The Plague Diaries

by Ronlyn Domingue

  I walked over to him. Below us, an older woman stepped through a kitchen garden bordered by rosebushes dotted with early blooms. “We don’t have much time to prepare,” I said. “I think we’ll be struck at the start of the summer. As to how long we’ll be sick—weeks, possibly months. For plants and animals, there’s a duration for each phase, but I don’t know if that will hold true for us. I’ve received no word of a spread beyond Rothwyke, but I think it will only be a matter of time before that happens.”

  “The panic this could cause. I’ll have to involve the Council.” He stood with his arms folded, his features calm, his sight fixed in the distance. At that moment, I knew Nikolas’s role in what was to be. Beyond the virtue of his birth, he possessed a quality of his essence. I’d seen it the first night we met as children, and in his words and deeds ever since. His gift was judgment, fair and clear.

  I touched his arm. He turned to me. “You are a man who can find the balance between fact and intuition. You ally the mind with the heart and align evidence with conscience. Regardless of what’s to come, I know you will lead as a king among men, not only as a king, because your aim is not power, but truth.”

  I watched his eyes temper, the color of myth set strong and ready as a blade. The might of words at the right moment.

  “Is that what you think of me?”

  “Believed, always, although I couldn’t say so in words until now.”

  “May I prove myself worthy of that opinion.” He glanced at the clock on the desk. “I’m due in a meeting.”

  On impulse, I smoothed the silk at his neck and flattened his coat’s lapels. I blushed when he smiled, conscious of the intimacy conveyed. At least for a moment, we forgot the kingdom was in peril.

  DIARY ENTRY 13 APRIL /38

  Second day the animals can’t move. Yesterday, I watched as the effects set in. The sheep, goats, and hens staggered and tumbled. Birds scuffled along the ground and twirled from the sky like dead leaves. Insects fell over and couldn’t right themselves. Cyril dragged his back legs behind him. By the evening, the beasts were in hiding. They know what happens to those sick, lame, or injured. Their instincts serve to protect them.

  Much of this morning, I worried they’d all die of thirst and hunger, but as I checked on Old Woman’s animals and the ones I found hiding, I saw they’re in a state like sleep. A temporary hibernation. All of them appear to dream sometimes, moving their paws, hooves, claws, and making noises. Their breathing and pulses are slower by a great degree. Birds usually vibrate in my hands, their little hearts beat so fast, but now the throbs remind me of a clock’s tick, tock, tick, tock.

  Harmyn was with me as I walked, and I let her pet them. Sometimes she hummed, which seemed to soothe them. They responded with little twitches and even slower breaths. She surprised me, though, when she said they have shadows, too. She couldn’t see into them, as she had with Nikolas, but she could sense feelings from the shadows.

  Fear and grief.

  15 APRIL /38

  IN THE WEEKS SINCE I’D seen him, Father and I exchanged letters—I’d reserved a post cubby—but I found excuses not to meet again. The last letter I received, he said he knew I’d visited Fewmany and that the search, as he called it, was over.

  I agreed to meet at an eatery, a neutral place. We attended the usual pleasantries, and soon after we ordered our meals, he started with the questions. First, he inquired about the symbol, and I replied I still had no idea what it meant. As to where I found the stones, I said they were in places he’d identified, although that was a lie because I didn’t use the maps Fewmany gave me. He wanted to know how I managed to find the location, to which I said little, and what the treasure looked like, to which I said no more or less than I told Fewmany.

  When he asked why I resigned my position, I said I needed time to rest and plan what to do next. I assured him I had the means to remain on my own, but I refused to tell him where I was living.

  “Where is my little pet? Where has she gone?” he asked.

  “She grew up and went away.”

  “How far?”

  “Far enough.”

  He looked wistful then. “Will you come in her place?”

  “No,” I said.

  Then he scowled, his mouth hard. “Always hiding. Always withholding, weren’t you?”

  That he said it stung me more than the truth of it. I always had to, I thought. An old unease welled up within me, the same feeling I had when my mother’s dark moods leached out, warning me to beware. Never once did she hit me, but the threat was always there. I could feel it. She inflicted the wounds of silence instead.

  However, there were moments I failed to keep my guard with my parents. I failed, by choice, when I told my mother I could speak to creatures and plants. By outburst, when I expressed how devastated I was when they cut down Fig Tree. By accident, when I made the drawing of the symbol. Sometimes I failed when I had no control at all, as it was after the fever.

  In those moments, I received no comfort or understanding, in words or gestures.

  Of course I hid. Of course I withheld.

  I had no intention to speak of these matters then, but what he said hurt me, and I wanted to hurt him back. “She didn’t choke. She killed herself, you know.”

  He looked as if I’d punched him in the throat. “Why would you say such a horrible thing?”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “Someone who expects to live doesn’t make a cipher for a manuscript she was entrusted to translate.”

  When he started to twist his ring, I wanted to tear it off his finger once and for all.

  He sat speechless, staring at his hands, and when he looked at me again, I couldn’t read his face. It wasn’t blank but too full. “She wouldn’t have left me that way. You will never speak of this again, do you hear me?” he said with fury in his voice, one I hadn’t heard since the twelve nights he cut my hair to force me to talk of the symbol I’d drawn.

  All I could do was nod as he refused to admit the truth. He could hardly look at me when we parted ways, and said only, “I’ll be away in Osrid, four weeks.”

  16 APRIL /38

  ON THE EVENING I WENT to collect the map for Fewmany, Nikolas and I had dinner first, upon his suggestion. How comfortingly conventional this seemed, sitting down for a meal, and how unnervingly unfamiliar because we weren’t quite the friends we’d once been.

  When I arrived, I was taken to the courtyard where our graduation party had been held nearly three years before. Nikolas stood on the walkway speaking to a guard, the one with the cleft chin. He introduced me to Hugh and reminded us how we’d met. During the summer grand ball almost fourteen years earlier, Hugh found Nikolas and me in the meeting chamber’s secret room, where Nikolas had led me for a game of hide-and-seek.

  “A pleasure to meet you under less surreptitious circumstances, Hugh,” I said.

  “Yes, Miss,” he said. His eyes cut from me to Nikolas. Hugh strained to thwart a smile.

  Nikolas’s face turned pink. He made a guiding gesture for me to walk ahead. In the center of the courtyard’s lawn were a blanket, cushions, and trays of food. As we ate, we spoke of pressing matters, but not for long. For at least an hour, the conversation was a respite from what was behind us and what was ahead, the two of us talking as we had hundreds of times before. The only difference—we held hands as Nikolas sat with his back to the guard, shielding me from his view.

  When we set out for the library, Hugh followed nearby and waited outside. The library was in the oldest part of the castle. I couldn’t help but notice how much smaller it was than Fewmany’s. New oil-lit chandeliers brightened the room. In the center was a map case, three desks with book cradles, and three cushioned chairs. Tall glass cases and open shelves lined the walls, accessible by ladders set on tracks. I shut my eyes as I breathed in the fragrance. How I missed that smell and the things that released it.

  Nikolas opened a drawer in
the map case. The rustle of parchment made my heart race. Knowing what I was about to see made it skip beats.

  He laid two maps side by side, each about two feet square, one almost a mirror of the other.

  As I touched the original, prickles stung the inside of my hand. Aoife’s map to the hoard had been kept dry and in the dark.25 The colors remained vibrant, almost as if freshly inked. There were no tears, but a dog-eared corner and a deep wrinkle along the right edge, a flaw in the skin. Aoife had taken great care to draw the rivers, mountains, and forests. Along the path she charted, she sketched towns in miniature and with dimension. Among the trees, beasts peered out—deer, boars, bears, foxes, wolves, one handsome stag, as well as a unicorn, griffon, and basilisk. In a desert, there was a line of camels, and in a sea, whales, narwhals, and seals.

  Only one bird appeared, a blue swallow, its wings smeared to a blur, flying near the X drawn within a region to the north.

  The X had no literal meaning. Geography was a limitation to which the realm was not subject. The realm could be entered from anywhere, given the right circumstances—a hollow tree which straddled one world and another, the escort of bees, the understanding to walk through. What Aoife had drawn was an approximation, a measure of time and distance, as the world was then.

  A map shows time, in its own way, what space looked like in that point in time, I thought. What is written of an event—before, during, and after—is also a map of time, of perspective.

  For a moment, I stared at my hands, the shape, my father’s, the skin tone, my mother’s. What map of lives are hidden in me? I wondered.

  “Did you notice the dragon?” Nikolas asked. He pointed to a cluster of pink clouds. One drifted from the rest, its edges forming a tail, wings, long neck—ruby red.

  “You said it was beautiful, but it’s beyond that.” I stepped aside to look at the copy drawn for Raef so he could search for the hoard.26 That one was stained, creased, revealing it had been folded, with two roughly sewn patches. Much of the fine detail was missing, but the swallow and X appeared in the same place.

  “Dare I ask, what will he think?” Nikolas asked.

  “The copy is from the same era. If he suspects it’s a modern forgery, he’ll have it authenticated, but I’m not concerned about that. He’s nearly as knowledgeable as the experts he retains,” I said.

  “I cannot believe I’m turning this over to him.”

  “What other option is there?” I said. I helped him roll the copy and slip it into a leather cylinder.

  “What happens after you send him wandering and he returns without his prize, looking for you?”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Somehow I do. I told you before, I’m meant to stop him. How, that hasn’t come clear yet. Please, trust me.”

  “I have something to discuss with you.” He braced his arms against the case. “I want you to address the Council about the plague.”

  I shook my head.

  “You can describe what happened to the plants and creatures because you observed it yourself. You were the first to notice the affliction because of your gift. You know how it will spread because of what they revealed to you,” he said.

  “Yes, and I’m the one who released the vials, remember? Do you want me to reveal that, too?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “What would happen to me before everyone sickens? Or after? What then? There will be a need to blame. If there’s a person who can serve as the target, I’d be the one if anyone else knew what I did,” I said.

  “You’re right. You can’t disclose that,” he said.

  “But I can disclose how I know?”

  “Yes. This knowledge gives us a chance to prepare. You observed the duration of the illness and the phases in a specific, not cursory, way. Like a natural scientist might, an astute one for certain. I know you said you don’t know how long it’ll affect everyone. But it will affect us, eventually. If you’re right, within weeks, about nine by my count. I can’t let this befall my people without trying to help them somehow.”

  Old memories of the child I’d been slipped from hidden places. A trail of ants. A creeping beetle. So ugly. So stupid. That’s witch talk! I don’t believe you. Fig Tree, green then gone. I fought back against the cry that knotted in my throat.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “No matter what it looks like to you, I wish I didn’t have this ability. To know things, to feel things from them. And it makes me like no one else, a freak of nature. For a while, when you were away for the goodwill visits, I made it stop. The absence was so wonderful. So normal. But it came back and I couldn’t shut it away again.”

  “What if what you believe to be a curse is a boon? Think about it. If you couldn’t do this, we wouldn’t know what to expect. We couldn’t plan.”

  “If I hadn’t poured the vials, it wouldn’t have happened at all.”

  “It’s done. This is the result.”

  I stared at Aoife’s maps. If her manuscript was a guide, what direction did it give me? What was I supposed to learn from her?

  As if he sensed what lay unspoken deep within me, he said, “I doubt you have the option to hide anymore.”

  I burst into tears. When he tried to hug me, I stepped aside. Undeterred, he took my hands. “If you hadn’t told me to follow squirrels, would I have wandered without aim?” he asked.

  “Possibly.”

  “If you hadn’t been there to take me through the hollow, would I have reached the realm?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I know,” he said. “You were meant to be there all along.”

  “I wish it weren’t so.”

  “But it is.”

  I brushed my damp nose against my shoulder, but he wouldn’t release me.

  “Consider my point of view. If I alone sat before the Council and told them a bizarre sickness had made lesser beings—”

  “They’re not lesser beings!”

  “Love, I know.”

  His tender response stunned my tears away.

  “Imagine if I tell the Council we’ll get sick as they did, unable to speak, hear, or move for weeks, months, to come—with no legitimate authority, no man of science to substantiate what I say,” he said.

  “Except a witch?”

  “You represent a realm of mystery whether you like it or not,” he said.

  “Whether others fear it or not,” I said.

  “I think even the greatest skeptics hope for the miracle of the unexplained.”

  “Many have suffered when they didn’t.” I thought of my mother, of Harmyn, untold others like them, perhaps like me, too.

  “I could command you to speak, subject you to interrogation and worse, with nothing more than the stroke of a pen. I know what power I wield. Don’t think for a moment I forget.”

  A rush of anger urged me to glance up. Expecting a threat in his eyes, instead, I saw a plea.

  “I don’t ask for my own credibility. I ask for the sake of Ailliath’s people and for everything that depends on air, water, and light to survive.”

  In good conscience, I couldn’t refuse him. “Very well. I will.” Then because I wanted to, I clasped my arms around him and held tight.

  DIARY ENTRY 19 APRIL /38

  For the animals, the plague is over. But Cyril is still ailing. He called me to his basket this morning and said, “It was not only my role to guide you, Secret. It was my honor. Bury me near Reach, where I was born.” I kissed his whiskered nose in promise.

  Through the day, Old Woman cradled him in her arms in the shade. Harmyn sat with them, humming softly. I knew he was gone when I heard Old Woman cry out. I went to them only after I controlled my own tears.

  When I went to Reach with a shovel, I received no greeting. His limbs swayed when I touched them, but the life was gone. I dug a hole facing east under the canopy. Old Woman brought Cyril’s little body shrouded in a blue cloth. We buried him w
ith dozens watching. The creatures had come to pay homage.

  Once we went inside again, Old Woman lay down exhausted. Harmyn held her hand and hummed songs she seemed to know. Strange that Harmyn still won’t sing, but nevertheless, the humming gives comfort.

  I’ve sent a mouse to deliver a message to Nikolas about what happened.

  Later: this arrived at midnight:

  Dear S—Our intrepid Cyril, gone! How impossibly old he was, but his departure from us is no less heart-wrenching. Please convey my deepest sympathies to Old Woman. She has lost a treasured companion today. I’m thinking of her in her grief. And you. And myself. We all adored that magical squirrel. With love, N

  26 APRIL /38

  EIGHT WEEKS BEFORE THE SUMMER solstice, a quorum of the Council met. The advisers who lived too far from Rothwyke to travel in time would receive confidential letters about the proceedings.

  When I entered the chamber with Nikolas, the men halted their conversations and stood as he walked toward the table’s head. They straightened their shoulders and switched off their Tell-a-Bells. I felt them study me. Some seemed curious, as if I were an unexpected guest; others seemed dismissive, as if I were a servant.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” I said.

  Nikolas invited us to sit, nodding at me to take the one to his right marked RESERVED. The crest of dragon scales—Nikolas’s own among them now—hung on the wall behind his chair. Nikolas welcomed the Council members and Rothwyke’s mayor, Mr. Pearson. He introduced me as a lifelong friend who had attended the same secondary school he did. He added that my name might be familiar to those acquainted with my father, Bren Riven of Fewmany Incorporated. My presence would be explained soon.

  During brief reports from the members, I looked around the chamber. A chronicler sat in a corner taking notes. At each place on the polished table was a teacup on a saucer, and along the table’s length were several teapots. Portraits of the last four kings hung on the wall opposite the windows. Curtains woven with metallic threads covered the wall far across from the crest. I wondered if anyone crouched in the secret room behind them.