research a cure? I don't recall you knowing anything about pharmacology. Garcia might have better luck."
Lucita couldn't go into detail, and said vaguely: "She has her methods, and I have mine. Let's just try and see."
What Lucita said was not untrue, and Stasia knew it perfectly well. Giving Garcia a vial of blood would yield nothing. Garcia's potions were not made by analyzing blood or pharmacological principles, but through fixed recipes passed down through generations. Her entire system was nothing like Stasia's.
The idea had already begun to take root in her mind, but before she could say anything, Kelsey slowly and with effort rolled up her sleeve and extended her wrist.
It was the first time Lucita had observed a human hand this closely and directly.
Her wrist was pale and slender, looking far more fragile than any half-blood's. This was not the leanness of good health, it was plainly the kind of rapid wasting that illness wrought, so severe that the skin had grown slightly loose and rough. The large wrist bones jutted out prominently, and several bluish-purple veins traced across her wrist, stark and rather arresting against the pallor of her skin.
Stasia was the first to come to her senses, scrambling to her feet: "Take mine. I'm in considerably better shape."
The message feather box on the table was knocked off by her movement, sending its contents clattering and scattering across the floor.
Lucita crouched to pick them up, and heard Kelsey say quietly: "Slowly. There's no rush."
Stasia nodded distractedly and stumbled off to the medical room to retrieve her own needle and sample tube.
Lucita was no doctor after all. The blood drawing was best left to Stasia herself.
In the end she did not take Kelsey's blood. Holding the syringe awkwardly in her right hand, she drew from her own left arm.
Lucita said drily: "I've heard it said, a doctor could not treat herself."
"Never heard that one." Stasia, between the illness and the pain, had fine beads of sweat standing out on her forehead, and yet still had the presence of mind to trade quips with Lucita: "The kind of doctor like me, in all these years, I've encountered none but myself. Naturally, I set my own rules. If I don't die, a few generations from now I'll be the founding ancestress of the whole tradition."
The other two present could only watch helplessly as she did it herself, with no way to assist.
From this visit, Lucita obtained one sealed vial of deep red blood. She left behind a promise to produce results as quickly as she could, then closed once more the worn old wooden door that had been shut for days.
The "Temporarily Closed" sign was still swaying in the breeze, as though it had more to say.
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