Calcifer Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  It is on a rare day that the sun doesn’t touch the houses and halls of Cloudless; but even rare days come to pass, and this was one such. The town of blooming greens and marigolds sat dull under the humid blanket of slate-gray clouds. The houses, jaunty and faerie-like in their construction, sagged in the middle and peeled around their edges, their colorful trims splintered and rotted. No children played in the decorated stone plaza; no pet dogs dug at carefully maintained gardens; no pastries or pies decorated the windowsills. The town was empty. It was almost fortunate that nobody was around to witness this spiritless display.

  In this case, ‘nobody’ was a woman, dressed in traveler’s beige and holding a doctor’s bag. She sat in a rigid wooden chair, the scent of her incense doing little to soothe her turning stomach. Each cursory glance out the clinic’s dusty windowpanes knotted her insides all over again. She turned away from the collapsing town.

  The clinic was a small building, but even so held the title of the largest building in Cloudless. The bulk of the building was one long room, an aisle flanked on either side by a row of modest beds and bedside tables. There were a number of folding curtains stacked at the back of the room for afflictions of a more private nature, but the current residents of the clinic didn’t make much use of them––there was nothing indecent about sleep.

  At the head of the room, the cracked wooden chair faced a smoldering fireplace. The fire did nothing to warm Amelia, but tending to it gave her a reason not to look at the rows of comatose bodies behind her. She was painfully aware of her mother’s face, deeply lined and leathery with years of summer, resting just out of her periphery. It was a reason not to look at her neighbors, her cousins, her childhood friends––pale, cool to the touch, their chests rising in shallow breaths. It wasn’t a great reason––but it was good enough.

  Under normal circumstances, Amelia would have left as soon as her routine check-ups were finished. But that day, she lingered, shifting uncomfortably in her chair. The letter on her lap fluttered to the ground, and her hand swooped down for it lazily, her eyes flicking over its contents for the thousandth time. The town would be someone else’s responsibility soon––or the biweekly visits, at least. She gave the letter one last read, slow and careful, making sure every detail was right; every measurement of medicine, every line of precaution, every routine instruction, not because she distrusted her choice of caretakers––quite the opposite––but because it was in her nature to do so. She let the moment run on for an eternity, like sand wearing at a pillar of patient stone.

  She knew it was best not to rush goodbyes.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE DOCTOR IS IN. DIAGNOSIS.

  “Hello, Maria. My name is Amelia Saul. I’m a doctor––your husband wrote for me.” Amelia said, searching her eyes for coherence. Maria nodded through the fog of sleep.

  Amelia peeled the blankets away from the woman’s clammy chest and placed a hand there, searching for a heartbeat. It was quiet but consistent––too quiet for a farmer, in her opinion. She moved her attention to the woman’s wrist, where the pain supposedly sat. The joints were swollen, and the veins had taken on a dark discoloration, like a nasty bruise.

  Amelia turned back to John, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket and wiping her hand clean. “Maria fell ill about a week ago, correct? Did she take to the woods any time in the week before that?”

  John thought for a moment, and then shook his head. “No. Mostly she spent her time in the garden, I think. Her herbs had just come in.”

  “Herbs,” Amelia mulled. “Butter root? Widow’s lock, maybe?”

  Even through his grief, John seemed surprised. “Mighty good sense of smell you have for a doctor-type.”

  She shook her head. “Not smell. I think your garden has a parasite, Maria. Not to any fault of yours, of course. They move with the cold, rooting wherever they can.”

  “She ate a parasite?” John said, alarmed.

  “No, no. The parasite lives in the roots. Most likely, she inadvertently ingested its blood, or interstitial fluid. Probably poisonous.” Amelia shrugged her knapsack off her shoulders, kneeling next to the coffee table and beginning to root through it for her mortar and pestle. “If you grow sweetgrass, John, I would go clip some. This antidote will be foul.”

  John, looking dazed, left the room, returning with a handful of short, green bristles. Amelia took them and began to grind them to dust, her next herbs already lined up on the table.

  “It makes sense,” He mulled, scratching his stubble absently. “I never liked butter root––too fatty. We had mashed potatoes that night. Regular butter was fat enough for me, thanks.” Amelia listened to the farmer’s musings while she worked. First sweetgrass, then tongue knot, the smallest drop of mercury… It was almost calming, if not for the knowledge of the amount of pain Maria was experiencing. “Maybe you should check my daughter July when she comes home. She was working late that night, but I haven’t been paying much attention to what she’s been grabbing from the garden. Maybe I should’ve been…” John’s hands began to wring again. Amelia stood up and put one of her hands on his.

  “Don’t blame yourself, John. Maria already feels bad; she wouldn’t want you to feel bad too.” After a second of kind but serious eye contact, Amelia reached back into her knapsack and grabbed two more herbs. She pinched out a small amount onto the table, and turned back to John. “Mix these until they’re a paste––it’ll smell awful at first, but the sweetgrass will mostly hide that––then apply it to wherever the swelling is worst. Don’t be afraid to be liberal with it, but leave a little in the mortar for me.”

  “For you?”

  “I’m going to remove your parasite, and I’ve got enough joint pain as it is.” Amelia laughed, a short and harsh sound that suggested she didn’t do it often. She patted John’s shoulder and stepped out of the room, leaving him with his thoughts and Maria’s gentle breaths.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MEETING JULY. DINNER. THE FIGHTER’S GUILD.

  A young woman jogged down the dirt road towards the Casperan farm. Her shoes smacked the dirt rhythmically, her breath escaping in short bursts as her left foot hit the ground––a technique her father taught her to avoid cramps. The neighbors who watched her pass from their nestled cozy homes might’ve mistaken her for a scrappy young man if they weren’t already familiar with the only daughter of John and Maria Casperan. On some level, July was aware of this, but she didn’t much care.

  She slowed her pace to a trot as she approached her driveway, cooling down in the gentle summer breeze. The wood porch peeked out from between the
rows of billowing crop. As she got closer, however, something felt amiss. Her father, not the relaxing type, was nowhere to be seen at the prime working hours of the day––working for his appetite, he would’ve said. On top of that, someone was kneeling in her mother’s garden––and it certainly wasn’t her mother.

  July, in her eternal nosiness, diverted her path from the front door to the garden. The woman looked older than her mother, with short, curly blonde hair and a serious face––the type that looked serious even when it was smiling. July leaned over the garden’s stubby fence and watched the woman’s fingers diligently root through the dirt.

  “I’m not big on butter root either,” July quipped, “but it’s not nice to mess with people’s gardens.”

  The woman tensed. “You must be July. John told me about you.”

  “Oh, did he tell you the boat story? He tells everyone the boat story.” July came around to the woman’s side of the fence. “We haven’t been acquainted.”

  “Amelia Saul. Doctor,” She said shortly.

  Not a people person, July figured. “You looked at my mother, then? I think––oh man, that’s gross!” The doctor held up a ligament of some sort––long, spidery, and covered in mucus. She shifted it to her other hand and yanked. The soil fell away and three more limbs pulled taut against her grip, connected at the center by a small, bulbous body. Amelia took up a pair of small scissors in her free hand and severed the limbs, leaving the body hanging by the appendage she held.

  “Pass me that hermetic jar?” Amelia directed, gesturing with her head at the ground next to her. July unscrewed the metal cap of the glass jar and handed it to her, watching with fascination as she dropped the bulb inside, then wiped her hands on a handkerchief and began digging in her pack again.

  “I’m guessing that’s what made my mother sick,” July said, eyeing the parasite, which pulsed helplessly.

  “You guess right,” Saul said flatly, pulling out a bottle of clear, foul-smelling fluid. Seeing July’s nose wrinkle, the doctor smiled. “Formaldehyde. Preserves what’s dead. Kills what isn’t.” She tipped the bottle into the hermetic jar, filling it halfway before sealing both the jar and the bottle again. The bulb began to inflate slowly, taking in the preserving fluid. Like a grape, she mused.

  “You seem more interested than grossed out,” Amelia added. July’s gaze shifted from the bottle to the doctor, and she nodded. She began to explain, but John stepped out to the front of the porch.

  “I see you two have already met,” He called. “July, come set the table. For four, if you would stay, Dr. Saul. It’s the least I could do to thank you.”

  The doctor dusted her hands against her pants, slipping the jar into her knapsack with her scissors and formaldehyde. “I’d be happy to stay, John. Thank you kindly.”

  July met Amelia’s eyes as she stood. “Thank you for helping my mother.” The doctor’s otherwise serious face seemed to soften slightly at this, and she gave a curt nod before passing the girl by on the way to the porch.

  Not a people person, July confirmed.

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  The dining room of the Casperan home was as modest as the rest––adjoined to the kitchen, with lots of windows and wood. Amelia felt certain that she could trace the furnishings of the room back to a carpenter or two in the nearby town of Little Rock. That was how small town life functioned––you traded what you had for what you didn’t; wheat and eggs for a dining room table; medicinal expertise for dinner and somewhere to sleep.

  When the table was full to John’s satisfaction, he sat down with the other two Casperans and Saul, and dropped his head, mumbling an obligatory prayer. Already, Maria looked much better. She would have to rest after dinner, but much of the color had returned to her skin, and the fever had broken. Saul patiently waited for the prayer to finish before taking a sip of water.

  “I meant to ask before, Dr. Saul,” John said, tearing a roll of bread in two, “what brings you down the way of Little Rock?”

  “Please, it’s Amelia. Mel, to my friends.” Amelia shuffled her food until none of it touched, as she had since she was a child. “This is a short stop on my way to San Della. I got a letter from an old friend––a mentor, actually––Judas Bachman. He taught me much of what I know about medicine.”

  “You can pass along my thanks to Dr. Bachman, then.” Maria said with a wan smile, hardly touching her food but drinking healthily. Amelia expected no different.

  “And mine,” John added. “San Della. That’s a far way off from here.”

  Amelia chewed thoughtfully, then spoke. “Yes. He has some news for me, to help with––well, home.” John and Maria nodded sympathetically, but July seemed puzzled. Mel felt a bead of anxiety in her stomach, as she always did when she thought about home. “Everyone in my hometown went to bed one night––but they never woke up,” She explained. “They sleep, all day and all night. They can only be fed by needle, and they hardly burn any calories. It’s as if someone turned off a switch in their heads.”

  “Oh.”

  Amelia nodded. There were a few moments of quiet thought and equally quiet chewing before the silence was broken again.

  “What’s that?” John said, staring intently at July’s outstretched arm, pitcher in hand.

  “It’s a bruise,” She replied.

  “I know it’s a bruise,” John snapped. “Where did it come from?”

  “I did a job on the docks, moving boxes. Buddy bumped into me, and I dropped a box into the harbor,” She navigated the story with obvious care, watching for parent-triggering phrases.

  “Bumped into you awfully hard,” Amelia interjected.

  July shot her a look––You aren’t helping. “It wasn’t the bump that caused the bruise. It, uh… it was the fist fight after the bump.”

  Amelia could feel the heat from John’s chair as his brow dipped and his lips puckered sourly. But instead of exploding, he clasped his hands together over his face, closing his eyes. She mentally applauded his temperament.

  “You’re banned from the pier?” He asked, dreading the answer.

  “I’m banned from the pier,” She agreed. “I still have work at the fighter’s guild though.”

  “You’re a part of a fighter’s guild?” Amelia jumped in, trying to steer the conversation away from punishment. “Where?”

  “Lochan. I do a lot of work in the city itself, but I’ve been out of Lochmount a few times.” Relieved, July babbled about the details of her work. “I’ve been to Raoh, and even Tallan, once. But mostly I don’t leave the province,” She concluded.

  “A fighter’s guild,” Amelia repeated.

  “You look like you’re thinking hard about something, Dr. Saul,” Maria prodded, smiling. “Care to share?”

  Amelia’s cautious smile returned. “I have to pass through Raoh to get to San Della. That means crossing international borders as well. I’d sleep easier if I had a little muscle.”

  “Yes,” July said instantly.

  “Hold on, kid. Think about this for a second before you go flying off the handle,” John said, putting out a hand. “San Della is at least a few days from here, and that’s making a good pace. And it’s across the border––is that even allowed with your ‘club’, or however you call it?”

  “It’s a guild, and yes, it’s allowed. I’d just need a passport,” July answered, clearly about to fly off the handle.

  “That can be arranged,” Amelia added, draining the rest of her glass. “However, there would be conditions. No heavy weaponry––“

  “A short sword is plenty,” July interrupted.

  “–and violence is a last resort.” Amelia looked July in the eyes, steely-blue to black-brown. “I am a doctor, and a pacifist. Human life is sacred to me. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal,” She nodded. “We’ll just ask the highwaymen nicely not to rob us.”

  Amelia sighed. “We’re not going to run into highwaymen. You’re coming to keep off wild do
gs, and bears. That sort of thing.”

  “Bears,” John mulled, disbelieving. “Why couldn’t you just be a farmer, Jules?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  INHOSPITABLE RAOH. HOME. THE NIGHT LURKERS.

  Growling.

  July’s hands tightened around the grip of her sword, her stance low and wide. Her eyes flicked across the edge of the stone highway, prying at the dark woods for the source of the sound. She had fought off a few wild dogs in the past, and knew the trick was keeping them in front of you. Once they got around to your back, they were apt to–

  A brown blur leapt from the trees at July. She flinched at the sudden movement, forgetting her composure for a second––but now that the dog was in her sight, her muscles acted on memory––a quick, clean slice, down and out.

  The dog fell back on its haunches, a deep cut running along the dog’s back. July closed the distance and thrust.

  Amelia, evidently deciding that she didn’t need to see this part, closed her eyes, turning away from the sound of metal sliding through flesh. “Are you finished?”

  “Yes.” July, utterly desensitized, pulled her sword from the canine’s neck easily. “I should throw it into the woods, though. Don’t want to attract more dogs––or bears, heaven forbid.”

  “Be my guest.” Amelia waved her hand at the woods.

  “Feeling ill?” July teased, shuffling through her pockets for a cloth to clean her blade. She came up empty, then shrugged, wiping the blade on the dog’s fur.

  Amelia continued down the road without her, but not before serving her a look that was equal parts annoyed, sincere, and tired. “Yes, and I don’t appreciate your tone. That dog was alive. It deserves respect.”

  “My apologies, Your Majesty,” July mumbled, sheathing her sword. She grabbed a fistful of the dog’s fur and hefted it into the ditch, where it flopped miserably in a trough of murky rainwater. She briefly wondered if this was the respect a wild dog earned.

  “You do look a little pale. Are you sure you don’t want to stop?” July asked, trotting after Amelia. Her face did seem whiter than before, and the bags under her eyes a little deeper. She felt a short pang of guilt for teasing.