The Plague Diaries

by Ronlyn Domingue

  “That’s when I lunged on top of him and the vest burst. Blood covered us as I subdued him. The feel and smell of it made me savage. I wanted to kill him. I could have. Only when he cried out in a human voice, in words, did my senses return. Somehow, I held him down long enough until he stopped fighting.

  “Old Man approached us. I got up and placed my foot on the man’s back. Old Man smiled as if he were pleased. I shook hands with the man when he stood next to me. He left, and soon after, I began to shake as if I were having a fit. ‘Let it release,’ Old Man said, although I wasn’t sure what he meant. When I calmed down, I asked Old Man about the prize. He grabbed my wrist, and I felt a sharp pain under my thumb. The blood was mine then.

  “He told me the scar would always remind me of what I’d done and what resided within. He said, ‘At another hunt, you will be the hunted.’ The next thing I remembered, I was in my room, clean, in different clothes, but the cut was raw.”

  I discovered my hands wrapped tight around Nikolas’s arm. “What do you mean, another hunt?”

  He stared into the sky. “My turn came a few weeks ago, before we found each other again. I wore the blood vest. I was the prey. I’ve never forgotten how I felt when I was the hunter—the savage instinct, the power I wanted over someone, something, else—and I won’t forget what it was like to be the one pursued, terrified and humbled.”

  I didn’t tell him then about my encounter with Old Man in my dream, the rage he provoked me to feel, or the hunt I had joined with Fewmany, by my own choice. “Why do you think you were called to do it?”

  “I believe I was meant to learn from the extremes. Who am I between them?” He nudged me with his elbow. “Quick, look up. Falling stars.”

  When I finally slept again, I dreamed of initiation, fire, and blood.

  AN ARCANE KNOWLEDGE AWAKENED IN my body. A part of me knew this place, this cold, this forest. I knew my grandmother’s village wasn’t far away.

  We trudged through the day’s chill. I stopped to forage for mushrooms. When I found a cluster of pale yellow ones, I told Nikolas about the first mushroom I’d ever seen, that same yellow type, on the carriage journey years ago, to this same place. I remarked on the kind coachman who acknowledged its beauty but warned me of its poison. I didn’t mention my mother, who told me not to touch the dirty fungus.

  At twilight, the wolf loped ahead toward a clearing where there was a bonfire. Someone called out from the shadows. We waved in acknowledgment. Two people swept their arms high to gesture us toward them. I didn’t feel there was a threat—neither did the wolf—but I was reluctant to go to the strangers.

  Nikolas, who always enjoyed a festive gathering, slowed his steps.

  A cheerful cry rose up.

  “They’re welcoming us. Let’s go,” he said.

  We and the group exchanged greetings in different languages. After several tries, a young woman and I discovered we could both speak Seronian with adequate proficiency. Nikolas and I sat down with bowls of fish stew and mugs of ale. Everyone seemed able to communicate with gestures, pantomimes, and facial expressions, conveying more than seemed possible.

  I studied the group in the firelight. Memories of the long-ago visit to my grandmother returned in glimpses. I remembered the people with their black hair and swarthy skin, like mine; their bodies strong and solid, although I’d grown more slight. As I watched the men, I sighed at the sudden thought of my stillborn brothers, wondering if they would have been tall, broad, and dark.

  Three of our companions brought a lute, hornpipe, and drum into the circle. As they began to play, the young woman, Vasi, poured out the contents of our mugs and filled them with something else. Wine, sweet and heavy. I took several quick sips to make the heat rise and quiet the pangs for what I’d had at the manor and the company with whom I shared it.

  Nikolas looked at me with his eyebrows lifted.

  “As you know, this isn’t my first taste,” I said.

  “Certainly not,” he said. He tapped his mug against mine.

  As the music played and people danced, we ate pastries filled with dried fruit and drank more wine. Between the drink and the fire, I was warm and relaxed. I tried not to stare at the drummer, the lines of his face striking in the flames’ light.

  Suddenly, Vasi dropped at my side. “Nikolas—husband?”

  I laughed. “No.”

  “Cousin? Brother?”

  “Friend,” I said.

  Her eyes brightened. She rose up, stood in front of him, and beckoned him with her finger. He shoved his mug toward me and followed her to the dancers. Vasi positioned his hands without looking away from his eyes. There, she taught him one dance, then another, the sounds of laughter adding notes to the songs.

  I’d had another mug to drink by the time a young man with straight black hair and light eyes held out his hand to me. I almost declined, an old reticence revealing itself, but at last accepted his kind offer. I had watched everyone enough to replicate the steps of something like a waltz, although that song was slower, the rhythm sensual, not too quick, not too slow.

  Nikolas glanced toward me several times. Vasi’s palms pressed against his chest. His left hand held her waist, his right, a bottle.

  Someone pulled Vasi away for the next dance. My partner slipped from my fingertips, and there was Nikolas with his hand lifted, open. I took it and, with my other, grasped his shoulder.

  A man spoke a loud comment in a teasing tone. The others laughed. Although I had no idea what was said, I blushed. After one last sip, Nikolas dropped the bottle at his feet. The weight of his touch pressed into my side.

  His eyes were glazed but focused on mine.

  “Do you know what I’ve liked most about this quest?” he asked.

  “What?” I asked.

  He raised his arm to allow me to spin. When I faced him again, he said, “Not being watched and followed almost every moment of the day. At home, nearly every word and movement monitored. Always, a guard a few steps away. During the goodwill visits, much of the same, knowing I was never free of scrutiny.”

  His hand slipped to my waist.

  “But I had an escape when we were children. No adults following me in the woods. No one telling me what to do or how to behave. No one ready to plunge a sword or take one for me. You never showed the way to anyone else, did you?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “Only you.”

  He spun me again, three times, his palm on my side once more.

  “When we were little, did you enjoy being away from the world? Did you like being alone?” he asked.

  “Very much, and I liked not being alone when I was with you,” I said, smiling at the memory of the two of us content in each other’s company.

  “Here we are now, untold miles from Ailliath, adventuring as we did when we were children.” He released my hand, tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, and traced his finger along the side of my face. “However, we aren’t children anymore.”

  The wine’s soft blur lifted. The waxing crescent moon beamed between us. My blood raced. My breath shallowed. The look in his eyes I’d seen before, but not from him.

  A couple stumbled into us, their apologies lost in drunken giggles.

  “Excuse me,” Nikolas said as he walked off into the trees.

  He was gone for so long, Vasi asked if I wanted to have a friend look for him.

  “I think he might be ill,” I said.

  She gave a twisted little smile. “Sick, yes. When he comes back, tell him you’re invited to stay. We’re here through the night. Unless you have somewhere to go.”

  I neither heard nor saw the wolf, so I assumed she knew we were safe. I accepted Vasi’s offer and walked among the group thanking them. Soon after everyone settled, Nikolas returned.

  “We’re here for the night. Are you feeling unwell?” I asked.

  He nodded, then fell asleep as soon as he cocooned himself in his coat.

  I lay awake, blaming the wine for what might have nearly h
appened, listening to the fire crackle and the nightcalls of hidden lovers.

  THE NEXT MORNING, NIKOLAS SLEPT through the group’s departure. When he awoke, he had a throbbing headache. I made a fire, heated water in the pot he carried, and found a bark to make him a tea. Eventually he muttered he’d had a “merry night” and didn’t remember much and hoped he’d not been “churlish.” I assured him he did nothing of which to be ashamed, although I wasn’t sure if his memory was as cloudy as he claimed.

  We started out after midday and hardly spoke, but I sensed his good spirits returning.

  Late in the afternoon, we stopped to rest. A loud call rose in the forest. We looked around for the source. The blare came again, closer. Fallen leaves crackled. A stag showed himself. He raised his head as his bell silenced every other sound.

  My hips and shoulders dropped with a forceful ache. The scent of evergreen suspended in the air. With different eyes, I saw another stag of a former time. Melting ice covered his rack like crystals. He watched her—Aoife—and his pause was an invitation to follow, to lead her to the place which would become her new home.

  The silver wolf joined the stag. They bowed to each other, then to us. We returned the gesture and walked toward them. I touched their faces and felt a surge of strength. Nikolas reached, too, and they allowed him three soft strokes.

  Come, they said.

  We followed the animals to a dirt road. The stag stepped aside, grazing my shoulder with his nose, and let the wolf lead us to a village.

  The summer I’d spent with my grandmother had been reduced to images. Ahmama’s braided white hair with the black streak. Her nesting dolls in her aged hands. A house with no halls. The woods filled with unfathomable beauty. I didn’t remember this path although I’d walked it many times.

  The wolf darted away. Nikolas followed at my side.

  Many cottages were in disrepair with sagging roofs, rotted shutters, and unkempt walks. I recalled a populated place, but perhaps it had been sparse then, too. A large dark-haired man leaned on his hoe in a plot of leeks. He gave us a cautious stare as he whistled a piercing series of six notes.

  Ahead, a tall elderly woman stepped outside her door with a cloth in her hand. I approached with a wary smile. The woman narrowed her eyes but seemed more curious than worried.

  With Nikolas behind me, I halted several steps from the woman’s door. I nodded and smiled, and the woman did the same. The villager uttered a phrase I didn’t comprehend.

  Suddenly, I was furious I didn’t know the language. The only words I remembered that belonged to them were ahma and ahmama, “mother” and “grandmother”; ahpa and ahpapa, “father” and “grandfather.” Of all the languages I’d chosen to study, I never considered I might need to know this one. I asked in several languages whether the woman understood the words I spoke and finally in the ancient Guardian tongue which hid within me.

  The old woman shook her head.

  “Zavet,” I said.

  The woman squinted her slightly slanted eyes.

  “Zavet. My ahma,” I said, almost in tears. “Ahmama—” I didn’t know my grandmother’s name, the key to my connection there. How could I not know my own grandmother’s name? Why hadn’t my mother told me? Why hadn’t I asked? If I had, and was told, why didn’t I remember?

  I gestured toward the cottages around us. “Ahmama? Ahmama?” A forgotten name sprung to my lips, spoken to me only once, that of my mother’s dead brother. “Szevstan?” The woman’s head tilted. “Zavet. My ahma.” I pointed to myself as I said my given name, the one I was known by almost twenty years before. “Evensong. Eve.”

  The woman studied my face. “Zavet!” she whispered. “Eve . . .” Her eyes softened. She touched her hand to her chest. “Tasha.”

  “Nikolas,” Nikolas said.

  Tasha invited us into her cottage. She gave us cups of goat’s milk and brown bread. As we started to eat, she held her hands up as if to say, Stay there, and wrapped herself in a cloak before she left us alone. Nikolas and I waited until she returned almost an hour later with Vasi at her side. I smiled in greeting as my heart sunk. She was not who I hoped to see.

  “Tasha thought I might know how to talk to you,” Vasi said in the language we spoke in common. She smiled at Nikolas as she sat down across from us and looked at me with kindness.

  “Do you live here?” I asked.

  “I came to visit cousins. Some you met last night,” Vasi said.

  “Where is my grandmother?” I asked.

  Vasi glanced at Tasha, their expressions sorrowful. “Dead. Two years ago.”

  The grief shocked me as much as what else welled up. I remembered only fragments of my visit that summer, but deep within, I hadn’t forgotten what I felt. Love for her, loved by her. My elbows hit the table. I rested my head in my hands. “My grandmother is dead,” I said to Nikolas. He touched my back. I shrugged him away.

  “What was her name?” I asked.

  “Katya. Tasha wants to know why you’re here and if your mother is well,” Vasi said.

  “I’ve come to ask how the people here remember her,” I said. My mouth dropped open when I realized what they should have known. “She died six years ago. My father sent a letter. Did it not arrive?”

  Vasi turned to Tasha. They spoke rapidly, with sharp inflections and a melodious lilt, some of the words familiar. The Guardians’ language, as well as their blood, had mingled in this village. Tasha’s expression was confused, then mournful.

  “She’s sad to hear of this. If the letter arrived, she doesn’t know. Your grandmother didn’t mention a death,” Vasi said.

  I wondered if my grandmother kept this news to herself and why she did. “Well, then,” I said, “tell me what Tasha knows.”

  I interrupted with few questions as Vasi translated Tasha’s words.

  The people of the village knew Zavet was different soon after her birth. The strange violet eyes against her swarthy skin made her appear otherworldly, although they agreed she was beautiful. She spoke months before most children learned their first words, and those villagers who had traveled afar confirmed her babbling wasn’t in their language alone. Slow to crawl and walk, she was a clumsy child, prone to bumping into anything in plain sight, yet—they noticed—she was graceful when she walked within the forest or through a crowd.

  But the people feared Zavet. Almost incessantly, she muttered and burbled, sounds and sentences, sometimes if she were in conversation with invisibles. When she sang, the air shimmered and those who heard her voice wept with a conflicted joy. When she spoke to others, she spoke of things she couldn’t possibly know, of private thoughts and hidden deeds, of the present and past, and, sometimes, of the future. When she noticed someone was injured or sick, she hummed as she touched them, and although it was said this gentle magic healed many, none asked for the cures.

  Among the old ahmamas and ahpapas, there were stories of others like her, girls born long ago, many who died soon after they became women. A curse among a few of the families, some believed, but the worst for Katya’s, a lineage that barely survived the loss of so many daughters.

  The people knew of, and condoned, the punishments Zavet received. When she didn’t quiet herself, when she spoke of things she shouldn’t, when she had fits in which she screamed in pain and pounded her head against the ground, her parents locked her in a room, or beat her with a switch, or dropped vinegar on her tongue. Only Szevstan, her older half brother, stood in her defense, pleading with them to see the cruelty made her worse. He was the only one who believed she was a wonder, not a witch.

  When Zavet was seven, she, like many others before her, disappeared. Katya sent her into fosterage with the hope her daughter could be cured or at least taught to control what strangeness possessed her. Each time she returned home, only to be sent away again, the peculiar child was quiet and contained but ever darker. She never spoke unless spoken to, and never of where she’d been. The spring she returned and learned Szevstan had died—a cut f
rom a lathe that festered into gangrene—no one heard her talk, scream, sing, or cry.

  During the next several years, the people of the village knew what became of her through rare letters she wrote to her mother, her father since dead. She was a student at a high academy, then a translator of books, then married. Only once more did they see her, when she arrived with a young daughter and stayed for a summer.

  “Did my grandmother speak of that visit? Of my mother?” I asked.

  Vasi shared my questions. Apprehension clouded Tasha’s eyes. I couldn’t understand what she said, but her tone was grave. Vasi took a long breath before she replied.

  “She said your mother wanted to be left alone and had little to say to anyone. Katya spent much of her time with you, which gave her much joy. Tasha wants you to know that. But before you and your mother left, there was a terrible fight. So much shouting she and other neighbors heard. Later, Tasha asked what happened. Your grandmother was very upset, very ashamed, and told her, ‘They tortured my daughter.’ ”

  I remembered a story my mother told of her time in fosterage, being tied naked to a bed with a bag of salt in her mouth to draw out the evil. “What was done to her?” I asked.

  “Tasha doesn’t know. Your grandmother said little else except the acts happened in several different homes. I’m sorry to have shared so much sadness,” Vasi said.

  “Szevstan. He was good to her, truly?” I asked.

  Vasi conveyed my question. Tasha smiled at last and answered with cheerfulness.

  “There was a tender love between them. He carried her on his shoulders and took her into the forest for walks. She smiled and laughed with him, and he could calm her in a way no one else could. He was a kind young man, and a talented woodworker. He made beautiful little chests. Everyone liked him,” Vasi said.

  The faded blue chest she kept, I thought. Szevstan must have made it for her.

  A brief conversation passed between the women. “Tasha offered a place for you tonight. Let me show you where I’m staying so that you can find me if you have more questions. I can point out where your grandmother’s house still stands.”