As soon as they landed, Neveeve made them spread out. "Put as much distance as you can between one another." Gregor moved away from his mother and Queen Athena, but didn't feel like he could set Boots down. She'd just run off, maybe to the railing of the box, and they were up really high.
His mom started to follow Gregor and Boots but Neveeve waved her back. "No! Move into a space by yourself!"
The doctor opened a pouch at her belt and pulled out what looked like a fancy perfume bottle. It had one of those bulbs on the side so you could spray it. She closed her eyes, pointed the nozzle at herself, and squeezed the bulb. Puffs of yellow powder settled on her skin and clothing. It looked like the same stuff the rats had been scratching from their coats. The flea powder.
Neveeve moved rapidly around the box spraying everyone. "Rub it into your skin, your hair. Cover every inch of your being," she instructed.
When she got to Gregor, he covered Boots's eyes with his hands while he shut his own. He could feel the powder coating his skin. It had a sharp, bitter smell. As Neveeve moved on to his mother, Boots sneezed and gave him a surprised look. "You yellow," she said.
"You, too," Gregor said, working the powder through her hair. "And what letter does yellow begin with?"
"Y!" Boots said. "Y is for yellow!"
"And what else?" said Gregor, trying to distract her as he rubbed the stuff over her skin.
"Y is for yo-yo! Y is for yak!" said Boots. She had never seen a yak, except in her ABC book. Neither had Gregor, for that matter. Probably no one would have ever even heard of a yak if it hadn't been about the only animal that began with a Y.
In a matter of minutes, the entire party of six bats and six humans had been treated with the pesticide.
"I think it is safe now to gather," said Neveeve.
Everyone came together in the center of the box. Below on the field, the charred body of the bat lay in a puddle of water. The fire had been extinguished.
"Bat sick. Bat needs juice," said Boots. Whenever she had a cold the first thing she got was a cup of juice.
"He's asleep now. He can have some when he wakes up," said Gregor. He could never manage to work out how to tell Boots someone had died.
"Apple juice." Boots squatted down and began to draw squiggles in the fine coat of yellow powder that covered the floor.
"Give orders to disinfect the entire field," Solovet called out to a guard who hovered on his bat near the box. "Wait!" The guard stayed as she turned to the doctor. "Will that be sufficient, Neveeve?"
"They must also spray the tunnels that lead away from the arena," said Neveeve. "The fleas will not be able to enter Regalia with the stone doors shut, nor jump so high as the seats. But some may already have escaped down the tunnels and into the rest of the Underland. Any who guard there must be recalled and their skin examined for bites."
"Do as she says," Solovet told the guard.
"What of the gnawers and the crawlers?" asked Vikus.
"No flea could penetrate the coat of poison on the gnawers, and they will not bite the crawlers. They are all quite safe," said Neveeve.
"And those of us here assembled?" said Vikus.
"If any flea reached us, which is doubtful, it is now dead. We must each be stripped and checked for bites by physicians in Regalia," said Neveeve.
"We are not..." choked out Gregor's mother. "We are never returning to Regalia!"
"Please, Grace, I know this to be very unexpected and distressing —" began Vikus.
"We're going home! We came to your meeting! That's all you said we had to do! So you tell that bat to take us home now!" said his mother as she pointed wildly at Nike.
"Who told you this? That you were only expected for the meeting?" asked Vikus with concern.
"Ripred," said Gregor. "He said we just had to come for a couple of hours. That you didn't need us to find the cure. Then he sent a swarm of rats to scare us out of the apartment."
Gregor could tell by the look Vikus exchanged with Solovet that this was the first they had heard of any of this.
"I am afraid he was not forthcoming," said Vikus.
"What do you mean?" asked Gregor's mom.
"He means Ripred lied," said Solovet.
"He may in fact have thought their presence was unnecessary for the —" said Vikus weakly.
"He lied!" repeated Solovet. "Do not defend him. He knows perfectly well there will be no quest for the cure without the Overlanders! He obviously thought there was no other means of bringing them below. I would have done the same, Vikus, if you would not have."
Gregor bet she would have, too. Solovet would not have cared what Gregor or his family wanted. Not at Regalia's expense.
"We will not force them to stay, Solovet!" said Vikus. Gregor had never seen him so angry. "They have been brought here under false pretenses. We will not force them to stay!"
Gregor's mother clutched Vikus's arm as if it were a lifeline. "You'll send us home now, then? We can leave?"
"No!" said Solovet.
"Yes!" said Vikus. "Nike! Prepare to take the Overlanders home!"
"Guards!" barked Solovet.
Gregor was bewildered at the power struggle playing out before them. He had never seen Vikus and Solovet fight like this, and it rattled him. Who could actually make this decision? What would happen if his family tried to leave? What was he supposed to do?
"Wait!" Gregor took his mom's hand. "Look, Mom, I've been to see Ares. He's really bad. He's dying, Mom. I can't leave him like this. So, how about you take Boots back and I stay and try to help? Okay? You take Boots and Lizzie and Grandma to Virginia. Dad will wait for me to come back up. Then we'll come to Virginia, too."
"That might be an acceptable compromise," said Vikus, eyeing his wife.
"We could put it to the council," said Solovet, although she did not sound convinced.
"I can't leave you down here, Gregor," said his mom. "I'm sorry about your friend. I really am. But I can't leave you here."
"Look, Mom, I don't think all three of us are going to be allowed out of here," said Gregor. "Please, take Boots and go home." He squeezed her hand tightly. It took him only a few seconds to register that something was wrong.
His mom was talking back to him now, but the words weren't reaching his brain. He moved his fingers over the skin on the back of her hand. No, he hadn't imagined it. It was there.
"Gregor, are you listening to me?" pleaded his mom.
He wasn't. He was trying to make sense of what his fingers were telling him. And trying to wish it away. But he couldn't.
Gregor slowly lifted his mom's hand into the light of a nearby torch and wiped off the yellow powder. A small red bite was swelling up on her skin.
PART 2
The Jungle
CHAPTER 10
His mom stared at her hand and became very still. As the rest of the group saw the bite, all movement and sound stopped. There was not a whisper, not a rustling of a wing or robe.
Curious, Boots climbed up on a seat to see what everyone was looking at. "You need pink," she said when she saw the bite.
Gregor knew she meant the pink calamine lotion they put on bug bites in the summer.
"I need to go home," his mother whispered.
"We cannot let you," said Vikus with a sad shake of his head. "Not now."
"If the plague were unleashed in the Overland, it could mean the annihilation of the warmbloods there as well," said Solovet.
"We must place you in quarantine at once," said Neveeve.
Solovet touched his mother's shoulder. "We are so deeply sorry this happened." She sighed. "Nike, take her in and report to be inspected for bites."
Gregor was still holding his mom's hand. He couldn't let go. "Mom..."
She gently pried his fingers loose and stepped back from him. "You take your sister home."
Did he nod? Gregor wasn't sure. But his mom got on Nike's back and disappeared.
"We must all be checked for bites immediately," said Neveeve
.
Somehow they were all on bats. They did not go through the city, but took some tunnels that opened out over the white seething river that ran by Regalia. At the dock, no one assisted them. The yellow powder was enough to keep people at bay.
They were sent to bathe and then had to stand naked while no less than seven teams of doctors inspected their skin for flea bites in bright light. Boots, who was exceptionally ticklish, giggled through the whole thing. Gregor submitted to the inspection without objecting, but he was almost certain he and Boots had not been bitten.
"You can run away, but the prophecy will find you somehow," he heard his grandma saying.
Oh, it had found him, all right. And dug its teeth into him. Into Boots, too. And it would not let them go until the whole terrifying episode had been played out. Their mom was infected with the plague. Now the warrior...the princess...they had to go try and find the cure.
Gregor wanted to scream out to no one in particular that it had been enough for Ares and Howard and Andromeda to be sick. He would have found a way to go on the quest. But his mother would never have let Boots go to the...what was it? The Vineyard of Eyes? For the prophecy to be fulfilled, his mother had to be taken out of commission. Quarantined. Made a victim. Yes, prophetically speaking, everything was right on schedule.
He felt exhausted by the responsibility that lay ahead. He was so sick of being dragged into the Underland. Of being expected to solve its problems. Of having the rest of his family suffer for causes that did not even really involve them. After he and Boots had been pronounced free of flea bites, they were given new silky Underlander clothes. Gregor managed to talk them into letting him have his boots back, but they had to be inspected for fleas and disinfected first. While they sat on a bench in the hospital waiting to hear about the others, Boots nodded off on his shoulder. No wonder, she'd only had a couple of hours of sleep. Vikus sent for Dulcet, the nanny who had looked after Boots on earlier visits.
Dulcet took the sleeping little girl from Gregor's arms and then touched his shoulder. "I am very sorry to hear about your mother. But do not lose heart. You will find the cure. Of this, I am certain."
Her tone was so kind that Gregor almost broke down and told her about how he had to find the cure. How his mom just had to live. How his whole family would break apart into splinters if she wasn't there to hold it together. How she could not die because he could not imagine the world without her. And how it would be Gregor's fault...her horrible death...the purple bumps...the struggle for air...because he had wanted to make this trip to the Underland...and she had not.
But all he said was, "Thanks, Dulcet." When everyone who had been at the meeting had been scrupulously checked, a total of three were sent into quarantine: Gregor's mom and two bats named Cassiopeia and Pollux.
Gregor saw Neveeve at the end of the hallway, writing something on a clipboard. He walked over and touched her arm.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. Her arm jerked to the side and the quill pen she'd been writing with left a large blot on her parchment.
"Sorry," said Gregor. Boy, she sure was jumpy. Of course, spending your days treating plague patients was not exactly a vacation.
"Can you tell me where my mom is?" asked Gregor.
"We have her isolated," said Neveeve. "Come, she sleeps, but you can see her."
The doctor led Gregor through the hospital.
"Does she know Boots and I didn't get bitten?" asked Gregor.
"Yes. But she was still highly agitated," said Neveeve, her fingers rubbing her eyelid, which seemed to be twitching. "I gave her a medicine to calm her." Gregor thought Neveeve might benefit from a little of that medicine herself, but he didn't say so. His mom was in a private room on the same hall as Ares, Howard, and Andromeda. Gregor looked through the glass wall and saw that all the yellow powder had been washed off her and she was dressed in fresh white pajamas. She looked small and vulnerable in the hospital bed. It was good she was asleep. If she could speak, she would order Gregor home and he would have to tell her that he and Boots couldn't go back now and she'd go crazy. So he fixed the picture of his mom in his head. What if this was the last time he ever saw her?
He shook the thought from his head and turned to Neveeve. "I need your help. I really need to know everything you know about the plague," he said.
"I am now headed to my laboratory where I study this sickness. Would you like to accompany me?" asked the doctor. "It is outside of Regalia, but it will take some time for them to resume the meeting to discuss the cure."
Nike flew them out of the palace, over the city, and high above the arena. The body of the bat had been removed and the moss of the playing field had a yellow coating of flea powder. They went down a tunnel, picking up a few torches from the holders on the walls. As the tunnel began to fork, Gregor knew he'd been this way before.
"Isn't Ares's cave out this way?" he asked.
"I believe it is. I have never visited it," said Neveeve. "It is said to be well hidden. This is why it took Howard and Andromeda several days to find Ares and bring him into the hospital,"
"He didn't come in because he felt sick?" asked
Gregor.
"No, Vikus had not heard from him for weeks. So
Howard and Andromeda flew out to search for his cave. He was so ill already, they had to carry him in,"
said Neveeve.
Gregor thought of Ares, alone and sick in his cave. His few close friends were dead or missing. And Gregor, his bond, was unreachable. "Poor Ares."
"Yes," said Neveeve. "Ares has been greatly persecuted through no fault of his own, and this is the result."
This surprised Gregor because there was not much sympathy for Ares in the Underland. He was deeply mistrusted and most people and bats wanted him dead. He felt a surge of warmth toward Neveeve for her compassionate view of his bond.
"Did you know him well?" asked Gregor.
"Not well. After you left Regalia, Ares would not return to the city, fearing they would imprison him again. On Vikus's instructions, I continued to care for the mite wounds on his back at my lab. Even then, Ares would only come very late at night when I was the only one present."
"I appreciate you doing that," said Gregor.
"As I said, I believe his treatment has been unjust," said Neveeve.
Her laboratory was housed in a series of large connecting caves. Long stone counters were covered with a variety of lab equipment. A stream had been diverted into a narrow channel that ran through the back of one of the caves. A handful of people in gloves moved about their duties. A few bats were there as well, peering into microscopes, consulting with the humans.
Neveeve guided Gregor into a room that was separated from the rest of the lab by a heavy stone door. "This is where I conduct my research," she said, carefully shutting the door behind her.
There were test tubes and beakers and several microscopes. Along one wall were four large glass containers that fitted into stone cubes. They reminded him of water coolers. Gregor moved in to examine one. Little black specks were crawling around inside it. Fleas. His torchlight reflected off a shiny red pool at the bottom of the container. Gregor realized it was blood and gave a little jump backward. His arm caught the adjacent container, causing it to tip sideways, but he managed to catch it. Fortunately, this one was empty.
"Sorry! Man, I'm sorry," said Gregor, steadying the container.
"That was well caught," said Neveeve with a high-pitched laugh. "Thank goodness, as these are made specially for the plague and not easily replaced. It took me several months to receive this one when its predecessor was broken. I am about to use this new one to test out a most promising antidote."
Gregor put the torch in a holder and stuck his hands in his pockets so he wouldn't bump into anything else. All he needed now was to be busting up some experiment that could save everybody's life.
The doctor told him what she knew about the plague. It was bloodborne, not airborne, which meant you couldn't get it if somebody ju
st sneezed on you, only if their blood got in your veins. That was where the fleas came in. They transmitted the disease from warmblood to warmblood.
"In many plagues, the insects would die as well. Not as the warmbloods do, but the germs would multiply in their bodies and kill them. Not so with this one. We believe that no insect has died. No fish or scaled creature, either. That is why it is called 'The Curse of the Warmbloods' and not 'The Curse of the Underland,'" said Neveeve.
"Ripred said you could treat the symptoms in Regalia," said Gregor.
"Yes, we can ease discomfort, lower fever, give medicines to induce sleep, but these do not kill the plague," said Neveeve. "We are attempting to come up with our own cure in the event that your search is not successful. Although almost no one really believes we can do it," said Neveeve with a weak smile. "I have faith that we can, but it will take time."
Time. It was all going to come down to time. "How long do you have after you're bitten?" he asked.
"It varies greatly. Ares, for instance, was the first Underlander to fall ill, but he shows remarkable resistance. It seems the fliers do not sicken as quickly as the humans do. Howard and Andromeda have only become symptomatic in the past few days. But then, we do not know if they contracted the disease from the mites or when they brought Ares into the hospital. Your mother...as a human who has had a flea bite from Icarus, clearly an advanced case..." Neveeve hesitated.
"I need the truth. How long would you give her?" said Gregor.
Neveeve lowered her gaze and massaged her forehead with a trembling hand. "If things go badly...we could lose her in two weeks."
***
CHAPTER 11
The stone floor was cold. Gregor lay on his side holding a small mirror by the handle. He was trying to read "The Prophecy of Blood" but it wasn't easy.
"You know, I've already got this thing memorized," he said.
"We know, Gregor, but Nerissa and I feel it is important for you to examine the original," said Vikus. "There are clues you may pick up from the way it is written."
The Underland Chronicles: Books 1-5 Paperback Box Set Page 40
