Seeds of Discovery (20 page)

David’s mother looked exhausted and concerned. “How are
Tallie
and Caleb?” she asked Quinn.

“They’re fine,” Quinn reassured her.

“Thank you so much for looking after them … they’re not too much trouble, are they?”

“They’re no trouble at all, really Mrs. Winthrop.”

“Please call me
Cammie
. I just … I don’t want them to see David like this. I don’t know what to do.”

Quinn’s heart went out to the young woman, who was dealing with this alone. She couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be. “Thomas and I don’t mind caring for them at all; please don’t worry about them right now.”

Nathaniel walked across the room and joined them. “Your home is quite close by, isn’t it
Cammie
?”

“Yes, Dr. Rose.”

“Perhaps Quinn and Thomas could take
Tallie
and Caleb back to your house tonight? Let them have some time at home, sleep in their own beds, give you a chance to focus on David?”

Cammie
looked over at Quinn, tears in the corners of her eyes, “Would you really be willing to do something like that?”

“Of course,” Quinn answered, without hesitating.

“I’ll take them over there in a little while,
Cammie
. Is there anything I can bring back for you, or we can take care of while we’re there?”

Cammie
looked down at her faded dress, and then at her son who lay sleeping restlessly, tiny beads of sweat on his pale forehead. “Some more clothes, maybe? My neighbors have been looking after the animals.”

Nathaniel’s smile was kind, “Certainly. I’ll come back in a while with some more clothes for you. Maybe you should try to get some rest while David is sleeping. I know William is keeping a close eye on him.”

William, who had been silent throughout the exchange, nodded.

 An hour later, Quinn and Thomas were standing in the small, tidy main room of the house
Cammie
Winthrop shared with her three children.
Tallie
had been excited to give them a tour, showing them the hand-carved dollhouse and dolls that stood in the corner, and introducing them to Rupert, the shaggy black-and-white dog. Caleb wandered around the house for several minutes, looking confused and calling out “Mama?”

Quinn picked him up, “We’ll see Mama in the morning, Buddy. Everything’s okay.”

“Mama
inna
morning?”

“Yes, we’ll go back to Mama in the morning.”

“It’s getting close to bedtime,” Thomas announced, pointing to the darkening sky through the window.

“Will you read to us first?”
Tallie
asked. “Mama always reads to us before bedtime.”

“Of course! First, let’s go change into pajamas, okay?” Thomas scooped Caleb out of Quinn’s arm, and carried him back into the small bedroom that he shared with David, while
Tallie
led Quinn into a room at the end of the tiny hallway.

“This is my room,”
Tallie
announced proudly.

Quinn smiled, “It’s very nice.”

And it was; Quinn looked around at the neat little room. There was a small bed in the corner, covered with a beautiful handmade patchwork quilt in bright colors. A little matching rag rug covered the floor, and handmade curtains decorated the little window. The wood walls and floor looked somehow different from those in the rest of the house. Shinier? Newer?

“My daddy made this room for me, when Caleb was born,”
Tallie
told her, as she pulled pajamas from the drawer of a little, white wooden dresser.

“Wow. That’s really special, isn’t it?”

Tallie
nodded, pulling a soft, blue nightgown over her head. “He died.”

“I know. My dad died when I was little, too.”

Tallie
looked at Quinn with wide, green eyes. “Do you miss him?”

Quinn
nodded,
a thick feeling in the back of her throat, “Of course I do.” She picked up a brush from the dresser and began pulling it through
Tallie’s
thick, brown hair.

“I miss my dad, too. Can we go read a story now?”

Quinn smiled at how easily the little girl’s mind drifted to a new topic, wondering if she’d been so casual about things when she was
Tallie’s
age. “Let’s go brush your teeth first.”

Tallie
and Quinn met Thomas and Caleb back in the living room. Thomas had settled himself into the small couch, with Caleb curled up on his lap, boasting a fresh diaper and snuggly pajamas. Quinn was impressed. Even Zander, who was so good with Annie and his own little sisters wouldn’t touch diapers when they were little. She swallowed hard; it felt odd to be thinking about Zander right now.

She wondered what they
were all
doing right now – her family, Zander and his family. It was so strange to not even know what time it was there, or even what day. She’d been in Eirentheos for a long time now, was it Saturday at home already? Was it morning or afternoon? It was all a little too much to process, and she decided not to think about it right now.

Thomas cleared a
Tallie
-sized space on the couch next to him, and the little girl climbed up, eager and holding a book she’d retrieved from David’s bookshelf. It was a thin paperback, and Quinn thought it looked strangely familiar. Thomas smiled when he saw it.

“Has David been studying history?” Thomas asked, taking the book from
Tallie
.

Tallie
shrugged. “This is his book from his teacher.”

“I had the same book when I was little,” Thomas told her.

“It has good stories.”

“Yes, it does.”

Quinn settled into a chair near them, watching and listening as Thomas began to read.

Long ago, before anyone alive now was born, our land was one great kingdom, ruled by a king and queen.

“That’s the king?”
Tallie
interrupted, pointing to the pictures.

“One of them,” Thomas answered. There were probably many kings and queens before this story started.”

Tallie
nodded,
a serious look on her face.

Thomas continued.

When a king grew old, he would pass the crown to one of his sons. Usually it was his oldest son, but if that son had died, then the crown would go to his next-oldest son.

One year, a young king and his wife were expecting their first child. They awaited the child’s arrival with joyous anticipation. However, when the queen’s time came, the baby had a difficult time being born. By the time the baby boy was born, the queen was very sick. The midwives were so busy tending to the queen that they almost didn’t notice that a second baby was coming.

In their surprise at the arrival of the second child, and their haste to tend to the queen, the midwives simply set the baby in the cradle next to his brother.

When they were finally reassured that the queen would live, the midwives turned back to the babies, who had curled together and fallen asleep. They were amazed at how alike the babies were; not one of them could find any difference between the queen’s two tiny sons. None of them could remember which child had been born first.

“So they didn’t know which prince should be king?”
Tallie
asked.

“Nope,” Thomas answered.

“Could they both be the king?”

“I don’t know. Should we keep reading?”

Tallie
nodded.

The princes were named Aaron and Philip. To tell them apart, Aaron was always dressed in purple and silver, while Philip always wore green and gold. As the princes grew, they were generous and kind, and both loved by their people. The king and queen loved them both very much. When the time finally came that the king was growing too old to rule, he didn’t know what to do. Which son should he pass his crown to?

One day, the king was visited by a messenger from the Maker Himself. This messenger told the king that his kingdom was to be split into two equal parts, and would be ruled by two kings. Aaron would rule one kingdom, and pass the crown to his own firstborn child. Philip would rule the other. If ever there was a dispute over one of the crowns again, the crown was to be passed to the closest related firstborn child of the royal bloodline.

“Is that a true story, Thomas?”

“It’s in the history book, isn’t it?”

“Yes,”
Tallie
was thoughtful. “Can a girl be the king?”

Thomas smiled. “A girl can be the queen.”

“Yeah, but I mean if a girl was the firstborn.”

“You mean like being the queen without marrying a king? Be in charge?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see why a girl couldn’t; nothing says that one can’t. There just never has been a firstborn girl.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,
Tallie
. It just hasn’t happened. Enough questions for now. Time for bed.” Thomas stood and scooped both of the children into his arms, carrying them down the hall.

When both children were tucked in and sound asleep, Quinn and Thomas retreated to the living room.

“That was an interesting story,” Quinn said, picking up the history book and studying the picture on the cover, the same symbol she kept seeing. “Is it true?”

“More or less,” Thomas answered. “That version is a bit watered down for small children.”

“What is this book?”

Thomas reached over and took it from her hands. “It’s a history book, given to children by a kingdom teacher when they’re learning Eirenthean history.”

“That makes sense,” Quinn told him, “I think
Alyia
had the same book in Mistle Village.”

Thomas nodded, “Pretty much every child around that age in the kingdom has this book.” He flipped to a page in the middle, showing her where blank lines had been filled in with childish writing. He ran his fingers over David’s answers; Quinn was impressed at the neat handwriting.

“What’s the symbol on the front?”

“That’s the Eirenthean seal,” he said, closing the book again, and looking at the circular design on the front. “It’s the same one that’s on our pendants.”

She nodded. “And it’s all over your formalwear, too.”

He shrugged. “I think I have underwear embroidered with it. I am a prince of Eirentheos.”

When they finally stopped giggling, Quinn looked over at Thomas. “So the other kingdom in the story – is that the kingdom that Tolliver is trying to take over?”

He nodded. “Yeah, you can see, even from that little story, why it’s kind of a big deal to us. We really believe that the Maker intends for the crown only to go to a true firstborn. And Tolliver isn’t one.”

“Is Tolliver the second born?”

“No. He thinks he has a right because he’s his father’s firstborn, but his father isn’t a true royal. His father isn’t even actually from Philotheum.”

“So the crown can’t go to whoever is the second born?”

“No. It can only go to a firstborn. It could go to the second-
born’s
firstborn, but I don’t think there’s anyone else close enough in line who’s old enough.”

“And so Tolliver thinks he can just step in.”

“Yeah. And he thinks he can get our kingdom to stand behind him, but he’s wrong.”

“Why would he think that?”

“Well ... he’s been trying for a long time to marry into my family. I guess he thinks that if his wife was a princess of Eirentheos, that my father would support his bid for the throne. He tried to court Rebecca, and now he has his eyes on Linnea.”

Bile rose in Quinn’s throat. “Isn’t he a little old for her?”

“I don’t think he cares. I don’t think he cares much about anything except for what he wants.” Thomas eyed Quinn meaningfully.

She shuddered.

Thomas, as usual, was up long before Quinn the next morning, though the horizon was only barely turning pink when Quinn first looked out the window. Thomas was outside, working in the
Winthrops
’ vegetable garden, filling a basket with ripe vegetables, and throwing weeds over the fence into a field. A fire had already been set in the little cook stove in the kitchen.

Caleb and
Tallie
were still
sound
asleep, and so Quinn attended to what small tasks she could find around the house. She’d never cooked anything on a wood-burning stove, but figured it would probably work like something in between a regular stove and a campfire, both of which she knew how to operate. She filled a kettle with water from the kitchen pump and set it to boil while she took out a rag to dust the living room furniture.

She had barely finished dusting when she heard Caleb calling out from his room. He was upset when he saw Quinn, instead of his mother, but she was able to distract him with a rolling wooden horse before his cries woke
Tallie
down the hall.

Once he was happy again, she was faced with a new challenge: a stack of neatly folded cloth diapers on a shelf. Her heart sank. Quinn’s mother had used cloth diapers when Annie was small, but they were some kind of fancy, new-fangled ones that fastened with Velcro and worked exactly like the disposable ones Quinn was used to. Annie’s had been waterproof on the outside, too, but judging from the spreading wet spot on Caleb’s bottom, his were not.

Leaving Caleb to play for a moment, she went out onto the porch and called to Thomas.

“What is it, Quinn?”

“Um... I’m not quite sure how to work diapers in your world.”

Thomas looked down where he was standing, a garden hoe in his gloved hands. “I’m kind of busy here, Quinn. Can’t you figure it out?” There was an edge to his voice that she’d never heard before, and it startled her. Was he angry? Her cheeks felt hot and a strange wetness hit the corners of her eyes.

“I’m sure I can,” she mumbled, heading back into the house.

She did figure it out, copying the way the old one had been fastened. Her job wasn’t as neat, but the diaper stayed on. By the time
Tallie
woke up, Caleb was dressed and playing, and Quinn had finished cooking some of the hot, grain cereal that Essie had taught her to make.

Thomas didn’t come inside the house for breakfast, and Quinn didn’t try to get him to, still worried that she’d somehow made him mad. She tried to think of what she might have done to upset him, but kept coming up empty.

It was when she was helping
Tallie
get ready, asking the little girl to hand her a ribbon so she could tie her hair back, that Quinn forgot her concern about his feelings and called out to Thomas in alarm.

The sound in her voice must have scared him, because he came rushing into the house, covered in dirt and still wearing the gloves he’d been using as he gardened.

“What’s wrong?”

Wordlessly, she pointed to
Tallie’s
hands, where tiny pink spots were beginning to bloom. Thomas’ eyes widened, and he leaned down to take the little girl’s hands in his gloved ones, looking at them closely. He nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, a grim look in his eyes that she could see him trying to erase when he made eye contact with the little girl.

“Hey sweetheart,” he said to
Tallie
in a gentle voice, “want to go back over to the clinic and see your mom?”

“Yeah! Can we go now?” Quinn was relieved to hear the excitement in the little girl’s voice – she hadn’t scared her.

Back at the clinic,
Tallie’s
rash was big news. It was the first definite case of the poisoning affecting more than one child in a single family. Nathaniel and Eli were floored; both of them questioned Thomas and Quinn intensively about any plants
Tallie
might have touched, and were disconcerted to realize that the child had only been inside her home between the last time Nathaniel had seen her and the time Quinn had discovered the rash.

“What does that mean?  Is it something in the house?” Quinn wondered.

“It could mean that, or it could mean that she was exposed sometime in the last few days and is only now developing the rash.”

Cammie
Winthrop was hesitant about giving
Tallie
the medication. David’s shadeweed symptoms were improving; his fever was down and the blistering on his skin had calmed, but the medicine was making him very sick. He kept getting the chills, and his facial features were tinged with pale gray. William’s anti-nausea medication was helping greatly with keeping the boy from throwing up, but he still looked and felt terrible.

“I know she seems fine now,
Cammie
,” Nathaniel’s voice was soft and matter-of-fact. “But if we don’t treat her, she could get worse. If we treat her right now, while she just has a little rash, she shouldn’t get as sick as David got. We’ll be able to give her just one or two doses of a medicine she drinks, and she’ll be feeling a lot better by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Are you sure she has shadeweed poisoning? What if she just has a rash from something else?”

“I’m not saying that’s not possible. But is that a chance you’re willing to take?”

“I just don’t understand how this happened,”
Cammie
lamented. “Where is this coming from?”

“We’ll find out.” The stress on Nathaniel’s face was evident. “We have to,” he sighed. “In the meantime, may we have your permission to treat
Tallie
?”

Cammie
nodded silently, looking devastated.

After lunch, Nathaniel and Eli left to go over to
Cammie’s
house, to see if they could find anything that could possibly be a source of the shadeweed. Thomas, who still seemed to be in a strange, distant mood, kept himself busy outside for most of the day, so Quinn found herself spending the afternoon in the clinic with William and the Winthrop family.

The other little girl who had been there when they’d arrived, Katie Cook, had been sent home with her family that morning, and David and
Tallie
were the only patients.

It had been an epic battle that morning, trying to get
Tallie
to swallow the vile shadeweed remedy, but she’d finally taken it, and she seemed to be doing okay. She had been sick for a while, but now was keeping down a glass of juice, and
Cammie
had taken her and Caleb out on the porch to play. Quinn wished she could have offered popsicles to the children.

It was quiet inside the clinic now, and she caught sight of William, who had been keeping vigil by David’s bed the whole day, and he didn’t show any signs of moving. She pulled up a chair on the side of David’s bed, opposite William.

“How is he doing?” she asked quietly, over the sleeping child.

William looked up at her, studying her face before he spoke. “A little better, I think. He’s sleeping well, and his body is responding to the treatment. I’m hopeful that he’ll recover completely.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes.” William’s expression was still so dark and serious. Quinn watched him as he adjusted David’s blankets, and swept his fingers gently across the child’s forehead. It was so difficult to reconcile
thisWilliam
with the boy she had been following at school. That time seemed so distant now, as if it had happened in another lifetime.

“How are you doing?” she asked him.

“Me?” William’s eyes flickered up to hers; his penetrating gaze made her breath catch in her throat. His forehead wrinkled, and his eyebrows pulled into a V-shape, as if he had to think about his answer. “I’m okay, I guess. I’m just worried about these kids, and I’m mad at myself.”

“Mad at yourself? Why?” After the words were out, she remembered his angry behavior the other day, and wondered if she was pushing him too far. It would be just her luck to upset both brothers on the same day.

He sighed, but he didn’t look angry. “There have been several things lately that I’m not too happy with myself about, but mostly for being too stupid to realize that these children had shadeweed poisoning.”

Quinn frowned. “I don’t think there’s anything stupid about that. How were you supposed to have known that?”

“You figured it out right away.”

“Sure, after almost poisoning myself with the stuff. Not to mention that I was coming at this from a completely different angle than you. Nobody else here figured it out, not even any of the … other doctors.” Her voice caught for a second. It was still difficult to think of someone her age as a doctor. “I wouldn’t consider Nathaniel stupid. Or Jacob or Essie, or Eli, for that matter.”

“It was so obvious though, especially when we were talking about shadeweed that first day in Mistle Village.”

Quinn shook her head. “It’s not that obvious. It still doesn’t make any sense; it’s not like any of these kids were out picking shadeweed flowers like I did.”

“No... But even so...”

“Why are you being so hard on yourself? Why does it have to be your fault? You didn’t do this to them.”

William blinked at her, looking surprised. “I … don’t know.”

A sense of empathy washed over her. Although the situations she’d been through in her own life were very different from his, she realized she understood his feelings too well.

“Nobody is perfect, you know.”

He managed half a smile. “I’ve heard that somewhere.”

They heard the back porch door open and close; the door that connected the clinic to Eli’s living area had been left open. There was the sound of footsteps on the wooden floor in the kitchen, and then water running in the sink, followed by the screen door opening and closing again.

Frustration mixed with – something else welled up in Quinn. “What is going on with your brother today?”

William shrugged. “You’ve seen him more than I have.”

“I don’t know if I did something to make him mad, or what.”

She was startled when he smiled. “I seriously doubt it. Thomas isn’t the type to keep that stuff bottled up. If you did something that made him mad, he would tell you.”

“He would?”

“Yes, that’s a skill I envy him sometimes.”

She smiled ruefully. “I have a problem with that one myself on occasion.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” William was pondering her face intently; she couldn’t fully grasp the emotion in his expression. She wondered what he meant.

“So if it’s not me … then what do you think his problem is?”

“I really don’t know, Quinn. Maybe he’s just having a bad day. Even Thomas gets grumpy sometimes – hard to believe, I realize. But this isn’t easy on him, either.”

Quinn sighed, “I’m sure you’re right.” She paused for a moment, watching him fidget with the edge of the blanket.

She watched David breathing in and out as they were silent for several minutes. Suddenly, she realized that William was watching her, and she looked up at him.

“How are
you
doing with everything?” he asked quietly. “This has to take the prize for the strangest thing that has ever happened to you.”

“The grand prize,” she agreed. She looked down, picking a tiny piece of lint off her woven pants. “You’re not the first person to ask me that, and I really don’t know if I know the answer. This is so far outside of anything I could have ever imagined, but here I am ... unless it’s all a dream.” She looked back up at him, seeing herself reflected in his wire-rimmed glasses.

“It’s not a dream, Quinn. It’s real. This is what I am – my big secret.”

“I can see why you keep it a secret. Isn’t it hard keeping to
yourself
so much at school, though?”

His forehead wrinkled thoughtfully. “Sort of. I don’t really think about it all that much most of the time. It seems like an awful lot of work to be friends with people I’d have to lie to all the time.”

She nodded, considering that. “It’s going to be weird for me, going home.”

He shrugged. “For a day or so, it will be. And then it will probably be like it never happened. Nobody else will know.”

“You’ll know.”

His eyes met hers, and he nodded. “I’ll know.”

She hadn’t thought about it at all, how things would change when she went home. Or how things wouldn’t change at all, really. He was right; she couldn’t tell anyone else. They’d never believe her if she
did,
and even if they believed her – she realized that she didn’t want to share it. Nobody would ever understand what it had really been like here, what it had, maybe, started to mean to her.

“Do you realize that this is the longest conversation you and I have ever had?” she asked.

William laughed out loud at this, causing the boy between them to stir in his slumber. “That it is. Maybe we shouldn’t wait so long again … and maybe we should move away from David and let him rest. I want to go check on
Tallie
again, anyway.”