New Lands (THE CHRONICLES OF EGG) (22 page)

G
uts didn’t want to stay down. Even though the girls pleaded with him to lie still and rest, he got up three more times and tried to keep going. But he couldn’t make it more than a few steps without doubling over again, and eventually he gave up.

He lay on his side and retched a few more times, but there was nothing left in his stomach. Then he asked for water. Millicent held up the skin she was carrying so he could drink from it.

Half a minute later, he threw it up.

“Sorry,” he said to no one in particular.

“It’s okay. Just let us know what we can do for you,” Millicent said.

“Jus’ need a minute,” he said through gritted teeth. Beads of sweat were rising on his forehead.

“Think you might need more than that.”

“Couple, then.”

I nudged Millicent. “What about the trader’s cure?” I whispered.

“I’d give it to him if I thought he could keep it down. We’ve just got the one clump. If he heaves it up, where’s that leave us?”

“How’s he going to stop throwing up if he doesn’t take it in the first place?”

“Give it a bit. See if he can keep some water down.”

I looked over at Kira to get her opinion. She was kneeling a few feet away from us, her face pointed in the direction of the rising sun. The firebird pendant was pressed between her hands, and she was whispering a prayer to it with her eyes closed.

Watching Kira, Millicent pursed her lips but didn’t say anything.

“How long does it last?” I asked Millicent.

“How would I know?”

“What did the trader say?”

“He didn’t. Just that…” She lowered her voice even further so Guts couldn’t hear. “It kills people.”

“Everyone?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Most of them, it sounded like.”

“What causes it?”

“Something in the valley.”

“We’re barely in the valley. We’re above it. And the rest of us aren’t sick.”

“Kira wouldn’t get it. She’s from here. It only gets the strangers.”

“So why don’t you and I have it?”

Millicent shook her head again. “I don’t know.”

“How soon would it…you know—?”

“I don’t
know,
Egg!”

“A day,” I heard Kira say over my shoulder. Her prayer finished, she came back to sit next to Guts. “Two at most. It goes quickly.”

“How do you know?” Millicent asked.

“I saw it. When I was young. If it’s the Judgment, he will get a fever. The pain will get worse…It helps if he can hold water down.”

Guts was on his side with his eyes squeezed shut in a grimace. Kira moved closer to him. She placed the firebird pendant against his side with one hand and put her other hand gently on his head.

His body tensed at her touch, and his hand jerked up to shove her away. But when he realized it was Kira, he relaxed and let her stroke his forehead.

“It’s not any ‘judgment,’” Millicent said in an irritated voice. “It’s just a sickness.”

Kira glared at her.

“What does it matter?” I asked.

“A sickness has a cure.” Millicent dug into the pocket of her tunic and produced the little cotton packet. As she unwrapped it, Kira looked away, shaking her head and turning her attention back to Guts.

The clump of dried moss looked pitifully small in Millicent’s hand. “So give it to him,” I said.

Millicent sighed. “Let’s wait a bit. See if he can keep water down.”

HE COULDN’T. AFTER
a couple hours of watching Guts take in mouthfuls of water, only to retch them up again, nothing had changed except his temperature. His whole body was hot to the
touch, he was drenched in sweat, and even wrapped in both blankets, he couldn’t stop shivering.

He was going downhill fast, and his answers to our questions were starting to get loopy and confused. Kira prayed over him nonstop, but it didn’t seem to be doing any good.

Finally, Millicent and I decided to chance the cure. She knelt beside Guts with the dried moss in her hand.

“Guts, I have medicine—”

“— —!”

Millicent looked at Kira for help. Kira frowned, but she bent her head and spoke softly into Guts’s ear.

“Listen to her,” she said. “Just try it.”

Guts stared up at Kira. The only color on his face came from the heavy dark circles under his eyes.

“Awright,” he croaked.

Millicent showed him the clump of moss. “You have to chew this. As long as you can. Then swallow it. And whatever you do,
don’t throw it up.
It’s all we’ve got. Okay?”

Guts’s head moved in what looked like a nod. He opened his mouth just wide enough for Millicent to place the moss inside. Then he closed his teeth over it.

We watched him chew, his jaw slowly rising and falling.

Then his lower cheeks bulged as his jaw clamped down hard. A second later, his whole upper body jerked in a retch.

“Don’throwitupdon’throwitup!”
Millicent begged him.

He fought it as hard as I’d ever seen him fight anything, through one convulsion after another as his body tried to reject the cure. It must have hurt like a demon, but he kept his jaw clamped down
and his lips pressed white, and eventually his body began to settle down.

His jaw started to move again. A minute later, he stopped chewing.

“Are you going to try and swallow it now?”

His eyes were still shut.

“Just did.”

She exhaled with relief. Then, just as quickly, she looked worried again.

“Don’t throw it up!”

“Shut up.”

There were a few more convulsions after that. But he managed to keep it down. For the next couple of hours, nothing about his condition seemed to change.

Then his face gradually started to relax.

“Not hurtin’ so much,” he said.

Ten minutes after that, he said, “Think it’s better.”

Pretty soon, the shivering had stopped, and his skin wasn’t nearly as hot. He asked for water, and for the first time since he’d eaten the moss, we decided to risk giving him some.

He drank a hefty amount, and this time he kept it down. Then he drifted off to sleep.

Millicent looked at Kira with a smirk. “Must have been the prayers.”

Kira scowled a little, but she was too relieved to really get angry.

WHILE GUTS SLEPT,
we gathered brush for camouflage. The blankets we’d bought were checkered in bright blue and red, and
to any Moku traveling through the forest, they would have stuck out like a signal fire.

As we gathered the brush and arranged it in a thin layer over Guts and the blankets, I couldn’t stop thinking about how thirsty I was. It was late afternoon, and the rest of us hadn’t allowed ourselves any water since Guts had taken ill, reckoning we were at least an hour’s round trip from the stream we’d passed.

We still had one full skin, but Guts had gone through a fair amount of the second one. I held up the half-empty skin.

“Think we can drink this now?”

Kira nodded, but Millicent looked skeptical. “Rather we wait a bit,” she said.

“What if I run back to that stream and refill it before dark?”

Millicent didn’t like the idea of our splitting up, but it was a straight shot downhill and back, and Kira didn’t have a problem with it, so she reluctantly agreed.

Before I left—and so I wouldn’t feel guilty when I drank it myself—I offered them what was left in the skin. Millicent declined, which seemed crazy to me.

“Aren’t you thirsty?”

“Some. But…”

I watched Kira drink from the skin. “But what?”

“What if it was the water that made him sick?”

That didn’t make sense to me. “Water’s just water,” I said. “And Guts didn’t drink from this until
after
he got sick.”

Kira finished her drink and offered the skin to Millicent again.

“I’ll wait,” said Millicent.

More for me,
I thought as I drained the skin.

I could feel the water slosh in my belly as I trotted down the hill to get more.

I can still remember how delicious that water tasted—clean, crisp, and still cold even though hours had passed since we’d drawn it from the stream.

And I remember laughing to myself at the idea that something so good could possibly hurt me.

I was halfway to the stream and moving at a good clip when my stomach started to feel quivery. I figured it was because I was going too fast with all that water in my belly, so I slowed my pace.

When the quivery feeling didn’t go away, I chalked it up to hunger and tried to take my mind off it by focusing on the forest around me. The sun hadn’t quite sunk over the mountains looming to my right, and scattered shafts of light filtered through the trees, dappling the woods in shimmery white patches. Birds chattered here and there, and if I listened carefully, I could hear the hum of insects.

I didn’t know much of religion, but right then the forest struck me as something more than beautiful. It was almost holy.

The Valley of Ka. The Sun God…

Those shimmery patches were part of the thing Kira worshiped, and they were everywhere, all around me. I marveled at that, thinking it was just possible that Ka really existed, and was watching over us, and that was why we hadn’t come across any Moku, and that only Guts had gotten sick, and when he did, we had just enough of the cure to fix him.

And now he was on the mend, and soon we’d be on our way again, none the worse for wear.

We were blessed. And the forest was a temple, and I was grateful for it, and everything was fine.

Except for the rumbling in my stomach.

But dinner would fix that.

I was close enough to hear the stream below me when the first pains arrived, little needles in my gut that came and went. Then they started coming faster, and staying longer, and the water wasn’t sloshing around in me anymore, so I was sure it must be hunger, and there was nothing to do but wait it out.

By the time I reached the stream, the pain had built to a steady ache in my gut. I figured the best thing was to drown it with the clear water, so I knelt down along the spongy bank and took up a mouthful in my cupped hands.

It was so cold it froze my fingers and made my teeth hurt. I counted the handfuls as I slurped them down. Four…five…six…My hands turned numb from the cold.

Seven…eight…

Then there was a bolt of pain like a hammer to my gut, and it hit me so hard I felt my forehead go clammy.

I’ve got to get back to the others.

I filled the skin with fumbling, cold-stiff fingers and turned back up the hill.

There was another bolt of pain, so bad it stopped me in my tracks. When it faded, I started to run, straight uphill as fast as I could.

Almost from the first step, I was shaky and weak. All the energy had been sucked out of me.

I did my best. I stumbled up the hill.

Then I fell.

I didn’t get back up.

I hadn’t gone far. I could still hear the stream behind me.

The next wave of pain hit me so hard I nearly cried out.

I rolled onto my side and vomited.

Once I started to puke, I couldn’t stop. My stomach squeezed into a knot and tried to force its way out through my teeth.

It went on for a while. My body was strangling itself to get rid of something that wasn’t even there anymore.

I’d been sick before. But never like this. I’d never felt this kind of pain.

Got to get back to the others.

I got up and tried to walk. I didn’t get far.

I curled up on the ground.

Just like Guts…

I wanted to yell out for my friends, but I knew I couldn’t because there might be Moku nearby.

The pain kept coming.

I started to shiver.

I was going to freeze to death.

The light in the forest was fading. The pain was only getting worse.

I prayed I’d pass out so I didn’t have to feel it anymore.

Time seemed to stop. Everything stopped. I might have passed out.

But if I did, the pain followed me.